Posts by Maria Di Mento
November 11, 2009, 11:26 AM ET
Why Charities Shouldn't Mirror Corporations, Plus More: Wednesday's Roundup
- While recent books encourage nonprofit groups to act more like big business, such thinking could threaten the charity world’s “distinctive identity and purpose,” writes Phil Buchanan, the chief executive of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a foundation research group in Cambridge, Mass. His views appear on a Duke University blog.
- To help their clients find ways to give in an uncertain economy, financial advisers should recommend they draw on individual retirement accounts, donate stocks or bonds, or use donor-advised funds, says Shelly Banjo, who writes The Wall Street Journal’s blog about the work of financial advisers.
- When writing a grant application, charities should be candid about their “growing pains or lessons learned” because potential donors feel more confident when an organization admits its missteps, writes Arlene Spencer, a fund-raising consultant, on...
November 10, 2009, 11:30 AM ET
A Call for Feed the Children Founder to Step Aside, and More: Tuesday's Roundup
- As a leadership struggle continues to embroil Feed the Children, its founder, Larry Jones, should leave the charity and allow new people to guide it, says an editorial in The Oklahoman.
- Social-media activists are protesting the decision by Causes to stop working with MySpace, saying the move will hamper their work to connect with poor people and racial minorities, writes Joe Solomon with NetSquared, a nonprofit technology program. Causes, an online application that enabled users to raise money for charity on social-media Web sites, said it is leaving MySpace to focus on Facebook.
- Bloggers are beginning to reflect on the second America’s Giving Challenge, in which charities competed to raise the biggest number of “friends” through Facebook’s Causes application. Allison Fine, a Chronicle contributor who writes about social media, notes that small charities again dominated...
November 9, 2009, 11:15 AM ET
Criticism of Philanthropy as Too Donor-Centric, Plus More: Monday's Roundup
- Philanthropy suffers from being too donor-centric, writes Holden Karnofsky, a founder of GiveWell, the nonprofit group that rates charities. “The sector revolves around telling donors great stories, while charities’ actual impact is unexamined and essentially irrelevant,” says Mr. Karnofsky.
- Charities take, on average, eight days to respond to people who sign up for their e-mail lists, according to a new survey by Care2, a company that works with nonprofit groups to promote environmentally friendly living habits.
- Sean Stannard-Stockton, an adviser to donors and a Chronicle contributor, writes about the Social Innovation Fast Pitch, an event in which carefully vetted charities deliver their “three-minute elevator pitch” to compete for grant money before an audience of 350 people.
November 6, 2009, 11:53 AM ET
Congress Urged to Force Charities to Prove Their Social Value; Plus More: Friday's Roundup
- With a recent survey showing that 23 presidents at private colleges earn more than $1-million, Congress should do more to regulate nonprofit salaries and operations, including establishing a national standard for “how much benefit an organization must provide to a community to earn tax-exempt status,” argues an editorial in the Des Moines Register.
- Tim Ogden, editor in chief of Philanthropy Action, writes about the case of Zynga, a company that makes online games, which recently trumpeted that it had raised $500,000 for nonprofit groups in Haiti. Much of the company’s revenue turned out to be raised through a scam, however, which highlighted for Mr. Ogden the lack of public information about how much of a consumer’s gift goes to a cause.
- Causes, the application that promotes giving on social-networking sites, recently announced that it was ending its efforts on MySpace ...
November 5, 2009, 11:29 AM ET
British Donors Urged to Go Public With Their Big Gifts, and More: Thursday's Roundup
- Dame Stephanie Shirley, Britain’s ambassador for philanthropy, is urging philanthropists to be more public about their giving and get charities to focus more on results, writes Lena Schreiber, a senior consultant at New Philanthropy Capital, a nonprofit research group in London. Her views appear on the group’s blog.
- As another charity scandal gets headlines, the nonprofit world “will have to work harder to ensure that we are letting our supporters know that we not only do good works but that we do them well and we are, therefore, worthy of their gifts and of their trust,” writes Janet Levine, a fund-raising consultant, on her blog.
- Using the online tool Twitter for social change is all about “making sure the message you want to put out there is simple, direct, and genuine,” Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, tells Huffington Post.
