Through the Eye of a Needle

The Wall Street Journal‘s Deal Journal blog relays news of a UK Christian ecumenical group’s effort to lead the banking industry back to the straight and narrow:

A report out this week from the Ecumenical Council on Corporate Responsibility–a U.K. church investors’ group that advises on about £17.5 billion in assets–has a slew of recommendations for banks to follow if they want to “rebuild trust” with society.

The ECCR wants them to do a number of things–make finance more available to the poorest in society, be more public about their political lobbying and limit commodity trading where “it could cause social harm”, for example by pushing up the prices of food in the developing world.

They also urge the banks to reveal the highest and lowest salaries among their employees, then work toward lowering that gap. How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

A Defense of Political Philanthropy

In the battle in Wisconsin over budgets and public employee unions, opponents of Republican Gov. Scott Walker have started to focus on billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, libertarian philanthropists. In the Washington Examiner, the Center for Competitive Politics‘s Sean Parnell argues against claims that their contributions are used to “Astroturf” over true grassroots efforts:

One of the central complaints about the Koch brothers’ giving is that their funding will “drown out” the voices of “average citizens” and turn government into a plaything of the rich. By contributing generously to advance their views, opponents of the Koch’s support for free market and limited government causes claim, the brothers are unfairly shaping America’s political and public policy debate.

But a quick review of the last 100 years in America shows that rather than “drowning out” the views and voices of non-wealthy Americans, support from the wealthy actually gives a voice to those who would otherwise be silenced.

The author’s examples of this phenomenon include the NAACP (initially dependent on a few wealthy supporters such as John D. Rockefeller), the ACLU (half of whose funding came from a single donor in their early years), and the different left-leaning groups like the Center for American Progress funded by George Soros.

Hips Recognized for Truthfulness, Philanthropy

The Boston Herald reports that the Harvard Foundation has awarded pop superstar Shakira its 2011 Artist of the Year award.

Foundation director S. Allen Counter says the Latin music artist, who has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, was honored for her “distinguished history of creativity,” as well as for her charitable contributions.

The singer founded the Barefoot Foundation, which aims to improve education and nutrition for poor children in her native Colombia.

In case any readers are cynical enough to wonder if fame plays a greater part than artistry in Harvard’s recipient selection process, please note that previous winners include Jackie Chan and Will Smith.

Voluntary Taxes Unpaid, Sky Blue, Water Wet

The town of Concord, Massachusetts last year sent letters to resident tax exempt organizations asking them to consider donating money to the municipal coffers.

The Boston Globe reports that the nonprofits have not stepped up:

One selectman said he has struck out, while another said he has seen at least a glimmer of hope from some groups…“I haven’t been successful with anybody,’’ said Jeffrey Wieand, the chairman of the Board of Selectmen. “But I’ve talked to people who are at least thinking about it.’’

Next headline in today’s paper: Dog bites man. (Hat tip: The Nonprofit Quarterly.)

Celebrity Apprentices Pick Charities

They’re not all famous enough to be considered true celebrities, and the extreme self-interest with which they approach the competition hardly suggests they want to serve a real apprenticeship. Either way, the entrants on this season of “Celebrity” “Apprentice” have announced the charities for which they are playing. The Nonprofit Quarterly has the full list.

The most sadly appropriate celebrity-charity pairing? Gary Busey will be playing for The Center For Head Injury Services. Any future fruits of their labor will come too late to help their valiant champion.

Korean Americans Giving More

Asian Week highlights a new study by Give2Asia.org that finds giving by Korean Americans on the rise:

The report examines the Korean American diaspora’s potential for philanthropy and finds that it is increasing as the diaspora accumulates wealth and comes to include a greater number of upwardly mobile American-born individuals. It also explores various traditions of giving among Korean Americans, including informal giving, remittance sending, gye, and church-based giving, and shows that mainstream giving is on the rise.

The full report is here.

Millionaire Wants to Play Billionaire

The new “venture philanthropists” are often lauded for the investment not only of their money but their attention, as they seek to ensure accountability and results in their charitable works as they did in their business life.

This approach has its critics in the nonprofit sector, who often chafe under the direction of “control freak” donors. The Wall Street Journal today highlights a particularly risible example:

Robert G. Burton, a 72-year-old publishing entrepreneur, demanded that the University of Connecticut return more than $3 million in donations and take his name off a campus building because he didn’t get a say in the hiring of a new football coach.

In a six-page letter to the school’s athletic director, copied to the governor, Mr. Burton wrote that he wanted to be involved in hiring the new coach. “For someone who has given $7,000,000 to the football program/university I do not feel as though these requests were asking for too much.”

This isn’t philanthropy; this is a moneyed weasel who wants to play Jerry Jones with his state’s university. Send his money back.

Rural America Underserved?

