PhilanTopic

U.S. Should Follow California's Lead on Immigration

(Ira S. Hirschfield is president of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. Robert K. Ross, MD, is president and chief executive officer of the California Endowment. And Timothy P. Silard is president of the Rosenberg Foundation.)

Equality of opportunity is a fundamentally American value. Throughout our history, we have taken important steps to make our country more equal and to bring opportunity to groups that were denied it in the past.

Today, with national leaders debating plans to reform America's broken immigration system, we may soon be taking the next step in this continuing journey. Getting reform right means keeping our core values front and center, and Californians are showing the way forward.

First, more about the problem. More than 11 million immigrants in this country (including nearly three million in California alone) are living in the shadows. Their invisibility and fear of deportation makes them vulnerable to exploitation at work, reluctant to report crimes or to participate in their communities, and hesitant to get health care when they and their families need it.

This situation is not good for anyone. The American economy and our society are better and stronger when everyone has an opportunity to participate. Having a permanent underclass of aspiring Americans who do not have the same rights as everyone else, and who cannot speak up for their interests without putting themselves and their families at risk, demeans our democracy and diminishes our values.

That is why federal immigration reform is so important. As Washington continues down the path to creating a better, more humane, and more efficient immigration process, it can learn a lot from what's happening in California. In recent years, our state has made important strides in bringing the values of equality and inclusiveness into the immigration debate.

Today, a decisive majority of Californians favor inclusive immigration policies that would allow undocumented people to stay in this country and eventually earn full citizenship rights. In addition, we were one of the first states to approve a law enabling the children of undocumented parents to have the same access to higher education as other young people. The California Dream Act became a model for other states and an inspiration for President Obama's program that allows young undocumented immigrants to apply for temporary work permits and a reprieve from deportation.

California is leading the way on these issues because it is home to one in four U.S. immigrants, as well as many heroic organizations that are advancing the cause of immigrant rights. Our three foundations are excited to be working with many of these organizations. Since we began supporting the movement for federal immigration reform years ago, we have had a front-row view of how nonprofit advocates across California have come together to educate people about the need for action on this issue at all levels. In addition, we have had the opportunity to work with other funders across the state to make sure that our combined support is having the greatest possible impact on the ability of the immigrant rights movement to achieve its goals.

And now, California advocates are taking the lead in defining the values that should drive the national immigration debate. Last month, in an effort coordinated by the California Immigrant Policy Center and the National Immigration Law Center -- two organizations that our foundations support -- more than one hundred leading civil rights and immigrant rights organizations outlined a set of core principles for reform.

These principles point the way to an inclusive immigration system that lives up to American values. Among the key principles these diverse groups recommend to national policy makers are:

• Creating a road to citizenship for 11 million new Americans that does not include long waiting periods or roadblocks.
• Protecting family unity for all immigrants, regardless of country of origin, race, religion, gender, age and sexual orientation.
• Guaranteeing access to health care for all residents.
• Protecting the inherent dignity and equal rights of all people by ending unjust detentions and deportation and other unfair treatment of immigrants.

The U.S. immigration system should reflect U.S. values. Lawmakers in Washington can learn a lot from California's experience. Let's hope they pay attention to the people and organizations that are working to make sure this state -- home to so many immigrants -- can become a place where they feel welcome and safe, are able to come out of the shadows, and can continue to contribute in positive ways to the economy and society.

-- Ira S. Hirschfield, Robert K. Ross, MD, and Timothy P. Silard

Dispatch From the Frontlines: Council on Foundations' 2013 Annual Conference

(Long-time PhilanTopic contributor Michael Seltzer is a trustee of EMpower-the Emerging Markets Foundation and a distinguished lecturer at the Baruch College School of Public Affairs of the City University of New York. He filed this report earlier today from Chicago, site of the Council on Foundation's 2013 annual conference.)

Each year, several thousand grantmakers from around the globe come together at the Council on Foundations' annual meeting to learn, discuss, and network. This week, more than 1,200 donors from 47 states and 17 countries have gathered here in Chicago. Reflective, perhaps, of a longer-term shift in wealth accumulation and the creation of new foundations, the states/regions with the greatest representation here are (host state) Illinois, California, New York, and Washington, D.C., while Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Great Britain top the list of countries represented at the conference. Another indicator of the changing composition of the field is evident in the large number of new faces. Take it from this philanthropy veteran, a new generation of grantmakers has arrived.

Paul Ylvisaker, the late Ford Foundation officer and a mentor to many veteran foundation leaders, once described foundations as "the passing lane" on the highway to a better world. Entrance ramps to that highway were quite evident in the opening sessions of this week's gathering.

On Saturday, at the annual gathering of the Association of Black Foundation Executives, Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion, focused her remarks on the opportunities available to philanthropy to support solutions to the challenges facing the soon-to-be "majority minority" population in America: people of color. Wiley highlighted examples of grassroots leaders across the country who are working to implement innovative public policies in their communities, cities, and states -- and, through a combination of vision, effective community organizing, and thought leadership, are succeeding in mitigating the structural barriers that for too long have denied access to equal opportunity for people of color, women, and others.

