Philanthropy News Feed

If you're under 50, finding your philanthropy comfort zone is challenging. Here are some guidelines for making your giving more manageable and effective.

Statement #10 - I have a great idea for a new program - I'll start my own nonprofit.

It's the last time we'll say it - just don't! Or certainly make it your last option. There has been a proliferation of non-profits over the last 10-20 years, some of them quite valid and needed. This also means there are more and more small organizations struggling to get enough resources to reach some level of sustainability and organizational capacity.

"The caduceus was the magic staff of Hermes (Mercury), the god of commerce, eloquence, invention, travel and theft...." I wonder if Trusted Advisors to Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) could use a symbol of some kind that we could carry, sort of like a wand, so that we might be recognized or sought out by potential clients.  Wish we could have trademarked those twinned snakes copulating on a rod, topped by wings. That pretty well says it all. OK, a single snake on a rod, then, and no wings. Well, no, I guess that is taken too.

Been at The American College now for two days as head of the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy program. Reporting to me are me, myself and I, none of whom has a clue.  I am now being held out as an expert or authority on philanthropy. I keep telling myself it comes down to confidence, demeanor, connections. If Madoff can fool so many, why should not I? Going through the roster of CAP designees are some of the very best minds in the field. I find myself wondering what I can do with the little megaphone I have been given to promote the best work of others. That is a role to which I might warm. Somehow we have to make this a many to many learning community with me as host or encourager, not as expert, except on, say, The Trusted Advisor as Pharmakos. And, frankly, I would rather defer to someone else on that score too.

• How Obama can partner with philanthropy: San Francisco Chronicle Jane Wales, co-founder of the Global Philanthropy Forum, writes an op-ed laying out the reasons why President Obama must partner with philanthropy as well as ways to do it. (tags: philanthropy)
• keeping a close eye…: Veterans Whine As Executives Dine Gary Snyder writes, "For every dollar spent on management or fundraising is a dollar spent not meeting the charity’s mission." I question his logic in a comment. (tags: philanthropy)

A superior court judge in Seattle ordered the Northwest chapter of the American Lung Association to stop using the word “lung” in its name and stop using donor lists belonging to the national organization, reports the Associated Press.

The national organization says the chapter breached its contract because it gave its Seattle headquarters building, and $600,000, to a different, new charity, the news agency reports. Mike Alderson, chief executive of the organization, said the new charity was created to do high-caliber fund raising to benefit his chapter and other lung-health-related organizations, the AP reports.

The dispute may be resolved in mediation, which was ordered by the judge, but a trial date has been set for June in case that fails.

The foundation raising money for President Bush’s future presidential library at the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas does not plan to disclose its donors’ identities, reports the Associated Press.

As of August, the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation had raised less than $3-million of the $300-million goal for the project, which will break ground in the fall of 2010, the news agency reports.

No law requires presidential library foundations to make donor names public, but Bill Clinton decided to do so after his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was named secretary of state.

(Free registration is required to view this article on the Los Angeles Times site.)

A federal judge in San Francisco has agreed with an Islamic charity that says it might have been the target of government wiretapping conducted without court approval, reports the Associated Press.

The now-defunct Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a group with headquarters in Saudi Arabia that maintained an American branch in Ashland, Ore., can now move forward with a lawsuit against the Bush administration’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, the news agency reports. The United States government considers the charity a terrorist organization.

Tough economic times have forced museums to reconsider a long-held ethics policy on selling art from their collections, notes an article in The New York Times. But the issue is controversial.

Carmine Branagan, director of the National Academy Museum, in New York, faced more backlash than she had anticipated when the museum’s board decided to sell two Hudson River School paintings for about $15-million. The Association of Art Museum Directors responded to the sale with an e-mail message to its 190 members, denouncing the academy for “breaching one of the most basic and important of A.A.M.D.’s principles” and calling on members “to suspend any loans of works of art to and any collaborations on exhibitions with the National Academy.”

Ms. Branagan says the withdrawal of loans was a “death knell” for the museum.

Supporters of the ban on selling art to cover operating costs warn that institutions that do will suffer irreparable damage.

“Selling an object is a knee-jerk act, and it undermines core principles of a museum,” said Michael Conforti, president of the museum directors’ association and director of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. “There are always other options.”

