Category Archives: One Post Challenge

I’m Moving to Erie PA!

November 28, 2007 – 11:52 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Dorian Adams. Dorian is the Publisher of Just Cause and the founder of Benefit Magazine.

By Dorian Adams

I’m Moving to Erie PA!

For the last four years I’ve channeled my publishing background in creating media about philanthropy, making a difference, giving back, volunteering, social entrepreneurs, corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing, etc. The result has been Benefit, the Bay Area magazine about the philanthropic lifestyle and, just recently, Just Cause, (www.justcauseit.com) the social-networking website dedicated to the greater good. It’s been a great ride so far and I’m inspired daily by the good news that people make in their chosen fields—be it the environment, education, the arts, health, civic causes or international affairs—and the opportunity to bring these stories to light.

Reader interest is undeniable. But media coverage about the passionate people who give time and money to good causes is limited. Sure the media-at-large will cover Bill Gates and Warren Buffett whenever they make news with their largesse.  But most individual stories go unnoticed. That’s why I was bucked up by the one-off story about the $100 million mystery donation to the town of Erie, PA. What a grand gesture. And how intriguing that the donor insists on anonymity!

Happily, the mysterious donor of $100 million to the Erie Community Foundation has caught the attention of major media outlets. “There has been amazing interest across the world,” foundation President Mike Batchelor said Tuesday. “I’ve been contacted by lots of national and international press. They are interested in this story, from the BBC to San Antonio to Buffalo, Boston, Cleveland.” (reported on the Go Erie website)

The Associated Press picked up the story, which first appeared in the Erie Times-News on Oct. 6, and Batchelor started getting calls on Monday from news organizations wanting to know more about the donation. Batchelor was on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and has been contacted by Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. “The bottom line, it’s a great story, and people are looking for great stories,” Batchelor said. “They’re happy to see success and charities benefiting.”

Here is the original AP story as reported by Jennifer C. Yates:  “Mike Batchelor invited the heads of 46 charities into his downtown office for one-on-one meetings to personally deliver the news. Nearby, on a small table, sat a box of tissues. And then he proceeded: A donor had given a staggering $100 million to the Erie Community Foundation, and all of the charities would receive a share. That was when the tears began to flow—and the mystery began—in this struggling old industrial city of 102,000 on Lake Erie, where the donor is known only as “Anonymous Friend.”  Continue reading Mystery $100M Donation Lifts Pa. City

Two Related Topics:

What does the future of Philanthropy Media look like?  Since the 2000 election, the public sector has failed to provide the social resources and the support that America needs. This has spurred the civic sector, private individuals and corporations to expand their support for nonprofits across the board.  The business sector has found that corporate social responsibility resonates with consumers—CSR has grown dramatically and will continue to do so.  In turn, this has created the need to communicate this goodwill to the public.  Corporate advertising, whose message is “we are good citizens,” has increased both on television and in print.  This is most evident around the subject of the environment, but I predict that editorial coverage about philanthropy, CSR, and giving back will grow apace.  Most magazines will continue to have their April Green Issues (Earth Day is April 22nd) but coverage of health, education and international issues will grow as well.  Additionally, visionary entrepreneurs who made their fortunes in the last decade recognize the power of the media to act as a catalyst for change.  They are the impetus behind the new magazines and websites dedicated to the greater good like Benefit, Contribute and Good magazines.  Moreover, social entrepreneurs like Jeff Skoll are bankrolling movies and documentaries aimed at raising public awareness about the environment, health issues and global concerns.  Skoll’s Participant Productions is behind An Inconvenient Truth, Darfur Now, Fast Food Nation, Jimmy Carter A Man from Plains, Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Luna, and American Gun among others.

Anonymity: What are the pros and cons?  The Mystery Donor of Erie PA is a wonderful story, but without names on museum wings and university buildings, modern philanthropy would suffer.  What’s your opinion?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Fundraising, Media, Philanthropy | Comments (2)

Are We Killing Our Grantees?

November 27, 2007 – 11:13 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Suzanne Walsh. Suzanne is a program director at the Lumina Foundation for Education. She previously worked as a program officer at The Heinz Endowments. Says Suzanne, “Before joining the world of philanthropy I was on the “other side”, working in non-profits where my job entailed writing grants and working on a large capital campaign. I have also served as the fundraising chair for boards on which I have served and have had to make those dreaded calls to prospective donors so I have seen this issue from all sides. I was even a telemarketer for an opera company!” Suzanne’s views do not necessarily represent those of the Lumina Foundation for Education.

By Suzanne Walsh

Are we killing our grantees?

Is there such a thing as too much money? Here is what has been bothering me lately: we give and we give and we give…to the same organizations. Is there ever a moment when we have given too much? Yes, you heard me, too much.

What happens when every local foundation discovers the hot new leader? We all want to invest in her and her organization for anything and everything. And then we wonder a year later why she is overextended and drowning and why she can’t do the core things she used to do. [I want to now pause to apologize for trying to kill my grantees, I didn't mean it. It was out of admiration for your talent.]