The next day, at the opening plenary (which was moderated by Joyce Foundation president Ellen Alberding), "The Three Mayors” -- Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago -- echoed Wiley’s message that social change is not only within our reach, it is happening under our noses. Each painfully recounted how alienated teenagers and young men today have turned to guns rather than yesterday's fistfights to settle their disputes, creating a "plague" of gun-related violence in our cities' African-American neighborhoods. But the three also outlined a number of strategies implemented by their respective administrations that, so far in 2013, have proven to be effective in reducing gun-related homicides and shootings.

While the mayors' remarks resonated with those in attendance, conference attendees will long remember the stirring musical performance turned in by the Soul Children of Chicago. The organization -- which uses music to motivate young people to have faith in themselves, each other, and God -- is just one example (albeit an especially inspiring one) of a grantmaker-supported organization that is actually helping African-American youth succeed in life.

Hope and inspiration. It's been a theme of the conference so far, and it reminds me of what philanthropy can accomplish when it seeks out and supports the "possibilists," a term popularized by UC-Berkeley professor John Powell. Indeed, one antidote to the disgust created by what passes for political discourse these days can be found in the uplifting stories told by changemakers on the ground who are crafting actual solutions to real problems and urging others to get involved. Because, as John Powell might say, if we stand together, we can accomplish pretty much anything.

-- Michael Seltzer

Introducing the 'Open Places' Initiative

(Kenneth H. Zimmerman is director of U.S. programs for the Open Society Foundations. The post originally appeared on the OSF's Voices blog.)

Across the United States, local communities face an ever more challenging environment: dramatic shifts in federal and state funding, advances in technology, and large-scale demographic change. Each of these affects how low-income communities and communities of color are able to access political, economic, and civic opportunities. In response to these shifts, the Open Society Foundations is launching a new effort, the Open Places Initiative, to advance the ability of local communities to achieve equal opportunity and promote vibrant democratic practices.

As part of the initiative, planning grants of roughly $100,000 each have been awarded to eight sites. The awards will enable an assortment of nonprofits in each of these places to plan how to create sustainable change in areas such as effective and accountable government, civic engagement, criminal justice reform, and equal educational opportunity.

In late 2013, OSF will award up to five of these sites long-term implementation grants of up to $1 million a year, for a minimum of three years -- and, potentially, a full decade.

The eight sites selected to receive grants are Albuquerque, New Mexico; Buffalo, New York; Denver, Colorado; Jackson, Mississippi; Louisville, Kentucky; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; San Diego, California; and Puerto Rico. We are pleased with the geographic diversity of these sites as well as the diversity of communities represented.

The Open Places Initiative begins with the premise that local knowledge and assets are fundamental to the creation of inclusive and open places. Yet, local conditions are changing significantly. Local governments face unprecedented demands due to budget constraints, and the nonprofit sector is facing significant funding challenges. At the same time, increased access to information is transforming community engagement on pressing issues. Nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and civic groups need to adapt to the new circumstances. One of the primary goals of the initiative is to increase the ability of each place to extend beyond current agendas, strategies, and capabilities.

The initiative draws on our experience with our urban social justice laboratory, OSI-Baltimore, which tests the effectiveness of various place-based strategies to address some of the biggest challenges facing Baltimore and other urban centers in the U.S. We are also drawing on the experience of other foundations and public-sector efforts, and look forward to collaborating with them going forward.

During the next few months, each site will select its specific areas of focus in response to pressing local priorities -- and, in each case, will incorporate multiple issues and tools into its planning.

While the sites are just now beginning the planning process, they have already noted some areas of focus. In addition to increasing local civic capacity to bring about long-term change, the preliminary goals of the different projects include advancing fair and inclusive economic development and fiscal policy, integrating immigrants into the larger community, reducing rates of incarceration, helping high school students graduate in greater numbers, addressing the enduring impact of residential segregation, and creating pathways to the middle class for low-wage workers.

We anticipate the initiative will enable the collaborations to identify and address needed skills and capacities, effectively access national and local resources, and further develop the approaches needed to address complex issues. In doing so, the Open Places sites will successfully develop more innovative and coordinated approaches to these and other challenges over the long term. While local equity and justice issues are likely to vary over time, what will remain constant is the need to bring together different groups -- residents, business leaders, state and local officials, nonprofits -- to mobilize and advance needed reform.

We are committed to supporting the Open Places sites as they develop and refine their approaches to making lasting and positive change. In addition to financial resources, we will be providing technical assistance as well as facilitating connections among sites and introductions with leading national organizations and institutions.

We heartily congratulate the groups that won planning grants. We look forward to gleaning lessons from the work that comes out of the initiative for replication in other cities, regions, and states, and believe that work has tremendous potential to help all of us chart a new course for our cities and regions.

-- Kenneth Zimmerman

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

Philanthropy? I’m Going Fishing!

(Bradford K. Smith is the president of the Foundation Center. In his last post, he wrote about the linguistic creativity of funders who award general operating support.)

April 1 is the most important day of the year on my calendar, and not because it's April Fools' Day. No, April 1 is the opening day of trout fishing season here in New York State -- and if it's like past opening days, it will be icily cold, wet, and unproductive, with my chances of actually catching one of those wily trout almost zero. Still, I'll be out there -- early -- because trout fishing is my form of meditation, the one thing I do that takes my thoughts as far away from work as possible, to nowhere.

