Archive for the ‘corporate giving’ Category

Valentine’s Day Edition: For Love of Nonprofits

February 14, 2012

The Nonprofiteer would not be so taken with the following story were she not a formerly voracious reader of Harlequin romances and, in fact, the author of a romance novel rejected by Harlequin for having too much plot.  (She even visited Harlequin headquarters in Stratford, Ontario, on her long-ago honeymoon, while pretending to be up there for the Shakespeare Festival.)  The company’s More Than Words award “recognizes and rewards women making extraordinary contributions to their community. The story continues when the winning recipients are paired up with Harlequin authors and the recipients’ journeys become the inspiration for three fictional short stories.”

Is that phenomenal, or what?  Who wouldn’t want to be a Harlequin heroine, her daily drudgery turned into purple prose?  It’s not clear whether the short stories based on the selected heroines will include imaginary jut-jawed lovers, but one can always hope.

In any case, each heroine will receive $15,000 for her organization, while the story about her (and it) will be available for free download.  The Nonprofiteer has written many a communications plan but none featuring anything so attention-grabbing as a romantic short story based on the agency’s work.

Bravo to this year’s winners—Mindy Atwood of Hilliard, Ohio, who runs Patches of Light, a nonprofit organization where anonymous angels pay the rent for parents of  desperately ill children; Helen McGovern of Tacoma, Washington, who oversees Emergency Food Network, which distributes food to 67 food banks, meal sites and shelters, including those with health restrictions; and Sally Spencer of Sunderland, Ontario, who manages Youth Assisting Youth, a mentoring program that rescues at-risk children—and to Harlequin for this apt exercise in corporate generosity.

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Posted in corporate giving, Coverage of nonprofits, Marketing, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Women's Issues | Leave a Comment »

The 5 Ws of Individual-Gifts Fundraising

November 1, 2010

As all budding journalists know, every story can be told through judicious use of the 5 Ws: Who? What? When? Where? Why?  Here the Nonprofiteer employs this efficient system to tell the story of how reluctant volunteers can become enthusiastic and successful individual-gifts fundraisers.

For most small- and medium-sized organizations, everything about this story is a blank.  So here’s a primer on how to fill in that blank.

WHO to ask?: Only two types of people should be asked individually for gifts: people who’ve given to your group before, and friends of your Board members.  With anyone else, it’s sheer impertinence: “Hi, nice to meet you, open your wallet.”  Ask friends (of the agency and the Board), and ye shall receive.

What to do when your Board members say, “I don’t want to ask my friends for money”?  Reply: “You don’t have to ask your friends.  Just ask each other’s friends!”  So Angela asks John’s friend, and John asks Angela’s.  All they ask of their own friends is to come to a meeting, and all they have to do at that meeting is wax enthusiastic about the group and listen while the other one solicits the gift.

WHAT to ask for?: If they’ve given to the agency before, you’re asking for more.  You have to make the leap of imagination (from $250 last year to $1000 this year) before the prospective donor can think about making it.

Don’t worry about being too ambitious in your monetary goal.  Very few prospective donors are offended by being mistaken for rich people.  (Women, though, are more likely to be taken aback than men, so ask for slightly less from women.  They’re more likely to say ‘yes,’ so it all evens out.)

If you’re asking a Board member’s friend, ask for slightly less than the Board member gives him/herself, because the first thing the prospect will do is turn to his Board friend and say, “What do you give?”  If the Board member doesn’t think the agency’s worth $500, the friend is unlikely to think it’s worth anything.

What if your Board member’s friend is a gazillionaire?  (We should all have this problem.)  Then prime the Board member to say, “I give $200, because that’s what I can afford.  We’re hoping you’ll likewise consider a gift based on your capacity.”  Again, few people mind being suspected of success, so if your Board member is prepared to say, “Listen, I know you made a killing last year when you sold your Google stock . . .”  his friend is unlikely to want to correct him!

