Category Archives: Media

Foundation Center Blog

September 24, 2007 – 1:19 pm

The Foundation Center has been publishing Philanthropy News Digest for some time. Now they’ve launched a blog called PhilanTopic. Recent posts have discussed the Giving Carnival, Stephanie Strom’s controversial article about the tax breaks for charitable gifts, and the impact of 9/11 on philanthropy.

Check it out.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Philanthropy, Resources | Comments (0)

Are Foundations Inept, Boring and Afraid of Failure? Part II

September 21, 2007 – 8:31 am

After her interview on the Tactical Philanthropy Podcast, Cheryl Dahle posted a “rant” about why she felt that foundations were not generally worthy of press coverage. I think very highly of Cheryl. She understands the evolving field of social enterprise very deeply and speaks fluently about philanthropy and the challenges that face it.

Howard Marks is the founder of Oaktree Capital Management. In a 1993 article in the Financial Analyst Journal, Marks discussed non-consensus forecasting (predicting a future that is different from conventional wisdom). In the article, he wrote:

“…being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.”

I think Cheryl is deeply wrong in her opinion about the state of private foundations… or too far ahead of her time. Much of what she wants will come to pass, but the trends she wants to see are still emergent.

In her rant, Cheryl suggests that foundations do not get more press coverage because most foundations do not engage in innovation. We currently live in a society that celebrates innovation very highly. Certainly, I agree that innovation is a worthy topic for press coverage. But what Cheryl is missing is that we have a robust business media culture, even though the bulk of for-profit companies are not innovative. An “innovation” is defined as “something new”. For something to be new, most people must not be doing it.

In the for-profit world, successful innovation generates higher sales, the company grows and over time, the innovators come to dominate their market. Think Google, Starbucks and Apple. What happens when a foundation is successfully innovative? The social return on its grantmaking goes up. Since foundations don’t fundraise, generating higher social returns should be met with higher payout levels (the foundation giving out more of its endowment). Over time, this will drive the foundation out of business. Ironically, one of the “innovations” that Cheryl calls for in her rant is more “spend-down foundations”. While there is a very legitimate argument for foundations to not exist in perpetuity, it must be recognized that from a Darwinian standpoint, this “innovation” would quickly decimate the ranks of innovative foundations.

Much of Cheryl’s complaints rest on the idea that foundations are unaccountable and unresponsive. What she is missing is that there is not a market or regulatory framework to encourage foundations to act in the way she would like. While it is all fine and good to complain about people not being the best they can be, her rant really boils down “if people would just be better people, the world would be a better place.” And if everyone was more polite, thoughtful, caring and ate their fiber the world would be a better place too. Rather than complain that foundations aren’t striving to be the best they can be, let’s encourage them to reach for that goal through the mechanism of societal appreciation of the actions we desire. In other words, press coverage!

The media continuously focuses their attention on the biggest grants and the biggest endowments. In the for-profit world, this focus would be similar to Exxon, General Electric and AT&T dominating the business press because they happen to be some of the largest companies.

Why isn’t the mainstream media spending more time covering NetSquared, The Packard Foundation Nitrogen Project, The Peace Primary, the Nonprofit Primary Project, B Corporations, Paul Brest’s call for an online information marketplace for philanthropy, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s experimentations with video games and health care, the work of the X Prize Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation’s conference in Second Life, the transparency of the Irvine Foundation, xigi.net, the F.B. Heron’s deep commitment to mission related investing, the Ford Foundation’s hiring of a business consultant as their new president, the Case Foundation’s “citizen centered” focus, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation’s work in venture philanthropy?

If every foundation was engaging in innovation it wouldn’t really be a news story would it? But there are tremendously exciting trends bubbling in the foundation and broader philanthropic community. I hope Cheryl continues to cover them and that editors can get over their view of philanthropy as a “do gooder” beat that a reporter shouldn’t want to cover.

The flip side of all of this is reflected in an email I received from another reporter who covers philanthropy. Responding to Cheryl’s comments, the reporter told me that the issues that Cheryl raised were reasons to cover foundations, not to ignore them.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Foundations, Philanthropy | Comments (7)

Are Foundations Inept, Boring & Scared to Fail?

September 19, 2007 – 10:50 am

Cheryl Dahle made a comment after her podcast that I want to share. Cheryl, along with Stephanie Strom at the New York Times, is one of the most highly regarded journalists in the field of philanthropy/social enterprise. That being said, I would guess a lot of readers won’t agree with Cheryl. Many of you will. Leave a comment and tell us what you think. The text below is Cheryl’s comment in its entirety.

