One of my pet peeves is when people and organizations shoot themselves in the foot because the lack the vision to see the big picture. This is especially obvious when it comes to many in the nonprofit sector fighing against a change in the charitable tax deductions of our wealthiest donors to help pay for health reform.

Many of our organizations are serving the uninsured and underinsured. We deal with school children who misbehave because they have an undiagnosed hearing problem or a cavity that hasn’t been filled, we serve families that have gone bankrupt because they have an emergency room bill that they can’t pay, and we suffer the effects of a  weaker economy because people can’t afford the health insurance costs if they left their job to start a small business. We are already paying the price without the benefit of universal care.

I will get off my soapbox now and let E.J. Dionne from the Washington Post say this much more eloquently.  From E.J.

If the uninsured can’t count on the do-gooders to help them, where else can they turn?

The question arises because certain leaders of the sector of our society devoted to civic endeavors moved this week to block a perfectly reasonable way of raising some money to extend health coverage to those who don’t have it.

At issue is a proposal by a number of senators, including Jay Rockefeller and John Kerry, to cap tax deductions taken by the well-to-do. Their suggestion wouldn’t even unsettle existing deductions, and it is far more limited than a sensible idea along the same lines put forward earlier by President Obama.

With the Bush-era tax cuts set to expire in 2011, the marginal rate on the top income bracket is scheduled to rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. This affects only families with taxable incomes of roughly $370,000 a year or more.

To help pay for expanded coverage, the senators are proposing that the itemized deductions taken by those with high incomes be capped where they are now. So beginning in 2011, people in the top bracket who made charitable contributions would have them offset against taxes by 35 cents on the dollar, not 39.6 cents. People in the next bracket down, $210,000 to $370,000, would still get a bigger deduction than they do now. The plan is estimated to raise about $90 billion over a decade.

At the beginning of the year, Obama proposed limiting the deduction to 28 cents on the dollar, which would have raised more than $300 billion and solved much of the health-care financing problem.
But Obama’s idea was shot down, and now, a group of charitable leaders — including representatives from the Council on Foundations, the American Association of Museums and, shockingly, the American Institute for Cancer Research — wants to kill the new proposal, too.

 

Read the rest here.

Ever since my son was 4 months old, he has been going to the best daycare in the world. I know most parents think their daycare is the best but mine really is and ABC agrees because they just selected our daycare provider for an Extreme Home Makeover! Philanthropy isn’t always about what you can do on your own. I would have love to build her a new house but I don’t have the resources but by all of the parents banding together and sending in many heartfelt entries to ABC we were still able to have the same result (OK a much, much better result that if we tried to build her a house ourselves).

In the past I have been very skeptical of these type of shows. I worried about drop in philanthropy, where a camera crew drops in, changes a families life in unknowable ways, and then disappears. What I didn’t understand, until we started this process, is that families don’t get on this show unless there is a strong community behind them that wants to see them succeed.

This has been a lifechanging experience for Tia’s family and for the community that she serves and I am excited to see it unfold.

PS watch out for all the daycare kids on Good Morning America, Monday at 7am (my two will be there as well)

Update: Here is a link to the video from that segment

One of my pet peeves is the lost opportunity at many conference to connect with people who are interested but couldn’t attend. Some conference planners think of this lack of connection as an air of exclusivity, when really it is just a missed chance to build buzz and fill more seats next year. James Walker at Brazen Careerist talks about this lost opportunity at the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference: From James:

If you were out and about in the DC area over the past weekend, I would expect you to know that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) just hosted their 2009 Annual Legislative Conference, but I wouldn’t expect you to know what happened there.

Why? I don’t think the CBC used social media as much as they could have to promote the conference, the people in attendance, the issues being discussed and the solutions created.

Only a small group of people can attend conferences like these, but to create the change that needs to occur, many more people need to be informed and engaged. Social media can help achieve that goal.

Though I could not attend, I tried my best to catch up on what was discussed, but it was not particularly easy. Honestly, if I wanted to party, I would have had no problem gathering that info on Twitter, but for some reason, the pure content or true substance of the meeting was hard to find.

Okay, so I’ve pointed out the social media #FAIL. Now I’d like to give a quick list of my PR Prescriptions on how the CBC could have better utilized social media to connect with people to provide more real time coverage.

* Official Tweeters

* Official Bloggers

* Media Partnerships

* Create a site to Build on the Discussion

Read the rest of the details of how social media could be better harnessed here.

I have been going through some of the videos from the Momentum Conference that the Tides Foundation put on earlier this month and I have been completely blown away. They have pulled together some amazing thinkers and so far Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins has been my favorite. She is the new Director of Green For All, the organization that Van Jones started, and she has an amazing understanding of how to make change happen. Her full video is here but I also love the short clip above from Green for All that shows why green jobs are important in a visceral way. Each of our organizations has a powerful story to tell, we just need to be creative about how to get those messages out there.

