PhilanTopic

A Strategy for Nonprofit Hospitals

Over the last few years, eight- and nine-figure gifts like those received by New York University's Langone Medical Center and Sandford Health have obscured the fact that not-for-profit hospital revenue is growing at its slowest rate in two decades.

Indeed, a new report from Wilmington Trust suggests that one of the drivers of revenue growth in the sector, however modest, has been high-net-worth families -- households with a net worth of over $1 million or net income of $200,000. In 2009, for example, 70 percent of high-net-worth families gave to healthcare organizations, compared to 23 percent of the families in the general population.

In response to this trend, a growing number of not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare organizations are establishing standalone foundations to lead their development efforts. According to the report, the benefits of such an arrangement include increased leadership and volunteer opportunities for trustees; clearer lines between the fundraising/administrative functions of the hospital and its core operations; a more focused marketing and branding strategy; and the flexibility and security that comes with having a separate endowment.

The report includes results from Wilmington Trust's own research, which found, among other things, that 70 percent of the healthcare organizations it surveyed in the mid-Atlantic region had foundations, as well as a short profile of one medium-sized nonprofit hospital, Ellis Medicine in Schenectady, New York, that has raised $12.1 million over the past five years and even managed to boost its fundraising revenue in 2009, thanks largely to the efforts of its foundation.

To download the report (8 pages, PDF), visit the Wilmington Trust site.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (May 12-13, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz says nonprofit communicators don't always "make it easy for people like me to share their information" via social media. If they really want to get their message out, adds Fritz, organizations should blog frequently, add images to their posts, use video when possible, encourage retweets on Twitter, and add RSS feeds to their online platforms.

Fundraising

On the AFP blog, Reed Stockton shares findings from a recent study which found that nearly $1.5 billion was raised through some 350 crowdfunding platforms globally in 2011.

On the Minnesota Council on Foundations' Philanthropy Potluck blog, Anne Bauers looks at the Nonprofit Finance Fund's recently released State of the Sector survey, which found, among other things, that many nonprofits are "feeling distant from their funders."

Maybe, as the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Sean Dobson notes, that's because the percentage of foundation grant dollars awarded for general operating support remained stuck at 22 percent in 2009 and 2010. It's a shame, writes Dobson, because in an uncertain economy, general operating support is "an endowment-friendly way [for foundations] to build stronger... grantees." 

Philanthropy

Ellen Remmer, president and CEO of the Philanthropic Initiative, explains why a growing number of community foundations are making investments designed to "produce a social (including environmental) and financial return." Writes Remmer:

They believe they can have a deeper and more sustained impact in their communities by adding this tool to the toolbox, particularly for some issue areas such as housing, sustainable economic development, healthy lifestyles (think local food), etc. They are compelled by the opportunity to "recycle" philanthropic dollars and augment the amount of capital committed to social change. And they believe that a broader group of social investors will be attracted to this approach for community improvement than their traditional cadre of donors.

Could community foundations become standard bearers for impact investing? Could they play an educational, brokering or even leadership role for donor investors and the recipient organizations? There are plenty of barriers to realizing the full potential of this evolving form of social investment; but my bet is that community foundations could -- if they choose -- play a key role....

Poverty Alleviation

Over at the Huffington Post's Impact blog, Maurice Lim Miller, founder and CEO of the Family Independence Initiative, reminds us that charity can be a double-edged sword. "The ability to make choices, determine our plan of action, and be in control are essential to achieving mobility and stability in our society," writes Miller. But while

everyone faces problems and needs help at some point, the programs and services for low-income people treat them as unable to make their own choices -- as charity cases. A charity case isn't simply someone who needs resources; the term carries pathos. "Charity case" does not breed confidence, self-respect, or affirm any sense of self-determination. If we really want people who are low-income to have the opportunity to get ahead, we need a new model....

Social Media

Last but not least, Allison Fine suggests in a post on the Harvard Business Review blog that what it means to be "professional" in the workplace has changed. "For most people over forty," writes Fine,

it means wearing a uniform of some kind, talking in a certain language, carrying a briefcase (or more recently a Blackberry or iPhone), and perhaps, most important, keeping one's private life private. Gen Y, or Millennials -- late teens to thirty year-olds -- have a vastly different notion of what it means to present oneself to the world wearing their business hat (so to speak). The huge organizational chasm between Gen Y and Gen X and Boomers is less a technological problem than a psychological one, and it manifests itself in the use of social media....

Is she right? Do older professionals view social media as a threat to professional behavior? Is it changing what it means to be "professional"? Use the comments section to share your thoughts.

And drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org if we missed something. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (May 5-6, 2012)

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

Advocacy

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Lisa Ranghelli offers a positive review of Learn Foundation Law, a new online training tool for foundation program officers that was developed by the Gates, Packard, Moore, and Hewlett foundations.

Arts and Culture

On the Minnesota Council on Foundation's Philanthropy Potluck blog, Anne Bauers explains why it's critical for arts organizations to focus on audience-building efforts. Writes Bauers, "The [uncertain economy] challenges arts organizations to make smart and cost-effective decisions about strategies to attract and retain audiences, sustaining practices that work, and modifying or dropping those that don't. It also challenges organizations to change themselves in ways that encourage risk-taking, innovation and learning...."

Communications/Marketing

NTEN's Holly Ross discusses how the organization improved its e-mail open rates by sending mobile-friendly versions of its newsletter to subscribers, many of whom manage their e-mail on smartphones.

Fundraising

Something of a skeptic when it comes to social media as a fundraising tool, Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks looks at a recently published Nonprofit Social Network Report which found that the average cost of a Facebook "like" is $3.50, while the average value of a Facebook "like" over the twelve months following acquisition is $214.81. Among other things, writes Brooks, fundraisers should consider the following questions as they examine their organization's data to determine whether a robust social networking presence is worth the time and effort:

• Does giving increase after a current donor becomes a Facebook follower?
• Does donor retention improve among those who "like"?
• Is the increase in value, if any, enough to make the $3.50 cost a good investment?
• What types of Facebook engagement creates the best return?

Hosting April's Nonprofit Blog Carnival, the folks at the Rad Campaign share a selection of posts that explore the ins and outs of social fundraising.

Governance

Writing on the Huffington Post, Alice Korngold says that given the significant strategic and financial challenges and opportunities confronting nonprofits, nonprofit boards need to rethink the way they function. That process should start with a conversation about the organization's goals over the next several years, followed by a discussion about its revenue model. After that, the board should dive deeper into the expectations of individual board members and develop a system of accountability; determine the proper size and structure of the board; develop a plan for board composition based on board members' expertise, experience, background, and networks; and adopt best practices with respect to leadership succession.