Given that my work is the business of philanthropy, I thought I'd share a list of the things I will NOT be thinking about while I am, as author John Gierach puts it, "standing in a river waving a stick." Here goes:

Is philanthropy effective?
Is philanthropy efficient?
Is philanthropy strategic?
Is philanthropy catalytic?
Is philanthropy innovative?
Is philanthropy transparent enough?
Is philanthropy too transparent?
Does the Foundation Center's data capture the uniqueness of each foundation?
Will the foundation world ever agree on data standards?
What is the difference between an outcome and an output?
Is there too little collaboration among philanthropy "infrastructure" groups?
Is there too little collaboration among foundations?
Is limiting the lifespan of a foundation better than establishing a foundation in perpetuity?
Is perpetuity better than limiting the lifespan of a foundation?
Who will be the next president of the Kellogg Foundation?
Who will be the next president of the Ford Foundation?
Who will be the next president of the (fill in the blank) Foundation?
Is there a viable business model for open source, open data, open anything?
Can philanthropy keep up with technological change?

These concerns and many others will still be percolating on April 2 when I return to the office -- as they are likely to be for months and years to come. So taking a day off from thinking about them won't be the worst thing I've ever done -- in fact, it might even lead to a sudden insight or two, in a Zen sort of way.

Of course, philanthropy itself won't be far away. As I was writing this post, I couldn't resist doing a quick search of Foundation Directory Online, and, lo and behold, I turned up more than 900 grants made by U.S. foundations that in some way involve "trout." The biggest beneficiary was Trout Unlimited, which received awards ranging from a minnow-like $1,000 to a real whopper of a grant, some $4.275 million, from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in support of its "Western Water and Public Lands Program." My favorite, however, was one from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust to Evergreen State College "to study needle-less methods for delivering gene-based vaccines to rainbow trout."

So, though April 1 will officially be a day of "no-mind" for me, I am fully aware that it's foundations and individual donors, working with nonprofits, local communities and advocates, and dedicated state conservation officials, that enable iridescent trout like the one pictured above to survive and thrive in fragile public streams less than two hours from the bustle and grime of New York City. It's also a reminder of the many ways in which the work of foundations contributes to the public good.

-- Brad Smith

Weekend Link Roundup (March 30-31, 2013)

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

Black Male Achievement

Here on PhilanTopic, the Open Society Foundation's Shawn Dove, whom we spoke with back in December, announces the launch of BMAfunders.org, a Web portal designed to "facilitate engagement, collaboration, and strategic decision making among funders, nonprofits, and policy makers working to promote positive outcomes for black men and boys in America."

Communications

In a guest post on Kivi Leroux Miller's Nonprofit Communications Blog, Jen Charney, communication manager at the Save the Redwoods League, explains how the organization redesigned its Web site to attract more "uniques" and increase online donations and e-mail subscribers.

Environment

Environmental "cause days" such as Earth Day are great, but what about the other 360+ days of the year, asks Geoff Livingston, author of Welcome to the Fifth Estate, in a recent post on his blog.  "If our culture intends to adapt to climate change," writes Livingston, "our efforts need to increase. First of all, let's not poo-poo the small acts taken. Instead, let's build upon them...."

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Skoll World Forum Up for Debate blog, Darin McKeever, deputy director of the Charitable Sector, Global Policy & Advocacy program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, asks the important question: "How might we accelerate [the] conversation about Big Data into one about Big Information, Big Knowledge, and Big Wisdom?"

Philanthropy

The excellent "forum" feature in the March/April issue of the Boston Review looks at the pros and cons of private philanthropy in America. With a lead essay by Stanford University professor Rob Reich, who argues that private foundations are plutocratic by nature, the package includes essays in response from Paul Brest, Rick Cohen, Pablo Eisenberg, Stanley N. Katz, Larry Kramer, Gara LaMarche, and Robert K. Ross, among others. Highly recommended.

Writing on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders whether proposals submitted to foundation-funded open challenges could serve a larger purpose. "For example, if you were trying to understand the 'state' of community information efforts, would the applications to the Knight News Challenge be a useful source of data in terms of understanding what people out in the world think is important," asks Bernholz. "Do you know anyone who has looked at them as such?"

GiveWell's Holden Karnofsky explains why his organization recommends so few charities, and the concept behind the GiveWell approach. "We recommend few charities by design, because we see ourselves as a 'finder of great giving opportunities’ rather than a 'charity evaluator,'" writes Karnofsky. "In other words, we're not seeking to classify large numbers of charities as 'good' or 'bad'; our mission is solely to identify, and thoroughly investigate, the best."

Social Justice

On the Huffington Post, Janell Ross discusses findings from The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism, a new book written by Rutgers University professor Nancy DiTomaso and published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Based on DiTomaso's research, writes Ross, the book argues that

most white Americans engage, at least a few times per year, in...activities that foster inequality. While they may not deliberately discriminate against black and other non-white job seekers, they take actions that make it more likely that white people will be employed -- without thinking that what they're doing amounts to discrimination....

Social Media

Nonprofits using video to engage their supporters should focus on telling stories about people, not programs, ListenIn Pictures co-founder Annie Escobar argues in a guest post on the Getting Attention blog. "The best use of video is not to inform and educate," writes Escobar. "It's to make your audience feel something and through that emotional response, create a connection to your work."