I would probably write about foundations more frequently if I more commonly stumbled across innovation among their ranks. In the almost ten years I’ve been covering social entrepreneurship and the non-profit sector, I can name very few potentially game-changing innovations that have come out of foundations: venture philanthropy, venture funds (a la Rockefeller’s ProVeNex Fund or Google Foundation), and more broadly the movement toward investing endowments to eliminate the hypocrisy of funding non-profits to fight social and environmental ills while buying the stocks of companies contributing to those problems.

The number of foundations engaged in these practices is pretty small. The bulk of the sector seems content to be:

  • Completely unaccountable for the “social returns” on its donations. How many foundations develop sound metrics for the progress they’re accomplishing — without a wrongheaded transference of the burden onto the non-profits in which they invest?
  • Completely unresponsive to their “customer base” of non-profits. The cost to non-profits of chasing money – because the sector has not made a significant enough effort to streamline grant application, share information, or cooperate in any meaningful fashion – is shameful. Add to that the degree to which foundations tug organizations off mission to satisfy internal agendas, and you begin to see how much damage foundations actually cause.
  • Unaccountable for the overhead they spend to find and make investments. I know of no other industry that re-invents the wheel with such relish. How about sharing some due diligence? Anyone?
  • So afraid of failure that they continually play small, hide unsuccessful investments (which could produce great lessons learned) and virtually conspire to overlook terrific opportunities for collaboration.
  • More interested in building their own brands or bolstering their own flavor of the month approach to investment than in building great non-profits that can scale. (The whole movement around investment in capacity building is an antidote to this.)

Here’s what I’d like to write about:

  • A coalition of foundations who decide their next big thing is to choose the best solutions in three areas — homelessness, early education and climate change –- and then pool their fund behind common metrics and organizations. These would be big bets…at least $50 mil grants.. and organized much the way that so-called non-profit private placements have been set up. Find the proven solutions. Scale them. Fail gloriously in some cases so we can figure out what to try next.
  • More spend-down foundations. I would love to see more foundations incented by making the boldest change and biggest leap forward they can in a short period of time than a fleet of organizations motivated to stay in business by playing small.
  • Rampant socially responsible investing (SRI). In an age when so many hybrid organizations and for profit organizations with social missions are languishing for lack of capital, it’s criminal that foundations manage their endowments as they do.

All that being said… I agree with you that there are some smart foundations making wise investments in good programs. But handouts that wind up in the right pockets (without a game-changing approach) isn’t really a story to me.

I would be delighted to hear about good stuff I’m overlooking.

You can read more comments from the discussion here.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Foundations, Philanthropy | Comments (11)

Community Foundations & the Morphing Media

September 18, 2007 – 7:46 am

So today, I’m speaking at the Council on Foundations Community Foundation Conference. I’m on the panel for the session titled The Morphing Media: Why We No Longer “Read All About It”. CoF had an identical session at their private foundation conference in Seattle, which I attended and blogged about here and here.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to say. My status as a “media expert” is a little bit suspect. My real expertise is in the financial aspects of philanthropy. But I write a successful blog and do things like produce podcasts so I guess I’ve begun to have some knowledge about media, at least as it relates to philanthropy.

I’m pretty excited about the session. I have a lot to say on the topic at hand and I look forward to the discussion. But today I looked at the list of my fellow panelist… hmm I wonder who Neil Budde is? So I did a little research:

As Yahoo!’s director of news Budde oversees Yahoo!’s news initiatives, including the operations of Yahoo! News, and is responsible for ensuring that Yahoo! delivers the most timely and comprehensive news offerings online or offline.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Budde spent more than 25 years working for newspapers and online publishers. As the founding editor and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online, the largest paid news site on the Internet, Budde directed the design, development and evolution of the product from the inception of WSJ.com.

Prior to his appointment as founding editor of the online Journal, Budde was deputy editorial director for Dow Jones News/Retrieval, where he oversaw design and development of new information services.

Umm, OK, that’s a media expert. I’ll see what I can add. Maybe I can convince Neil to join me for my presentation on Wednesday to the California Society of Certified Public Accountants about structuring charitable gifts to philanthropic vehicles!

