Archive for the ‘Social Service Agencies’ Category

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Tom Sawyer was wrong

June 2, 2011

This branch of Habitat for Humanity has chosen to charge volunteers for the privilege of helping out.

When the Nonprofiteer pointed out that volunteers give more readily to the agencies they serve than non-volunteers, she wasn’t advocating admission fees.   Volunteers may have paid to paint Tom Sawyer’s fence, but Twain’s point was that they were stupid.  Your volunteers aren’t.

Even if mandatory “contributions” (oxymoron watch!) weren’t offensive in suggesting that volunteers’ time has less than no value, they’re practically the definition of penny-wise and pound-foolish: people will pay what you require (or not) and then regard their giving to the agency as being done for the year.

Or forever.  Please stop this idea before it kills again.

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Posted in Benefit events, Charity scandals, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Earned income, Finances, Fundraising, Housing, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 4 Comments »

Eliminating the charitable deduction: It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

May 19, 2011

As governments at all levels scramble for resources, the idea of eliminating the charitable deduction from the income tax code has begun to attract support.  Many people who work in nonprofits say this would damage the sector, because people would be less inclined to give and those who did give would give less.  Let’s assume this is true (though Americans’ passion for voluntary organizations long predates the tax code; Tocqueville, anyone?).  Is the health of “the sector” really the relevant concern?

It may be that people will give less to their churches or alma maters or prestige arts organizations if deprived of a tax benefit for doing so.  But that money will be in the public treasury, where it will go for health care and education and environmental protection (and even a pittance for the arts).  So wouldn’t the goals of nonprofit hospitals and nonprofit schools and environmental nonprofits and arts nonprofits actually be advanced if the government had more to spend on these essential services?

In other words, as with health care, the question isn’t whether people pay; it’s how.  You either pay for health care by giving money to an insurance company, or by paying taxes and letting the government insure you. (The latter model, in use in this country only for the aged, produces the greatest efficiencies and greatest satisfaction among patients, families and caregivers; but of course extending it to the rest of the population would set us on the road to serfdom.  Hayek himself endorsed public provision of health care, so what are we arguing about, again?)

Likewise, you pay either way for education and schools and environmental protection and so on; it’s just a matter of which pot you’re anteing up in: the private nonprofit or the public.

So there’s a real discussion to be had about whether the charitable deduction is a good idea for the entire sector, or whether in fact social service and social justice nonprofits–-the ones that struggle the most for philanthropic support–-would be better off without deductions but with a bigger public fisc.

(Yes, the money might go for defense, or subsidies for oil companies, or some other boondoggle.  It’s our responsibility as citizens to prevent this; tax deductions were not designed to protect us from self-government.)

This is another version of the argument the Nonprofiteer has made elsewhere about the generosity of billionaires versus the reinstatement of a significant inheritance tax.  (We Democrats should make a point of calling it “the inheritance tax,” because that’s the whole point: at the moment, people who work for their money pay income taxes on it while people who inherit their money don’t.  Or we could call it “the windfall profits tax,” which is what it is: a tax on the windfall profits of people whose only contribution to society is having picked the right parents.  And the Nonprofiteer speaks as a windfall recipient.)

When the government collects inheritance taxes it can spend the money on things we as a democratic society think important: health and education and social services and, yes, roads and weapons systems and a bunch of other things about which the Nonprofiteer’s opinions are in the minority.  If the government doesn’t collect, billionaires’ offspring can spend the money on the things they as potentates think are important, which might be eradicating malaria and endowing charter schools but which might, yes, be paying scholars to produce support for the elimination of public education or the abolition of all regulation, or even paying legislators directly for said elimination and abolition.

The tax code is designed to provide the government with resources to do its job.  Its job, among other things, is to provide essential services to citizens who cannot provide those services for themselves; and the more money it collects, the more services it can provide.  What’s important is that those services get provided, not that they get provided by the sector that happens to employ the Nonprofiteer.

So the question here is not, “Is it good for the sector?” but “Is it good for social welfare and social justice?”  The answer is not clear-–crunching the numbers would be a huge job for which the Nonprofiteer is totally unqualified-–but let’s make sure we’re asking the right question.

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Posted in Health care, Insurance, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Private Philanthropy, Public private partnerships, Social Service Agencies | 9 Comments »

Ownership and its Discontents

February 16, 2011

Many years ago the Nonprofiteer lived briefly in a cooperative apartment building, which looks like a condominium building but differs from it in a fundamental way. In a cooperative, owners don’t own their units: they just have long-term leases. What they own instead is stock in the landlord—a corporation whose sole asset is the building.

