Weekend Link Roundup (April 29-30, 2017)

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

Children and Youth

In a post on the Colorado Trust site, Kristin Jones, the trust's assistant director of communications, details three of the structural factors that, according to the latest data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT initiative,  are holding back children in the state, with real consequences for their health.

Communications/Marketing

As if there isn't already enough in the world to disagree about, design shop Elevation has created a gallery showcasing its favorite 75 nonprofit logos. Let the games begin!

Environment

Barry Gold, director of the Environment program at the Walton Family Foundation, explains why fishing reforms recently enacted in Indonesia and the U.S. Gulf Coast region point the way to a more sustainable fishing industry in the twenty-first century.

Foundation Center has launched a new Web portal, FundingTheOcean.org, designed to help funders and activists track, inform, and inspire ocean conservation. 

The UN Foundation's Justine Sullivan shares seven reasons why the U.S. would be foolish to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Food Insecurity

On the Civil Eats site, Mark Winne talks to Andy Fisher, author of the new book, Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance Between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups, about poverty, the "business" of hunger, and Fisher's vision for a new anti-hunger movement.

[Infographic] The State of Donor Retention 2017

The folks at nonprofit management and fundraising software company Bloomerang recently surveyed 775 nonprofit organizations (mostly) in the U.S. and Canada "to see where they stand on the issue of donor retention" — and are sharing some of the key findings in a nice little infographic on their website (and below):

No real surprises here. The vast majority (99 percent) of the surveyed respondents have heard the term "donor retention" (up from 98 percent in 2014, the last time Bloomerang conducted the survey), while two-thirds (67 percent) track their donor retention rate (up from 55 percent in 2014). Maybe more interesting are the reasons nonprofits give for NOT tracking donor retention:

• don't have the tools (20 percent)
• don't know how (16 percent)
• aren't sure what they would do differently if they knew their rate (14 percent)
• no one has ever asked to see it (13 percent)
• don't care about the metric (1 percent)
• "other”

What about your organization? Is donor retention something you and your colleagues think about and track? And if not, why not? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

To learn more about the importance of donor retention and why it's a critical metric for your nonprofit, check out our Sustainable Nonprofit archive, where you'll find any number of articles on the topic — and lots of material on other topics of interest!

10 Ways Technology Can Advance Family Planning

Contraceptive social marketing used to be a straightforward, relatively low-tech affair. You would design an attractively packaged condom or contraceptive product and sell it to as many retail outlets as possible. To increase demand, you would create TV and radio advertisements and produce T-shirts, caps, and other promotional items to drive interest in your brands.

Times have changed. While my organization, DKT International, still uses those tactics, we now have new technologies at our disposal that enable us to reach more people than ever with information about family planning products and services.

According to the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, 94 percent of people living in low- and middle-income countries now have access to mobile phones, up from 4 percent in 2000. That means more people in the world have access to mobile phones than electricity or clean water.

And, as almost everyone knows, social media has become an increasingly prominent communication platform. Eighty-nine percent of Internet users in Indonesia use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2016.  This should come as no surprise, given the excellent 4G coverage in that country combined with the Indonesian penchant for community building. The statistics in other countries are equally impressive: 88 percent in the Philippines, 85 percent in Nigeria, 81 percent in Mexico, and 79 percent in Brazil. By comparison, only 71 percent of Internet users in the United States are on one or more social networking site.

These developments give family planning organizations a wealth of new opportunities and channels to share information about contraception.

With that in mind, here are ten innovative ways technology is being used to advance sexual reproductive health globally:

1. Sex info 24/7: Thanks to a new technology embedded in Facebook Messenger, DKT Brazil has launched "Prudence Advisor," a "chatbot" on the Prudence Condom Facebook page that can answer sex-related questions in real time.