What happens when national foundations discover hot intermediary organizations to help them make grants and run programs? The same thing, every foundation invests in those few for all their work and then those organizations become overextended and start to drown not able to do the basics well any more.

Sometimes there is an executive director who says no thanks to the money but it’s not easy to say no to millions when you aren’t sure if by saying no now, you have ruined your chances forever with that foundation.  The dating game between foundations and non-profits is awkward at best. It’s nice to be courted by the rich suitor and hard to say no when that large grant means the ability to hire new staff, pay the bills without worrying about writing more proposals for a while, becoming one of the “chosen” of an important foundation, and being able to take your work to scale.

That all sounds great but what I am still trying to figure out is can an organization maintain the same level of excellence if it is working with not just one foundation but if every foundation brings its large projects to bear on a single organization. Because now, there are the idiosyncrasies  of each foundation to contend with: funding cycles differ, reports are due at different times, the kinds of data needed by each foundation are different, the way each foundation wants to be treated is completely different…And if you thought that is only in instances where each foundation is funding a different project, think again. Even when foundations come together to fund projects, each foundation may still have its own requirements. So, yes, an organization may have more staff but it must also spend a lot of time killing itself responding to the various needs of the various foundations. When and how can any work get done?

Maybe it is time for foundations to do what we have asked of our grantees. Maybe we should start to work together so that we can give but make it OK non-profits to say no when they have reached capacity. Maybe we can work together to have common reporting requirements, at least when we jointly fund projects. Otherwise, I do think we are going to kill our grantees and we need them perhaps more than they need us.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Foundations, Grantmaking, Philanthropy | Comments (6)

The Necessity of Measurement

November 27, 2007 – 11:02 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Phil Deely. Phil is a nonprofit consultant at Deely & White and write the blog Strategic Governance, Philanthropy, and Planning.

By Phil Deely

The Necessity of Measurement, or, pour compendre il faut computer. [“To understand something we better start counting!”]

I first ran into the debate over quantification and social policy decades before I became a development consultant while a graduate student in European History and was first presented with an approach to history that was analytical and not just hortatory or a synthesis of others opinions. Historian Marc Bloch of pour comprendre fame was required reading and we were expected to search out  and analyze primary data. Of course, it wasn’t possible to rely solely on quantification—I was looking at generational conflict between conservative older intellectuals and the revolting students of the 1960’s—but, I began to see that real psychometric data such as opinion polls, numbers of citations in the popular press, and the like, enabled one to go beyond “flashes of intuition.”

Going forward a decade I left the leafy realm of academic research and was faced with developing and then implementing a system for the assessment of ‘good teaching’ in an independent/private school setting. The greatest resistance to the entire process came from faculty members who felt any reliance on standardized tests or other quantifiable data smacked of ‘public school’ and that these techniques inevitably missed the ‘ineffable essence’ of good teaching.

As I am in my third [and, I hope, final] career phase there is a lot of resonance in the current dialogue over the tendency of ‘performance measurement’ to undercut social change.  Of course, if the Apostles had commissioned a feasibility study in 34 AD, the objective data would have been disheartening to Christians, unless the researcher was able to get behind the façade of Roman invulnerability.  I am not, and have never been, an advocate for sole reliance  on numeric measures and I find that federal requirements in particular are often overly bureaucratic whether No Child Left Behind metrics or in social purpose grants.  However, given increasing donor expectations for accountability, an ongoing decline in public confidence and the tendency for some to substitute inspiration and instinct for the dismal science of measurement I believe our role is to embrace and improve most powerful tool in our repertoire-objective,  quantifiable assessment.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Impact Measurement, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Creating a Generation of Digital Natives

November 27, 2007 – 10:43 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Daniel Ben-Horin. Daniel is the founder of CompuMentor/TechSoup, which puts on the NetSquared conference. Daniel has been named to the Nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50 a number of times.

By Daniel Ben-Horin

The bone I am gnawing on is about connecting these dots:

* There is something intrinsic in ‘knowing technology’ that makes the person with knowledge want to pass it on. So there is an almost infinite pool of ‘desire to help’ in the technological world (and I do mean ‘world’)

* The technologies associated with Web 2 make it easier and easier for communities to self-organize (although it is still by no means a slam dunk to do so, even with the new tools;  some level of external catalyzation and some level of structure are essential to successful, sustainable efforts, viz the relationship between Jimmy Wales and his staff and the larger Wikipedia community.)

* Financial resources are available for big web-based projects invoking large communities; the chance to be associated with the next Wikipedia or to be perceived as a leader in the climate change arena is very attractive to corporate sponsors. Likewise, some foundations see the potential.

* Absent a coherent effort to link the three dots above, there will be insufficient technological intellectual capital to train and support on new technologies in the developing world. This is an absolutely classic and pervasive issue. The digital divide has been ‘traditionally’ considered a matter of hardware and software, but it is as much or more a matter of training and support.  Projects like the xo (formerly ‘hundred dollar laptop’;  this is a good piece on that issue) offer a lot of promise for abetting a generation of digital natives (in the techie not colonialist sense of the word!) but in the short term, and in the longer as well, it is essential to create a way for these digital natives to get assistance along their learning curve, and also to create a way for the full demographic spectrum to learn to use these tools. And to do it soon.

