Denver

Philanthropy and the federal government have made progress in the past year-and-a-half to improve their collaboration—but more needs to be done, Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser and assistant to President Obama for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement, told an audience at the official opening session here of the annual meeting of the Council on Foundations.

Ms. Jarrett discussed some ways for foundations to support government efforts in coming months, including by making it easier for small charities to accept and work with the many volunteers who will soon be put to work through the Serve America Act. The act would triple the size of AmeriCorps.

With last year's "Summer of Service" effort to promote volunteerism, the administration found that many smaller organizations didn't have the ability to effectively use volunteers, Ms. Jarrett said.

Too often, she said,...

Denver

Many companies are in the midst of transformation in the way they think about creating social good -- and are interested in finding models in which they can simultaneously improve the world and their bottom line, participants in a session for corporate grant makers said today.

In a talk at the annual Council on Foundations conference, Kyle Peterson, managing director of FSG Social Impact Advisors, said that businesses have moved in the last 10 years from ignoring or understating problems to wanting to solve them and believing that doing so can be beneficial to their companies.

"What we're looking at now is how to move toward more shared value," Mr. Peterson said. 

He cited several examples of companies that have tried this approach:

* General Electric, whose "Healthymagination" effort is trying to improve health care by reducing costs and increasing quality and access. "This ...

Speaking at an event for young grant makers a day before the official start of the Council on Foundations conference tomorrow, Steve Gunderson, president of the council, urged young foundation executives to help their organizations prepare now for the economic recovery.

In remarks he said he will echo tomorrow, Mr. Gunderson said if there's one thing that keeps him up at night, it's a fear that "we'll fail to prepare for what will be-and I really believe this-the incredible opportunities for growth."

Mr. Gunderson noted the stock market's recovery and legislative changes he expects Congress will make to encourage giving, such as approving a permanent estate tax. 

He said the young foundation executives in the room were not really "next-generation" grant makers anymore; they were the "now generation of grant makers." "The future is really now," he said.

Mr. Gunderson said he expects a...

Denver

Nonprofit groups say it takes them 25 to 30 hours to apply for a grant. Yet most of the grants being awarded are probably $15,000 or less. 

That's much of what's wrong with philanthropy today, Bill Somerville, founder of Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, told an audience of young grant makers here at the first conference of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy. He said the figures on grant size were based on information from the Foundation Center.

"This is absurd; it's patronizing," Mr. Somerville said. "Philanthropy needs reform." 

Mr. Somerville, whose foundation does "paperless" grant making and promises a 48-hour turnaround on grant decisions, urged young foundation officials to help grant makers become smarter, faster, and more responsive. His directives included:

Get out of the office. "I don't think you can do philanthropy from behind a computer," he said. "But in...

Denver

At least since 2006, when the Bridgespan Group predicted that the nonprofit field would need to hire 640,000 senior managers in the next decade to fill the jobs of retiring baby boomers, an impending leadership void has been the talk of the nonprofit world.

Other studies by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, CompassPoint, and others, have examined reasons why younger people say they don't want top jobs at charities—namely, long hours and low pay.

But do young charity workers perceive a leadership void at their organizations? Not really, according to participants in a session at the annual meeting of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network here.

"I don't see a leadership gap," said Aaron Stiner, vice president of the Phoenix chapter of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network. "A lot of people feel like they are getting stuck right now. They don't see room for growth."  

In an informal...

Denver 

Young nonprofit workers need to push the nonprofit world to educate lawmakers about the work of charities and become more involved in public policy, because older people are not going to take on the task, Robert Egger, founder of the V3 Campaign, told an audience at the annual Young Nonprofit Professionals Network conference here today.

Mr. Egger started the V3 Campaign to educate politicians about the economic contributions that nonprofit organziations make. A baby boomer, Mr. Egger said that many members of his generation are too complacent to take a lead in that effort. 

"My generation, we're comfortable, we're just standing there while we should be moving," he said. "My generation chose to drop out; yours can rage." 

Mr. Egger talked about his quest to figure out why the nonprofit world has so little voice in policy debates. Part of it, he said, is that many charities...

Denver

Love being a program director and can't wait to find a job as an executive director? Not so fast. 

Leading a charity is about much more than being a program director with a few extra responsibilities tacked on, said speakers in a session of the annual Young Nonprofit Professionals Network conference in Denver.

The conference drew nearly 150 nonprofit workers in their 20s and 30s, about half of them from outside the Denver area. 

In one panel this morning, three nonprofit leaders in their early 30s -- Lydia McCoy, executive director of the Colorado Children's Immunization Coalition; Sonya Garcia-Ulibarri, executive director of YouthBiz; and Sarah Fischler, director of consulting and special projects with the Community Resource Center and a former interim co-director of the Denver group -- discussed what to expect from an executive-director job.

Among their suggestions for what...

Baltimore

Why do capital campaigns fail? 

M. Kent Stroman, a consultant in Bartlesville, Okla., and Phil L. Lakin, chief executive of the Tulsa Community Foundation, described the top seven reasons in a session today at the annual Association of Fundraising Professionals conference. 

They are: 

Not setting priorities correctly. "If you're going to be successful, you have to have a sense of sequence," said Mr. Stroman. "The results are rarely better than the plans."

He described showing up at a meeting with trustees who were organizing a capital campaign. He was surprised to learn that the campaign had already begun, even though the organization had just approached him to provide consulting assistance. Worse, the trustees had kicked off the $1-million campaign with a bake sale in a city park. "A bake sale may be the right thing for a campaign, but it's certainly not the first thing,"...

Baltimore

If your organization's board was a TV show or movie, which one would it be?

Lost? Survivor? That 70s Show? Dumb and Dumber, perhaps?

Those were among the suggestions made by fund raisers at a session on nonprofit boards led by Nancy Axelrod, a consultant, at the Association of Fundraising Professionals conference here.

Ms. Axelrod, the founding president of BoardSource, discussed why, when so many people in the nonprofit field know what a good board looks like, so many boards are incompetent.

Is it because our expectations are unrealistic? Ms. Axelrod asked. Or perhaps because there is always a certain amount of dysfunction when you bring a group of people together? Or are the nonprofit world's governance models simply out of date? 

Ms. Axelrod discussed some of the assumptions that guide her thinking about boards:

• There isn't one model when it comes to a board's...

Baltimore

Like teenagers who wonder if they should fess up before their parents notice the dent in the family car, donors have a lot of questions.

Harvey McKinnon, a fund-raising consultant in Canada, discussed questions that donors often ask of fund raisers -- and how fund raisers can respond. Mr. McKinnon has written a book on the topic called The Eleven Questions Every Donor Asks, and the Answers All Donors Crave.

Among the questions:

Why me? Mr. McKinnon described a conversation that his friend Mal Warwick, also a fund-raising consultant, had with a wealthy woman who focused her giving on organizations that help older people. Mr. Warwick was raising money for a youth charity and asked for a $5,000 gift. When the woman replied that she gave to seniors groups, Mr. Warwick asked, "Do you see a contradiction between your support of seniors groups and of a youth charity?" The woman...