Following is the final installment from a notebook kept by Holly Hall, a features editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy, who has been studying at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.
Day 16: Charities Become Irrelevant
Web sites like Kiva.org and ModestNeeds.org, which enable donors to give directly to needy people and then get updates about their progress, are part of a trend that is making nonprofit organizations increasingly irrelevant, says Jon Duschinsky, a fund-raising consultant in Paris.
Mr. Duschinsky, who is teaching a class on global philanthropy here, noted that Kiva and the growing number of Web sites like it, enable donors to bypass nonprofit groups altogether.
“For the first time ever, the balance of power is shifting,” he says. “Nonprofit organizations no longer identify problems and beneficiaries. With Kiva, you don’t get telemarketing calls and e-mails. The donor controls the relationship.”
Fund raisers, Mr. Duschinsky says, are “losing control” of many donors who give at modest levels. “It’s an increasingly volatile marketplace, and you can’t control it. It’s much more fun to give to Kiva than the Red Cross.”
To survive in this environment, Mr. Duschinsky says that charities would do well to figure out what they do better than any other organization and focus on that.
Charities should also set bold goals and use creative, “sexy” messages to attract supporters and talented employees, he adds . “You can’t teach passion or curiosity, and we should recruit for these qualities in our staff.”
(More about groups like Kiva and Modest Needs can be found in the cover article
from the latest issue of The Chronicle.)
Day 21: What All Fund Raisers Need to Know
Yesterday was the final day of classes for this first session. As I look back, I realize nothing I learned was what I anticipated.
Much as I learned some important techniques and ideas about how charities can improve donations, I was most struck by how important it is for fund raisers to understand how charitable organizations developed and to watch carefully as efforts to promote philanthropy spread across much of the globe.
Philanthropy developed in the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries as people fleeing Europe and other parts of the world for the Americas were forced to devise innovative ways to care for each other and meet social needs. In the absence of an aristocracy, military rule, or a national government, people improvised — and the social networks they formed contained the seeds of organized philanthropy.
Now, as governments around the world struggle to meet the needs of their people, efforts to plant philanthropy, to get citizens to help fill in the gaps, are going global.
But the conditions that spawned philanthropy on this continent are vastly different from conditions in most other parts of the world. The success of efforts to get citizens from other countries engaged in philanthropy and making donations depends on understanding that—and understanding them. Simply importing American fund-raising techniques is highly unlikely to work in many parts of the globe.