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

The independence of the nonprofit world and its ability to take risks make it a valuable resource for President-elect Barack Obama as he faces the challenges awaiting him when he takes office this month, writes Jane Wales, in a column in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Ms. Wales, vice president for philanthropy and society at the Aspen Institute, argues that preserving the freedom of philanthropy will be vital to its partnership with the new administration.

Angelina Jolie topped a poll of the best celebrity activists of the year, notes Give and Take, The Chronicle’s roundup of the best blog posts about the nonprofit world.

Online donations appear to be thriving even in the recession, according to a new study cited in Prospecting, The Chronicle’s fund-raising column.

Read the transcript of today’s discussion about the outlook for nonprofit groups this year.

Yesterday, Kari Dunn Saratovsky wrote on the new Case Foundation Blog about ranking nonprofits based on how good of a place they are to work:

Young people have become in many ways disillusioned with the top-down hierarchical approaches that are so often found in traditional nonprofit organizations. Instead they embrace a leadership style that has emerged from growing up immersed in a technology-driven world that empowers people from many different backgrounds to come together to solve problems — and to do so quickly, efficiently, and at little to no cost. It’s this style that favors collaboration and team work that often goes against the norm within the sector – but how do you measure that?

If I had the opportunity to develop my own criteria for ranking the nonprofit sector – I’d take a look at how nonprofit organizations are adapting and changing with the times. Rather than stifling new talent, how are individuals able to grow and be challenged in their roles at nonprofits? How does this compare to their peers in the for profit community? How does the organization embrace diversity, work-life balance, and for goodness sake, does it have a Twitter feed?

This reminded me of studies that show that the stocks of corporations included on the annual list of 100 Best Companies to Work for in America have outperformed the market over time. I’ve been talking about the need for nonprofits to pay market rate salaries to their employees and for funders to support this use of their donations. I think a broader point would be that nonprofits should operate in a way that attracts great employees. Salary certainly isn’t the only element of satisfaction, but it is impossible for me to believe that an industry that systematically underpays employees can ever attract the top talent (just to be totally clear, I’m talking about the total talent pool. Obviously, there are many, many talented people who have chosen to work in the nonprofit field despite the lower compensation).

Some people have made the case that nonprofit employees “deserve” to be paid the market rate. Other people have challenged my argument by saying that high paid people in the for-profit sector should make less. My point in all of this is that paying higher salaries will result in more impact. So if you think about your giving as the impact per dollar that you can achieve, you should be insisting that your grantees compensate employees well and be willing to let them spend your grant funding on these higher salaries.

However, it is important to note that being the best place to work is about more than just pay. It is also about meaning. So the nonprofit field has a massive advantage over the for-profit field. But let’s not cede that advantage by offsetting it through low salaries.

Online giving remained relatively strong in 2008, despite the creaky economy, according to a post by Steve MacLaughlin on the blog maintained by Blackbaud, a major provider of charity-solicitation software.

In a survey of clients of Blackbaud, charities saw steady growth in the first half of the year, a slight drop in the third quarter, and online giving rebound at the end of the year. December and June were the two biggest months for donations made via the Internet.

Nonprofit groups in the study of approximately 2,000 charities received an average gift online of $152.12. Education, health care, religious, and grant-making organizations had higher average gift amounts, according to Mr. MacLaughlin.

Online giving grew four times as quickly in December as it did in other months, a trend that is consistent with the past several years. Despite the economic turmoil, December accounted for 21 percent of the total transactions made during the year and 48 percent of the total dollars raised. The average gift in December was $248.82, writes Mr. MacLaughlin.

How did your charity’s online giving fare last year?

— Caroline Preston

Lesson #9 - "I want to be sure our family foundation is around for a long time to come so I need to be sure to spend only as much as I have to every year"

There is nothing wrong with that approach, but you might want to consider what more and more philanthropists and foundations are doing now ( i.e. giving away their full corpus within a stated time frame.) Bill and Melinda Gates said 50-100 years, Warren Buffet said 10 years! Whatever the amount, the decision is driven, in part, by the good ol' time value of money--a dollar spent today often has more value than the same dollar spent in the future. If that economic concept applies anywhere, it should really apply to the application of philanthropic funding to social needs and problems.