Posts Tagged ‘Poverty’
January 19, 2011
Take a look at this piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education documenting the important role of legacy preferences—admissions boosts to the children of alumni—in college acceptance rates. It raises the question, as our colleague Rick Cohen puts it at the Nonprofit Quarterly, “why tax preferred institutions of higher education in many cases get to use their tax-exempt status to serve children of immense wealth and privilege.”
This is the real issue embedded in another question frequently asked: “Why do well-endowed universities get tax breaks?” The answer to that can easily be “because education is a public good,” but if that good is available disproportionately to a tiny subset of the public then the entire edifice of tax protection for elite institutions starts to crumble.
Legacy preferences are regularly justified on the grounds that they’re necessary to assure alumni loyalty and therefore alumni financial support. As the Chronicle article documents, the evidence for this is ambiguous at best. But even if it were true, it’s not clear why the convenience of fundraising officers should trump society’s legitimate questions about how it’s allocating scarce benefits among competing groups of beneficiaries. And as long as universities receive tax breaks, it is the broader society that’s doing the allocating and has the right to ask the question.
And here’s another question we have a right to ask: why is affirmative action a problem when it benefits poor people and minorities but not when it benefits wealthy white people? “Legacy preferences” is, after all, a euphemism for making sure that thems that has, gits—and gits more.
Most colleges and universities these days would regard it as an ethical violation to accept tobacco money, or porn money. Why should their ethical standards tolerate accepting privilege money—which means, essentially, accepting a bribe? It makes little sense for the source of money to be evaluated for purity while its purpose goes unquestioned.
As an ex-admissions officer, the Nonprofiteer is more familiar with legacy preferences than she ever wanted to be, and she can assure her readers that merely being the child of an alumnus is not a bona fide occupational qualification. Plenty of successful alumni have no-’count kids—hence the old saw about “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” Nor does it matter that the practice is long-established. Ivy League colleges had a long-established practice of coordinating their scholarship packages (to keep students from choosing among them on the basis of cost), until someone read and implemented the antitrust laws. The sky didn’t fall as a result of that change, and it won’t as a result of this one.
Of all the ways in which universities violate the spirit if not the letter of the laws granting them tax advantages (from running semi-professional sports teams to serving as research arms of the military), legacy preferences are perhaps the most damaging. Every legacy preference helps perpetuate a system of inequality. Every legacy preference deprives someone better-qualified of an opportunity s/he’s earned. What’s more, the howls of protest that go up when that accusation is leveled at some other system of preference are nowhere to be heard.
If institutions of higher learning want to maintain their tax-favored status, they should abolish legacy preferences. If they don’t—if they go on practicing white people’s affirmative action—they deserve to be knocked off the comfortable perch on which they now sit.
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, Fundraising, IRS, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthropy, Poverty, Relations with funders
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Education, Fundraising, Higher education, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Racism | 7 Comments »
November 19, 2010
More about the troubles of the do-well-by-doing-good gang, this time in the financial services sector.
Which raises the question: when does “profiting” turn into “profiteering”?
Tags:charity, corporate giving, Fundraising, International, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthrocapitalism, Poverty, social entrepreneurship
Posted in Charity scandals, Conflict of Interest, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Earned income, Finances, Fundraising, International, Investment, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Relations with funders, Social enterprise | Leave a Comment »
November 17, 2010
A new study—poignantly titled “Social Enterprise: Innovation or Mission Distraction?”—reports that nonprofit agencies which choose to support themselves with for-profit businesses end up serving their clients less and worse. Moreover, when the businesses thrive the profits go back into the business, while when the businesses falter the losses are taken out of the hide of the agencies. (So glad to see nonprofits acting like businesses! This “heads I win, tails you lose” approach is just what the investment bankers did—en route to destroying the economy.)
Gloating is unattractive, and unwarranted. After all, any friend of the nonprofit sector would be delighted to learn there was a way to strengthen it without having to stretch every penny into a copper wire, or grovel to wealthy people who understand the situation less well than the people they may or may not deign to help. But a bit of schadenfreude directed at the prophets of social enterprise really can’t be avoided.
It’s always seemed obvious to the Nonprofiteer that if there were money to be made in ending poverty, poverty would long since have been ended. The challenge is to provide services and alleviate suffering when it isn’t profitable. It seems equally obvious that any system which must allow for a private person to make money before the clients get served is one that reduces the resources available for those clients.
Now, lots of things that are obvious also happen to be false. And certainly there’s a reasonable discussion to be had about whether, once you factor in all the costs of raising donations, it would be cheaper or more efficient—even with a profit margin—to organize charities as business enterprises. But a decade’s worth of experimentation suggests that the answer is “No.”
