PhilanTopic

Board Compensation in Grantmaking Foundations: Reasonable and Necessary?

(Mark Hager is associate professor of nonprofit studies in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. This post originally appeared on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog.)

Tradition dictates that board members work for free in most quarters of the nonprofit sector, but that isn't necessarily true for grantmaking foundations, especially independent ones. In a new paper (free access until late March) published in Public Integrity, the ethics journal sponsored by the American Society of Public Administration, Elizabeth Boris and I consider the question of what varieties of grantmaking foundations compensate their board members for governance duties. It reboots and reframes an earlier analysis conducted by the Urban Institute, the Foundation Center, and GuideStar.

In the paper, we point to several interesting examples, including a very large foundation's generous policy of trustee compensation spelled out in its organizing documents, another with seven-figure annual compensation paid to a bank to act as a very part time "institutional trustee," and another that underwent IRS investigation for eye-popping compensation that essentially amounted to trustees looting a charitable trust. These cases aren't typical, but they are part of the big picture of how work gets done in grantmaking foundations and how much insiders get paid to do it. In more typical cases, foundations might have justifiable reasons to compensate board members, including to ensure representation from beneficiary populations or to extend health insurance benefits to family founders. It's the extreme cases, however, that threaten to color all of philanthropy.

Compensation for governance duties is perfectly legal, so long as it falls under the IRS' broad standard of "reasonable and necessary." The practice is pretty rare in community foundations, partly due to the fact that they rely so heavily on public contributions and are therefore subject to public scrutiny. It also appears to be fairly rare in corporate foundations, but that may largely be due to the fact that many corporate foundation trustees get paid as corporate executives, making their compensation invisible on the foundation side. About one in five independent foundations, however, appear to report compensation of their board members for governance duties, as reported on Form 990-PF.

The practice is always concentrated in larger foundations. Of the ten thousand largest U.S. foundations that are the subject of the study, more than half compensate no one, including any staff. Most foundations are small and get their work done by family volunteers. Foundations that compensate staff members are more likely to compensate their board members. However, for the typical foundation, board compensation levels are eminently reasonable. The median individual board member compensation in independent foundations is only about $8,000. That's not an indication of a rampant problem.

However, a few bad apples always threaten to spoil the bunch. The median may be $8,000, but the mean was $15,700 due to a number of well-compensated apples. When a board member's one-year compensation reaches $200,000 (this happens), or a bank trustee is compensated $1,000,000 to spend a few hours a month managing investments (noted above), or aggregate board compensation in a given foundation exceeds its grants in a given year (this happens, too), we might rightly ask whether compensation has exceeded what is "reasonable and necessary." At the same time, $1,000 here and $100,000 there adds up to real money, to the tune of more than $100 million paid out to foundation board members in any given year. People hear that and start asking why that money isn't being allocated to community nonprofits instead.

Who is going to check to see whether board compensation is reasonable and necessary? For many organizations in the nonprofit sector, the general public is the first regulator. Service providers and advocates, especially those that rely on public contributions, reign in compensation and overhead costs due to public pressure. This is not the case with independent foundations, however, since they are not beholden to public contributions. Since the general public has no skin in the private foundation game, the public tends to ignore them.

A second regulator candidate, then, is government. Certainly, the IRS can prosecute private foundations that exceed the vague "reasonable and necessary" standard. Thing is, they don't, at least not very often. For one thing, identification of board member compensation is very difficult on Form 990-PF. For 2008, the IRS revamped Form 990 for public charities so that compensated individuals are identified as board members or employees. No similar revamp happened to Form 990-PF, where administrative and governance duties are conflated. Picking out board members working on governance duties is tricky; board compensation must be inferred from titles or numbers of hours worked, if reported. So, board compensation is not always obvious on the federal form. And even when unreasonable or unnecessary compensation appears evident, the IRS is often unwilling to take on community elites with deep pockets.

The third regulator, maybe, is private foundation executives and board members themselves. That's one of the ideas underlying the Foundation Center's Glasspockets initiative: private foundations will regulate themselves as their practices become more transparent. Private foundations certainly do not need to eradicate the practice of compensating board members for governance duties. However, when outliers cause observers (like me) to raise their eyebrows, the whole field can get painted as out-of-touch with community needs. Maybe Glasspockets can plant a stake in the ground on this issue to encourage foundation leaders themselves to openly disclose this information as a best practice. Voluntary and widespread disclosure of board member compensation, venues for discussion, and bright lights on questionable practices can help stem criticism of compensation that may or may not be "reasonable and necessary" for carrying out the exempt purposes of grantmaking foundations.

Everyone benefits when somebody, somehow, enforces the "reasonable and necessary" standard. Grantmaking foundations will keep better faith with their local communities. Regulators will be able to concentrate on more worthy offenses. And nonprofits will benefit from resources that are otherwise diverted into trustee pockets. Win, win, win.

-- Mark Hager

“Beep, Beep”: The Sound of Philanthropy and the Social Economy in 2013

(Bradford K. Smith is president of the Foundation Center.)

"We will change what we do with and without institutions, and we will change how our institutions (funders, nonprofits, and others) work." So predicts self-described philanthropy wonk Lucy Bernholz in Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2013, a must-read roadmap available for the first time as a GrantCraft publication. "Beep, beep." Wile E. Coyote (me, nonprofit executive) has just been left holding a burning stick of dynamite while the Road Runner (Lucy, blogger extraordinaire) races headlong onto her next prediction. That is the true value of Blueprint 2013 for those who are busy running the institutions that make up the "social economy": Lucy has seen the future for us, and now we must struggle to adapt, respond, and innovate. The data- and technology-driven future she envisions is both exhilarating and a bit unsettling, but one thing is clear: the Silicon Valley credo is fast approaching the staid world of philanthropy: "Disrupt yourself or be disrupted."

The vast majority of today's social sector leaders grew up in a world where foundations were the funders and nonprofits were the doers. Blueprint 2013 lays out a vision of a social economy inhabited not only by traditional nonprofits, but also by social businesses, socially responsible corporations, peer networks, and institutional forms not yet invented. Donors in this economy have choices between well-known forms of charitable giving (like creating a foundation), impact investing, and political giving to bring out the change they desire.

Running throughout the social economy is the lifeblood of data. In 2012 alone:

• GuideStar and the Nonprofit Finance Fund released an online tool for comparing the financial health of nonprofits;
• 15 of the largest U.S. foundations teamed with the Foundation Center to launch the "Reporting Commitment," making their grants data available in open, machine readable form; and
• the China Foundation Center started rating more than 2,000 Chinese "foundations" with an elaborate Transparency Index.

These are but a few of the examples included in Blueprint 2013 to illustrate how "new data-driven insights will become a first step, an input, into the practical work of decision-making." Lucy notes that the "next step in using social economy data is for community organizations and funders to join in this ethos of using, sharing, comparing, and contrasting data and tools."

While fast-developing technology makes it easier by the minute to collect, access, analyze, and visualize data, unresolved issues loom on the horizon. "Nonprofits in the future will be defined by how they use their data for public good while protecting the personal privacy rights of all who contribute that data." Data use, ownership, and access rules will be as definitional for the social economy in the 21st century as the charitable deduction was for nonprofits in the 20th century. Blueprint 2013 urges the social sector to take the lead in setting standards for collecting, using, storing, and sharing individual data in ways that thread the needle between personal control and social good. The Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support (WINGS), a federation of some hundred and forty philanthropy support organizations around the world is doing just that by promoting a global philanthropy data charter much like that already adopted in the field of health.

Not all of Lucy’s predictions are about the shimmering world of data and technology. Something everyone in our sector cares about -- the charitable deduction -- is also on her radar: "They (Congress) will set lower limits for charitable deductions." Others -- "Civic crowdfunding will grow and may exacerbate inequality" -- require serious debate and reflection. But among the rich density of Blueprint 2013, the most interesting thought comes toward the end in a section entitled "Glimpses of the Future": "We still need to think about what purposes we want served and what the right mix is of institutional and financial systems to accomplish those goals." Lucy laments that a narrow focus on maintaining the tax deductibility of charitable gifts will crowd out a much-needed and broader discussion about "the most effective ways to provide incentives for private involvement on behalf of the public benefit."

In this regard, perhaps philanthropy and the broader social sector cannot escape the largest question facing our global community -- what kind of world do we want? Data, technology, institutional forms, and regulation are tools to be used to create a better world. While no one expects a return to the failed welfare states of the 20th century, we still need a destination. Otherwise all of our networking, crowdsourcing, analytics, social entrepreneurship, and innovation will occur in a vacuum where change, though sometimes inspiring, will ultimately be retail. Aspiring to something greater requires the kind of thought and questioning contained in Blueprint 2013: a roadmap filled with tantalizing glimpses of where we might be able to reach. As the fuse grows shorter, defining the destination is our responsibility.

-- Brad Smith

No Truth or Consequences

(Mark Rosenman is an emeritus professor at the Union Institute & University and directs Caring to Change in Washington, D.C. You can read some of his other posts on PhilanTopic here, here, here, and here.)

Nonprofit leaders, as well as those in government and the corporate world, seem unwilling to accept responsibility for their decisions and actions. Recently, the founding president of Social Accountability International, a nonprofit that works to advance the human rights of workers around the world, failed to live up to her organization's name when she vaguely defended SAI's decision to award its highest certification to a Bangladesh garment factory that burned down just weeks after its most recent inspection, killing more than two hundred and sixty workers.

