PhilanTopic

New York Foundation: Celebrating 100 Years

2009-12-16T17:26:30-05:00

The "Great Recession" of 2008-09 is often compared to the "double dip" recession of 1980-82 and the Great Depression of 1929-33, the searing economic calamity we seem to have avoided (for now).

But more than a few economists and historians think the more appropriate analogy is the Panic of 1907, when a failed attempt to corner the stock of the United Copper Company triggered a sequence of events that eventually caused the New York Stock Exchange to fall 50 percent and led to numerous runs on banks and trusts. The crisis was finally contained when New York financier J.P. Morgan, acting as the lender of last resort in the absence of a central bank, pledged large amounts of his own money (and convinced others to do the same) to restore liquidity to and confidence in the system.

The similarities between that long-ago panic and our own recent crisis are striking. At their root, both were precipitated by aggressive and largely unregulated risk-taking on the part of Wall Street insiders; both led to a paralyzing crisis of confidence in the integrity of financial markets and market participants; and both seemed to blindside all but a handful of observers.

A century ago, one of the few who saw disaster looming was New York banker Jacob H. Schiff. In 1906, according to Taking Risks That Matter (20 pages, PDF), a new report from the New York Foundation that celebrates the foundation's first hundred years, Schiff "issued a stern warning that America would face critical failure if the nation didn't modernize its banking and currency systems. There would be 'such a panic', he said, 'as will make all previous panics look like child's play."

Schiff turned out to be right, and his pre-panic call for the creation of a central bank "with adequate control of credit resources" became reality in 1913 when President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law.

But his most enduring claim to fame was as a driving force -- along with Edward C. Henderson, Isaac Seligman, and Paul M. Warburg -- in the creation of the New York Foundation, one of the very first philanthropic foundations in the country and one that, a century after its establishment, remains true to its founders' vision: that New Yorkers, given the tools and means, can create social change.

Well versed, as the report notes, in "the world of risk/reward ratios," Schiff, Henderson, Seligman, and Warburg "imbued their new foundation with a principle borne of the vicissitudes of life on the Street: the greater the expected return, the greater the investment risk." From its earliest days, the foundation worked to address issues and problems that others perceived as controversial or unfashionable. Whether that meant funding efforts to improve conditions for garment workers in the wake of the horrific Triangle Factory fire in 1911 or making one of the first grants to a fledgling National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; funding social welfare work during the Great Depression or supporting the emerging field of community organizing in the 1950s; backing resource-starved community organizations during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s or standing resolutely for the rights of successive waves of immigrants throughout its history, the New York Foundation has helped and been an inspiration to countless millions who, regardless of race, creed or color, have flocked to the greatest city in the world in search of opportunity and a better life.

Why should we care about the century-old legacy of a medium-sized foundation? It's a fair question, and I like the way the report answers it:

It's important to understand [our] roots, especially in an age when, due to a faltering economy, community needs keep escalating, making philanthropy and its inherent risks matter more than ever. It is also important to note [our] faith in the abilites of community residents. Civic organizations play a crucial role in articulating and advocating community interests. While social theorists, pundits, and political theater customarily stress the necessity of calling in experts to investigate social problems, the New York Foundation has shown a century-old conviction in the irrepressibility of New Yorkers; it has striven to cultivate their capacity to engage social, political, and economic forces while respecting their will to act as the sole arbiters of their fate....

Happy 100th birthday, NYF. We couldn't agree more.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Readings (and Other Stuff) - Dec. 15, 2009

2009-12-15T17:16:15-05:00

Here's what we've been reading today:

Alan Tuck, Don Howard, and William Foster: Outrun the Recession: Seven Tips for Surviving the Economic Downturn (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
Suzanne Perry: Wealthy Individuals Ask Congress to Extend Estate Tax to Promote Philanthropy (Chronicle of Philanthropy)
Lucy Bernholz: New Research on Online Giving Marketplaces (Philanthropy 2173)
David Koken: The Current State of Online Philanthropy (via Scribd)
Frank D. Roylance: Charity Begins on the Internet Now (Baltimore Sun)
Heather Mansfield: ATTN Nonprofits: Major Changes Coming Soon to Facebook Fan Pages (Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog)
Seth Godin: What Matters Now
Rosetta Thurman: Six Ways to Use Twitter to Enhance Your Nonprofit Career

How about you?

Climate Change and Philanthropy

2009-12-14T18:41:22-05:00

As the second week of the 15th annual UN climate change conference gets under way in Copenhagen, representatives of the nearly two hundred nations in attendance have produced more "posturing than progress," reports the New York Times. Maybe so, but a new research advisory from the Foundation Center reveals that philanthropic organizations in the U.S. have stepped up in a big way over the last eight years to address the issue. According to Climate Change: The U.S. Foundation Response (4 pages, PDF), foundation funding to address issues related to global warming jumped from less than $100 million in 2000 to nearly $900 million in 2008.

In the advisory, Steven Lawrence, the center's director of research, explains that "while philanthropic efforts to address global warming have been growing, a small number of very large funders still account for most of the support....In fact, the top 25 climate change grantmakers in 2008 provided more than 90 percent of the funding."

That's a lot of money, but will foundations be able to support the issue at that level given the uncertain economy? It's too early to say, writes Lawrence:

[T]he recent economic crisis has markedly reduced foundation resources, and the Foundation Center predicts that the impact of the downturn will lead to continued reductions in overall foundation funding through at least 2010.

Though the impact of the expected reductions on climate change grantmaking is uncertain, throughout 2009 foundations have continued to announce new grants focused on the climate crisis, suggesting that the foundation community will remain committed to addressing the causes and impact of global warming....

You can download the entire advisory here. And for more information about philanthropy's response to climate change, check out this presentation produced by the center for the Global Philanthropy Forum's 8th annual conference last April.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (December 12 - 13, 2009)

2009-12-13T16:57:53-05:00

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Economy

U.S. senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) have issued a report on "wasteful" projects that have received stimulus funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nonprofit Quarterly contributor Rick Cohen highlights several of the senators' bete noirs, including Shakespeare festivals and jazz programs supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, and concludes that while it "contains some stuff we can all learn from," readers of the report should not get caught up McCain and Coburn's "ideological peculiarities."

Fundraising

On the Charity Navigator blog, one donor shares the findings from a recent experiment in which he recorded the number of requests for funding he received from charities December 1, 2008, to November 30, 2009. All of which leads CN to wonder, How many requests is too many?

Todd Cohen argues on his Inside Philanthropy blog that nonprofits are "missing out on digital giving." With the recession affecting everyone's bottom line, writes Cohen, "charities need to do more than throw information...on their Web sites. They need to understand how their givers and prospective givers are communicating...and then develop communication and fundraising strategies to connect with and engage those givers."

Impact/Effectiveness

On his Free the Nonprofits blog, Dan Pallotta commends Charity Navigator, Guidestar, GreatNonprofits, Philanthropedia, and GiveWell for stating in a joint press release that "overhead ratios and executive salaries are useless for evaluating a nonprofit's impact." Pallotta also salutes CN for announcing plans to re-vamp its charity evaluation system, noting that it "takes tremendous courage to put the thing that has sustained you second to the things that can sustain real change in the world."

Journalism/Media

Are journalists storytellers? On his Buzz Machine blog, Jeff Jarvis says that maybe they shouldn't be. By assuming "that our role is that of the storyteller," writes Jarvis, "we risk closing ourselves off from forms of gathering and sharing information that do not end up in the form of stories...."

Leadership

In a series of "Shine While Your Light's On" blog posts, Rosetta Thurman explains why young nonprofits professionals should use Twitter and shares some insights into how she was able to build her personal brand by blogging.

