5 Questions for...Henry Timms, Executive Director, 92nd Street Y

#GivingTuesday was established in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y in New York City and the United Nations Foundation as a sort of corrective to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two post-Thanksgiving "holidays" dedicated to spending and consuming. The idea, according to Henry Timms, executive director of the 92nd Street Y, was simple: "We were really just trying to say, look, everyone talks about the holiday season and the giving season, and we think there's space for the philanthropic community to make a statement, amongst all the consuming and buying, that giving is important, too."

PND recently spoke to Timms about a new report that provides an in-depth look at #GivingTuesday fundraising trends since 2012.

Philanthropy News Digest: A new analysis by Blackbaud shows double-digit year-over-year growth in #GivingTuesday donations for three years running. Is it your sense that the growth in donations is in addition to the usual giving that happens at the end of the year, or is it coming at the expense of traditional year-end giving?

Henry Timms: We haven't seen evidence of the latter. In fact, the data we have seen has been quite positive with respect to the additive value of #GivingTuesday, both in terms of gift size, which has been meaningful, and also from an overarching perspective. Our own #GivingTuesday campaign has been hugely beneficial in terms of additive donations. It would be naïve to suggest it doesn't happen, occasionally, but the overall trends are very positive. Steve MacLaughlin at Blackbaud has actually been very good on this topic and has written some really interesting pieces on how Americans think about giving, and one thing he talks about is that we do have this kind of default fear of scarcity in the nonprofit sector. It’s a kind of Oliver complex, where we tremble whenever we get up the nerve to ask for more. I wonder how healthy that is, especially this year, when we see first-half fundraising numbers coming in pretty bullish. It seems to me like it’s a good time to be asking for more. I was at an event in Westchester County recently, and someone there said to me, "You know what, I love #GivingTuesday because it gave me the confidence to ask, which is something I never had." Many of us recognize how important that permission is, and I think we need to encourage our colleagues in the field to ask more regularly. Not just on #GivingTuesday, but all year long.

PND: Was there anything in the Blackbaud study that surprised you?

HT: The finding which jumped out at me was mobile. Something like 17 percent of the online donation form views on #GivingTuesday were from mobile phones. But how many nonprofits are ready to accept mobile donations in a meaningful way? It's a wake-up call. If you've spent any time in Silicon Valley, you know that everyone is building for mobile. The same can't be said of the nonprofit sector, so I hope that finding starts to get people really thinking about mobile. I was also pleased to see a lot of smaller organizations report positive #GivingTuesday results, because one of the early criticisms of the campaign was that it would only work for large organizations. Generally speaking, the data in the Blackbaud study is quite interesting, and one of the many good things about #GivingTuesday is that, three years on, we have richer data and a lot more of it.

Weekend Link Roundup (June 27-28, 2015)

Our weekly roundup of noteworthy items from and about the social sector. For more links to great content, follow us on Twitter at @pndblog....

Economy

"For young and old alike," a new poll suggests, "debt now looms as a major factor in setting their life course. An identical 38 percent of both young and older respondents said that in making decisions such as when to get married, buy a home, or have children, debt had affected their choices 'a great deal'. Nancy Cook, a correspondent for National Journal, reports for The Atlantic.

Fundraising

On the Nonprofit Marketing Blog, Jennifer Chandler, vice president and director of network support and knowledge sharing at the National Council of Nonprofits, shares some thoughts on how new rules issued by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) could "make life less stressful for nonprofit fundraising professionals and development directors."

In a post on the Software Advice blog, Janna Finch, a market research associate at the firm, shares key findings from a report based on a recent survey of nonprofit event planners.

Giving

Is charitable giving really at a record high? On the CNBC website, Kelley Holland takes a closer look at the numbers.

Higher Education

Meredith Kolodner, a staff writer for the Hechinger Report, checks in with a deeply researched look at merit-based scholarship programs, which, studies show, "disproportionately benefit middle- and upper-income students and have little impact on college graduation rates.