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

-- The Editors

A New Way to Sustain the Campaign: Foundation Center and Open Society Foundations Launch BMAFunders.org

(Shawn Dove is the campaign manager for the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement. The original version of this post appears on Philanthropy New York's Smart Assets blog.)

This June will mark the five-year anniversary of the creation of the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement, which was launched in 2008 to address the economic, political, social, and educational exclusion of black men and boys from American society. When I consider the upcoming five-year milestone I can't help but think that the campaign was originally slated to be just a three-year "initiative." But thanks to the determined and focused work of our partners in philanthropy, government, the not-for-profit community, and the private sector, our board extended the campaign's term limit and provided CBMA staff with much-needed breathing room, increased funding, and an opportunity to exhibit bold leadership on behalf of the emerging field of black male achievement.

During the past five years, the work of the campaign, along with the efforts of an evolving group of philanthropic partners and leaders from the policy, advocacy, practitioner, and research sectors, has expanded on the earlier work of funders like the Ford Foundation and the 21st Century Foundation to tackle a seemingly intractable problem. It has been fueled by a broad and diverse sector of organizations that combine a direct services and policy change approach. From the time we launched the CBMA, my daily mantra has been "sustain the campaign" in the belief that the philanthropic sector could not remedy a generational problem facing black men and boys with a short-term grant-cycle mindset.

In partnership with the Foundation Center, we have launched the Web portal BMAfunders.org to facilitate engagement, collaboration, and strategic decision making among funders, nonprofits, and policy makers working to promote positive outcomes for black men and boys in America. It could very well be the pivotal investment that enables this work to gain the sustained philanthropic commitment necessary to overcome the structural and systemic barriers that prevent too many black men and boys from realizing their full potential.

The portal will be the go-to source for data and information related to black male achievement, serving as a resource not only to funders, including affinity groups like the Association of Black Foundation Executives and Grantmakers For Children Youth & Families, but also to nonprofits, policy makers, business leaders, and anyone else interested in the field.

Features of the portal include an interactive mapping tool with funding data, a timeline of philanthropic milestones in the field, a toolkit for assessing project outcomes, a comprehensive collection of research reports, descriptive case studies of work on the ground, and multimedia content. Currently on the site are highlights of the recent Black Male Re-Imagined II, a collaborative effort by the Ford, Knight, and Open Society Foundations to examine strategies for shifting perceptions of black men and boys in America.

BMAfunders.org builds on the groundbreaking 2012 report Where Do We Go From Here? Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys, which examines foundation funding flows in support of black men and boys and highlights innovative philanthropic initiatives. The report highlights the deepening funding commitments of foundations such as Knight, Skillman, Robert Wood Johnson, Mitchell Kapor, and the California and Heinz Endowments in the field of black male achievement. The portal also complements the field-building efforts of the Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement, which seeks to strengthen the infrastructure and sustainability of the growing field of black male achievement.

The portal magnifies the words of Open Society Foundations founder George Soros, who in the afterword of Where Do We Go From Here? states how he hopes the report (and the ensuing launch of BMAFunders.org) "will motivate other philanthropists and foundations to invest in efforts to improve achievement by African American boys and men....[T]his is a generational problem. It demands a long-term commitment."

-- Shawn Dove

More to Do: A 'Flip' Chat With Anika Rahman, President/CEO, Ms. Foundation for Women

While the topics du jour in the women's movement seem to be Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and New York magazine's take on "feminist housewives," there are deeper, more persistent problems in need of attention, from access to health and child care, to low wages and a shortage of quality jobs, to continued assaults on women's reproductive rights and services.

Indeed, as the Ms. Foundation for Women says on its Web site, "It's true that women have come a long way since the 1970s, but for every woman who has reached the 'top' (and who still face discrimination, by the way), there are millions of women struggling to earn a living wage, gain access to basic health care, secure affordable child care, and participate in the opportunities that should be available to every person in the U.S."

On a rainy day earlier this month, I spoke with Anika Rahman, the organization's president and CEO, about the many inequities confronting women, especially low-income women and women of color, as well as the organization's new report, More to Do: The Road to Equality for Women in the United States (58 pages, PDF).

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

(Running time: 7 minutes, 9 seconds) 

Have a thought or comment you'd like to share? Use the comments section below....

-- Regina Mahone

Read of the Week: 'US Giving for Japan Disaster Exceeds $710 Million'

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a tsunami that devastated more than four hundred miles of Japanese coastline, swamped (and permanently disabled) the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power complex, and left more than eighteen thousand people dead and half a million displaced from their homes. According to a new report from the Japan Center for International Exchange, Americans have donated a total of $712.6 million for relief and recovery efforts in Japan in the two years since the disaster -- the most ever given by Americans in response to a disaster in a developed nation and the fifth-largest giving total ever for a disaster.

The report, US Giving for Japan Disaster Exceeds $710 Million (5 pages, HTML), notes that initial disaster relief tallies underestimated the giving of tens of thousands of Americans who, instead of donating to the usual suspects, organized their own fundraisers, as well as off-the-radar groups with connections to Japan that launched fundraising campaigns of their own. Indeed, the report argues that whereas the outpouring of charitable donations following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was magnified by the well-documented poverty of the most of the victims and survivors, the American response to the disaster in much wealthier Japan seems to have been motivated in many cases by personal and/or corporate ties -- despite the fact that more than a few disaster-relief experts and media outlets suggested that Americans' donations would be more usefully applied to "everyday disasters" in poorer developing countries than in infrastructure-rich Japan.