Wiserearth seem to have a piece of this puzzle. The Impact Alliance might have an interesting piece or Oneworld.net,Techfinder, a project CompuMentor and NTEN developed has a piece (but only a piece).

I remember once hearing Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices talk about human rights bloggers, who often operate clandestinely, which it makes it all the harder for them to secure technology assistance. I think about Bill Lester, of Engender Health, telling me about an internet outage in South Africa and the very specific skills it takes to just understand how to talk to the ISP there. I think about ngos around the world working against extreme odds with the barest-boned of patchwork IT structures and so little access to help.

And I think about all the people who can help, want to help and, with current tools, can help remotely.

A project to build a largely self-organizing database of technology experts/helpers/mentors and to enable those people to create beneficial interactions with organizations that need help would need project planning and development resources would need, I think, at least two skilled staff for the first year– one a very technically savvy Web 2 savant who could figure out how to create the necessary interfaces among existing resources and build new ones as needed; the second a more development oriented person who could articulate the social possibilities and build the relationships.

What do you think?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (4)

One Post Challenge: Mo’ Money, No Problems

November 26, 2007 – 10:58 am

(Read to the bottom to catch the new “side bet” with prize money available to more contestants. I need your help to figure out how to award it.)

Wow. If you haven’t left a comment on one of the One Post Challenge entries, one of the last two entries (here and here) will definitely give you something to write about!

We now have 22 published entries and I’ll have to publish two or three posts a day to get everything out by the November 30 deadline. I’m still accepting new entries, so get those fingers flying on your keyboard and send me something juicy!

The One Post Challenge momentum has continued to build with entries from high profile contestants, lots of comments and another mention in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Today I have more cash to add to the prize pool.

First, Jeff Tuller, president and chairman of socialmarkets and author of the One Post Challenge entry, “Sleeping With The Enemy” is adding $250 to the winning prize. Jeff’s gift is in addition to my $250 and the $250 offered by Network for Good. The $750 prize goes to the post with the most comments from unique individuals (ie. The number of people posting comments, not the number of comments). The prize will be awarded as a Good Card, the new gift card from Network for Good that lets the receiver donate to the nonprofit of their choice.

Now not everyone has been happy with the way this contest is being judged. Early on, regular reader Bruce Trachtenberg wrote in a comment:

Maybe “volume” is overrated–and you need to find some way of assessing the quality and long-term value of guest posts. If your goal is simply to generate a lot of comments, you can always invite people to say or write something outrageous. But there also has to be a place for thoughtful, illuminating commentary that people respond to in other ways–like acting on what they’re hearing rather than tossing off a knee-jerk response.

More debate on this issue occurred in this post and comment thread.

I agree that the metric I chose for the contest is not perfect. I chose it because it is objective and transparent (anyone can verify the results and all contestants know exactly what they’re shooting for). How else could the contest have been judged? Well, now we have a chance to find out. Another $250 in prize money is being offered by TisBest. TisBest was founded this year and is offering their own charity gift card (read here for details). So here’s the deal. How do you think this $250 in gift cards from TisBest should be awarded? I’ll read the comments to this post and try and “read” the overall response and go with what the community wants. The only limitation is that the $250 cannot be spread out over more than 25 cards. Otherwise, anything is game.

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

The Secret Leaders of the Philanthropic Revolution

November 26, 2007 – 9:29 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Jeremy Gregg. Jeremy has been working in the area of fundraising and brand-building since 2001. A graduate of SMU with an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas, he is currently the Director of Development for Central Dallas Ministries. Jeremy is the author of the blog The Raiser’s Razor.

By Jeremy Gregg

What is the definition of power and influence in the philanthropic sector?

The NonProfit Times has offered an attempt to answer this question by issuing lists of the people whom they consider to hold said power and influence. Their 2007 list was the subject of one of my recent blogs as well as Phil Cubeta’s reply on his Gift Hub blog.

The image below comes courtesy of a 2005 post on adoption curve dot net, which I discovered when running a Google Image search for “power and influence.” The analysis struck me as a very fitting image to portray the ideas that I outline in my previous blog.

Power & Influence Map

I’ll concede that people like Patty Stonesifer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Susan Berresford of the Ford Foundation are indeed powerful. And that this power necessarily provides a certain level of influence.

But their power is not unexpected, and their influence fairly predictable in all but the most extreme circumstances. The “power and influence” of this particular Top 50 list, therefore, is fairly minimal.

Allow me to offer that a far more powerful list — a philanthromap, as it were — would be a more revelatory list such as:

The Top 50 Non-Profit Leaders Who are Quietly Changing the Sector

Or, as I with my conspiratorial bent would prefer:
The Secret Leaders of the Philanthropic Revolution

Who are these leaders? What are their defining traits? Are they the sort of folks whom we would be proud to invite to speak at our child’s school, or are they of that ilk that should be on some sort of public list that is carefully watched by the shadow government — or both?Who, I ask, truly holds the power in the philanthropic sector?Who, as the diagram at the top portrays, are the true “players” as opposed to merely the “context setters”?

