Innovations in the Philanthropic Sector

Corporate Giving in 2009 (Philanthropy Journal)

Giving by U.S. companies was mixed during the worst recession in decades as some trimmed their philanthropy, others gave more and most predicted 2010 would be flat, Reuters reported March 5 read here.

American Express lauches Take Part

American Express used last night's Oscars to launch its new philanthropy-advertising intitiative, Take Part.  The debut features ads of the Harlem Children's Zone and the founder of Patagonia. You can vote once a week for your favorite charity and every 3 months, the 5 with the most votes each receive $200,000 donations from American Express. Am Ex will give you reward points for volunteering or if you donate . Learn more here..

$25 mm for socially responsible investment (PDN)

The Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation has announced that it is setting aside an additional $25 million for social investments — a set of strategies that uses endowment funds to generate financial returns as well as social returns to advance the foundation's mission.

The allocation is in addition to the $100 million the foundation had already approved for such investments, bringing the total earmarked for the strategy to $125 million, or 5 percent of the foundation's $2.5 billion endowment. The increased allocation from the endowment will not be included in the foundation's annual grant payout rate of almost 8 percent.

According to Casey Foundation officials, a growing number of grantmakers are seeking opportunities to align their investments with their mission. In 2007, the Casey Foundation partnered with the F.B. Heron Foundation and the Meyer Memorial Trust to launch the More for Mission Campaign — a call to foundations to increase mission-related investments by at least 2 percent of total foundation assets. To date, the CEOs of sixty-four foundations representing close to $32 billion in assets have signed on to develop a robust and dynamic mission-related investing field.

(from PDN)

The next generation of philanthropists (WSJ)

From the Wall Street Journal, insights into the future of philanthropy.
Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies got 8 of their peers in their 20s and 30s to "discuss their current or future roles in family foundations, their philanthropic aspirations and what today's charities could do differently for them." According to this column, "The new crop of philanthropists is looking to do more with less. They are focusing on smaller start-up organizations and looking for ways to leverage their gifts." Bronfman refers to the next phase of philanthropy as 3.0—not his parents' philanthropy, described as driven by emotions nor the business-like venture philanthropy of the dot com era, but a blend between the two. Read the article here.

The Case for Stakeholder Engagement (SSIR)

From the new issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review:

Grantmaking initiatives often fail when the foundation remains isolated from its grantees and the communities they both serve. To remedy this problem, grantmakers must work more closely with their grantees, community leaders, and other important stakeholders. This engagement helps everyone involved gain a deeper understanding of the problems they are tackling, create new and better solutions, and build more effective organizations.

Read the article here

Resource Guide for Corporate-Nonprofit Collaboration (Gill Foundation)

This report based in part on surveys of nonprofits and corporations, offers an overview of trends in corporate philanthropy and practical advice and tools for building partnerships. Includes successful examples and case studies, with a focus on advancing LGBT issues.

Funder Collaboratives (GrantCraft)

This study presents survey findings on grantees' experiences of being supported by a funder collaborative, advantages, and disadvantages. Suggests how grantmakers could maximize the benefits by emphasizing boldness, efficiency, and clarity and leveraging resources.

Guide to Failing in Philanthropy (RWJ)

A Helpful Guide to Failure in Philanthropy. Use Carefully.
By Larry Blumenthal, Director, Social Media Strategy, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Originally published in Philanthropy News Digest

If you try to fail...and succeed, what have you done?
— Phil Proctor

Let me start with a confession.

Recently, at a conference on building communities online, I was asked to discuss the biggest mistake I had made in social media. I was last in line on the panel so I had time to think, but I couldn't come up with anything other than sweat rings under my arms and an urge to wet myself. When my turn came, I had nothing. Zip. An empty plate. I failed at failure. If you too have faced this problem, I'm here to help. I want to offer my handbook to failing at philanthropy. First, an explanation.

For the most part, foundations tend to be a cautious lot. We hold lots and lots of meetings. Pile on layers and layers of review and approvals. Solicit opinions from everyone. "Let me just check with that guy waiting for a bus over there. The one wearing only one shoe. He might have some insight I missed."