Now, while it's true that the way we do disaster relief in this country doesn't always ensure the most efficient distribution of resources for victims and survivors, it's also true that, as wealthy as Japan is, its nonprofit sector is relatively underfinanced. In fact, donations from Americans made a significant impact, the report argues, precisely because the funding base of Japanese nonprofits -- which did and continue to play a crucial role in relief and recovery efforts -- traditionally has been limited.

The report includes links to JCIE's searchable database of roughly $1 billion in donations and grants made by overseas organizations in support of relief and recovery efforts, as well as a handful of innovative ideas that emerged from the response. It's worth checking out.

-- Kyoko Uchida

'How Do I General Support Thee, Let Me Count the Ways!'

(Bradford K. Smith is the president of the Foundation Center. In his last post, he wrote about the globalization of the Giving Pledge.)

With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I could not resist paraphrasing her famous poem for an appeal to foundations to stop trying to be so unique. But I promise you, this will be the shortest blog post I've ever written because the data speak far louder than words.

America's more than 80,000 foundations have invented at least 251 different ways to utter the phrase grantseekers most long to hear -- "general operating support." They range from the terse ("for general use") to the turgid ("for unrestricted funds for operational development"), from the honorific ("for honorary grant for general support") to the positivistic ("for general operations advancement"), from the vague ("for general") to the didactic ("for general operating support, core support for agency").

So even answering a seemingly simple question like the one posed not too long ago by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy -- "What is the state of general operating support?" -- can be devilishly difficult. It takes people willing to penetrate the linguistic creativity of donors, develop standards, write code, and crunch data -- people like my colleagues at the Foundation Center. And it takes foundations like those which have already banded together to form the Reporting Commitment to be more transparent and consistent about the way they report their grants data.

End of post. Any and all thoughts welcome!

-- Brad Smith

Expanding Our View of Pathways to Grow Impact

(Kathleen P. Enright is president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, a community of more than four hundred funders committed to improving their own practices in ways that are critical to nonprofit success. GEO does this by facilitating connections between its members so that they can learn from each other and make more progress more quickly.)

Only a few short decades ago, smoking was both widespread and socially acceptable. To those who grew up in the 1990s, a show like Mad Men, where characters smoke in every imaginable context, might seem more like fantasy than a portrayal of a time gone by. It's a visible reminder of how effective advocates have been in challenging social norms and changing the public’s perception of smoking.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids is one of those advocates. Recognizing that 90 percent of adult smokers picked up the habit as teenagers, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation set out to counter the harmful impact of the tobacco industry's promotion of its products to teens. In 1996, RWJF launched the campaign to educate teens and the public about the health risks and social downsides of tobacco and promote policies designed to keep kids from smoking.

The campaign employed a variety of strategies, and its online resource center quickly became a hub for sharing information and ideas, including news about tobacco-related policies and reports and opportunities to get involved. Through its work, the campaign connected with other organizations that shared the same mission in order to spread the idea that smoking wasn't cool and supported policy reforms that reduced the appeal of smoking and made it harder for teens to pick up the habit.

Although traditional notions of scale in the nonprofit sector tend to focus on program replication and organizational growth, a closer look reveals that, like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, most successful nonprofits pursue multiple strategies. After all, the results an organization achieves are far more important than its size.

To gain a deeper understanding of the various pathways to greater impact and the grantmaker practices that best support it, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations engaged in a collaborative project with Ashoka, Social Impact Exchange, the Taproot Foundation, and the TCC Group to answer the question: What is the grantmaker's role in supporting high-performing nonprofits looking to grow their impact? The resulting report, Pathways to Grow Impact (40 pages, PDF), includes a framework that details four distinct pathways adapted from one developed by Julia Coffman for a publication of the Harvard Family Research Project. They include:

• Increasing the reach of a program that has demonstrated reliable results for a specific population over a period of time.
• Spreading a new idea or innovative way of doing something among individuals or organizations within a system.
• Increasing the number of people or places that use a technology or apply a specific skill, practice, or approach.
• Advocating for policy change as a means of transforming behavior.

The report offers recommendations for grantmakers seeking better ways to support nonprofits as they look to grow their impact. Indeed, our work identified four grantmaker practices that are critical to amplifying grantee impact:

• Providing flexible funding in appropriate amounts over the long term enables high-performing nonprofits to invest in the infrastructure and human capital that will keep them strong.
• Supporting an organization's ability to collect and use data and develop an approach to performance management enables it to continuously learn, grow, and concentrate its resources where it is having the greatest impact.
• Providing capacity building and leadership development that is responsive to a nonprofit's context enables an organization to build critical skills and shift gears when appropriate.
• Supporting movements in addition to individual organizations can nurture relationships and help build the momentum required to achieve broad-scale change.

To access the full Pathways to Grow Impact report and read more stories about pioneering organizations and initiatives that have found creative ways to achieve big results, visit www.geofunders.org.