WHEN to ask: The Nonprofiteer is a prompt—some might say premature—fundraiser.  As a cautionary tale, she offers the story of how her alma mater took her out for coffee repeatedly to soften her up for an ask, despite her saying, “Guys, I’m a fundraiser.  I know what we’re doing here.  Just ask me for the money!”  By the time they were ready to ask her, she’d been reminded that the school’s investment philosophy would have permitted owning shares in slave-ships, and did permit investing in companies propping up genocidal regimes; and therefore she declined to give, though she wouldn’t have reneged on a preexisting pledge.  So don’t delay; get the yes!

“What about cultivation?” you ask.  The Nonprofiteer believes that lots of what passes for “cultivation” in individual-gifts fundraising is nothing more than stalling.  Don’t hold “cultivation” events and plan to ask for money later; if you hold an event, either get contributions through the ticket price or ask forcefully that night.

All you need to do to “cultivate”  people is to demonstrate that you’re thinking about them on a regular basis, and you can do that by forwarding something you think they’d like to read.  Better yet, send them invitations to your activities, whether performances or client graduations or river cleanups.  People give where they feel they belong, so be on the lookout for “belonging” opportunities.  For this purpose, the less special the event, the better.    If you do something special for a donor, make it an ask.

One word of caution about WHEN: don’t ask too soon after the last gift.  May and June may be two separate fiscal years to you, but your donors probably think (and give) on a calendar-year basis.  So they’ll think you bizarre and ungrateful if you respond to their May gift with a June ask.

WHERE?: Over breakfast, lunch or dinner (or possibly bedtime snack).  The Nonprofiteer is a firm believer in the power of food to facilitate fundraising.  In any case, the advantage of a meal is that it requires the prospective donor to sit still for about an hour, during which time you can a) learn about her; b) educate her; and c) ask her.

WHY?: Why bother with individual gifts?  Why not just write some more grants?  (asks your Board.)  Three reasons:

  • Because grants come and go.  Institutional funders have the attention span of fruit-flies: this year they’re interested in AIDS but next year it will be architecture.  If you’re not the fad, you’re out of luck.
  • Because even if they continue to embrace your work, very few foundations or corporate giving offices will give money to support your operations.  They want to support programs, the newer the better, often leading agencies to elaborate their programming beyond what their infrastructure can sustain.  If you need to pay your light bill—or your employees—you need individual gifts.
  • And finally, even if they love you to pieces, most institutional funders want to sustain you while you find broader support.  They’re not interested in being your permanent sugar daddy.

By contrast, most individuals give because they’re asked, and what they’re asked for is support for a cause or an agency (not a single program), and once they’ve agreed they keep giving out of habit.  So you have to actively offend them before they stop.

So that’s the story of successful individual giving.  And if who-what-when-where-why merely piques your interest, you can learn how right here.

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Posted in corporate giving, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Fundraising, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Volunteers/Volunteerism, Women's Issues | Leave a Comment »

An appraising stare down the gift horse’s gullet

August 31, 2010

Jane Mayer’s excellent piece in this past week’s New Yorker about the brothers Koch, oil billionaires who’ve donated hundreds of millions to nonprofits promoting right-wing causes, finally clarified for the Nonprofiteer her unease at Bill Gates’s campaign to persuade billionaires to donate half their estates to charity.  It’s not a question of who has or hasn’t taken the pledge, though that’s an entertaining parlor game.  Nor is it the fact that the generosity of extremely wealthy people may not be what the rest of us have in mind when we hear the word “charity.”  (The Kochs’ “charity,” for instance, is a term of art encompassing donations to all kinds of institutions, predominantly think-tanks churning out rationales for the economic interests of wealthy people and front groups to make it appear that defending those economic interests is the political will of the non-wealthy majority.)

What’s troubling about the billionaires’ pledge remains so even when the receiving causes are unexceptionable.  Gates, for instance, has very generously underwritten substantial efforts by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  Good for him, and for the world.

But.

Even the best-intentioned best-directed private donations are a way for moneyed people to work their will on the public, while the rest of us have nothing but the vote.  And when the level of contributions is discussed in fractions of $1B, it’s no longer charity within a democracy: it’s benevolent dictatorship.

Maybe our country should be giving less to treat AIDS et al and more to eradicate infant and maternal mortality through the UN Population Fund; maybe not.  That’s a decision to be made by the people of the United States, through our government.  It’s really not a decision for a single person.

