PhilanTopic

Weekend Link Roundup (May 18-19, 2013)

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

Data

We're big fans of data visualization whiz Hans Rosling, and so is Humanosphere blogger Tom Paulson. But, writes Paulson, Rosling "is strikingly upfront about the limitations of data. Sometimes, the problem is that different countries measure things -- like unemployment -- in different ways....In other cases, there are real uncertainties in the data that must be assessed: child mortality statistics are quite precise, whereas maternal mortality figures are not; global poverty measurements are infrequent and uncertain." And so on. Still, when it comes to telling stories with numbers, few can rival Rosling, as the video Paulson embeds in his short post well illustrates.

Education

In a post on the Huffington Post Impact blog, Chris Gabrieli, co-chair of the Time to Succeed Coalition and founder and chair of the National Center on Time & Learning, and Ford Foundation president Luis Ubiñas discuss the progress the coalition, which works to ensure that children in high-poverty neighborhoods have access to more and better learning time in school, has made since its was established a year ago.

Fundraising

On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz gives a thumbs up to Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks' The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistble Communications. Among the things she liked, writes Fritz, is Brooks' admonition that "our biggest mistake in fundraising is thinking that what we like is what works. We're self-centered, rather than donor-focused. And, frankly, we are soooo off the mark."

International Affairs/Development

On the Mashable site, Casey Brown announces the creation of G-everyone, a "24-hour digital convening" that, on the eve of next month's G8 Summit in Northern Ireland, will unite local groups around the world to discuss the pressing issues addressed at the summit. According to Brown, "G-everyone will provide an open dialogue around the G8's core themes of 'Open Economies, Open Governments and Open Societies.' [And] Mashable will crowdsource the best ideas and thoughts from our community...and report back to the leaders at the [summit]."

Nonprofit Management

David La Piana draws some important lessons from a merger involving two Texas providers of adoption services that ultimately failed to save the weaker of the two organizations. The case, writes La Piana, "offers a reminder that merger is not designed to change the underlying market dynamics an organization faces. A good merger can strengthen management, improve strategic positioning, and bring needed scale, but it cannot move a marginal or declining operation into the black if demand is just insufficient or the economics of the activity don’t pencil out."

Philanthropy

On the GrantCraft blog, Rosien Herweijer takes a closer look at the newest GrantCraft guide, Foundations Moving On: Ending Programmes and Funding Relationships. As Herweijer notes:

All funders somehow have to deal with exits. Venture philanthropist and limited-life or spend-out foundations tend to be very deliberate about exits, but other grantmaking or operating foundations also change strategic priorities, leave fields, or leave countries. And on a smaller scale, project funding ends automatically or -- in rare cases -- has to be withdrawn. You cannot wait for all the complicated questions to pop-up once an exit decision looms. And once you make and communicate a decision to exit, you need a lot of answers....

Social Media

In the latest installment of her Social Good podcast, Allison Fine chats with Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, a network of a thousand women bloggers using their influence to drive attention to a range of social causes.

Transparency

On the Keeping A Close Eye Blog, NCRP executive director Aaron Dorfman compares a three-decades-old report from his organization that ranked and scored more than two hundred foundations on their ability to meet a standard of transparency with a new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy that surveyed 138 nonprofit leaders on what they'd like to see from foundations in the way of transparency. According to Dorfman, the old NCRP report found that "60 percent of foundations in the sample did not meet an acceptable standard of transparency," while findings in the new CEP report reveal that the more things change, the more they stay the same. "I see many parallel findings between that report and CEP's...report," writes Dorfman.

A full 33 years later, nonprofits are still clamoring for more information about how foundations make funding decisions and they want clear and open communication about priorities. They want to know whether it's worth their time to cultivate a relationship and pursue funding. And despite an explosion of glossy annual reports and fancy Web sites, leaders of grantseeking organizations are still highly frustrated by the lack of clear communication about a central element of foundation activity, namely how foundations decide which organizations to fund....

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (May 11-12, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Megan Sullivan shares a list of tools for resource-constrained nonprofit communications officers.

Fundraising

Frustrated by your organization's inability to turn its good work into consistent, sustainable donor support? Hop over to the Fired-Up Fundraising blog, where fundraising consultant Gail Perry shares a very good list of the ten things you need to understand about how fundraising really works. Recommended.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Markets for Good blog, Laura Quinn, executive director of Idealware, argues that as much as funders and others value the idea of more and better performance data from nonprofits, most nonprofits do not have the resources to provide high-quality data about their own effectiveness. How do we get them to a point where that’s possible? asks Quinn.

It would take more than just a little training or a second look at their priorities. They'd need sizable investments in a number of areas. They'd need help with technology, and to understand how to best make use of data and metrics on a limited budget. They'd need a rationalized set of metrics and indicators that they're expected to report on, standardized as much as possible per sector with a standard way to provide them to those who need them.

Funders need to understand what is and isn't feasible, and to redirect the focus of their desire for community impact evaluations from small nonprofits to the university and research world so the nonprofits they support can be unencumbered to work toward a better world....

