July 16th, 2008
Red-blooded Americans are not the only ones recoiling in horror that before long, each case of Budweiser they buy will dump money into the coffers of a Belgian company.
Nonprofits in St. Louis, where Anheuser-Busch’s headquarters are located, are worried that the brewer’s new owner, InBev, may not provide the kind of support they’ve come to depend upon over the years.
Anheuser-Busch gave $13 million to charitable causes in the St. Louis region last year. At least 70 local organizations got money from A-B. Carlos Brito, the chief executive officer of InBev, has said his company would maintain a St. Louis civic presence.
As indifferent as I am to who owns a brewer whose products I find to be watered-down, flavorless excuses for beer, 13 million bucks is nothing to sneeze at. And with TWA long gone, I’m hard-pressed to identify a corporate titan who can provide St. Louis with the charitable presence it’s come to rely on. It just might be time for the city’s suds drinkers to switch to Miller High Life. | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 3 comments
July 16th, 2008
Jailbreak fundraisers, in which local celebrities go behind bars until enough money can be donated to “free” them, are a familiar feature of the charitable landscape, so kudos to the Nova Scotia chapter of the Children’s Wish Foundation for putting a new twist on things:
[The chapter] is currently working to grant 43 wishes, and has come up with a creative fundraising effort to help fund those wishes.
It’s called “Exile Island,” and it’s based on the landmark reality TV program “Survivor.” The plan is to have ten “tribes” of ten banished to George’s Island on Friday, September 19, where they will compete to win their way off the island. …
The tribes will compete to build a shelter, to pass mental and physical challenges and, most importantly, to raise funds. So despite being exiled out of their offices, they’ll get to hang on to their Blackberries. “A lot of their big donations come while they’re on the island, so there’s pretty fierce competition on the island,” [chapter director Cheryl] Matthews says.
Survivor’s producers have used the show to raise money for good causes in the past, so if I were Ms. Matthews, I’d be trying to reach Mark Burnett in advance of September 19. Wonder what Rupert is doing that day … | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 0 comments
July 16th, 2008
The thank-you note is a staple of fundraising, a document nearly as vital to a nonprofit as its mission statement. A brief missive acknowledging a donor’s gift, thanking her for it, and telling her a bit about what her generosity helps to support is not merely polite, it’s also smart — it helps to continue the relationship the organization has developed with her and fosters more goodwill, leading, one hopes, to future gifts.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, right?
But according to the NonProfit Times, institutions are lagging in thanking benefactors for online donations that come through Facebook’s Causes application.
On May 1, The NonProfit Times made $25 contributions to 10 different Causes on Facebook, selecting the top five Causes (based on number of members) as well as five national organizations in a range of categories. While an immediate generic notification is sent by email to the donor from Network For Good, which processes donations for a cut of 4.75 percent, none of the nonprofits corresponded directly, by email or regular mail, at presstime, some six weeks after the donation.
Granted, technological changes happen extraordinarily swiftly, and keeping up when resources are limited can be tough. But, goodness, the opportunity that Facebook presents is so golden. Once limited to college kids, the social networking site is gaining greater traction with people in their 30s and 40s — an important demographic nonprofits love to reach. By failing to do something as basic as send a thank-you note, organizations risk letting those high earners donate their money elsewhere and contribute their time and expertise to other causes. | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 1 comment
July 15th, 2008
Responding to my recent post about churches retooling their service missions in hopes of increasing their impact on those who truly need it, a reader asked in a comment:
If “one church was painted six times” isn’t that the fault of that church’s leadership, not of the non-profits seeking to help?
The answer is simple: It doesn’t matter.
Whether they or their beneficiaries are to blame, nonprofits should be applauded for seeking greater effectiveness in their efforts. Pointing fingers and saying that it’s not their job to determine whether the people they’re helping have already been helped may make them feel better for a minute or two, but once they realize they’ve just flushed thousands of dollars in airfare, supplies, and free labor down the toilet, they’re going to wish they’d done their homework first. In this case, impact trumps principle. | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 0 comments
July 14th, 2008
When was the last time you listened to that CD you got as a favor at the last wedding you attended? That long ago?
How much do you want to throw out the crappy trinkets your 6-year-old brought back from that birthday party she went to last month? That much?
Brides, grooms, moms, and dads, there’s a better way: As the Indianapolis Business Journal reported recently, more celebrants are taking the money they’d spend on favors that would never get used and instead donating it to causes they believe in. Observers quoted in the story noted that the nonprofits that benefit can use the trend to build relationships that last long after the last glass of champagne has been sipped and the last piece of cake scarfed down.
Becoming part of a donor’s celebration helps a not-for-profit establish an emotional connection that likely will stay with the donor, [I Do Foundation executive director Grant] La Rouche said.
Generally speaking, donors who do this already believe in a cause, but the wedding or birthday party can serve almost as a promotional platform for the not-for-profit, said Jessica White, president of locally based fund-raising consultancy Jessica White Associates.
“It gets other people to know about the organizations and become donors themselves,” she said.
And checking back in with the donors regularly will help keep them involved and giving, she said. Ideally, giving at the wedding is just the beginning. La Rouche said he’s gotten lots of requests for charitable tie-ins to baby registries, an option the foundation hopes to roll out soon.