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Tactical Philanthropy Podcast: Cheryl Dahle

September 17, 2007 – 10:15 am

Today’s interview is with Cheryl Dahle. Cheryl was employee number 24 at Fast Company Magazine and spearheaded the launch of the Fast Company Social Capitalist Awards. During the interview, Cheryl talks about mainstream media coverage of philanthropy, the importance of social enterprises and the challenges faced by nonprofits that try to grow rapidly. You can learn more about Cheryl via the background notes I posted last week.

Cheryl will be answering your questions and comments in the Comments section of this post, so fire away.

You can click on the link below to read the transcript.

Read More »

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurship, podcast | Comments (16)

Cheryl Dahle Background

September 14, 2007 – 12:26 pm

On Monday, I’ll be posting a podcast with Cheryl Dahle. Cheryl is the creator of Fast Company Magazine’s Social Capitalist Awards. Most recently, she has been involved with the launch of social enterprise Blue Egg. Blue Egg provides information and practical solutions to help people become more mindful of the environment. Cheryl is also the founder of the Independent Journalists Collective, a non-profit project that aims to provoke more coverage of social change in the mainstream media.

You can read more about Cheryl at the links below. If you have a contribution to make, please leave it in the comments section.

Cheryl’s introduction to the 2007 Social Capitalist Awards

The Fast Company Homepage for the Social Capitalist Awards

Links to a bunch of articles written by Cheryl

A conversation on Social Edge about telling the stories of social entrepreneurs, hosted by Cheryl

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurship | Comments (0)

Celebrity Philanthropy

September 10, 2007 – 4:38 pm

The New York Times, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal seem to be one upping each other to see how often they can write a story about philanthropy. Sweet!

Today the New York Times writes about how The Chronicle of Philanthropy decides whether or not to cover Celebrity Philanthropy:

When a portion of a celebrity’s paycheck or time — say, that of Angelina Jolie or Bono — goes to a pet cause, the effort is inevitably lauded by celebrity news blogs and tabloids worldwide.

But to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the sober voice of the philanthropy industry, the yardstick is much higher. As celebrity involvement in charitable causes has reached new levels, the trade paper, which tracks charities, nonprofit organizations and grant seekers, has had to set ground rules for when a star’s altruism rises to the level of news.

“I think there needs to be greater skepticism about celebrity involvement than I see in the media right now,” said Stacy Palmer, the editor of The Chronicle, who helped start the publication in 1988.

You can read the full article here. You can read/hear more from Stacy Palmer from the podcast I recorded with her about media coverage of philanthropy.

I’ve written in the past how much I learn from Tactical Philanthropy readers, so it was great to see regular reader Bruce Trachtenberg quoted in the article:

Bruce S. Trachtenberg, the executive director of The Communications Network, a nonprofit organization in Naperville, Ill., that works on communication strategies for the philanthropic world, said that the charity establishment has been growing more sophisticated in its dealings with stars.

“As long as people understand that once you want to promote yourself in a way that brings attention to the work you’re doing, you have to be willing to tell the whole story,” he said. “They’re giving some of their time and energy, and that could be part of the bargain.”

Mr. Trachtenberg said that even if celebrities do not donate their own money, their efforts often warrant recognition and scrutiny. “A celebrity endorsement that could bring in x number of dollars — that might be a valuable return to the organization,” he said.

I read on another blog that the amount of philanthropy coverage in the mainstream press was dropping off recently. I haven’t seen any data one way or another, but it seems to me that the coverage of philanthropy in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Times has gotten much more in depth and consistent. Philanthropy is no longer confined to the November “Special Giving” section. I think it is here to stay.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy | Comments (1)

Alumni Giving Trends

August 28, 2007 – 2:32 pm

Traditionally most donors have given to causes to which they have a personal connection. They give to the hospital where they had a successful surgery. They give to an at-risk youth shelter because they grew up in a broken home. They give to the college they went to because they feel like it did a great job preparing them for life.

Part of what characterizes the donors I call Tactical Philanthropists, is their embrace of the idea that they want their gifts to be effective. This desire for effectiveness may lead them to organizations that they do not have a prior connection with. But the effectiveness of these donations, the “social return on investment” that they get from these gifts, is the goal that they are pursuing.

From today’s Wall Street Journal article, “Rich donors stiff elite alma maters, give to needier colleges”:

Laurence Lee is the sort of alumnus that the University of Chicago craves, with two degrees from the school and plenty of money that he is looking to give away. But when Chicago solicits Mr. Lee for donations, he says he thinks to himself, "What do they need me for? What difference can I make when they already have billions?"