Why not?  Well, for starters, the “single person” in question is a billionaire, and thus always a man.  That means almost by definition that the highest levels of charitable giving will overlook women, though we constitute more than a majority of the population.  And if that’s the case—if society’s needs are met by individual whim instead of collective decisions about the greatest good for the greatest number—then what, actually, is left of self-government?

Of course, billionaires have plenty of assistance in the task of allowing economic power to trump political will.  The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, holding that corporations are “persons” with First Amendment rights violated by limits on their campaign spending, already put the nation quite a way down that road.  But somehow it’s worse when something that sounds so benign—”half my estate to charity, because I’ve been so fortunate”—actually translates as “I set the agenda for the future of this country, because I’ve been so fortunate.”

What we really want from billionaires is for them to pay a lot more in income taxes: say, the 87% of taxable income paid in 1954,  or even the 70% paid at the start of the 1980s.  And then we as a group can decide where our group’s money goes.  All contribute, all decide.

And what we really want from billionaires’ heirs is for them to pay the 77% estate tax rate in effect in 1941, or even the 70% estate tax rate in effect in 1976.   (And let’s not hear any nonsense about “death taxes.”  The dead aren’t the ones paying.)  Why shouldn’t people who get money by inheritance have to pay taxes on it, just like people who get it by working?

Merely to ask that question is to answer it: no democratic society decides that people who don’t work should be privileged over those who do.  Societies like that are called “aristocracies,” and all those so-called Constitutional Originalists running around hijacking elections by screaming about excessive taxation should take a moment to remember that our Constitution was designed precisely to interfere with the establishment of a government by inheritance.

The Constitution prohibits not once but twice the granting of any title of nobility; but the Framers didn’t rest there.  They fought to cripple and ultimately abolish entail and primogeniture, the primary devices by which English law kept family fortunes together.  Why?  Because they realized that, if you’re founding a republic, it’s really not a good idea to let money keep piling up generation after generation in the same few pairs of hands.

Self-governing societies can’t operate on noblesse oblige, and societies that do aren’t truly self-governing.  As Dr. Franklin said, “A republic—if you can keep it.”

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Posted in Advocacy, Advocacy groups, Campaign finance, corporate giving, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Disease charities, Environmental, Finances, Fundraising, International, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Private Philanthropy, Public private partnerships, Women's Issues | 10 Comments »

Chase: What matters?

July 23, 2010

[An excerpt of this posting appears on the Huffington Post, in the Impact section.]

The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones notwithstanding, the problem with the Chase Community Giving program isn’t that it lets “civilians”–non-expert non-critics–decide which theater companies deserve a $20,000 one-time no-strings grant.  The problem is that it pretends to do that–Let the People Decide!–while actually turning theater companies into marketing satellites of Chase Bank.  Institutions poor and weak enough to be moved by a $20,000 carrot–to which the competition was explicitly restricted–recite the bank’s name relentlessly to their audiences.  That’s a lot of advertising for very little money.  Of course, all corporate giving is advertising–but this is of a special, insidious kind.

The Nonprofiteer doesn’t believe in “crowd-source philanthropy,” because it’s not philanthropy at all: it’s “crowd-manipulation marketing.”  Chase has gotten hundreds if not thousands of little charities to demand that their audiences provide contact information to the bank and subject themselves to commercial targeting for the good of the cause.

These crowd-manipulation marketing programs (pioneered by Pepsi and American Express, doubtless with many more corporate behemoths yet to come) also set up a system which rewards the nonprofits with the greatest Internet presence or savvy, which is not the same as giving the money to the neediest, or best, or most diverse, group of people doing important work in society.  Again, the issue isn’t who gets to define “best;” it’s whether the agencies competing for that designation have a fair and equal opportunity to receive it.  Upper-middle-class people may imagine that “everyone” has access to the Internet, but in fact if you reward clicks and responses to e-mail and Facebook postings, you reward organizations with wealthy white audiences and disadvantage those whose audiences are nonwhite and/or poor.  Way to magnify the digital divide.  Way to make sure that the rich get richer and the poor have babies.

This lazy and manipulative approach to corporate giving diverts nonprofit attention from real fundraising–which involves relationships over the long term–to point-and-click fundraising, which costs “donors” nothing and therefore gives them no stake in the institution.