The best fundraisers do not merely land checks. They build relationships. They persuade. They inspire. Seems to me that linking those efforts with the happiest times in a person’s life is a pretty good way to do it. | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 0 comments
July 14th, 2008
Writing for GuideStar, nonprofit branding consultant Larry Checco argues that how an organization acts is intricately linked with how it is perceived. With that in mind, he presents five suggestions on how “to operate on a high moral and ethical plane—and keep [your] brand strong and healthy.” Some are on the obvious side (”Recruit and hire well. Be transparent about your finances.”), but others have aspects you may not have thought of:
- Educate staff about what’s at risk. Ethical lapses can have extraordinarily serious legal and fiscal consequences; it’s not just about the hit your reputation would take. Do your employees, volunteers, and board members realize this?
- Speak truth to authority. Lower-level staff members who are afraid that the messenger will get shot will not come forward and blow the whistle when it might do some good. Set up good-faith mechanisms to allow them to tell management that they smell something fishy, and protect them from retaliation.
- Legal should not be the litmus test. This one’s the kicker. As I’ve written before, because many people see the sector as more inherently noble, when compromised ethics become public, the perception is that the offending organization has farther to fall. The news is bigger, and people are more disappointed. The lesson: It doesn’t have to be illegal to be seen as wrong. | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 0 comments
July 13th, 2008
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 0 comments
July 12th, 2008
There’s this notion out there that the nonprofit sector has only recently come around to the idea of metrics and accountability, and I’m just not sure that’s true. For example, the Baltimore Sun, in writing about a company that has developed piece of software that purports to measure nonprofit impact, noted the other day:
It’s a newer way of thinking. Traditionally, nonprofits have been satisfied to know they’re working hard to do good work, but rarely set measures to determine what was good. Individual employees sometimes kept their own records, in logbooks or Excel files or - in one Minnesota organization’s case - on recipe cards. But often, there is no entity-wide system … .
Nonprofit metrics are not long-standing facets of the sector, but neither do I believe that they are as recent a phenomenon as the Sun’s wide-eyed report would have us believe. It’s not as if a Red Cross chapter director in Boise read a management book two years ago and snapped her fingers and launched an accountability movement. Admittedly, I have only my own anecdotal evidence of 15 years in nonprofits to go on, but my gut tells me that, while not nearly as explicitly stated or as formalized as it is now, the attempt to measure results goes back further than many think. | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 2 comments
July 11th, 2008
Mention “religious missionaries” and the mind immediately conjures up visions of pious men and women taking lengthy trips to exotic international locales to do good deeds and convert the locals. But these days, missions also include numerous shorter service-immersion trips by younger congregants to foreign lands. As the Washington Post noted earlier this week, some critics have raised concerns about these jaunts, calling them “religious tourism.” The churches are responding.
To make missionary work more meaningful, some churches are taking a different approach. In response to the criticism, a growing number of churches and agencies that put together short-term trips are revamping their programs and establishing new standards.
For the past four years, for example, the Fairfax Presbyterian youths have stayed closer to home, in places such as Welch, West Va.; Lansing, Mich., and Philadelphia. Last week, a team of 44 were in St. Petersburg, Fla., to clean and paint low-income homes, assist the homeless and volunteer at a free health clinic.
This shift gets to the heart of the new emphasis on nonprofit outcomes. As the Post wrote, one Mexican “church was painted six times during one summer by six different groups.” This not simply about making “missionary work more meaningful” for its participants — it’s about ensuring that the work has a truly beneficial impact for those it’s meant to help. Isn’t that what mission means? | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 1 comment
July 11th, 2008
And you thought Dick Cheney was bad.
On this day in 1804, the vice president of the United States of America shot his political rival during a duel. As in, on purpose. Alexander Hamilton died the following day. His killer, Aaron Burr, was charged but never tried, and eventually returned to Washington, D.C., to serve out the remainder of his term as Thomas Jefferson’s No. 2. (Jefferson had already made clear his intention to drop Burr from the ticket for his second term; George Clinton replaced Burr as veep. No word on whether the P-Funk All-Stars were named to cabinet posts.)
The Aaron Burr Association seeks to honor and perpetuate Burr’s memory “as a student, a soldier, a lawyer, a politician, a patron of the arts, an educator, a banker, and as a husband and father” and “to secure for him the honor and respect which are due him as one of the leading figures of his age.” Burr has gone down in history as the bad guy, with some accusing him of using a doctored firearm to gain an unfair advantage in his duel with Hamilton, whose reputation has remained so untarnished that his portrait glances out from every sawbuck printed by the U.S. Mint. The association is distressed by this:
Burr’s supporters in the Aaron Burr Association since 1946 knew his character was not consistent with that of a villain, and have tried to convince history teachers that teaching children to hate an innocent person is wrong. We don’t need villains to be united. Attacking someone’s character does not make the attacker superior. The press destroyed Burr’s reputation, while Burr stood silent in Hamilton’s death. Hamilton’s biographers were hailed, while Burr’s were spurned. Burr could not prove the trick pistols were used, and took the blame for the duel. Throughout our history, we have rallied on the backs of those we condemn. 200 years after the duel, this negative behavior by our teachers and politicians must stop.
Nonprofits are like ice cream: There’s one for every conceivable individual taste. | 501(c)
Share This
By Tom Durso -- 0 comments
Recent Comments