Building out the "information infrastructure" of the social sector, as Markets for Good and its supporters (the Gates and Hewlett foundations prominent among them) propose to do, is an admirable idea, writes Bridgespan's Daniel Stid on the Markets for Good blog. But "if we build it," he asks, "will the putative buyers and sellers in the envisioned marketplace -- the philanthropists and nonprofits spending and soliciting money within it -- use it as planned?... [W]ill better information change their behavior?" What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Leadership

"There are a number of affinity groups that focus on bringing together younger grantmakers," writes Greater New Orleans Foundation president Albert Ruesga on the White Courtesy Telephone blog. "Their challenge, as I see it, is to avoid simply turning younger practitioners in the field into older practitioners in the field...."

Nonprofit Management

In an excellent post on the Nonprofit Quarterly site, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits executive director Jon Pratt argues that financial independence not only is something that nonprofits should strive for, it's something they can achieve -- with good planning, continuous and active attention, and lots of hard work.

Philanthropy

In a world characterized by growing social and environmental challenges, foundations need to think and act more like "catalysts," writes Erik Rasmussen, founder and CEO of Scandinavian think tank Monday Morning, on the Huffington Post's Social Entrepreneurship blog. What's more, says Rasmussen, catalytic philanthropy isn't about how much you give,

but how you give. [C]atalytic foundations have realized that they can make a big difference not by writing checks but by offering their competencies, network[s] and way of thinking as a new form of capital. By doing so, they bring forth innovative capital that opens the door to great changes and improvements in society. Imagine what change we could gain from one hundred philanthropists thinking and working [like] Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or David Rockefeller....

"What does the journey from entrepreneur to philanthropist look like, and how can we chart these experiences to help the cause of more and increasingly effective giving?" asks Charles Harvey, pro-vice-chancellor for humanities and social sciences at Newcastle University. Citing Andrew Carnegie as "perhaps the best example" of an entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, Harvey, who helped lead the research team that looked into the question, writes: We want this research to show there is a logical process at play which many struggle to understand. Entrepreneurs apply the same rigour and disciplines from the world of commerce to the charitable sector, which suggests there is in fact a science to giving at this level that can be replicated and learned from....

What are the hallmarks of "entrepreneurial" philanthropy? Harvey and his team suggest the following:

• It is the pursuit by entrepreneurs on a not-for-profit basis of big social objectives through active involvement of their economic, cultural, social and symbolic resources.
• They apply business-like methods when making social investments: key performance indicators and rates of return.
• Entrepreneurs invest more than simply money [in] their causes: time, connections, the "know-how," branding.
• They like to leverage investments and frequently partner with others, including governments.
• Businessmen and women don't believe in giving handouts. They want to help others to help themselves.

Technology

Joanne Fritz has a good post on crowdfunding site Benevolent, which enables Chicagoans to help ordinary folks who find themselves in a tough spot. As Fritz explains, the site is effective in part because it works with nonprofits that "vouch" for the individuals listed (i.e., verify that their needs are legitimate and reasonable). The site has been a hit, she adds, because it's simple to use and because people understand that giving through Benevolent is less about charity and more about "neighbors helping neighbors."

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Blueprint 2013 author Lucy Bernholz fleshes out her digital civil society concept and explains that the discussion going forward should be focused on governance issues and how such assets work, not about gadgets.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (April 6-7, 2013)

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

Advocacy

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Rosenberg Foundation president Tim Silard discusses the foundation's recent decision to increase its payout this year to 6.1 percent to help advance immigration reform. "Our hope," writes Silard, "is that this major step by a mid-sized foundation can go a long way toward encouraging more of us in philanthropy to stretch our funding even further...to respond to this unique window of opportunity."

Communications

In a post on the Council on Foundation's Re: Philanthropy blog, Rita Soronen, president and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, reminds us why storytelling matters. Indeed, it is "at the heart of all emotions," writes Soronen. "And nonprofits simply must use communications -- storytelling -- as a very important tactic to steward current donors and secure new funders."

Fundraising

Jeff Brooks, author of the Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications, explains that fundraising is "a two-way conversation" and if you don't know that, you're missing an opportunity to engage your donors in a real way.

Impact/Effectiveness

Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan considers the role of foundations in the emerging impact investing space. Writes Buchanan:

In many of the accounts heralding impact investing as the potential solution to the world's ills, foundations, with their more than $300 billion in assets, are featured prominently. They are portrayed as leaders, or likely leaders, in this new realm....

Clearly, there are some major foundations that have taken significant and important steps into impact investing, such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (see CEO Sterling Speirn's excellent post on Kellogg’s experience for the CEP Blog) and the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. But, beyond a handful of much discussed examples, it is unclear how much of the talk about impact investing is just that -- talk -- and how much is reflected in actual practice....

Buchanan goes on to explain that he has heard "many foundation CEOs and board members eschew the idea that they'd ever seek anything other than maximum returns for their foundations' endowments." To that end, Buchanan writes, more research needs to be done "to bring the prevalence of this practice into focus."