I would propose that the following traits would make for a fairly short but substantive list of the truly powerful leaders of our sector, the likes of which NonProfit Times in all its illustrious glory would never publish:

  • They have no cash to throw around (i.e. the revolution will not be funded);
  • Their organization is not a household name (i.e. their national and local office are likely the same);
  • They regularly voice their ideas in speeches, blogs, print publications or other media — and they write their own material;
  • As the above image from adoption curve dot net blog illustrates, they have a high stake in the outcome of their actions/publications. This stake is deeply personal, far beyond compensation; that is, they have an intimate connection with the future of our sector.

I also think that an important consideration is whether or not they are compensated for their thoughts (i.e. they are part of a think-tank), or whether their publications are a veiled attempt to gain consulting contracts or sell services/products. This certainly should not fully eliminate people (love it or hate it, Terry Axelrod has made a lot of money while significantly changing our sector through her “Raising More Money” model). But there is a significant difference between Ms. Axelrod’s motivation in writing a blog and that of someone like the anonymous writer of Don’t Tell the Donor, who certainly has spent more resources on their blog than they will ever reap from its luminosity.

What names would you add to such a list? Phil Cubeta and I offered some initial suggestions in the aforementioned blogs. These are but a beginning.

Please add me your own nominations to this philanthromap as comments on this post

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (3)

Blogs Aren’t For Everyone

November 26, 2007 – 9:19 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from an anonymous writer named “S”. S works in communications at a large California-based foundation and has worked in the philanthropy sector for more than a decade.

By “S”

You know what? Blogs aren’t for everyone. I get so tired of hearing how important it is to start a conversation online and care for it and feed it and make it go. Blogging can be a great tool, but has anyone thought about the fact the blogging may not be the greatest thing to ever come to philanthropy? How is posting a blog and receiving comments really a conversation? I post, you post, I post…

Paul Brest needs a blog. Really? What for? Let’s step back and think about this for a moment. Paul Brest needs a blog why? So that his completely scrubbed words can help philanthropy make its mark on the world? Let’s be real. Not only is Paul Brest too busy to have a blog, but the honest truth is, people don’t crave news about philanthropies, they just don’t. I work for a foundation and we share about our work only as much as we want to. Other than that, no go.

This blogging community in philanthropy is tiny. The only people who regularly comment on others’ posts are the bloggers themselves. When you need to ask people to Digg it or to StumbleUpon it, what are you doing? Skewing the result of what normal people might do. People aren’t Digg-ing it or StumblingUpon it because it’s not what is on their agenda.

Philanthropy is a great thing and helping out all kinds of people is a great thing. But foundations get so wrapped up in trying to tell everyone about their work and how great they are. Who cares about what the general public thinks? We are important and we are doing great work. We are so convinced that we need to get out there with our message.

The foundation I work for has spent nearly four decades doing good work. And before the Internet and blogging and Digg and StumbleUpon and other avenues online, we have been able to get the word out as necessary.

I am not against an online conversation or building the interest around philanthropy. We just need to think about it and not assume that everyone should be interested. They have their lives, too.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Foundations, Giving Blogs, Media, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency, nptech | Comments (11)

Blogging Is Like Life

November 23, 2007 – 11:32 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Julia Moulden. Julia is a regular contributor to the world’s #1 blog, the Huffington Post. Her new book, WE ARE THE NEW RADICALS: A Manifesto for Reinventing Yourself and Saving the World, will be published internationally by McGraw-Hill, New York in January 2008

By Julia Moulden

Blogging is like life: it takes on the meaning you give it.

At first, blogging was an act of faith. Long before I had a publisher, I had a blog. From this tiny cyberplatform, I sent forth word about a movement I saw taking shape — that people were longing to do good works. My earliest posts felt like calls into a virtual Grand Canyon, and I listened intently for the first faint echoes.

People like Drew McManus read my blog and made contact. Drew is co-founder of Bring Light, an innovative new website where people can find causes they care about, dialogue with charities and the community, and collaborate to fund a specific project (and, yes, they have a blog). Drew shared many wonderful stories with me, including how, when they were deep in the R&D phase, he came across a young woman’s MySpace page. She was talking to her friends, telling them that her rent had just been lowered by $40 a month, and that she wanted to give that money to charity. She asked if anyone had any suggestions of good causes she might consider. Drew remembers taking a sharp breath in and thinking, “Wow, when I was her age, that extra forty bucks would have gone to beer.”

Fifteen months later, blogging no longer feels like whispering shyly into the void. It has become a way to meet men and women I would otherwise never have encountered, and learn about their lives. Most importantly, it is a way to begin — and nurture — conversations with these people so that we can find ways to work together (like the MySpace woman and her friends) to make an even greater difference.

The need to tell and hear stories is as old as civilization. I now understand that a blog is simply a new tool.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Giving Blogs, Philanthropy | Comments (3)

Beyond Hacking Philanthropy

November 23, 2007 – 11:25 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Kevin Jones. Kevin is a principal at Good Capital and blogs at xchangexchange.

