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Conference Notebook
April 2009
April 29, 2009
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Technology at the Conference
Technology wasn’t just the subject of conversation of the Nonprofit Technology Conference. It played a role in just about every aspect of the meeting.
People who wanted to pose a question to a plenary speaker had to submit them online. Other participants voted to determine which questions would be asked.
On Monday, the first day of sessions, 400 evaluations were submitted via text message, and participants sent 3,800 conference-related Twitter messages.
The volume of online activity was so high that for a period of time it brought down the hotel’s wireless network.
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Charities Need to Track What Is Said About Them Online, Says Nonprofit Official
Monitoring what people are saying online about an organization is critical, Carie Lewis, Internet Marketing Manager at the Humane Society of the United States, in Washington, told participants at a session on social media.
Charities, she said, should be tracking:
- Their organization’s name.
- Any acronyms associated with the group — the Humane Society monitors HSUS.
- The names of prominent employees and spokesmen.
- Any current campaigns or issues associated with the organizations.
- Other organizations that work on the same cause — the “competition.”
- “Detractors” — people who are known to be critical of the organization
- “Influencers” — people who shape he opinions of others.
“Detractors are people who can’t stand us, and there’s really nothing we can do about it,” said Ms. Lewis. “But we still have to pay attention to them. Our influencers are people who we’ve identified that are evangelists about our brand. We want to be able to communicate with those people and point them out.”
To help the Humane Society track all of that information, Ms. Lewis used iGoogle to set up a dashboard that aggregates RSS feeds from a variety of sources — including Google alerts, Filtrbox, Twitter Search, Technorati, Digg, and Forum — that send alerts on the terms the group is monitoring.
She also receives text messages when someone is talking about the organization online.
Said Ms. Lewis: “Brand monitoring is not a 9 to 5 job.”
April 28, 2009
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Tools That Streamline Social-Networking Tasks
Once a nonprofit organization has started using social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, maintaining the group’s presence on multiple sites becomes increasingly time consuming, Jordan Dossett, creative director of Antharia, a technology company in Lanham, Md., said in a session at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
“Basically, you go nuts, and want to jump out a window,” she quipped.
But, fortunately, she said, there are free and low-cost tools that can make updating the sites easier.
Ping.fm, a free service, lets people update all of their social networks at the same time.
Ms. Dossett said that the first thing she did when she arrived for the session is send a “ping” to say she was in the room and it was “T minus 15 minutes” until the start of the presentation.
“When I did that, it updated my Facebook page, my Twitter page, my LinkedIn page, my Plurk page, all of it,” she said. “I did not have to log in six different places. It did it all for me.”
Other tools, like Tweet Deck and Event Box, let people follow the activity on all of their social-media accounts in one place.
Says Ms. Dossett: “I’m streamlining and making my life easier.”
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Using Open-Source Software is a Moral Issue, Says Speaker
Using “open source” software rather than proprietary tools is a moral issue that extends beyond technology and affects all of the causes and people that nonprofit organizations serve, Eben Moglen, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, argued at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
The idea that knowledge is something that can be owned and therefore controlled is the cause of most human misery, said Mr. Moglen, who is also a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University Law School.
“There are people who will die because the knowledge of the molecule that might help them not to die is owned knowledge,” he said. “Someone has secured for the substantial portion of a human lifetime the exclusive right to deploy that knowledge, which raises its price, decreases its availability, and condemns some people to extinction.”
Knowledge as a commodity also explains why such a small percentage of people worldwide have access to education, said Mr. Moglen.
“How many of the Einsteins that ever existed were allowed to learn physics?” he asked the audience. “One or two, maybe?”
But digital technology, which allows information to be duplicated at no additional cost, calls into question the rationale for the ownership of knowledge, Mr. Moglen argued.
“If we could feed everybody by cooking one breakfast and pressing a button, what would the case be, what would the argument be for charging people more for food than they can afford to pay?” he said. “Of course, we can’t just cook one breakfast and press a button, but we can make one operating system and press a button.”
Using open-source software products, then, that were created collaboratively and can be shared freely chips away at the system that seeks to control knowledge for profit, Mr. Moglen told the audience.
“We are not merely making our own businesses cheaper to run or even more efficient, more pleasant, more simple, more stable, we are also addressing a root issue of injustice,” he said, “because we are reducing the political and economic might of knowledge that can be owned.”
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Next Wave in Online Videos -- Interactivity
New technology tools allow organizations to make their online videos more interactive, Michael Hoffman, chief executive of See3, a Chicago consulting company, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
Among the nonprofit videos he pointed to as examples: That’s Not Cool, a new campaign designed to help teenagers recognize the role that technology can play in unhealthy or abusive relationships. The online campaign was developed by the Advertising Council, in partnership with the Family Violence Prevention Fund.
The campaign uses a light touch to talk about what can be a difficult issue.
In one video, sock puppets portray a teenage couple in which the young man is overwhelmed by the constant text messages he receives from his girlfriend asking where he is and what is he doing. After laying out his dilemma, the video asks the viewer what he should do:
A — You have no choice. You tell her your phone is broken.
B — Tell her she needs to trust you and give you some space.
C — Move away and work on a horse ranch.
What viewers see next depends on which answer they choose.
Adding this kind of interactivity to online videos increases viewers’ involvement, said Mr. Hoffmann.
“If you think about it, a lot of video is very passive,” he said. “You watch the video. That’s pretty different than a lot of what we’re talking about with social media, which is about commenting and creating and doing.”
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Online Fund Raising in Tough Times
The turbulent economy is very much on the minds of nonprofit organizations as they think about their online fund raising.
Nick Allen — chief executive of Donordigital, a consulting company in San Francisco that specializes in online fund raising, and a speaker at the Nonprofit Technology Conference — spoke to The Chronicle about what he has heard from his nonprofit clients.
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Microsoft Announces a New Contest
Microsoft wants to know how its software donations through Tech Soup have helped charities and libraries in the United States and Canada — so it’s holding a contest to find out.