Philanthropy

On the It's Your World blog, World Affairs Council president and CEO Jane Wales gives a shoutout to Steven Goldberg's new book Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets: Why Philanthropy Doesn't Advance Social Progress. In the book, Goldberg makes the case for a nonprofit capital market that would "allow philanthropists to know what various nonprofits accomplish, through evaluation and transparency, and not just what nonprofits are trying to accomplish, through anecdotal reporting." Although Wales agrees with Goldberg, she notes that, given "the resilience of human nature," it will not be easy to change people's behavior.

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz has posted a new draft version of "Disrupting Philanthropy 2.0," a grand summing up of many of the memes she's been tracking over the last few years. Written with former Surdna Foundation president Ed Skoot and Barry Varela, the paper explores, in often fascinating detail, how technology is altering "philanthropic capital flows." Bernholz and company are soliciting feedback on the report via her blog: e-mail (lucy@blueprintrd.com), or twitter (@p2173) (be sure to include the hashtag #DisruptPhil).

Seattle Times' reporter Kristi Heim explains why donating to a charity directly may be more effective than purchasing a charity gift card this holiday season.

"Giving is an act of self-expression, and generosity is a practice," writes Sasha Dichter on his blog. "Each time I decide not to give [to a charity or a homeless person], I'm reinforcing a way of acting –- one that's critical and analytical and judgmental." Do you agree? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

On her blog, Heather Carpenter recaps the 2009 ARNOVA conference and offers a few takeaways on the future of nonprofit research.

Do professional athletes have an obligation to give back to their communities? That question has sparked a fascinating debate on the blog of Athletes for Hope, a nonprofit that works to encourage pro athletes to give more to charity.

Social Media

Last week, Google launched a real-time search engine that incorporates Twitter and Facebook updates on the results page of any query. In conjunction with the launch, Facebook changed its privacy settings. But not everyone is happy with the changes. Writes Brad Stone on the New York Time's Bits blog:

While Facebook has given people more refined controls over who can see particular pieces of information they post, one controversial move is that several pieces of data are now visible to all members on the service: your name, city, gender, photograph, the profile pages you are a fan of, and your list of friends.

For the record, it's easy enough to restore your old settings. On your Facebook profile page, click on Settings | Privacy Settings | Profile Information and use the drop-down menus to change individual settings as you see fit.

In a related post, Lucy Bernholz was quick to point out the ironies of Facebook setting up a foundation as a result of an earlier lawsuit against the company involving privacy issues. "Internet time may apply to product launches, but doesn't seem to apply to creating Internet-fueled, legally mandated foundations," writes Bernholz. "I won't even get into the irony of setting up a new foundation focused on Internet privacy rather than directing the money to any one or a combination of the existing nonprofits that already do that work."

Last but not least, Beth Kanter takes a close look at the Ocean Conservancy's recent social media efforts on Facebook and shares a few best practices. Kanter suggests that organizations getting ready to launch a social media campaign should use "very specific, narrow objectives...and specific metrics" to gain more tangible results.

That's it for this week. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone

TED on Sunday: David Keith on Climate Change and Geo-engineering

2009-12-13T14:27:06-05:00

Scientists have been concerned about the uncertain impacts of anthropogenic climate change for fifty years, says environmental scientist David Keith, and yet we have done almost nothing to slow or reduce emissions of manmade greenhouse gases. That's the bad news. The good news is that we can solve the problem of global warming quickly and relatively cheaply by putting fine sulfur particles into the lower atmosphere to deflect sunlight, much as volcanic eruptions do. But geo-engineered solutions to the warming problem create problems of their own, says Keith. First, who gets to decide what the appropriate action and timing of that action is? And how do we resolve what Keith calls the moral hazard implicit in any geo-engineered solution to global warming? After listening to his talk, you'll have a greater appreciation for the challenges confronting the negotiators at the climate change talks in Copenhagen. (Filmed: September 2007; Running time: 16:30)

Liked this talk? Try one of these.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Nonprofit Issues Forum: Boards and Governance

2009-12-10T17:33:00-05:00

(The following post was written by Stephen Sherman, reference librarian at the Foundation Center-Atlanta, and originally appeared on the Philanthropy Front and Center-Atlanta blog.)

What if various stakeholder groups -- donors, patrons, foundations, government agencies, corporations, and volunteers -- all had a direct say in the governance of nonprofit organizations in proportion to their contributions? Would this help improve the governance of nonprofit organizations?

These were some of the questions posed by Professor Dennis Young at a recent Nonprofit Issues Forum. The free event was held at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and included a lecture by Dr. Young and a panel discussion on the topic of boards and nonprofit governance.

While nonprofit boards have a tendency to attract highly-motivated, well-intentioned individuals, they often suffer from inherent problems in their structure and composition, resulting in issues such as:

Free-riding -- individuals failing to contribute meaningfully to the board's collective activities
Groupthink -- the inclination of groups to avoid conflict and debate in order to reach a consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas
Conflicts of interest -- individual board members bringing personal motives or incentives into the decision-making process
Principal/agent problem -- the board and staff working with conflicting goals or objectives and not sharing the same agenda for the organization

To address these issues, Young proposed reconstituting boards to include representatives from stakeholder groups that provide the resources on which each nonprofit depends. These groups -- donors, customers, private funders, government agencies, corporations, volunteers -- would be represented on each board and receive voting rights in proportion to each group's share of the revenue for the nonprofit. According to Young, this model would have the advantage of introducing competing stakeholder interests and tighten the relationship between resources and the decision-making process.

Panelists Marjorie Fine Knowles, professor of law at Georgia State University; Penelope McPhee, president and trustee of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation; and Oz Nelson, retired chairman and CEO, UPS, all offered responses to Young's proposal. Among their criticisms:

Stakeholder incentive already exists in the fiduciary duties of boards and therefore precludes the creation of such a model.
Board members are required by law to act in the best interests of the nonprofit organization as a whole and therefore would not be permitted to represent specific stakeholder groups or interests.
Involving outside stakeholder groups would actually lead to greater occurrences of conflicts of interest and more self-dealing among individuals.
Rather than fall into neat categories, many stakeholders would likely have multifaceted interests in the organization (for example donors may also be volunteers), preventing them from representing a specific subgroup.
Board members should be recruited according to the skills and interests that they bring to a nonprofit rather than for their status in certain stakeholder groups.

What do you think? Feel free to join the debate in the comments section below.

Want to learn more about nonprofit boards and governance? See the newly-revised FAQs on the topic or search our Catalog of Nonprofit Literature, the Foundation Center's bibliographic database, for the subject Board members.

-- Stephen Sherman

Readings (and Other Stuff) - Dec. 9, 2009

2009-12-09T17:20:36-05:00

Here are some of the things we've been reading today:

Lucy Bernholz (with Edward Skloot and Barry Varela): Disrupting Philanthropy 2.0
Heather Gold: Information Flow Demands a Compass, Not an Anchor (Brittannica blog)
Mario Marino: The Dark Side of the Sun (Intrepid Philanthropist)
Sean Stannard-Stockton: Using Your Head & Your Heart in Philanthropy (Tactical Philanthropy)
Philanthropy Potluck: Helping Individuals and Families Navigate Crisis: Interim Report on the Bremer Emergency Fund (Minnesota Council on Foundations)
Jane Wales: Tie Funding to Performance, Curb Traditional Fundraising; Book Lays out Plan for an 'Impact Index'
Do Charter Schools Deserve The Spotlight? (National Journal)
Bruce Trachtenberg: Have a Strategy? Let People Know (Communications Network blog)
Rosetta Thurman: Top 30 Nonprofit News Sources and Thought Leaders on Twitter
Jeremy Porter: 10 Reasons Media Relations Will Get Easier in 2010
Exploring a New, More Dynamic Way of Reading News with 'Living Stories' (Google blog)
Mikhail Gorbachev: We Have a Real Emergency (NYT Op-ed)

What are you reading?

Talking About Impact

2009-12-09T13:17:25-05:00

(Larry McGill is the Foundation Center’s vice president for research. In his last post, he wrote about the debate surrounding the NCRP report Criteria for Philanthropy at its Best.)