-- Kathleen Enright

Reducing Gun Violence: A Q&A With David Bohnett, Chairman, David Bohnett Foundation

"Now more than ever, we need to provide support for the advocacy organizations that are working to establish a formidable counterweight to the gun lobby, which is well financed, well organized, and will stop at nothing to protect the interests of the firearms industry and obstruct sensible legislation that will help save lives."

So argues David Bohnett in an opinion piece he co-authored with Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad in February. For Bohnett, a technology entrepreneur who co-founded the pioneering community site GeoCities back in 1994, gun safety has long been an interest of his and a focus area of the David Bohnett Foundation. Indeed, as Bohnett told PND, reducing gun violence is consistent with the foundation's mission "to improve society through social activism."

Earlier this month, PND spoke to Bohnett via e-mail about his and Broad's efforts to reduce gun violence in America, his view of recent legislative proposals in Congress to address the issue, and what he thinks other foundations and philanthropists should be doing to advance solutions to the problem. (For more on the issue, check out the special collection on gun violence in Issue Lab.)

Philanthropy News Digest: The Bohnett Foundation supports organizations working in a range of areas. When and why was gun violence added to the foundation's grantmaking portfolio?

David Bohnett: Supporting responsible gun legislation and working on gun safety has been one of our primary focus areas since the foundation began in 1999. Reducing gun violence is consistent with our mission to improve society through social activism. The issue is one of the cornerstones of building healthy and vibrant communities where people feel safe to walk the streets and conduct productive and meaningful lives.

PND: In February, you and Eli Broad co-authored an opinion piece that urged Americans to take action on gun violence. How did you and Broad come together on this issue and what did you hope to accomplish with the op-ed?

DB: It's a small universe of funders who all know each other, exchange ideas, and are working together to help solve the problem. We believe it's important to support advocacy organizations on the ground such as Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Fund for a Safer Future. Supporting efficient nonprofit grantees helps maintain the energy behind reform and keeps up the pressure on our elected officials.

Eli Broad and I support the efforts of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spearheads Mayors Against Illegal Guns. We have worked to promote education in our communities and support MAIG's anti-gun violence campaigns. Since 2007, the David Bohnett Foundation has provided grants to MAIG for outreach and awareness efforts.

In writing our op-ed, we wanted to send the message to the philanthropic community and all concerned citizens to be active, to stay active, and not let this moment pass us by. We believe philanthropists can help ensure that politicians make the right decisions, while private citizens can also help make a difference -- by writing a check, donating time, calling and writing their elected officials, using social media channels for outreach and awareness. We hope to continue building a grassroots campaign that can't be ignored. By helping raise awareness, we can get more people to participate in the conversation and bring positive change to our communities.

PND: The horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in December seemed to signal a turning point in the gun control debate. Two and a half months later, not much has changed. Are you disappointed by the lack of action on the part of Congress?

DB: A lot has changed in terms of generating new support for efforts to reduce gun violence and promote a real dialogue around guns. We are encouraged to see that gun violence reform has finally become a priority in Washington and that the president has unveiled a bold package of legislation to deal with this complex issue.

The NRA has been exposed as beholden to gun manufacturers and not gun owners, yet many of our congressional leaders continue to pay more attention to the needs of the firearm industry rather than the safety of average citizens. It's one reason out of many to be disappointed in Congress, but those of us who are committed to change take the long view and will continue to do the work we need to do.

Ultimately, Congress must find common ground with the president and those working to curb gun violence and act, while concerned Americans need to stand united and keep up the pressure. In the end, it's up to us. We need to stay active and hold our leaders accountable.

PND: Are you optimistic that Congress and the White House can reach an agreement?

DB: I'm very optimistic. I believe we can pass new laws and change our culture. At the same time, I think we need better data on the effect of gun violence on society, on communities, on our economy, and on people's individual pocketbooks. The more vivid and personal we make the problem of gun violence, the better.

Second, we need to change the language we use and be more inclusive. The term "gun control" has become a wedge which divides a public that overwhelmingly favors gun safety and violence prevention. The more we talk about "controlling" guns, however, the more we turn off voters who support reasonable legislation and the enforcement of laws already on the books. Ultimately, gun owners and non-gun owners have the same goal -- keeping our families and communities safe. It's time to join together, find common ground, and send a message to Washington. In the end, if both sides work together and hold our leaders accountable, we'll see real reform.

PND: The Bohnett Foundation has awarded nearly $3 million to organizations in the United States working to research and prevent gun violence. What advice would you give other foundations that may be thinking about funding efforts in this area?

DB: Let's not re-invent the wheel. It is important to promote existing organizations and not arbitrarily start new ones from scratch that overlap and duplicate the good work already being done. I believe interested givers should seek out groups that are making strides in the campaign to reduce gun violence and help fund their advocacy.

Unfortunately, philanthropic foundations tend to be cautious about funding this kind of advocacy work, so the best advice I can give is this: be bold. People -- not just philanthropists, but all people -- need to understand how critical it is to support organizations that are fighting to make our streets, schools, and communities safe from gun violence. It is an epidemic, but we have the power to do something about it.

-- Emily Robbins

Weekend Link Roundup (March 16-17, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

Over at Katya Andresen's Non-Profit Marketing blog, Kari Saratovsky and Derrick Feldmann, co-authors of the recently published Cause for Change: The Why and How of Nonprofit Millennial Engagement, explain how developing a platform to engage Millennials can better position an organization for success.