International Affairs/Development

In a post on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Impatient Optimists blog, Gerry Power of InterMedia highlights a report that looks at "how we can communicate about aid in a way that people understand and are encouraged to act upon." Key takeways from the report include:

• Instill a deep understanding and appreciation for the objectives of international development when people are young and where values are nurtured;
• Do not underestimate the challenge of leveraging public opinion as a means to influence policy; and
• Facilitate more effective information and data gathering and sharing strategies for government decision makers.

Philanthropy

Writing on the Council on Foundations' blog, Michael Moody, the Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy, suggests that "a theory about philanthropy as essential because of the failure of the other sectors is not so useful. What we need is a theory about philanthropy as essential to the other sectors."

On the Philanthropy 411 blog, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy executive director Rusty Stahl announces the launch of Generating Change, a new initiative that aims to "create deep discussion about the challenges and opportunities for nonprofit talent and leadership development; illuminate new ways funders can address this critical need at all levels; and increase investment in talent and leadership development at the individual, organization, movement, and sector levels."

Social Media

Last but not least, Rosetta Thurman shares a list of things every nonprofit leader should know about social media.

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

-- The Editors

If You Say You’re Innovative, You’re Probably Not

(Derrick Feldmann is the CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based consulting firm that works with nonprofits. A version of this post originally appeared on the Achieve blog, and it is reprinted here with permission.)

One of the best parts of my job, beyond working with some great clients, is traveling to speak about the latest trends in fundraising and millennial engagement. After most presentations, individuals will come up to personally ask for advice. I love this one-on-one time with folks willing to wait in line just to get one burning question answered.

Many of these conversations start with an all too familiar opening: "My organization is innovative because..." Usually, the individual will go on to describe why the services offered by his or her organization are unique and unlike other nonprofits'. Indeed, this claim of innovation is becoming more and more common. Unfortunately, while some nonprofits truly do have unique program models and service delivery approaches, most do not.

For example, I just did a quick online search and found three nonprofits with the following statements on their Web sites:

"We are an innovative organization pairing youth with adult mentors throughout the city."

"We are an innovative organization designed to help people achieve self-sufficiency."

"We are an innovative nonprofit working in an economically disadvantaged community to help people come together to solve social problems."

Alas, the more I explored each organization's site, the more I found there that wasn't unique or different. So maybe it's time we had a discussion about what truly makes an organization innovative.

When I look at innovative nonprofits, several traits come to mind:

They find creative solutions. Innovative nonprofits are driven by leaders willing to take risks and be at the forefront of new ideas and change in their communities. Innovation doesn't mean you create a process and come back to it five years later to see how things went. Truly innovative nonprofits constantly evaluate their processes and work to make their service delivery better every single day. They are never satisfied with the answer "it is what it is."

They are not afraid to fail. Innovative nonprofits are not afraid to test new concepts -- or to see them fail. They approach research and development in the spirit of discovery and are willing to push the envelope in the interest of improvement. Truly innovative fundraisers say, "We will test text-to-give platforms and learn from our mistakes and successes." They never say, "I wish we would've..."

They know when to pivot. Innovative nonprofits don't wait till next month's board meeting to address a project or program that has gone off the rails. Instead, they pivot when change is necessary and are not afraid to make a move in order to achieve a desired result. Innovative nonprofits understand how fluid the current environment is and know that today's complex problems demand maximum efficiency and effectiveness from every organization and sector. They never say, "We need to hold that idea till next month."

At the end of the day, innovation is more about people letting their networks know about an innovative organization they've discovered, rather than about an organization endlessly promoting itself as innovative. If your nonprofit is truly innovative, it doesn't need to tell the world. Its actions speak for themselves, and we'll know it's innovative because we haven't seen anything else like it.

For more on the DNA of innovation, check out this Fast Company article.

What do you think? Is innovation something you "walk" instead of "talk"? Or, in an ever-more crowded media environment, is it better -- indeed, essential -- to tout your organization's innovativeness at every opportunity. Use the comments section below to share your thoughts...

-- Derrick Feldmann

Weekend Link Roundup (April 28-29, 2012)

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

Advocacy

Responding to news that "Covering the Night," Invisible Children's offline event in support of its KONY 2012 campaign, was less than a rousing success, Allison Fine writes on her blog that the organization failed to attract widespread support because it "overlooked a fundamental tenant of networked activism: do what you do best and network the rest." Adds Fine:

Invisible Children has spent years honing its expertise in online organizing. And it showed in the initial outburst of support associated with the video and [the fact that] tens of thousands of people signed up to participate [in] Cover the Night....I think [the event] fizzled because on land organizing is simply not what Invisible Children does best. A better approach would have been to partner with an organization with the core competency of on land organizing, a group like Oxfam perhaps...."

In a guest post on the Communication Network's blog, Spitfire Strategies senior vice president Erin Campbell Boltz and former Greenpeace USA executive director John Passacantando offer a checklist for nonprofits that are planning issue campaigns. Their recommendations include: set a clear goal, know the opposition and arm yourselves to face them, play to your strengths, and engage the right coalition partners. Developed by Spitfire and the Communications Leadership Institute with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Just Enough Planning Guide provides an interactive step-by-step framework for mapping out a public advocacy campaign strategy.

Economy

Courtesy of the Browser, MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu, co-author (with James Robinson) of the book Why Nations Fail, discusses four books and one paper that explain how and why the United States and other Western societies have become less equal over the last thirty years and what it means for the future.

Fundraising

"The charitable marketplace is consumed with big talk about the need for transparency, yet many nonprofits, along with their boards and their funders, operate with their heads in the sand," writes Todd Cohen on his Inside Philanthropy blog. "If nonprofits, boards, and funders do not wake up soon, nonprofits will continue to struggle, leaving as victims the clients who count on them to provide the programs and services they need more than ever in our shattered economy...."

Innovation

Guest blogging at Beth's Blog, Laura Quinn and Chris Bernard of Idealware share a case study included in the report Unleashing Innovation: Using Everyday Technology to Improve Nonprofit Services that demonstrates how technology can spur innovation and improve service delivery.