Philanthropists are pretty comfortable talking about how diversity of staff improves their foundation’s grantmaking. We have sessions at the COF conference where we talk about exemplary foundations that went beyond their comfort zone and hired someone with a different racial background and the foundation presidents will go on and on about how suddenly the foundation had new connections in the community and a fresh perspective as deliberations were being made. Then the audience will start to get into the conversation and regale the rest of the audience with stories about how their foundation took these diversity conversations even farther and starting looking at how many women vs. men were on their boards, or how they made an effort to find a LGBT staff member, or how it is important to have people with disabilities or even different political perspectives on staff to stretch our thinking and improve our collective decision-making. Our differences are what make our work better and the crowd cheers.

Then I ask the panelists “where does diversity in age, not number of years foundation experience, but diversity of age, fit into this conversation?” The panelists grimace, the moderator moves on to the next question and the age question gets left on the table again. When I ask this question in smaller settings, the common refrain is “gen x and gen y don’t want to pay their dues” and “you don’t just come in at age 30 and get a foundation job, it is a reward for a long career in nonprofits.”  In the diversity conversation it is not ok to say “don’t ask that question, you are going to make the panelists feel too white” but it is definitely ok to say “don’t ask that question, you are going to make the panelists feel too old.”

So how does the presence of multiple generations in a foundation improve grantmaking?

Different generations have different perspectives and different life experiences. Someone who graduated from high school in 2000, has a different perspective on the education system than someone who graduated from high school in 1965. Foundations that are making education grants would benefit if they had both of those experiences on staff. One could tell you about the pitfalls of re-segregating schools, the other could talk to you about the security realities of a post-Columbine school. Both perspectives are important and add depth to your deliberations.

A pipeline of leadership in your organization strengthens your foundation and the field. The hardest leadership trait to hire for is a matching value set.  Having a multigenerational staff ensures that as more and more of your staff become retirement age, there are staff available that understand the organizational culture and values and have been prepared to assume leadership.

Different generations have different skill sets.  A Baby Boomer program officer who has been with a foundation for many years might better understand some of the historical foundation relationships, a Generation X or Y staff member may have more comfort with technology or a more robust professional network.  Both perspectives are important.

 Has generational diversity been a topic of conversation at your foundation? What are some of the barriers and opportunities you are seeing as a result of generational shifts?

Trista Harris is Executive Director of the Headwaters Foundation, the blogger behind New Voices of Philanthropy, and co-chair of the Council on Foundation’s Next Generation Task Force.

I’ve been reading Bill Somerville’s book Grassroots Philanthropy: Field Notes of a Maverick Grantmaker with great interest over the last few days. Bill’s belief is that all of the paperwork and bureaucracy of philanthropy prevents us from achieving our purpose of helping the community. His most important principal for grantmaking is to locate outstanding people doing important work. I know all of this should be grantmaking 101 but this lesson seems to have been forgotten as we are buried under our piles of grant reviews. All of this of wonderful and I highly recommend that you read the book because if we all slightly changed our practices and spent more time in the community it would have an amazing impact, but that is not what made me say “holy crap, that’s a great idea” and run to write this blog post.

In the chapter on grantmaking with speed and grace (I love that description!), Bill describes how his foundation, Philanthropic Ventures, has prepared for disaster grantmaking. They are located in San Francisco where the threat of earthquakes are real. The foundation has identified 10 organizations that they have worked with over the years that have outstanding leadership and has a long track record of working with the poor. They have signed a letter of understanding with each organization starting that “in the event of a major earthquake, flood, fire, or other disaster”, they have immediate access to $25,000 for the first 4 days following the event.  The organizational leaders can use their personal credit cards for anything necessary to alleviate pain and suffering. Nothing has to be approved by the foundation 1st and the charges will be paid by the foundation before they are due.

What an amazingly simple and powerful idea. So much time is spent after a disaster figuring out the fundraising plan, rather than providing services that are so desperately needed. What is your local disaster risk? We are a flood and tornado state (with a slight chance of bridge collapse) and there are many partners  that our geographic community foundations have worked with over the years that would be much more effective if this type of arrangement was in place.

Who would your foundation work with in a disaster and what is stopping your institution from developing those relationships now?

Dan Pallotta is the author of Uncharitable and has been writing columns for Harvard Business on how the current nonprofit model actually makes it nearly impossible for our work to be successful, an issue that is near and dear to my heart. His most recent article is about nonprofit pay. An excerpt is below:

In what can only be called an effort to maintain a culture of martyrdom, when all else fails, traditionalists argue that higher compensation offerings in the nonprofit sector will not attract better talent. This effort at argument is actually progress. They used to simply declare that it was immoral for anyone to make money in the nonprofit sector. When confronted with the notion that this might restrict progress, because higher salaries would attract leaders who can achieve greater impact for those in need, they resort to the argument that money makes no difference. People do this work out of love of humanity and receive psychic benefit in return. Money will only contaminate things, attract greedy people, and we wonʼt get any better impact. The worldʼs most urgent problems are immune to financial incentive.