As in so many similar situations, instead of acknowledging responsibility for a mistake and accepting the consequences, leaders like the president of SAI are quick to lay that responsibility on others -- and then support only minimal consequences for those assigned the blame. The corporate world saw an example of this after one of the greatest environmental disasters in recent memory, the Deepwater Horizon blow-out that released nearly five million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Executives of BP, which had leased the rig and owned the rights to the undersea drilling site, remain free while two employees who were on the scene have been indicted for negligence related to the disaster.

Similarly, when it comes to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent economic meltdown, corporate leaders who contributed mightily to the collapse have escaped responsibility for their wrongdoing. Not one top executive of Countrywide Financial, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, or any other Wall Street firm has gone to jail, even as millions of Americans continue to suffer the economic consequences of their actions.

Sadly, politicians in Washington continue to ignore the interests of the American public and scramble instead to do the bidding of lobbyists and campaign contributors. Conservatives are bent on preserving low tax rates for their wealthiest supporters while cutting entitlements and programs for the middle class and neediest among us. Rather than raise taxes on the top two percent of income earners, a move favored by a significant majority of Americans, they would rather send the country over the fiscal cliff -- a combination of tax increases and draconian across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take effect on January 2 -- or play chicken with the economic chaos of national default by vowing intransigence in the coming debate over extending the debt ceiling.

Other politicians are unwilling to even acknowledge their positions when it would be unpopular to do so. NBC reported that not one of the thirty-one pro-gun members of the U.S. Senate was willing to appear on "Meet the Press" following the recent Newtown school massacre to share his or her views on assault weapons or to address the consequences of past votes on gun legislation. CBS also reported that the nonprofit National Rifle Association and pro-gun politicians refused invitations to appear and acted as if they had no responsibility to explain their positions on this critical issue or to accept accountability for them.

Nonprofit executives in general have been shamefully absent from the fiscal debates, working mightily to preserve the charitable tax deduction in its current form while remaining silent on the larger and more consequential fiscal battles before us. Even the last-minute statement in support of higher taxes by one infrastructure group betrays the fact that it and other organizations have steadfastly refused pleas to get off the sidelines and advocate for policies that benefit the less advantaged in society; instead, these organizations poured precious resources into keeping the deduction as is.

What are we to think when nonprofit CEOs fail to lead and instead embrace self-interest -- both theirs and that of their members. What are we to think when they seem to forget that the public interest is more significantly and effectively served by government funded out of the public fisc than by privately funded groups.

A similar dynamic of unaccountable self-interest allows nonprofit university presidents to remain unchallenged in their cupidity. Even in modest-sized institutions, many command eye-opening salaries and benefits. Indeed, over twenty percent of university presidents in America earn in excess of $600,000 a year, with better than seven percent pulling in more than $1 million annually.

These university presidents and other administrators draw large salaries while higher education employs close to 750,000 workers on below-poverty wages. And while they ostensibly lead tax-exempt institutions, those institutions routinely fail to provide an affordable education or opportunities for upward mobility to low-income kids who desperately need both.

Out-sized financial compensation at the executive level is also a characteristic of many large health and cultural institutions as well as some social service charities. It's as if the executives of our largest nonprofits are determined to "get while the getting is good" rather than champion the public good that their institutions are supposed to deliver. To whom are they accountable?

Occasionally, albeit infrequently, responsibility and accountability is imposed from outside the sector. New York State's attorney general recently forced the president of one nonprofit, Educational Housing Services, to repay millions in excess compensation and other benefits achieved through "self-dealing" while also requiring board members to pay $1 million for their "stunning" negligence.

Punishment may also be meted out to Graham Spanier, the former president of Penn State University, in the Jerry Sandusky case. Spanier was indicted last month, joining other administrative colleagues also scheduled to be tried, for helping to establish and maintain a "culture of silence" surrounding years of child sexual abuse committed by Sandusky, a former coach attached to Penn State's renowned football program.

But such consequences are the rare exception.

Far more common is the tendency to blame and perpetuate an amorphous "institutional culture" for wrong or misguided actions. Too often, we fail to hold individuals to account for their sometimes criminal and/or selfish decisions and actions. Rather than demand accountability from those with personal responsibility, we act as if faceless institutions and organizations somehow cause abuse without human agency.

It's as if banks do wrong, not bankers. Corporations, not CEOs. Congress, not elected legislators. Charities, not board members or executives. We even talk of a sector's culture as if people are powerless to do anything but acquiesce -- often to their own benefit -- to dysfunctional practices that profit the individual over the common good.

It's time for it to stop. America has a serious problem with abuse, self-dealing, and lack of accountability in some of its most important institutions, including charitable ones. And while many are affected by these sometimes calamitous actions, the responsible individuals appear to face few meaningful consequences. That is wrong.

Too many nonprofits allow, even encourage, practices that further victimize those they should be serving. This is even more true in business and in politics. We're much more likely to lock up a street criminal than a corrupt executive -- although in most cases it's the latter who causes the greater harm. We need to change that.

Charity leaders should encourage and support efforts to hold one another accountable for serving the common good over private interests. Those efforts must extend to elected officials and other public leaders and to corporate executives. We need powerful and effective new mechanisms, both voluntary and regulatory, to accomplish this.

If we, as a society, don't insist on holding individuals accountable for their bad decisions and actions, it will continue to be others who suffer the consequences. That may be in the interest of elites, but it is of little benefit to the rest of us.

-- Mark Rosenman

Demystifying Corporate Responsibility Rankings

(Emily Keller is an editorial associate in the Corporate Philanthropy department at the Foundation Center. In November, she reviewed Roger Thurow's The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.)

Corporations have long collected data generated by and/or relevant to their operations –- everything from sales figures, to permit applications, to industry trends and customer behavior. Increasingly, however, regulatory and watchdog groups are demanding that companies provide information about the impact of their activities on society and the environment.

As the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement has gained traction, indices and lists that seek to quantify and rank company activities according to sustainability principles have proliferated. Financial analysts, media groups, and independent consultancies today produce annual assessments of everything from the amount of carbon companies put into the atmosphere to the sustainability of their supply chain management and the diversity of their boards. Those metrics, in turn, are often used by customers, investors, and prospective job candidates to determine their level of engagement with a particular company.

Earlier this year, the Foundation Center added a CSR tab to the company profiles in Foundation Directory Online that highlights nearly two dozen of these corporate sustainability ratings lists and presents basic information from them in a user-friendly format.

But in an emerging field characterized by a multiplicity of definitions and standards, even simple numbers can be hard to make sense of. Using hundreds of data points and a unique methodology, SustainAbility, an independent think tank and strategy consultancy, has taken it upon itself to "rate the raters" in order "to better understand the universe of external sustainability ratings and to influence and improve the quality and transparency of such ratings." As the firm is quick to note, many of these lists have been introduced within the last five years and there's plenty of room for improvement.

With that in mind, here are a few of the more prominent ratings lists/indices:

Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. The Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, which are offered cooperatively by SAM Indexes and S&P Dow Jones Indices, were launched in 1999 to track the stock performance of the world's leading companies in terms of economic, environmental and social criteria. DJSI World tracks the top 10 percent of the 2,500 largest companies in the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market Index, while DJSI North America tracks the top 20 percent of the 600 largest U.S. and Canadian companies. The evaluation process includes a survey customized for fifty-eight industry sectors covering governance, workforce diversity, disclosure of compensation, risk and crisis management, greenhouse gas emissions, waste generation, branding strategies and metrics, data privacy, talent attraction and retention, and other areas. According to the DJ Sustainability site, "The indexes serve as benchmarks for investors who integrate sustainability considerations into their portfolios, and provide an effective engagement platform for companies who want to adopt sustainable best practices."

Carbon Disclosure Project. Every year, the London-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers, produces a dense, chart-filled report detailing the progress of S&P 500 companies toward their greenhouse gas emission goals. Based on a detailed questionnaire (the data collection process is so complex that CDP runs a series of workshops around the world to help companies answer it), the 2012 report offers a three-tiered breakdown of GHG emissions totals by sector; a performance band from A to E assessing actions to promote climate change mitigation, adaptation, and transparency; and a disclosure score from 0 to 100 for the provision of data. Multiyear leaders in the rankings include Bank of America and Lockheed Martin in the performance category, and Cisco Systems, Gilead Sciences, and Spectra Energy in the disclosure category.

Newsweek Green Rankings. In contrast to DJSI's rankings of only the most sustainable companies, Newsweek ranks the five hundred largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. as well as the five hundred largest in the world, regardless of their sustainability record. And unlike the Carbon Disclosure Project's rankings, only 10 percent of the scores are based on disclosure, with the remainder split between environmental impact and management (a category that takes public controversies into account). The magazine (which recently was purchased by The Daily Beast site and is transitioning to an online-only format) includes more than seven hundred data elements in its survey of companies, including greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste disposal, water use, equity investment (companies are responsible for the impact of the companies they own), hazardous waste reduction, biodiversity protection, company operations, contractors and suppliers, and products and services. Based on a scale of 0 to 100, IBM (82.9) and Santander Brasil (85.7) topped the 2012 rankings.