Can't get enough of the impact/metrics debate? The Nonprofit Quarterly kicks it up a notch with a great point/counterpoint debate featuring an entertaining post ("Charity Navigator 3.0: The Empirical Empire’s Death Star?") by William Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, and an equally sharp rebuttal ("Debating the Realities of Ranking Charities") from CN's own Ken Berger.

International Development

Ariel Schwartz, a senior editor at Fast Company's Co.Exist operation, looks at four ideas that Melinda Gates believes will drive the next wave of advances for people in the developing world: M-Pesa, a mobile money system; Digital Green, an organization that helps farmers in India and South Asia create educational videos for other farmers; contraception education and access; and local development.

Nonprofit Management

On the Valcourt Group blog, Jim Jewell looks at seven reasons why nonprofits often fail or flounder.

Regulation/Oversight

The Charitable Giving Coalition (CGC), a group of sixty nonprofits that includes the Association of Fundraising Professionals and Independent Sector, has launched a new Web site, ProtectGiving.org, to help preserve and protect the charitable tax deduction in its current form. Visitors to the site will find a variety of resources (reports, fact sheet, FAQ) designed to raise awareness about the importance of charitable giving in America, examples of the impact nonprofits make in our communities, and a "Take Action" section that includes talking points, a message and media guide, and op-ed and elected official letter templates.

Social Entrepreneurship

Writing on the Gates Foundation's Impatient Optimists blog, GOOD magazine's Mary Slosson announces the launch of the Global Citizenship Project, which will offer five global innovators each a "pop-up fellowship to elevate and expand their work in order to create more equitable and successful neighborhoods."

Social Media

Beth Kanter urges nonprofit leaders to embrace social media -- and "the benefits of effective social media integration that personalizes your organization’s brand with the voice of its leader" -- by making time for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other tools on a regular basis. As a start, Kanter suggests that execs and senior managers start by asking their communications teams:

• What do you spend time doing now that you could do better via social?
• What other executive directors that you respect, follow, or feel inspired by are using social creatively?
• What are your strengths and preferences and what is the best match in terms of social channels?
• How will social improve things you already KNOW and value

Citing the experience of Udi Ofer, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Kanter points out that Twitter not only enables Ofer to comment "on his organization's most important cases and issues," but also to display his human side and inject "warmth into the organization."

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

-- The Editors

Blinded By the 'Sophisticated Donor'?

(Derrick Feldmann is CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based creative fundraising agency. In his last post, he wrote about the importance of "usability" to the online fundraising experience.)

When I started in fundraising, I had almost no experience asking for money. To compensate, I read lots of articles and books about the different approaches and techniques used by successful fundraisers. As I immersed myself in their ways, I started to pay particular attention to an approach that emphasized the importance of communicating to donors the impact their gifts were helping to create.

Many years later, as the head of national fundraising for a K-12 education program, I spent a good deal of my time seeking support from some of the biggest foundations and corporations in the country. My "ask" in these situations invariably included what I thought was a powerful and persuasive presentation that demonstrated to grantmakers how a grant would transform the lives of a certain number of students and ultimately improve a community. Every time I gave my presentation, I would see heads nodding and would sigh with relief, knowing that those present "got it." Of course, not every presentation resulted in financial support, but even when they didn't, I usually made new friends who understood and liked what we were doing and were willing to help us build our network of supporters.

I used this method, with its focus on impact, in every fundraising solicitation I made. And I taught my staff to do the same.

One day, a member of the board who planned to ask a friend to donate to our organization before the end of the year called me to review our solicitation script. But as I walked him through it, I could tell something was wrong. He didn't say anything after I finished, but he clearly was uncomfortable. A week or so later, he called me to report on the meeting and let slip that he hadn't said any of the things to his friend I'd told him to say. When I asked why, he said, "I've known my friend a long time. And I know the only thing that really matters to him is my trust in this organization and the people who run it. I could've talked about all that impact stuff, but it wouldn't have made a difference. So I just told him why I support you and asked him to consider making a gift."

I told him I appreciated his honesty and filed it away as one person -- albeit an important one! -- who made a spur-of-the-moment decision.

A couple of months later, I attended a gala event for an organization that a friend served as a board member. Now, I have to admit that attending a fundraising event for another organization is not high on my list of things to do. But I wanted to help my friend.

So I watched as individuals schmoozed, bid on auction items, and generally enjoyed themselves. Then it was time for the "fund the need" portion of the evening, during which everyone in attendance was asked to support the cause by donating whatever they could. As I sat there, my wife (a fundraiser in a former life) turned to me and told me to get out our credit card. I hesitated, then asked, "Why?" Because, she said, it was important to our friend. "How do you know our gift will make a difference?" I replied. "Stop being cheap," she said.

Then it hit me. Not everyone is a "sophisticated" donor. Not everyone is a professional fundraiser or works for a foundation or corporate giving program. In fact, very few people do. And people who don't seldom give to a charitable cause or organization because they're looking to achieve impact or based on a chart of performance metrics; they give because it makes them feel good, or because it's a worthy cause, or because, like me, they want to help a friend.