Winners of the Microsoft Impact Story Contest 2009 will be chosen based on their ability to show how the software helped the organizations stabilize and strengthen their technology systems, improve the services they provide, or do their work in new ways.
Contest winners will be announced June 26, and receive $5,000 in cash and Microsoft products worth $25,000.
April 27, 2009
Nonprofit Technology Conference
How the Internet Has Changed Advocacy Work
The Internet is transforming the ways that groups come together and take action, Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
“We are living in the middle of the biggest expansion of expressive capability in the history of the human race,” said Mr. Shirky, who is an adjunct professor in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Previous communications revolutions were either good at sending one-way messages to large groups of people, like the printing press or broadcast television, or at getting small groups of individuals to talk to each other, like the telephone, he said.
“The Internet is the first media that brings the many-to-many pattern, two-way group communication into the media landscape,” Mr. Shirky told the audience. “For the first time, we have the ability to put them together. It isn’t just listening to one source at a time. You can also talk back and you can talk sideways.”
What’s more, he said, the Internet absorbing everything that came before it.
“The media is subsuming all previous media as they go digital, which means that not only do we have the many-to-many pattern, but we have the broadcast pattern and the two-way communication pattern existing in the same environment,” said Mr. Shirky.
These changes, he said, have had profound implications for organized group action.
“When we see large-scale organized action in the world, we are used to there being some managed organization behind it, driving it,” said Mr. Shirky. “That is now no longer the case. Organizations no longer have the monopoly on organized activity.”
Institutions in society — nonprofit organizations included — are at the beginning of a long process of reinventing their roles in a radically different media landscape.
“Institutions are the way they are, in part, because of the difficulty of managing information,” said Mr. Shirky. “So any really profound change in the information landscape also changes the way institutions work.”
Nonprofit Technology Conference
New Guide Looks at Low-Cost Fund-Raising Software
A new guide to low-cost software systems that help charities manage their donor records was released at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
The report — which was published by the Nonprofit Technology Network and Idealware, a nonprofit group in Portland, Me., that provides information on software designed for charities — reviews 33 fund-raising packages that cost less than $4,250 the first year a charity uses them and compares the features that they offer.
The guide also provides in-depth reviews of 12 of those systems.
Laura S. Quinn, executive director of Idealware, spoke with The Chronicle about the report’s findings and offered advice about the steps charities should take when they are looking for new fund-raising software.
Nonprofit Technology Conference
New York Charity Makes Its Software Available to Groups That Provide Mentors to Youngsters
Founded a decade ago, the New York charity iMentor pairs adults and children to meet in person and to intensify their ties through online communications.
High-school students in the New York City nonprofit program meet with their mentors once a month, but weekly online messages that adults and students send to each other are a critical part of helping the relationships grow.
Early in its life, iMentor realized that it needed to build an online system that would allow for safe, guided communication, says Dana Saxon, director of partnerships at iMentor Interactive.
“We needed to know how to track those e-mail messages, and really importantly we wanted to be able to monitor the communication,” she says. “Since the majority of the students are under 18, it’s important for their safety.”
In addition to allowing staff members to monitor the electronic conversations going on between students and their mentors, the system provides prompts — that help the pairs keep the conversation going and build deeper bonds.
“Very shortly after they first meet, they run out of things to talk about, so it’s very important for the mentors and mentees to have guided communication,” says Ms. Saxon. “Our program is focused on academic, career, and personal growth, so we have writing prompts that are targeting those specific topics.”
Soon after iMentor developed its software system, the organization began to receive requests from other mentor programs that wanted to use the software too.
So in 2007, iMentor began to offer the Web-based software to other charities. The cost to use iMentor Interactive, which groups can tailor to their specific program goals, depends on the size of the organization and the number of people who will be using the system.
Ms. Saxon, who is giving a presentation at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, talked to The Chronicle about the software’s conversation prompts and how they have helped students in iMentor’s program improve their writing skills and develop closer bonds with their mentors.
Nonprofit Technology Conference
Nonprofit Technology Leaders Gather in San Francisco
More than 1,300 charity technology officials, consultants, and company representatives are gathering here in San Francisco this week for the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
Sessions at the conference — which is organized by the Nonprofit Technology Network — will focus on topics like fund raising on mobile phones, nonprofit technology careers, ways to attract new online donors, measuring the effectiveness of social-media efforts, and creating podcasts.
Among the speakers will be Eben Moglen, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, and Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, a book that looks at how people are using new technologies to organize in nontraditional ways.
April 24, 2009
Global Philanthropy Forum
Avoid 'Philanthropic Colonialism,' Says Grant Maker
While foundations want to help African nations, they must avoid “philanthropic colonialism,” in which projects last for only a few years and ignore local needs, said Peter Buffett, co-chair of the NoVo Foundation.
Speaking on the final day of the Global Philanthropy Forum, Mr. Buffett described how his organization has worked hard to avoid such pitfalls in the African nation of Liberia, where NoVo, the World Bank, and others are trying to rebuild the education system.
For example, in helping to set up vocational schools to teach former child soldiers, the NoVo Foundation and its partners have tried to find out what job training is relevant to the country’s marketplace.
“If you’re turning out tailors and you need plumbers, it makes no sense,” he said.
In addition, he said, to fully appreciate the challenges of working in a country recovering from war like Liberia, donors need to see the place firsthand.
“You don’t know if you don’t go,” he said.
After visiting Liberia, he said, he had a better understanding of the cultural and economic obstacles that affect his foundation’s efforts to improve education for girls. For example, female students often have responsibilities at home that keep them away from school, some families force them to get married at a young age, and a few teachers offer good grades for sex.
Finally, Mr. Buffett said working effectively in Liberia means operating closely with the government.
In response to the interest in the country by NoVo and other foundations, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia, has established a “philanthropy secretariat,” said Natty B. Davis, a Liberian diplomat.
He said the position will help make sure the foundation interest Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf has attracted will continue after she leaves office.