Philanthropy

In a long piece on the National Education Association site, Alison R. Bernstein, director of the Institute for Women's Leadership and a former vice president at the Ford Foundation, looks at the growing corporatization of philanthropy -- and doesn't much like what she sees. Writes Bernstein:

Corporatization is important because it is rapidly becoming the preferred way of doing the "business" of grant making and it is influencing both new and older foundations, large and small, in ways that I believe may undermine the diversity of the philanthropic world. Just to put all of this in context: there are approximately 72,000 foundations in the U.S., half of which have been created in the last 30 years. This explosive growth in philanthropy is proof that numerous individuals got very rich during the Reagan Revolution. In looking for models of how to give away money, more and more corporate givers, family foundations, and community trusts are modeling themselves along the lines of Gates, not Ford or Mellon. The question is why? Why do they think Gates is a more effective model? Why is large-scale grantmaking intrinsically better than carefully scaled efforts to make a difference? Why are leaders and practices from the corporate sector preferable to those of the nonprofit sector? Why are phrases like "strategic grantmaking" dominating the discourse of the day? (Parenthetically, would anyone proudly claim to be an unstrategic donor?) And where is evidence that this is happening?...

On the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president/CEO Albert Ruesga proposes a set of principles that would govern the way progressive funders collaborate so as to strengthen their collective efforts. Inspired by the Sullivan Principles, which were adopted voluntarily by more than a hundred companies with operations in apartheid-era South Africa, Ruesga's principles include: the Do 'With' Rather Than 'To' Principle; the Maximize Coordination Principle; the Drop Everything Else You're Doing Principle; the Get the Money Out of Politics Principle; the Everything Is Connected Principle; and the Empowerment Principle. With the hope that his post sparks an actual conversation, Ruesga writes, "I see the development of these principles as much more than another idle flipchart exercise."

Manwhile, over on NCRP's Keeing a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal commends Ruesga for his post and adds two principles to his list:

• The provision of unencumbered long-term support -- i.e., core support of sufficient duration to address pressing social needs.
• Bolstering the capacity of our (limited) think tanks because conservative funders have succeeded at moving a policy agenda by funding similar institutions that feed policy to the Hill.

In a recent Forbes article, Rahim Kanani interviews Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin about the foundation's centennial celebrations and how the foundation views its anniversary as a critical opportunity to raise the effectiveness of its work and advance solutions to pressing global challenges.

On Health Affairs' GrantWatch Blog, Tom David challenges foundations to take the information shared at their annual conferences and networking events -- many of which are held in the spring -- and "actually go out and make them happen." Writes David:

Whether it's collective impact or impact investing or whatever the big idea of the moment is, considerable buzz is generated [at these events], blog posts are published, tweets are tweeted, and then we return to our respective corners of the country. What's waiting when we arrive home is often a pile of grant applications and files awaiting action. The pressure to meet the deadline for the next board meeting too often trumps our best intentions to apply those new ideas from the conferences to the way we do business.

Meanwhile, the context in which we operate is...chronic crisis mode. The economy may be slowly recovering, but the human toll of unemployment and foreclosure and lack of health insurance and underperforming schools continues to mount. Governments are stretched to the limit in their ability to maintain even basic services. To someone observing the situation in the United States from afar, it would be clear that this is not a time for business as usual....

Social Media

On her Nonprofit Marketing blog, Network for Good's Katya Andresen shares an infographic that highlights the most popular social networking sites and how best to use them.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (April 7-8, 2012)

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

Advocacy

On Wednesday, the Case Foundation announced the winners in the "Fearless" category of this year's DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards." The winning organizations, which "used their videos to experiment and...take risks," are Invisible People, the Global Health Media Project, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation for the Benefit of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, and Partnership at Drugfree.org.

On her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz says that while the second Kony 2012 video from nonprofit Invisible Children addresses a number of the criticisms voiced after the organization's first video became a global YouTube sensation in March, the video ultimately falls short. "[CEO and narrator Ben] Keesey is spot on in recognizing the necessity of building the organization's credibility," writes Schwartz. "But this video just doesn't do the job for me: it's beautifully produced emptiness...."

Fundraising

About.com's Joanne Fritz shares findings from a new Convio report which found that online giving is "growing just about as fast as retail e-commerce, and sometimes more," including 16 percent in 2011, compared to 15 percent for e-commerce.

International Affairs/Development

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch received two Peabody Awards -- a rare honor for a nongovernmental organization -- for two multimedia features it produced in 2011: one on civil society activists in Russia and the second about abuses against people living near the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea. Congrats to HRW on its excellent work.

On her Good Intentions Are Not Enough blog, Saundra Schimmelpfennig is curating blog posts in support of A Day Without Dignity on April 26, a 24-hour event conceived as a "counter-campaign" to the TOMS One Day Without Shoes, which aims to raise awareness of "the impact a pair of shoes can have on a child's life."

Leadership

Rosetta Thurman, who recently celebrated her five-year blogging anniversary, takes a closer look at The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today, a new book by Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd which notes, among other things, that "by the year 2020, there will be [five] generations working side by side in the workplace, with Millennials (professionals born roughly between 1980-2000) representing 50% of the workforce."

Philanthropy

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Yna Moore shares a list of ten questions she believes broadcast journalist Charlie Rose, who has a reputation for asking hard-hitting questions, would ask an executive at a private foundation. Her list includes:

• Have you ever regretted providing a particular grant to a nonprofit? And conversely, is there a nonprofit whose grant request you turned down previously but now wish you approved?
• You give out about 5-6 percent of your foundation's assets in grants each year. How are you using the other 95 percent of your assets to achieve your mission?
• Some critics say there's a double standard when it comes to what people view as appropriate pay for executives at a large foundation compared to acceptable compensation for executives of nonprofit grantees. Where do you stand on this issue? Should there be a cap when it comes to executive compensation for leaders of foundations?

A great start. What would you add to Moore's list?

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz offers a great set of links related to data and stories, data and philanthropic transparency, and data and change.

Back from the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green explain why philanthrocapitalists "have a crucial role to play in the new model for global problem-solving."

And Tactical Philanthropy blogger Sean Stannard-Stockton makes it official: After five years as one of the most thoughtful and widely followed bloggers in the philanthropy space, he's calling it quits. Writes Stannard-Stockton, "It [has been] a magnificent five years for me and the most intensively intellectually stimulating experience I've ever had....But that time is done for me. Having put off officially ending this blog by declaring myself on sabbatical for the past five months, it is now time for me to face the fact that I'm not coming back to philanthropy blogging any time soon."

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

-- The Editors

On 'Exponential Fundraising': A 'Flip' Chat With Jennifer McCrea, Senior Research Fellow, Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations

(This video was recorded as part of our 'Flip' chat series of conversations with thought leaders in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. You can check out other videos in the series here, including our previous chat with Big Duck principal and founder Sarah Durham.)