As professional fundraisers, we tend to align our methods and appeals with the needs of sophisticated donors. Why? Because they have money to give and it's what they expect. But in doing so, we sometimes forget about the people who give because it makes them feel good or because they like our mission, our leadership, or the story we have to tell.

What's a fundraiser to do? Start by thinking about your sophisticated donors and how they may be influencing, subtly or otherwise, your overall fundraising approach:

Board Members
Board members, especially good ones, are by definition sophisticated. They tend to be accomplished individuals who are interested in your work and are more than happy to sit through presentations and engage in serious discussions about all aspects of that work. Since most are expected to dig into their own pockets to support your organization, they also tend to have a keen and very personal interest in your fundraising results. As such, they can exert a disproportionate and even damaging influence on those results. As I like to say to the board members with whom I work, you are not the target audience of an organization's fundraising appeals; the general public is.

Foundations
Given the number of organizations seeking their support, foundations really do have limited resources. Which is why many of them, especially larger ones, evaluate their grant investments on a regular basis to identify high-performing nonprofits with a proven ability to execute. They also are staffed (again, the larger ones) with program officers who have particular agendas of their own. Many nonprofits seeking foundation support get into trouble when, against their better judgment, they agree to alter, expand, or create programs to serve a foundation's goals rather than their own.

Major Donors
Some fundraisers will try to replicate the conversations they have with major donors when "pitching" a member of the general public. That almost never works, for obvious reasons: Jane Doe doesn't have the resources, philanthropic experience, or big-picture mindset that a major donor typically has. Even more problematic is trying to approach a potential $1,000 donor in the same way you might approach a $100,000 donor. Don't assume the former (or even the latter) cares about organizational effectiveness or is familiar with any of the well-known charity rating systems out there. Indeed, studies show that fewer than 22 percent of all donors will check a charity's ratings before making a gift.

Don't get me wrong: Sophisticated donors and the fundraising approaches that resonate with them are important and should be reviewed and revised on a regular basis. But development professionals also need to realize that not every donor is willing to invest as much time and thought in their giving as are wealthy individuals and big grantmaking organizations. If you remain mindful of that fact and allocate your resources accordingly, I'm pretty confident you'll soon realize improved returns on your investment in fundraising.

-- Derrick Feldmann

[Infographic] 2013 eNonprofits Benchmark Study

Here in the Northeast, spring has sort of arrived, and that means it's time to share a new infographic from M+R Strategic Services and NTEN highlighting key findings from their annual eNonprofits Benchmark Study.

Now in its seventh year, the study examines trends in nonprofit online fundraising and advocacy, in sectors ranging from human rights to environmental issues. Based on data gathered from 55 nonprofits, this year's report analyzed 1.6 billion e-mail messages sent to 45 million list subscribers, 7.3 million advocacy actions, and more than $438 million in online donations from over 6.5 million online gifts.

As impressive as that is, the picture painted by the report is...well...mixed.

For instance, the study reported a 21 percent year-over-year increase in online revenue, with only International groups seeing a decline in online giving. But it also found a sharp decline in certain key e-mail metrics, including a 14 percent decline in click-through rates for advocacy messages and a 27 percent decline in click-thru rates for fundraising messages overall.

The report also found that:

●     Online monthly giving grew by 43 percent -- more than twice as fast as one-time giving.

●     E-mail list sizes continued to grow for all sectors and sizes, up some 15 percent overall in 2012.

●     Growth of social media audiences outpaced e-mail list growth, up an average of 46 percent on Facebook and 264 percent on Twitter.

There's a lot more in the report, which is available as a free download (registration required) here.

-- Mitch Nauffts

PNP Salary Survey Report: 'The Year of the Program'

(Robert F. Duvall, Ph.D., is director of special projects at Professionals for NonProfits (PNP), a full-service staffing firm exclusively serving the nonprofit sector.)

Professionals for NonProfits has just released its annual Salary Survey Report. With a focus on salary ranges, practices, and trends in the nonprofit sector in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, the survey has gained widespread credibility over the last three years and always generates considerable interest.

A look at the Survey Report for 2012 reveals some intriguing developments. While there is great variety among organizations -- in terms of budget size, area of service, location, and scope of activity -- one theme appears to stand out: More than 80 percent of the 6,500 nonprofits surveyed reported a new or renewed focus on the effective development of programs and services.

"In many ways, 2012 could be called 'The Year of Program'. Nonprofits of all sizes and types are taking a serious and fresh look at what they offer and how they serve the public through their programs," said Gayle A. Brandel, president and CEO of Professionals for NonProfits. Moreover, the renewed focus on programs and services is expressed in four inter-related areas: development, delivery, evaluation, and efficiency.

1. A growing number of nonprofits -- a third of the respondents to the 2012 survey -- are working deliberately to refresh their offerings, both in terms of new, innovative programming and by reinstating programs and services that had been cut back over the past few years. Accompanying, and often driving, these programmatic developments is a growing awareness of the need for good analyses of the market. Forward-looking nonprofits are acting on the realization that it is no longer enough to offer a program or service and expect an audience to respond positively -- regardless of how much it might merit it. Building a better mousetrap is no guarantee that people will rush to embrace your product. First, you have to determine whether they want to catch mice!