[Infographic] Impact Investing Opportunities

Impact investing is an activity "that aims to generate a specific social or environmental benefit in addition to financial gain." Previously the domain of institutional investors, over the last five years it has begun to attract the attention of foundations and high-net-worth individuals and, according to the team at Getting Smart, has powered a revolution in ed tech. In addition to outlining basic considerations for donors thinking about making an impact investment and listing ten education investment categories, our infographic of the week (courtesy of Getting Smart) includes a link to a paper (38 pages, PDF) that identifies twenty-five impact investment opportunities in K-12 education.

[Review] 'Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology'

Don't be fooled by the title of Kentaro Toyama's Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology: this is not an iconoclastic anti-technology manifesto. Nor is it a paean to an idealized pre-digital age when social change was driven by "people in the street." Instead, as back-cover blurbs from both Bill Gates and William Easterly, the NYU economics professor whose book The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor excoriated the kind of "technocratic" global health interventions favored by the likes of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Geek Heresy presents a nuanced argument for a human-centric approach to development work that leverages, rather than relies on, technology to create change.

A "recovering technoholic," Toyama, co-founder of Microsoft Research India and now the W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan, once believed fervently in the power of technology to solve a range of "social afflictions." Like many of his peers in the tech industry, he embraced the idea that digital technology and cleverly designed devices could improve failing schools, eliminate health disparities, and lift communities out of poverty. But his work in India and elsewhere soon disabused him of that notion, convincing him, instead, that technology's role in society, not to mention its many grave consequences, was widely misunderstood. He couldn't ignore the fact, for instance, that Microsoft Research India's pilot projects, though successful in well-funded, closely monitored demonstration schools, faltered when scaled to underfunded government schools — in part due to the lack of adequately trained teachers, engaged administrators, and tech support and infrastructure. In those situations, technology not only didn't improve things; it exacerbated existing problems and disadvantages.

This "Law of Amplification" is the crux of Toyama's argument. "[T]echnology"s primary effect," he writes, "is to amplify human forces...[and] magnify existing social forces" — another way of saying "the degree to which technology makes an impact depends on existing human capacities." While it isn't a novel idea, as the author himself admits, Toyama sees it as a useful framework for a discussion of how NGOs, development experts, and industry leaders can leverage technology more effectively to address poverty, educational disparities, and other development challenges.

Restoring Eyesight: Leveraging Tech to Empower People

Jadi Begum Bi lives in a small mud house near Sargodha, Pakistan. She may never meet Shakil Khan, a member of a displaced community near Syedpur, Bangladesh, or Raju Sharma, a laborer in Patna, India. They all have one thing in common, though: they had been blind for years, until their eyesight was restored and their lives transformed as part of RS Foundation's ocular procedures program.

A Canadian nonprofit organization, the RS Foundation has facilitated more than fourteen thousand procedures for men, women, and children over the past six years by funding local and international partners such as OBAT Helpers USA, Sightsavers in the UK, and the Seva Canada Society. Other organizations engaged in this work in a significant way include 20/20/20 (U.S.), the Fred Hollows Foundation (Australia), the Aravind Eye Care System (India), LRBT (Pakistan) and Unite for Sight, whose eye clinics have benefited 1.9 million patients in Ghana, Honduras, and India.

According to the World Health Organization, 60 percent of the estimated half a million children who go blind every year in developing countries will die in childhood. WHO further notes that restoring sight is the single most cost-effective health intervention in reducing global poverty. For the cost of dinner at an inexpensive restaurant, a poor, visually impaired individual can have their sight restored, regain the ability to work and provide for their family, and recover their lost dignity. Indeed, studies have found that eye surgery interventions in developing Asian and African countries "significantly increase personal consumption expenditure (PCE) among operated cases" and raise "productivity among vulnerable groups, in particular females, [the] elderly and those with the [least] economic opportunity."

5 Questions for...Vic De Luca, President, Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation

The Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation was established in 1947 by Charles Noyes, a real estate developer in Manhattan, in honor of his wife, Jessie Smith, herself a women's suffrage and civil rights activist. Initially, Noyes set up the foundation to provide scholarships, with half earmarked for non-white students. In the 1990s, the family decided to change course and began to provide funding more directly to organizations working on issues in which they had an interest. Today, most of its support goes to grassroots organizations and movements in the United States working "to change environmental, social, economic, and political conditions to bring about a more just, equitable, and sustainable world."