Being landlords, coop boards act like landlords: they determine who may move into the building, and what sort of alterations may be made to the units, and even how much heat any individual owner receives. As a result, coop owners are deeply involved, monitoring Board actions closely because those actions may intrude significantly on their lives. At the same time, they’re favorably disposed to any regulation promising to maintain or enhance the value of their units. They’re prepared to accept considerable restrictions on their own freedom of action for the privilege of restraining others’ freedom of action. The entire system is like living in the United Nations—for better and worse.

This came to the Nonprofiteer’s mind because in the past week she’s facilitated two Board meetings at which people have threatened to quit. (Perhaps this suggests she should alter her style of facilitation, but she prefers to think that she’s just making people face the hard questions.) At the first meeting, a Board member confronted for the first time with a clear statement that he was expected to make a personal financial contribution announced, “If I don’t get credit for using my corporate connections, I quit!” At the second, the Executive Director responded to a consensus that individual counseling was outside the agency’s mission by saying, “If you’re telling me I can’t listen to people’s problems and try to solve them, I quit!”

If people threaten to quit while talking about difficult issues like money and mission, what does that mean? It’s obviously necessary to press on the most sensitive spot, the issue that needs to be resolved before anything else can be accomplished; but is “I quit!” (whether acted upon or not) the only possible response?

People who serve on nonprofit Boards do so out of passion for the agency’s cause, and what they get in return for their commitment of time and energy and money and belief is a sense that they own the agency. When an “owner’s” understanding of the agency is challenged or contradicted, naturally it feels as if his/her property is being stolen. “I quit!” means “I’ll throw this in the trash before I let you take it from me.”

It’s good that Board members consider themselves owners of the agency, but bad that so many of them misunderstand the nature of that ownership. They don’t own their own little condominium understanding of the agency’s mission or its means of achieving it. Rather, they co-own the agency with the rest of the Board, and it’s the whole Board that owns the understanding of mission and means.

This often makes Board membership difficult for people who are natural leaders. They’re accustomed to acting without consultation, or with the kind of consultation that acknowledges their superior knowledge and/or power. But on a nonprofit Board, those who act without consultation risk either distorting the mission to match their private vision or provoking the adoption of significant restrictions on everyone’s freedom of action to prevent that distortion from taking place. Neither is a good outcome.

The ideal circumstance is for all the owners to realize that they’re members of a cooperative group whose sole asset is the institution, and that securing that asset’s well-being is the task they all face together. When that’s clear, disputes about what the institution is or does or deserves from its Board members can be negotiated among all the owners, and no one says “I quit!”

Now, how to get there?

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Social Service Agencies, Strategic Planning (and the tactical kind, too) | 4 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, For whose benefit, exactly?

February 9, 2011

Dear Nonprofiteer,

I have an ethical dilemma that I need help sorting out. I’m really bothered by this and I want to know 1. if I am seeing this from the wrong perspective and 2. what you would advise doing.

I am a wardrobe stylist and I make custom dress shirts & suits. Fairly often, when approached, I donate gift certificates for custom shirts to silent auctions, which raise a nice amount of money for fund-raising organizations.

Here is the issue: In the Fall of 2009, I donated a gift certificate to a well-known organization that runs after-school and extra-curricular programs for children. I was told that the gift certificate was for the silent auction that coincided with an annual fund-raising event. Obviously, I was told proceeds from this event & auction would go to support the local children’s organization.

Last week, I got a call from the former President of the Board of Directors of this organization. He was really excited to finally have his custom shirts made. The organization had given a gift certificate to him while he was on the board, as a thank you gift for his service.

I was a little fuzzy on the gift certificate details, had completely forgotten that I had donated a certificate to the auction, and couldn’t remember anyone buying a gift certificate as a gift…but went the next day to fit him and thought it would all be clear once I saw the certificate.

I only realized at the end of the 60 minute appointment that HIS gift certificate was the one I had DONATED to raise money for THE KIDS and the facility. It apparently was not auctioned off at all, but was given to a Board member as a gift! (Now, it might not have had any bidders in the auction, but this is sort of unlikely, has never happened yet.)