When we do fail, we generally keep it to ourselves. Smarter people than me have offered explanations for this phenomenon. Most recently, Pittsburgh Foundation president Grant Oliphant, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation chief learning officer Bob Hughes, and Robert Giloth and Susan Gewirtz of the Annie E. Casey Foundation (who wrote Philanthropy and Mistakes: An Untapped Resource) offered their insights. While there are a few "good" reasons like protecting grantees, we all know the main explanation comes down to embarrassment (and ego). Few people are comfortable admitting failure. I want to add one more possibility to the literature. Perhaps foundation staff members don't know how to fail.

I don't mean to imply that we don't fail. We fail all the time. Sometimes in little ways. Sometime we go down in an impressive conflagration of failures. (See the latest edition of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation anthology To Improve Health and Health Care for several case studies of programs that "seemed like a good idea at the time.") No, maybe the problem is that we don't know how to fail in a good way. Failing with style. Failure as success.

So, always wanting to be helpful, I offer my four steps to failing well based largely on some things I have learned working in social media.

Fail small. Social media expert Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, warned recently about foundation staffers who claim to be working on a grant that will change the nature of life as we know it (or something equally ambitious). His advice is to lock that staff member out of the building until he or she comes back with a bunch of smaller ideas that might lead to the big one. Why? Because when an idea is that audacious, failure is out of the question (and probably assured). It's akin to the Hollywood blockbuster that has five screenwriters and is on its third director but won't die because the studio already has too much invested. Michael Organ, who headed online advertising for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, says his goal from the beginning was to fail in small ways eight out of ten times. He calls it microfailure. So here is my advice: Think big (that's important), but embrace microfailure. Look at all of your work as an experiment — a pilot — and plan upfront for several review points along the way that allow you to correct your course or exit altogether. First drafts are rarely your best work. It is the thousand little edits and mid-course corrections that create excellence.

Fail publicly. There is a whole world of wisdom out there, and it has become easier and easier to tap into it. Put your thoughts and ideas out for feedback early and often, don't worry that they may still feel half-baked. Don't be afraid to publicly ask for help. It is better to find out early that you are off track than when you have a full head of steam. There are plenty of people who can redirect you. Plenty of people with good ideas. Plenty of people besides the usual suspects.

Fail to win. Learn from mistakes. Turn them into successes. One of the stories in the RWJF anthology mentioned above concerns the foundation's efforts to improve the care of dying hospital patients. Clearly, it was a noble cause, but a formal evaluation of one of the first major efforts — a $31 million program called SUPPORT funded between 1988 and 1996 — found that little had been accomplished. The foundation could have walked away. Instead, then-president Steve Schroeder encouraged the program officer to take a careful look, gather the lessons learned, and try again. He reasoned that the goal was too important to not keep trying. The result was a $170 million effort that is credited with building the field of palliative care. Such an accomplishment might not have happened without an honest assessment of what had failed the first time out, and the drive to learn from it.

Fail proudly. Share your mistakes with gusto. Think of my buddy Bill who couldn't wait to tell everyone about the blind date who jumped out of his car as he was pulling up to her apartment building at the end of the evening. "Dude, the car was still moving." Smart failures are a badge of honor. You took a risk. You lost. You learned something. Your teachers and parents told you that the best way to learn was by making mistakes (then promptly asked, "What were you thinking?"). They were right about the first part. You remember the mistakes. They stay with you. Take calculated risks. If they don't turn out, that's okay. Share what you learned, and share the fact that you tried and it didn't work. If you are a manager, celebrate your staff's failures. Take everyone out bowling for the day. Discuss mistakes openly at the weekly meeting in an educational way (and without criticism or finger pointing). It will encourage others to do the same. It will drag failure out of the back alleys and into the light of day at your organization.

One last piece of advice. If you fail, and others with sour faces don't see it as the triumph it truly is and need a little encouragement to take some risks as well, feel free to share with them the following quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

Maybe it will work. Maybe it won't. Take a chance. Nobody wants to live in the gray twilight.

Larry Blumenthal is director of social media strategy for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He blogs and tweets (@lblumenthal) regularly about philanthropy and social media.