2. Increasingly, nonprofits are exploring and adopting new ways of delivering programs and services. The use of social media is a prime example. New channels of communication create new opportunities -- and challenges -- for the effective delivery of programs and services.

3. Integrated with these trends is a growing interest in evaluation and assessment. Nonprofits are asking: How do we know our program initiatives are working? And how do we measure their impact? In the face of reduced government funding, lower revenue, increased competition for visibility and support, and the need to engage volunteers, members, and boards, this is a critical issue. Identifying and using appropriate instruments for data gathering, analysis, and assessment will be an ongoing concern for nonprofit organizations in 2013 -- and beyond.

4. Correlated with improved program development, delivery, and evaluation is a growing concern for increased organizational efficiency. "Less can be more" is a mantra we hear often these days, and the 2012 Survey Report reflects that reality.

The effect of all these trends on staffing needs in the sector is significant. The report found that 33 percent of the nonprofits who responded said they added staff in 2012, while more than 37 percent said they plan to hire additional staff in 2013.

Indeed, with a stronger focus on improved delivery of core programs, heightened visibility for those programs, and new and improved ways to secure financial support, nonprofits are adding staff in three key, and inter-related, areas: Programs and Services (54 percent), Fundraising and Development (39 percent), and Marketing (35 percent).

And we project these trends will continue in 2013, making it even more definitively "The Year of Program Growth."

For a breakdown of Salary Survey responses by region/metro area (i.e., NYC, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C.), visit the PNP Web site (registration required).

-- Robert F. Duvall

Weekend Link Roundup (March 23-24, 2013)

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

Black Male Achievement

On the GuideStar blog, Zeina Fayyaz, manager of the Social Innovation Forum and Social Innovation Accelerator at Root Cause, announces a call for applications to the 2013-14 Black Male Achievement Social Innovation Accelerator. Modeled after the Social Innovation Forum, the accelerator program will provide, over twelve months, capacity-building and coaching support totaling more than $150,000 to five BMA Innovators, along with opportunities to network with funders and the chance to become a national leader in the field of black male achievement.

Higher Education

Is student debt the new subprime? Writing on the Demos blog, Thomas Hedges thinks it may be. "Education itself, which many considered a right thirty years ago, has become a market product," writes Hedges. "University presidents are, in the end, fundraisers, soliciting large donations and encouraging students to take out loans that will take decades to pay back. The costs of tuition, which are cleverly obscured for low-income students, slam students years after they graduate, once they realize what paying off, say, $30,000 in student debt means." As one 30-year-old woman with $120,000 in student loans tells Hedges: "The grim truth is that universities and student loans are no longer creating the American dream, they are destroying it, one wide-eyed dreamer at a time.”

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Arabella Advisors blog, Cynthia Muller, director of the firm's impact investing practice, is encouraged by signs that the strategy is gaining traction.

On his Gift Hub blog, Phil Cubeta shares an "open" letter addressed to venture philanthropy pioneer and Leap of Reason author Mario Marino. Writes Cubeta:

I work with financial people. When they learn they can keep clients from giving money out from under management by selling them a feel good story about a “social venture portfolio,” the social economy will shift from nonprofits to for-profits. What will be lost are the local, small, inept organizations that formed you. Like the parish. That is, unless we show respect for these informal orgs and love them back as they loved us, when we were weak

And Mario responds.

"Debates in the private sector have devolved into an existential struggle between two camps: one which believes that privacy is dead and profit is king, and one which fears that any reuse of data beyond the original purpose for which it was collected is a potential threat to privacy and civil liberties," writes Robert Kirkpatrick, director of the UN's Global Pulse initiative, on the Harvard Business Review blog. "[Our] goal is to insert a third pole into this discussion: Big Data is a raw public good, and we must work together to find ways to harness it for massive social impact, both safely and responsibly. For this to happen, data philanthropy has to become a private sector priority."

Nonprofit Management

Nonprofits need to lose their fear of failure, writes Ashley Good, founder and CEO of Engineers Without Borders Canada's Fail Forward project, on the Idealist.org blog, "because almost everything we do has elements of both success and failure." To get beyond that fear, Good suggests six strategies designed to "encourage communication about failures, support collaborative learning, and break down much of the fear associated with taking action."

Charity Navigator's Sandra Miniutti defends the charity evaluator's recent decision to factor out joint cost allocations from program expenses and allocate them to fundraising costs. As a result of the change, sixty-six charities in the CN database now have lower ratings, leading one of the nonprofits to compare CN to the hall monitor from the animated South Park series. Writes Miniutti:

[A]re we offended to be called the "mean-looking hall monitor from South Park?" No, we can take it. This type of response is in the nature of what happens when you make judgments and rate organizations....But what really concerns us is that wasting time calling us names doesn't change anything. Where is the outrage in the sector with regards to excessive joint cost allocations? Where are the charities that refrain from this practice? They should be standing up and demanding that other charities change their ways....