2. Knowledge panels: Google has introduced knowledge panels, a handy way of accessing information about modern contraception (or anything else). When you search for the name of a contraceptive method, you'll see information regarding that method pop up on the right side of the search results. The potential to educate millions of young people with a simple mouse click is enormous. Thank you, Google!

Nonprofits, Partisan Politics, and Tax Policy

Calls for tax reform by the White House, Congress, and others have led to proposals that would have a direct and profound impact on nonprofit organizations and philanthropy. Of those proposals, one from the House Republicans calls for eliminating the tax deduction for charitable donations, one floated by the White House would eliminate an incentive for charitable bequests, and another from a coalition of nonprofit organizations would expand the deduction to more taxpayers. The three proposals couldn't be more different.

But while charities and donors are scrambling to preserve (or expand) their tax advantages, there are other worrisome proposals floating around. Most significantly, President Trump and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill want to change the tax code to allow charities to engage in partisan electoral activity — while, at the other extreme, some want to disallow tax deductions for support of nonprofit advocacy and policy work.

Certainly, one can understand why most tax-exempt organizations would fight to protect the tax incentives for charitable contributions that support their work, but such efforts raise questions about whether charities and donors are worried more about their own self-interest than the public good.

Nonprofits' efforts to preserve and extend the charitable deduction would be less suspect were the organizations fighting for those policies as engaged in the debates over other government tax, budget, and policy initiatives — debates that profoundly threaten many of the causes and constituencies they exist to serve. When nonprofit and foundation leaders are missing from such debates, it becomes easier to impugn their motives for trying to preserve their own tax advantages. Protecting the charitable deduction is not an adequate surrogate for broader action.

Against this backdrop, the president's pledge to "totally destroy" the so-called Johnson Amendment prohibition on charities' involvement in partisan electoral campaigns needs to be addressed (as do other administration proposals).

More Than a School

The following post is part of a year-long series here on PhilanTopic that addresses major themes related to the center’s work: the use of data to understand and address important issues and challenges; the benefits of foundation transparency for donors, nonprofits/NGOs, and the broader public; the emergence of private philanthropy globally; the role of storytelling in conveying the critical work of philanthropy; and what it means, and looks like, to be an effective, high-functioning foundation, nonprofit, or changemaker in the twenty-first century. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.

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As a unifying, universal agenda for countries around the world, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a unique opportunity to deliver innovative solutions and much-needed development assistance to the world's poorest countries and regions. Philanthropists the world over have answered this rallying cry and are playing a critical role in filling technical and funding gaps between what is required and what is available, while also providing important intellectual capital. While the current impact of these efforts is not to be underestimated, it is crucially important that philanthropic dollars are directed in the right way, to the right projects, at the right time. Without lasting buy-in from populations and communities targeted by these investments, impact can fade rapidly and disappear altogether over time. But to really have an impact, this funding needs to go beyond standalone projects and contribute to longer-term systems change.

Here's an example of what we're talking about. A foundation or individual donor decides to pay for the construction of a new school in an impoverished village. The odds are good that, when built, the school will have an immediate impact on the local population. But if the school is not supported by parents and local stakeholders, there's a decent chance that, within a few years, it will fall into disrepair. To achieve real, lasting impact, the school should be viewed as a community-based project that, among other things, provides local youth with a competency-based curriculum and skills training that prepares them for market-driven employment opportunities.

These are real-world challenges for philanthropic investment

It is critically important that philanthropists (and other social investment types) understand the complex development "ecosystems" of the countries in which they work. Why? Because no issue is an island, and many issues overlap in a complex web of cause and effect. Those wanting to have a long-lasting impact in a country must understand this reality, invest wisely, and work with local and national stakeholders to make sure the solutions they support truly are sustainable.

One thing we have seen time and again in the development field is philanthropy and government not working with each other. This often leads to missed opportunities for collaboration, additional funding, and innovation. Philanthropy can benefit from the public sector's knowledge of current policy and development frameworks, the specific and interrelated needs of the target population, and details about what has, and has not, worked in the past. Similarly, governments too often miss out on philanthropy's deep field knowledge, agility, and tolerance of risk. To improve this situation, we believe philanthropy and government need to locate where their interests converge, identify instances where they can collaborate, and share lessons learned.