Mr. Buffet said that the dynamic Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf was why he first considered helping Liberia. But now having developed a close relationship with other government officials and a place in his heart for Liberians, his charitable commitment will not waver when she leaves office.
“We support her, but we support the country,” he said.
Global Philanthropy Forum
Grameen Bank Founder Says He's 'Nervous' About For-Profit Microcredit
While microcredit has grown in popularity in recent years, the increasing number of for-profit efforts that provide loans to poor people is a concern, said Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who founded the Grameen Bank.
Mr. Yunus pioneered the idea of providing small loans to poor people to start their own businesses in the 1970s. In 2006 he and the bank won the Nobel Peace Prize for their antipoverty efforts.
Since then microcredit has blossomed around the world. But Mr. Yunus said he is “nervous” that many nonprofit lending groups are converting to businesses and big commercial banks see money-making opportunities in cultivating low-income borrowers.
While some of these institutions say they only want to make a small profit with microcredit, usually “people aren’t satisfied with a little money,” he said. Over time, these business enterprises will become too focused on the bottom line, and not the customer, he predicted.
He said if an institution is charging somewhere upwards of 15 percent interest on a loan, they have perverted microcredit’s charitable intentions.
“You’re no longer in the microfinance area,” said Mr. Yunus, “you are in the loan-shark area.”
Global Philanthropy Forum
Nonprofit Venture Capital Fund Discusses Impact of the Economic Crisis
Jacqueline Novogratz sees business as part of the solution to poverty in developing countries.
The organization that she founded, the Acumen Fund, in New York, raises philanthropic dollars, which it then invests in businesses in South Asia and East Africa that provide health, water, energy, and agriculture products and services to people earning less than $4 a day.
Too often, says Ms. Novogratz, traditional aid breeds dependency. But at the same time, she says, market capitalism alone isn’t enough to lift poor countries out of poverty. She describes the Acumen Fund as a middle approach.
Ms. Novogratz, who was in Washington to speak at the Global Philanthropy Forum, talked to The Chronicle about the effect the world economic crisis is having on the Acumen Fund’s work and the businesses that the group invests in.
April 23, 2009
Global Philanthropy Forum
How, Exactly, Does a "Public-Private Partnership" Work?
“Public-private partnership” is a favorite buzzword in philanthropy, particularly now that the Obama administration has voiced a commitment to working alongside foundations and nonprofit groups.
But what do such partnerships among governments, businesses, foundations, and charities look like? And how can philanthropists create or participate in such efforts?
Jean Case, who runs the Case Foundation, with her husband Steve discussed those questions at a session today along with Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, and Shelly M. Esque, vice president of legal and corporate affairs with the Intel Corporation.
The three described their work as part of the U.S. Palestinian Partnership, an effort started in 2007 to expand economic and educational opportunities for Palestinians. The effort was one of about four large “public-private partnerships” started by Condoleezza Rice, when she was Secretary of State, and other government officials, said Mr. Isaacson, but the only one that survives today.
Mr. Isaacson said the partnership has focused on two things: giving medium-sized loans to businesses in the Palestinian Territories and developing youth centers in the West Bank. The effort has attracted financial and technology help from not only Intel, but Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and other companies, he said.
Mr. Isaacson said the new administration ought to seek to use a similar approach elsewhere. “We hope this can be a template, whether you’re working in Nairobi or Palestine or anywhere in the world,” he said.
Asked why the U.S. Palestinian Partnership has generated support while the other attempts at public-private partnerships foundered, Mr. Isaacson credited Ms. Case’s “persistence” in recruiting corporations. He also said that donors who want to get involved in this kind of work have to be risk takers who are willing to look at long-term results, not those achieved in the short term.
Several people in the audience pointed out that the notion of “public-private partnership” is nothing new. But some nonprofit officials in the audience, as well as the panelists, said they sensed the new administration would be particularly open and committed to working with nonprofit officials and businesses.
Global Philanthropy Forum
Can Green Enterprise Go "Mainstream" Like Microfinance?
The development of innovative clean-energy businesses in poor countries could, in 15 years, be “rivaling where the microfinance sector is today,” Christine Eibs-Singer, co-founder of the nonprofit group E+Co, told donors assembled at the Global Philanthropy Forum.
Ms. Eibs-Singer, whose organization supports clean energy projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America said such efforts are poised to grow quickly, just as microfinance has done over the last decade or so. She encouraged people with experience working in microfinance to share what they have learned, particularly with respect to the importance of providing long-term philanthropic investments.
“We can take a lot of lessons learned that went into growing microfinance to growing this space,” she said, “and we can recognize that there are a lot of benefits of linking these sectors together.”
Ms. Eibs-Singer described the successes of her nonprofit group in identifying and expanding green businesses. The organization supports 32 businesses in the developing world and has helped to attract $180-million in additional capital for those companies.
As of June of last year, the businesses supported by her nonprofit group, which was started by the Rockefeller Foundation, had offset 4.6 million tons of carbon and brought clean energy to 4.8 million people. Her group now returns 3 percent on capital.
But she says that having a sustainable business model, one that returns a profit, has put her organization in a sort-of “nowhere land.”
“For those on the charitable side, many say our job is done. You’re a self supporting. Go off and do good,” Ms. Eibs-Singer recounted. “You go over to the private-sector side and they say 3 percent, please. We’re looking for more than 3 percent.”
There is a commercial opportunity for clean energy, she said, but philanthropic investments are still needed to develop small businesses and make them sustainable.
“That’s a quandary of public-private partnerships,” she said. “When do you need to be fully private and take the risk of losing social innovation and diluting your mission, versus when should you stay in the public or philanthropic side?”
Global Philanthropy Forum
Philanthropist to Create New Prize for Energy Innovation
Thomas Siebel, a technology entrepreneur and chairman of the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, said today he plans to establish a $20-million prize to encourage the creation of affordable energy-efficient homes.
Mr. Siebel, whose foundation is best known for its efforts to prevent methamphetamine use, told an audience at the Global Philanthropy Forum that he has been working for two years with researchers at Stanford, Princeton, and other institutions on the project.