The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity. Consulting firm and magazine publisher DiversityInc, which launched its diversity rankings in 2001, bases its ratings on the responses it receives to a 300-question survey. As the organization explains in the methodology section of its site: "Ratios between key factors in diversity management, such as demographics of managers compared with managers who received promotions and demographics of the workforce compared with people promoted into their first management positions, play a significant factor in determining point scores." Companies are rated by industry, and the rankings include thirteen different top-five and top-ten lists. Topping the list in 2012 were PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sodexo, Kaiser Permanente, AT&T, and Procter & Gamble.

Corporate Responsibility Magazine's 100 Best Corporate Citizens. Corporate Responsibility Magazine and the Corporate Responsibility Officer Association (CROA) began publishing their list, which is 100 percent based on verifiable publicly available information, in 2009. The rankings are driven by companies' performance in seven broad CSR categories -- environment, climate change, human rights, employee relations, corporate governance, philanthropy, and finance -- with some three hundred and eighteen data points tracked across those categories. Carbon Disclosure Project and Foundation Center data are incorporated into the assessments.

And that's just a sampling. Indeed, the diversity and number of CSR ratings lists now available can be overwhelming at times -- for consumers and investors, as well as for companies, which feel pressured to respond to detailed surveys and questionnaires from dozens of groups and do not always understand the reasons they are selected or omitted from a given list.

In an effort to standardize the ratings process, Ceres and the Tellus Institute, founders of the Global Reporting Institute (GRI), recently launched the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR), which aims to establish best practices in the sustainability ratings field, with a focus on performance-based results, forward-looking indicators, relevance to market forces, integration of sustainability criteria into investment decisions, transparency of methodology, independence of raters, and an expansion in the scope of participating companies. The initiative hopes to release the initial draft of its standards in 2013.

In the meantime, the number and scope of CSR ratings lists continue to grow. Last year, the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, in partnership with the Reputation Institute, released its fourth annual list of the top fifty companies in the U.S. based on the public's perception of their corporate citizenship, governance, and workplace practices. And earlier this year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Vestas released their third annual Global Corporate Renewable Energy Index (CREX) report, which tracks voluntary demand for renewable energy among the world's largest companies.

Other entrants in the field include the UN Global Compact, which asks companies around the globe to embrace universal principles and partner with the United Nations in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption issues, and A Billion + Change, which seeks to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono work and skill-based volunteerism by the end of 2013.

Is any of this work making a difference? I believe it is and, having compared some of the largest lists against our corporate FDO profiles, can see that many corporations, here in the U.S. and around the globe, are beginning to walk the CSR walk. But from climate change to human rights to corruption, we -- and they -- still have a long ways to go.

What do you think? Is CSR a movement whose time has arrived? Are CSR ratings a useful tool for consumers, investors, and advocates? And if not, how can they be improved? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

-- Emily Keller

Weekend Link Roundup (April 14-15, 2012)

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

Accountability

Thanks in part to the proliferation of social media and a loss of faith in institutions of every kind, foundations and nonprofit organizations must rethink how they communicate and hold themselves accountable, argues Lucy Bernholz on her Philanthropy 2173 blog. "The kind of organizing that led Komen to change its decision and that is now calling for change from Gates is easier than ever," writes Bernolz.

It can be turned on in an instant and reach unprecedented scale at unprecedented pace. Boards of directors of nonprofits and foundations need to know this, they need to expect it, and they need to engage with both critics and supporters. They need, in other words, to govern in a new landscape in which each and every decision they make may be the one that transforms supporters into critics (Komen) or turns educational policy grants into part of national outrage about gun laws and racial justice [i.e., Gates Foundation support for a conservative advocacy organization known as ALEC].

Is this about a social media policy? I don't think so. Is it about governance, engagement, conversation, accountability, structural consistency, clarity of mission, and a willingness to remain civil while participating in difficult areas of work riven with disagreement? Yes. Nonprofits are part of civil society which thrives only when it is filled with multiple points of view and diverse approaches to problem solving. The "public" will not agree with every decision a foundation or nonprofit makes and they have a right to express that disagreement. Foundations and nonprofits have a right (and a responsibility) to make their decisions and expect a public response to them....

Communications/Marketing

On her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz "nonprofitizes" a list of content marketing tips from top chefs originally compiled by MarketingProfs.com. Her list includes:

• Use fresh ingredients. Fresh content retains its natural flavor. Avoid stale or processed content -- your supporters will know it and hate it.
• Keep the menu simple. Don’t overcomplicate content or muddy the dish with too many flavors.
• Experiment in the kitchen. Try new forms of content and solicit feedback so you know what's not working -- and what is.

Visit GettingAttention.org for the complete list.

Journalism/Media

On the HuffPost Media site, Kevin Murphy, president of the Berks (PA) County Community Foundation, suggests that the death of traditional journalism is going to force philanthropy to step up and fund alternatives. "[A]s foundations realize the profound impact of losing the communications vehicles that tie our society together," writes Murphy,

they're going to recognize the imperative of supporting journalism in their field or community. At a global level, funders rely on journalism to help the public understand challenges like world wide poverty, climate change and human rights violations.

Without the ability to hear from, and communicate with the populations they serve, foundations will find their mission nearly impossible to accomplish. So, they'll solve that problem....

Leadership

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares management lessons from Steve Jobs included in a recent Harvard Business Review article by Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson. Her favorite -- "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." -- was something Jobs told Isaacson he had first come across in that icon of '70s counterculture, the Whole Earth Catalogue.

On her blog, Rosetta Thurman offers a few suggestions for organizations interested in supporting the next generation of nonprofit leaders. Among other things, Thurman advises nonprofit executives to increase the number of professional development opportunities availble to young staffers and to require each employee to draft a career development plan.

Philanthropy

In advance of the annual conference of the Global Philanthropy Forum later this week in Washington, D.C., Jane Wales, president and CEO of the World Affairs Council and vice president of philanthropy and society at the Aspen Institute, considers the philanthropic legacy of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller and connects it to some of the tools and approaches championed by a new generation of philanthropists.

On the BlackGivesBack blog, Tracey Webb announces the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Cultures of Giving Donor Challenge, a ten-day online competition designed to boost funding for nonprofits working to address the critical needs of communities of color.

Social Entrepreneurship

Writing on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Jason Saul, the founder/CEO of Mission Measurement, shares five takeaways from the 2012 Skoll World Forum: it's okay to make an economic return from trying to solve a social problem; measurement is no longer optional; it's cool to be corporate; people want to move the needle; and we're entering a new age of social entrepreneurship.

Social Media

In a guest post at Beth's Blog, Frank Barry, Internet strategy manager at software company Blackbaud, shares findings from the 2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report. Writes Barry: "We learned a lot of things, but one prevailing theme stood out -- despite limited budgets and staffing, nonprofits continue to find great value in their fast-growing social networks."

In the latest installment of her Chronicle of Philanthropy Social Good podcast series, Allison Fine chats with Alliance for Youth Movements co-founder Stephanie Rudat about how and why a few recent social action movements, including Kony 2012 and Change.org's Trayvon Martin petition, went viral.

Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield discusses hashtag spamming, which "can do more harm to your nonprofit's brand on Twitter than good." Writes Mansfield: "Too many hashtags in one tweet can look messy or nonsensical, decrease click-through rates, and subtly communicate to your followers than you are a hashtag spammer -- i.e., you're not really monitoring or participating in the conversation around a certain hashtag, just spamming it in hopes of getting more followers, which doesn't work by the way." What do you think? Is less more when it comes to hashtags in tweets? Use the comments section below to share your thoughts.

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

-- The Editors

Microfinance and the 'Smart Campaign'

After a tough year, the microfinance industry is looking to heal itself. As Elisabeth Rhyne, managing director of the Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION, writes in PND:

It could be argued that, after two decades, microfinance was slow to develop a client protection consciousness. (One might say something even stronger about the mainstream financial sector in the U.S.) After all, a sector built with intent to improve the lives of the poor should have the best interests of its clients at heart. And I believe it does. But the microfinance community — and here I include myself — was naïve in thinking that its good intentions would always benefit clients. We assumed too readily that borrowers always benefited from our services and thus the more borrowers, the greater the benefit. The drive for growth caused some providers to cut corners, lose their focus on quality, or simply be blind to the possibility that some clients were experiencing substandard treatment.

It took several instances of rapid growth leading to client over-indebtedness -- particularly in Bosnia, India, Morocco, and Nicaragua -- to make it clear that a model geared toward reaching people as fast as possible needed adjustment. In addition to the Smart Campaign, the microfinance industry is working on initiatives such as Microfinance Transparency (which promotes the release of comprehensive pricing data), as well as efforts to increase credit information reporting to identify clients who may be over-indebted. In Bosnia, MFIs have worked together to create a debt counseling center.

As the Smart Campaign has delved into the actual practices of MFIs through on-site observation, we find that most MFIs implicitly have been practicing client protection, even if they have not made explicit reference to the principles. The Smart Campaign recently analyzed the results of on-site third-party assessments of more than three hundred and fifty MFIs. The overwhelming majority (88 percent) earned passing scores. This exercise was a first-ever assessment of practices, mostly by social investors carrying out pre-investment due diligence, and we expect such assessments to grow more rigorous in coming years. Meanwhile, on-site assessments of MFIs like these are helping organizations identify their weaknesses and take steps to correct them....