5 Questions for...Alma Powell, Chair, America’s Promise Alliance

America's Promise Alliance, the nation's largest network dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth, is marking its twentieth anniversary on April 18 with a Recommit to Kids Summit and Promise Night Gala in New York City. PND spoke via email with Alma Powell, the network's chairwoman, about its work, the progress it has made toward its goals over the last twenty years, and what every American can do to help.

Philanthropy News Digest: A lot has changed since America's Promise was founded twenty years ago. Are the Five Promises to America's children and youth announced at the Presidents' Summit for America's Future in Philadelphia in April 1997 — caring adults, safe places to learn and play, a healthy start, an effective education, and an opportunity to serve — as relevant today as they were twenty years ago? And what, if anything, would you add to those five promises?

Alma Powell: The Five Promises are just as relevant and necessary today as they were twenty years ago. I can't imagine that ever changing. They are rooted in both sound social science and common sense and represent the minimal conditions that every child, in every neighborhood, has a right to expect. If these objectives aren't met, it is not the fault of children; it is a collective failure of adults in this country.

I wouldn't add another promise to the five. When it comes to young people, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We need to summon the will.

PND: Of the five commitments that form the core of the organization's mission, which has been kept most successfully, and where has progress been unexpectedly difficult?

AP: Thanks to the work of researchers and youth development experts, we know a lot more about what young people need to thrive. Better data helps us pinpoint educational problems by school district, school, and student, enabling us to focus help exactly where it is most needed. At the same time, more nonprofits and other organizations are involved in this work than ever before; advances in neuroscience have opened new windows into how children learn and have underscored the importance of the early childhood years; and scientific breakthroughs on the impact of adversity, high levels of stress, and trauma have taught us a lot about why some students struggle and how they might be helped.

All that has led to progress. Today, infant and child mortality rates are lower, rates of smoking and alcohol use among teens are lower, and high school graduation rates are up. More young people are living in homes with parents who graduated high school, and more students are attending college.

But there's more work to do. The child poverty rate is about the same as it was twenty years ago, snd social and economic mobility has stagnated. If we're to help more young people get on a more sustainable path to the middle class, we need to address the issues behind generational poverty and its long-term effects on young people. 

Saving the Affordable Care Act

That was a close one. Twenty-four million Americans get to keep their health coverage — for now. Grassroots pressure undoubtedly influenced the decision of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and the White House to pull the Obamacare repeal bill, but winning the first round of this battle is not grounds for complacency. Indeed, now more than ever, Americans need a robust political movement in support of affordable health care for all.

In the end, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), as the bill was called, failed because Republican members of the House who wanted to dismember the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could not agree among themselves how to do that. Ordinary Americans also were fortunate to have powerful stakeholders such as the American Hospital Association and American Medical Association on their side. There is no escaping the fact, however, that Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress and the White House in the 2016 election by promising to repeal the ACA.

This makes the conspicuous lack of consumer-focused nonprofit organizations focused on health and policy all the more troubling. The situation is in stark contrast to the corporate healthcare sector, which spent $509 million in 2016 lobbying the federal government on behalf of drug makers, hospitals, providers, and insurance companies. In addition, most health nonprofits focus on a particular area of health care, such as insurance coverage or wellness or mental health, which contributes to the field's inability to build a unified movement for more affordable and accessible care.

Support Girls of Color by Listening First

Last year, the NoVo Foundation announced a seven-year, $90 million commitment to support and deepen the movement for girls of color in the United States. After more than a decade of partnership with incredible organizations working with and advocating on behalf of adolescent girls across the country, we saw that the need for additional funding to support girls of color specifically could not be more urgent or clear.