By Kevin Jones

There are events like Hacking philanthropy, where people try to come up with new ways to crack the code of giving. There are events like Josh Becker’s zero tradeoff conference where a new group of funds say you can invest to do good at no discount to return. Both approaches are attracting a lot of people and attention. And I think they’re great, but I also think something deeper needs to happen.

If you are hacking philanthropy, it’s like, in technology terms, that you are just hacking at the interface level; you are buying into the set of assumptions, the implicit myths that the system offers you. The true power of the open source Linux system is that it opens up the root level, where you can decide which interface, which set of assumptions you buy, or where you can even create a new set. That’s where I want to play. At the root, superuser level, where you decide who you are, look at your resources and decide what impact you want to make in the world, without the hard and fast categories of giving and investing, two pocket thinking that you’ve had handed down to you.

I want to hack at the root level, not just hack philanthropy or investing. I want to reconsider the basic equation. What impact do I want to make in the world? How much do I need, how much can I share for the sake of all?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, New Philanthropy, Open Source Philanthropy, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (2)

My Favorite Daily Cause

November 21, 2007 – 11:23 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Tracy Gary. Tracy is the author of Inspired Philanthropy: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Giving Plan and Leaving a Legacy. She has been a donor activist and philanthropist for more than 25 years. She has appeared on Oprah Winfrey, The Today Show and the New York Times as well as many other media outlets.

By Tracy Gary

Changing the conversation from “Where do you work?” to “What do you care about, and do you use your money and time for the public good?”, is my favorite daily cause.

When I sit on planes, buses and rails to get to my destination, inspiration or “bridging the great divide” simply manifests that way. Take the story of my trip from San Francisco to New York. When I share my love of giving and the importance of each of us giving more and more strategically, inevitably I have an interesting exchange. Try it, I say, and let’s get out of the same old ways.

One of my seat partners on a bounced up first class Continental flight, was a worn out Silicon Valley, twenty something, who had dropped out of Stanford to toss in his software skills for the almighty buck. Six years later, at age 25, he was spent. Exhausted and without the slightest work-home-community, balance. Half way to NY, after hearing me share the people who excited me in our same community, he was committed to joining a nonprofit board and going to do some selfless service to get his soul back. And you know what…he joined Edgewood Children’s Home’s board as the youngest team member and sent me $1000 as a gift to pass on. Changed his life he said!

When he emailed six months later to get some help with his marriage on our next trip to New York…my answer was easy…”Join TV Free America,” I said. Now I’m not Dr. Ruth, but taking the TV out of your bedroom and putting in some serious play time is good for the best of us. Imagine my delight when I hear his next call. We grow great donors at Inspired Legacies, and the work of it is the pleasure of change making the culture. May we shape the society we long to live for and with. Thanks for the inspiration, Sean. But pass on your enticement, or pay it forward, with our buy one and give one free offer, for Inspired Philanthropy. You might for that $500 enable 20 new donors to get into transformational giving! Hey, there’s a story of gratitude on the horizon. Catch it! Meanwhile, I’m off to my next plane ride.

-Tracy Gary, jet sitter with the “to be inspired”…

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Philanthropy | Comments (2)

Does Blogging Substitute Real Action?

November 21, 2007 – 11:19 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Perla Ni. Perla was the founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her current project is Great Nonprofits, a “Zagat’s”-like guide to nonprofits.

By Perla Ni

Does blogging substitute real action?

I get asked about this a lot because I blog.   Why are all these people blogging?   Why aren’t they out there in the real world doing something?

Especially in the nonprofit world – where there’s so much need and most ED’s I know are busy enough running their programs, fundraising, doing the jobs of 4 people – blogging about nonprofits or philanthropy seems quite a luxury in navel-gazing.  There’s so much work that needs to be done in the real world, why waste time blogging?

I have two minds about this.  On one hand, yes, I’ve seen blogging become an end to itself for some bloggers.  One blogger I know started blogging in order to vent his frustrations about the lack of community spirit in his town.  Though he’s still very much looking for solutions, he’s equally absorbed with monitoring how many people have visited his blog and how long they’ve stayed on the site.  Because the “success” of blogs are measured by these metrics, it’s easy to see how some can get so absorbed in the process of blogging that it saps their focus from tackling the real world problem.\

On the other hand, blogging is essentially the mass, interactive, publishing and the dissemination ideas.  It’s an efficient means for spreading ideas.  As Seth Godin says, “ideas that spread, wins.  Period.”

When we think of some of the most important accomplishments of nonprofits – the civil rights movement, environmental movement, women’s rights movement – these are all massive systemic changes that required the winning of millions of hearts and minds.  The ideas and values at the heart of our nonprofit work – whether it be providing after school programs, cleaning up local streams, providing battered women shelter – need to be spread and supported even more widely if we want systemic change.

That’s where blogging can matter.  Blogging is not the only means – but one easy and efficient channel for you to spread your ideas far and wide.    Even those of you who are on the front lines – working with incarcerated juveniles, or running a museum, or providing health counseling – you are all also in the business of winning support for your patients, clients and cause.   You are all in the business of gaining converts to your ideals and goals.  Now if they can only add another 2 hours to the day!