Read Rhyne's commentary and learn more about the Smart Campaign here....

2011 Year in Review: Microfinance Vows to Do Better

Once viewed as pioneers in the fight against poverty, microfinance institutions (MFIs) -- under siege since 2010 when loan default rates in many developing countries soared and Indian politicians accused lenders of exploiting the poor -- faced growing political hostility and calls for stricter regulation in 2011.

The year got off to an inauspicious start when Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, long a champion of microfinance, accused MFIs in general and Grameen Bank and its Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder, Muhammad Yunus, specifically of "sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation." In January, nearly a month after a documentary film on Norwegian state television raised questions about the use of $100 million in Norwegian aid funds by Grameen in the 1990s, Hasina initiated a probe into the matter -- despite assurances from the Norwegian government that the bank had been cleared of wrongdoing.

Subsequently, Hasina moved to dismiss the 70-year-old Yunus as managing director of the partially government-owned bank on grounds he was well past the country's mandatory retirement age of 60 -- a move that Yunus supporters viewed as politically motivated. While an investigating committee failed to dig up anything it could use against the bank, the Bangladeshi High Court rejected Yunus' appeal of the order, and he resigned from the bank in May.

That same month, the Reserve Bank of India issued new regulations capping interest rates and margins for MFIs operating in the country, limiting the size of loans and total debt per household, and requiring a minimum loan term and other protections for borrowers.

Meanwhile, MFIs continued to expand their operations in other countries, many with an eye to integrating their lending with so-called livelihood services. As of February, for example, Seattle-based Global Partnerships had invested $4.5 million of a new $20 million social investment fund in six Latin American MFIs -- all of which bundle their loan activities with business education, health services, agricultural training, and other services -- and expected to disburse the fund's capital by year-end. In March, a $25 million grant from the MasterCard Foundation enabled Bangladesh-based BRAC, the world's largest nongovernmental development organization, to export its "microfinance multiplied model" to Uganda and expand its capacity to undertake longitudinal analyses of the effectiveness of its integrated microfinance and livelihoods model. And in May, Opportunity International, a global nonprofit microfinance institution headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, was awarded a $2.5 million grant by the United Nations Capital Development Fund to provide access to safe savings accounts, business loans and training, and other services in the Democratic Republic of Congo -- a grant followed, in July, by a $2.5 million award to the organization from the John Deere Foundation to expand its community banking network in Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda.

As of October, roughly a year after the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh promulgated an ordinance regulating microfinance activities, MFIs reportedly had stopped making new loans in the state. At the same time, many appeared to be committed to improving their accountability and client protection practices. Indeed, the Smart Campaign, a global initiative committed to embedding client protection practices into the institutional culture and operations of the microfinance industry, issued a report (48 pages, PDF) in November that examined MFI practices in areas such as preventing over-indebtedness, transparency, responsible pricing, protection of client data privacy, and mechanisms for complaint resolution and gave 88 percent of the rated MFIs overall passing marks.

"The fact that we now have data from almost five hundred third-party, external assessments of client protection practices at MFIs shows the extent to which the microfinance industry has committed itself to accountability on this all-important front," said Smart Campaign director Isabelle Barrès. "Responsible finance is assured when we develop and apply tools to hold MFIs accountable for the way they interact with customers."

Related Links:

Government of Bangladesh to Investigate Grameen Bank (1/14/11)

Global Partnerships Announces Investment of $4.5 Million in Latin American MFIs (2/23/11)

Bangladesh Court Upholds Order to Dismiss Yunus as Head of Grameen Bank (3/09/11)

5 Questions for...Alex Counts, President and CEO, Grameen Foundation (3/23/11)

BRAC Receives $25 Million to Expand Microfinance Model in Uganda (3/31/11)

Yunus Loses Final Appeal (4/7/11)

Reserve Bank of India Issues New Microfinance Regulations (5/04/11)

Bankers Without Borders Announces Partnership With Association for Enterprise Opportunity (5/08/11)

UN Capital Development Fund Awards $2.5 Million to Expand Community Banks Network Into DRC (5/15/11)

Opportunity International Receives $1.3 Million From Credit Suisse (5/24/11)

John Deere Foundation Awards $2.5 Million for Banking on Africa Initiative (7/08/11)

Microfinance Industry Embraces Accountability, Report Finds (11/13/11)

Weekend Link Roundup (December 17 - 18, 2011)

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

Communications/Marketing

In a post on her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Network for Good's Katya Andresen weighs in on a new Silverpop white paper that looks at where digital marketing trends are headed. Among other things, writes Andresen, nonprofit marketing staff should expect their work to become more personal, "human," and mobile in 2012.

Disaster Relief

On Oxfam International's From Poverty to Power blog, Chris Anderson, Oxfam's global adviser for disaster risk reduction, makes the case for more investment in disaster preparedness, noting that investment in DRR accounts for less than 1 percent of official humanitarian assistance to the world's twenty biggest recipients of such assistance.

Diversity

Rosetta Thurman shares a new article from the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group in which Katherine E. Jacobs and Andrew Grant-Thomas explain that when it comes to recruiting there "is no such thing as a diverse candidate."

Education

Writing about federal education policy in the New York Times ("Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?"), Helen Ladd, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke, and Edward B. Fiske, a former education editor at the Times and the author of the Fiske Guide to Colleges, pose what they believe is a critical question: "Why do presumably well-intentioned policy makers ignore, or deny, the correlations of family background and student achievement?" Ladd and Fiske propose that rationales for ignoring such correlations range from a belief that schools are capable of offsetting the effects of poverty, to not wanting to lower expectations for poor students, to the huge challenges posed by tackling poverty as a whole. "Let's agree," they write in closing, "that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question."

Global Health

On his Humanosphere blog, Tom Paulson has some nice things to say about Seattle-based PATH's acquisition of the nonprofit drug company OneWorld Health.

Philanthropy

On his Inside Philanthropy blog, Todd Cohen commends foundations and corporations for "moving beyond grantmaking and investing more of their assets to address critical social and global problems." "[T]hat kind of innovation," adds Cohen, "is critical to help make the social economy more productive in serving people and places in need."

Philanthropy 2173's Lucy Bernholz shares her annual list of new buzzwords and phrases, including evidence based, shapeshifting, and disruption.

Social Media

Nonprofits shouldn't confuse content curation -- "the organizing, filtering and 'making sense of' information on the web" -- as aggregation, writes social media expert Beth Kanter in a recent post on her blog. "The debate in content curation circles [right now]," adds Kanter, "is that [if] we treat content curation as aggregation, then we’ll miss the point and just create noise. We don't need more content but a human point of view guided by intelligent tools that can help others find and make sense of the information and resources out there."

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Bill Somerville, executive director of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, offers his take on the relationship between transparency and effectiveness that was the subject of recent event in San Francisco co-hosted by the Foundation Center and the Center for Effective Philanthropy. Writes Somerville:

Does transparency and glass pockets help effectiveness? I don't know. What difference does it make for people to know foundation salaries? If it does make a difference, then we are talking about accountability not effectiveness. Is the foundation accountable in being efficient, frugal, responsible, responsive and productive?

Foundations have a special place in the community in that they are answerable to themselves. They are independent and have maximum latitude to do their work. They have a unique asset in that their money is not political, not in competition with anything or anyone, and they have no ax to grind. So, what are the factors of excellence in the exercise of philanthropy? A question foundation personnel should ask themselves every day....

One is leadership. Foundations should exercise leadership in their willingness to venture where others haven't gone, to take risks, to think into the future rather than indulge themselves in endless paper. A leader is one who brings out the best in others. Isn't this what foundations should be doing?

Another factor of excellence is modesty. Money is the tool of philanthropy and money is power. Foundation personnel must understand that it is not their money nor is it their power. Foundations are investing funds in people and programs worthy of the investment. They are not "giving money away."

Somerville concludes by noting that his comments are meant to "create a dialogue and stimulate other people to add their thoughts on what makes for effectiveness." Here's your chance to join that conversation. What do you think an "effective" foundation looks like? And what is the relationship between transparency and accountability? Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

That's it for now. With the holidays looming, most of our shopping still be done, and miles to go before we sleep, we'll be posting a little less frequently over the next couple of weeks. Here's hoping you get to spend time with friends and loved ones. Have a great holiday!

-- The Editors

Yéle Haiti Responds to NY Post Allegations

Yesterday, we posted a digested version of a November 27 New York Post article ("Questions Dog Wyclef's Haiti Fund") which suggested that earthquake-relief funds raised by Yéle Haiti, a charity co-founded by hip-hop star Wyclef Jean (who is Haitian), in the months after the quake had been used improperly. At the heart of the Post's allegations are P&A Construction, which is run by Warnel Pierre, the brother of Jean's wife, Claudinette, and two independent contractors, Miami-based Amisphere Farm Labor Inc. and Samosa SA, in Port-au-Prince.

That article generated the following response from Hugh Locke, a co-founder of Yéle Haiti who served initially as executive director of the charity's Haiti operation and then as president of the combined Haiti and U.S. operations (until this past February). In the interest of fairness (and the facts), we thought it was important to reprint Locke's comments in their entirety.

Feel free to weigh in on Locke's comments, the Post's reporting, and/or our version of the Post story in the comments section below.

