British Person Seems to Defend US Tax Deduction

We’re not sure, but we think this editorial from the UK’s Telegraph makes a case for the United States’ charitable tax deduction, which has come under fire from time to time. The writer’s talk of “how much I chucked around the village fête,” having “a whack of money,” and so on make it unclear at times exactly what exactly she is trying to say.

Getting on Board

A Fast Company blogger says getting your executives on nonprofit boards provides great but often missed opportunities for companies. The move can benefit your “government and community relations, economic development, leadership development, and effective stewardship of your costly grant-making.”

A Century Perspective

At Forbes.com, philanthropy adviser Betsy Brill compares philanthropy today with philanthropy 100 years ago, based on the reprint of a New York Times article from January 1911.

Among the differences, she finds there was far less skepticism about the donors’ motives and beneficial effects a century ago. Similarities include only a small percentage of giving going to community service or public affairs organizations.

Google Doesn’t Reinvent Philanthropy After All

Shortly before taking Google public in 2004, its founders vowed to dedicate 1% of profits to philanthropy. Rather than merely give, however, they would reinvent philanthropy “by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.”

The result was Google.org (or just DotOrg), which would operate in part as a business, avoiding constraints put on nonprofits. They hired an executive with no experience running a major philanthropy, one who promised “Google.org can play the entire keyboard. It can start companies, build industries, pay consultants, lobby, give money to individuals and make a profit.”

The New York Times relates this story and details how Google.org fell far short of its ambitious goals:

Although Google gives tens of millions of dollars to charity each year and says the overall company is meeting its 1 percent giving goal, DotOrg itself is no longer making grants to nonprofit groups or financing new companies. Instead, it focuses on projects like using Google Earth to track environmental changes and monitoring Web searches to detect flu outbreaks. Most of the experts it initially hired have left, and Google, a company obsessed with numbers and metrics, struggles to measure DotOrg’s accomplishments.

What goals they’ve accomplished seem to fit within the framework of what Google does best, that is, aggregate data. The article notes Google Flu Trends, which tries to predict flu outbreaks based on reports of symptoms worldwide, has been cited as useful (if hardly decisive) by public health officials.

At the link, there’s much more about what went wrong and what might be next for Google.org. Recommended.

You Can’t Win If You Don’t Play

Oops: Missed Deadlines Cost United Way and Community Hundreds of Thousands

Foundation or DAF?

The New York Times, focusing on one family facing the challenge of transferring philanthropy from one generation to the next, examines the question: Private foundation or donor-advised fund?

The article considers questions of control, cost, privacy, and legacy in differentiating the two options. Good stuff.

Gates and Abu Dhabi Prince Partner on Immunization

The International Business Times reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi have each pledged $50 million to fund immunizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A third of the combined funds will be given to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, to be used for immunizing children in Pakistan and Afghanistan against polio, while the remaining will be directed to the GAVI Alliance for the purchase and delivery of vaccines against pneumonia, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, hepatitis B and meningitis-causing Haemophilus influenzae type B, for Afghan children.

Health issues and immunization in particular have been focuses of the Gates Foundation for several years. Immunization and development of vaccines are a big part of their Grand Challenges of Global Health project.

Real Charity Hires Fake Newsman

Jon Stewart – alternately scathing media critic when on the offensive and “just a comedian” when challenged – has joined the National September 11 Memorial & Museum board, reports Business Insider. The group is “in charge of building the 9/11 memorial, set to look like twin reflecting pools set above the fallen towers’ footprints.”

Education Reform Effort Generates Controversy

From the LA Times: “Philanthropist Eli Broad and three other donors announced Thursday a $100-million endowment to make Teach for America [TFA] a permanent teacher-training program.”

The Broad Foundation focuses on education reform and has worked with the Gates Foundation on other reform projects – not without controversy.

This particular project focuses on recruiting top college graduates to teaching, training them and then placing them in “some of the nation’s most challenging urban schools.” Critics have emerged here as well, as the article notes:

Early on, the program’s intensive training was not regarded as effective enough to result in consistently good teaching. TFA leaders now say research demonstrates their training program has become among the nation’s best.

More recently, a coalition of groups has challenged the designation of TFA’s rookie teachers — who enter the classroom after a brief, whirlwind training regimen — as highly qualified. They assert that many hard-to-staff urban public schools and charter schools claiming to be staffed by highly qualified teachers are not.

The article doesn’t list the members of this coalition. We can’t help but suspect that teachers’ unions may be involved, but that of course is just wild speculation.

Chinese Billionaire Hands Out Cash

While “venture philanthropy” and buzzword-captured strategies seem to be dominant trends in philanthropy in the west, Chinese recycling magnate Chen Guangbiao prefers to hand out envelopes of cash to the poor himself. He continued this practice on a recent visit to Taiwan:

Mr. Chen today held a “donation ceremony” at a Taiwan auditorium and doled out $227,1888 in his signature red envelopes. He also donated money to social-welfare groups and a school-lunch program for low-income students.

This practice of course has its critics:

The fad among today’s venture philanthropists is to target their dollars to solve a larger social problem, not give away cash to the poor. Accountability, measurability and efficiency are the buzzwords among today’s American givers. The wealthy say giving cash out on the street just fosters a culture of dependency.

The author however suggests that Guangbiao’s practice might be a healthy part of the evolution of Chinese philanthropy:

Remember that John D. Rockefeller handed out dimes on the streets to children before he hired Frederick Gates and became obsessed with outcomes, eventually becoming the country’s first true venture philanthropist.

The red envelopes aren’t the only source of controversy with the Chinese billionaire’s visit. As with any outreach from Red China to Taiwan, some are concerned that it could be part of some kind of reunification effort by the former, as this article at the Huffington Post reports.

