The question of what gets said to people who are getting fundraising letters over your signature—or at least under your aegis—is a separate one. You are utterly within your rights as a Board member to say “I’m happy to solicit my friends but I won’t send out a letter telling them how much to give,” so that the staff can prepare your letters without the offending terminology. Those letters are from you, and therefore should represent your own approach to the people you’re soliciting, whether that’s “This group is in desperate need” or “This is the only group I’m supporting this year because of the fabulous new program they’ve launched.”
In other words, it’s one thing to shake off what you consider a slight directed at you, and another to permit the agency to direct that slight at your friends. In that spirit, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to notify the agencies whose appeals have troubled you that you wouldn’t ask your friends for money with that inflection and that they might consider not asking their friends for money that way, either.
But consider this. The Nonprofiteer remembers being unable to ask how much something cost in Paris because the straightforward “Combien?” seemed so abrupt and rude but she lacked the syntax skills to soften it, not to mention the language facility to know what phraseology would constitute appropriate softening. People who ask for money and people who get asked are speaking different languages. Those doing the asking never mean to be rude—they just lack the skills to determine what constitutes being polite. Perhaps if you consider the transaction from that perspective you’ll be less annoyed.
Tags:Arts Organizations, Boards of Directors, Fundraising, Higher education, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders
Posted in Arts Organizations, Boards of Directors, Fundraising, Higher education, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders | 9 Comments »
February 6, 2012
Tags:Arts Organizations, Boards of Directors, Fundraising, Higher education, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Private Philanthropy
Posted in Arts Organizations, Boards of Directors, Fundraising, Higher education, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy | Leave a Comment »
February 3, 2012
When Warren Buffett challenged Mitch McConnell to help him pay down the deficit, McConnell paid him no never-mind—but a teenage girl in Northbrook, IL heard and responded, sending $300 to the Feds and asking Buffett to do the same. This is an adorable story, and the video makes it more adorable still.
But let’s not let this young woman’s sense of civic duty and remarkable act of civic participation distract from the real point of the Buffett challenge, which is that without increased taxation of the wealthy, jerks like Mitch McConnell will free-ride on public-spirited souls like Katie Murphy.
Tags:charity, IRS, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, politics, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, volunteer, volunteering, women
Posted in Current Affairs, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Private Philanthropy, Volunteers/Volunteerism | Leave a Comment »
February 2, 2012
as they seem to have lost their own. Komen’s decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood at the behest of an anti-choice Board member reminds us how ready the right wing is to sacrifice women’s health for political gain.
There’s a petition to sign if you want to want to make your voice heard. If you’ve been a Komen supporter and you now de-fund the organization, your voice will be heard even louder.
Tags:501c3, Advocacy, Boards of Directors, charity, foundations, Fundraising, Health care, nonprofit, Nonprofit management, not for profit, politics, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, social services, women, Women's Issues
Posted in Advocacy, Advocacy groups, Boards of Directors, Charity scandals, Current Affairs, Disease charities, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Health care, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Social Service Agencies, Women's Issues | 6 Comments »
February 1, 2012
but she’d really have preferred not to have this as an inspiration. There is no excuse for the decision of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, until now a respected source of information and funding in the fight against breast cancer, to defund Planned Parenthood‘s program of providing breast exams to poor women.
In fact, the decision doesn’t even make sense–unless you consider that a recent addition to the Board of Komen is an anti-choice ex-politician from Georgia. As another commentator has wisely noted, Planned Parenthood will survive this latest injury–the Nonprofiteer’s determination to support the agency has just been redoubled, and probably her gift will be, too–but Komen may not.
Please join the Nonprofiteer in notifying Komen of your distress at its decision to let irrelevant politics endanger the lives and health of poor women, and of your decision to redirect to Planned Parenthood any support you may have been giving to Komen.
Tags:501c3, Advocacy, Board of Directors, Boards of Directors, charity, foundations, Fundraising, Health care, Komen, Mission, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, Planned Parenthood, politics, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, social services, women, women's health, Women's Issues
Posted in Advocacy, Advocacy groups, Boards of Directors, Current Affairs, Disease charities, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Fundraising, Health care, Mission, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Social Service Agencies, Women's Issues | 4 Comments »
January 13, 2012
The Nonprofiteer’s readers might enjoy this account of a pissing match between Warren Buffett and Mitch McConnell. The Senator from Kentucky has been urging the Sage of Omaha to make voluntary contributions to the Treasury if he felt he was undertaxed. Buffett has now responded that he’ll match any such contributions made by Republican Senators.
This dialogue makes in a different form Milton Friedman’s point as recounted by the Nonprofiteer yesterday. Voluntary contributions to reduce poverty (or do any of the other things we rely on the government to do) are insufficient, because everyone would be willing to pay his/her share only if s/he could be sure that everyone else would be willing to pay his/her share. Otherwise, no dice.
Doubtless McConnell will ignore Buffett’s challenge and continue his nonsensical bluster about Buffett’s freedom to pay extra if he feels “guilty” about his low tax rate. But the point isn’t, of course, how Buffett feels, or even what he does—it’s what everyone else does. And if McConnell and his buddies don’t donate to the Treasury, then they are poster children for the free-rider problem—thereby proving Buffett right: philanthropy is not sufficient and taxation is necessary.
H/T the indispensable Rick Cohen at The Nonprofit Quarterly.