Impact/Effectiveness

"[M]ost social good organizations...[are] focus[ed] on reproducing the institution, not reusing...data," writes self-described data wonk Lucy Bernholz on her Philanthropy 2173 blog. "This needs to change in two ways," adds Bernholz. "First, nonprofits should be using their data for social purposes only....[And, second] when it comes to enterprise level data, the default should be to share all the data you can."

On Arabella Advisor's Greater Good blog, Katrina Briddell and Lauren Marra share five keys to effective donor collaboration.

The Inter-American Development Bank's Lina Salazar Ortegón shares five things investors need to know about impact investing metrics:

1. Reporting requirements should be simple and in line with the client companies’ operations.
2. It's necessary to involve both investment officers and investee companies in the measuring and tracking process, training them on the importance of metrics and reporting.
3. To the extent it contributes to everyone speaking the same language and using the same type of indicators, tracking performance contributes to better communications with stakeholders.
4. Investments aren't the only thing that need to be tracked. Grant-funded projects with potential to become profitable and sustainable business models also need to be monitored from the start.
5. Metrics must be negotiated during the due diligence process and be formally included in the loan agreements.

Ortegón invites readers to learn more about the challenges the bank faced, the improvements it made, and the lessons it learned by reading the OMJ IRIS User Case, which was published earlier this year by the Global Impact Investing Network.

On the PBS Newshour site, Newshour economics correspondent Paul Solman talks with Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin about social impact bonds and how one such instrument is being used to address (and hopefully break) the cycle of recidivism in New York City.

Innovation

To help you and your organization circumvent the "idea-killing apparatus" that exists in almost every nonprofit, ace consultant David LaPiana shares half a dozen "lifesaving suggestions" designed to keep new ideas alive.

Journalism/Media

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Elizabeth Miller shares some advice from a South by Southwest panel discussion for new journalists looking to establish themselves in the rapidly changing field:

1. Don't be a jack of all trades. Go deep with one tech skill.
2. Be passionate.
3. Use academic opportunities to experiment.
4. Never underestimate the value of being able to construct a sentence.
5. Learn to code. (And even if you aren't willing to learn how, get up to speed with the possibilities of what good code can do.)
6. Don't be afraid to measure success (or failure).

Philanthropy

Based on the findings of a paper titled the Dynamics of Crowdfunding: Determinants of Success and Failure, the Kauffman Foundation's Mindee Forman highlights some of the factors that contribute to a successful crowdfunding campaign, including the size of an organization's network, whether the campaign has a strong geographic tie-in, and duration of the campaign. (Shorter is better.)

Social Justice

"How can grantmakers boost the impact of their contributions to a more just society?" Niki Jagpal asks on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog. "The answer might well lie in fusing strategy and justice in the ecosystem of the nonprofit sector. Consider the interconnectedness of the issues that funders are addressing and it becomes clear that our sector functions much like any system such as the human body: if one part of it changes, the entire system is affected...."

Social Media

In the last post in a series about her experience at this year's South by Southwest conference, Beth Kanter offers some metrics and measurement advice to nonprofits, including "don’t be a zombie repeating the mistakes of the past" and analyze your data using various methods.

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

-- The Editors

Leveraging Momentum in the Movement to End Violence Against Girls and Women

(Jennifer Buffett is the president and co-chair of the NoVo Foundation, an organization that seeks to empower girls and women worldwide and to end the violence and exploitation against them. )

When girls are empowered, they can transform communities and the world. But for too many girls, domestic and sexual violence stands in their way.

Countless advocates have worked tirelessly for decades to end violence against girls and women. Thanks to their work, we have made progress: Attitudes have shifted. Resources have been allocated. Systems have started to change. And yet, rates of violence remain staggeringly high -- violence that makes the headlines, like the gang rapes in India and Steubenville, Ohio, as well as everyday rapes and beatings that are so commonplace in our culture they are not even considered news.

What will it take to create lasting change -- to create a world where women and girls are safe and respected and can reach their amazing potential? We believe it will take bold action. And change is certainly afoot.

There has been incredible momentum building over the last two months around ending violence against girls and women. On February 14, One Billion Rising (an initiative led by V-Day) mobilized millions of women and men around the world in the largest global action in history to end violence against girls and women. On former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's penultimate day in the office, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum that institutionalizes an ambassador-at-large to run the Office of Global Women's Issues, ensuring that girls and women have a place on our national agenda.

During the first week of March, as the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status on Women explored the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls, President Obama signed the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. This version of VAWA, which among other things ensures critical funding for programs that support victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, education, and training for the judges and lawyers who prosecute these crimes, now guarantees that the LGBTQ, Native American, and immigrant communities also will find protection under the law. The bill also includes the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a law designed to prevent trafficking, aid victims, and hold traffickers accountable in court.

While big gains are being realized on the national and international stage, innovative organizations are changing the attitudes and behaviors of hundreds of thousands of Americans in their own communities. A Long Walk Home, an organization that uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against girls and women, has educated more than a hundred thousand survivors and their supporters to build safe communities and end gender violence in just a few years. A CALL TO MEN is working to engage men, who have the primarily responsibility for preventing domestic and sexual violence, in the solution. The organization goes where men are, from community centers and college campuses to football fields and boardrooms, and provides education, tools, and strategies to help them change their attitudes and behaviors. Over ten years, A CALL TO MEN has reached more than a hundred thousand people, including thirty thousand young men in high school and college and 90 percent of the teams in the National Football League.