So now I am out-of-pocket, a lot, for a board member’s gift, as opposed to the organization buying something for him (which is tax-deductible for them!) This is a $700 retail value gift. I feel deceived—this money was for kids, not the board president.

Thoughts? Advice? I’ve heard both sides. Someone from non-profit told me I was stuck, that it was perfectly legal & someone else said that I am not accountable to fulfill this certificate.

I would really appreciate your experience/thoughts on this matter.

Signed, Tailor-Made

Dear Tailor:

1) You are not seeing this from the wrong perspective.
2) But it’s hard to know what to do.

There’s no question about it: if you donated a gift certificate to be auctioned off for the benefit of the agency, you wuz robbed if instead it was used instead as a personal gift to an agency Board member. Nonprofit Board members aren’t supposed to be compensated for their services, though they may be recognized: I would argue that a $700 gift starts to sound more like the former than the latter. (I’m presuming the agency knows the value of the certificate.)

You’re not actually stuck: no one can make you make these shirts, and neither agency nor Board member would be likely to sue you to secure them (or equivalent reimbursement). But you have a business reputation to protect, and so the question is which will cost the least to you: telling the Board member you can’t honor the certificate because it’s not being redeemed according to its terms, or telling the agency you want to be reimbursed for their misuse of your gift.

It’s a matter of strategy: if the Board member is likely to become a regular customer, you’d rather not piss him off by refusing to honor the certificate. (Obviously you can only guess about that, but you’re a savvy person: your guess is probably correct.) If you’re likely never to see him again, then say you CAN’T (not you won’t) honor the certificate because its terms called for it to be auctioned, not given away. If he protests that no such “terms” appear on the face of the certificate, explain that those were your arrangements with the agency, and advise him to return to the agency and explain that its gift is unredeemable. You can say or merely imply that what the agency did was exactly like passing counterfeit money: giving him something valueless while pretending it was valuable. Smile when you say all this, but say it and repeat it as often as necessary to get the guy out of your shop.

If, however, he’s a likely future customer, then your only choice is to go to the agency and tell them what you’ve told the Nonprofiteer: that you were told the certificate was to be auctioned off for the benefit of the agency and it wasn’t; that you were willing to donate to the agency but not to its individual Board members; and that you’d like to be reimbursed for the $700 value of your misused gift. If you want to sound lawyerly (which is all the Nonprofiteer got out of her three years in law school), say that you won’t take the $700 out of the hide of the Board member because he’s an innocent “holder in due course,” that is, someone who was given something worthless while believing in good faith that it had worth. Do all this in person with the Executive Director, and then (unless s/he hands you $700 on the spot) reiterate it in a letter to the entire Board.

Getting the $700 out of the agency won’t be easy: they know you’re as unlikely to sue them as they are to sue you. But if they fail to cooperate, do two things: include in the aforementioned letter a statement that you will never donate goods, services or money to the agency again; and include an express or implied intention to make the agency’s misdeed public. You can say, “and I intend to post this on my Facebook page,” or “and I intend to tell alll my business colleagues to do likewise [withhold support] or “I intend to mention this to my friend the New York Times reporter;” or you can simply say, “I know the agency’s reputation for uprightness and am sure you would not wish to have it stained by any accidental misuse of a donation,” and let them infer that the stain on its reputation will come from you.

If the agency offers you refund of half the price or more, take it and walk away. If not, make the shirts for the Board member and do them so brilliantly that he’ll be on your doorstep demanding more–for which you can overcharge him with a clear conscience.

What a shame you’ve had this experience–it seems to validate the old saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” But plenty of other charities will use your gift correctly, so please try not to be embittered.

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Posted in Benefit events, Boards of Directors, Charity scandals, Fundraising, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies | 10 Comments »

A delicate balance

January 27, 2011

If fundraising is concentric circles, as consultants often say (you ask your friends and then their friends and then their friends’ friends), then it seems to make the most sense to start asking right in the bosom of the family: from your staff and volunteers.  Indeed, this is what most nonprofit executives think of when they hear the phrase “Charity begins at home”!

But staff and volunteers are in quite different positions with respect to your organization, and so they can’t be treated alike in terms of asking for money.

