Many thanks and kudos to Blue Avocado and the Nonprofit Online News for this glorious skewering of the news coverage and foundations which so dominate the nonprofit sector.
Or, as one of the Nonprofiteer’s pithier colleagues remarked, “Narcissism in philanthropy–really?”
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?
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.
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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.
This is a public health alert provided for our friends in the funding community: please be aware of a sudden uptick in cases of what can only be called Munchausen by Charity. Though the Nonprofiteer makes her living through funded consultancies, and therefore stands to profit from outbreaks of the disease, she nonetheless feels compelled to bring this most recent epidemic to the attention of those whose funds are being consumed in fruitless treatment of its symptoms.
Munchausen Syndrome, as readers may know from exposure to medical dramas, is a mental illness which expresses itself in faking ailments to secure the psychic benefits of being the center of attention. In Munchausen by Charity, an agency finds itself perpetually inadequate to its tasks, and therefore perpetually in need of consulting services.
While Munchausen by Charity presents in many guises, the version with which the Nonprofiteer is most familiar goes something like this:
The Board of Directors couldn’t possibly govern the institution without a strategic plan, so it hires a strategic planning consultant, who discovers that the Board is weak. The Board couldn’t possibly repair that weakness without hiring a Board development consultant, who attempts to shore up the Board with a clearer description of its tasks as well as a group of new members. The expanded Board couldn’t possibly take on its newly-clarified tasks without hiring a Board trainer, who provides the group with sessions of role-playing in which they can practice those tasks (e.g. asking for money) without ever actually leaving the safe confines of the group. The trained Board couldn’t possibly go out and ask people for money without hiring a development consultant, who draws pyramid diagrams showing that the biggest gift goes at the top and convenes meetings at which members of the Board try to remember if they’ve ever met anyone with any personal wealth. And so it goes–on, and on, and on.
What the Munchausen by Charity sufferer is experiencing, of course, is the euphoria of personalized attention divorced from the need to actually do anything oneself. If this diagnosis sounds harsh, consider that before discovering the Syndrome the Nonprofiteer believed serial consultancies were nothing more than a stalling tactic to delay fundraising, or a futile search for an expert who’d say it could be avoided altogether. But now she realizes what we’re dealing with is not a trick or a device but an illness, about which we should all be understanding.
If, however, the Nonprofiteer had the financial reins at foundations that give technical assistance grants, she might suggest a limit on the number of funded consultancies–something along the lines of “Three Strikes, You’re Out.” It only takes two hands to find your ass; it certainly shouldn’t take more than three consultants.
Or perhaps the epidemic will subside by itself–say, by next April Fool’s Day.
h/t Jan Stempel
This account from Sunday’s New York Times gives the flavor of life in a community where the supports are all crumbling at once. N.B. the emphasis on the possibility that agencies will have to merge or collaborate to secure support from strapped philanthropies.
Historically, mergers and collaborations driven by funders (the United Way was an early champion of the technique) have been less successful than those initiated by the relevant agencies. But it’s understandable at a time of crisis that philanthropists can’t wait for agency executives to get their egos out of the way, and must press for quick action.
The article also makes a point it may not have intended: that charities reliant on organized philanthropy are at the mercy of same. Only an agency’s own individual donors–who are persuaded of the essential irreplaceability of its particular approach to issues, whether social-service, arts, advocacy or environmental–can sustain it through these tough times.
So if you’re not already raising money from individuals, time to start.
The Foundation Center offers a summary update of foundations’ plans for the coming year. It’s pretty grim–only two of the respondents plan to increase giving, notwithstanding the huge jump in demand for nonprofit services–but just keep repeating to yourself:
“The darkest hour is always just before the lights go out completely.”
Here’s a story about endowments that can’t be touched because they’re “underwater,” that is, now worth less than the contribution(s) that established them, and state law prohibits endowed nonprofits from touching the principal. Though the Nonprofiteer is ordinarily a big fan of regulation, she notes that this statutory scheme harms the very agencies it intends to protect.
But more troubling still is the organization described in the article whose concern for the size of its endowment causes it to fire staff rather than dip into principal to pay their salaries. Why is the perpetual existence of an organization more important than its ability to perform its mission now?
Nonprofits–whether operating charities or foundations–are not for perpetual existence; they’re for accomplishing their mission. When perpetuity gets in the way of mission, it’s perpetuity that ought to give way. And the Nonprofiteer would be willing to risk any unintended consequences of a regulatory scheme embodying that idea.
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