Underlying all philanthropic work is the belief that we can create or facilitate positive social change. And most of us believe that we do. We can cite examples as evidence.

But how do we know if we are working as effectively as we could be? How do we know that our way of working is as effective as other ways of working?

The belief that philanthropic work can make a difference is nowhere stronger than it is in women's funds. And there is no doubting that women's funds are doing extraordinary work. A quick read of the annual reports issued by the International Network of Women's Funds, the Women's Funding Network, and especially the reports of place-based funds such as Semillas in Mexico or the Women's Fund in Georgia, provides ample and compelling evidence of this. Don't take my word for it -- take a look!

Now, women's funds are poised to help the field rethink how the real-world impact of social change organizations can be specified, assessed, and fed back through a virtuous learning cycle that allows philanthropy to continuously hone its strategies to bring about real change. At a meeting last week convened by the program on women's issues at the Oak Foundation in Geneva, representatives of seventeen women's funds from around the world met with a group of researchers and representatives of philanthropic support organizations to discuss how to measure and assess the social impact of their work.

It should be acknowledged, of course, that many tools, methods, and best practices designed to assess social impact have been developed in recent years -- 150 of them can be accessed through a new web portal called TRASI (Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact), developed by the Foundation Center in partnership with McKinsey & Company. Other organizations, such as FSG Social Impact Advisors, InterAction, and the Innovation Network, are also rich sources of information on the challenges of measuring social impact.

At the meeting, tough questions were raised concerning the applicability of existing measurement and evaluation methodologies to the task of assessing the impact of women's funds. Others who attended the meeting are more capable than I of articulating these challenges, and I invite them to post their own thoughts about this.

For me, the meeting was remarkable for many reasons, but what struck me most was the deep, experience-based understanding of the issues associated with monitoring and evaluation efforts that each participant brought to the discussion. Put another way, for this group, the discussion really mattered. Assessing impact is important, yes; but at what cost, when there is so much work to be done. And if we are going to try to measure social impact, let's make sure to keep it real by grounding it in the pragmatic realities of the situations in which we operate and the people with whom we are working.

This meeting was also remarkable at a personal level. I was privileged to be one of just two men in attendance, and had the opportunity to participate fully. What I discovered was that it was impossible for this man -- an outsider to the group in so many ways (in terms of gender, upbringing, experiences, and unearned advantages social, economic and political) -- to work side-by-side with a group of women of such deep commitment and accomplishment without being personally affected, indeed "changed." For me, courage and strength have a new face -- in fact, more than two dozen new faces. And even that isn't quite right -- because linked inseparably with each of these remarkable women are the lives of countless other women whom they would tell you are the most remarkable of all.

Working with these women, it has never been clearer to me why we do the work we do. Watch this space and see what happens when women's funds bring their collective talents, passion, and lived experience in making change happen to the task of re-imagining how social impact might be assessed. Let's talk, share, and learn.

-- Larry McGill

WEBCAST: 2009 Governor's National Leadership Conference

2009-12-08T18:52:15-05:00

Tomorrow morning (December 9, 11:30 a.m. EST), we'll be hosting a live feed from the 32nd annual Governor's National Leadership Conference in Dallas featuring a panel of nonprofit leaders discussing collaborative efforts to stimulate socially innovative activities in Texas. Panelists include Elizabeth Darling, president/CEO of the OneStar Foundation; Stacy Caldwell, executive director of Dallas Social Venture Partners; and Andrew Wolk, CEO of Root Cause.

Immediately preceding the discussion, the Texas Social Innovation Initiative -- a collaboration between OneStar and Root Cause -- will award each of seven nonprofit organizations from the Greater Dallas/Fort Worth area more than $25,000 in cash and technical support.

Promises to be interesting.

Ten Lessons From the Piper Charitable Trust

2009-12-08T15:44:01-05:00

The Phoenix-based Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust is the largest private foundation in Arizona. Established in 1995 by Virginia G. Piper (whose first husband, Paul Galvin, founded Motorola), the trust works to improve the quality of life for residents of Maricopa County and makes grants in the areas of healthcare and medical research, arts and culture, and education, as well as to faith-based organizations that focus on young children, adolescents, and older adults.

To mark its first decade of grantmaking, the trust, in the latest edition of its Notebook publication, highlights ten lessons it has learned over the last ten years. Here are a few of our favorites:

Accountability begins at home. "The values of of an organization are either lived or not. If a foundation wants grantees to achieve its values of excellence, honest communication, commitment to improvement and learning, stewardship and community collaboration, then the funder must...embrace these qualities as well."

Expect detours and rerouting. "On the way to a particularly difficult goal, strategies or the mix of strategies may need to shift as the full complexity of a problem reveals itself. Tough challenges demand perseverance and constancy."

"Think nationall, act locally" is not just a political strategy. "Borrowing ideas and tools from the greater world and applying them at the grassroots is a tried-and-true strategy. Foundations should not be afraid to replicate best practices and programs from elsewhere to boost impact locally."

Be prepared for great ideas to come from unexpected places. "Good ideas know no boundaries. In philanthropy, great ideas can flow from a lengthy deliberative process or be sparked by a chance meeting."

Foundations have more to offer than grants. "Strategic philanthropy is not merely measured in dollars invested. Strategy embraces rigorous grantmaking defined by measures of success related to long-term community impact. 'Strategic' also means using the many other tools available to create impact and positive change."

What lessons would you add to the list? Feel free to share them in the comments section below.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (December 5 - 6, 2009)

2009-12-06T18:34:43-05:00

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Communications/Marketing

Appearing on NPR's "Marketplace" program, Philanthropy 2173's Lucy Bernholz talked with Kai Ryssdal about the top philanthropy-related buzzwords of 2009 (interview transcript here). On her Nonprofit Marketing blog, Network for Good's Katya Andresen adds a half dozen of her own to Lucy's three.

How can nonprofit organizations make the most of their taglines? Nonprofit marketing expert Nancy Schwartz provides a dozen tips on her Getting Attention blog.

Diversity

Rosetta Thurman says that if nonprofit organizations care about having a more racially diverse workforce, they need to "implement strategies specifically designed to attract people of color."

Governance

Does board service automatically provide individual board members with enough capacity/experience to be an effective executive? Not necessarily, writes Mike Burns on his Nonprofit Board Crisis blog. "Board members have a special set of skills and experience," adds Burns, "that do not instantly apply to the fundamental management skills needed for operating a nonprofit, nor even managing a board for that matter...."

Impact/Effectiveness

For some, the big news of the week was the press release issued by Guidestar, Charity Navigator, GreatNonprofits, Philanthropedia, and GiveWell. Titled "The Worst (and Best) Way to Pick A Charity This Year," the joint release says that "overhead ratios and executive salaries... [are] useless for evaluating a nonprofit's impact." On the Charity Navigator blog, CN president and CEO Ken Berger wrote:

[We do] not agree with everything that is stated in this press release (we think overhead does have a place in rating charities, yet agree it should not be primary or overly emphasized), but we do concur with the fundamental truth that the most critical dimension in evaluating a nonprofit has to do with achieving meaningful results (we call them outcomes)....

In the post, Berger explains how Charity Navigator, over the next year and a half, plans to improve its frequently criticized rating system to include indicators related to an organization's financial health, accountability, and outcomes.

Leadership

On the Social Citizens blog, Kristin Ivie notes that while her fellow Millennials are an "idealistic generation, with very high standards for ourselves, our organizations, our colleagues and our politicians," they've struggled to come to terms with "disappointments in the organizations we have been involved with and our sector as a whole." What to do when reality falls short of expectations? Ivie has a few suggestions: volunteer for another organization, spend time with a mentor, express your concerns about the nonprofit in question, and/or do a "reality check."

Philanthropy

Sean Stannard-Stockton weighs in on why the recently launched Social Impact Exchange is important and matters to philanthropy.