On Monday, the Nonprofit Research Collaborative announced findings from its latest report on charitable giving. Among other things, the Nonprofit Fundraising Study, 2011 (47 pages, PDF) found that 53 percent of the 1,602 charities surveyed saw donations increase in 2011, while 70 percent said they expect to see additional growth in 2012. Even so, the economy remains a concern for many nonprofit organizations, with about a third of respondents saying economic issues, nationally and globally, pose the greatest challenge to the success of their fundraising efforts in 2012.

Absent a tooth fairy or mega-millions lottery for charities, fundraisers in the nonprofit sector must use a variety of techniques to boost their organization's income in these uncertain times. Enter "exponential fundraising," an approach coined by Hauser Center senior research fellow Jennifer McCrea that aims to alter the buyer-seller dynamic that often characterizes donor-fundraiser relationships.

"We get very stuck in....this transactional mindset of 'what have you done for me lately', instead of actually having real conversations with people," explains McCrea. "Our work is so much more powerful if we can remove that buyer-seller dynamic and we can actually allow our passion for making a difference together shine through…."

For almost a quarter-century now, McCrea has worked to share her approach to fundraising with others -- most recently through a year-long course she teaches at Harvard's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, as well as on a one-to-one basis with nonprofit leaders from a wide range of fields.

(If you're reading this in an e-mail, click here.)

(Running time: 6 minutes, 41 seconds)

Do you raise funds for a nonprofit organization or charitable cause? What's working for you in this uncertain post-recessionary environment? And has anyone tried McCrea's "exponential" approach? If so, we'd love to hear what you found worked (and maybe didn't). Use the comments section below....

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (March 31-April 1, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

"[T]elling a good story is only part of the equation," writes Kim St. John-Stevenson, communications officer at the St. Luke's Foundation of Cleveland, in a recent Getting Attention blog post. If they want to tell a great story -- and what organization doesn't? -- "nonprofits must also look to use data and outcomes....Great stories are a precise blend of outcomes (conveyed in tangible data) together with a healthy dose of good storytelling and visual imagery."

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares a couple of data points, in infographic form, from NTEN and consulting firm M+R's soon-to-be-released annual e-benchmarking study.

Fundraising

Atlantic Wire reporter Jen Doll takes a closer look at how private secondary schools in New York City are boosting their fundraising results by "mining" parents' personal data. "[Y]ucky or not," writes Doll, "good marketing brings results. School donations in New York City have increased jawdroppingly (268 percent) in the last ten years, for a median donation per school of $1.7 million, up from $462,341...."

Impact/Effectiveness

Good interview on the Global Impact Investing Network site with Rockefeller Foundation head Judith Rodin about the foundation's catalytic role in the impact investing space and the next phase of its efforts to build the industry.

International Affairs/Development

On the WSJ's Wealth Report blog, Robert Frank asks readers whether British prime minister David Cameron's budget proposal -- which, among other things, "would cap the tax relief for wealthy givers at 25 percent of their annual income, or £50,000, whichever is higher" –- would reduce overall giving. Proposals floated by the Obama administration to do something similar in this country have been non-starters. What do you think? Is charitable giving by the wealthy largely driven by tax policy? Use the comments section below to share your thoughts.

Heading to Africa last week, Bill Gates shared his itinerary with readers of his Gates Notes blog. In Zambia, one of his stops, he'll be meeting with key partners to discuss malaria-eradication efforts there. "Malaria deaths are way down from their peak in Zambia. Bed nets have been very effective. But we're still looking for answers to some questions about them," writes the ever-curious Gates. "How much do they help long term? How quickly do they wear out?...[D]o malaria deaths eventually rebound, as we've seen somewhat in Zambia (particularly in the north)? Why the increase -- is it because people didn't use the nets, because they’re torn, because mosquitoes adapted, or simply because mosquito numbers vary from year to year?"

Philanthropy

On her blog, the Nonprofiteer makes a case for spending down rather than giving "out amounts insufficient to make any significant change" in tackling the world's most pressing challenges. "No, philanthropy isn't supposed to be society's primary source of support," she writes, "but while people are busy starving government so they can drown it in the bathtub, private wealth can and should step into the breach. Consider," she adds,

the contributions of the Gates Foundations to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Can anyone really argue it would be better to hold back on eradicating those diseases, in case there’s some bigger plague later on? If there is, as AIDS itself demonstrates, we’ll mobilize and raise money for it. Meanwhile, in case of every ailment, time is our enemy: the later we provide resources, the harder it will be for those resources to have impact. Thus wasting money is a less significant risk than failing to spend enough to make a difference....

Earlier this week the Council of Foundations announced Ocean Conservancy CEO Vikki Spruill as its new president and CEO, effective July 1. Spruill's background "is an interesting mix of two intersecting professional streams," ocean conservation and public relations, writes NPQ columnist Rick Cohen, and her new colleagues undoubtedly will be asking how she plans to strengthen the trade association, build membership, and stabilize and improve its finances. But Cohen has a few questions of his own for Spruill:

• What can and should philanthropy do to address environmental justice issues?
• What is the role of the council in addressing the nonprofit sector’s multiyear, recession-induced revenue shortfall?
• What, if anything, does the council plan to do to address the concerns of progressives who increasingly see some big foundations as part of the one percent?
• Will she revive efforts to push foundations to pay more attention to rural needs?
• And will she take a position on whether the foundation community should be monitoring and reporting on aspects of racial equity in its grantmaking, staffing, and leadership?

Tough questions and a tough job. We'll be rooting for her.

Over at Co.Exist, senior editor Ariel Schwartz talks with Global Philanthropy Forum head Jane Wales about Google, Pepsi, and the future of giving.

Social Entrepreneurship

In his Forbes.com column, Tom Watson takes a closer look at online giving platform GlobalGiving, whose co-founder and president, Mari Kuraishi, was in Japan last week to check on the progress of earthquake and tsunami recovery efforts there. While GlobalGiving itself has come a long way since its debut as a kind of "eBay of philanthropy" a decade ago, its success, Watson reminds us,

provides a central lesson for social entrepreneurs who look to for-profit business success stories as pure models that can be transferred to the world causes and development. The path is slower, the route can be even more crooked, and even the goals can shift....

Transparency

On the Transparency Talk blog, Janet Camarena, director of the Foundation Center's San Francisco library, commends the Omidyar Network's David Sasaki for committing to be the "most transparent grant-maker in philanthropy" by publishing grants data on his blog within fifteen days of the signing of a grant agreement. At the same time, notes Camarena, even with Sasaki's and ON's commitment to greater transparency, ON only meets fourteen of the twenty-three transparency and accountability criteria listed on the Foundation Center's Glasspockets site. Like other grantmakers, she adds, ON is

is lacking what many in the field have found the most challenging: sharing details about things like an assessment of [its] overall performance, a centralized knowledge base of lessons learned from previous program evaluations, details about its investment policies, and information about its diversity practices...."