- Rick Cohen, national...
November 4, 2009, 11:26 AM ET
A Call for Charities to Share Their Data; Plus More: Wednesday's Roundup
- Marnie Webb, co-chief executive of TechSoup Global, contemplates the role of charities in a world in which so many people have easy access to data. In response to posts by Allison Fine, the social-media expert, and Lucy Bernholz, an adviser to donors, Ms. Webb says she would like to see nonprofit groups do more to share their data, collect stories to demonstrate what the data show, and agree on standards for the information they collect.
- Holden Karnofsky, a founder of the nonprofit group GiveWell, raises more questions about microfinance on the organization’s blog. He says that some charities may be supplying small loans in places where people could get other forms of credit.
- Philanthropy has become a tired concept, and more charities need to follow the example of Citizen Effect, which uses the Internet to connect everyday people with local charitable projects, writes ...
November 3, 2009, 10:58 AM ET
A Critique of Consumer 'Giving,' and More: Tuesday's Roundup
- Lucy Bernholz, an adviser to foundations, thinks that embedded giving — namely, the incorporation of charitable gifts into consumer purchases — is a “rip-off” because it puts too many steps between a nonprofit group and a donor, lacks reporting standards, and has the effect of individual donors giving away their charitable deduction to companies. On her blog, Philanthropy 2173, she asks readers to share their run-ins with embedded giving during the holiday season.
- Good magazine interviews Matthew Bishop, a co-author of Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World, on the eve of the book’s release in paperback. Mr. Bishop says that the recession has increased talk of mergers and collaborations among charities, which he calls “an opportunity rather than a disaster for philanthrocapitalism.”
- Scott E. Hartley, a graduate student at Columbia University and a former...
November 2, 2009, 11:56 AM ET
The Downside of Transparency, Plus More: Monday's Roundup
- Lucy Bernholz, an adviser to foundations, explores the potential downsides of transparency on her blog Philanthropy 2173. Ms. Bernholz, an advocate of increased information in philanthropy, describes one potential unintended consequence: If disclosure requirements at private foundations were expanded, that might drive more people to instead use donor-advised funds.
- Heather Carpenter, a researcher at the Caster Family Center for Nonprofit Research, offers some tips for moving from a job at a regional to a national nonprofit group.
- While The Philanthropist television show has been canceled by NBC, fans of the show are trying to persuade the network to bring it back, writes Mitch Nauffts on PhilanTopic, the Foundation Center blog.
- A new $75,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation brings the total amount of prize money available in America’s Giving Challenge to $2...
October 30, 2009, 02:20 PM ET
Public Invited to Vote on Philanthropy "Game Changers;" and More: Friday's Roundup
- Huffington Post is asking readers to vote on “the biggest game changer in philanthropy.” Candidates include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for his creation of a citywide service program, and Perla Ni, founder of the Web site Great Nonprofits.
- Andrew Wolk, founder of the nonprofit group Root Cause, advances the idea of creating common measurement tools tailored to an organization’s size and stage of development.
- While making changes to the nation’s health-care system is important, capping the charitable tax deduction to pay for the overhaul — or any other government program — would hurt charities, writes Brian A. Gallagher, chief executive officer of United Way Worldwide, in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.
- With the growing interest in the racial and gender diversity of foundation leadership, Gary Yates, chief executive of the California Wellness...
October 29, 2009, 02:55 PM ET
Concerns About Federal Impact on Charity, Plus More: Thursday's Roundup
- Howard Husock, vice president of policy research at the Manhattan Institute, writes on Townhall.com that “the stars are aligning for government to capture funds that would have otherwise gone to philanthropy and for government itself to pick charity winners and losers.” His concerns center on proposed changes to the amount Americans can deduct for their charitable gifts, the new White House Office of Social Innovation, and the Serve America Act.
- Several prominent corporate chief executives have sales backgrounds, so why does it seem that nonprofit chief executives usually are not former fund raisers? Sasha Dichter, director of business development for the Acumen Fund, raises this question on his blog.
- While some nonprofit experts question the appetite of everyday donors for charity evaluations, Ken Berger, chief executive of Charity Navigator, a watchdog group, argues...