Social Entrepreneurship

On his Change.org blog, Nathaniel Whittemore shares three lessons social entrepreneurs can learn from World AIDS Day.

Social Media

On the What We Give blog, Larry Blumenthal, director of social media strategy for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, discussess steps taken by the Hewlett Foundation to be more transparent in its work with Hewlett communications director Eric Brown.

If an organization wants to successfully implement social media, "[it] needs to be part of everyone's job," writes Beth Kanter in a recent post.

On her Business of Giving blog, Seattle Times reporter Kristi Heim takes a look at GlobalMojo, "a Web browser that channels money to nonprofits when its users search, shop, or book travel." But are services such as these "giving us the illusion we're doing community service," asks Heim, "when in fact we have no real connection to the cause and we're simply buying more stuff or getting lost in our gadgets?" And does it matter?

Google Wave -– an "online tool for real-time communication and collaboration" –- may just be another "shiny new object," but Idealist's Scott Stadum thinks it has a lot of potential for the sector and shares some ideas about how nonprofits can make the most of it.

According to About.com's Joanne Fritz, "generosity will get you everywhere in social media." To that end, Fritz shares some tips about building relationships online:

Listen and get to know the community you want to interact with;
Ask questions;
Invite comments on your blog and respond to the comments you receive;
Look for information about your subject that you can pass on to your readers;
Retweet others' tweets;
Say "thank you" and give compliments frequently;
Be present, responsive, and in it for the long haul.

On his With or Without You blog, Mitch Hurst looks at how the top 30 foundations are using Facebook and Twitter. Based on his informal survey, Hurst writes:

The most active foundations in the social media space are focusing their efforts on pushing dialogue about specific issues or on reaching out to specific audiences that are heavy social media participants. Foundations that fund interest areas that are currently in the news or are part of national policy discussions are also getting their perspectives out, particularly on Twitter. At an institutional level, foundations are drawing significant followings on Twitter by posting information about individual grants and linking back to additional information on their Web sites....

Adds Hurst, "As adoption by the general public of social media platforms increases, and the dialogue that takes place becomes more influential, foundations that stay on the sidelines will miss out on the substantive discussions about their issues that are taking place online." We agree.

Women

Last but not least, Allison Fine wonders whether women can use blogs and social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook "to overcome the traditional barriers that exist within institutions of position, financial resources, and permission." And if not, can women use social media to create their own platforms for social change?

That's it for this week. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone

TED on Sunday: John Doerr on the 'Green' Imperative

2009-12-06T13:14:13-05:00

With the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) set to begin tomorrow, this seems like a good time to take another look at what may be at stake. In this emotional talk, legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr argues that there "is a time when panic is the appropriate response" -- and with catastrophic, irreversible climate change only decades away, that day is fast approaching. Fortunately, says, Doerr, he has learned four things about the climate change issue that give him hope: business can be part of the solution; individuals matter; smart policy matters; and the potential for radical innovation in the clean-energy field is almost limitless. As Doerr likes to say: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Let's get started. (Filmed: March 2007; Running time: 17:49)

Liked this talk? Try one of these.

And for those who can't get enough of TED, check out Jim Simpson's post about a cool hidden feature of most TED Talks.

-- Mitch Nauffts

The Trouble With Values

2009-12-04T17:12:46-05:00

(Consultant Thaler Pekar helps smart leaders and their organizations find, develop, and share the stories and organizational narratives that can rally critical support. Her previous posts in this series can be found here, here, here, and here.)

For many years, I traveled around the world teaching people the importance of values-based communication. Values-based communication urges people to initiate their communication efforts by stating the values -- values such as opportunity, fairness, and equity -- underlying their issues and advocacy.

There's a problem with this approach. It doesn't go far enough. Values are utterly subjective and mean different things to different people. Heck, any given value can mean different things to the same person at different times in their lives or within different contexts.

Think of the value of community. To rural Americans, "community" means something much different than it does to city dwellers, who often associate the idea with their social, political, or religious affiliations.

The realization that this was the case (along with what I had learned about how the brain processes information) eventually led me to stories as one of the best ways to articulate stated or underlying values.

Annette Simmons, in Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact, offers the following explanation:

Values are subjective. To one person, integrity means doing what her boss tells her to do. To someone else, integrity means saying no even if it costs her job. If you want to encourage a value or teach a value you have to provide a demonstration by telling a story that illustrates what that value means, behaviorally. Hypothetical situations sound hypocritical and preachy. Be specific.

Simmons also notes that "Values are meaningless without stories to bring them to life and engage us on a personal level." Not only do stories help us to establish meaning, they also help us talk about both values and facts at the same time.

Earlier this year, my husband, Tom, traveled to Senegal and worked on a documentary for Tostan, an organization that works to "empower African communities to bring about sustainable development and positive social transformation based on respect for human rights." Tostan means "breakthrough" in the West African Wolof language, and the organization was founded by an extraordinary American woman, Molly Melching. Tom returned from his travels with this story:

In 1997, Tostan was conducting educational workshops in Senegalese villages, helping women and men learn about their human rights to health and to be free from all forms of violence. The women in one village made the connection between female genital cutting, ongoing health problems, and even deaths among their young women. They realized that female genital cutting was a violation of their human rights and begged their village leader to put a stop to it. The old chief, Diawara, told Molly he couldn't do that, even if he wanted to. Molly asked him why that was, and he explained that people don't marry within their own village, so all the intra-marrying villages would have to agree before they could change a tradition like FGC. If they all agreed, they would make a public declaration of FGC abandonment so that it would stick. She asked him what it would take, and he said that if he had the bus fare, he would go and talk to the other village leaders. So Molly gave him the money, and he spent three months going from village to village. In the end, it resulted in the first-ever public declaration of FGC abandonment by the thirteen intra-marrying villages.

Today, Diawara has personally persuaded 174 villages to abandon the practice. And he has spoken before the United Nations and the British Parliament about the practice. Of the 5,000 Senegalese villages that have practiced female genital excision, 1,993 villages where Tostan has been working have abandoned it.

A powerful and clear illustration of the Tostan mission statement!

Another problem with values is that they are non-hierarchical. We like to think that our lives are neatly ordered, and that we, as emotionally intelligent adults, have formed clear moral frameworks that guide our decision-making. We will always value family over work, for instance, or community over autonomy. But even if we believe that some values exist on parallel tracks, complex situations can cause them to collide, requiring us to make decisions about which value or values should win out.

For example, how do we allocate a finite amount of charitable contributions in a world of unending need? How do we decide which of many, seemingly equally worthy charities should receive our support?

Katharine Q. Seelye, in the New York Times, recently examined just such a collision of values:

The abortion issue has put members of Congress who support abortion rights in a quandary over the health care legislation.

Do they stick to their long-standing principles and fiercely resist the legislative effort to limit access to insurance for abortions?

Or should they compromise on the issue and vote for legislation that in other ways could greatly improve health care for women?

...Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy at Harvard, said the choice between trying to stop an erosion of abortion rights and trying to improve health for women pitted "what are described as two fundamental human rights -- the right to universal coverage and the right of access to reproductive services – against each other.

"They aren’t just policy trade-offs," he said. "And that's why this is so wrenching."

What's more, different constituencies may differ in the way in which they prioritize their values, so that, in terms of advocacy, leading a campaign with the same underlying value for all stakeholders may be shortsighted.

My colleagues at the Australian consulting firm Anecdote note yet another problem that arises when organizations focus on values, as well as a solution to the problem:

Most organizations we know have a set of stated values. You know what we mean, things like integrity, professionalism, respect for the individual. And in most cases they've been developed for the wrong reasons. And when developed for the right reasons, most employees don't understand what the values mean anyway. Let us explain.

Often the starting question for establishing a set of organizational values is, "Which values should we hold each and everyone accountable for so our organization thrives?" This gets translated to "What values do our stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers) expect us to hold?" The list is then drawn up and the result is a moribund list of words.