While it’s possible today to build homes that have zero energy footprint, Mr. Siebel said, it’s an incredibly costly task. By contrast, the philanthropist said, he wants to support the development of energy-efficient homes that are no more expensive to build than ordinary houses.
Mr. Siebel said he plans to officially announce the prizes this fall. The awards will be given out in three phases: first, for the development of ways to reduce to zero the energy footprint of homes; second, for the design of houses that use that technology; and third, for the construction of the 10 types of homes that show the most promise.
The home that performs the best, he said, will be awarded $10-million. Mr. Siebel said he would support the construction of a 100-home energy-free community based on the winning designs on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana.
Global Philanthropy Forum
Kiva's Numbers Continue to Mushroom, but Gift Size Has Shrunk
Kiva.org, the popular Web site that enables people to give small loans to entrepreneurs overseas, is attracting more and more donors despite the recession, its co-founder said today.
Matt Flannery told an audience at the Global Philanthropy Forum that traffic to the site, and the number of loans being provided, has doubled since late last year. People now lend, on average, a total of $1-million per week through the site, and this week alone the site brought in $2-million.
That said, people who give through Kiva.org are contributing smaller amounts. But the drop in the size of loans hasn’t been large enough to offset the big jump in users, Mr. Flannery said.
“If you’re innovative on the Internet, you can get a larger piece of a shrinking pie,” he said.
He also described how enthused entrepreneurs overseas have been by Kiva’s recent announcement that it will enable borrowers in the United States to participate in the site.
“For the first time you see someone in Africa on a level playing field as someone in the U.S.,” he said. “That really excites people in Africa because they feel they’re becoming part of a truly global community where the barriers between benefactor and recipient are really breaking down.”
Mr. Flannery encouraged donors at the conference to help identify and support new ways to use technology to drum up and channel more philanthropy.
Global Philanthropy Forum
Attendance at Global Philanthropy Meeting Holds Steady
While other philanthropy and fund-raising conferences have experienced declines in attendance this year, roughly the same number of people are attending the 2009 Global Philanthropy Forum as last year.
Steve Fox, a spokesman for the World Affairs Council of Northern California, which runs the event, said that about 400 or so donors and philanthropists have come to Washington to discuss global affairs and giving. While the event is not immune to economic problems and has trimmed some of its costs, it is an elite, members-only meeting, which keeps the numbers of attendees fairly steady.
To join the forum, a philanthropist must apply for membership or be nominated by a fellow donor. While it does not require attendees to make a pledge, like the Clinton Global Initiative, its online eligibility guidelines state: “This event is geared toward individual donors and investors with a significant commitment to philanthropy.”
The application form asks how many years an applicant has been involved in grant making, how much of his or her giving goes abroad, and what global causes interest them.
The forum also has another rule for its members: “All conference participants are required to adhere to the GPF’s strict ‘no-fundraising and no-solicitation of business’ policy throughout the conference.”
Global Philanthropy Forum
Official Urges Donors To Work With African Philanthropists
American philanthropists who want to help Africa should work closely with a spate of new homegrown foundations that are emerging on the continent, said Akwasi Aidoo, executive director of TrustAfrica, during the Global Philanthropy Forum.
“There’s been phenomenal growth of African foundations,” he said. He pointed to the work of Theophilus Danjuma, a businessman and former defense minister of Nigeria, who is establishing a foundation with assets of “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
(Read The Chronicle’s article about the new foundations in Africa.)
Grant-making institutions are also being set up in South Africa, Ghana, and Tanzania, said the head of TrustAfrica, which is a foundation in Dakar, Senegal.
Partnerships between American and African donors are crucial to the long-term success of development and antipoverty work on the continent, he said.
“Africa has been literally — and I don’t mean this in a bad way — a playground for external donors and funders, each one coming in and doing their own thing. It doesn’t add up,” he said.
Too often, government aid agencies and foundations suffer from “project-itis.”
“It’s almost like a disease where the donors come in, they do a project for two or three years, with benchmarks and so on, and then move on” he said. “And not much is left behind in terms of the vehicles that are required to keep things going.”
He said the new foundations in Africa are trying to fix that problem by strengthening African charities, improving their management and leadership skills. He asked other grant makers to join them.
“My plea is that these are institutions you really need to figure out a way to partner with,” he said.
Mr. Aidoo also weighed in on the new book Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, by Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born and Oxford-trained economist.
He said the book has generated an important debate about how foreign assistance can be effective, but its analysis that most aid is bad is flawed.
“Aid is talked about in a very limited sense and then condemned,” he said.
“Everybody should read it,” he said, “but I wouldn’t necessarily go out to buy it.”
(Read an opinion article in The Chronicle about the book.)
Global Philanthropy Forum
State Department Seeks Collaboration With Nonprofit Groups
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her department is starting a new program to work more closely with foundations and philanthropists and has assigned a veteran diplomat to lead the effort.
Speaking during the Global Philanthropy Forum last night, the secretary announced the Global Partnership Initiative, which will work with nonprofit groups, businesses, and others to fight poverty abroad.
“I know that we’ve only been in office for a little shy of a hundred days. But I’m even more convinced now than I was when I became secretary of state that the problems we face today will not be solved by governments alone,” she said.
“It will be in partnerships –- partnerships with philanthropy, with global business, partnerships with civil society. We have to find new ways to fill that space that is unfortunately left to create vacuums in too many places around the world.”
(A transcript of Ms. Clinton’s speech is available on the State Department’s Web site.)
Elizabeth Bagley, who was a senior adviser to former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and a former ambassador to Portugal, will lead the program, Ms. Clinton said.
“Elizabeth is a talented diplomat, a gifted networker, and a wonderful person, and I’m delighted she agreed to champion our efforts,” she said.
While several participants welcomed the new effort, saying it was a change from how the Bush administration operated, some said they would like to know more specifics about what types of collaboration the secretary and other Obama officials are looking for.