The argument about who’s entitled to judge art is a side-show, doubtless one Chase would be happy to have theaters and critics debating from here to eternity.  Meanwhile, the bank laughs all the way to–the bank.

[Unable to resist, the Nonprofiteer dons her critic's hat and argues that, though she believes her opinions about theater are better-informed and therefore more useful than those of the guy standing next to you on the train, she's also open to the possibility that her prejudices and blind spots make this false in a significant number of cases.  In any case, if she didn't believe theater was the essential human art form--because it involves words, the very thing that separates us from all other species--and therefore belonged to everyone human, she wouldn't spend so much of her life seeing and reviewing plays.  So she refuses to concede that others' engagement with theater--in whatever form, and without any credentials whatsoever--is unwelcome or inappropriate.]

“Crowd-source philanthropy” doesn’t mean the people get to decide; it means they get the illusion of deciding while actually being used to serve someone else’s commercial purposes.  We know that’s a bad thing when the issue is what corporations give to, and get from, politicians.  Let’s not fail to notice when the issue is what they give to, and exact from, us.

See also Barbara Talisman’s posting on the subject, which links to an entire discussion of the pros and cons.

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Posted in Arts Organizations, Campaign finance, corporate giving, Coverage of nonprofits, Fundraising, Marketing, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Technology | 6 Comments »

Bankers: Don’t try to use charities as human shields

January 11, 2010

The Nonprofiteer comes roaring out of seclusion to point out that big-bank donations to charity, and/or big banks’ making donations to charity mandatory among their employees, are NOT substitutes for big banks’ and bankers’ payment of a fair share of their earnings in taxes that support the operation of the United States government.  (You’re welcome to translate “fair share” as “the 90-plus percent banker-bonus tax recently enacted in the United Kingdom.”)

While the Nonprofiteer is as enthusiastic as anyone about the work of the nonprofit sector–all of its work, whether advocacy or arts or higher education or social services–she hardly thinks that donations to the Metropolitan Opera and Harvard should be considered an appropriate alternative to making tax funds available for health care or schools or housing or child care–or even the military.

Taxation is the expenditure of our common funds on common purposes.  Expenditure of private funds on private purposes–however worthy–is something else entirely, and the latter can’t be offered in trade for the former.

If the big banks want to dampen public outrage over the enormous bonuses they’re paying, they should take the simple step of not paying them.  And, as they seem unlikely to do anything that sensible or decent, public criticism should be made law in the form of taxes and regulations to recapture the windfall profits the banks made with public money.

Charities are real entities with real work to do.  We shouldn’t be treated as fig leaves for the worst excesses of capitalism.

And the Nonprofiteer certainly hopes we don’t hear from self-appointed sector spokespeople hastening to tug their forelocks and say “What a swell idea!  Thank you, thank you, Goldman Sachs!”  It’s not just the public at large: even nonprofits are better off with a government suitably supported by taxes than with a temporary infusion of tax-free guilt money.

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Posted in Advocacy, Charity scandals, corporate giving, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Finances, Fundraising, Health care, Higher education, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies | 2 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, What happened to the agency we knew, yester-me, yester-you, yester-day?*

September 10, 2009

Dear Nonprofiteer:

For the last year I have been hovering near the Board of a small startup nonprofit I respect.  I started as a donor, and I think I was about to be invited into the boardroom.  Now our dealings are stalled, if not worse, and I don’t know what to do.

I learned about the organization two years ago from an old, somewhat close friend who had been doing some consulting work for it.  I’d agreed with her when she spoke excitedly about its activities.

Now she has been fired, or she’s quit; I can’t tell.  All ties severed.  She’s playing the cool professional in a shtick I find irksome: “Let’s just say it was mutual consent and I wish them all the best.”  Okay, I said, but do you have confidence in the leadership?   Is there anything I need to know?  “Look, I’d rather not talk about  it,” she said.

For its part, the organization (I mean its current ED and the board chair) hasn’t been in contact with me lately the way it had been.  It’s the summer, I tell myself; they’ll get back in gear soon.  But maybe I too have been fired.