Shawn [Callahan, a partner at Anecdote] was reading a paper by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras and they suggest an alternative set of questions (in our words): "What values do we deeply hold that reflect the essence of our company?" and "Would we still hold these values if they created a disadvantage for us if things changed?" If you can answer these two questions in the positive then you've identified your core values.

Proclaiming one set of values while exhibiting another is certain to result in your listeners distrusting you. You will appear disingenuous, if not deceitful.

As a leader and communicator, you want to share the values that inform the issue on which you want your listener to take action. But don't simply state the value; be sure to demonstrate it every day through your actions and your listeners' experiences with you and your organization. Short of your listeners' ability to physically experience what you are talking about, a story that clearly articulates and demonstrates the power of your stated values is the next best thing.

-- Thaler Pekar

A Modest Proposal

2009-12-03T16:53:36-05:00

As we noted last fall, fiscal 2009 promised to be -- and ended up being -- a terrible year for state budgets. And that's bad news for nonprofits that rely on state payments and contracts.

According to The Fiscal Survey of the States, an annual overview of fiscal conditions in all fifty states produced by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers, states are

facing one of the worst, if not the worst, fiscal periods since the Great Depression. Fiscal conditions significantly deteriorated for states during fiscal 2009, with the trend expected to continue through fiscal 2010 and even into 2011 and 2012. The severe national recession drastically reduced tax revenues from every revenue source during fiscal 2009 and revenue collections are expected to continue their decline in fiscal 2010. As state revenue collections historically lag behind any national economic recovery, state revenues will remain depressed throughout fiscal 2010 and likely be sluggish into fiscal years 2011 and 2012. The "official" economic recession, which began in December 2007 and may have recently ended, has significantly affected state spending, as more than half the states decreased their general fund expenditures in fiscal 2009, and over two-thirds of states enacted fiscal budgets with general fund spending lower than the previous year....

Back in January, a coalition of nonprofit organizations led by Independent Sector called for immediate financial aid to state and local governments experiencing budget stress as well as a short-term $15 billion bridge loan program for nonprofit human service organizations that, if implemented properly, would help preserve vital services to 7.8 million Americans in need and preserve some 300,000 nonprofit sector jobs over the next two years.

In February, with the national unemployment rate at 8.1 percent, the House and Senate passed, and President Obama signed into law, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which, among other things, set aside some $55 billion for state fiscal relief. There was no provision in the legislation for an emergency bridge loan program for nonprofit service providers.

Today the unemployment rate stands at 10.2 percent -- and it could be higher tomorrow after the November figure is released. Meanwhile, financial service firms that received federal bailout money under the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) are scrambling to pay those funds back so they can "reward" their executives and star traders with the lavish pay packages and bonuses they've grown accustomed to.

With the White House convening a jobs summit and desperately looking, in the words of Tech Ticker, "for any and all ideas to help get Americans back to work," here's a modest proposal. Let's take $15 billion of the $45 billion Bank of America has said it will return to Treasury by year-end and put it toward the nonprofit bridge loan proposal advocated by Independent Sector and others. As Los Angeles arbitrator James Adler, writing on the Huffington Post, notes: "The key to creating jobs quickly is to utilize existing employers, particularly nonprofits who have seen their resources diminish precisely at the time of maximum need for their services...."

This would seem to be that time, no?

-- Mitch Nauffts

Readings (and Other Stuff) - Dec. 2, 2009

2009-12-02T18:22:17-05:00

Here are some of the things we've been checking out today:

Burton A. Weisbrod and Evelyn D. Asch: Endowment for a Rainy Day (SSIR)
Rosetta Thurman: How Nonprofits Can Recruit Talented People of Color (Even in a Tough Economy)
Allison Fine: More on Branding
Beth Kanter: I Hope My Kids Organize Their Own Online Fundraiser When They Are Teenagers
Tara Parker-Pope: Is Your Facebook Personality Genuine? (NYT's Well blog)
Andrew Wolk: Social Innovation at an Inflection Point
Boom: Relative Size of Social Networks (The Big Picture)
Ira Socol: Mythic America: What Our Students Need (SpeEdChange)
Alexander Howard: Is Journalism Going Through Its Own Reformation? (HuffPo)
Leah Betancourt: The Journalist's Guide to Maximizing Personal Social Media ROI (Mashable)
Obama’s Speech in a Snowcloud (Channel 4 News)

How about you?

Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink

2009-12-02T12:39:41-05:00

If ever a picture/graphic was worth a thousand words...

(H/t Adam Singer/The Future Buzz)

-- Mitch Nauffts

Just Say No (to Reducing Value of Charitable Deduction)

2009-12-02T12:17:10-05:00

That's the consensus view among charity fundraisers, according to the results of an online Quick Poll conducted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals from October 20 - November 30.

Under a proposal that has been advanced by the White House, individuals earning more than $250,000 annually would have the value of their charitable deduction reduced by as much as 20 percent.

The poll asked: Will the White House proposal to decrease the deduction for charitable giving to help pay for healthcare reform hurt your organization's fundraising?

The findings:

66 percent of respondents said the proposal is a bad idea
56 percent said a reduction in the amount donors could deduct would hurt their organization
35 percent said their organization would be "hurt a lot"
14 percent agree with the proposal
11 percent said their organization would be unaffected
18 percent were undecided

The AFP position on the proposal is unambiguous. AFP president and CEO Paulette Maehara: "While people give for many reasons, the fact is that incentives for giving -- such as the charitable deduction -- play an important role in how much people give, especially as the amount of the gift grows. It simply makes no sense to enact this proposal when charities are already facing difficulties in raising the money they need to provide critically needed programs and services."

What do you think? Would a reduction in the charitable deduction result in less giving by those affected? Does the current system reward "unfairly" reward high-net-worth individuals, large charities and tax-exempt institutions, and/or big capital campaign gifts? Would the proposal be more palatable if it kicked in at a higher annual income level (say, $500,000)? And what are the chances of anything like this being passed by Congress in 2010?

Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

-- Mitch Nauffts

ANNOUNCEMENT: Annenberg Foundation Launches Leadership Development Program for L.A. Nonprofits

2009-12-01T18:29:02-05:00

A good idea at the right time...

The Los Angeles-based Annenberg Foundation is now accepting applications from qualified nonprofits in Los Angeles County for a new leadership development program.

An expansion of the Annenberg Nonprofit Leadership Seminar, Alchemy, as the program is called, will be offered to executive directors and board chairs of L.A. nonprofits with operating budgets of $2 million or less. The program -- which will address issues such as governance, public accountability, and fundraising -- will be launched with sessions in January, February, and March 2010.

For more information, call (213) 403-3030, or e-mail info@annenbergalchemy.org.

Goldman's Image Make-Over?

2009-12-01T11:00:49-05:00

In the clip below, Melissa Berman, president and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, discusses Goldman Sachs' new $500 million initiative to help small businesses with Bloomberg TV's Erik Schatzker and Deirdre Bolton. (Disclosure: Berman serves on the board of the Foundation Center, which publishes Philanthropy News Digest and this blog.)

What do you think? Is the Goldman initiative a sincere effort to help right the U.S. economy? A cynical ploy to deflect attention from the $20 billion in bonuses that Goldman will be paying out in a few weeks? Or something in between?

-- Mitch Nauffts

Barron's 'Best Givers' List

2009-11-29T22:07:08-05:00

With Thanksgiving behind us (hope you had a good one!), list season has begun in earnest. And to kick things off, Barron's, in collaboration with Global Philanthropy Group, a U.S.-based consulting firm that designs "highly leveraged philanthropic strategies" for foundations, corporations, and high-net-worth individuals, has just published its list of the "25 Best Givers."