Instead of contributing much to Chicago, where he earned bachelor’s and law degrees, Mr. Lee, who is retired, gave $6.6 million to a school he never attended: Lake Forest College, a small liberal-arts school located in the Chicago suburb where he lives. Its endowment is about $75 million, just over 1% of University of Chicago’s $6.1 billion.

"My money means a lot more to Lake Forest," he says.

Mr. Lee is among a rising cohort of philanthropists who are eschewing their richly endowed alma maters in favor of schools with meager resources. Turned off by massive endowments at the nation’s top schools, they seek to make a greater impact at less-wealthy institutions.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (8)

Financial Times Philanthropy Column

August 24, 2007 – 9:06 am

Today marks the debut of my gig as a columnist for the Financial Times. The column will appear in the Wealth at the Weekend section once a month. I’ve been given wide latitude to write about philanthropy from many perspectives. Regular readers of Tactical Philanthropy will recognize many of the themes in my first column titled “Philanthropy not just for the ultra-rich”. One of the fun aspects of writing both the column and this blog is the way I can have the two interact. So if you’re a Financial Times reader visiting the blog, leave a comment or send me an email about any questions you might have or ideas for future columns. If you’re a regular Tactical Philanthropy reader, let me know what you think of the column and which of the topics we regularly discuss here you’d like to see make it into a future column.

Bill Gates. Warren Buffett. The massive transfer of wealth between generations. Stories abound about billions of dollars being set aside for charity. Yet there is an even bigger story unfolding; the story of a growing number of everyday individuals who are waking up to the fact that they, too, can engage in philanthropy.

The fact is that philanthropy is no longer only for the ultra-rich. A good rule of thumb is that you should consider philanthropic tools such as transferring stock or using a donor advised fund if you give more than $500 a year. If you give more than $25,000 a year you can consider charitable trusts and private foundations – the same tools utilised by Gates and Buffett. 

You can read the rest of the column on the Financial Times website.

The Financial Times is published in London (you’ll note the British spelling used in my column) but is distributed internationally and has a circulation second only to the Wall Street Journal among financial newspapers.

Readers know how much I like feedback, both positive and negative. Well the editors of the Financial Times feel the same way. So if you liked my column or think my ideas are idiotic, send them an email at letters.editor@ft.com and maybe your thoughts will end up in print.

Lastly, I’d like to point out that the Financial Times has some of the best philanthropy coverage of any major daily. You can find a whole section of their website dedicated to philanthropy here.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Financial Times Column, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (6)

Tactical Philanthropy Podcast: Stacy Palmer Interview

August 16, 2007 – 8:06 am

Today I’m happy to present the delayed podcast with Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Stacy was involved in founding the paper in 1988, the leading newspaper in the philanthropic sector. During the interview, I ask her about her thoughts on philanthropy blogs, the Chronicle’s plans for their own blogs, the mainstreaming of philanthropy, and whether all of the hoopla over Buffet and Gates is warranted.
You can learn more about Stacy via the background notes I posted last week.

Stacy will be answering your questions and comments in the Comments section of this post, so fire away.

You can click on the link below to read the transcript.

Read More »

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Philanthropy, podcast | Comments (11)

Foundations Are Your Friends

July 30, 2007 – 8:39 am

Bruce Trachtenberg, a regular voice on this blog, is interviewed for the Fundraising Success radio show on NPR member station WXEL. The segment is called “Foundations Are Your Friends – How to Make and Keep Them”. You can listen to the podcast here.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Foundations, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Innovatorz

July 29, 2007 – 9:20 am

You may have noticed the big step up of quality in the last Podcast. We have Innovatorz to thank for that.

Innovatorz is a micro television and radio network that follows the ongoing stories of social innovators. These are among the most exciting and inspiring stories in the world. We strive to make online storytelling dead simple for time constrained leaders. We work on three areas: content production, technology platform, content distribution.

Dead simple is right. The whole process of creating the James Canales Podcast from my end was simply calling a conference call number, talking with Jim and hanging up. Later Innovatorz emailed me the transcript and pointed me to the edited Podcast file they had posted.