MN Grantmakers Optimistic

While overall giving by Minnesota funders is expected to decline for the second year in a row, foundations and corporate grantmakers in the state are less pessimistic about the outlook for giving in 2010 than they were at this time last year, a new report from the Minnesota Council on Foundations finds.

Based on a survey of 125 grantmakers representing roughly 70 percent of the grant dollars awarded in the state, the 2010 Outlook Report (6 pages, PDF) found that while 30 percent of the funders surveyed expect to give less in 2010, 25 percent expect to give more. In contrast, MCF's 2009 Outlook Report found that 40 percent of those surveyed expected to give less in 2009 while only 15 percent expected to give more.

The survey also found that 20 percent of grantmakers in the state expect to make fewer grants in 2010, 10 percent expect to reduce the size of the grants they award, and corporate foundations and giving programs expect their giving to remain the same. In addition, 70 percent of grantmakers report they are providing funds for basic needs such as food, housing, and employment services to those hardest hit by the economic downturn.

Donor Circles work (The Daily Tell)

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Report on Funder Collaboratives (Ford Fnd)

This new report gives an overview of how collaborative funds get started, how they work, benefits and challenges for donors and grantees, and factors behind trends in collaboration. Offers examples, case summaries, and tips and tools for effective collaboratives. Download here.

The state of online philanthropy (Hewlett Foundation)

This report from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation looks at fifty-five online nonprofit databases and giving platforms and examines the range and quality of information and services provided, the providers, the users, the distribution of traffic among the sites, and areas for improvement.

Evaluation in Philanthropy (Grantmakers for Effective Organizations)

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations has a new report on grantmakers' approaches to evaluation, defined as "systematic information gathering and research about grantmaker-supported activities that informs learning and drives improvement."

Essentials of Foundation Strategy (Center for Effective Philanthropy)

New report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy identifies defining elements of strategic foundation leaders; characteristics of their plans, communications, grantmaking, and assessments; need to back strategic plans with logic models; and challenges. Includes excerpts of interviews and case summaries.

Robin Hood - any real impact?

If you have not heard of the Robin Hood Fund it is a BIG money raiser in NYC - mostly hedge funds folks. Quite the media darling. This is a critical  blog, about the 'impact' and 'metrics' used by the fund. Seems the real issue is transparency. Ring a bell, Wall Street? Read it here.

Impact Investors

A new report from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors "Solutions for Impact Investors: From Strategy to Implementation" provides guidance on investing to maximize social and environmental impacts as well as financial returns. Illustrates organizational strategies and tools, implementation processes, investment opportunities, and challenges through case studies.

Download the report here.

Chase - $5 M Giving Program on Facebook

JPMorgan Chase has announced the launch of a $5 million community giving program on Facebook that it hopes will inspire a new approach to corporate philanthropy. Teh program invites Facebook users to nominate nonprofit organizations with operating budgets of no more than $10 million working in the areas of education, housing, the environment, health and human services, arts and culture, and animal welfare to receive a grant from Chase. You can learn how to be a part here.

New evaluation tools from RW Johnson Fnd

This new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation describes how you to design stakeholder engagement in evaluation processes. I has a simple step-by-step guide to identifying stakeholders; determining their roles, priorities, and motivations; and selecting an engagement strategy. Includes planning worksheets. Get the tool kit here.

How long should foundations exist?

The Aspen Institutes's Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation just published report on the long-established but seldom-studied practice of spending down foundation endowments rather than preserving them indefinitely.

Time is of the Essence: Foundations and the Policies of Limited Life and Endowment Spend-Down, looks at five foundations and concludes that donors might want to consider a limited lifespan for their foundations.

The study also offers these suggestions for those thinking about starting their own foundations:

• Invest time and effort to clearly define "donor intent" t;
• Donors should go beyond their inner circle to engage people with "expertise, shared passion and shared values to lead their foundations".
Time is of the Essence: Foundations and Policies of Limited

Life and Endowment Spend-Down is available online as a free download at www.aspeninstitute.org/psi.

SPARK

Spark, a young nonprofit, is changing the notion of philanthropy. For its members, philanthropy is a lifestyle choice-one that engages them on many levels. According to Executive Director Shannon Farley, Spark helps you change the world-and network, find a tennis partner, and a new apartment all at the same time. Find them here