Are services provided by social entrepreneurs better than no services at all? Sure, but it demonstrates the poverty of our current mindless anti-tax political discourse that those seem like the only two choices. The real alternative to entrusting the provision of public services to for-profit groups is having them supplied by the public. Anyone familiar with the history of the private subway franchises and private lending libraries and private schools of the 19th Century will be grateful that our predecessors decided to eliminate the middleman markup and run subways and libraries and schools as the public goods they are.
Have social enterprises ever succeeded? Certainly, and more power to them. But anyone who claims they will supplant philanthropy, charity or social change movements is selling snake-oil.
The most thoroughgoing enthusiasts of the market seem to forget that Adam Smith himself recognized areas in which it would, and did, fail. Those of us caring for people who can’t make profits for other people are dealing with the consequences of those failures. So let’s face it: we’re outside the market economy. Let’s stop contorting ourselves to fit into it, and concentrate on figuring out how to make our own systems function more fairly, transparently and effectively.
Tags:501c3, Fundraising, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthrocapitalism, philanthropy, Poverty, recession, social capital, social enterprise, social entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurship, social services
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Earned income, Fundraising, Investment, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Social enterprise | 10 Comments »
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.
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, Fundraising, generosity, International, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthropy, Poverty, Relations with funders, volunteers, women, Women's Issues
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 »
January 14, 2009
Scholars (not to mention the authorities at The West Wing) have long agreed that the standard U.S. measure of poverty under-reports its existence, but developing a new consensus poverty measure has proved impossible. (The issue is so political that a California state legislative staff member shuddered at the very word when the Nonprofiteer raised the issue with her in the late 90s: “Even calling it ‘poverty’ is a liberal thing to do. We prefer to talk about ‘families.’”) An alternative poverty measure developed in 1995 has failed to secure widespread acceptance, for reasons which can be guessed at: if it increases the number of people considered to be living in poverty, it will cost the government more money. If it doesn’t, it will squeeze social service agencies even more than they’re already being squeezed. The lobbies aren’t equivalent, by any means, but there’s enough weight on each side to paralyze any effort to redo the analysis.
Into this breach leap the scholars whose effort to redefine poverty in the United States has just been published by Issue Lab. The Nonprofiteer doesn’t have the scholarly chops to assess the new measure; she simply wants to draw the attention of those who do to the fact that someone is taking this seriously. As the economy declines, more of us will slide into whatever is defined as poverty. The good news is, maybe that will make it more politically palatable to describe it in terms that reflect Americans’ ordinary understanding of what’s involved.
Tags:liberal, Poverty, social science measurement, The West Wing
Posted in Advocacy, Coverage of nonprofits, Evaluation, Poverty, Social Service Agencies, Women's Issues | Leave a Comment »
January 6, 2009
Headline in the University of Chicago Chronicle: “An economic downturn impacts social services’ ability to aid poor.” Alert the media. Oh, wait, we are the media.
Interesting nugget buried under inane headline:
- “[F]or every dollar paid in welfare cash assistance, the United States spends about $15 on social service programs delivered typically by nonprofit agencies, but often funded by the government. . . . [N]early 75 percent of nonprofit services receive some type of government funding, and . . . half of all nonprofit organizations receiving government grants are dependent on those funds for at least half their budgets.”
Query whether all those beating the drum to reduce the number of social service agencies because there are “too many nonprofits” would be willing to simply have those funds transferred directly to poor people, thereby reducing their poverty. No, we didn’t think so. So in the words of the great Toby Ziegler, “Then shut up.”
New Year’s revelry left the Nonprofiteer loaded for bear.
Tags:media, Poverty, social services, too many nonprofits
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Public private partnerships, Social Service Agencies | Leave a Comment »
July 21, 2008
Here’s an intriguing development in the ongoing process of trying to connect residents of deep-poverty nations with the resources of the Internet and, thus, the world economy: a computing device and software that enables up to 30 people to use a PC at one time, as if each person had a computer of his/her own. While this may sound like the sort of triumph only a gearhead could appreciate, what it really means is computer access costing less than $70 per person–all the world’s knowledge in a form approaching the affordability level of bednets and clean water.
The Nonprofiteer is rarely enthusiastic about e-this or cyber-that; but making information commonly available to people who have been deprived of it is an unalloyed Good Thing, and even she’s not churlish enough to withhold her thanks and praise from people who’ve figured out how to accomplish it while making a profit at the same time. Excerpts from the company’s press release appear below.
REDWOOD CITY, CALIF., July 15, 2008– NComputing, the leading provider of desktop virtualization software and hardware, today announced it is working with leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide to help reduce the digital divide between developed and developing countries. The company has already deployed successful partnerships with such leading NGOs as U.S.-based Save the Children, France-based Ateliers Sans Frontieres (ASF), Bangladesh-based BRAC, Latin America-based Organization for American States (OAS), UNESCO, and India-based Azim Premji Foundation to name just a few. NComputing further announced special discounts and programs to help NGOs on every continent reach their goals for digital inclusion in emerging markets.