_____________________

<snip>

My name is Hugh Locke and I was until earlier this year the president of Yéle Haiti. I would like to set the record straight regarding the NY Post article.

Bad journalism can be the result of sloppiness, incompetence, or a distortion of facts in order to serve a bias or editorial agenda. All three of these traits are on full and splendid display in the November 27, 2011, New York Post article "Questions Dog Wyclef's Haiti Fund" by Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein. These two reporters have Wyclef Jean, co-founder of Yéle Haiti along with Jerry Duplessis and myself, in their sights in a no-holds-barred effort to sell papers, and no pesky truth is going to stand in their way.

The Yéle staff and our various partners who braved a chaotic and dangerous situation in order to deliver emergency relief to victims of the January 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti are true heroes in my book. Ms. Vincent and Ms. Klein cannot be allowed to discredit our collective efforts with falsehood and innuendo. What follows are the facts and figures to counter to each accusation in their Post article.

1. How much did Yéle receive in donations following the earthquake in Haiti and how much of that money was used for emergency relief?

NY Post: "In the months following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, a charity run by hip-hop star Wyclef Jean spent a pittance of the money it took in on disaster relief and doled out millions in questionable contracts....Records show that Yele Haiti spent just $5.1 million for emergency relief efforts, including food and water delivery to makeshift survivor camps...."

HL Response: As reported in Yéle Haiti’s 2010 IRS 990 tax filing, the organization received $16 million in donations that year (figures quoted are rounded off). More than half of these donations were received in the weeks immediately following the earthquake. Over the course of 2010 we spent a total of $9.2 million -- $8.2 million for programs (most of that for emergency relief and a small portion for other Yéle programs) and $1 million (or roughly 11 percent) on administrative overhead. Yéle made a decision not to expend all the funds raised in 2010 during that same year because people in the tent camps continued to need support. Consequently $6.8 million was carried over to cover operations in 2011.

Clarifications about contracts, none of which were "questionable," are answered in the points that follow.

Yéle’s activities in 2010 were a combination of emergency relief and long-term rebuilding. Here is an overview of what we accomplished.

Emergency Relief: Yéle worked with non-elected community leaders and elders within a core group of 30 of the tent camps throughout Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas to identify needs and coordinate aid delivery. These targeted camps had a combined population of just under 80,000. Here is a summary of what was distributed by Yéle over the course of 2010:

• 2,000 tents of various sizes
• 873 tarp kits for building shelters
• 4.2 million gallons of filtered water delivered in trucks (including to cholera areas)
• 233,000 10-ounce pouches of water
• 32,850 bottles of water in various sizes
• 98,000 hot meals
• 14,400 items of canned and packaged food
• 270,310 nutrition bars
• 4,425 individual care bags with personal toiletries and other items
• 8,705 items of new and used clothing
• 3,520 pairs of new and used shoes
• 1,000 pairs of new boots
• 14,300 pounds of medical supplies
• 1,240 windup and/or solar flashlights
• 2,500 windup and/or solar radios
• 26 generators
• 900 sheets and blankets

In response to the cholera outbreak in October of 2010, Yéle purchased 2 million water purification tablets and received a donation of 50,000 bars of soap and 100,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. These items were distributed by going tent to tent in the camps, noting that a portion of them were distributed in 2011.

Employment: There were very few jobs following the earthquake and even fewer for the 1.3 million people living in tent camps. Yéle began a program in 2010 that employed up to 2,000 people at a time to clean the streets of Port-au-Prince, paying them a respectable $7 a day. Towards the end of the year a vocational training program in carpentry, plumbing, and masonry was added to give youth marketable job skills.

Youth Development & Education: Yéle provided weekly support for two residential orphanages that were damaged in the earthquake. In additional to providing operational costs, one orphanage was completely rebuilt and more than doubled in size while the second was repaired and some additional facilities added. Yéle managed an onsite medical service for all the orphans as well.

Tree Planting & Agriculture: Haiti has less than 2 percent tree cover and imports roughly 70 percent of its food. Yele’s response in 2010 was to increase the capacity of local farmers, working with them to plant trees and introduce better farming practices that resulted in higher yields. A second Yéle program involved commissioning peasant farmers to grow vegetables that were delivered weekly to up to 2,000 orphans.

2. What was the role of Amisphere Farm Labor Inc. in Yéle’s emergency relief efforts?

NY Post: "A purported Miami business called Amisphere Farm Labor Inc. received a whopping $1,008,000 as a 'food distributor'. No trace of the company could be found last week in the Sunshine State, but records show the company’s head, Amsterly Pierre, bought three properties in Florida last year, including a condo in an upscale waterfront community.

"The firm incorporated in August 2008 but never filed any of the subsequent financial paperwork required to do business in Florida, according to the Florida Department of State.

"The address listed for the business is an auto-repair shop in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, where a worker said he had never heard of Pierre or Amisphere. Pierre did not return a call for comment...."

HL Response: Getting food to people who were in makeshift tent camps following the earthquake was a priority. It was particularly important to send in hot meals because people had limited capacity to cook in the camps. With this in mind we approached Amsterly Pierre, a businessman in Haiti who had experience in this field, and asked him to set up the operation on our behalf. For this purpose he used the bank account of a company he had registered in the US, Amisphere, because the banks were not yet functioning in Haiti.

In the midst of the chaos that characterized Port-au-Prince at that time, Mr. Pierre used his operation on the ground there to find a kitchen that, although damaged, could be made operational with a minimum of effort. He found sources of food, some of which had to be brought in by truck from the Dominican Republic, and assembled a staff that could cook and deliver thousands of meals at a time.

The hot meal program began on January 24 with the first distribution of hot meals to tent camps, with a particular focus on women and children living there. Over the next three months a total of 98,000 hot meals were served in the course of 15 distributions that ranged between 5,000 and 7,000 at a time.

While the primary emphasis was on the tent camps, during the early phase of the program we provided some of these meals to members of the national police force who were themselves living in tents, as the government was unable to give them any food or wages for the first month and a half following the earthquake. We also provided meals during that same time for a number of civil servants who were in a similar situation but who were determined to stay on the job to do what they could to restore services for the population.

In addition to the hot meals, we also contracted Mr. Pierre to develop a dry food ration kit. These were prepared in the Dominican Republic and brought in by truck and distributed in tent camps. Each kit had enough rations for an average family for one week. A total of 700 of these kits were distributed.

The term "whopping" should be applied to the impact Mr. Pierre had on Yéle’s behalf. Each hot meal fed an average of two people, and the ration kits fed five people for a week -- so through Mr. Pierre we were able to feed around 200,000 people at a cost of about $5 per person at a time when food was scarce, hot meals almost unheard of, and delivery of food into the tent camps was regularly causing riots.

3. What was the role of Samosa SA in Yéle’s emergency relief efforts?

NY Post: "Yele Haiti also paid $577,185 to a company called Samosa SA, based in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, as a 'bulk water supplier'. But some of that money went to rent a house for Yele Haiti volunteers on Samosa’s property at the inflated price of $35,000 a month...."

HL Response: Samosa SA is a Haitian company that Yéle contracted to provide fresh water to those living in tent camps. Samosa utilized 14 of their 1,200-gallon tanker trucks to deliver an average of 34,000 gallons of water a day on a rotating schedule to 30 different tent camps. The water came from an aquifer on the Samosa property and they filtered the water on site using a reverse osmosis process. While Samosa provided the trucks and drivers, Yéle sent its own staff to accompany each delivery -- having made sure that each tent camp would be ready with volunteers to help manage the operation and residents lined up with pails ready to take the water.

Water distribution began on January 24 and over the course of the remainder of 2010 a total of 4.2 million gallons of purified water was distributed at a unit cost of 10¢ a gallon. The unit cost went up in October when half the water was diverted as Yéle contributed to fighting the outbreak of cholera in the rural areas north of Port-au-Prince. The increased cost was a combination of more fuel being required to drive outside the capital plus a bonus paid to the drivers because they were afraid to go into the midst of the cholera outbreak when it had just begun and the population was terrified and did not yet understand how it was spread.

There was a second and separate contract with Samosa SA for Yéle to rent a seven-acre walled property that included a house. The property and house were rented from May 1 onwards for $15,000 a month.

The house was used by Yéle as a center of our relief activities, serving as both headquarters and main office. Our U.S. staff and visiting volunteers also stayed there. The house had three bedrooms and by using mattresses and sleeping bags we were able to accommodate as many as 30 people at a time, depending on the scale of the distributions or other emergency relief programs that were being implemented.

The rest of the property was used as the site of a warehouse operation where relief items such as tents, tarps, blankets, food, clothing, shoes, medical supplies, windup flashlights, windup radios, and other items were stored, sorted, and loaded onto trucks for delivery to the 30 tent camps that we served on a regular basis.

The warehouse operation had two components -- we installed a large concrete slab on which we placed nine permanent 40-foot containers and had space for six more that shuffled between the property and the port. The second component involved a 44-foot diameter geodesic dome that we erected and which was used for both storage and sorting.

Lastly, we built a facility that was intended to serve the needs of amputees. Two geodesic domes were erected, but the facility was not completed when it was discovered that the initial government estimates amputees had been significantly overstated. The two domes were taken down and are currently in storage.

As the overall emergency relief needs in Haiti changed, Yéle subsequently moved out of the rented Samosa property in early 2011.

