Archive for the ‘Higher education’ Category
May 1, 2009
It’s not just Susan Boyle and “Britain’s Got Talent”–the nonprofit world, too, is full of ugly ducklings eager to turn into YouTube swans. So it’s not surprising that two different groups have just announced plans to assist nonprofits in telling their/our stories on video. The first of these is genuine; the second is a concealed ad for fundraising software.
- Animoto for a Cause (http://animoto.com/cause) is a new program “that will give non-profit organizations and humanitarians the ability to create dynamic, professional-quality online videos from their own photos and music – for free. . . .Animoto for a Cause will donate pro accounts to groups and individuals who are working to improve their community and the world at large, kicking off with more than 20 launch partners, like Help the Children and Susan G. Komen Foundation. . . . Animoto is encouraging all types of community activists to apply for an Animoto for a Cause account – everyone from college fundraisers to large non-profits will be considered . . . . Now organizations can use the service to promote their cause online in a multitude of ways, from posting and sharing videos on websites, YouTube and social networks, to downloading them to DVD for distribution at events.”
- Meanwhile, an outfit called www.nonprofitnetworknews.com has created a “customizable video for nonprofits to make their wishes come true. The video then links to free nonprofit resources to help them get through these tough times.” Well, if by “free nonprofit resources” one means “a commercial Website that doesn’t charge you for visiting,” that’s absolutely true.
Tags:advertising, charity, Marketing, nonprofit, not for profit, phony news, video
Posted in Advocacy groups, Arts Organizations, Coverage of nonprofits, Environmental, Health care, Higher education, Housing, International, Marketing, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Social Service Agencies, Technology | 1 Comment »
April 27, 2009
Hey, Nonprofiteer, here’s my beef:
All of a sudden a number of colleges have received completely anonymous donations in the millions of dollars, which is great–but it turns out all the colleges in question are run by women. Now, why should something as irrelevant as the gender of the CEO determine who gets support for education? Aren’t other colleges entitled to the same help?
Signed, Concerned With Merit
Hey, Concerned,
First of all, no one is “entitled” to a gift, as my law professors used to point out when we studied battles over wills and estates: the daughter may be a better person, but that doesn’t mean she “deserves” anything; if the giver intended to benefit the son, that’s the end of the conversation.
Second, and more important, what makes you think the anonymous college donor isn’t concerned about merit? Maybe s/he thinks women are better stewards of resources than men (per this suggestion in the New York Times’ coverage of the same issue), which certainly is a reasonable posture given that the only sane things being said about the banking crisis are coming from the woman who oversees the TARP program and the woman who runs the FDIC. (Meanwhile their male counterparts are busy making sure no squash partners or prep-school roommates are discomfited by inconvenient regulation.)
Or maybe s/he thinks colleges which act on their rhetoric about equality for women by hiring one as CEO are more likely to act on their rhetoric about equality for women in treatment of students and faculty. (As opposed, say, to colleges whose presidents announce that women aren’t any good at science.)
In other words, this gift is all about merit, and about rewarding virtue. If you find it hard to recognize as such, because the virtue in question is “acknowledging people who are often marginalized, even if we’re the majority,” that just makes the anonymous donor’s point: people still have a hard time with the idea that women matter.
But as it is written, women hold up [more than] half the sky; why shouldn’t good treatment of us be considered important enough to be worth millions?
Tags:anonymous donation, colleges, nonprofits, not for profit, women
Posted in Current Affairs, Education, Finances, Fundraising, Higher education, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Women's Issues | Leave a Comment »
April 24, 2009
Hat tip to our colleagues at PhilanTopic for their report on efforts to reduce redundancy and excess paperwork in the grant application and evaluation process, and a salute to the grantmakers and grantseekers involved in Project Streamline.
The Nonprofiteer believes strongly that most nonprofits’ futures lie with individual donors, but that doesn’t change the fact that institutional support is important in launching and sustaining many agencies. So anything that makes the process of securing that support simpler and more straightforward is a major contribution to nonprofit health.
In one of her previous lives the Nonprofiteer was an admissions officer, in which context she was made aware of the enormous waste of applicants’ time and money involved in having a different application form for every single school. But each school insisted it was impossible to get its unique needs met through a common application form–and it was impossible, right up to the point at which it got done.
In philanthropy, we’re still in the “impossible” stage; but maybe that’s just the last stage before “Voila!” Here’s hoping, anyway.