Philanthropy

To mark the centennial of the Rockefeller Foundation, the the Rockefeller Archive Center has created a Web site to tell the story of the foundation’s first hundred years. The site includes an overview of the foundation's work by subject area; a sampling of internal reports and memoranda, correspondence about Rockefeller Foundation projects, excerpts from board meeting dockets and entries from the diaries of foundation staff members; and an interactive map to help visitors to the site navigate the material. Nicely done!

Social Media

Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield shares five types of tweets nonprofits should avoid sending. The list includes: 1) truncated automated tweets from Facebook; 2) automated tweets announcing new photos posted on Facebook; 3) tweets with too many hashtags; 4) poorly formatted tweets; and 5) tweets with semicolons (who knew?).

Best-selling author Seth Godin suggests that we create a standard for online communicating that encourages fairness and generosity. "Online communities are quick to form, but they're just as quick to fade, to become less open and to become less trusting because sometimes we have a cultural orientation toward taking, not giving," writes Godin. "We forget to feed the network first, to take care of those we care about."

Women & Girls

On the Huffington Post, veteran journalist Evelyn Leopold recaps the UN's recent Commission on the Status of Women conference, which concluded with all UN member states agreeing to a code that condemns violence against women and girls.

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

-- The Editors

Steve Goldberg: 'SIBs Are Here to Stay'

I don't always agree with Steve Goldberg, but I admire his ability to say what he means and to say it well. Earlier this week, Goldberg, the author of Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets: Why Philanthropy Doesn't Advance Social Progress and a vocal proponent of social impact bonds (also known as pay-for-success bonds), posted a long rebuttal to a post by Jon Pratt, executive director of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, in which Pratt suggested that the two main claims for SIBs, more resources and better results, are "admirable but dreamy."

I'm not going to get into the details of Pratt's argument or Goldberg's counter-argument (you should definitely take the time to read both). I was struck, however, by Goldberg's assertion that the "real reason" SIBs are here to stay is because "Government is out of money and out of breath" (a phrase he credits to Sir Ronald Cohen, a "founding father of social investing"). Goldberg continues:

We are enmeshed in a long-term fiscal and economic crisis that will increase the need, but decrease the funding, for effective social services long after unemployment returns to normal levels. This is a "new normal" of government retrenchment, rising inequality and decreasing social mobility to which we have not yet adjusted. The safety net ain't what it used to be, plus we can’t afford it.

While there are many encouraging trends in social sector innovation, as well as room for improvement, beleaguered nonprofits are in no position to take up the slack left by an eroding public sector. They don't just, as Mr. Pratt puts it, "frequently feel under-compensated, need more resources, and blame their limited success on lack of funding," they are under-compensated, in need of more resources and held back by a chronic and worsening lack of funding. Nonprofits are fighting a holding action that they can't win over the long term. They, too, haven't figured out how to cope with the new normal....

Now, Steve Goldberg isn't the first person to make this argument, and he won't be the last. But if denial is a river in Egypt, then many nonprofits are ill prepared for what's coming.

What do you think? Was the Great Recession merely a prelude to a "new normal" characterized by government retrenchment, reduced funding, and lowered expectations? Are most nonprofits prepared for such a reality? Will SIBs gain traction as more traditional funding sources dry up? And what do you think the sector will look like a decade from now? Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

Interested in learning more about the pay-for-success model? As part of its social innovation work, McKinsey has put together a nice package of resources, including the 2012 report From Potential to Action: Bringing Social Impact Bonds to the U.S., an animated video that introduces the topic of SIBs, and an introductory article that describes the SIBs landscape. Well worth checking out...

-- Mitch Nauffts

Survey: The State of Social Sector Leadership

Anyone in a position of leadership these days understands that organizations have a choice: disrupt or be disrupted. That's as true for nonprofits, foundations, public private partnerships, and social enterprises as it is for profit-seeking businesses.

To better understand how social sector leadership is changing, McKinsey & Company is inviting social sector leaders to participate in an online survey.

Among other things, the management consulting firm is interested in learning more about the attributes of high-performing social sector leaders -- what do they, and the peers they admire, excel in -- and how do they think their job descriptions will change over the next five to ten years. The firm also is interested in learning whether the sector is walking the talk when it comes to collaboration -- are social sector leaders committing their organizations to multi-stakeholder partnerships where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and attribution and credit are shared -- or is their primary focus still on fundraising and media coverage for their organizations.

As Laura Callanan, who leads McKinsey’s Learning for Social Impact (LSI) initiative, notes: "There are a number of key trends affecting the social sector environment today which require successful leaders to have different strengths from what was important in the past. The social sector is a dynamic environment and a lot happens over a ten-year period." We couldn't agree more.

McKinsey will be sharing the results of the survey -- in the context of a broader "landscaping" it has developed on the state of funding, resources, and research on social sector leadership -- with all who participate later in the year.

To take the survey, click here.