Recently, PND chatted with Vic De Luca, who joined the foundation in 1991 and has been its president since 2000, about its donor-advised campaign, a new initiative aimed at convincing donors to make more timely allocations from their donor-advised funds.

Philanthropy News Digest: The Noyes Foundation recently launched a campaign around the timely distribution of monies from donor-advised funds. Why is the distribution of funds from DAFs suddenly an issue?

Vic De Luca: Donor-advised funds have been around a long time, administered in many cases by community foundations, but they started to become really popular among donors in the 1990s after mutual fund companies like Fidelity and Vanguard began to offer them, and by the early 2000s their popularity was off the charts. One of the reasons for their popularity is that contributions to a donor-advised fund qualify for an immediate tax deduction, while donors have complete say over how those tax-advantaged dollars are allocated. In other words, you're allowed to transfer funds from your own personal account at Fidelity or Vanguard to a public charity, and then at some point in the future you get to "advise" that public charity as to where those dollars should go. It's a simple process. You just contact the fund-holder, answer some questions, and make a contribution; it can be a one-time contribution, or you can choose to contribute on a regular basis. And you can make disbursements from the fund at any time, or not at all.

PND: What part of that equation does your campaign address?

VDL: We're not saying donor-advised funds are good or bad; we're saying the current system is broken, in that it allows an individual donor to take an immed­iate tax deduction but does not insist on a corresponding responsibility to put those dollars to work for public benefit in a timely fashion, which is something we'd like to see. We think donors should be encouraged to give, and what we're trying to do is to say to individuals who have donor-advised funds, "Look, you've made your contribution to this public charity, you've gotten your tax deduction, don't let that money sit there, let's put it to good use." We think the money sitting in donor-advised funds is an untapped resource that could and should be used to deal with some of the pressing problems of the day. And we can help donors who share our social justice concerns do that.

How to Identify Prospects in a Small Shop

When it comes to identifying prospects, many otherwise intelligent people enter the world of the Sugar Plum Fairy. They figure that all they have to do is research individuals with a high net worth, determine an appropriate six-figure "ask," find out where these individuals live, and then track them down and request a gift. The Sugar Plum Fairy part is that these individuals will be delighted to have been stalked in this way and will make the gift. 

In fact, effective prospect research has to start with people to whom you have access: your own friends and family, your board members and their networks, your organization's current donors, and your donors' friends and family members. Many famous people might, in fact, be interested in your organization. But getting your message in front of them requires a messenger: someone you know has to know them. 

So, we start with who we know. Then we must determine: of the people we know, who gives money to charitable causes? In a typical year, about 70 percent of the adult population will make a donation to a nonprofit organization, so there's a better-than-average chance that the people we have access to are givers. That said, there is no point in asking someone for money who never gives. Once you've eliminated the people who never give, you have a list of prospects to research. And if you hang out with high-net-worth individuals who also happen to be generous donors, then you'll want to do more research on them and maybe eventually ask them if they'd be interested in supporting your organization.

When thinking about prospect research, keep the following in mind:

[Review] 'The Social Profit Handbook: The Essential Guide to Setting Goals, Assessing Outcomes, and Achieving Success for Mission-Driven Organizations'

In his poem "i thank You God for most this amazing," e.e. cummings wrote that "now the ears of my ears awake and / now the eyes of my eyes are opened." It is precisely this sense of clarity that comes to mind when reading The Social Profit Handbook: The Essential Guide to Setting Goals, Assessing Outcomes, and Achieving Success for Mission-Driven Organizations (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015) by David Grant, former president and CEO of the New Jersey-based Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

As Grant notes, the world of the twenty-first century increasingly is defined by metrics and data. The social sector is no exception, and calls for better and more timely measurement of its activities have become a feature of the landscape. Gone are the days when funders were content to let intuition and anecdotal evidence guide their funding choices. Donors today — both institutional and individual — are keen to move the needle on large, seemingly intractable societal and environmental challenges, and in attempting to do so they have become ever-more interested in data that can demonstrate the impact of the programs and organizations in which they have invested. As a long-time admirer and teacher of poetry and literature, Grant relishes the complexity of this brave new world and applies his nuanced perspective toward a keen assessment of what it means for the field. "Social profit," he writes, "is about desired social benefits, and so it has to be defined locally depending on what a community of people values and what they need. It will never have a fixed or standard measure, and efforts to create one will get bogged down in endless quibbles and conflict about measurement itself."