Tags:not for profit, charity, philanthropy, foundations, nonprofits, Project Streamline, grant application
Posted in Private Philanthropy, Social Service Agencies, Relations with funders, Coverage of nonprofits, Fundraising, Higher education, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Finances | 2 Comments »
April 17, 2009
according to Crain’s.
The Nonprofiteer is always eager to trash the big corporate nonprofits, the hospitals and universities, while racing to the defense of the scrappy little social service, arts, environmental and advocacy groups. But she wonders what this same analysis would produce if the smaller agencies were under the microscope. Though probably social service agencies give away most of their services (if only through being desperately underpaid for providing them), surely most arts organizations get more in tax breaks than they give away in tickets. And groups whose focus is policy or advocacy are not in the business of doing services, much less giving them away.
Anyone in the health care industry is a tempting target these days, and for good reason: we have a system that enriches very few at the expense of many. And at least the best-known and most selective of American private universities seem content to sit on a lot of capital while asking teenagers and their families to fork over huge amounts more.
But let’s make sure we’re measuring nonprofits by what society and the tax code actually expect them to do, which is to contribute to the public interest by advancing knowledge and producing beauty as well as by offering services. Research hospitals produce cures for diseases; we get our money’s worth from the tax breaks they receive even if they never give out a dime of care.
Providing patients with the health-care they need is a social responsibility. Hospitals surely have a special role in making sure this is done, but it’s not their responsibility exclusively and their social worth (meaning, the tax freedom they deserve) shouldn’t be measured exclusively on that dimension.
Tags:501c3, charity, Health care, hospitals, nonprofits, not for profit, tax breaks
Posted in Advocacy groups, Arts Organizations, Coverage of nonprofits, Disease charities, Earned income, Endowment, Environmental, Health care, Higher education, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Social Service Agencies | Leave a Comment »
March 13, 2009
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.
Tags:Endowment, perpetuity, underwater
Posted in Arts Organizations, Current Affairs, Education, Endowment, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Higher education, Investment, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues | Leave a Comment »
March 2, 2009
The Nonprofiteer hardly knows what to say about the argument that the humanities must justify themselves economically or die out. The humanities (or the liberal arts, or non-vocational education–whatever term is current) teach people to read and evaluate arguments so they can make decisions. Is there some more useful skill than that, in the economic realm or elsewhere?
Which means that Professor Kronman’s blithe concession in the article that study of the humanities may inevitably become a luxury constitutes a rich man’s indifference to everyone else’s needs. Doubtless he simply means to be provocative–this is, after all, the same good professor who infuriated the Nonprofiteer in a long-ago Contracts class by arguing for the enforceability of slavery.
But let’s not be so quick to give up on the idea that everyone should be taught to read and write. If humanities professors can’t manage to make that argument, without stooping to “It adds hundreds of thousands of dollars to your lifetime earning potential,” they should get new jobs.
Tags:citizenship, the humanities
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Education, Higher education, Marketing, Mission, Poverty | 2 Comments »
January 7, 2009
Nicholas Kristof’s column Bleeding Heart Tightwads purports to reveal that political conservatives are more charitable than political liberals, and that Americans are more charitable than Europeans. These are familiar neocon morsels, and Kristof’s willingness to swallow and regurgitate them casts doubt on his claim to be a liberal–not to mention his claim to be a journalist who analyzes and thinks before he writes.
Self-described conservatives donate more money to charity than self-described liberals ONLY if “charity” is taken to include donations to churches. As many more conservatives than liberals are regular churchgoers–and the most regular and charitable of all are the ultra-conservative Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Days Saints, whose members tithe 10 per cent of their income–any count of charitable contributions which includes church donations will unfairly portray liberals as cheapskates. The Nonprofiteer doesn’t give a dime to her church because she doesn’t belong to or participate in one, but she’ll measure her actual contributions to charity–social services, education, health care and the arts–against the actual contributions to charity of any registered Republican, any time.
Similarly, Europeans give less money to charity than Americans not because they refuse to put their money where their social-justice mouths are but because they’ve already done so in the fields of health care and education to an extent as yet undreamed of by the United States. Of course Europeans, Canadians and Japanese give fewer charitable dollars to health care: most medical care is paid for out of their taxes. Of course they donate less to institutions of higher learning: tuition to those institutions is paid by the state.
The relationship between politics and charity is a complex one, and there are serious people who believe, for instance, that donations to food banks interfere with achieving long-term food security for all Americans because they keep the hunger problem just below the national radar. (And there are certainly serious people who believe that columnists who try to buy young Asian prostitutes to liberate them are merely increasing the profitability of Asian prostitutes and thus the risk to young Asian girls.) These difficult policy analyses are not made simpler or likelier of resolution by facile comparisons and repititions of nonsense on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.