Girls of color face structural barriers in nearly every aspect of their lives. Over 60 percent of girls of color are born to families living on low incomes or below the poverty line. Sexual violence is pervasive in the lives of all girls and often goes neglected, especially for girls of color. What's more, girls of color who face harm are often unfairly penalized. Black girls, for example, are six times more likely to be suspended in school than their white peers — and are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system. At least eight trans women have already been murdered this year, most of them women and girls of color. All these disparities combine and deepen into new disparities in adulthood: the median wealth for single black women, for example, is just $100, compared to $44,000 for single white men.

Despite this profound structural inequity, a movement for and with girls of color thrives. And we knew that the best way to deepen our own relationship with this movement was to be guided directly by the women and girls of color who'd been leading it for decades — rather than by our own assumptions. Otherwise, we'd simply be reinforcing the very structural barriers and power structures we sought to dismantle.

So, before developing a new strategy to guide our work, we spent a year traveling across the country, from the Northeast to the rural South, from the Midwest to the Southwest, to hear from girls of color as well as activists, movement leaders, and organizers of all ages. We prioritized communities that are often underresourced, less visible, and living with their own unique challenges — as well as possessing unique strengths.

The Role of Philanthropy in Preventing Health Care Harm

Preventable harm in health care is a leading cause of death in America and must be tackled more comprehensively — as a public health crisis — than it has been to date. Philanthropy has a key role to play, and it's highlighted in a new call to action developed by the National Patient Safety Foundation.

The call to action builds on successful efforts to reduce health care-associated infections and is inspired by America's long history of coordinated public health responses to specific diseases and conditions. That history produced what arguably is the greatest advance in America in the twentieth century: an increase in the life expectancy of Americans of some thirty years.

Efforts to improve patient safety have been ongoing for several decades, but the improvement has been limited. What's needed now is a shift from reactive piecemeal interventions driven by individual organizations to a coordinated system-wide effort aimed at providing safe care delivery across all aspects of care. Philanthropy is essential to that shift, and its role should play out across several dimensions.

First, foundations and other funders are needed to help build a consensus around the importance of a coordinated national effort to eliminate preventable harm in health care. As a nation, we know how to create successful public health responses to crises. Preventing harm in health care certainly rises to that level, and because so much of that harm is preventable, failing to combat it comprehensively is nothing less than tragic.

Millennial vs. Boomer Strategies: Time to Move On?

If you've ever talked to or heard from a consultant about how your organization can and should reach younger donors, I'd almost guarantee you were told something like, "Wait till they turn seventy-five," or, "Your young donors are fifty-five."

But is that right? Should you only focus your fundraising efforts on Silents and boomers? And is a millennial-focused strategy so bad?

Let's take a closer look.

No doubt about it, a millennial-focused fundraising strategy can be a challenge. (That's not an insult; it's supported by data.)

Then why would an organization even consider such a strategy? Typically, millennial-focused strategies are driven by two factors:

Media-driven generational comparisons. The media love to compare millennials and younger cohorts to their elders, especially boomers. But guess what? That's not a new storyline. The Silent Generation was compared to their parents, the so-called Greatest Generation; boomers were compared to their parents, the Silents; and Gen X-ers were compared to boomers. How long will it be before millennials are compared to the so-called centennials? The important thing for nonprofit organizations is to figure out ways to reach the rising generation as earlier generations move through and out of their peak giving years.

Board-driven pressure. Board members — older ones, especially — are beginning to notice that many of the prospective donors they see at fundraising events, industry meetings, and organizational activities don’t necessarily look like them. It's to be expected that older donors will continue to provide a significant amount of your organization's revenue for the foreseeable future. But Silent and boomer board members know they aren't getting any younger and, combined with all the media coverage of millennials, they are becoming increasingly interested in persuading leadership to shift some of their fundraising focus to younger generations.