According to Grant, efforts to measure social impact are fraught with challenges with which the for-profit world does not have to contend. Trying to balance multiple bottom lines, for example, is necessarily more complex than having to worry about a single one, he notes, especially given the fact there is no single agreed-upon unit of "social profit." Rather than focus on quantitative measures, therefore, Grant emphasizes qualitative "formative assessment." While not ignoring quantitative performance measures, he favors "soft measurements" and argues that a true assessment of social profit demands "a combination of pertinent metrics and a qualitative description...that can only be created by the people who are providing and receiving it."

Climate Action: A Catalyst for Change

The coming months promise to be the most hopeful yet in our long fight against global climate change.

President Obama is moving forward with a plan to clean up dirty power plants. The Clean Power Plan will do more to cut the dangerous carbon pollution that's driving climate chaos than any single step ever taken, and it will also spur tremendous innovation and create tens of thousands of clean energy jobs.

Elsewhere, Pope Francis is poised to issue a papal encyclical on our collective moral obligation to protect future generations from the dangers of climate change. And more than a hundred and ninety world leaders will gather in Paris later this year with the goal of taking concerted action to confront the climate crisis. In doing so, they will also be creating a more equitable, just, and sustainable future for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

And yet, powerful forces, most notably the fossil fuel industry and its political allies, are prepared to do everything they can to derail this progress. Theirs is a simple agenda: put fossil fuel profits first — even if it puts the rest of us at risk.

In the two-year run-up to the midterm elections last November, the fossil fuel industry spent more than $720 million to support its agenda and its allies in Congress. They seem to be getting their money's worth. Republican leaders in the House and Senate have been pushing legislation meant to block the Clean Power Plan, while offering no alternative of their own to address climate change.

We can't let them get away with it.

Philanthropy’s Difficult Dance With Inequality

America's foundations do not easily use the word "inequality." This may seem surprising in the wake of the Ford Foundation's recent announcement that it will refocus 100 percent of its grantmaking on "inequality in all its forms," but perhaps it shouldn't. Out of close to four million grants made by American foundations and recorded by Foundation Center since 2004, only 251 use the word "inequality" in describing their purpose. Moreover, the geographic focus of many of those grants is countries such as El Salvador, Nigeria and Malaysia -- or it's simply "global," which in the parlance of most foundations means the rest of the world. More common are terms like "opportunity" and "poverty," which can certainly be viewed as related to "inequality" but hardly are synonyms for it.

Nevertheless, inequality is an inescapable fact of our world: while extreme poverty in many regions of the globe may be declining, recent research suggests that the gap between rich and poor is fast becoming a growing threat to peace, economic prosperity, the environment, public health, democracy and just about any other major challenge you can name. Indeed, one of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals developed by seventy nations (with the direct participation of 7.5 million people around the world) is to "reduce inequality within and among nations." So, why don't more foundations embrace the term?

Inequality is controversial. In most camps, the word "inequality" is not neutral. It is a concept that implies a search for causes rather than the treatment of symptoms. It requires the kind of work that Carnegie Corporation board chair Russell Leffingwell so eloquently described in his McCarthy-era testimony to Congress: "I think [foundations] are entering into the most difficult of all fields....They are going right straight ahead, knowing that their fingers will be burned again, because in these fields you cannot be sure of your results, and you cannot be sure that you will avoid risk." It is also difficult for a single foundation, or even a coalition of foundations, to know where to begin. Oxfam reports that eighty-five ultra-high-net-worth individuals hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. How do you tackle such a challenge? Besides, this simply isn’t the kind of work that most foundations do. More than 60 percent of the giving by U.S. foundations goes to mainstream causes in the fields of health, education, and the arts.