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

-- The Editors

A 'Flip' Chat With...Sarah Durham, Principal and Founder, Big Duck

(This video was recorded as part of our 'Flip' chat series of conversations with thought leaders in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. You can check out other videos in the series here, including our previous chat with Annie E. Casey Foundation president and CEO Patrick McCarthy.)

At a recent Foundation Center event, Big Duck founder Sarah Durham explained that her book Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications was written for small nonprofits that do not have the budget to hire an outside consulting group like her New York City-based communications firm.

Yes, the principles behind effective communications are pretty basic. But because most nonprofit leaders aren't well versed in marketing/communications strategy, they often have trouble following through on them, says Durham. For that reason, Brandraising seeks to show executive directors how to raise funds and increase the visibility of their organizations using approaches developed by some of the most successful fundraisers in the country.

Before the event got under way, I had a chance to chat with Durham about the different levels of "brandraising," the role young staff members can play in the strategic planning process, and how Big Duck measures its impact. On that last point, Durham said her colleagues set measurable goals at the start of each project and then, after implementation, sit down with the client to compare notes and see whether they were on target.

(If you're reading this in an e-mail, click here.)

 

(Running time: 4 minutes, 1 second)

What do you think? Do you agree with Durham that mobile is "the next big thing"? Has your organization started collecting cell phone numbers? Feel free to share you brandraising success stories in the comments section below.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (January 28-29, 2012)

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

Civil Society

Writing on the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president Albert Ruesga urges grantmakers to invest less money in white papers and candidates' forums this election season and more on "helping advocates introduce democracy to the United States." Writes Ruesga: "While foundations might not have the resources to shift the political discourse in this country [in] the coming year, they can at least help liberate us from the illusion of free and fair elections...."

Communications

In a post on the Communications Network blog, Commnetwork board chair Mitch Hurst suggests that grantmaking organizations need to do a better job of monitoring social networks, blogs, and the mainstream media if they hope to understand "how their issues are being influenced in online conversations."

Corporate Social Responsibility

In a post on the Harvard Business Review blog, Rosabeth Moss Kanter argues that great companies are about more than a single-minded focus on the bottom line. Truly great companies, writes Kanter,

believe that business is an intrinsic part of society, and they acknowledge that, like family, government, and religion, it has been one of society's pillars since the dawn of the industrial era. Great companies work to make money, of course, but in their choices of how to do so, they think about building enduring institutions. They invest in the future while being aware of the need to build people and society....

Education

Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green argue against the idea, suggested last week by former British prime minister Gordon Brown, of a Global Fund for Education to help address education funding cuts and boost the number of young people globally who attend and graduate from high school. Unlike fighting malaria -- which, write Bishop and Green, is "a finite task that can be achieved even where governments are weak" -- "educating the children of the world will need sustained investment indefinitely...."

Fundraising

Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks explains why it's important to "keep your eye on the ball" in fundraising -- and life in general.

Impact/Effectiveness

The Nonprofit Quarterly has published a fascinating exchange between the Hudson Institute's William Schambra and Wallace Foundation president Will Miller on the use of metrics in "the development and dispersion of knowledge" as a driver of the foundation's grantmaking. A must read for anyone who works in the sector.

Technology

On the Impatient Optimists blog, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Deborah Jacobs considers how the surge in tablet and e-book reader ownership presents "huge opportunities in an increasingly digitized society where information access plays a critical role in building knowledge and skills," as well as a challenge, in that the trend threatens "to exacerbate the digital divide that is already perpetuated across the U.S."

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Meyer Memorial Trust communications director Marie Deatherage discusses the foundation's "road to transparency," a decade-long journey that included the early and active embrace of the Web and other online communications channels.

Volunteerism

Last but not least, CauseShift managing director Scott Henderson offers a few ideas for folks interested in changing the world one good deed at a time.

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

-- The Editors

A to Z Survival Guide for Uncertain Times

(Michael Seltzer is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. This post originally appeared on this blog in October 2008, shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Michael's last post was a Q&A with David Jones, president of the Community Service Society of New York.)

Each time the American economy has suffered a downturn or government has cut back on funding for social programs, the media has focused on how those of us on "Nonprofit Street" are being affected. Those of us running nonprofit organizations don't need newspapers to tell us how things are going or how our constituents are faring. Instead, we want to know what our colleagues are doing to address the financial challenges we each face.

The "A to Z Nonprofit Survival Guide for Uncertain Times" is compiled from my past writings and strategy recommendations I learned from grantees, clients, and fellow consultants. To all of you, I am grateful for your generosity and wisdom.

_____

Accentuate the positive
There's enough doom and gloom in the media and on Wall Street. The public doesn't want to hear how poorly nonprofits are doing; they want to know that nonprofit organizations will continue to be there for them.

Be bold
The pressure to scale back programs and to promise less is real. But it's important, when possible, to find new ways to provide value to clients, funders, and supporters.

Collaborate
In normal times, many nonprofit leaders view collaboration as the most unnatural of acts. These are not normal times. There is much to be gained, including cost savings and enhanced impact, by working more closely with others.

Deepen relationships (with elected officials, in particular)
Unfortunately, local, state, and federal governments will be forced to make cuts in their budgets as tax revenues decline. Be sure to make the case with your elected officials and their key staff for continued government funding of your organization.

Experiment
Look for opportunities to experiment and/or pilot small-scale initiatives. Such opportunities are likely to be a less expensive investment in change than grand, large-scale progams or initiatives.

Fundraise selectively
Good advice anytime, but especially in the current economic climate. Focus on strong, solid prospects rather than second-tier long shots. With corporate donors, be prepared to discuss non-cash ways the company can support your operations, including loaned executives, volunteer programs, the short-term loan of facilities, and other in-kind contributions.

Get rid of dead (board) wood
Tough times demand that all stakeholders roll up their sleeves and give generously of their "time, talent, and treasure." Board members who are unable and/or unwilling to pull their weight and contribute what they can to strengthen the organizations must (gently) be shown the door.

Help other organizations less well positioned than your own
It doesn't have to be with money; technical assistance, fundraising advice, even something as simple as words of encouragement can go a long way in a tough economic environment. At the end of the day, we're all in this together.

Invest in the future
Though you're likely to find that cost-cutting measures are unavoidable, it's equally important that you identify ways to create or expand your reserve funds. No one can predict the future, so the best advice is probably the old Scouts motto: "Be prepared."

Join your local or state association of nonprofits
Networking is not only helpful in times like these, it's essential. Local nonprofit associations provide a great meeting ground to exchange information and lessons learned with peers and colleagues in other organizations.