4. What was the role of P & A Construction in Yéle’s emergency relief efforts?

NY Post: "Yele Haiti paid five contractors to accomplish its goals, including P&A Construction --- which received $353,983 and is run by Warnel Pierre, the brother of Jean’s wife, Claudinette...."

HL Response: Yéle contracted a company called P & A Construction to design and build several things, and in keeping with a policy of transparency we included the fact that the owner of the company is a relative of Wyclef Jean in our IRS 990 tax filing for 2010.

Finding a contractor who can build anything in Haiti on time and on budget is a rarity, and Warnel Pierre was that person. As we did with all contracts, estimates for projects were reviewed against standard costs per square foot or the relevant unit of comparison, depending on the project. In all cases we were satisfied that Mr. Pierre was providing a good service at a competitive rate.

Among the services provided by Mr. Pierre during 2010 were the following:

• repair and complete rebuilding and expansion of the Jean et Marie Orphanage that had been damaged in the earthquake;
• repair and the addition of a kitchen, bathrooms, and two new classrooms at the Bon Samaritan Orphanage that had been damaged in the earthquake;
• installation of electrical power lines, septic and water storage tanks, and a well; re-surfacing with gravel and a drainage system, building of toilets and shower facility, and other upgrades to the Place Fierte tent camp in the Cité Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince;
• installation of concrete slab and related ramps for container-based warehouse storage;
• installation of concrete slab base, plumbing, bathrooms, and showers for the amputee facility, including assisting in the installation of two geodesic domes on the site; and
• installation of concrete slab and surrounding gravel drainage area for geodesic dome used as part of the warehouse operation, including assisting in the installation of the dome.

5. What did Yéle do to ensure transparency of operation?

NY Post: " 'Given the fact that Yele Haiti was involved in a swirl of controversy after the earthquake in Haiti, it's all the more reason to be more transparent to ensure donors that their funds are going to help people,' said the Better Business Bureau’s Bennett Weiner...."

HL Response: Yéle hired the prestigious accounting firm of RSM McGladrey to improve its level of transparency and together we developed one of the most comprehensive and timely systems of disclosure of any NGO working in Haiti. Beginning in September 2010, Yéle regularly updated this financial information on its website.

6. Did Yéle lose $244,000 in 2009?

NY Post: "The group lost $244,000 in 2009...."

HL Response: This allegation is simply made up. Yéle began 2009 with $57,421 in cash on hand that was carried over from the previous year. To that was added donations in 2009 totaling $749,480, for a total of $806,901. We spent $994,344 in 2009, with the difference of $187,443 between what we spent and what we received being invoices that came in the latter part of 2009 and which were paid in 2010. There was no loss.

</snip>

(Locke is currently writing a book about his six years of humanitarian service in Haiti.)

Another Way of Thinking About Accountability

(Michael Remaley is the director of Public Policy Communicators NYC and president of HAMILL REMALEY breakthrough communications. This post originally appeared on the Glasspocket's blog, Transparency Talk.)

More and more philanthropic professionals are accepting the idea that their organizations should be transparent and, in part because those who founded the organization took major tax benefits when it was established, have some accountability to the public. Many of our field's big thinkers are making a compelling case that public accountability in philanthropy should be a core value in our work. But when it comes to accountability, what if foundations and the public are talking about entirely different things?

New research from Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation presents evidence that the public and leaders across many sectors hold strikingly different ideas about what it means to be accountable. Based on new public opinion research, the report, Don't Count Us Out: How an Overreliance on Accountability Could Undermine the Public's Confidence in Schools, Business, Government and More (52 pages, PDF), outlines the key dimensions of accountability as the public defines it and contrasts the public's perspective with prevailing leadership views. Although it isn't mentioned in the subtitle, the report explores the ramifications for foundations, too.

For philanthropic professionals, the implications are significant -- both for their foundations and the institutions they support. There are several pros and cons in the research for those foundations already committed to transparency and accountability. For those foundations on the fence about accountability, the research reinforces the fact that the public expects institutions to be accountable but raises questions about just what that means.

There are several key points from the research that philanthropic professionals will want to consider:

Accountability requires ethics. For foundations, the biggest "pro" in this research is that the public sees accountability first as a dimension of ethics and responsibility. Foundations -- especially those with an orientation toward accountability and transparency -- will likely fare well with the public in this regard. On the "con" side, many leaders who see accountability measures as the principal way to ensure that their institutions meet their obligations to the public may be putting too much faith in how much the public values the setting of benchmarks, collecting data, measuring performance, disclosing information, and organizing system-wide reforms. Those mechanisms, while often valuable as management tools, fall far short of relieving the public's most potent concerns, especially their fears about an ethical decline in our society. Foundations that demonstrate they are acting responsibly and ethically will be thought by the public to be accountable more than those that simply talk about benchmarks.

More information does not equal more trust. Typically, people know almost nothing about specific measures, and they rarely see them as clear-cut evidence of effectiveness. Many Americans are deeply skeptical about the accuracy and importance of quantitative measures. Most are suspicious of the ways in which numbers can be manipulated or tell only half the story. So on the "pro" side, this research is good news for those foundations that have become adept at getting their message out with personal stories of those affected by their programs. For those that are still trying to talk about their impact with lists of grants made and lots of data, the "cons" in this research may be quite jarring. Many members of the public feel confused and overwhelmed by the detailed information flying past them in the name of "disclosure" and "transparency." Many fear they are being manipulated by the complex presentations. More and more statistics do not reassure, so in fact more information can actually lead to less public trust. It's not that the public doesn't want accountability and information from foundations, but a whole lot of data (without any qualitative context) isn't reassuring to them.

Responsiveness is just as important as benchmarks. For the public, being able to reach someone who listens to you and treats your ideas and questions respectfully is a fundamental dimension of accountability. This may be the biggest challenge for foundations highlighted by research, since even the most transparent rarely open the door more than a crack to let the general public in to give feedback on the funding programs aimed at them. For most people, not being able to talk to someone is a signal that the institution doesn't genuinely care about those they serve. And foundations are particularly opaque to the public. The message is clear for those in philanthropy and other sectors who may fear being besieged by community input: the public wants a better balance and authentic mechanisms that allow them to be heard. On the "pro" side, those foundations that do seek community input and can demonstrate they are listening will likely be afforded a great deal of public trust. Foundations that rate well on the Foundation Center's Glasspockets measures of transparency, especially those dealing with grantee surveys and grantee feedback, can probably feel some relief that they will likely be considered accountable in the public's eyes.

The public expects to be held accountable, too. For most Americans, the return to real accountability is not the job of leaders alone. Time and again, people in focus groups spoke about their own responsibilities and the near impossibility of solving problems without a broad base of responsibility at every level of society. Many foundations already get this. Institutions that embrace the idea of a public role in fostering institutional accountability must think creatively and proactively about how typical citizens can contribute their knowledge and actions to fulfill the organization's mission. The report emphasizes that giving people more and more information or giving them more and more choices without truly considering public priorities and concerns is likely to backfire.

The report is getting a lot of attention in policy circles. The Washington Post's education columnist Jay Mathews wrote, "Its message is vital. Accountability is a key word in our national debate….The Public Agenda/Kettering report may have exposed the greatest obstacle to getting our kids the educations they deserve." And The Nonprofit Quarterly weighed in with this:

"The authors suggest that there is one other area that needs equal attention: philanthropy, which they say has 'fewer true accountability mechanisms than any other field.' However, there is one dimension of accountability in which philanthropy may be the strongest: the 'publicly stated moral convictions of its leaders.' How to measure that will, perhaps, be the biggest challenge of all."

For foundation professionals involved in communicating the results of their organizations' work, the first thing to recognize is simply the different orientation of your audience. The second is to understand that people expect more than just statistics and analyses of results to feel that your foundation is indeed accountable. Many foundations are hesitant to allow outsiders to even have easy e-mail access to staff (another Glasspockets transparency measure). So allowing the public to give feedback on the programs that are directed at them may seem like a radical idea to some. Many foundations are already doing grantee surveys and allowing public commentary on their blogs. These are likely to go a long way in engendering trust with the public.

Many foundations have already realized that telling stories is a more effective means of communicating with people than rolling out more statistics and facts. When it comes to demonstrating our foundations' accountability, it may be time to consider the idea that bringing the public into the process is as important as enumerating outcomes.

-- Michael Remaley

A Strange Catalyst for Philanthropy in South Korea

(Nick Scott is assistant to the publisher at PND. In his last post, he wrote about U.S. aid policy and disaster relief efforts in the Horn of Africa.)

Philanthropy News Digest recently ran an item recounting the rather bizarre saga of South Korean billionaire Chung Mong-Koo's record-setting philanthropic pledge of nearly $1 billion.

Some sources in the region optimistically speculated that the gift might encourage more philanthropy by the mega-wealthy in South Korea -- a strange conclusion to draw from the more-or-less coerced pledge that Chung, the chairman of Hyundai Motor Group and the second wealthiest man in South Korea, seems somewhat reluctant to fulfill. Taking a very charitable view of the situation, the Korea Herald professed uncertainty about what might have inspired Chung to make his pledge before adding this postscript:

One may recall that Chung Mong-Koo had made a commitment to donate 840 billion won in 2007 when he was accused of making illegal profits through business improprieties. As the criminal charges were denied later by the Supreme Court, Chung was relieved of the obligation, but he must have felt moral responsibility to make good on his pledge....