Weekend Link Roundup (June 13-14, 2015)

Our weekly roundup of noteworthy items from and about the social sector. For more links to great content, follow us on Twitter at @pndblog....

Criminal Justice

On the BMAfunders.org site, Shawn Dove, CEO of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement, argues that mass incarceration of young men and boys of color "is a symptom of a larger disease that is prevalent both before and after arrest and imprisonment occur." 

Fundraising

A new report from Crain’s New York Business, in partnership with the Association of Fundraising Professionals, finds that 57 percent of respondents to a spring 2014 survey said they expected to raise more in 2014 than in 2013, while a majority — 52 percent (compared to 29 percent in 2013) — said their organizations planned to hire development staff in 2015 to take advantage of the more generous giving climate.

"Generation Z, the heirs to the digital empire built by Generation X and expanded by Millennials, is made up of people who don’t just spend time online — they live there," writes Beth Kanter on her blog. "And despite their youth... kids in Generation Z are regularly rocking social media for social good. Well-informed, constantly connected, and more tech-confident than your aunt Jan, they're taking on the world's problems, one online fundraiser at a time.

Governance

Where do nonprofit boards fall short? The Nonprofit Law Blog's Erin Bradrick shares some thoughts.

Impact/Effectiveness

On her Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington chats with Mary Winkler, senior research associate with the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, about measurement as a "necessary practice" for nonprofit organizations, the difference between measurement and evaluation, and the challenge inherent in finding funding for measurement work. 

[Infographic] CECP - Giving in Numbers 2015

After a short hiatus, we're back with a new infographic, courtesy of CECP, a coalition of one hundred and fifty CEOs "united in the belief that societal improvement is an essential measure of business performance," and the Conference Board, a global business membership and research association. Based on an annual survey, it provides a nice snapshot of "social engagement" at 271 multi-billion-dollar companies, including 67 of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500.

5 Questions for...Michael I. Sovern, Board President, Shubert Foundation

The state of the nonprofit arts sector in the United States has ignited passionate debate in recent years. PND asked Michael I. Sovern, board president of the Shubert Foundation, which recently awarded grants totaling $24 million to nearly five hundred arts nonprofits, about the role of philanthropy — and, specifically, general operating support — for performing arts organizations. Sovern is Chancellor Kent Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and former president of Columbia University (1980-93), and has served on the boards of numerous nonprofits, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, WNET/13, and the American Academy in Rome.

Philanthropy News Digest: The Shubert Foundation describes itself as "the nation’s largest private foundation dedicated to unrestricted funding of not-for-profit theaters, dance companies, professional theater training programs, and related service agencies." When did the foundation adopt a policy of providing unrestricted funding to performing arts groups? And why do you believe it's important for the foundation to give its grantees maximum flexibility with respect to the way they use their grant income?

Michael I. Sovern: Our policy of providing unrestricted funding was already in place when I joined the foundation's board over thirty years ago. Although the foundation was established in 1947, its formal funding priorities and guidelines were created in the 1970s, which is when the focus on unrestricted funding for professional theater companies — with a secondary focus on professional dance companies — began.

We have reviewed the policy from time to time but always have come up with the same answer. Each of the many performing arts organizations we support is wrestling with issues specific to its own location and circumstances while also facing challenges that are common across the industry. We believe that the administrators, artists, and boards of our grantees know best where the funds we provide should be directed. Our confidence is buttressed by our multi-faceted approach to the evaluation of each company — one that considers the artistic, fiscal, and administrative aspects of the organization. This careful annual review helps us to feel comfortable with awarding unrestricted grants.

PND: Why do you think so many arts funders are reluctant to provide general operating support?

MS: Some donors want to see the specific impact of their contributions immediately. Some enjoy exercising control. Fresh initiatives are more exciting than paying the electric bills. But the quest for earmarked support can draw an organization's attention away from its central mission. Time and energy that could be spent strengthening the company may be diverted, possibly to the detriment of the overall health of the organization. A search for replacement funds to continue the projects or programs can drain resources while often yielding minimal results. The impact on the bottom line of the organization and the toll on the company itself may well prove that the pursuit of these funds was a mistake.