Tags:bleeding heart tightwads, Kristof, slavery
Posted in Advocacy, Coverage of nonprofits, Disease charities, Education, Fundraising, Health care, Higher education, International, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Religion, Social Service Agencies, Women's Issues | 10 Comments »
December 4, 2008
Yesterday’s New York Times notes the finding of a new study that the cost of college education has risen at three times the rate of inflation for the past 20 years, as well as its projection that college will soon be beyond the financial reach of most American families. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education also pointed out that public universities–long the best bargain on the higher-ed shelf–are the first to feel, and pass along, the impact of a shrinking economy: when state tax revenues decline, state college tuition rates go up. This leaves students with two unpalatable options: community college (which, whatever their virtues, don’t generally provide the upward social mobility Americans seeks from higher education) and hugely expensive private institutions.
So that of course explains why places like Harvard are issuing statements crying havoc about the decline of their endowments and threatening program cuts and tuition increases. Because there’s going to be a rainier day later on, and the important thing is to make sure that the current faculty and administration stay dry.
Tags:Harvard, public colleges, recession, tuition
Posted in Current Affairs, Education, Endowment, Higher education, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General | Leave a Comment »
July 16, 2008
Micro-lending has come to the American student financial aid market. GreenNote.com will syndicate student loans among individuals who wish to provide as little as $100 to college-bound students, in return for which the lenders will get a guaranteed return of nearly 7% (while the syndicator, presumably, gets the difference between the lender’s return and the borrower’s interest rate, unspecified in Green Note’s promotional materials). Even if the borrowers are paying only a few basis points above the lenders’ return, this seems an awfully expensive way to provide college money to students at a time when the discount rate is below 4%. Unless students are totally shut out of the college lending system as mediated by Sallie Mae, it’s not at all clear why they would turn to this electronicized (and commercialized) version of the old mutual-aid-society lending arrangement.
If the American banking system is actually collapsing, this is neither a good time to borrow money for college nor a good time to become an unsecured creditor to debtors without skills or degrees. If the American banking system is not collapsing, there should be sufficient guaranteed student loans available to attendees at most accredited institutions. The Nonprofiteer has no doubt that GreenNote.com will make money connecting small lenders to small borrowers, but she doubts strongly that this connection will make much of a contribution toward paying the average college student’s bills of more than $40,000 annually.
Not everything that comes dressed up as “e-commerce” and “micro-lending” actually makes any sense.
Tags:Higher education, micro-lending, nonprofit, not for profit, student loans
Posted in Education, Higher education, Investment, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 28, 2008
If this is the best argument that can be made for holding one’s fire on the subject of huge unspent university endowments–that it might make people think all colleges have too much money–then the institutions sitting on those endowments might as well start writing big checks to the IRS right now, because they’ve already lost the debate. It’s never a good idea to claim that people might get the wrong idea from the truth–even when it’s the case. Yes, it’s unfortunate that scandals at the Red Cross and United Way contribute to a mistaken impression that all charities are corrupt; but surely no one would argue that therefore those scandals shouldn’t be reported.
And in the current context, is it really too much to expect that before shutting their wallets the relevant consumers–by definition, people with college educations!–will ask if in fact the place still needs money? Most loyal (that is, donating) alumni actually pony up first and ask questions later, like the Nonprofiteer’s cash-strapped friend who nonetheless just pledged hundreds of dollars to an alma mater with literally a billion in the bank. If current coverage of over-endowed institutions brings that pattern to an end, so much the better: more charitable money left for causes that actually need it.
And if the concern is Worcester State College (as our colleague at the 501c Files suggests), once again the ear to bend is that of legislators too cowardly to do what’s necessary to fund the public educational system they inherited from their more forward-thinking predecessors.
(The Nonprofiteer doesn’t, by the way, think much of the Harvard alum’s suggestion that the university use its endowment to fund education in Africa; that’s not its mission. It’s fine for alums to divert their “class gift” to that purpose–every new fundraising drive gets to identify its own purpose and goal–but at the same time Harvard needs to figure out how to spend its endowment on the work for which it was raised, namely, providing Harvard students with an education.)
Tags:alumni, charity, Endowment, Fundraising, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, university
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Education, Endowment, Fundraising, Higher education, Private Philanthropy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