Maybe he did, but the Herald apparently felt no moral responsibility to report that the charges were actually dropped after Chung received a presidential pardon based on his importance to the fast-growing Korean economy. Apparently, this sort of crony-capitalist two-step is a rite of passage among South Korea's mega-wealthy, as evidenced by billionaire tycoon Lee Kun-Hee receiving a similar pardon after being convicted of tax evasion in 2008. Following a two-year hiatus (and no time in prison), Lee has returned to his former position as chairman of the Samsung Group, the multinational conglomerate. Despite a certain amount of outrage on the part of South Korean civic groups about the government's lenient attitude toward corporate malfeasance, it would seem that in South Korea, the health of the country's surging economy trumps concerns over corporate governance.

When it comes to philanthropy, Chung Mong-Koo and Lee Kun-Hee are hardly ideal role models. Their charitable gifts surely will be welcomed by many NGOs and civic groups, but the idea of philanthropy as a "Get Out of Jail" card seems like a troubling precedent to embrace -- in South Korea or anywhere else.

-- Nick Scott

BBB Wise Giving Alliance: Helping Grantees Measure Up

(Laura Cronin is a frequent contributor to PhilanTopic. In her previous post, she provided an update on rebuilding efforts in tsunami-ravaged Japan, with a focus on the arts.)

Because so many high-profile charitable gifts in the United States come from institutions that ostensibly know what they're doing, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that individual donors still give far more than foundations, corporations, and estates -- combined.

Of the $290.89 billion donated to nonprofit organizations in 2010, some 73 percent ($211.77 billion) came from individuals. That figure includes more than a few "mega-gifts" from wealthy individuals who employ philanthropic strategies similar to those of professional grantmakers. Still, most charitable giving is done by individuals who don't think a whole lot about theories of change, logic models, and giving strategies.

Through its Wise Giving Alliance and local BBBs, the Better Business Bureau is working to extend its outreach to individuals who come to the charitable marketplace without the benefit of a philanthropic advisor or a well-informed board. Last revised in 2003 by a panel of nonprofit experts (with extensive input from the charitable sector), the BBB Wise Giving Alliance Standards for Charitable Accountability suggest guidelines and minimum requirements in four key aspects of nonprofit management: governance, effectiveness, finance, and fundraising/communications.

According to Claire Rosenzweig, president and CEO of the BBB of Metropolitan New York, "[T]he Charity Accountability Standards are intended to help create a more informed charitable marketplace and to give prospective donors a framework they can use to make their own decisions about where to give." Rosenzweig believes nonprofits should use the standards as a sort of checklist to remind staff of the things they need to do to keep an organization operating ethically and in compliance with regulations. More broadly, says Rosenzweig, they can be used to improve an organization's accountability and transparency.

Because the BBB has given so much thought to what makes an effective nonprofit tick, nonprofit groups that solicit and depend on the public for the bulk of their revenues might want to take the additional step of having their organization formally reviewed. In the Empire State, the New York Philanthropic Advisory Service of the BBB evaluates charities in the metropolitan New York area against the standards and publishes a review of its findings that is available to the public online. A positive review is one way of highlighting the soundness of your organization while also reminding your managers about the fundamentals of good management practice. Seminars on how to apply the principles embodied in the standards are offered year-round.

Professional grantmakers might be surprised to learn which standards are the most difficult for nonprofits to follow. In New York, the five "most-failed" standards all have to do with effectiveness and communication. They are:

14. Board-Approved Budget. Have a board-approved annual budget for your current fiscal year, outlining projected expenses for major program activities, fundraising, and administration.

16. Annual Report. Have an annual report available to all, on request, that includes:

• your mission statement;
• a summary of your program service accomplishments over the past year;
• a roster of the officers and members of your board of directors; and
• financial information that includes (i) total income in the most recent completed fiscal year, (ii) expenses in the program, fundraising, and administrative categories, and (iii) ending net assets.

6. Effectiveness Assessment Policy. Have a policy of assessing, no less than every two years, your organization's performance and effectiveness, and determining future actions required to achieve your mission.

17. Website Disclosures. Include on any site that solicits contributions the same information that's in your annual report, as well as the mailing address of your organization and electronic access to your most recent IRS Form 990.

7. Effectiveness Reporting to Governance. Submit to your organization's governing body, for its approval, a written report that outlines the results of the aforementioned performance and effectiveness assessment and recommendations for future actions.

Data from charities that solicit nationally shows similar patterns, with most charities around the country failing to meet the same standards as the ones that trip up New York-based charities. Charities in other regions were also found to have trouble with addressing donors' privacy concerns (#18) and convening the board on a regular basis (#3).

The standards also help guide nonprofit leaders through the delicate dance of negotiating partnerships with often-demanding corporate donors.

19. Clearly disclose how the charity benefits from the sale of products or services (i.e., cause-related marketing) that state or imply that a charity will benefit from a consumer sale or transaction. Such promotions should disclose, at the point of solicitation:

• the actual or anticipated portion of the purchase price that will benefit the charity (e.g., 5 cents will be contributed to abc charity for every xyz company product sold);
• the duration of the campaign (e.g., the month of October); and
• any maximum or guaranteed minimum contribution amount (e.g., up to a maximum of $200,000).

When it comes to these types of partnerships, the public wants to know about the charitable bottom line. Corporate donors would be wise to pay attention as well and to take into account how their nonprofits partners are perceived by individual donors when they sit down to design a cause-related program.

In an effort to supplement its work on charity accountability, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance along with the BBB Foundation of Metro New York helped organize an initiative to address the effectiveness and transparency issues head on. Developed in partnership with GuideStar and Independent Sector, Charting Impact is designed to help nonprofits sharpen their thinking about their work, create a standardized report about their plans and progress, and share that report with people looking to invest their money, time, and attention. To start, nonprofits are asked to answer five "deceptively simple" questions:

1. What is your organization aiming to accomplish?
2. What are your strategies for making this happen?
3. What are your organization’s capabilities for doing this?
4. How will your organization know if you are making progress?
5. What have and haven’t you accomplished so far?

Armed with the answers to those questions, nonprofits are invited to complete an organizational profile with a unique URL that is shared on the Charting Impact site, the GuideStar site, and -- in the future -- with other Web sites and information providers.

"Developing a self-reporting framework that enables nonprofits to gauge their mission-driven impact is a ground-breaking endeavor that the BBB was pleased to embark upon with Guidestar and Independent Sector," says Rosenzweig. And the information the BBB is capturing on behalf of individual donors can be useful for institutional funders, as well.

For nonprofits seeking to distinguish themselves in a vast sea of worthy causes and deserving organizations, a Charting Impact profile is a new and exciting platform for getting the word out to prospective donors, volunteers, and other stakeholders. The format of the profile is thoughtful and well designed, and it forces nonprofit development and communications professionals to be both clear and concise about their organization's goals and results. If you haven't checked out the site, take a few minutes to do so. It will be time well spent.

-- Laura Cronin

'Giving USA', 2011 Edition

The annual Giving USA report was released earlier today, and the headline number -- charitable giving totaled $290.89 billion in 2010, up from a revised estimate of $280.30 billion in 2009 -- failed to generate any real enthusiasm. In a year that saw equity markets and endowment values rebound sharply from the dark days of 2008 and 2009, the estimated increase represents growth of just 2.1 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Before we get to some of the commentary, here are a few other numbers from the report:

Giving by type of donor

• Individual giving was up an estimated 2.7 percent (1.1 percent in inflation-adjusted terms), to $211.77 billion.
• According to the Foundation Center, foundation grantmaking by private, community, and operating foundations fell 0.2 percent (-1.8 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to $41 billion.
• Charitable bequests rose 18.8 percent (16.9 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $22.83 billion.
• Corporate giving was up 10.6 percent (8.8 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $15.29 billion.

Giving by type of recipient

• Representing 35 percent of overall contributions, giving to religion was up 0.8 percent (-0.8 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $100.63 billion 
• Giving to education increased 5.2 percent (3.5 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $41.67 billion.
• Giving to foundations (private, operating, and community) rose 1.9 percent (0.2 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to $33 billion.
• Giving to human services was up 0.1 percent (-1.5 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $26.49 billion. This includes most of the $1.43 billion donated for Haiti disaster relief; ex Haiti, giving for human services would have declined 4 percent (-5.6 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars).
• Giving to public-society benefit organizations (e.g., United Way, United Jewish Appeal, Combined Federal campaign, freestanding donor-advised funds like the Fidelity Charitabel Gift Fund) increased 6.2 percent (4.5 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $24.24 billion.
• Giving to health rose 1.3 percent (-0.3 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $22.83 billion.
• Giving to international affairs jumped 15.3 percent (13.5 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $15.77 billion.
• Giving to arts and culture rose 5.7 percent (4.1 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $13.28 billion.
• Giving to environment/animal-related organizations fell 0.7 percent (-2.3 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars), to an estimated $6.66 billion.

Downward revisions

• The report also revised downward estimates for total giving in 2008 and 2009 --from $307.65 billion and $303.75 billion, respectively, to $303.65 billion and $280.30 billion.