Often agencies are afraid to ask their volunteers for money on the grounds that they’re already getting the volunteers’ time, and it would be greedy to ask for more.  But in fact no one is in a better position to appreciate the value of the work you do, or the scarcity of resources under which you labor, than a volunteer.  Further, though not all volunteers are privileged, they are at least people who have leisure time to donate, which suggests they’re not grindingly poor.  If your volunteers show up at the office with a cup of Starbuck’s in hand, consider what that represents: 1 Venti/day@$2.50 x 5 days/week x 52 weeks/year = $650.  So they’re probably spending more on coffee than you’d think of mentioning in an initial ask.

Will any volunteers take umbrage at being asked to give money as well as time?  Sure; a certain percentage of the population finds discussion of money distasteful and crude, and such people may well be represented in your volunteer corps.  But you’re not any poorer for asking them, and there’s very little reason to think they’d stop volunteering at an activity they enjoy because you asked them a question to which the answer was “no.”

Don’t extend this blithe attitude, though, to asking your volunteers to ask for money.  Direct-service volunteers are apt to be offended if they’re asked to do other kinds of volunteer work, such as fundraising, because the request suggests that they’re not already working hard enough.  You understand the difference between time and money, and your need for both; your volunteers are equally sophisticated.  So ask them for money, not for more time.

Staff members are a different issue.  People who work in nonprofit agencies are already donating enormous sums to the agency, in the form of foregone income–-the money they could be making working in the for-profit sector.  In this sense they are almost certainly the top donors to the agencies at which they work.

The Nonprofiteer took a nonprofit executive job for half the salary she had been earning as a practicing lawyer—a not inconsiderable sacrifice, though one she was glad to make.  But when members of the Board suggested that she also write a check to the agency, her attitude was, “The very second the Board gives $25,000 a year to the agency–-collectively, let alone individually!—it will have the right to come back and ask for something more than the $25,000 worth of lost wages I’m already giving.”

To be fair, hers is a minority view.  Many agencies regard staff donations as some sort of measure of staff commitment to the agency.   But staff members indicate commitment every day through the work they do, the salaries they accept, the health insurance they lack.  At some agencies they even demonstrate their commitment by working overtime for which they don’t get paid—and by not ratting out their employers to the U.S. Department of Labor or the state agency charged with regulating wages, hours and working conditions.  The fact that our agencies do socially valuable work doesn’t entitle us to exploit our laborers, though of course for many years nonprofits have survived their lack of financial capital by consuming human capital instead.

So don’t ask your staff for money, and do ask your volunteers.  Maybe they’ll donate enough to make it possible for you to offer the staff health insurance, or paid sick leave, or even a raise.

Well, one can dream, anyway.

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 7 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, How can we reduce the effort of acknowledging event-based donations?

January 6, 2011

Dear Nonprofiteer,

I have been a long time reader, and appreciate your blog tremendously!

I have a question, and if you choose to publish it, I would prefer to remain anonymous.

My organization is the fundraising agent for a couple of state funded organizations (the state only funds salaries & utilities—and the foundation I work for was founded a long time ago to raise funds for educational programs, content, etc.).  Recently, as a means to save ourselves ample amounts of time, energy, and overhead in administration, we began contracting with another local NPO that is first and foremost a performing arts space, but also the most comprehensive ticketing agent in our town.  This has become vastly beneficial because our own staff is so limited that we just don’t have the time and support staff to administer ticketing for ALL of the events for ALL of the organizations we support.  This saves us a great amount of time prior to these events, but we still have to process funds transferred to us from the ticketing agent post-event, and then send letters for any tax deductible value to the patrons.

So, here’s the question that has arisen in our office—can we just put something on the ticket itself that states the tax deductible value of the ticket to save ourselves from having to also send letters? Or, is it just best practice to send those letters post event to the event patrons?

Signed, Overwhelmed and Understaffed

Dear Overwhelmed:

Without being sure of the details, the Nonprofiteer recalls that actually tearing tickets is considered best practice in the management of for-profit events as a protection against employee theft of proceeds: the stubs are compared to the sales numbers and everything has to balance out at the event’s conclusion.  So it seems like a mistake to put the tax receipt or other acknowledgment on the ticket itself, when you’re going to want to physically retrieve at least part of it.

Of course, it’s possible to print a detachable ticket stub and leave that in the hands of the donor, and that stub could contain the necessary language for tax purposes.  (“Ticket price: X.  Tax-deductible value: X minus value of event’s benefit to patron.  Helping [nonprofit's] clients: Priceless.”)  And if you’re using electronic tickets, which can be scanned and then returned in full to the patron, that same language can appear anywhere on the ticket’s face.

