Community Foundation of Utah

A group at BYU and Harvard just completed a study trying to get at the root of what makes people innovative.  Reading the list of traits I kept thinking - this describes nonprofit leaders to a T!. And then I wondered - why do some think our sector is so staid and risk adverse?

Here is one quote "the most effective leaders "are much more likely to ask 'What if' questions, such as, 'What would happen if we do this?' They ask things like, 'What if we try doing things a new way, how will it change the world?'

The study appears in the Harvard Review of Business this week.

 

About a dozen charities that received donations from a Florida foundation established by convicted ponzi schemer Arthur Nadel could be forced to surrender the money.

The return gifting would impact charities who received more than $20,000 from the Guy-Nadel Foundation. Ouch. The foundation was financed with $2.85 million the ponzi s scheme, donated millions of dollars to reputable charities. The Sarasota opera named its concert hall lobby after the foundation,

Comment from the Diocese charity that do not want to sign the waiver:
" Robert Reddy, spokesman for the diocese, said that gifts from the foundation had been spent on programs such as foodbanks and financial assistance programs for people in emergency situations. "Any need to reimburse money will be a hardship," said Reddy. "In legal terms, when cases like this come up, the only money that would be asked for is the money donated within the previous year. [Otherwise,] it's assumed the money's been spent."

I have to pass on this blog by a British 'social investor'

I admit it, I'm guilty of wasting charitable funds

By Martin Brookes

I need to confess to a misallocation of charitable funds, as well as a flouting of my own personal rules. In short, I gave some money to an animal charity.

Recently, I wrote a blog post about why I don't give to animal charities. This argued, in essence, that giving money to (say) donkey sanctuaries rather than domestic violence charities represented a misallocation of charitable funds, and that this is wrong.

On holiday in Cyprus last week, my five year-old daughter Alice asked to go to the local donkey sanctuary. I couldn't resist and she ended up having a fine time walking and grooming Popeye and Lorraine, (Alice and Popeye are pictured), two aged and well looked after donkeys. She then asked to adopt Lorraine, which we duly did, handed over more money by way of donation and bought several gifts.

This broke all my rules about charities. The only compensation is that it makes me feel like a better dad. But it was charitable giving to make me feel good, not charitable giving for public benefit.

To make matters worse for me, the donkey sanctuary in Cyprus is funded by The Donkey Sanctuary here in the UK, the very charity NPC used for the comparison with domestic violence charities. The most recent published figures show The Donkey Sanctuary had an annual expenditure of £19.6 million in the year to September 2008. Reserves were £37.1 million. That is, to put it mildly, rather a lot. After my visit, that reserves figure is now a tiny bit higher.

After my visit to the donkey sanctuary, I felt good as a parent, but bad as a donor. Alice feels marvelous and is inseparable from her picture of Lorraine, but that is not a sensible charitable objective...

The Utah Nonprofits Day on the Hill was last week, and 30 or so nonprofits hit the marble, needs and solutions in hand. This new study from LA proves once again that advocacy is where it is at. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy found that between 2004 and 2008 the community benefits provided by LA County nonprofits engaged in advocacy and organizing included $2.6 billion in higher wages.... and that is just a start. Read the full results here - preferably while you are on a bus up to the capital!

And a special shout out to the intrepid new lobbyists from the environmental sector I watched steer Representative Noel away from global warming and on to huntin' and fishin'. Now that is advocacy!

Todd Manwaring from BYU, Steve Grizzel of Innoventures and Alex Lawrence at Funding Universe are planning a foru on the state of social entrepreneurship in Utah.  Here is an example of the type of program the Community Foundation would love to see grow in Utah -  The Bread Project, which trains low-income students, many struggling with the impacts of homelessness, criminal backgrounds, addiction and poverty to be successful bakers.

Read the story here.

Passing along this news from the bummer blogosphere:

The Boomer Project recently compiled some studies on the attitudes and outlook of the Boomer generation . These are the people we have been lead to believe will fill foundation and nonprofit coffers. I guess people forgot that these were also the people who have lost their retirement in the Great Recession.

Well someone asked and it turns out - they are NOT HAPPY. What I love about the study is it used real adjectives like bummed, sickly, overcast, gloomy. In a nutshell, they are all of the above.

The advice? "Noting their preoccupation with immediate stresses, the Boomer Project advises: Boomers will respond to pragmatic marketing messages, not overly optimistic ones."

Here is a nice convergence of a certain executive director's interests- our partner Skullcandy featured in Vogue, with help from our pal Henry Eshelman at Platform Media Group. !