While these incredible sparks of innovation are happening in pockets across America, groups tend to operate in silos, and culture-shifting campaigns like these are disconnected from one another. At the NoVo Foundation, we started the Move to End Violence program, a ten-year operational program to identify visionary leaders who are doing innovative social change work in isolation and bring them together to strengthen the movement to end domestic and sexual violence in the United States. Through their work, we will achieve a movement made up of powerful organizations working toward a shared vision for ending violence against girls and women.

Two years into our commitment, we could not be more pleased with the direction of this work. We are transforming leaders and ensuring they have the resources and capacity to lead the way in ending violence against girls and women. We are bringing together organizations that once saw one another as competitors and now see themselves as invaluable partners. We are helping these advocates adopt a more sustainable, impactful way of doing this work. And the leaders in this program and their allies are beginning to envision a new way of moving forward together.

Right now, leaders in the field are hosting "movement conversations" all across the country, engaging their allies in discussions around a bold vision for ending violence against girls and women and the actions needed to make that vision a reality. The field is on the precipice of becoming a powerful movement for social change in which talented leaders working in concert can leverage the power of their organizations to achieve bold impact.

It is clear the time is now. Years of hard work by many have set the stage for a series of policy wins, a new level of consciousness, a growing group of transformed leaders, and a public ready for change. We must collectively leverage this momentum. We need to invest in the advocacy and social change agenda that these innovative leaders are creating -- and work together as funders to put resources behind these efforts to create lasting change.

-- Jennifer Buffett

Weekend Link Roundup (March 9-10, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

In a two-part series on her Non-Profit Marketing blog (here and here), Katya Andresen shares highlights of a discussion she had with Allyson Kapin and Amy Sample Ward about the key themes in their recently published book Social Change Anytime Everywhere, including how nonprofits can use online tools to advance their work.

On the Communications Network blog, Courtney Williamson, the network's community manager, shares slides and video from Avoiding the Blind Spot: Telling Your Story With Pictures, a recent network webinar featuring Resource Media's Liz Banse and Scott Miller. Among other things, Banse and Miller outline three principles of good communication: 1) people are visual first, verbal second; 2) people's decisions and actions are based on emotional reaction more than rational thought; and 3) visuals are the most effective communications vehicles for evoking emotion and getting people to take action.

Disaster Relief

On the techPresident blog, Julia Wetherell looks at findings from a new Internews report on the effectiveness of crisis mapping following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. Among other things, the report found that the crisis map created on the Ushahidi platform was "not as critical to [the humanitarian] response" as previously thought, in part because many victims of the disaster weren't aware of it. "The accessibility of crisis mapping was also dependent on the availability of Internet service," says Wetherell. To address that shortcoming, the report recommends strengthening IT infrastructure, particularly in less connected rural areas, before the next disaster hits.

NPR has a good interview with reporter Jonathan Katz, author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster.

Women

Daily Beast contributor Caroline Linton announces the launch of the Half the Sky game on Facebook -- a clever use of social media that seeks to turn virtual donations made by players into real-world donations to organizations that support women and girls around the world, including the Fistula and United Nations foundations, Girls & Education Mentoring Services, Heifer International, ONE, Room to Read, and World Vision. As Linton explains, the game "helps educate the players to some of the challenges women face around the globe, especially as [the Indian woman narrator] Radhika travels to far-off lands such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Kenya."

Writing on the For Women blog on Friday, Ms. Foundation for Women senior strategist reminded us that "we still have miles to go in [the United States]" in terms of advancing women's rights. As the organization's most recent report notes:

• The U.S. economy marginalizes women and consistently relegates women of color to the lowest-paying jobs;
• Quality, flexible and affordable child care is inaccessible to working families, particularly those headed by women;
• Control over women's bodies is legislated by people who often prioritize political posturing over women's health;
• Gender-based violence remains a prevalent and complex problem, despite important policy victories like the recent renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.

"[So on this] International Women's Day," writes Kay, "let's set high goals for the U.S. and challenge ourselves to make this a place in which a woman may obtain justice and equality regardless of her race, socioeconomic status, age or immigration status," writes Kay. "The U.S. should be a beacon of rights, rather than a place that offers privilege to some while turning a blind eye to others' inequality."

And while Congress did recently vote to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, extending protections to homosexual and Native American victims of violence, more needs to be done, writes Niki Jagpal on NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, especially since "many of these community members do not report the crimes committed against them." To help address the problem, Jagpal urges grantmakers to prioritize "underserved communities intentionally and [fund] social justice work heavily, including funds for advocacy and community organizing by or on behalf of these communit[ies]."

Last but not least, Beth Kanter marked International Women's Day with a nice discussion of the Global Mom Relay on her blog. "Every time you share a relay post on Facebook, Twitter, or email or donate $5 or more as part of the relay," writes Kanter, "a $5 donation (up to $8,000 per day) will be donated by Johnson & Johnson and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to one of four initiatives [-- Girl Up, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, and Shot@Life --] that are helping women and children lead healthy and happy lives."

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

-- The Editors