Global Philanthropy Forum
Philanthropy Urged to Share Lessons on Improving Health Care
Grant makers, philanthropists, and donor advisers began the second day of the Global Philanthropy Forum with a discussion on how to expand access to health care around the world. But first they heard from Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office for Health Reform, about America’s health-care challenges.
Ms. DeParle described how, even in a country as wealthy as the United States, roughly 47 million people lack health insurance. She called on philanthropy to share its ideas, including those culled from abroad, with the federal government as it seeks to expand health-care coverage.
“Some of the most innovative ideas have come from you, your research, you studies, and your models,” she said.
Ms. DeParle pointed to Mexico as an example of a country that had worked successfully to improve its health-care system.
Speaking at the Washington event, Julio Frenk, Mexico’s former minister of health, said people need to push their governments to recognize the economic and security arguments in favor of improving health care coverage for all.
“We have to make the case with the ministers of finance, the presidents, that health is necessary in achieving economic growth,” he said. “We’ll never have successful education policies without healthy children and healthy teachers.”
Melanne Verveer, the U.S. State Department’s ambassador at large for global women’s issues, urged donors to focus on improving women’s health, which she said had an enormous influence on economic growth.
“When a mother dies or is severely ill, her family suffers dramatically, her children are more likely to be stunted, to be deprived of education and the kind of health care they’re required,” she said.
Ms. Verveer and others emphasized that changes to health care can’t happen without political will — and that a vocal nonprofit world is vital to keeping pressure on government to get things done.
“To make the top more effective,” she said, “we need pressure from the bottom.”
April 22, 2009
Global Philanthropy Forum
White House Social Innovation Office to Have Three Goals
While the plans for the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation are still being worked out by the Obama administration, its newly appointed head, Sonal Shah, gave some details about them during the Global Philanthropy Forum.
Ms. Shah, who formerly led global-development efforts at Google.org, said the office has three goals:
- To use new communications technology, hold meetings, and start discussions to find out “what are the innovations that are taking place, how are people solving problems, what types of problems are they solving, and where are they” working.
- To provide money to innovative nonprofit projects working with state and local governments and grant makers. For example, she said the president is interested in improving math and science education and assisting states like Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana where local industries need to be revitalized.
- To promote national service and volunteerism. Ms. Shah touted the expansion of AmeriCorps, which was signed into law this week, as the “first piece of action” in social innovation.
To the donors and grant makers in the audience, she said that the office wants to work with them in a closer way than previous government efforts.
“Partnerships matter a lot to us. It’s not just that the government does, and everybody else follows,” she said. “It really is about where can we learn and what can we do differently.”
To achieve its goals and form robust partnerships, Ms. Shah said “we’re going to have to change some laws,” but she did not say specifically what they were.
She said also her focus is primarily on domestic issues, but that she is working with the National Security Council to bring a global perspective.
When asked when the office would start operating in earnest, she responded in jest: “I hope soon, or I’ll be out of a job soon.”
Global Philanthropy Forum
Apple Jam a Sign of Social Progress, Says Jordan's Queen
One of the big challenges facing philanthropy is making sure that what it supports actually works — and for one speaker, proof of its social change comes in the form of Jordanian apple jam.
During a speech at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan produced a small jar of jam and told the audience that it was a sign, albeit a small one, that efforts to improve primary education in her country were making strides.
“Now, I gather from my friend Bill Gates, that at conferences like these if you really want to get the audience buzzing, you have to bring a jar,” she said as she put the container on the podium to nervous laughter, “But don’t worry. I’m not about to unleash a swarm of hungry mosquitoes on you.” (Read how Mr. Gates used mosquitoes during a speech to call attention to his foundation’s efforts to fight malaria.)
The queen said the food spread was created by a 9-year-old Jordanian student named Layla. As part of a nutrition program started last year by the Jordanian government, with the help of corporations and charities, Layla learned that apples are a valuable source of vitamins.
She began collecting apples discarded by her friends and classmates, who prefer more sugary snack food, and with the help of her mother, turned the fruit into jam.
Layla wants to sell the jam at local markets to raise money to pay for upgrades in school cafeterias and computers.
“Layla’s lesson is that philanthropy means more than giving money,” said the queen. “Philanthropy means giving bold thinkers like her the chance to lift their communities and realize the power within themselves to change things for the better.”
The queen acknowledged that the Middle East — as well as the rest of the world — faces difficult economic problems that may hamper philanthropy and education programs.
“Jam may be sweet, but the times we face today are anything but,” she said.
Yet despite losses of wealth, she pushed foundations and philanthropists to continue finding new ways to help children like Layla.
“As the saying goes,” she said, “when the sky is darkest, that’s when we see the stars.”
Global Philanthropy Forum
World Bank Seeks Philanthropic Partners
While news coverage of the financial crisis has focused on problems in the United States and other wealthy nations, its effects are starting to compound social problems in developing countries, said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director of the World Bank.
For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 200,000 miners have recently lost their jobs, while in Cambodia, 30,000 garment workers, mostly women, are without work because of closing factories, she told donors and others attending the Global Philanthropy Forum.
What’s more, remittances from relatives living abroad are starting to dry up, which has meant some families are going hungry. “People are cutting back on meals, from three to two meals a day,” said Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, who is the former finance minister of Nigeria.
As a result, she expected malnourishment to rise in poor nations and for more children to drop out of school as they lack the energy to attend.
“The context is that we’re dealing with a human crisis,” she said.
She asked philanthropists and foundations to work with the World Bank in microfinance and other efforts to help ameliorate these growing problems.
“I see plenty of possibilities with these partnerships with the philanthropic sector, working together with the private sector, with the international-financial institutions, with the public sector resources of these countries coming together to address the various channels that can help developing countries weather this crisis,” she said.
Global Philanthropy Forum
Donors Should Preserve Independence
President Obama faces a health-care crisis at home, conflicts abroad, and a global financial problem; to solve these issues he needs new ideas from philanthropists and others, Jane Wales, president of the World Affairs Council, told participants at the start of this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington.