Just read an interesting piece in a small newspaper in North Carolina. The Blue Ridge Times explored the impact of federal stimulus on local npos - and the hangover that is likely to result.

The  Western Carolina Community Action, in just oen example,  received about $3 million, for Head Start, health care, building greener communities through updating low income people's homes and updating their medical data software and - perhaps most important;y - not l;ayign off the teachers that work directly with the community's low income children

But now what?

North Carolina - just like Utah - has seen a serious downturn in its economy and reduced state revenues. Their legislature, just like ours, is slashing the very programs that the stimulus funds were meant to save.  There are no real plans to replace these sources of revenue in the future... Will we see three year olds pulled from classrooms? Will individuals step up? Will the investments made in communities be withdrawn? Stay tuned here -- or just read the Tribune.

This final dashboard of 2009 reports on year end giving, changes in revenue and the planning assumptions of Utah's nonprofits as they continue to meet the cultural, social and educational needs of our communities in 'the great recession'.

We are all familiar with the traditional year-end giving campaigns that nonprofits of all sizes and missions conduct after Thanksgiving. These donations can be crucial to an organization's annual budget. National philanthropy pundits predicted that Americans would continue reach deep into their pockets at the end of 2009 knowing the hardships faced by their neighbors. They forecasted more frequent, yet smaller, gifts and a possible increase in new donors, particularly those agencies serving low income individuals.

Our study found this prediction to hold true in Utah where the dollar amount of individual gifts decreased more significantly than either the total amount of dollars donated or the number of people giving.

• 28% of the 133 agencies reporting said the total amount of giving at year end was significantly lower in 2009 than 2008; and
  nearly as many - 21% - said it was significantly higher.

Utah does not, however, compare favorably to the rest of the United States. A Chronicle of Philanthropy poll conducted in early January found that 48% of 181 agencies saw an increase in holiday season giving in 2009 compared to 200 – more than twice that of Utah.

Down load the full report here. DashboardJan_2010.pdf

A friend passed this on and it is too good not to share:

DEAR FOUNDATION PEOPLE:

We’ve been “friends” for a long time. We call. You return our call a few weeks later. We hang on to your every word. You seem to like us too, because you send us checks, though they’re always smaller than we’d hoped. We send thank-you notes, or give you a piece of Lucite at our next dinner.

But the truth is, we don’t really talk. We in the not-for-profit world depend on you, your foundations, and your beautifully typed checks with a tycoon’s name on them; by one recent count, you have $628 billion that you could dole out to us. Still, let’s be honest: Our relationship is fraught. Most of us don’t tell you how we truly feel about you. We don’t say when we think you’ve made a bad decision, because in the hoity-toity world of big money (yours) and little not-for-profits (us), that would be impolite — and, on my part, stupid. We fear losing your money.

If we’re really in this do-gooder business to do good, though — and if we’re ever truly going to be partners — then we’re going to need a little more honesty. So here are some things we wish you’d stop doing — along with one pledge I’ll make — which would vastly improve our relationship.

1. Stop thinking you know everything. Don’t assume that your PhD diploma — which I see on the wall every time I visit — means that you understand the challenges of executing and implementing some of the good plans you fund. You’ve got lots of ideas, and you may write smart white papers about combating youth depression and suicide. But you probably still don’t know as much about it as the folks at To Write Love on Her Arms or the Trevor Project, who work with suffering people every day.

2. Stop mistaking marketing for overhead — and stop hating on overhead. We’re all running businesses, and we’ve all got more expenses than we want. But your constant refrain about us spending too much on communications staff, graphic design, and public relations is misguided. “Scaling up” means that people need to know about us. It also means that we’ll have to spend money on expenses that you label with the most unfairly pejorative word in our business: overhead.

3. Stop funding redundancy. There is a ridiculous amount of repetition in our sector — much of it encouraged by the way we ask for funding, but also spurred by the way you fund. Does it make sense to bankroll three different organizations claiming to be the umbrella coalition for New York not-for-profits — or could we just get behind one? Be less like Santa Claus, who visits the home of every good boy and girl, and more like Warren Buffett, who picks targets that make long-term sense and pulls in smart investors with him.

4. Stop thinking that newer is better. We all love shiny new toys. Over and over, you tell us, “Bring us something new.” We just wish you’d get behind programs with proven track records so that we could focus on making them better, rather than coming up with a new gimmick to catch your eye. We know that much of what we do isn’t sexy, but it is important; think about funding the not-for-profit Ugly Bettys too.

On my end, I promise to stop calling “for advice” or “just to check in” when that’s never the point of the conversation. We both know what I really want: your check.

Fondly, Nancy