[snip]
The NComputing solution is based on a simple fact: today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications only use a small fraction of the computer’s capacity. NComputing’s virtualization software and hardware tap this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously shared by multiple users. Each user’s monitor, keyboard, and mouse connect to the shared PC through a small and very durable NComputing access device. The access device itself has no CPU, memory or moving parts so it is rugged, durable, and easy to deploy and maintain – especially critical in developing nations. The NComputing software and hardware costs as little as $70 per seat. With NComputing, people and organizations around the world are maximizing their investments in PCs.
[snip]
No other attempts at bridging the digital divide have been as successful. Low-priced laptop solutions, such as the $188 OLPC XO, carry very high hidden costs—like maintenance and support—that far outweigh their benefits.
[snip]
[S]aid Medhy Davary, director of DSF[,] “The virtual desktops are extremely affordable and durable, require very little maintenance, and use only one watt of electricity. This allows users in even the world’s poorest countries to benefit from computer access and the Internet.”
“Almost one billion users around the world who would benefit from access to computing have been unable to afford it—until now,” said Stephen Dukker, chairman and CEO of NComputing. “It is only by fundamentally changing the economics of computing that our industry can bridge the digital divide. We are going to deploy more than a million virtual desktops in the coming year and are honored to work with such prestigious NGOs to improve the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.”
“In response to increasing interest from NGOs, NComputing is developing programs to help them better leverage their skills and funds,” said Ms. Lindsay Petrillose, Government Liaison for NComputing. “We offer seed units and special NGO discounts that multiply the impact of an NGO’s limited funds.” Interested NGOs and governmental institutions seeking NGO assistance can contact Ms. Petrillose at lpetrillose@ncomputing.com, (650) 454-4991.
————-
*of computer access
+as in “the digital divide”
Tags:charity, computers, computing, corporate giving, International, Internet access, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, Poverty
Posted in Current Affairs, Education, International, Investment, Marketing, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
June 23, 2008
Professor Anita Bernstein, one of our most thoughtful regular commenters, brought to our attention this New York Times article about the declining purchasing power of food stamps, observing,
I found this story truly horrifying . . . . What should I do–donate to a soup kitchen, or something else?
Certainly donating to a soup kitchen, food pantry or food bank would be helpful, particularly between now and October, when food stamp allocations are scheduled to increase (overriding a Presidential veto–ah, compassionate conservatism!) The article estimates that current allocations leave a family of four $34 a month short of what it requires to purchase the makings of nutritious meals. Can we each manage a gift of $150 to the local food charity to cover that immediate shortfall for a single household in our neighborhood? The Nonprofiteer is writing her check now, and thanks Prof. Bernstein for the gentle nudge.
The article also reports that Congressman Jesse Jackson is leading a coalition calling on Congress to accelerate the increase in the allocation, but the Nonprofiteer was unable to unearth any information about the coalition or the Congressman’s role in it. He has not introduced any legislation to this effect (as one might expect of a legislator); perhaps a flurry of e-mails to his office would produce activity where it might actually count.
We eagerly solicit the suggestions of our readers who work in the field. What can one person do, immediately, to help make sure that everyone has enough to eat now?
Tags:charity, food insecurity, Food Stamps, hunger, nonprofit, not for profit, Poverty
Posted in Advocacy, Current Affairs, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Social Service Agencies | 4 Comments »
June 16, 2008
Word comes of an amazing and wildly successful new social venture (not a mere boring old charity, mind you) with great metrics:
And for SingleStop’s underwriters [Nonprofiteer's note: not mere boring old contributors, mind you], these outcomes mean substantial returns: For every $1 invested, the program gives clients $3 in benefits, $4 to $13 in legal counseling, $2 in financial counseling, and $11 in tax credits
reports a swoony article in Slate, which calls the national rollout of the venture “the Google IPO of the nonprofit world.”
So what’s the revolutionary, paradigm-shifting product?
Finding every dollar of government services to which the clients are entitled.
Yes, that’s correct: this idea that will change the way we practice assistance to the poor in this country is to make sure that we actually deliver the assistance to the poor that this country is already committed to providing. Only under a Republican administration could this be hailed as a triumph of private-sector innovation.
It’s a fine idea–we do indeed leave substantial amounts of cash assistance on the table because people are too frightened or proud or confused to apply for it, and it may indeed be necessary to have an outside agency (rather than, say, a government employee) unearth all these goodies, because the said government employee is most likely under pressure to make her agency’s budget stretch as far as possible by disqualifying potential beneficiaries.
But let’s hear no more about how effective the private sector is at providing for the needy, when the biggest idea in private-sector charity turns out to be “slopping more effectively at the public trough.”
One might almost call it non-profiteering.
Tags:government benefits, nonprofit, not for profit, Poverty, private-sector innovation, SingleStop
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Investment, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Public private partnerships, Social Service Agencies | Leave a Comment »