Rick Cohen of the Nonprofit Quarterly‘s Cohen Report examines what he calls stagnant levels of giving to domestic rural areas, charging that “rural philanthropy has not made the leaps that rural communities sorely need.”

The article looks at the levels of giving from 2004 to the third quarter of 2008, deliberately selecting a range before the recent recession. Using data from the Foundation Center, Cohen finds that “rural development” fared poorly over the period:

During that span annual foundation grants for rural development declined from $92.7 million in 2004 to $89.5 million in 2008. That’s a 3.45 percent decrease during a period when total annual foundation grantmaking increased 43.4 percent.

Here we pause to note that the chart Cohen himself provides shows increases in rural-focused giving from 2004 through 2007, with a precipitous drop-off in 2008. Could 2008 have been an outlier, a fluke, rather than evidence of a trend?

Lots more at the link, including a look at efforts by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and others to encourage more giving for rural development, top grant makers to this focus area, and reasons why foundations may be underserving rural America.

UPDATE: In comments, author Rick Cohen offers further evidence that the drop in giving to rural concerns is indeed a trend:

That’s not the third quarter of 2008, but all of 2008. But cut out 2008, and look at the numbers for 2004 through 2007 only. All foundation grantmaking grew during that period grew 38.36 percent, but rural development grantmaking grew only 26.64 percent. Rural development grantmaking was 0.29 percent of all foundation grantmaking in 2004 but fell to less than 0.27 percent of foundation grantmaking in 2007.

“Shy” Philanthropist Signs Giving Pledge

Duty Free Store co-founder Chuck Feeney – the publicity-averse founder who has quietly given away billions via his Atlantic Philanthropies – has signed on to the Giving Pledge, the New York Times reports.

Mr. Feeney is a leading advocate of a school of philanthropy that argues on behalf of “giving while living” rather than creating a foundation that will live in perpetuity, and his intention is for Atlantic to have spent its final dollar by 2020.

Even though neither [Bill and Melinda Gates] nor [Warren] Buffett has ever advocated that pledge signatories adopt similar spend-down policies, Mr. Feeney makes it clear in his letter that he plans to use his participation to urge fellow signers to give away their money while they are alive.

The case for and against perpetual foundations is an interesting one. In The Foundation, Joel Fleishman examines the arguments for “giving while living,” ultimately concluding that “lack of confidence in the good stewardship of their successor philanthropic administrators” was the number one driver of the trend. However, he made a strong case for perpetual foundations:

• They can be a “countercyclical force…to policy-making and problem-solving,” taking the longer view while others might get caught up in shifting focuses and solutions.
• They will invest in generating basic knowledge (which may only be applied to problems later) while life-limited foundations will focus of applying knowledge in hope of solving problems quickly.
• They serve as a steadying influence for social activism; they are a vehicle for social change to happen gradually and peacefully, without requiring sudden revolution.
• By exerting influence over the decades, perpetual foundations also serve as both “a prod and a counterweight” to the government.

We are interested in seeing if any of the Giving Pledge signatories establish more traditional, perpetual foundations. A mix would seem to be optimum.

Smile Merger Causes Frowns

In a tale of the sort of boardroom intrigue and hush-hush dealings one normally imagines going on in the for-profit world, we learn from the New York Times how former philanthropic rivals Smile Train and Operation Smile are unexpectedly merging – and how it has little to do with newfound comity among the principles.

The article does a good job laying out the complex series of events that took place in what it likens to a “putsch” which seems to have been born of conflict within the Smile Train’s board. One member who opposed the merger described it thus:

“It’s kind of like handing the New York Yankees over to a high school team,” said Mark Edward Atkinson, a Smile Train board member who opposed the merger. “Operation Smile gets a partner and a $50 million dowry, and Smile Train fires its senior executives, all of whom are great, and the organization and money move to Virginia,” where Operation Smile is based.

It only goes to show that human nature operates in the philanthropic community just as it does everywhere else.

UPDATE: More on this merger from the Nonprofit Quarterly.

CSR in Pakistan

The Express Tribune – apparently a Pakistani news partner of the International Herald Tribune – publishes an interesting reflection on the proper role of CSR in the corporate world.

First, the author, Citizens Foundation VP Ahson Rabbani, concedes a point we’ve hinted at before, to wit: Businesses do a lot of good in their for-profit activities alone:

Businesses support society in a number of ways. Foremost among them is providing goods and services to meet the needs of consumers. Other major contributions include providing employment opportunities to public and paying taxes for the functioning of government.

The rest is nothing terribly new for those familiar with CSR best practices, but it’s interesting to learn that corporate philanthropic opportunities are being examined in Pakistan.