But the Nonprofiteer is a little puzzled about your role in the process.  Given that you’ve transferred ticket-processing to another nonprofit, why not transfer the entire fiscal agency to that nonprofit?  Does being the fiscal agent confer some other benefit on your foundation?  If not, it may be that a relationship that once made sense no longer does, now that the agencies you’re shepherding have become so active in their event-based fundraising.

Even if your foundation needs to remain fiscal agent for the purposes of state contracts, it should be possible to transfer fiscal agency for events to the ticketing nonprofit.  In that case, the task of sending tax-receipt acknowledgment to the patrons would fall to it.

In either case, of course, the task of actually thanking the patrons falls to the nonprofit whose event it is.  If the Nonprofiteer understands the situation correctly, donors have no particular interest in you: by their attendance at events, they intend to benefit the nonprofits for which you’re the agent.  Therefore, they don’t want to hear acknowledgment from you—they want to hear it from the benefited agency.  That’s what’s priceless!

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Posted in Benefit events, Finances, Fundraising, Government grants, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Public private partnerships, Social Service Agencies | 3 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, Who quit and made me president?

November 4, 2010

Dear Nonprofiteer:

Recently I started serving on a board of a small social service organization.  In the last six months our board president has slowly retreated from his leadership duties due to a variety of personal issues that he’s facing and I find that I’m essentially left driving the bus.  What resources are there that you would recommend for those seemingly newly anointed to oversee a nonprofit?

Signed,Nickeynewguy and Lost

Dear Nickey,

Of course the best resource is the Nonprofiteer it/herself–the site has no search function, I’m sorry to say, but if you just keep trolling backwards you’ll find numerous bits of advice for Board presidents.  But here’s the central thing to remember: even if you’re suddenly the Board PRESIDENT, you’re not suddenly the whole Board.

So the first thing to do is call a meeting of the Board (with the Executive Director in the room—s/he will be your most valuable partner) and say, “Well, I appear to have become president by default.  This wasn’t your choice and it certainly wasn’t mine; so let’s figure out what has to be done and divide up the tasks.”  In other words, make it clear from the word Go that you’re not going to be in this alone.

Second, if you’re the sort of person who ends up leading by default, that means you’re a natural leader in one way or another.  I’m going to proceed on the assumption that your leadership flows from quiet competence rather than noisy charisma (otherwise you’d have been Board president to begin with).  So use that quiet competence to help the Executive Director and your fellow Board members think through:

  • What do we have to do that’s urgent?
  • What do we have to do that’s important?
  • Are we letting the urgent get in the way of the important?
  • If so, is the urgent really so urgent?
  • If so, do we need more people to address things, urgent and important alike?
  • If so, who will lead a brainstorming session to identify and recruit prospective new Board members?

Note that I’m not suggesting you do the recruiting, though you may be the most motivated to do so, having suddenly awakened to a whole set of unasked-for responsibilities. Nor should the Executive Director do it—s/he’s got plenty to do already.   But the only way you can do your job is to make sure other Board members do theirs, and the best way to get them activated is to give them the fun job, namely, thinking about who else would just love the work you’re doing if only they knew about it, and then talking to those people with great enthusiasm about what you do.

Any Board member who can’t run, or at least participate whole-heartedly in, a recruitment campaign should be given some essential but boring task like reviewing budget vs. actual expenses or assuring compliance with the Federal and state filing requirements.  That person should have to report at the next Board meeting, as will the recruiters.  As soon as you’re having Board meetings where Board members talk to each other (instead of sulking, or reporting to the Executive Director or to you as though you were the only responsible parties in the room), you’ve got this presidency stuff down pat.

For more detailed guidance, the Nonprofiteer strongly suggests checking out any of the sites on the blogroll (in the right margin), as well as going to boardsource.org, which as its name suggests specializes in making Board service as straightforward and resource-rich as possible.  The Boardsource “Knowledge Center” is chock-a-block with guidelines, forms and checklists to help you make sure the essential bases are being covered—even in the center fielder’s absence.

And as further questions arise, please feel free to write again!

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Social Service Agencies, Strategic Planning (and the tactical kind, too), Volunteers/Volunteerism | 2 Comments »

Well, duh!

October 26, 2010

England’s Financial Times reports concern that cuts in government grants to charities will impair the charities’ ability to provide services, and particularly to pick up the slack produced by cuts in direct government services.  The Nonprofiteer wonders what this is doing in the newspaper, as it falls into the category of Dog Bites Man.