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, IRS, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, social capital
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Finances, Government grants, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy | Leave a Comment »
January 11, 2012
I am distressed by the sight of poverty; I am benefited by its alleviation; but I am benefited equally whether I or someone else pays for its alleviation; the benefits of other people’s charity therefore partly accrue to me. To put it differently, we might all of us be willing to contribute to the relief of poverty, provided everyone else did. We might not be willing to contribute the same amount without such assurance.
Therefore, this wild-eyed radical continues, the government must step in. If poverty is to be alleviated, everyone must be taxed so that no one gets a free ride to the benefits of poverty eradication.
How appalling! How socialistic! Of course, what else could one expect from an ivory-tower academic complete with Nobel prize?
No, not that one (or even that one): Milton Friedman.
When the man said “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” he meant it.
H/t Allen R. Sanderson.
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, IRS, nonprofit, Nonprofit management, not for profit, philanthropy, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, taxation
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Finances, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy | 1 Comment »
January 10, 2012
From an article in the New York Times whose date the Nonprofiteer neglected to notice:
“It’s admirable when people back their charitable impulses up with donations,” said Scott Klinger, tax policy director of the group Business for Shared Prosperity. “But the tax code shouldn’t allow the wealthy the kind of loopholes that let them, essentially, force other taxpayers to underwrite donations to their pet causes.”
“The kind of loopholes . . . “ Is there some other kind? That is, can we have the tax code encourage individual generosity without delegating to private individuals decisions about what constitutes the public good? The Nonprofiteer doesn’t see how. Either you have a tax subsidy—which means by definition that other taxpayers bear a bigger burden—or you don’t.
Without the subsidy, current donors might give less but the government would have more to give out to public causes (health, education, welfare) now privately supported. And perhaps without the subsidy, current donors would be replaced by those less-burdened other taxpayers in a burst of their own generosity. And maybe this would mean fewer snow-globe museums and more attention to human services in the nonprofit sector.
Or maybe it would just mean a reduction in charity and an increase in the government’s resources, which could then be used on public education and public housing. Or missiles and drones.
This is why the Nonprofiteer remains at war with herself over the charitable deduction. She wants a thousand flowers to bloom. She believes any free society requires a counter-balance to whatever the current government has decided about anything. And she believes this counter-balance requires money. The whole point of the nonprofit sector is that it permits people to identify and respond to their own needs in their own communities, producing a closer fit between service and community than is possible with centralized programs.
But she also believes that society-wide priorities should be funded society-wide, which means limiting the number of pots of money exempted from inclusion in the public fisc. And she doesn’t want society-wide priorities to be determined by people who have so much money they can buy entire public school systems and experiment on them.
To quote the great Yul Brenner: Is a puzzlement.
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, Fundraising, IRS, Mission, nonprofit, Nonprofit management, not for profit, philanthropy, politics, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, social services
Posted in Finances, Government grants, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies | 1 Comment »
January 4, 2012
Here’s a chronic story (h/t The Nonprofit Quarterly), about how the United States is the most generous nation on earth. This annual survey measures how often people donate money to charity, how often they volunteer and how often they help strangers in need—the distinction between #1 and #3 being a little vague.
While the Nonprofiteer salutes all the donors among us, she feels constrained to point out that the United States leaves to private charity a whole range of activities provided elsewhere by the government. Are the citizens of France really less giving, or are they just willing to give free public higher education through their taxes rather than depend on the kindness of strangers? Are the Swedes, who provide paid parenthood leave while Americans think they’re generous to provide unpaid leave, really stingier than we are? And do the English really turn their backs on the needy, or do they instead provide health care for everyone?
The Nonprofiteer is proud to be an American, but she prefers to be proud of the things we really do well rather than the things we do to compensate for what we do poorly, namely, supply adequate social services to all our citizens.
Tags:Health care, Higher education, International, Poverty, Private Philanthropy
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Finances, Government grants, Health care, Higher education, International, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy | 2 Comments »
December 20, 2011
The most powerful argument Jack Shakely makes in his LA Times op-ed piece opposing the charitable tax deduction is that it’s a poor trade-off. The retired foundation executive points out that charities have permitted themselves to be shorn of their ability to influence policy and politics in return for a mess of pottage. Of course the restrictions on charitable participation in the public arena aren’t as draconian as nonprofit executives (and especially Boards) think they are—but the point is that nonprofits understand themselves to be constrained, and rather than bothering with the details remain quiescent politically.
As strong a proponent as the Nonprofiteer is of the pursuit of individual gifts, in the real world virtually every social service agency needs seriously more government money if it’s going to make any dent in the social problems it faces. The more social service agencies feel free to advocate for this particular budget bill or that particular provision in a piece of legislation—both prohibited by the current tax-code provisions—the more likely it is that those bills and provisions will pass, which would serve way more of the agencies’ clients than the most blue-sky estimates of their potential for growth in individual giving.
And for someone with foundation cred to say this! All hail Jack Shakely.
h/t The Nonprofit Quarterly Newswire.
Tags:501c3, Advocacy, charitable tax deduction, charity, donors, Executive Director, Fundraising, IRS, nonprofit, Nonprofit management, not for profit, philanthropy, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, social services
Posted in Advocacy, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Fundraising, Government grants, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Private Philanthropy, Social Service Agencies | Leave a Comment »