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Giving Blogs, Philanthropy, Social Media, nptech | Comments (4)

Charity Navigator’s Vital Mission Hides Flawed Rankings

November 20, 2007 – 11:23 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Michael Soper. Michael is President, TeamSoper and the Development & Marketing Management Corporation. Formerly, he was Senior Vice President, Development at PBS and WETA.

By Michael Soper

Strong Marketing of a Weak Success Measure: Charity Navigator Vital Mission Hides Flawed Rankings

Everyone wants to figure out how to evaluate nonprofits. Grantmakers, donors, volunteers, journalist, and nonprofit leaders.

Individuals who contribute and the nonprofits that use those funds to provide vital services would both benefit from ranking of effectiveness and efficiency. Such evaluations would encourage nonprofits to constantly improve their performance and allow funders to make smarter investments.

Those were the driving motivations behind the creation of Charity Navigator and other nonprofit rating / ranking services. Yet, if you believe Charity Navigator or others have found the holy grail of evaluating nonprofit organizations you’re sadly mistaken — and I encourage you to keep reading.

For-profits have one thing nonprofits do not — a clear set of financial measures of success. Across for-profits is it relatively easy to measure and compare profits. Yet, it is much tougher to measure effective and efficient service – the mission and goal of all nonprofits.

Charity Navigator’s rankings are the result of gross oversimplifications. For example, Charity Navigator’s:

  • Evaluation process begins and ends with creating ratios based on almost any two numbers found in nonprofit organizations’ IRS Form 990.
  • Presumption is that all nonprofits complete their IRS Form 990’s in the same manner, using precisely the same definitions of what income and expenses are reported in response to a given question on Form 990.
  • Ratings do not include an “affirmative confirmation” from nonprofits’ top management to guarantee the accounting basis of specific figures or that the resulting ranking is both correct and fair.

Imagine a nonprofit institution raising capital funds for a new facility. Simply looking at the IRS Form 990 could lead one to believe the organization had a dramatic increase in revenues. That’s good news to the nonprofit — unless, for example, Charity Navigator decides to use that year as a “base year” on which to evaluate future year’s revenues. Future ratings and rankings could show the nonprofit in decline as a result of the decreasing revenue.

Or, consider how you would rate a nonprofit whose mission is to care for people during and immediately following natural disasters? Funding for the organization is like winding a clock-spring. All of the investments in infrastructure are “waste” if there are no disasters.

On the other hand, if there is a disaster and the expensive infrastructure doesn’t exist, the organization will fail to react instantly when conditions demand nothing less. Only when the spring is wound can the organization deploy resources and services when they are most needed.

These situations have me reflecting on the age-old loaded-question, “Are you still beating your wife?” Charity Navigator’s ratings, rankings, and top ten lists are all presumed to be true as published until and unless they are challenged a nonprofit that was damaged by an overly simplified ranking system that is not based on an apples-to-apples comparison.

In my view, Charity Navigator, its ratings, and its top ten lists are nothing more than great merchandising of a weak underlying product.

For example, wouldn’t any donor or nonprofit be interested in the following “Top Ten” Charity Navigator lists?

  • 10 of the Best Charities Everyone’s Heard Of
  • 10 Highly Rated Charities Relying on Private Contributions
  • 10 Charities Routinely in the Red
  • 10 Charities Stockpiling Your Money
  • 10 Charities Expanding in a Hurry
  • 10 Charities in Deep Financial Trouble

These lists — while attractive — are the “National Enquirer” approach to a topic that demands more substantive evaluation of nonprofits’ effectiveness and efficiency. While not as quick or easy as Charity Navigator’s overly simplistic rankings, it’s fascinating to see Charity Navigator’s own recommendation on how to evaluate nonprofit institutions that it does NOT rate (listed below) far more closely represent the time, questions, and interaction with nonprofits that are required to evaluate their effectiveness and efficiency.

Charity Navigator’s Suggestions On Evaluating Nonprofit Success

  1. Can your charity clearly communicate who they are and what they do?
  2. Can your charity define their short-term and long-term goals?
  3. Can your charity tell you the progress it has made (or is making) toward its goal?
  4. Do your charity’s programs make sense to you?
  5. Can you trust your charity?
  6. Are you willing to make a long-term commitment to your organization?

I give up! If these are the questions that Charity Navigator recommends you and I ask of nonprofits, why don’t they use these same questions themselves?

I can think of four answers:

  • It would require an enormous investment of time and money to gather the answers.
  • Even if answers to the above questions were collected, they don’t lend themselves to numeric ratings;
  • Without numeric ratings, it is next to impossible to produce apples-to-apples rankings, and, finally;
  • Without low-cost, easy to produce nonprofit rankings, there is no Charity Navigator.

Regardless of their size, the rating of a nonprofit’s service is complicated and highly subjective. The list of provided above by Charity Navigator is a good starting point for discussions with a nonprofit’s leadership, top management and key professionals.

But here in all this complexity and subjectivity is the beauty of making an individual decision to support a specific nonprofit organization.