Dance-a-thon Actually Held

With all the buzz about Jumo, Facebook, Twitter, social networking and the future of philanthropy, it’s appealing to hear of college students taking part in an old-fashioned fund-raising effort: Ball State University students dance 12 hours for Riley Foundation

The fourth annual Dance Marathon began at 3 p.m. and was expected to last until 3 a.m. today.

“This marathon is going to be incredible because of Ball State’s executive Dance Marathon board and because of all the teams that signed up,” Ben Cohen, Dance Marathon and Kids Caring and Sharing Coordinator of Riley Children’s Foundation said.

No mention in the article of upcoming plans to have a goldfish swallowing competition, or to see how many student can fit into a phone booth.

Detriot Would Buy That for Fifty Thousand Dollars

Some philanthropic causes inspire people to get involved with their time and money in hopes of having a positive and lasting impact on someone less fortunate.

Others inspire people to fund a statue honoring a fictional cyborg:

On a list of Detroit’s biggest problems, the lack of a statue honoring RoboCop would seem to rank rather low.

Yet in a city where some of the most prominent buildings have sat vacant for decades and booting a scandal-plagued mayor out of office took eight months, raising $50,000 to produce and install a 7-foot-tall iron replica of the crime-fighting cyborg was accomplished in a mere six days.

Good fund-raising is where you find it.

IRS Targets Shady Supporting Organizations

“Supporting organizations” raise and disburse funds to support a specific operating nonprofit. A commonly seen example would be the “Friends of” some museum or college sports program.

The New York Times reports that the IRS is cracking down on “shady” uses this type of organization, having revoked exemptions from 72 such groups in the last five years.

Among the problems the I.R.S. found were supporting organizations that were created as tools in shady financial planning programs to let donors take a tax deduction, only to get their supposed charitable donation back through offshore investments or interest-free loans to relatives…

[Lois Lerner of the IRS] said the most common abuse involved promoters who set up supporting organizations on behalf of their clients. The client would take a deduction for donating money to the organization. Then, through a series of promoter-controlled transactions — some involving offshore activity — the “donation” would be returned to the client or a relative, often in the form of a no-interest loan.

Premji Supporting Non-Traditional Lessons

The New York Times profiles the education methods being put at work at schools supported by Indian billionaire Azim Premji and his news-making grants of last year. The students forgo rote memorization for stories, oral presentations, and independent projects–not the usual fare:

[The activities] might seem commonplace in American or European schools. But such activities are revolutionary in India, where public school students have long been drilled on memorizing facts and regurgitating them in stressful year-end exams that many children fail.

Panel Discusses Donors, Giving in UK

Across the pond, the Guardian publishes the remarks of an “expert panel” regarding the current state of philanthropy and major donors in the UK. Questions cover matters such as:

• Strength of donation market
• What might the UK learn from the USA
• Whether expectations of donors too high

 

“Flamboyant” Chinese Philanthropist Plans Return

In his previous visit to Taiwan, Chinese recycling magnate Chen Guangbiao made a splash handing out traditional red envelopes of cash to random people. Focus Taiwan is reporting the philanthropist plans to soon return with more structured giving plans:

On his next visit to Taiwan, Chen said he hopes to donate money to universities or set up a foundation. The foundation would set up scholarships to help poor students and also be used to promote cross-strait cultural exchanges to enhance communications and understanding between students across the Taiwan Strait.

Gates Looks to Boost Chinese Vaccine Quality

From Reuters: Gates Foundation to improve child vaccines in China

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is helping partners in China improve child vaccines, roll out faster TB detection kits and make higher-yielding rice which it hopes can be used later in other parts of the world.

The challenge appears to be to raise the producers’ quality control to a level allowing the vaccines to be used internationally (Red China’s standards being a bit laxer than the international community’s).

Target to Aim Political Contributions More Carefully

Round logo-sporting, SWPL Walmart alternative Target has revised its political giving policy following controversy over contributions last year:

Target attracted the ire of many LGBT rights supporters — some of whom pledged to boycott the company — after it was revealed last year that the retail chain donated $150,000 to MN Forward. The group ran ads backing Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who opposes same-sex marriage.

The corporation’s new policy is not to forgo political contributions altogether; however, “a policy committee made up of senior executives to guide decision-making for financial support of political activities” will be established.

 

Beaver State Crackdown

An editorial from the Oregonian says the state’s attorney general is cracking down on nonprofits which are keeping a decidedly high percentage of their funds for themselves:

Just before Christmas, [Attorney General John] Kroger released a list of 20 charities of all kinds that spent more than 75 percent of their donations on their own management costs and fund-raising — leaving only pennies of every donated dollar for the people they professed to help.

Government oversight of the nonprofit sector tends to be lax because that’s not where the (big) money is. The cases like this we’ve notice at Giving Click tend to involve charities which claim to help veterans. Perhaps the idea that veterans are being cheated is compelling enough to make it good politics to investigate.