Defenders of the cuts argue that they’ll provide incentive for government-dependent charities to raise money from the private sector and individuals.  While the Nonprofiteer yields to no one in her insistence that charities become less dependent on grants of any kind and spend more time asking for money from individuals, she also knows that this defense is crap—at best irresponsible, at worst deliberately false.

No one can realistically suggest that charities which have essentially been created by the government to provide services it funds (probably for the purpose of evading unions) can somehow instantly replace 95% of their operating budgets with contributions of a pound or ten, or even a hundred. It takes time to develop individual donors, and surely no one would seriously suggest that charities have neglected this task for lack of “incentive,” because government grants keep them in the lap of luxury.    There’s never enough money, as a result of which there’s also never enough time to raise money if you’re also going to serve your clients.

So which is it, Mr. Cameron?  Do you want charities spending their time providing services that your government now won’t, or do you want them spending their time raising money to provide those services?  “Both” is not a realistic answer.

Conservative governments should really have the courage of their convictions.  If you’re going to cut public services, then say to the public, “We’re not going to provide these services.”  It’s just dishonest to say, “We’re not going to provide them, but don’t worry, someone else is,” when no one else has anything like the resources necessary.

Apply as appropriate to the American situation.

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Posted in Advocacy, Campaign finance, Charity scandals, Coverage of nonprofits, Finances, Fundraising, Government grants, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Public private partnerships, Social Service Agencies | Leave a Comment »

Whether women are more generous than men, and whether it matters

October 26, 2010

The Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy has just released a study showing that at all income levels women give more than men—both more frequently and more generously when controlled for income.

This study’s headline is that across nearly all income levels women 1) are more likely to give and 2) on average give more than men.

Specifically, women who make $23,509 or less (Q1) are 28% more likely to give than men; women who make $23,509 – $43,500 (Q2) are 32% more likely to give; women who make $43,5000 – $67,532 (Q3) are 49% more likely to give than men; women who make $67,532 – $103,000 (Q4) are 43% more likely to give than men; and women who make +$103,000 (Q5) are 26% more likely to give than men.

In every income group except for Q2, women give more than men. In Q1, women give 92% more (or almost twice as much) than men; in Q3, women give 95% more (or almost twice as much) than men; in Q4, women give almost 45% more (or almost one and a half times more) than men; and in Q5, women give 94% more (or almost twice as much) than men.

The study’s authors resist the temptation to make bold claims about why this is the case, though they note that generosity tends to increase with education and that women now earn more than half of all bachelor’s degrees.  Generosity also increases with income, and more women are employed now, and therefore earning their own income, than ever before.  But even controlling for income, education and wealth, in what principal investigator Debra Mesch calls “pure terms,” women are the more generous half of the population.

[Digression: Women now make 80 cents for each male dollar.  This represents an increase from 62 cents in 1979, at which rate we'll achieve wage parity in 2043.  Only the most ridiculously strident feminists regard this as a problem.]

What’s the source of women’s greater generosity?  When prompted, Mesch is willing to indulge in a bit of speculation:

Women are socialized to take care of their families and their communities, and because of that socialization process we see the motives of empathy and caring.  We’ve done another study that looks at difference in motives for giving, and women score much higher on empathy and principle of care.

Her new study’s results comport with the trend to focus international aid on women because they’re more likely than men to spend surplus income on their families instead of themselves.  Mesch is unsurprised: “I think that’s an international phenomenon, that women are the caregivers and nurturers; they have more of those prosocial behaviors.”

So what difference does any of this make, except the sheer giggle value of demonstrating female superiority to the male of the species?  Mesch is the Queen of Tact on the subject:

I think what we need to understand is that one is not better than the other,  just different.  Women give for different reasons, give differently, are much more egalitarian in their approach.  As girls, we’re taught to be nice and share.  Men have been taught to be much more competitive, and to communicate status.  Men are strategic and women want to be equalizers.

[Oh, right, of course: no one's better, we're just different.  But the Nonprofiteer defies anyone to offer an example of how "less generous" can be better than, or even equal to, "more generous."]

If we’re lucky, the study will help eliminate the prejudice afflicting most professional fundraisers: that women are timid askers and chintzy givers who never donate without asking someone’s permission.  Not only will cultivating a female donor be more likely to yield a “yes” than comparable effort spent on a man, but women’s giving will increase faster than men’s relative to their economic power.  You’re betting on a stock that’s going up.