To compile the list, GPG and Barron's "considered scores of philanthropists, rating them on such criteria as innovation, quality of alliances with other groups, the ripple effects of their giving and the extent to which their successful projects can be replicated." The result, according to the editors, is a list that focuses not on the biggest givers but rather on those "who are getting the results."

It's an odd list, both well intentioned and too cute by half (do we really need to know that Brad Pitt has commissioned the design of a house that would float if there was another flood in New Orleans?). It's also peppered with the names of individuals who made their fortunes in high tech or finance and got into the giving game believing they could leverage business discipline and their faith in metrics into a lean, more effective philanthropy for the twenty-first century.

I know what you're thinking, and so do the folks at GPG and Barron's. "By its nature," they write, "an exercise like this involves a lot of subjective calls. Facts and figures about philanthropy are much harder to come by than data on corporations. One giver's definition of success can differ sharply from another giver's -- or from ours."

Well, yes. And lists like this are designed to spark conversation and debate. So what do you think? Did the folks at GPG and Barron's get it right? Who's on the list that doesn't belong there? And more importantly, who's not on the list that should be?

Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

-- Mitch Nauffts

'Givers' Must Become Social Investors

2009-11-25T13:07:01-05:00

(Jeff Mason is vice president of Social Solutions, a leading provider of human and social service software, and serves as chair of the Alliance for Effective Social Investing, a network of more than thirty-five nonprofit leaders committed to driving more money to high-performing nonprofits by helping donors adopt sound social-investing practices. This is his first post for PhilanTopic.)

Giving is often influenced by "tug-at-the-heart string" stories from charismatic nonprofit executive directors able to persuade people to open their hearts and wallets. Which means the funds flowing into the nonprofit sector today tend to go to organizations that tell good stories, have the right relationships, and/or have a recognizable brand. Unfortunately, none of these characteristics provides any real indication of an organization's ability to perform and generate social value and, as a result, millions of dollars of charitable "giving" are wasted on ineffective organizations and programs.

Most of those who give have the best of intentions. But they tend to view their donations as a gift rather than as an investment and therefore don’t expect to get anything in return -- except for an emotional lift and perhaps a tax deduction. What big-hearted philanthropists need to understand is that there are consequences to their giving. Giving to ineffective organizations or programs tends to draw resources away from effective organizations that generate real social value. And in some cases these donors may actually be funding programs that do more harm than good.

Take, for instance, a Washington D.C.-based organization that launched a program to treat men and women involved with domestic violence. Shortly after the program began, the organization learned that the violent tendencies of the men enrolled in the program where actually increasing. That's right. The program was making the men enrolled in it more violent. Fortunately, the organization is a high-performer -- meaning it carefully manages its performance and has a clear understanding of the effectiveness of its efforts to achieve desired outcomes. With that knowledge, it was able to retool its domestic violence program to help those enrolled. What is scary, however, is that most organizations fail to manage their performance and as a result have no idea whether they are having an effect -- positive or negative -- on those they are trying to help.

While performance management isn't easy, it is essential. And it requires the right systems, processes, and organizational culture to have real impact. Absent making performance management a top priority, most nonprofits are in effect operating blindly and potentially creating more harm than good.

So why aren't organizations embracing performance management? Simply put, they get paid to tell heart-warming stories, develop relationships, and create memorable brands. Even more disturbing, many organizations get rewarded for keeping their overhead low. What we need to do instead is to start rewarding organizations with high-performing characteristics. And that will require donors to become social investors who look for meaningful indicators of an organization's ability to generate social value. In other words, donors need to expect something in return for their investment.

So how does a donor know he or she is investing in a high-performing organization? Social investors need to take the concept of "performance management" into account when making a philanthropic investment. That means asking the right questions and looking for organizations that meet certain criteria for success. Listed below are five questions that, if answered in the affirmative, greatly improve the chances that the organization you are investing in is high performing and likely to generate social value:

Does the organization have clear goals in line with existing resources?
Does it have a clear strategy for reaching its goals and objectives?
Does it have a method for monitoring progress?
Does it have the ability to make mid-course corrections?
Does it have the capacity to share results and outcomes?

From a nonprofit evaluation perspective, big changes are afoot. Charity Navigator, which influences approximately $10 billion in funding annually, will be launching a new rating system in 2010 designed to assess a nonprofits' overall performance, not just their admin-to-program cost ratio. Until this new system is in place, however, social investors should focus on the five questions highlighted above when considering making a donation of any proportion.

The future of the nonprofit sector hinges upon better performance management. As more and more donors rid themselves of the "gift giving" mind-set and begin to think and act like social investors, more money will go to high-performing organizations. For organizations that are not on board the performance management train, it could mean less funding. And that's a good thing.

-- Jeff Mason

Weekend Link Roundup (November 21 - 22, 2009)

2009-11-22T17:59:11-05:00

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Communications/Marketing

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Cary Lenore Walski says that it only takes "five seconds for a new visitor to decide whether or not they will stay on your website." And if in those five seconds the visitor clicks "play" on a video, Walski adds, they are more likely to stick around.

Community Improvement/Development

What's it like to live in an abandoned building -- a house that is not a home? On the Second Line blog, Mike Miller, director of supportive housing placement at UNITY of Greater New Orleans, imagines what it might be like for the 63,000 people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Leadership

Are young bloggers guilty of "ageism" when they focus on the aspirations, challenges, and triumphs of a particular demographic cohort such as Gen Y? asks Rosetta Thurman on her blog.

Microfinance

Last week Nathaniel Whittemore argued on the Social Entrepreneurship blog that it was time to lay the Kiva controversy to rest. Not so fast, says Holden Karnofsky on the GiveWell blog. "The time to 'move on' should not be based on Kiva’s 'handling' the situation or our growing tired of it," writes Karnofsky, "it should be based on Kiva's supporters, by and large, understanding how Kiva works."

Philanthropy

Does the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation need a new $500 million, 900,000-square-foot headquarters campus? Wall Street Journal Wealth Report blogger Robert Frank has his doubts.

Blueprint Research Design (Lucy Bernholz' shop) has created a new area on its Web site called Conversations, which it hopes will be "a real hub for discussion -- part digital water cooler, part wisdom of the crowds." To get the ball rolling, Lucy and her colleague Tony Wang have started a conversation around the topic of What Capital When? and over the next few months will be "thinking out loud" about the different forms and uses of philanthropic capital to drive impact. Looking forward to it.

On the NetSquared blog, Amy Sample Ward interviews Avi Kaplan of Epic Change about the upcoming TweetsGiving campaign, November 24-26.

Tactical Philanthropy's Sean Stannard-Stockton shares excerpts from a recent e-mail debate between Paul Shoemaker, executive director of Social Venture Partners-Seattle, and Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, on "the merits, or lack thereof, of general operating support grants."

Social Media

What does the decision by Causes, the online fundraising application, to abandon MySpace and the shutting of ideablob, a competition and promotion platform for entrepreneurs, mean for nonprofits? Guest blogging on Tactical Philanthropy, Amy Sample Ward considers the implications.

After sharing three recent examples of "place-based charitable giving hubs" (GiveMN, I Live Here, I Give Here, and Chase Community Giving on Facebook), Beth Kanter wonders whether these kinds of campaign will make a difference in a difficult economy or just add to the noise.

"It is way too early to declare" the death of e-mail, writes Joanne Fritz on the Nonprofit Charitable Orgs blog at About.com. "Don't get rid of your email," adds Fritz. "Just make it as effective as possible."

And on the Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz confesses to wondering whether the use of social media platforms such as Twitter to crowd-source "top trend" lists has jumped the shark. "As we approach December and the list making frenzy of 'top 10s,'" writes Bernholz, "let us all take a deep breath and perhaps even do some [original] thinking."

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone

'Career Pathways' and Young Professionals

2009-11-20T15:04:04-05:00

Career Pathways to Philanthropic Leadership, a new "baseline" report from the Council on Foundations, has received a fair amount of attention.