I still respect the outfit–what I know of it, its mission and accomplishments.  And I don’t think my friend will mind if I stay involved.  What does the correct semi-outsider do in these circumstances?

Signed, One Foot In

Dear Foot:

When a consultant mutters about mutual decisions and best wishes, the translation is ‘AVOID!  AVOID!  COMPLETE DISASTER AHEAD!”  If the organization has decided to let you alone, count it as one of your blessings.

Less glibly: the most likely reason a consultant would leave a paying gig is that she discovered something improper or unethical, pointed it out as something that needed cleaning up, and encountered a stone wall.  Whether it’s mis-, mal- or non-feasance, it’s not something a professional wants to be anywhere near.  Nor is it something you would want to be involved in as a Board member.

Could you join the Board and turn it around?  Maybe.  But as a newcomer, and without your inside contact, you’d have less leverage in insisting on a clean-up of whatever needs cleaning up, and/or bringing in new blood (in the form of other new Board members) to wash the infection away.

What might be the problem?  The list is long, but with start-ups one common difficulty is that they’re not actually charities at all.  Perhaps they’re secretly profit-making entities for the founding Board; perhaps they’re tax shelters.  But not every organization that gets a preliminary ruling from the IRS should actually be considered a tax-exempt charity, and your friend might have discovered this sort of foundational issue.

Practically the least serious reason for a consultant to walk is that she hasn’t been paid.  But if this is the kind of organization that doesn’t pay its bills, again, I think you should count yourself lucky if it’s passing you by.

If you’re determined, though, to make this your experience of Board service, there’s no reason for you to be shy: after all, you’re a volunteer offering your services, not a supplicant begging for a job.  Pick up the phone and call the Executive Director and say, “I’d gathered you were recruiting me for the Board: was that correct?  I’m still interested in serving.”  No point in beating around the bush: listen to her answer, and if she’s at all evasive or indefinite about when she might want your services, then you’ll know it’s time to walk away.

It’s frustrating to have invested time in an agency with the expectation of being promoted to the Board, and then have that expectation frustrated.  But better that than the long-term frustration of serving on the Board of an agency whose integrity is in serious question.

____

*Apologies to Stevie Wonder.

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Charity scandals, corporate giving, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 1 Comment »

Another casualty of Great Depression II

May 5, 2009

Charities that depend on tribute galas–fancy events at which the Man or Woman of the Year underwrites the cost of being honored–are discovering that fewer and fewer corporate executives are able to be so honored.

It’s always been true, but now it’s obviously true: any nonprofit whose fundraising rests on events (instead of an annual campaign plus major individual gifts) is riding for a fall.

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Posted in Benefit events, corporate giving, Coverage of nonprofits, Finances, Fundraising, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders | Leave a Comment »

Foundation Friday: “Astroturfing” and foundations

April 10, 2009

A bit of fine reporting, and thoughtful skepticism, from the Community Media Workshop about the relationship between community groups and the philanthropies who fund them.  And another example of the same phenom, from the same dogged source. When foundations fund community groups, whose voice really gets heard: the community’s, or the foundation’s?

This is something we ought to be wary of, as we begin to hear calls for foundations to take over funding newspapers.  If those same foundations are funding a particular approach to school reform, can we expect to see that approach critically appraised in the pages of its captive newspaper?

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Posted in Advocacy, Advocacy groups, corporate giving, Coverage of nonprofits, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Fundraising, Mission, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders | 3 Comments »

Where’s the beef?: Big projects swallow up all the money

April 6, 2009

Hey, Nonprofiteer, here’s my beef:

I read (Crain’s Chicago Business, March 16, registration required) that the Chicago Olympics 2016 committee has a corporate sponsorship goal of $1.8 billion.  Isn’t that going to cut into corporate responses to nonprofit funding requests?  Is that going to make things worse for nonprofits than they already are?  I remember hearing a nonprofit Executive Director grousing about how much money was diverted from regular charitable donations to go to [naming opportunities in the city's new downtown] Millennium Park, and the Tribune recently mentioned the same possibility in connection with the Olympics.

Should I worry about who will pay if the Olympics go over budget?