Most Popular PhilanTopic Posts (January 2013)

It's the first day of a new month, which means it's time to look back at the most popular posts on PhilanTopic in the month just passed:

• 'Don't Call Us, We'll Call You' (Brad Smith)
• [Infographic] The Importance of Donor Retention (Mitch Nauffts)
• "Beep, Beep": The Sound of Philanthropy and the Social Economy in 2013 (Brad Smith)
• Hey, Nonprofits, 'Usability' Is More Than a Tech Term (Derrick Feldmann)
• Foundations and the Freedom Not to Forget (Brad Smith)

Have you read/watched/listened to anything lately that our readers should know about? Use the comments sections to share your finds....

[Infographic] Gender and Salary Inequity in the Nonprofit Sector

This week's infographic, courtesy of the TCC Group, looks at the troubling disparity in pay for men and women in the nonprofit sector.

Based on an analysis of data from a thousand nonprofits in a combined Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT) and 990 dataset, the infographic shows that women in the sector make .75 for every $1 made by men; that women leaders tend to be more effective than their male counterparts; and that, in order to be paid equally, women have to perform better than men in a range of areas, including problem solving, creating organizational culture, and supporting the professional development of staff.

How is your nonprofit doing when it comes to equal pay for equal work? How is it doing on key indicators of organizational effectiveness? To find out, check out the CCAT on the TCC Web site.

Weekend Link Roundup (January 13-14, 2013)

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

Disaster Relief/Recovery

It's been three years since Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, was devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. In the weeks and months following the disaster, individuals and the international donor community stepped up with more than $5 billion in cash and commitments for relief and recovery efforts. So where do things stand today? Mark Leon Goldberg, managing editor of UN Dispatch, provides some basic facts and figures.

Nonprofits

Marie Deatherage, director of communications and learning at the Meyer Memorial Trust, curates a nice list of 2013 predictions for nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and the social economy. Her list includes Lucy Bernholz's Philanthropy and the New Social Economy: Blueprint 2013, which is available as a free download from the Foundation Center's GrantCraft site; Pantheon president Mark Tobias ((@PanthTech) on "Ten Technology Trends to Watch in 2013"; and Nonprofit Revolution Now's "missing" predictions.

Philanthropy

Writing in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Nick Penniman and Ian Simmons take philanthropy to task for its "chronic" underinvestment in political reform at a time when the "special interests that finance and influence the political process have amassed unprecedented power." What would be an appropriate amount? ask Penniman and Simmons. Their answer? One percent, or as they write:

Some $300 billion is donated annually to charitable causes. So, $3 billion for reform. Yes, $3 billion sounds like a lot of money. But 1 percent of philanthropy is not excessive -- especially not for a purpose as important as maintaining a government of, by, and for the people. We spend magnitudes more than that funding the arts and humanities, fighting infectious diseases, providing the poor and needy with the services they need, and trying to improve our educational institutions. Committing a sliver of philanthropy to making sure Washington and the state capitals are free of corruption -- both legal and illegal -- seems like a smart investment. Doing so should not be seen as merely advancing an abstract concept of “good government,” but as a concrete and necessary step in advancing solutions to the great challenges of our time -- solutions that the philanthropic sector often invests in but never sees actualized....

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, CEO and president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest healthcare philanthropy, is named one of New Jersey's most fascinating people and is profiled in depth by the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Chris McCrum, chief operating officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, argues that employee satisfaction is inextricably linked to feelings of empowerment and offers three lessons for foundation leaders looking to boost the sense of empowerment among staff.

And speaking of CEP, Nell Edgington has a nice Q&A with Phil Buchanan, the organization's president, on her Social Velocity blog.

Web Analytics

For those who are tired of (or don't trust) Google and Google Analytics, the search giant's ubiquitous Web analytics package, Sharon Hurley Hall, a professional writer and blogger, looks at a number of alternatives. In addition to good overviews (including screenshots) of Clicky, GoSquared, Woopra, KissMetrics, and Crazy Egg, Hurley Hall also lists nearly a dozen other packages in less detail.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And Best Wishes for a very Happy and Productive New Year!

-- The Editors

[Infographic] The Importance of Donor Retention

This week's infographic was put together by Jay Love and his team at Bloomerang, developers of a CRM product focused on donor retention and management, and was featured in a good post on Katya Andresen's Non-Profit Marketing Blog.

According to Love, nonprofits do a poor job of retaining donors compared to organizations in the for-profit sector -- in part, because they tend not to have clearly defined donor-retention goals or devote adequate resources to tracking donor retention rates. (Note: The 94 percent customer retention rate mentioned in the top left square of the infographic was derived from 10K filings for "large publicly held tech companies" -- think Apple, Amazon, Google, and so on -- and is probably not representive of the for-profit economy as a whole.)

In the post on Katya's blog, Love shares six donor retention KPIs that most (if not all) nonprofits should be tracking:

• First-Year Donor Retention Rate by Dollars
• First-Year Donor Retention Rate by Number of Donors
• Repeat Donor Retention Rate by Dollars
• Repeat Donor Retention Rate by Number of Donors
• Overall Donor Retention Rate by Dollars
• Overall Donor Retention Rate by Number of Donors

Back in November, Derrick Feldmann, CEO of Indianapolis-based Achieve, wrote a good post on this subject here at PhilanTopic. The Bloomerang blog is also a good source of information for those who want to learn more.