Over time, you learn about those organizations dealing with the causes you care about most – and are passionate about their mission.

After all, if it were that easy to determine the most successful nonprofits, everyone could invest in nonprofit mutual funds and fund managers would make the investments in only those organizations’ services rated at the top of the list in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

Large donors and small donors. Very well funded and not so well funded nonprofits. In all of these cases, half of the fun of investing in nonprofits – in giving away your hard earned cash – is learning about the similarities and differences between the half-dozen organizations meeting needs you believe are essential.

In the end, a significant contributor only has two good options.

  • They can become involved, get engaged, and learn about the organizations they fund.
  • Or, they can simply hire me (just teasing) – or any other consultant with substantial hands-on, nonprofit experience, to collect information on nonprofits of interest and provide them with a thoughtful narrative report.

My real concern is that Charity Navigator’s rankings appear to be so powerful and easy to use that:

  • Individuals will fail to take the time and gather the information to determine which ratings may be solid and which are gross oversimplifications or just plain wrong.
  • Potential contributors will simply discard a deserving nonprofit from their list of giving priorities, and / or;
  • Donors will fail to use the rankings provided by Charity Navigator as one of many topics to discuss with the top management of the nonprofit that interests them.

Charity Navigator’s (and other data aggregators / information providers) current ratings, rankings, and practice of publishing the “truth” until proven otherwise fails potential donors, some nonprofits, and its own mission.

I’m not suggesting that every poor rating of a nonprofit by Charity Navigator is incorrect or undeserved. I am urging the nonprofit industry to create better measures and / or methods of evaluating nonprofits’ mission-driven services in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

Until that time, I would urge all nonprofits to be open and accountable and all current and potential contributors to become more involved with and knowledgeable about the nonprofits engaged in the causes that interest them the most.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Fundraising, Impact Measurement, Philanthropy | Comments (18)

I Really Can’t Have It Both Ways?

November 20, 2007 – 11:14 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Suzy Meneguzzo. Suzy works at a community foundation based in the Midwest.  Her work in the philanthropic sector has included grant making, programming, evaluation and governance.

By Suzy Meneguzzo

I really can’t have it both ways?

A great deal has been written recently about the appropriateness of foundations existing in perpetuity, level of payout and the desired life span of foundations.  Arguments seem to run to one extreme or the other: Everything should be paid out now or keep the endowment growing and maintain the 5% payout so that we can continue to work on these problems as the solutions evolve in the future.

It makes me wonder, though, if the discussion shouldn’t be framed differently.  Shouldn’t the question be, given the outcome we are trying to achieve (insert mission here); it is most effective if we spend, don’t spend (insert action here)?  Isn’t it really about which tactic will accomplish the goal?

I can envision situations in which an “all in” investment makes sense- disease eradication pops to mind.  However, I can also imagine funds with goals that lend themselves to existing in perpetuity: empowering girls and young women as an example.  The most interesting cases may be foundations with missions and strategies that fall cleanly into neither category.

Working in an organization that supports economic development in a specific geographic area, I can envision an approach that both spends and saves.  We might invest 3 million dollars from the endowment in an investment fund here, invest a million in an innovative business concept there, make grants to our communities to support their economic development projects.  All of this, while at the same time sitting on funds with an eye for next year’s or next decade’s opportunities.

Perhaps not as clean as a 20 year drop dead date or fattening up that endowment but the environment in which we live isn’t always neat and clean either.  And shouldn’t it really be about what we’re trying to accomplish?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Foundations, Grantmaking, Philanthropy | Comments (1)

Foundations Should Be More Like Public Companies

November 19, 2007 – 4:04 pm

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Dahna Goldstein. Dahna is the Founder of PhilanTech, provider of the PhilanTrack online grants management system for foundations and nonprofits.  Prior to starting PhilanTech, Dahna worked for venture philanthropies and as a producer of interactive eLearning programs.  She is a member of the board of the I Do Foundation.

By Dahna Goldstein

Thank you for issuing this challenge.  I’ve been thinking about these issues for a while, and haven’t been able to make the time to write frequently enough to warrant my own blog.  This challenge provided just the push I needed to start writing.

Foundations should be more like public companies.  Now before you start arguing that foundations aren’t and shouldn’t be like public companies at all, and before you quickly point to Enron to make your point, let me say two things: (1) the point of the One Post Challenge is to encourage conversation, and (2) I’m going to amend my statement slightly – foundations should be more like good public companies.

If you’re still reading, you either like a good fight, or perhaps you think there might be something to this comparison.

In the interests of time and blog post length, I’m going to limit my comparison to three areas: public disclosure, customer service, and shareholder vs. stakeholder responsibility.

Public disclosure: Public companies are required to make not only quarterly and annual disclosures to the SEC, but also to report any material information.  If they disclose good news, they are rewarded for it (generally in the form of an up tick in stock price).  If they disclose bad news, they are frequently judged by how well they react to and resolve issues.