But you can’t treat your female donors like men in drag.  As Mesch notes,
If you’re a fundraiser, you have to communicate with women in a different way than with men.  You need to involve and engage them, because if you feel involved as a woman, you contribute not only your money but your time.

Thus the study suggests a lot more than it claims: that today’s efforts to find meaningful work for female volunteers will produce tomorrow’s major gifts.  That achieving equal pay is essential not just to women but to the charities we support (so, a little help here, guys?).  That female-headed households can be a resource to be tapped and not just a problem to be solved.  That the future of philanthropy rests in women’s hands.

What makes this more than a parlor game is the extent to which it reveals the role of empathy in giving.  Just as poor people give a greater proportion of their income to charity than rich people—presumably because they know how it feels to be on the needing side of the give-and-need equation—so women may give more generously because we know what it’s like to be dependent.  Women are less likely to imagine that having been born on third base means we hit a triple; and the feminist mantra that every woman is one divorce away from welfare makes most of us acutely aware that there but for the grace of God go I.

Part II of the study, scheduled to be released in December or January, will address gender differences in the kind of charities supported: secular or religious?  Large or small?  Do women’s gifts go to operating expenses, while men’s go to bricks and mortar on which they can carve their names?  Says Mesch,

What I can tell you is from the previous research, men and women do give to different causes.  We find women seem to give more to the social service areas, to helping the needy.  Plus women seem to spread their giving out [among multiple charities] and men are much more strategic.

The results of her research leave Mesch hopeful.

My ideal wish is that at some point, we won’t have a need to study women’s philanthropy.  It would be wonderful if philanthropy is just philanthropy, and we understand that women have caught up in terms of their income and education and wealth.

We can really change the world––women are at the tipping point.  It’s going to be a huge movement where women can really see themselves as making an impact and being philanthropists.

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Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Finances, Fundraising, International, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Volunteers/Volunteerism, Women's Issues | 3 Comments »

Be careful what you wish for

September 14, 2010

Long ago the Nonprofiteer had a client hire her to manage the transition from the founding Executive Director to—well, to whatever future awaited the agency in his absence.  It was impressive, actually, that the founder himself was the one who realized first (and persuaded the Board) that transition planning was necessary.

But it turns out that recognizing the need for transition planning is quite a long way from being prepared for actual transition.  While the founder was theoretically in favor of Life After Him, in practice he was working to set in stone the practices, policies, goals and programs of Life During Him.  Though he would have denied this, his purpose was to prevent transition.  The person at the helm would change but first the founder was going to assure that the new pilot’s heading would not deviate a single degree from his predecessor’s course.

The only surprise here is the Nonprofiteer’s failure to expect this absolutely predictable occurrence.  (Well, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, either.)  But even the smartest consultant isn’t a mind-reader, and so we mostly undertake to do what the client articulates as the job.  Of course there will be undercurrents and cross-currents and breakers and riptides, but at least we’re all sailing in the same direction.

Except in this case we weren’t.  When the Nonprofiteer met with the Board and challenged its members to move beyond the founder and take true ownership of the agency as essential preparation for hiring a successor, she found them champing at the bit to do so.  They had little experience with governance because they’d let the founder run things pretty much as he pleased; but that didn’t mean they had little interest in the subject.  In fact, once they began to talk about things that could be done more or less or differently or better, they were neither to hold nor to bind.  And, having gotten precisely what he’d said he wanted, the founder was furious—at, of course, the Nonprofiteer.

So here’s a warning to all you consultants out there: when you’re doing transition planning, assume that any founder who purports to be okay with leaving is lying like a rug.  And to all you Baby Boomer founders out there, approaching retirement faster than we ever thought possible: if you’re serious about transition, find a consultant and go for it, but don’t expect the process to be smooth.  Having a baby taken from your arms is a difficult experience, so don’t go through it til you’re confident that the nanny—your Board of Directors—can be trusted not to drop it.

What if you’re ready to retire and don’t trust the Board?  (You shouldn’t have a Board you can’t trust, but that’s water under the bridge at this point.)  Then shut the agency down.   If the only way it can operate is your way, and you’re about to leave, end of story.

But if you want your creation to outlast your own tenure, brace yourself: with transition, you’re in for the ride of your life.

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Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Management Advice Day tip, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Social Service Agencies | 6 Comments »

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