Based on a quantitative study of the appointment of 440 CEOs and executive directors over four years (2004-08) and a companion qualitative project, the report was designed to develop new insights into how philanthropic organizations choose their leaders and how individuals make their way into those positions. Specifically, it looked to answer four questions:

What are the professional backgrounds and profiles of CEOs and executive directors of foundations and grantmaking organizations?
What are the personal demographic characteristics -- gender, race, and ethnicity -- of these individuals?
What are the keys to career success and advancement for philanthropic leaders?
How can the pathway to careers and positions of leadership in philanthropy be broadened to improve leadership in the field?

The key findings from the research were interesting, if not that surprising:

The majority (79.5 percent) of the 440 foundations that appointed new CEOs and executive directors during the study period filled them not through internal promotions but from candidates outside the organization.
Two-thirds of the successful candidates (63.4 percent) had served in executive positions in their immediate prior position, either as chief executive (38.9 percent) or vice president (24.5 percent).
The majority of the successful candidates made the transition from fields other than philanthropy -- with business (24.3 percent) and the nonprofit sector (24.8 percent) topping the list.
Of the successful candidates, nearly 20 percent were from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds and almost half (48.7 percent) were women.
Thirty percent of field leaders who were interviewed said mentors played a major role in their career advancement.
About 85 percent of the interviewees expressed skepticism about the willingness of trustees, search consultants, and other hiring decision makers to be influenced by leadership development efforts as they worked through their executive hiring decisions.

As a young professional at the beginning of her career who is still (sort of) figuring things out, the report struck a chord with me. I always assumed there would be a clearly marked path for me to follow once I figured out what I wanted to be and do. But I'm learning that that's not always the case, and that age-old certainties -- about career paths, compensation, even the nature of work -- are being upended at a furious pace.

The council's research also makes it clear that trying to achieve a leadership position from within the field is no easy thing and may become more difficult; that one's chances for advancement to the very top of the organizational chart are slimmer if you are a person of color; and that there's a pressing need for more and better professional development efforts within the field.

What do you think? Is the report grounds for optimism or a much-needed wakeup call for foundations? Are grantmaking institutions and nonprofit organizations doing enough to ensure that a new generation of leaders will be ready to take over as their boomer bosses retire? And are you pleased at the way your career in the sector is unfolding?

Use the comments section below to share your thoughts....

-- Regina Mahone

Readings (and Other Stuff) - Nov. 19, 2009

2009-11-19T17:57:50-05:00

Here's what we've been checking out today:

Paul Brest: President's Essay: Forms of Philanthropic Support: The Centrality of Alignment (Hewlett Foundation)
Podcast: Diversity and Inclusion in the Nonprofit Sector (NonprofitNext)
Video: An Interview with Paul Polak: Over 17 Million Poor Customers Served (Unreasonable blog)
Video: Scroogenomics - Wharton Professor Makes the Case for Charitable Giving During the Holidays (Charity Navigator)
Phil Cubeta: Philanthropedia Q&A (Gift Hub)
Dirk Smillie: A Perpetual Recession For Papers (Forbes)
Chronicle Review: Academe and the Decline of News Media (Chronicle of Higher Education)
The Weakonomist: The Blue Collar Recession (Weakonomics)
Evan Newmark: Mean Street: Don’t Apologize for Anything, Goldman Sachs (WSJ)

How about you?

Don't Be Afraid to Share Your Stories

2009-11-18T22:25:13-05:00

Too many foundations are confounded by storytelling.

Paralyzed by the need to tell the one perfect story that embodies their brand, acknowledges all their stakeholders, AND helps to advance their goals, foundations often refrain from telling any stories at all. As a result, potentially transformative knowledge fails to reach hungry audiences and voices vital to innovation within the philanthropic sector go unheard.

Or foundations will only tell stories about their grantees, failing to realize that their own stories -- about leadership, challenges, and successes -- often resonate powerfully with key audiences.

Today, we know that the audiences with whom foundations should and most often do communicate -- current and potential grantees, donors, policy makers -- are eager to hear about the work of and people within foundations. Indeed, the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative has reported that 88 percent of "informed Americans" want foundations to share the lessons they have learned.

So imagine the benefits, not to mention goodwill, that would accrue if foundation staff were encouraged to share their stories with board members, grantees, policy makers, and their peers in other organizations. Imagine what might happen if foundation staff shared authentic stories about what they were seeing in their areas of expertise, what was important to them, and what was impacting their work.

The unique value of any foundation lies in the knowledge it brings to the important work of finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems and in its ability to learn from, share, and apply that knowledge to other problems. Such expertise is best shared by the people most responsible for developing and nurturing it. And that's why foundation staff -- leadership and program officers, in particular -- should be encouraged to share stories that effectively articulate and illustrate the foundation's core values.

Remember: The point is not to fuss over stories until they have a perfect narrative arc or seamlessly fit the thematic constraints of the annual report. The goal, instead, should be to tap the passion, knowledge, and expertise of staff members; to demonstrate your foundation's unique value; and to share your stories as widely and as often as possible with audiences eager to listen to, engage with, and pass them on.

-- Thaler Pekar

Readings (and Other Stuff) - Nov. 17, 2009

2009-11-17T18:21:00-05:00

Here's what we're reading today:

Holden Karnofsky: Not Our Last Word on the Kiva Controversy (GiveWell)
Elizabeth Clawson: What Is Social Impact? (Nonprofit Periscope)
Robert Frank: Does the Gates Foundation Need a $500 Million Complex? (WSJ)
Amy Sample Ward: Causes, MySpace & ideablob (Tactical Philanthropy)
Allison Fine: Redlining Online
Kari Dunn Saratovsky: The Role of Millennials in Reshaping a Sector (Social Citizens)
Marc Lacey: Money Trickles North as Mexicans Help Relatives (NYT)
Miguel Helft: Everyman Offers New Directions (NYT)

What are you reading?

VIDEO: Be That Woman

2009-11-17T17:26:34-05:00

In time for the holidays, the Washington Area Women's Foundation is out with a new campaign called Be That Woman. The campaign, and the video below, is based on a simple premise: If you invest in a woman or girl, the investment benefits all.

The video, which was done pro bono by RP3 Agency in Bethesda, Maryland, isn't as dramatic as the Girl Effect video we wrote about back in February, but it has a sweet, vaguely retro quality that I find appealing.

What do you think? Does the video work? Will it inspire you to action? And if not, why not? Be nice...

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (November 14 - 15, 2009)

2009-11-15T17:14:28-05:00

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Accountability/Transparency

In a recent post on the GiveWell blog, Holden Karnofsky takes the Carter Center to task for its lack of accountability and transparency.

Communications/Marketing

"Listening is everything," writes Katya Andresen on her NonProfit Marketing blog. But how does one make the time to do it? Have any suggestions? Leave your suggestions below.

Last week, marketing expert Nancy Schwartz released the 2009 Nonprofit Tagline Report. "A strong tagline complements your org's name [and conveys] its unique value or impact with personality, passion and commitment," writes Schwartz, adding, that "If you fail to make the most of your tagline, you throw that opportunity away." You can download a copy of the report here.

Impact/Effectiveness

Do donors care about nonprofit impact? Charity Navigator has gotten some surprising feedback on that question and wants to hear from you. After you fill out the three-question survey, read what others are saying here.

International Affairs/Development

Matthew Bishop shares a few thoughts about how former Gates Foundation executive Raj Shah can make the most of his new position as head of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Microfinance

In his "last word" about the so-called Kiva controversy, Nathaniel Whittemore argues that even though the folks behind the online giving platform "messed up," we should unequivocally support the organization's future efforts. "Kiva is a young organization," Whittemore writes,

and one of the first to really harness the Internet to extend the experience of giving in dramatically new ways. In my mind, they may have goofed on the trust that they have with their lenders, but they have not undermined the trust that we must have in any nonprofit to be committed to delivering the services it promises in the way that most effectively helps the people it's trying to serve. They've changed their communication, they're proactively seeking to rebuild trust with lenders, and at the end of the day, the amount of good that has been done through Kiva remains immense....