So, how is your nonprofit doing when it comes to donor retention? Does it track donor retention rates? Is it spending more or less on donor retention activities than it did five years ago? And what would you tell other nonprofits looking to improve their performance in the donor retention area? Share your thoughts/advice in the comments section below....

Hey, Nonprofits, 'Usability' Is More Than a Tech Term

(Derrick Feldmann is CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based creative fundraising agency. In his last post, he urged nonprofit development professionals to join the donor revolution.)

My mother isn't a techie. And because I'm a so-called "digital native," I tend to serve as her tech support, troubleshooting problems with her iPhone and laptop. Let me put this as politely as possible: serving as Mom's tech support requires a certain level of patience.

Recently, over the Thanksgiving holiday, she asked me to go online with her to look at some Christmas gifts she was thinking about buying for my wife. After watching her inch the cursor across the screen and type a Web address into the browser that led us to a "page not found" message, I jumped in and suggested it might be faster if we used Google. So we went to the Google home page, typed "cute personalized Mac travel case" into the search box, clicked on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, and voila! -- link after link to sites offering cute personalized Mac travel cases.

Good comparison shoppers that we are, we decided to click on a link accompanied by a great short description and the promise of a steep discount. When we clicked on the link, however, it took us to a site that looked about ten years old. As I scanned the page, Mom said, "Derrick, we aren't going to buy it from here, are we?" I had already decided we weren't, but I wanted to hear her reasoning. When I asked her, she said, "Well, it looks like it's a scam. I mean, we should buy from a site that looks like the people behind it have been in business a while, right?"

Then I asked her to explain something that led me to write this article: "Tell me specifically what you don't like about this site." To which Mom replied, "Other sites just look nicer. They have easy-to-click buttons, and I feel like I can trust them with my credit card."

My mom is like millions of other ordinary consumers who have been exposed to a variety of e-commerce experiences. She has been trained to expect simple user interfaces and straightforward navigation schemes that allow her to easily find and purchase the item(s) she's looking for. What my mom doesn't realize is that someone, a developer or programmer, designed the Web page or site that enables her to do just that: to easily find what she's looking for, learn more about the item, and, should she choose, purchase it with a minimal amount of fuss and bother.

In the Web development/design business, this is known as usability, and it typically comprises five components:

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they visit a site?

Efficiency: Once users have become familiar with a site, how quickly can they find what they need?

Memorability: When users return to a site after having not visited it for a while, how easily are they able to reestablish their proficiency in navigating the site?

Errors: How many "wrong turns" do visitors to the site make? How deflating are these mistakes and dead ends and how easily are visitors able to recover from them and find what they were looking for?

Satisfaction: How pleasant is the user experience?

Companies and organizations that have mastered usability with respect to their Web sites are able to get customers like Mom coming back to purchase more of their products or services. Straightforward navigation and simple transaction mechanisms help to establish a level of trust with the individual customer/visitor and make it easier for her to learn about additional products and services. In short, sites that offer a good usability experience make it easy for folks like my mom to move quickly from being a potential consumer to becoming an informed buyer.

And that's exactly the kind of experience that every nonprofit should provide to  prospective online donors. Organizations need to think about the online donation experience in terms of usability. This includes taking the five critical components of usability noted above and applying them to your online donor cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship pages.

Learnability: How easy is it for a prospective donor to understand the mission and purpose of your organization? Is it clear why your organization is asking for money and the ways in which donated funds are used to assist your organization's constituents? Are donors able to actively engage with your organization the first time they visit the site?

Efficiency: Once a prospective donor understands the reasons your organization requires additional funding, how easy is it for him or her to make a donation? Is the process quick and painless, allowing the donor to act on impulse? Is the experience one that instills trust? And, most importantly, does it build on the knowledge the donor gained during the cultivation process?

Memorability: When a donor returns to your site after a period of time, is it easy for her to reestablish the connection she made with your organization the last time she visited? Was her previous experience on the site memorable enough to inspire her to return, learn more, and perhaps make another gift for a larger amount?

Errors: How many "wrong turns" do potential donors make during the donation process and do they affect their willingness to donate? Could donors' navigation mistakes and dead ends be avoided if your organization provided better tools, easier options, and/or additional support during the donation process?

Satisfaction: Do donors leave the site feeling satisfied? Are they satisfied with the additional knowledge they gained, the efficient donation process, and the overall user experience?

As I hope the above makes clear, usability is not just a "techie" term. It's a way of thinking and a way to ensure that current and future donors' experience with your organization online is educational, efficient, and satisfying. Indeed, nonprofits that are busy acquiring new donors tend to be ones that have solved the usability puzzle. And their donors tend to return year after year -- and sometimes more frequently -- to support the important work the organization is doing.

So ask yourself: Does your organization's Web site pass "the Mom test"? Or is it more like the ten-year-old site that no one really trusts and wants to spend time on?

-- Derrick Feldmann

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