Where’s the parallel, you ask? Well, it’s not perfect, but it’s something like this: foundations are required to file 990 PFs with the IRS, but they should disclose more material information – and disclose it more broadly.  What made a project or grant successful?  What elements of the foundation’s grantmaking or of the grantee’s program are replicable and could be reproduced with similar success in another community, for example?  Equally, if not more, important is sharing failures.  Some foundations (notably the Irvine and Hewlett Foundations) have begun to do that, and they should be applauded for those efforts.  They should also be emulated.  By sharing failures and the causes of those failures with the philanthropic community, foundations can help ensure that bad projects, bad initiatives, and (dare I say it?) bad nonprofits aren’t repeatedly funded only to generate the same bad results.  On the flip side, they can help magnify the impact of good projects, good initiatives, and good nonprofits.

Customer service: A good company has good customer service.  It’s really that simple.  Companies need customers.  A company with bad customer service loses customers as soon as there is a substitute product available.  You might argue that foundations don’t have customers.  That perception is a fundamental problem with philanthropy in this country.  Foundations are seen – by both the foundation and the nonprofit – as sources of funding, not as service providers.  Yes, nonprofits need foundations.  But foundations need nonprofits, too.  Funding nonprofits (or, more broadly, funding philanthropic and charitable activities) is foundations’ raison d’etre.  It is in exchange for that obligation that foundations, charitable trusts, etc. are entitled to be tax exempt organizations.  Foundations need nonprofits – and need happy nonprofits – just as much as corporations need happy customers.  Grants are a product of philanthropy, and nonprofits are the customers.  I don’t know too many nonprofits that would switch to another foundation because of bad customer service, but that doesn’t entitle foundations to deliver bad customer service.  Some foundations have started to be more responsive to their customer base, as is evidenced in things like the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Grantee Perception Reports.  More foundations need to get on this bandwagon.

Shareholder vs. stakeholder responsibility: Companies have faced significant pressure in recent years to be accountable not only to their shareholders (by maximizing shareholder value) but also to their stakeholders – including their employees and the communities in which they operate (by acting in socially- and environmentally-responsible ways).  Many in the philanthropic sector would no doubt agree that corporations should be socially and environmentally responsible.  But what does this have to do with foundations?  Like public companies, foundations have “shareholders” – their donors (living or not) and their boards of trustees.  But they also have stakeholders – members of the communities in which they operate, and society at large.  Foundations have a duty to be responsible actors in society, and that has to go beyond simply making grants.  This responsibility is heightened when one considers the tremendous public trust that is invested in the success of foundations by virtue of their tax exempt status.  Foundations should contribute to growing the field, to building on past successes and failures, to sharing those successes and failures so that others can learn from them, build upon them, and ensure that the public trust is honored.  Foundations collect vast amounts of information about how pressing social issues are being tackled – most foundation grants over $10,000 require the grantee to at least submit a year-end report.  Those reports, if used well – and if shared with others – could provide significant insights into what is working and what isn’t in addressing social issues.  Sharing that information could not only help funders to learn from other funders (from their successes and their failures), but could also help nonprofits learn from other nonprofits.  Who else is addressing a similar issue?  What is working for them?  What isn’t?  What lessons can be learned and applied to the problems a given nonprofit is facing and to the social issues it is trying to address?  By not sharing candid, detailed feedback about funded programs and grantmaking initiatives, foundations are violating their stakeholder responsibility.  Good public companies are now acknowledging that maximizing stakeholder value should be pursued alongside maximizing shareholder value.  Foundations should, too.

So what do you think?  Should foundations be more like good public companies?  If you don’t buy the comparison, why not?  If you do, are there other areas in which you think foundations should be more like good public companies?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Foundations, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (14)

A Shout-Out to Youth!

November 18, 2007 – 5:23 pm

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Jamie Kong. Jamie is the Program Coordinator for YouthChoose, a DonorsChoose.org Youth Philanthropy Program.  DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit website that connects individual donors with teachers requesting materials and experiences their students need to thrive in the classroom.  When donors entrust large donations to the YouthChoose program, youth in the program have the opportunity to reflect on their own educational experiences and decide together how these funds can have the greatest impact on public school classrooms through the DonorsChoose.org website.  In this way, YouthChoose offers young people, who are often the beneficiaries of philanthropy, the chance to become philanthropists themselves.

Jamie Kong

A shout-out for youth.  They are the next generation of philanthropists.  It’s young people who are on MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Xanga, and are the segment of the population that is the most comfortable with blogging.  And it’s young people who will direct the future of philanthropy.  So, wouldn’t it be great if we could connect youth with the conversation that is happening here?

Reading the “$500 for Your Nonprofit” post got me thinking.  The beauty of this post is that it opened the conversation to everyone and gave everyone a chance to participate—even without a new idea to introduce.  It invited people who may not have their own conversation starter to join the discussion.

So, I would like to start a post for youth philanthropy.  If are a young person, share the issues you care about or your experiences with philanthropy. If you work with youth, share any ideas to increase youth engagement in philanthropy.  And if you don’t belong to either of these groups, share how your experiences as a young person informed your decisions about philanthropy today.  The sharing of experiences can be as catalytic as the sharing of ideas.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Giving Blogs, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Youth, nptech | Comments (4)