“Addressing these and other challenges as president, he like any other world leader is going to need to be able to tap all sources of social innovation, be they from the public, the private, the nongovernmental or philanthropic sector,” said Ms. Wales, who is also co-founder of the forum. “And that’s why we’re all here today.”
About 400 wealthy donors and nonprofit officials from around the world are attending the three-day event.
While she encouraged the participants to assist the Obama administration, she cautioned that they should be careful with how close they work with it.
“It’s terribly important to understand what each partner brings to the table. And in many respects, what the philanthropic sector’s greatest asset is is its independence,” she said. “And I’m not not just speaking about independence from government; I’m also speaking about independence from the sort of snap judgments of electoral politics, the snap judgments of the markets, the tyranny of quarterly reports, and a world driven by a 24-hour news cycle.”
Preserving that independence allows philanthropies to take risks, which is crucial in these tough economic times, Ms. Wales said. “it preserves the capacity to make long-term investments in the public interest.”
Global Philanthropy Forum
Global Philanthropy Forum Kicks Off in Washington
Hundreds of donors interested in international causes are gathering in Washington this week at the Global Philanthropy Forum, a project of the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
The participants will discuss domestic programs that could be successful overseas, and international efforts, like microfinance and rural health-care projects from South Asia, that could be imported to America.
Among the speakers will be Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Aga Khan, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, and Muhammed Yunus.
April 18, 2009
Social Enterprise Summit
The Recession Brings Tough Challenges and Opportunities, Say Experts on Socially Run Businesses
The tumultuous economy will test the leaders of charity-run businesses in a way they have never been tested before, Kevin Lynch and Julius Walls, Jr., authors of Mission, Inc., told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit. But at the same time, they said, the downturn offers exciting opportunities.
Staying on top of the business’s cash flow is critical.
“If you run out of cash, you’re done,” said Mr. Walls, who is chief executive of Greyston Bakery, a charity-run business in Yonkers, N.Y., that provides employment to people who are recovering from addiction, returning from prison, or have other problems that make it difficult to get a job.
Six weeks ago, Rebuild Resources, a screen-printing business in St. Paul that employs people who are recovering from substance abuse, instituted pay cuts to cut expenses during a tight period.
But the pay cuts were driven by the organization’s values, said Mr. Lynch, the charity’s president.
The cuts started with Mr. Lynch, who took a voluntary pay cut of more than 30 percent.
“That’s where the money is, in the higher salaries,” said Mr. Lynch. “So if you want to actually affect something, you have to go to the people who are paid the most.”
Other charity staff members took pay cuts that were tied to their salaries, with employees who made the least money taking a 5-percent decrease. But the hourly workers in the charity’s business were not asked to take a cut.
“Economically, they simply couldn’t sustain it,” said Mr. Lynch. “But more importantly, that is where the rubber hit the road for us on mission, and what we wouldn’t compromise on.”
At Greyston Bakery, cash flow is tightest during the first three months of the year. So, before the quarter started, Mr. Walls brought the business’s major vendors together, and explained that during that period, the business would pays its bills within 45 days, rather than its regular 30-day term.
“Not one of them said, No,” Mr. Walls told the audience. “Not one of them even gave me a hard time, but that’s because we talked to them about what we were doing.”
Balancing a charity-run business’s financial goals and its social mission becomes even more difficult in tough times, said Mr. Lynch.
“We’re learning to live with the fact that, for a period of time, we’re making more decisions that are 70/30 on financial survival, because we know we have to be there for the long run,” he said.
The danger, he said, is that over time that ratio will move further and further away from mission.
“So the way to avoid that happening is to get clear right now on what you will compromise and what you will not compromise on, and to know what that is before the decision that puts you into that zero-sum realm arises,” he said.
As difficult as the challenges facing nonprofit business ventures are, there are also new opportunities, Mr. Lynch and Mr. Walls told the audience.
“Now this sounds really cold-hearted and cold-blooded, but during tough times, there is a culling of the herd,” said Mr. Lynch. “It happens in nature, and it happens in business.”
When weak businesses go under, stronger ones need to go after the customers and market share that are up for grabs, he said.
The recession, he joked, is a good time for social enterprises to go shopping.
“Be on the lookout for deals for equipment, for raw materials, for inventory, for people, even entire businesses,” said Mr. Lynch. “There’s going to be fire sales.”
To be successful, charity-run businesses have to provide a high-quality product or service, he told conference participants. It’s not enough just to have a worthy social goal.
But with the current “backlash against traditional business,” the value of a nonprofit venture’s mission and story in attracting customers has increased, said Mr. Lynch.
“And that is something that should be milked for all it is worth in your marketing efforts,” he said.
The extraordinary challenges of the recession will stretch the leaders of charity-run businesses in unprecedented ways, said Mr. Walls.
To best help their ventures weather the storm, he said, leaders need to make sure that they take care of themselves and their personal relationships and not let the business become all-consuming.
“Give sweat and tears,” Mr. Walls told the audience, “not blood.”
April 17, 2009
Social Enterprise Summit
Considering a Charity-Run Business? A Consultant Offers Tips to Get Started
Charities that are thinking about starting a new business venture should assemble a planning team that encompasses a wide variety of perspectives within their organization, Sean McGee, a partner at Cause Impact, in Columbus, Ohio, told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit.
He recommended that the team includes organization leaders, employees who would be involved in the business, several board members, and perhaps donors who are deeply involved in the group’s work.
“You create a tremendous amount of buy-in before you even launch the project if you assemble a team across those different constituencies so that everybody has the opportunity to help craft the final product,” said Mr. McGee.
He said it’s particularly important to include staff members.
“You don’t want to hand down the plan from Mount Olympus to the people who are going to be executing it, because it dramatically increases the chances of organ rejection,” said Mr. McGee.
Early on, he recommends that an outside facilitator help the group brainstorm possible business ideas.