The Future of 'Community' for Community Foundations

Community foundations have existed for more than a hundred years by adhering to a simple proposition: they exist to serve their local communities. Today, this proposition is being challenged by an increasingly global, twenty-first century mindset and amazing new technologies that strengthen connections even as they weaken the importance of place. As a result, the definition of "community" is changing, and community foundations must ask themselves: Will we change with it?

More and more, Americans see themselves as global citizens – both influencing and being influenced by international events. The ubiquitous nature of smartphones and social media apps means that almost everyone is only a click away from staying in touch with any person they've ever met or from learning about a new development affecting any cause they've ever cared about. At the same time, Americans are more willing than ever to relocate to different communities in pursuit of a job or a different lifestyle.

The fact is, we are all part of multiple communities based on professional and personal interests that do not necessarily stem from or exist within a defined geography. Some of these communities exist only in cyberspace. And yet people have – and will always have – a direct connection to the place where they currently live. This presents a significant challenge – and a huge opportunity – for community foundations, which increasingly must figure out how to respond to locally based donors who support causes and organizations outside a foundation's stated geographical boundaries.

Put simply, community foundations that can address both the local and global philanthropic interests of their donors are the ones most likely to grow over the coming decades. At Silicon Valley Community Foundation, we are committed to embracing this responsibility and believe that community foundations that cannot or choose not to do so will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage over time. 

President Obama’s Eulogy for Beau Biden

Below is the full text of the extraordinary eulogy for Beau Biden that Barack Obama delivered on June 6, 2015, at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden, the vice president's eldest son and a former attorney general of Delaware and Iraq War veteran, died on May 30 from brain cancer. We were out of pocket over the weekend and only learned of the president's remarks through Dave Pell's not-to-be-missed enewsletter, Next Draft. On Medium, Pell wrote he felt obliged to share the president's remarks because, in addition to being "one of the most amazing and thoughtful remembrances I've ever [heard]," they "seriously make [me] want to be better." We couldn't agree more.

___________

"A man," wrote an Irish poet, "is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men." Beau Biden was an original. He was a good man. A man of character. A man who loved deeply, and was loved in return.

Your Eminences, your Excellencies, General Odierno, distinguished guests; to Hallie, Natalie and Hunter; to Hunter, Kathleen, Ashley, Howard; the rest of Beau's beautiful family, friends, colleagues; to Jill and to Joe  —  we are here to grieve with you, but more importantly, we are here because we love you.

Without love, life can be cold and it can be cruel. Sometimes cruelty is deliberate —  the action of bullies or bigots, or the inaction of those indifferent to another's pain. But often, cruelty is simply born of life, a matter of fate or God's will, beyond our mortal powers to comprehend. To suffer such faceless, seemingly random cruelty can harden the softest hearts, or shrink the sturdiest. It can make one mean, or bitter, or full of self-pity. Or, to paraphrase an old proverb, it can make you beg for a lighter burden.

But if you're strong enough, it can also make you ask God for broader shoulders; shoulders broad enough to bear not only your own burdens, but the burdens of others; shoulders broad enough to shield those who need shelter the most.

To know Beau Biden is to know which choice he made in his life. To know Joe and the rest of the Biden family is to understand why Beau lived the life he did. For Beau, a cruel twist of fate came early —  the car accident that took his mom and his sister, and confined Beau and Hunter, then still toddlers, to hospital beds at Christmastime.

But Beau was a Biden. And he learned early the Biden family rule: If you have to ask for help, it's too late. It meant you were never alone; you don't even have to ask, because someone is always there for you when you need them.

And so, after the accident, Aunt Valerie rushed in to care for the boys, and remained to help raise them. Joe continued public service, but shunned the parlor games of Washington, choosing instead the daily commute home, maintained for decades, that would let him meet his most cherished duty —  to see his kids off to school, to kiss them at night, to let them know that the world was stable and that there was firm ground under their feet.