The glass-half-full nature of the report was captured by Patrick Rooney, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy, who called the inflation-adjusted increase of 2.1 percent in overall giving "good news." But, added Rooney, "the sobering reality is that many nonprofits are still hurting, and if giving continues to grow at this rate, it will take five or six more years just to return to the level of giving we saw before the Great Recession."

In the Nonprofit Times, sector veteran Elizabeth Boris, director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, echoed that sentiment: "It seems like we've gone quite a ways back in the giving and it's going to take us a long time to recover, unless the economy takes a giant step forward." Boris also noted the significant revision to the 2009 data: "It makes me a bit concerned...talking about $280 billion in 2009; you have to go all the way back to 2003 or 2004 to see numbers like that."

Elsewhere, the Nonprofit Quarterly's Ruth McCambridge and Rick Cohen thought the picture painted by the report was "alarming," in that the numbers suggested "a significant disinvestment in people in need on the domestic front." And they cautioned fundraisers not to assume that "the unending generosity of the American charitable donor will win out."

But what most concerns McCambridge and Cohen about this year's report (as Phil Cubeta picked up on in his Gift Hub blog) is the evidence it offers for a growing "class divide" in society and the nonprofit sector. "What the Giving USA numbers suggest," they write,

is not only a crisis of declining charitable giving reaching human services or social safety net groups, but a class divide where the groups that do well in charitable solicitations are those with connections, with the social class interrelationships that give them automatic access. Meanwhile, charitable giving for human services is very much the province of the less moneyed donors, the payroll deduction donors, the people who volunteer at the shelter or food pantry or clinic because they know the tangible importance of those institutions to their communities....

Just as corporate CEO compensation is now back at pre-recession levels even while joblessness persists, the needs of the poor and of the organizations that serve the poor have virtually disappeared from political discourse and from the priority lists of philanthropy. And the incentives -- bequests, IRA rollovers, etc. -- flow toward the institutions with the fundraising infrastructures and the social connections to major donors....

What do you think? Were you surprised by anything in this year's report? Do you expect overall giving in 2011 to be up more than the 2.1 percent we saw in 2010? Do the numbers in this year's report reflect the growing inequality in American society? And is it time, as McCambridge and Cohen suggest in their article, to rethink the incentives built into our charitable giving structure in a way that addresses that inequality?

CORRECTION, June 22, 11:50 a.m.: The original version of this post mistakenly attributed the first paragraph of the quote above to Gift Hub blogger Phil Cubeta. The graph in question actually was part of an insightful piece written by the Nonprofit Quarterly's Ruth McCambridge and Rick Cohen. Thanks to the Alliance for Nonprofit Excellence's Fayre Crossley for bringing the misattribution to my attention. And my apologies to Ruth and Rick for the mistake.

-- Mitch Nauffts

This Week in PubHub: Teacher Preparation

(Kyoko Uchida manages PubHub, the Foundation Center's online catalog of foundation-sponsored publications. In her previous post, she looked at four reports that explore developments and issues involved in palliative and end-of-life care.)

As the debate over how to measure and improve teacher quality rages on, this week in PubHub we're featuring four reports that explore ways to strengthen teacher preparation programs.

One of the stated aims of the Department of Education's Race to the Top initiative is to help states implement reforms in "recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals" by linking student performance data to teacher education programs, publicly reporting program effectiveness, and scaling successful programs. The Center for American Progress report Race to the Top and Teacher Preparation: Analyzing State Strategies for Ensuring Real Accountability and Fostering Program Innovation (48 pages; 610KB; PDF) examines states' RTT-funded plans to adopt stricter accountability mechanisms for teacher education programs and finds that while all twelve states have committed to better reporting, only five intend to publish the effectiveness of program graduates as a measure of accountability. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates and Eli and Edythe Broad foundations, the report recommends maximizing the potential for change by developing high-quality data reporting systems, piloting stronger accountability measures, fostering innovative strategies, supporting promising practices in non-RTT-funded states, and monitoring state performance.

Measuring What Matters: A Stronger Accountability Model for Teacher Education (44 pages; 397KB; PDF), an earlier Center for American Progress report that was also funded by the Gates Foundation, proposes a framework for a more radically redesigned teacher education accountability model with the following components: a measure of whether program graduates help their students learn, measures of classroom performance based on reliable and valid observation instruments, public reporting of persistence rates up to five years post-completion, feedback from program graduates and their employers, and a new licensure process that includes common tests and policies across states.

Getting in Sync: Revamping Licensure and Preparation for Teachers in Pre-K, Kindergarten and the Early Grades (32 pages; 1.75MB; PDF), a report from the New America Foundation that focuses on teacher education for pre-K through third grade, argues that current teacher education curricula pay little attention to developmental science or early childhood-specific training. Funded by the Foundation for Child Development and the A.L. Mailman Family and W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone foundations, the report highlights a number of promising practices, including increasing applicant pool selectivity, an emphasis on frequent classroom experience and in-depth coursework, and the need for more rigorous licensure standards and policies.

The Elusive Talent Strategy: An Excellent Teacher for Every Student in Every School (16 pages; 776KB; PDF), a report from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, also calls, among other things, for improving applicant pools. According to the report, top-performing education systems in Finland, Singapore, and South Korea hire only the top third of college graduates as teachers. If U.S. students are to compete globally in the twenty-first century, the report argues, the country needs to recruit better teacher candidates and improve their preparation; offer incentives to place them where they are needed most; utilize data to improve support systems and evaluation systems; and hold teachers accountable for their performance. Promising models that have emerged of late include urban teacher residencies -- apprenticeship programs that provide intensive classroom experience alongside a mentor teacher, supplemented by coursework -- and alternatives such as Teach for America and the New Teacher Project that enable teachers to begin their careers while in the process of obtaining their certification.

What are your thoughts about accountability and teacher education programs? Know of any promising practices or policies? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

And don't forget to visit PubHub, where you can browse more than seven hundred reports on education-related topics.

-- Kyoko Uchida

For Performance Assessments, How Public Should Foundations Be?

(Kevin Bolduc is vice president of assessment tools at the Center for Effective Philanthropy. In that role, he oversees both the design of new tools and the refinement of CEP's suite of assessment offerings and has presented CEP's data to the boards, management, and staff of dozens of funders. This post original appeared on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog.)

We at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) are often asked just how public should foundations be with the results of the assessments tools we provide them? It's a simple question, but I am not sure there's an easy answer.

The question arises most frequently in the context of our Grantee Perception Report (GPR), which we have provided to some two hundred foundations of various types and sizes. CEP's motivation for creating the GPR was simple: in order to be truly effective, foundations need to hear from those they are supporting. Relative to other one-off grantee surveys, the GPR is powerful because grantees can be candid, knowing their identity will be protected, and because the results are comparative. Through the GPR, funders learn about how they are doing relative to others, helping highlight real strengths and weaknesses.

Since we began delivering these reports eight years ago, about 40 funders of all stripes and sizes, from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (the first do so and unusual enough that it was written about in the New York Times) to The John R. Oishei Foundation (one of the most recent), have elected to post some or all of their CEP Grantee Perception Reports on their Web sites. (You can also find links to public GPRs listed on Glasspockets.) But many funders have chosen not to post their GPRs. Here and there I've been asked why not all funders make their GPRs public and whether I think they should.

There are a few intertwined reasons I see (and hear) about why funders posting their GPRs can be good for philanthropy and can even help to mitigate some of the sector's inherently asymmetric power dynamics.

Clarity: Public GPRs can provide one more resource for grantees and other prospective partners to understand how a particular foundation does its work -- strengthening potential future proposals or helping to identify areas of mutual alignment.

Transparency about successes and failures: Funders can lead the way in demonstrating that by sharing successes and failures openly, we can best learn and improve.

Accountability: Self-imposed accountability can often serve as a first step in a funder making change. While posting the GPR alone might not do this, funders often use the opportunity to tell grantees (and others) what they're going to change and why. They can prime grantees to start reconsidering any preconceived notions and approach the foundation with a fresh perspective. And in so doing, they might begin to alter the dynamics of the relationship for the better, fostering a greater sense of comfort among grantees in providing feedback, including about whether change is happening -- or not.

Motivation of internal change effort: When leadership makes the GPR itself public, it's a powerful statement to staff colleagues about the importance of the GPR feedback and, more importantly, about the importance of always seeking to learn and improve the way the foundation works with its grantees.

These are strong arguments. But here's the thing: I've seen funders that don't make their GPRs public go on to make real and important changes in their work based on GPR results. And I've seen a few funders go ahead, make results public, and then follow up with half-hearted change efforts.

Posting results is easy. Creating change based on those results is the hard work.

Furthermore, we know that many foundations communicate about their results in some way, even if they don't go as far as publicly sharing their GPR. Some send a detailed letter or e-mail to grantees. Some have hosted a gathering or discussion with grantees and potential applicants. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, didn't post its GPR, but it held open conference calls in which foundation leaders candidly described GPR results and invited questions; the Foundation then posted audio recordings of the calls on its Web site.

So, here's a thought: maybe Glasspockets should accept and link to all these types of sharing as "evidence" of transparency and accountability. It's not just the public GPRs that are real signals of commitment to effectiveness.

CEP's third-party evaluations indicate that funders are making major changes in their work, whether they're posting results or not.

And that's what it's all about for me.

-- Kevin Bolduc