I’m not a technology expert in the least. But I see clearly that social media tools and philanthropy is a perfect match. Pretty soon, foundations that want to share the knowledge they have with the public at large are going to figure out that these tools make the process incredibly cheap and easy. Some of these foundations are going to develop their own technology expertise, but many will find that by using the “assisted storytelling” process offered by a group like Innovatorz, they can focus on the content and essentially ignore the technology. That’s what I’ve found.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Foundations, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Social Entrepreneurship, Transparency, nptech | Comments (2)

Join the Conversation

July 26, 2007 – 8:08 am

If you’re joining the Tactical Philanthropy community today after reading the New York Times article Foundations Are Facing Up to Failures, I want to invite you to ask Jim Canales of the James Irvine Foundation any questions you might have. You can find the podcast here, the transcript here, and you can use the comments section of the Podcast post to ask any questions you might have or add your two cents. Jim is responding to questions and comments from readers now, take him up on his offer to engage.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Foundations, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (0)

Philanthropy Radio on NPR Member Station

July 17, 2007 – 8:11 am

National Public Radio member station WXEL has a show called Fundraising Success. Since they launched a couple of months ago, they have featured Peter Panepento of the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give & Take blog talking about various philanthropy and nonprofit blogs. This week, Peter brought me on the show to talk about Tactical Philanthropy. You can find podcasts of archived episodes on WXEL’s podcast website. You can hear my interview by clicking the play button next to the July 15, 2007 episode. My segment begins at the 47:16 mark and runs about 10 minutes.

Peter profiled this blog back in May and in various other episodes has talked about:

Most bloggers use a combination of Google Alerts, Technorati and some sort of blog stat program (I use MyBlogLog) to keep on top of when their blog is mentioned online. I don’t know of any program that can track audio mentions. Since no one has blogged about Fundraising Success that I know of, I assume the bloggers being talked about are unaware of the show.

Does anyone know of any other audio or video programming that has mentioned philanthropy blogs? If so, let me know. I guess it still takes good old fashion word of mouth to stay on top of these mediums. Or maybe Beth Kanter will save the day and point us all to a nifty new gadget that makes things easier (Beth Kanter: The Batman of nonprofit technology! “Where does she get all those wonderful toys?").

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Philanthropy, Resources, nptech | Comments (2)

Private Foundation Public Relations

June 20, 2007 – 8:46 am

BusinessWeek has an article out about the importance of public relations as a tool for private foundations:

In the veiled world of private philanthropy, the practice of public relations is eschewed by many foundation leaders. Some believe that proactive media outreach is tantamount to inviting the Internal Revenue Service in for an audit, while others feel that publicity in some way diminishes the altruistic nature of giving. Yet over the last few years, a shift has begun to take place and foundations are seeing how external communications can complement and even strengthen their giving.

PR can be an invaluable tool for foundations of all sizes. It shines the spotlight on grantee successes; inspires action among constituencies; creates an environment for collaboration among multiple stakeholders; advances key issues; and perhaps most importantly, it highlights the foundation’s role as a good community citizen that is leading by example.

The article mentions the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative, which was behind the Demonstrating Impact session that generated so much interest at the Council on Foundations conference.

Tactical Philanthropy reader Bruce Trachtenberg left a comment on the BusinessWeek website arguing that foundations have a long history of external communications, but they need to change the focus of their message:

I don’t think there has been any lack of willingness among foundations to have active, sometimes aggressive communication programs… Instead, I think what the PAI report and other research has shown is that foundation communication activities have overemphasized money and process, and not enough effort has been spent talking about outcomes, or even before that, what our grantmaking is meant to achieve.

Bruce’s Op-Ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy last summer had a similar thrust.

We call this time in history “The Information Age”. Philanthropy as an industry has not embraced “information technology”, but we are seeing some early ventures in this area like NetSquared and Packard’s Nitrogen project. I can sense the interest is rising. A lot of the foundation employees who read this blog work in the communications department. They understand information and they understand the power of information tools to enhance the impact of philanthropy.

The Council on Foundations is going to replicate the Morphing Media session from their annual conference at their Community Foundation conference this fall. They’ve invited me to be one of the speakers. Personally, I think that understanding how humans process information and how to tell your story in a way that sticks is the big competitive advantage right now. Think about the story that Apple tells, or Starbucks or Nike. I think that philanthropy as a whole, and foundations in particular, need to begin to tell the public a story. A story that excites and inspires, that invites the listener into an exhilarating world where our most honorable actions are celebrated and where we have the ability to co-create the world we want (hat tip to Peter Karoff).

I’m not a communications expert. If you want to read someone who really understands how to tell stories that change the world, check out Seth Godin’s blog. It’s on my daily read.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Foundations, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (5)