Keep informed of developments in your field
That means staying on top of your issues and looking for even better ways to do what you do. This is not the time to cut back on professional journals and magazine subscriptions.

Look to the future, not the past
Another way of saying, "Don't rest on your laurels." And if your organization is struggling, take comfort from the fact that, with creativity, hard work, and an optimistic outlook, things are likely to get better.

Mind the sweet spot
Don't just chase dollars. Identify your organization's "sweet spot" -- the intersection of its vision, mission, assets, and other strengths with the giving "impulses" of your supporters and stakeholders -- and make sure everything you do connects to it.

Never reinvent the wheel
No explanation necessary.

Open yourself and your organization to new ideas
If something has stopped working for you, it's probably time to change it. Open your mind to new ideas and new ways of doing things, and seek out the opinions of experts in your field.

Plan for uncertainty
To be a good steward of the resources that have been entrusted to you, you simply must forecast several different financial scenarios for your upcoming fiscal year. Be conservative in your revenue projections.

Quickly communicate bad news to your key supporters
Make sure your key internal and external stakeholders feel they are being kept apprised of major changes and developments affecting your organization. And whatever you do, do not let them learn bad news about your organization from the media.

Respect your stakeholders
You can expect to get a lot of tough questions from concerned stakeholders. The fact they are concerned is a positive for your organization. Don't squander it by giving false or misleading answers.

Share
Cost-saving measures such as sharing office space or pooling back-office functions must be considered in tough economic times. Many funders will be cutting back on administrative costs and will appreciate grantees' efforts to do the same.

Tell your story
Across the country, in practically every community, low-income families and individuals are the ones who will be most affected by the economic downturn. They are likely to turn, in growing numbers, to local nonprofit organizations for food assistance, child care, credit counseling, job retraining, legal assistance, and other services. Nonprofit leaders would be well-advised to collect the stories of the individuals and families they serve and share them with donors, supporters, and local media.

Upgrade your staff perks
Many nonprofits will be pressured to reduce headcount and/or to contract out some of their services. Such measures can hurt morale and reduce organizational effectiveness. It's important, therefore, for nonprofit leaders to find both material and non-material ways to express their appreciation for and solidarity with staff. Listen to their ideas and validate their concerns. They'll appreciate it and your organization will benefit.

Vision, vision, vision
In tough times, people tend to rally around organizations and leaders that project an air of confidence and optimisim. Franlkin D. Roosevelt warned about fearing "fear itself" in the depths of the Great Depression, and in the 1960s Lyndon Johnson rallied a shocked and racially polarized country around the notion of a "Great Society." For both men, language was a critical tool in helping to paint and convey a picture of better times to come. Nonprofits would be well-served to take a page out of their respective books.

Wear your values on your sleeve
In our sector, the most important assets are our values and the public's trust. Whether we express our values through our Web sites, marketing materials, or on a T-shirt, we should display and wear them proudly. And in no circumstance should we compromise our ethics or the integrity of our organizations or the sector.

eXhale
Remember: Most of us still have a lot to be grateful for.

Yield no ground as an authority in your field
In order to assert that authority, however, you have to stay informed (see K) and must communicate clearly.

Zero in on your core competencies
Identify what your organization does best and strive to be a leader and innovator in that area or space.

-- Michael Seltzer

Weekend Link Roundup (December 3 - 4, 2011)

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

Environment

On the Mother Nature Network, author Chris Turner (The Leap: How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy) suggests that the problem with the modern environmental movement is "a maddening combination of Much Too Big and Way Too Little": Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen, and Durban -- "the entire international emissions treaty process...[is] predicated...on convincing essentially the whole world to take [the first step] all at once, in unison," while our individual decisions to use eco-friendly products at home just aren't going to change the world. In his post, Turner offers advice about how to nurture your own activism and points to the solar energy boom in Gainesville, Florida, as an example of right-sizing a community sustainability effort.

As part of Occupy the Future, a forum on lessons to be drawn from the Occupy movement hosted by the Boston Review, Paul and Anne Ehrlich (co-authors, most recently, of The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment) offer a much darker view of the "conflict" between capitalism and the environment. "It is clear that we must redesign governments to regulate the marketplace so that most externalities are internalized for the good of society," write the Ehrlichs. "Everyone should recognize that old-time capitalism, like socialism and communism,

simply has not and cannot generate the sustainable redistribution and material and population shrinkage that are essential to creating an environmentally sound and equitable global society. The challenge is immense and unprecedented, with the dilemma exacerbated by plutocrats buying politicians and funding a powerful and effective disinformation machine programmed to lie about environmental threats. Overcoming that machine will require much cooperation, which won’t likely be achieved without new institutions and a broad increase in social justice. And these will require what the Occupy movement apparently demands: that we step back and consider whether the society we’ve built is indeed the one we want. But we have no choice but to meet the challenge. Either we will change our ways, or they will be changed for us.

Fundraising

Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks explains why the advent of Web 2.0 fundraising tools has not killed direct mail. "Direct mail is the greatest fundraising medium ever created -- after the church collection plate," writes Brooks. "It's changing, getting more complex and more expensive. But it's not dying."

Health

On the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Impatient Optimists blog, Dr. Bart Haynes, head of the NIH NIAID Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), marks the thirtieth anniversary of the global AIDS epidemic by reflecting on the progress that has been made in developing a safe and effective AIDS vaccine.

In an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal ("No Retreat in the Fight Against AIDS"), George W. Bush recounts the successes over the last decade of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). More than 4.7 million people have received AIDS treatment through the Global Fund and PEPFAR, Bush notes, while some 450,000 children have been born HIV-negative due to the latter's programs to disrupt mother-to-child transmission. And while acknowledging that "in lean budget times the U.S. and developing world must prioritize," the former president closes by urging Congress to think twice before it cuts funding for the programs.

On the same topic, Open Society Foundations program officer Shannon Kowalski gives two reasons why it's unlikely AIDS will be eradicated: "political will and the money to do it." Writes Kowalski:

These two barriers came into painfully clear view last week when the board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced that it was cancelling its latest call for applications for funding and adopted a set of drastic measures so that it could maintain funding for the essential services that it is currently supporting. At precisely the moment we've realized how to curb HIV, donors have left the Global Fund treading water, struggling to keep funding flowing to preserve the lives of those who are already on treatment....