Now, if you are an organizational leader, there isn't much you can do to control, or even shape, the media's obsession with generational comparisons. But you certainly can do something in response to pressure from your board — and I'm not talking about issuing a statement like, "We have lots of younger donors age fifty-five and over."

Weekend Link Roundup (April 15-16, 2017)

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

Advocacy

Our colleagues over at GrantCraft have put together an excellent suite of resources that captures the wisdom of philanthropic leaders who have participated in multi-party advocacy collaboratives. Check it out.

And Salsa Labs, a maker of integrated software for nonprofits, has released a a Nonprofit Advocacy Action kit that includes, among other thing, best practices and customizable advocacy templates. (Registration required.)

Climate Change

There's no denying that philanthropy is as industry that loves jargon — or that the use of jargon often undermines the effectiveness of our messaging and communications. With that in mind, Achieng' Otieno, a communications officer in the Rockefeller Foundation's Nairobi office, shares some tips about how to communicate the concept of "resilience" to non-experts.

Health

Here on Philantopic, the Robert Wood Johnson's Foundation John Lumpkin has some suggestions about what we can do to improve care for patients with complex needs.

Higher Education

On the Inside Philanthropy site, Mike Scutari examines the implications of a new Marts & Lundy report which finds that mega-gifts for higher education are rising while alumni giving overall is falling.

Groundwork for Good Fortune: The Real Power of Strategic Planning

It's the phone call every nonprofit leader dreams of. "I'd like to give you a very large sum of money." At first I thought it might be a scam, but when I realized the caller was the real deal — a philanthropist who cared deeply about education — a new question came to mind: How would we spend that much money?

Fortunately, we had just concluded a twelve-month strategic planning process, had a board-vetted plan for growth ready to go, and were able to submit that plan to the donor with only minor revisions. Several weeks later, we received our first-ever seven-figure gift.

To quote the Roman philosopher Seneca, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Nonprofit organizations often treat strategic planning as a luxury, opting to focus on more pressing, day-to-day matters. And because, as time-management guru Steven Covey has framed it, strategic planning is entirely Quadrant II (important but not urgent), its inherent value is easily overlooked.

The concept of deliberate strategic planning goes back at least as far as the late 1960s, which is when John Argenti published his landmark Corporate Planning and when companies began engaging in SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. The nonprofit sector embraced strategic planning in the 1980s and 90s, as the number of registered 501(c)(3)s began to explode, "charities" became more professionalized, and the competition for grant dollars increased. In 1993, Patrick J. Burkhart and Suzanne Reuss published Successful Strategic Planning: A Guide for Nonprofit Agencies and Organizations, one of the first books to help nonprofits with their long-range planning.

Still, apart from the occasional discussion at a staff meeting or board retreat, organized strategic planning often takes a backseat to the day-to-day work of running an organization. Yes, schools use strategic planning to shape and guide their capital campaigns, but for nonprofits that don't mount major fundraising campaigns, setting aside time for strategic planning can be seen as more burden than blessing.

At Oliver Scholars, the time and effort that went into strategic planning paid off handsomely when we were asked by our angel donor for a well-thought-out growth plan. Is your nonprofit prepared? The following ten tips can help your organization get the most out of its next strategic planning process:

A Multi-Pronged Approach to Impact Investing for Family Foundations

The following post is part of a year-long series here on PhilanTopic that addresses major themes related to the center’s work: the use of data to understand and address important issues and challenges; the benefits of foundation transparency for donors, nonprofits/NGOs, and the broader public; the emergence of private philanthropy globally; the role of storytelling in conveying the critical work of philanthropy; and what it means, and looks like, to be an effective, high-functioning foundation, nonprofit, or changemaker in the twenty-first century. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.

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One hundred percent of foundations and philanthropists have set up their portfolios for "impact." But in the words of Heron Foundation CEO Clara Miller, "they just don't know if their impact is positive or negative."