Says Mr. McGee: “If the executive director runs the brainstorming session, they sometimes have difficulty restraining themselves from shooting down ideas as they’re brought up.”
Social Enterprise Summit
Financial Crisis Offers New Oppportunities for Socially Oriented Investments
The fallout from the financial crisis represents an extraordinary opportunity for businesses and investments that seek to combine financial returns with benefits for society, Jed Emerson, a long-time proponent of such ventures told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit.
In many ways, he said, the crash is a repudiation of the world view that divides for-profit activity strictly from social and environmental considerations.
The experience of low-cost housing groups and community development financial institutions, for example, show that it wasn’t subprime mortgages themselves that triggered the financial crisis, said Mr. Emerson, who is a managing director at Uhuru Capital Management, in New York.
“These people are doing fine,” he said. “They know how to underwrite. They know their communities. They know these people.’
Instead, the problem was a result of the approaches that purely profit-driven companies took to lending in poor neighborhoods, said Mr. Emerson.
“When you have these folks who came in on the straight commercial side, without any consideration of social value or broader impact, that’s when it got out of control,” he said. “They built this whole subprime thing around a fundamental misread of their markets, because they didn’t care about their markets. They cared about the fees and selling.”
As a result of the crash, a growing number of investors are starting to look at social investments, said Mr. Emerson.
“Finally, after 20 years, we have a whole set of deals and investment opportunities that we can actually move forward, whether its microfinance bond offerings or regional lending pools or loan guarantee funds, things that we’ve been piloting for the last decade,” he said. “It’s like, Let’s go play.”
Social Enterprise Summit
A Nonprofit Business Seeks to Spread Nationally
Rubicon Programs is often held up as a model of what successful nonprofit-run business looks like.
The San Francisco Bay Area charity operates two businesses –- a landscaping and grounds-maintenance service and a bakery –- that generate about $18-million annually and provide training and employment for roughly 250 people who are poor or have disabilities.
But for the last several years, Rick Aubry, Rubicon’s long-time president, began to question just how successful the organization’s effort were, he told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit.
“I’ve really personally questioned, Given all the time and energy and sweat and worry that we’ve had, has all of that been equal to the impact that we’ve had?” he said. “And I came to the conclusion: maybe not.”
With foundation grants, Mr. Aubry and several other Rubicon employees have been able to step away from the day-to-day operation of the organization to think about how to create a business that could operate nationally and to investigate business opportunities.
The group, said Mr. Aubry, tried to answer several different questions, “Are there business opportunities that exist that a nonprofit or a hybrid actually has a competitive advantage in achieving, that scales, and that we could get the capital we need to go to scale?”
After interviewing scores of nonprofit leaders who run businesses, researching a wide range of possible businesses, and doing in-depth feasibility studies on several ideas, Rubicon National Social Innovations, as the effort is known, has identified two businesses that it is now developing: mattress recycling and an employer-based payroll advance service that would be an alternative to exploitative payday lenders.
Rubicon is already working with nonprofit organizations in San Jose, Calif., to test the mattress-recycling business, and plans to start another test in Philadelphia later this year.
In the past, Rubicon Programs, along with many other nonprofit groups, was guilty of following “the Andy Hardy school of social enterprise,” Mr. Aubry told conference participants.
“Hey guys, Let’s start a business for those men and women sitting outside our door,” he said. “Let’s go to it, kids!”
While that approach often draws on a lot of enthusiasm and energy, Mr. Aubry said, it often overlooks the basics of what makes a good business.
“Is there really a market problem that we’re solving?” he said. “Or are we setting up businesses that the bigger we get, the more difficult they are, that we have to keep subsidizing them more and more?”
April 16, 2009
Social Enterprise Summit
Social-Enterprise Advocates Urged to Educate Policy Makers
As proponents of applying business models to achieving social change talk with policy makers –- and even others in the nonprofit world –- they can’t assume that people understand the term, “social entrepreneurship,” Mitch Landrieu, Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit, here in New Orleans.
“People who are not MBA’s, that didn’t hang out in Ivy League schools, they don’t know what the hell social entrepreneurship is, and they’ll look at you with a blank stare,” he said. “And if you go out on the ground and talk to people who are social entrepreneurs and you tell them that they’re one, they might slap you.”
In 2007, Mr. Landrieu created the first state Office of Social Entrepreneurship.
The problems that the United States face are tremendous, he said, and neither government, business, nor philanthropy can solve them alone.
“Sometimes government helps; sometimes government gets in the way,” said Mr. Landrieu. “Sometimes business can help. Sometimes business really gets in the way.”
Charity, he said, has its place, but alone it’s not enough.
“The folks like Sr. Anthony over at Associated Catholic Charities have been doing great charitable work over time,” he said. “But that model is basically, I need money, and then I can get that money to people who need it, and I’m not going to ask them to give anything back. That model works in certain circumstances, but it doesn’t work all the time.”
Mr. Landrieu said he started the Office of Social Entrepreneurship, in large part, because of the creative, “born of necessity” solutions he saw in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.
To create similar offices in other cities and states, nonprofit leaders and other advocates need to provide clear, tangible examples to their elected officials to help them understand what social entrepreneurship is, he said.
“Your voice can be heard if you speak to them,” he told the audience. “But if you don’t go to them, they won’t come find you.”
April 15, 2009
Social Enterprise Summit
New Legal Status for Socially Oriented Business Gains Ground
Five states and one Indian nation have passed legislation recognizing a new type of business that puts its social goals ahead of making money.
In the year since Vermont became the first state to recognize the low-profit limited-liability company, or L3C, Michigan, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah have all followed suit, as has the Indian Crow nation.
The new for-profit designation is designed to make it easier for socially oriented businesses to attract program-related investments from foundations and additional money from private investors.
Too often, foundations feel like they have to go through the lengthy and expensive process of getting a private-letter ruling from the Internal Revenue Service each time they want to make a program-related investment in a for-profit business that has a social mission, says Robert M. Lang, Jr., who developed the new designation and is leading the effort to promote it. He is also chief executive of the Mary Elizabeth & Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation, in Cross River, N.Y.