And in "World AIDS Day: The Role of Religion," the Council on Foreign Relations' Isobel Coleman writes that "[t]he obstacles to achieving an AIDS-free generation -- and the benefits of this achievement for humanity -- make the constructive involvement of religious institutions crucial." While religious leaders have "contributed to the epidemic by denying the importance of condoms in HIV prevention and contributing to the stigma that AIDS patients already confront," Coleman writes, USAID is partnering with religious leaders in places like Indonesia to "facilitate the implementation of HIV policy statements" and "share a compilation of fatwa (religious guidance) on HIV prevention."

Journalism/Media

Author, NYU professor, and new media deep thinker Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations) brilliantly rebuts a lengthy piece in the Columbia Journalism Review written by Dean Starkman in which Starkman argues "for the continued relevance of existing news organizations, especially newspapers, in something very close to their current form." It's long, well worth reading, and includes this observation: "No medium has ever survived the indifference of 25 year olds...." Indeed.

Philanthropy

The folks at the BlackGivesBack blog need your help selecting the top ten celebrity philanthropists of 2011. Anyone can vote, as long as they do it before Sunday, December 11.

Social Justice

At the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Sara K. Gould, former president and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women, shares key findings from Diminishing Dollars: The Impact of the 2008 Financial Crisis on the Field of Social Justice Philanthropy (35 pages, PDF), a new study which she authored with help from colleagues at the Cricket Island Foundation, the Foundation Center, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, and the Social Justice Philanthropy Collaborative.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (November 26 - 27, 2011)

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

Community Improvement/Development

On the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president and CEO Albert Ruesga issues a call to support community-based organizations, which, he says, "are just too good and too important to fail."

On the Knight Blog, Philadelphia program manager Donna Frisby-Greenwood announces the beta launch of Change By Us, a platform for Philly residents who want to share ideas, join or create projects, build teams, and find resources to advance their projects.

Economy

Did you find yourself fumbling for words when the dinner-table discussion turned to income inequality and the Occupy Wall Street movement this weekend? The next time that happens, you might want to mention this finding about the widening income gap, courtesy of the Weakonomist:

In 1967, the lowest fifth (called a quintile) of income earners earned 9 percent of what the top quintile earned. In 2010 that number was 6.5 percent. That means the gap between the top and bottom has widened.

But there's a problem with statistics like that. It's a measure of household income. Household income is the total income of anyone living at a particular address. Since 1967, the total number of households in the US has grown 95 percent, while the population has only grown 56 percent. How can that happen? When a household splits in half, you get two households. Say mom and dad get divorced and each make $30k a year. You go from having one household that makes $60k to two that make $30k. How does this get reflected in the data? It skews the low-income numbers down. In the lowest quintile household, on average, there are zero income earners. In the top, of course, there are two. If more households had two income earners, you'd see less of the widening gap....

International Affairs/Development

Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green explain why the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness created by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2005 to manage development assistance has been disrupted "beyond repair" by the financial crisis.

Leadership

GuideStar president and CEO Bob Ottenhoff weighs in on organizational leadership, which happened to be the subject of Ashoka CEO and founder Bill Drayton's remarks upon accepting the John W. Gardner Leadership Award and is discussed at length in Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs' book Leadership Agility. During his remarks, Drayton urged nonprofits to trade in their hierarchical structures, which, he said, don't work anymore because they "are no longer able to respond quickly or sufficiently enough," for a team approach, while Joiner and Josephs argue that today's organizations need to "nimbly anticipate and respond to rapidly changing conditions," and that the team approach is one way to do that. "There's a lot to think about here," writes Ottenhoff. "In some ways, these observations seem to be stating the obvious. But if [it's] so simple, why aren’t we doing it?"

Public Policy

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal looks at at a new study from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life which found that there has been a "dramatic increase in the size and influence of the 'religious lobby.'" These findings, Jagpal writes, "are important for any foundation concerned with advancing our democracy or engaging in policy."

Regulation/Oversight

In and op-ed for the New York Times, Boston College Law School professor Ray Madoff looks at the favorable tax treatment accorded donor-advised funds, many of which are affiliated with and managed by large financial institutions like Fidelity, Schwab, and Goldman Sachs, and calls on Congress to enact rules "that require donor-advised funds to distribute all of their assets to real public charities within seven years of their contribution."

Social Media

To kick off the holiday season, Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz highlights a few campaigns that embrace a sense of fun, including a #GoodSpotting sweepstakes organized by the Case Foundation that invites Twitter users to share pictures of an individual or organization doing good using the hashtag #GoodSpotting; participants who enter the contest on the foundation's Facebook page can win up to $500 in holiday spending cash -- and up to $5,000 for the charity of their choice.

Guest blogging at Beth's Blog, Mary Trudel and Rory MacPherson of Trudel | MacPherson Arts Consulting share findings from a new national study that looked at social media use by arts organizations. Among other things, the study, How Strong Is Your Social Net?, found that 70 percent of the 1,600 arts groups surveyed feel that social media is delivering on its promise and hype.

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

-- Regina Mahone

The Donor Is Not Always Right

(The following post was written by Sofia Michelakis, director of philanthropy development at Social Venture Partners Seattle. Michelakis' post, which was written in response to a recent post by fundraising author and consultant Kivi Leroux Miller, touches on the need for donors and funders to keep their focus on organizational outcomes rather than the administrative shortcomings that are common in the nonprofit world.)

Recently I attended a fundraising breakfast. The organization’s programs serve people who are homeless due to addiction and/or mental health issues. My friend is their executive director, but that's not why I support them. Their mission resonates with me on a personal level. My mother is mentally ill and I lost my brother to a drug overdose. Supporting them in many ways helps me. As I walk down the street in Seattle and encounter homeless people not so different from members of my immediate family, I feel as if I'm doing something to help.

The first year I attended the event, inspired by the visionary founder's words about taking care of people in our community, I took a breath and made a two-year pledge, my biggest gift to date. It felt good to sign up to be a big giver. The second year I agreed to be a half-table captain. What's a HALF-table captain, you ask? I teamed up with a friend to fill one table in a room packed with nearly a hundred tables. Well, that turned out to be not so hard. So this year my husband and I more than filled a table ourselves. We were becoming more involved.

You know those envelopes at nonprofit fundraisers that are passed out during the ask? I listened to a client-speaker share the story of her abusive home life, running away, her pregnancy, loss of her child to a sudden grave illness, and falling into despair and drug use to numb the pain -- all by the time she was seventeen. Having just had my first child, I found my eyes welling up and my throat dry with emotion as I clutched the envelopes in my hand before remembering I was supposed to pass them around. I'd brought my checkbook and still owed my gift for this year. I knew October was going to be a big expense month, so I put two checks in the envelope, one made out for that date and the other postdated to the end of November.