Philanthropy

Although the latest iteration of the online America's Giving Challenge campaign extended over fewer days than the inaugural challenge in 2008, it still managed to generate more than 105,420 donations and raise over $2 million for charitable causes. Allison Fine offers her post-mortem here.

On his Wise Philanthropy blog, Richard Marker argues that in order to be effective, donors first have to understand their "culture and values." Writes Marker:

I am a believer in the concept I coined a few years ago: that those of us above a certain age are "guests in this century." The challenge is NOT to get [the denizens] of this transformed world to embrace a culture or values of a century and era now past. That is not a worthwhile enterprise and would be unsuccessful anyway. It is incumbent upon [those of us who are older] to embrace the culture of this world -- or get out of the way....

On the Nonprofit Charitable Orgs blog at About.com, Joanne Fritz shares five suggestions taken from The Art of Giving, the new book by Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, to leverage your charitable giving.

On the MCF's Philanthropy Potluck blog, Chris Murakami Noonan recaps the recent joint annual conference of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and the Minnesota Council on Foundations. Speaking to conference attendees, Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, said that this is "the era of partnerships" in philanthropy and then listed the four "Cs" that drive effective public/private partnerships: connections, communication, capacity-building, and convening.

Lucy Bernholz singles out two new database applications that underscore the role "data will play as platforms for change": TRASI (Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact), a joint effort of the Foundation Center and McKinsey & Co., and KidsData, a project of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health that aggregates information on three hundred indicators related to the health and well being of children in communities across California.

Social Media

Philanthropy Action's Tim Ogden and Laura Starita have released the results of a survey about the use of social media by mid-size nonprofits. "In terms of fundraising and attracting volunteers, metrics that most nonprofit boards and executive directors highly value, the available evidence suggests that social media is not very effective," writes Ogden. Click here to download the complete report (22 pages, PDF).

Beth Kanter takes a close look at the results of the Philanthropy Action survey and compares it to the findings of a different report released earlier in the week. Her conclusion: It's too early for nonprofits to ditch their social media efforts. Writes Kanter:

It's time to set realistic outcomes, look for strategic efficiencies, and define and share best practices. I don't think it is a good idea to simply dismiss social media. I think it is important to have the conversation, but don't look at ROI in such a narrow [way]. Look at the missed opportunity costs of not participating -- as well as take it as an opportunity to look at everything you're doing and figure out what isn't working and try social media in its place. It also important to keep measuring and improving....

In the first post of a two-part series on "social media for accountability" at the Future Leaders in Philanthropy blog, Zach Wales explains how social media can help board members bring "integrity to their nonprofits, and reinforce everything that made them join the board in the first place."

Technology

On the GOOD blog, William Simpson, vice president for information technology at CHF International, argues that it's time for nonprofit IT heads to start running their departments like a business. And the first step is to ask these five simple questions:

Is this technology practical?
What is the true cost of this technology?
Are we looking at all the options?
What existing solutions are there within the organization's global operations?
Have we hired the best we can afford?

(H/t: AFP blog)

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone

Ten 'To-Dos' for People Under 30

2009-11-14T15:01:05-05:00

Last weekend, we took a look at management guru Jim Collins's recipe for greatness in tough times. Today, we've got his ten "to-do's" for people under thirty, which Collins shared with the audience during his Drucker Centennial Day keynoter at Claremont University earlier this month.

For what it's worth, I'm not entirely sure what #1 and #4 mean, I love #5 through #8, and I'm still trying to decide whether #10, should it come to pass, would be a blessing or a curse. Then again, the last time I was under thirty a gallon of gas cost .89, you could still smoke on a plane or in a restaurant, and everyone had really bad hair. Go figure.

Build a personal board of directors.
Turn off your electronic gadgets -- not for others but for yourself.
Study yourself like a bug -- without judgment.
Calculate your questions-to-statements ratio and try to double it.
Imagine you had $20 million to spend and a terminal disease -- what would be on your "stop-doing" list?
Stop doing your "stop-doing" list.
Unplug the opportunities that distract you.
Find something for which you have so much passion that you are willing to endure the pain.
Articulate the values for which you will not compromise.
Prepare to live a life where at age 65 you are one-third of the way through your work.

What's you advice for people under thirty? Inquiring minds want to know...

-- Mitch Nauffts

Bill Gates at the 92nd Street Y

2009-11-13T14:26:08-05:00

I had a chance to see Bill Gates being interviewed by Matthew Bishop, New York bureau chief for The Economist and co-author of Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World (read our interview with him here), the other night at the 92nd Street Y here in New York.

Security was surprisingly light, and the Y's wood-paneled concert hall offered a suitably dignified setting for the well-attended event, though both men walked on stage tieless and in good humor. Bishop, who devotes a whole chapter to Gates and the Gates Foundation in his book, almost immediately referenced the February TED talk at which Gates, to illustrate a point, released a swarm of mosquitoes into the audience. Then Bishop, to much laughter, pulled out a can of insect repellent and set it down on the table between them. (You can see the aerosol can in the picture above.)

From there, the conversation moved briskly. At one point, Gates, a man clearly comfortable in his own skin and with his own wealth, dismissed Bishop's suggestion that the global financial crisis had been caused by "the rich" and rejected the notion that he -- or any person of wealth -- should view philanthropy as a path to redemption.

Other takeaways from the evening:

It's possible but unlikely malaria will be eliminated by 2025; resistance and the evolving nature of the pathogen makes that difficult. At the same time, much is being done (bed net campaigns, etc.) to control the disease and limit its toll, in terms of deaths and lost productivity, in the developing world, and Gates expects that to continue.
Polio, now down to about 2,000-3,000 cases a year (most of them in Nigeria, India, and a few other places), is likely to be the second disease (after smallpox) to be eradicated from human populations. It is difficult, and expensive, to eliminate those last few cases, but it will happen.
An effective vaccine for AIDS will probably be the most expensive vaccine ever developed, and we're unlikely to see one in the next ten years, though maybe in twenty. But Gates is confident one will be developed in his lifetime.
Gates has no regrets about the foundation's focus on specific diseases as opposed to taking a more "holistic" approach to public health problems. As he told Bishop, in the developing world the first thirty days of life are where you lose the greatest number of children, and the diseases the foundation is targeting are responsible for causing many of those deaths. As you reduce the number of childhood deaths -- down from 12.5 million in 1990 to under 9 million today -- parents respond by having fewer children and spending more money on educating the children they do have. Lower birthrates and a better educated populace leads to more opportunity and economic growth, which feeds back into public health initiatives. So, Gates added, in a sense you could say our approach is holistic, in that everything we do is related.
Unlike governments, which change on a regular basis, or business, which tends to focus on the profit expectations of shareholders, foundations are well-suited to funding risky research and unproven approaches because they can stay the course over the many years and even decades it takes to achieve big, hairy, audacious goals (my phrase). And because of our assets and scale, said Gates, we have to tackle big problems.
It's easy to criticize the lack of clear, understandable metrics in social change work, but at the end of the day the field (i.e., foundations and their nonprofit partners) is pretty good at identifying and moving into areas where traditional market signals don't exist or have failed.
Entrepeneurship is inherent in human nature and will flourish when structural impediments -- corruption, lack of infrastructure and/or rule of law -- are removed. In the U.S., there are immense opportunities emerging for entrepreneurs in science-related fields.

Gates's final word of advice to other philanthropists in the audience (and there were more than a few there, including a couple of billionaire hedge fund types) was direct and to the point: Pick something you love and don't spread yourself too thin.

Come to think of it, good advice for anyone.

(Photo credit: Joyce Culver for the 92nd Street Y)

-- Mitch Nauffts