In time, he hopes that the L3C designation will become a recognized “brand” that allows foundations to feel comfortable making a program-related investment without a private-letter ruling.
Mr. Lang and other proponents say that businesses that operate in a state that has not passed L3C legislation can seek the designation in one of the states that has.
Because the L3C designation is a new type of limited-liability company, businesses that operate as an L3C will have to follow all of the regulations that apply to an LLC.
Regulations for limited-liability companies vary from state to state, and Mr. Lang advises businesses that are seeking the L3C designation in another state to select the state with an L3C designation whose LLC law is most compatible with their home state’s LLC law.
Says Mr. Lang: “That’s how you decide between Utah and Vermont and Michigan.”
Social Enterprise Summit
Charity and Business: a Social-Enterprise Gathering in New Orleans
Scores of nonprofit leaders are gathering in New Orleans this week to discuss how nonprofit-run business ventures are faring — and what is next for them
The meeting is the 10th annual conference sponsored by the Social Enterprise Alliance. Speakers scheduled to present keynote speeches include Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Mitch Landrieu, and Jed Emerson, a veteran promoter of nonprofit-run businesses.
We will provide updates of sessions in this conference notebook.
Social Enterprise Summit
Nearly Half of Charities Operate Businesses
The turbulent economy doesn’t appear to be dampening interest in charity-run businesses, according to a new study released today at the Social Enterprise Summit in New Orleans.
A survey of 843 nonprofit organizations found that a little more than half run business ventures, and of the charities that do not run businesses, 57 percent said they were thinking about starting a social enterprise.
The survey was conducted in the middle of September by the Social Enterprise Alliance, Community Wealth Ventures, and Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship.
The organizations that conducted the survey were surprised by the large percentage of groups that said they were thinking about starting their first business ventures, says Heather Peeler, managing director of Community Wealth Ventures, a consulting company in Washington that focuses on social enterprise.
“It was this past fall, right when we got confirmation that we were in recession,” she says. “We thought that given the economic conditions that many nonprofit leaders might be thinking of taking more of a hunker-down approach.”
The most prevalent type of ventures run by charities in the survey were businesses that provide training opportunities, followed by retail and thrift shops, consulting businesses, and food-service ventures.
The survey also found that of the charities that run businesses, nearly half run more than one venture.
“What often happens is that those who launch social enterprises and are successful with it tend to launch more,” says Ms. Peeler. “There’s this whole concept of the serial entrepreneur. When organizations are able to capture the potential, in terms of the financial benefit as well as the mission benefits, they get the bug.”
April 01, 2009
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Advancing Fund Raising Globally
As the Association of Fundraising Professionals annual meeting wraps up today in New Orleans, the conference has made clear that the organization’s work is now spreading around the world.
The association has been increasing educational offerings outside the United States and Canada and extending membership opportunities to fund raisers overseas. In addition, the association has advised charity regulators in countries including Brazil, China, New Zealand, and Poland. It is planning a symposium on developing new charity regulations to be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in November.
The association now has chapters in several locations in Mexico, as well as chapters in Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Singapore. And working with 23 other fund-raising associations or related organizations from other countries, the association has produced the International Statement of Ethical Principles in Fundraising.
Among other overseas expansion activities:
- The association held its first joint fund-raising conference with the Institute of Fundraising in London last year, drawing participants from eight countries. A second conference is planned for January 2010.
- A new online-only membership has been created for overseas fund raisers who pay $50 annually to join. The association plans to market the membership more actively, although more than 100 fund raisers have joined with little promotional effort.
- The association has worked with a Mexican university to create a new Professional Online Diploma training program and a certificate in Spanish. The first students will begin taking courses this spring.
Association of Fundraising Professionals
How Charities Can Find Donations Even in Tough Times
Despite the soft economy, nonprofit groups can do many things to put themselves in the “ready position” to take advantage of some of the fund-raising opportunities still out there, Dee Vandeventer, president of ME&V, a marketing and fund-raising company, told participants at a session of the Association of Fundraising Professionals conference.
One is to focus on the organizations’ image. Think of Morton Salt, she told the group. Though other brands might be cheaper Ms. Vandeventer says, she always buys Morton’s because it’s a familiar and trusted brand.
“It’s the same salt my mother cooked with and the same salt my grandmother cooked with,” she said. “If you can get your organization to that level of emotional branding, you’ll be head and shoulders above everyone else.”
A strong brand, she said, is one that communicates a clear consistent message to all kinds of people. To assess the strength of a nonprofit group’s image, she suggested that participants consider: “If you put all your marketing materials out on a table, would you be able to know that that’s your organization?”
Nonprofit groups should also be using this time to strengthen board members’ connection and commitment to the organization, said Ms. Vandeventer.
While serving as a volunteer on a symphony board, she asked board members to identify three key phrases to describe the mission of the organization and an explanation of why they sit on its board which they then wrote on index cards to use in a six-second “elevator speech” whenever they met likely new donors.
To remind them of the importance of acting as ambassadors for the organization, board members were asked at every board meeting whether they had yet used their elevator pitch.
She also suggested fund raisers look for niche groups that might still be able to give. Because data show that women receive 70 percent of all bequests, and are expected to hold half the wealth in the United States by 2010, she urged fund raisers to think carefully about whether they are doing anything specific to appeal to female donors. She pointed to the example of one local United Way chapter that had recently started a women’s philanthropy group.
Association of Fundraising Professionals
What Fund Raisers Need to Know About Bequests
Three new studies shed light on what fund raisers should know about seeking bequests.
Scholars who presented results at the annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals noted that people who are single and childless are far more likely than any other types of people to make bequests — no matter how wealthy or dedicated to a charity people with families may be.
And they found that donors of bequests have somewhat different motivations than those who give yearly — so fund raisers need to appeal to them in specially tailored ways. You can read all the details about the findings in a Chronicle of Philanthropy article.
Copyright © 2009 The Chronicle of Philanthropy