Jewish Charities and the Next Generation

Private, family-founded foundations eventually face the challenge of passing the philanthropic assets – and the philanthropic mission – from one generation to the next.

The JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) discusses these issues, with a specific focus on Jewish charities. This comes on the heels of news last week that the San Francisco-based Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund will close its doors in two years, the remaining assets to be divided among the heirs and their own charities.

Beer, Philanthropy, Facebook, and More

Life is full of so many wonderful things: Beer, football, philanthropy, television. But rarely does fate afford us the opportunity to see so many of these things combined into one amazing corporate philanthropy promotion:

Miller High Life appears to be replacing its Super Bowl ad buy with some goodwill marketing. The brand has announced a philanthropic campaign called “Official Beer of You,” where viewers of drinking age can sign a contract at MillerHighLife.com.

There, visitors who fill out a form (e-mail, home address, phone number, etc.) can donate $1 to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, or the participants can have a $1 coupon mailed to themselves. Either way, they will be entered into a drawing to play a role either in a Miller High Life TV ad or on the brand’s Facebook page.

Wait a minute. Are the ads playing during the Super Bowl or not? And when I go to the site I have to choose what to do with my dollar. Okay, but why would I pay a dollar for a $1 coupon instead of just spending the money on beer? And then there’s a drawing, but there are two prizes?

Okay, we’re confused by this promotion, and we haven’t even had any “Official Beer of Us” yet.

UK Arts Funding Innovation

As philanthropic efforts concentrated more on addressing poverty and social issues during the economic downturn, funding for the arts fell.

The Guardian (UK) culture blog asks if “a ‘popular movement’ to support arts projects with online donations be the next step for cultural philanthropy?”

Today a new website, wedidthis.org.uk, opens for business. It’s an intriguing idea: it hopes to support specific arts projects via donations, of any size, given online. If the project reaches its target funding, the donors will be given a small reward…If the campaign doesn’t reach its target, the donors will be refunded.

Interesting idea, especially the money back guarantee if the necessary funds are raised.

Fuzz Finger Filching Philanthropist

Despite a generally relaxed level of government oversight, the vast majority of the dedicated individuals who staff our nation’s foundations have more than enough integrity to prevent anything resembling financial impropriety from occurring.

Some foundations, on the other hand, have staff who embezzle more than a quarter million dollars before the police arrest them.

Free GuideStar Webinar to Predict Future

Via press release, we learn that GuideStar is offering a free webinar Wednesday, February 9th, to review ten predictions for the next ten years.

Fellow philanthropy blogger and Giving Click favorite Lucy Bernholz will be among the presenters discussing emerging trends for the next decade.

Russian Philanthropist Profiled

From previously unknown (to us) magazine RUSSIA!, we read a profile of Suleiman Kerimov and his foundation, which funds social projects in Russia and the donor’s native Dagestan. The article provides some background on the current state of philanthropy in Russia:

Today charity in Russia is growing together with the economy. According to the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), Russian businesses donate around 150 billion rubles ($5 billion, or around 0.4 percent of the GDP) to charity.

The authors show how different expectations are in our erstwhile Cold War rivals’ country:

A distinctive feature of Russian philanthropy is that it often replaces the government. Charities offer services that people should rightfully receive from the state, for example scholarships and health-care subsidies.

In America, you save for college. In Russia, college saves for you!

HP to Leverage Their Technology, Expertise

Hewlett-Packard plans to leverage its technology and employee expertise to enhance its philanthropic activities, according to Venture Beat.

Announced at the Digital Life Design conference today in Munich, the HP program will help nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as mothers2mothers, a South African group that helps prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus from HIV-positive pregnant mothers to their children…

HP will use new database, cloud and mobile services technology to convert mothers2mothers’ paper-based patient records into digital form so that information can be shared across more than 700 sites in sub-Saharan Africa.

How much corporate giving is in-kind giving of this nature? Our guess is most corporations find giving up products and services more amenable to the bottom line than straight cash.

 

Gates, Buffett to Visit India

Bill Gates tells a Reuters interviewer that he, his wife Melinda, and Warren Buffett will be traveling to India this year to encourage the subcontinent’s super-wealthy to pony up some philanthropic dough.

The meeting will be similar to one Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffett held in China last year, where they said some of the small group of ultra-rich Chinese made some “very generous” gifts…

Mr. Gates said that during the China meeting “interest was very high”, and he hoped for a similar response in India.

Gates makes a point we’ve made here; to wit, that emerging economies will take some time to develop a culture of giving, just as the United States did.

“In the U.S. it took a long time to get to where we are, and even in our case the percentage of the very richest who give the majority of their wealth away is only about a third,” he said.

Fact-Checking the President

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, nonprofits are teaming up to fact-check President Obama as he delivers the state of the union address this evening (as we blog, in fact):

Nonprofit newsroom the Center for Public Integrity and watchdog group the Sunlight Foundation are teaming with the Huffington Post online service and the political magazine the National Journal to provide real-time fact-checking as the president makes his annual report to Congress.

In our experience, fact-checking political speeches is usually a silly if harmless exercise. The crux of a political speech isn’t the bare facts themselves but how the speaker selects them, spins them, and draws conclusions from them. Those points aren’t something you can check against an encyclopedia; they are political arguments that can only be settled by politics and debate.

Fundraiser Discusses State of Philanthropy

The Washington Post interviews Renee Acosta of Global Impact, “a nonprofit organization that raises funds to meet global humanitarian needs.” She discusses the current nonprofit landscape, strategies for fundraising during the recession, and her organization’s efforts to generate more corporate partnerships.