(This guy sounds a little worried:

http://behindthebid.blogspot.com/2007/03/crains-olympic-challenge.html)

Signed, Bean Counter

Hey, Bean–

You’re asking two separate questions.  Second one first: you shouldn’t worry about who will pay for inevitable Olympic cost overruns, because it’s all settled: you’ll pay, if you’re a Chicago taxpayer.

I think the Olympics are a bad idea on about six different dimensions, but the first one you raise is discussed least often: the tendency of big projects like the Olympics (or, before it, Millennium Park) to sop up huge volumes of corporate and foundation funding, leaving less for ordinary operating nonprofits.  But of course it’s impossible to determine what those funders would have spent on education or health care or social services had a sexier alternative not been available.

Fundraisers for high-profile projects always advance the argument that, as George W. Bush would have it, we “make the pie higher”–that donations to the Olympics constitute additional private money being put at the service of public purposes.  The notion is that glamor projects magically produce the fresh generosity necessary to sustain them.

But if Great Depression II teaches us anything, it’s that private firms actually don’t have limitless sums of money, and that if they put it in one pot (say, credit-default swaps) it’s not available for inclusion in another (say, mortgages).  By the same token, if they put the money into naming the Ronald McDonald Memorial Olympic Village it’s going to be mysteriously missing when the local food pantry comes to call.  And it stands to reason that given the option corporations (and even foundations) will choose to invest in shiny things on which they can engrave their names.

At least in Chicago, the ordinary lack of transparency in philanthropies (“It’s our money; why should we tell you what we’re doing with it?”) is complemented by an equal lack of transparency in government (“It’s your money; why should we tell you what we’re doing with it?”).  So we can only speculate that money spent on circuses will not then be forthcoming for bread.

*******************

Readers: What’s your beef?  What drives you craziest about trying to manage your agency or serve on its Board?  Is it the bully who won’t let anyone else speak?  The budgeting that features revenue everyone knows you won’t get?  E-mail your problems to the Nonprofiteer, subject line “Where’s the beef?” and she’ll solve them for all the world to see.

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Posted in corporate giving, Current Affairs, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Fundraising, Marketing, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Public private partnerships | 4 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, Isn’t it great that Boeing’s helping our wounded soldiers?

February 5, 2009

Dear Nonprofiteer,

Isn’t it great that the Boeing Company gave $50,000 to a program at Camp Pendleton?  According to a press release,

Art & Creativity for Healing will use the $50,000 Crystal Vision Award to support the “Art for Healing for Heroes and their Families” program at Camp Pendleton. Initiated in November 2008, at San Onofre Elementary, located on the northern tip of Camp Pendleton, the purpose of this program is to assist military personnel and their families in processing their personal journey using collage, journaling and painting . . . . The program will also address the special needs of enlisted men and women who are working through war-related experiences. . . .

“Art for Healing is a program that is capable of supporting the entire military family,” said Lieutenant Colonel Sam Pelham, Deputy, Community Plans and Liaison Office, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton School Liaison Officer. “It provides both adults and children an opportunity to connect and confront stress associated with multiple deployments during a time of war and offers a unique and creative outlet for expression…and ultimately healing.”

Signed, Proud to Have Corporate Help in Supporting Our Troops

Dear Proud:

The Nonprofiteer is delighted to see support shown to veterans and their families, and she has every reason to believe the program being supported here is a worthy and valuable one.  And she’s also always been in favor of taking money from corporations without regard to how they made that money: in her view, tobacco companies ought to support cancer research and men’s magazines ought to underwrite domestic violence programs; who better?

Still, she can’t help noting the details of how Boeing made that $50,000, and many other dollars besides.  Defense work has accounted for more than half its revenue for 4 out of the last 5 years (an upward spike in commercial accounts, and much-publicized shunning by the Congress, reversed the situation in 2007), and its publicly-announced business plan is to seek much more defense money in the future.

Those who profit from the wars we’re fighting should absolutely be in the forefront of helping rehabilitate our wounded fighters.  The Nonprofiteer just thinks it would be tasteful for them to do so without a lot of plumage.

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Posted in corporate giving, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Earned income, Fundraising, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Public private partnerships, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies | 1 Comment »

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