Then they ask for data: “Show me where high salary packages have attracted better leadership.” Clairvoyant data, I would call it. How can you show anyone data on the success of a practice thatʼs not permitted? The demand for data on a paradigm that doesnʼt yet exist is always the status quoʼs last defense. Itʼs an epidemic in the nonprofit sector. The sector requires data before anyone can sneeze. Imagine how long it would have taken to launch Disneyland in a nonprofit setting. Weʼd still be waiting for the data. But there are some data that might serve as a proxy. A Goldwater Institute paper on the merits of six-figure teacher salaries found that 7th grade South Korean students scored 21% better on math scores than their American peers, despite the fact that average South Korean classes are twice as large as average American classess — 49:23. They found that the quality of the teachers mattered much more than the class size.

Read the rest of the article here.

As I was going through an old notebook, I found a piece of advice that Jessica Stannard-Friel gave me in 2007 at a conference, “start a blog, it’s a great way to position yourself in the field and to develop a two-way conversation about generational issues.” Jessica is the sister of Sean Stannard-Stockton, blogger at Tactical Philanthropy and she had described how Sean’s experience starting a blog just a few months before had been a great way to meet colleagues and flesh out new ideas. I’ve stayed in touch with Sean over the last few years and was excited when he announced his newest venture Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, where he will work directly advising wealthy donors on how to make their philanthropy more effective.  I am always pleased when one of my fellow bloggers leverages the knowledge and connections that they have developed through blogging to make a personal or professional dream come true. The firm will have many services for individuals but I am most interested in his plan to bring individual donors together with professional foundation staff to share lessons learned in something he is calling the Tactical Philanthropy Knowledge Network. More about that from Sean’s website:

Who you know is often more important than what you know. And yet philanthropists – from individuals to large foundations – seldom communicate with each other. The result is that donors often have to reinvent the wheel. To help our clients benefit from the vast amount of knowledge in the field of philanthropy, we are building the Tactical Philanthropy Knowledge Network.

One of the core services of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors is to act as a trusted intermediary between major donors and the professional field of philanthropy. The Tactical Philanthropy Knowledge Network is a network of professional grantmakers who are committed to the idea that knowledge-sharing leads to greater social impact. Philanthropy thought leaderJed Emerson has agreed to act as Chair of the Network. In addition, the design firm IDEO will be involved in designing the Network and facilitating Network gatherings.

The Network will launch in late 2009 with the first in-person gathering to take place in early 2010.

Odds are that you’re aware of some of the work to bring diversity and inclusiveness to philanthropy, whether it’s through the “Race Matters Took Kit” of the Annie E. Casey Foundation or even through the grants of the family foundation down the road from you. But how much don’t you hear about?

I’ve been exploring how foundations communicate their work on diversity for a case study that will be published by the Diversity in Philanthropy Project (DPP) at the end of September. The case study examines some of the innovative ways this dialogue is happening at some of the leading national foundations: Ford, Marguerite Casey, Packard, C.S. Mott, and The Denver foundations. But the question about communicating the work at other foundations is wide open: a lot of diversity and inclusiveness work still falls beneath the radar.

As Anastasia Ordonez, Packard Foundation’s senior communications manager, pointed out to me, many foundations like it that way. They’re used to taking a back seat on publicity and working behind the scenes to make things happen.

Another issue is specificity. There’s no shortage of high-minded ideals and vision statements, but what about the heart and soul of the work? Jan Jaffe, the Project Director of GrantCraft, told me that it’s not enough for foundations to tell how diverse they are. They need to show us by interacting with their staff, grantees, and stakeholders to find out why and how diversity is important to us. She said, “They need to ask what they’re doing differently as a result. How is our work different from a Benetton ad?”

The case study is far from an exhaustive list of innovative communications or challenges to communicating. I wanted to open up the dialogue to blog readers:

• What innovative communications work about diversity and inclusiveness have you seen?
• What should foundations do to become more innovative and effective in their communications?
• What would be the advantages or disadvantages of creating a best practices platform?

I was having a great day at work today and decided to buy my staff some Izzy’s ice cream from the Birchwood Cafe because it is super hot and feels like the last hurrah of summer. As I was waiting in the turn lane for the light rail train to pass, I saw a man look at the train coming and jump in front of it. A man that was standing near by ran over and tried to help but it was obviously too late, in many many ways. There is probably a story here about a crumbling social services safety net, the lack of funding for mental health services, and the debate over health care access for all but quite honestly I don’t have the mental energy for that today.

What I will say is that as I was taking to the very kind transit officer that was getting my statement, the only thing that I could think about was how soon I could see my family. Just a half an hour before all that was on my mind was staff morale and getting ready for a fabulous reception that the Minnesota Council of Foundations is putting on for foundation staff to socialize tonight. But really, that isn’t where priorities lie when you are shaken awake by tragedy.

So I leave to to you guys and the other really talented people in the nonprofit and government sector to figure out what it takes to stop these kind of tragedies from happening again but what I will say is hold your loved ones a little bit tighter and in the busyness of the day, don’t forget what is really important.