Advice from another new voice

Tidy Sum left a comment on the article that I wrote a while back on Advice for those new to the foundation field. His or her advice was so spot on that I thought I would share it with the rest of the readers.

• Tune in to Foundation Power Hour. Learn about foundation and nonprofit governance and learn to sketch out the power dynamics among staff and the board.
• Find out where the bucks stop. Learn about the financial side of the field. Ask where the money comes from and how it is invested. It may intrigue you or it may make you barf.
• Enjoy wildlife. Get a field guide to spotting sacred cows in the field. Then shoot them.
• Moisturize. Buy some lotion cause you will need thick skin to survive.
• Listen up. Talk for 10 percent of the time and listen for 90% of the time. We all talk to much.
• Holla back. Defy expectations. Return your damn phone calls and emails to applicants.
• Celebrate and laugh once in awhile. You get to meet some of the smartest people who are changing the world. You lucky dawg.

Student loan magic bullet or magic BB?

I was just reading an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy and I thought all of my nonprofit dreams had come true. The headline was "Congress passes bill to forgive student-loan debt for some charity workers." Was I reading an international version of The Chronicle? Was it AmeriCorp VISTA volunteer day at the Capital and they took over the voting? Or did my government suddenly take an interest in the financial stability of a whole class of workers that have dedicated themselves to the common good? Well, yes and no. Like most laws that seem fantastic on the surface, there are some downfalls. Let me list the many conditions that will make it unlikely that this new law will lift your crushing student loan debt:

1. Workers can erase their student loan balances if they work 10 years in a public service career. This includes workers from tax-exempt charities, government employees, public-school teachers, law-enforcement officials, and public-health workers. Employees must be making student loan payments for those 10 years. (Right now you are thinking, "this is me" or "this is me in 9 and a half years", but wait...)
2. The plan only applies to loan payments made after October 1, 2007. You have to be a current student or planning to go back to school to benefit.
3. Annual income must be less than $65,000 at the end of the 10 year period.
4. Forgiveness only applies to specific job titles like early childhood teachers, foreign language specialists, librarians and nurses.
5. It sounds like the maximum loan forgiveness is $5,000.

I am torn between thinking this is a complete waste of legislation that only makes lawmakers feel good and doesn't improve the issue that they intended to address and believing that this is an important first step which may change the financial status of many social sector workers in the future and may be the solution to the sector's leadership gap. What do you think?

P.S. If you are a former political science or law student check out www.thomas.gov and look for HR 2669 and let me know if you can find any loopholes.

Philanthropic Roots

"Poverty isn't only a lack of financial resources, it is an isolation from the kind of people that can help you make more of yourself." -Keith Ferrazzi

I have been thinking a lot lately about what foundations are doing to address the root causes of injustice and poverty in our communities. At a Black men and boys conference that I attended Alvin Starks of the Open Society Institute had an important thought about this issue, he said the question shouldn't be what is wrong with Black men and boys, the question should be what is wrong with a society that would completely write off a whole section of its population?

What are we doing as a field to address root causes of problems? Are we just skimming the surface and avoiding the real questions because they are too hard?

Asking for your cake ala mode and other life lessons

Last week I was at a dinner for a conference that I was attending at a nice restaurant. It was one of those things where you order off the two choices on the menu and the meals get brought out on a great swarm of activity. At the end of the meal we had a choice of chocolate or rum cake, the desserts were brought out and our table started eating the delicious cakes when someone noticed a discrepancy at the table. Someone was eating a chocolate cake but there was something else on his plate...ice cream. Not just regular ice cream but the delicious homemade kind that makes your plain old piece of chocolate cake turn into a symphony in your mouth. Ice cream wasn't on our menu, so how did this man conduct what amounted to a conference dessert
coup d'état? He said he asked for his dessert ala mode. As we all sat in dumbfounded silence, I realized our collective disappointment was about more than a naked cake, it was about our failure to negotiate a better deal. How many times are we given two options and we confine our selves to those choices? There is a whole suger filled world out there and we are missing it because we don't look outside of what is presented. So the next time you are offered dry chicken or fish at a conference, ask for the chef to whip up a fresh vegetarian option or if you get two mediocre grant proposals, search for something better. You can have your cake ala mode too, you just need to ask.

Fundraising 2017: You think fundraising is hard now…

I am participating on this month’s Giving Carnival hosted by Gayle Roberts. The topic this month is “Predicting the Future of Fundraising”. Not so long ago, I was a fundraiser for a nonprofit, so this topic is near and dear to my heart.

If current trends continue, by 2017:

1) The only role of an executive director will be to raise the money needed to keep the doors of their respective nonprofit open. Gone will be the days of executive director as the nonprofits’ strategic visionary. Exponential growth in the number of nonprofits and slow growth in foundation and individual giving makes fundraising an (even more) time consuming task.
2) The 990 will be the main analytical tool used to select a nonprofit to fund. Increased governmental oversight makes the 990 a cumbersome tool for nonprofits (especially small ones) but gives donors and foundations a “magic effectiveness” number made up of overhead rate calculations, program expenses, and the executive director’s salary. This number is manipulated by savvy nonprofits and misunderstood by smaller nonprofits. Instead of relying on their intuition and common sense, funding decisions are now made by cold hard calculations.
3) Each nonprofit will consist of a wide variety of short-term programs that are developed to meet donor specifications. Online marketing will allow nonprofits to create very specific fundraising pitches to donors but they will become the victim of their own success, as donors want nonprofit programming tailored to their specific interests.

It feels a little bit “Wonderful Life” but I will say it anyway, fundraisers this doesn’t have to be your future. Spend time learning how to communicate your organization’s specific value to the nonprofit marketplace. What do you do better than anyone else? If you can learn how to do this effectively then the money will follow. If this is an impossibly hard assignment, then maybe you work for an organization that isn’t adding a significant value to the sector and competition may cause you to close. Develop programs that meet community needs and put an internal evaluation system in place to make sure that they are effective. Donors want to fund high quality programs that meet community needs. By developing your own internal evaluation systems, you have the information that you need to make the case that you are an important part of the sector.

10 years is not so far away, so think about what you can be doing today to improve the future of nonprofits.