The assumption has been that foundations and philanthropists would be among the earliest adopters of investment strategies that align their portfolios, their values, and the social change they are trying to achieve. Sadly, this has not been the case.

According to the Global Impact Investing Network's 2016 Annual Impact Investor Survey, foundations in 2016 accounted for only 4 percent of an estimated $77.4 billion in impact investment assets under management. At the same time, there is much in the report to be excited about, starting with the finding that survey respondents indicated a high level of satisfaction with the performance of their impact investment portfolios. In fact, "[e]ighty-nine percent (89%) reported financial performance in line with or better than their expectations, and 99% reported impact performance in line with or better than expectations."

There are many foundation leaders who are well aware of the potential of impact investing to drive social and environmental change. Liesel Pritzker Simmons, principal of Blue Haven Initiative, captures the sentiment of a growing number of philanthropists: "Just your philanthropic dollars are not enough to solve big world problems. We have a responsibility to use everything we have to make an impact."

[Review] The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life (Tenth Anniversary Edition)

Ours is not a particularly big-hearted species. Many of us come of age believing that success is measured in dollars and that kindness, compassion, and a willingness to turn the other cheek are behaviors best left to fools. Our generosity, meager as it often is, is reserved for kith and kin, and when extended to others often comes with a price. We would rather be feared and respected than loved and admired. And so it goes.

In The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life, Italian psychotherapist Piero Ferrucci rejects this ethos and instead asks his readers to reflect on what it truly means to be kind. To help us, Ferrucci explores nineteen "qualities" he deems to be the essential components of kindness, ranging from virtues such as forgiveness, empathy, and patience to honesty, a sense of belonging, and gratitude.

His reasons for doing so aren't solely altruistic. Ferrucci points to a multitude of studies which show that kindness and its related qualities are good for our health and overall sense of well-being. Not, he argues, that we should be kind simply because it's good for us, as though kindness were like "broccoli or exercise" but because, as studies show, we are hardwired to be kind. What's more, Ferrucci argues, integrating kindness more fully into our lives need not be a thankless sacrifice. Instead, we should think of it as bringing a musical instrument into tune with itself. Not necessarily easy, but so essential to our humanity that without it we are, by definition, diminished.

Much has changed in the ten years since the first edition of The Power of Kindness, translated from the Italian by Vivien Reid Ferrucci, was published. The new edition includes a preface by the Dalai Lama, a new introduction by the author, and a chapter on an additional quality, harmlessness, and its relationship to kindness. Like its predecessor, the new edition also addresses many timeless themes, offering advice calibrated to a wide range of situations and leaving ample space for readers to reflect on their own beliefs, priorities, and vulnerabilities. And yet, against the backdrop of our current contentious and deeply polarized political climate, I often found myself considering Ferrucci's advice and guidance and wondering whether the book stands the test of time.

Beyond the Emergency Department: How We Can Improve Care for Patients With Complex Needs

As a physician, I have struggled with the question of how best to care for patients with complex needs since my early days of working in a hospital emergency department. Back then, my colleagues and I routinely encountered people in crisis who were battling medical, behavioral, and social difficulties all at once. And I realized over time that while we did our best to address their clinical problems, the issues they faced at home or in their communities were often what led them to the ED.

In recent years, my colleagues and I collectively have come to the realization that our patients — and others facing similar challenges — have, in many ways, been failed by society. Researchers have uncovered patterns of unstable, traumatic childhoods among patients with complex needs. They've also learned that many of these patients felt disrespected by the hospitals and clinicians who cared for them, which often resulted in patients skipping their medications or missing needed appointments. All too often, patients with complex needs are seen as statistics — just another person with diabetes or heart failure — when what those patients desperately want and need is to be acknowledged as individuals.

While the social implications of how we fail to fully care for these patients are deeply troubling, the economic cost is equally stark. We know that while people with complex needs represent only about 5 percent of the U.S. population, they represent about half of all healthcare spending.