The next day I received a voice-mail from the organization's development director thanking me for renewing our pledge and soliciting feedback on the event. I returned her call and was put on hold for quite a long time. We never got connected, so instead I sent a short e-mail. I thanked her for her call, said I'd be happy to give feedback, and that our guests really enjoyed the event. As an aside, I referenced the postdated check, hoping they'd seen it. I asked her if she could call me back to set up a monthly auto-pay for our pledge for next year so we could get it out of the way early. I never heard back.

A few weeks later I was doing some online banking and noticed that two large checks for the same amount had cleared. I clicked to view the images and saw that the nonprofit had cashed both checks, including the postdated one. I got upset and started composing an e-mail in my head, one to which I would attach a PDF of the postdated check clearly showing the date. I also thought about CC'ing my friend, the development director's boss. I knew the e-mail would not be ignored.

But then I paused. I reflected on the fact that I'm a major donor to the organization, someone who introduces new donors as a table captain, who knows a lot of other givers and foundation officers -- and is a friend of the ED to boot. No matter what I said in that e-mail, or how unreasonable it might have been, I would have been told I was right. I thought further about the hundreds of people at the event, how many payments the organization must have processed that day, and how easy it would have been to not notice a date scribbled on a check, or for volunteers to not wonder why a donor would enclose two checks instead of one.

So instead, I wrote her an e-mail telling her I had made a mistake. I should not have put a postdated check in the envelope and waited two days to let her know. My bad. I did, however, ask that we get a monthly payment plan set up for next year. I didn't want to make the same mistake again.

The end of the year is often the most stressful for nonprofits. Most organizations I know are constantly recalculating their projections with respect to how much their fundraising events will yield. End-of-year donations will determine their balance sheet for the next year, and in some cases whether they're even able to make payroll.

I recently read a well-intentioned blog post by a fundraising consultant who, at the end of 2010, sent out ten gifts of $20 each to a range of national nonprofits to test how promptly they thanked her for the gift. Her startling finding was that only three out of ten sent a timely thank you. Scrolling through the comments to her post, I saw that someone pointed out that the online service she used to send the donations prints the donor's name but not a mailing address on the notifications it e-mails to recipients. In order to get the address of the donor, a nonprofit would have to go to the check payment Web site itself, something few people are aware of. Still, the author of the post was quick to judge the nonprofits rather than think there might be a good reason she didn't receive a timely thank you. (Besides, what's a reasonable expectation for a $20 gift?)

The lesson here is not that nonprofits shouldn't take customer service seriously. The fact is they have to -- or they're likely to go out of business. At the same time, it's incumbent on donors to empathize with the organizations we've decided to support -- indeed, to ask how we can make their lives a bit easier. Administrative mistakes will happen, but often because nonprofits have more important fish to fry, like making a difference for the individuals and communities they serve.

-- Sofia Michelakis

P.S. Wondering how the development director responded to my e-mail? She wrote me right away and thanked me for being so understanding.

Weekend Link Roundup (November 12 - 13, 2011)

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

Education

On the Guardian's Global Development blog, Brookings Institution senior fellow Kevin Watkins criticizes Bill Gates for ignoring international education in his speech to world leaders at last week's G20 Summit. "Education in the world's poorest countries does not figure high on Bill Gates's list of development priorities," writes Watkins. "[And]...applying his market-based strategy in the poorest countries is a prescription for social inequality. At risk of over-generosity, we award him a C- on education, with the hope that he will come back next year and do better."

Fundraising

In a recent post on the Nonprofit Finance Fund's Social Currency blog, Andrew Schwalm argues that nonprofit orgnizations which are able to clearly and accurately articulate their financial story and resource needs are in "a better position to make a...case for support." To that end, Schwalm and his NFF colleagues have created a self-assessment worksheet to help nonprofits assess their stengths and weaknesses.

Innovation

Harvard Business Review blogger Dan Pallotta argues that before an organization can think outside the box, it needs to figure out what kind of box it's in. "Zune was Microsoft trying to think outside the box, which they saw as the lack of a product to compete with the iPod," writes Pallotta. "The doomed MP3 player became a monument to the real box, which was Microsoft's inability to innovate. It was screaming so hard 'Look, we're innovative' that it never had a chance of being anything but the antithesis of innovation...."

In a wide-ranging interview, Forbes contributor Rahim Kanani spoke with Paul Carttar, director of the federal government's Social Innovation Fund, about the nature of the social innovation sector in the U.S., the fund's milestone achievements, its priorities moving forward, and the future of social innovation. You can read part one here; part two is here.

Social Velocity blogger Nell Edgington has an interview with Robert Egger, founder and president of DC Central Kitchen, the country's first "community kitchen," that touches on some of the things nonprofits need to do to demonstrate how they are actually driving change. The tireless Egger has just launched CForward, "a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization that champions the economic role of the nonprofit sector and supports candidates who include the sector in their plans to strengthen the economy."

Leadership

On the Venture Philanthropy Partners site, VPP chairman Mario Morino poses six questions that "every nonprofit board and executive team must ask to prepare for rough financial straits ahead."

Philanthropy

Earlier this week, Tactical Philanthropy blogger Sean Stannard-Stockton announced that, after five years, he and his widely read blog will be taking a sabbatical. "I have learned so much from the Tactical Philanthropy community," writes Stannard-Stockton, "and have become only more convinced that the field of philanthropy is rushing forward toward a Second Great Wave of philanthropic activity that is fundamentally different from the philanthropy of the last century." We've been admirers of Sean's work from the beginning and wish him great success in his future endeavors.

Poverty Alleviation

Deep Social Impact blogger Joanne Duhl wonders why Americans have accepted and become complacent about growing poverty in their country, and offers a few suggestions for funders working to improve the lives of those in need.

Social Entrepreneurship

In the Washington Post’s new On Giving section, "Social Entrepreneurship and the Next Generation of Giving" features interviews with Kiva.org's Premal Shah and Ashoka's Bill Drayton about the fundamentals, evolution, diversity, and challenges of social entrepreneurship, including the difficulties of applying universal effectiveness metrics to a diverse range of activities. "[Social entrepreneurs'] goal is to get the system to evolve in the fundamental pattern-change ways that will help the children, the parents, the society -- the whole thing," Drayton says. "They see a problem, and they can't imagine stopping and being happy in life until they've changed the pattern in the field."

Social Media

In conjunction with the launch of Google+ Pages, Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield offers step-by-step instructions for nonprofits looking to establish a presence on the social networking platform.

Transparency

And on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Meyer Memorial Trust communications director Marie Deatherage explains why her perception of "foundations as moated fortresses that operate by a secret rich-people code" was wrong.

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

-- The Editors