Helen Brown Group

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Trouble in Paradise

Over a year ago, an anonymous “John Doe” sent an encrypted message to a newspaper in Germany called Süddeutsche Zeitung. The conversation unfolded like this:

That 2014 cache of data, the equivalent to about 38,000 average-sized books, make up what became known as the Panama Papers.

It’s a trove of documents obtained from the files of a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca, which helped create shell companies and other complex financial instruments in order to assist companies and individuals to evade paying tax in their home countries.

Journalists from nearly 100 news outlets around the world in a collaboration called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) worked together nonstop for months under tight security and complete secrecy. [Read more…]

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My fellow Americans

US Naval Hospital Ship Comfort is on its way to Puerto Rico

It’s been a relentless hurricane season, beating and tearing through one US region after another. Mercilessly. Texas. Then Florida. Now the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

You already know this, because you’ve been watching the same footage and reading the same articles that I have, I’m sure. Listened to the same desperate pleas for help. [Read more…]

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81 percent

U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. William P.Coleman

I was shocked to learn from an NPR story on my drive home recently that one in three kids in Massachusetts goes hungry every day. Massachusetts is not known for being an underprivileged state, so that really shook me.

But then this morning I read this:

81 percent of all kids in public school in Houston, Texas are eligible for free or reduced-priced breakfasts and lunches. EIGHTY ONE PERCENT. According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), Houston public schools provide 224,000 kids with the basic food they need every day. A quarter of a million kids every day, in Houston alone. [Read more…]

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Google Search, just for you

According to many tech writers, the future of search is looking very much like a verbal interaction between searcher and search engine. Alphabet wants you to have the same relationship with Google that over 8 million people already have with Amazon Echo’s “Alexa” every day.

ComScore estimates that by 2020 (which is only two and a half years away, my friend) over 50% of all searches will be screenless. Which is very Star Trek and cool and cutting edge and all that.

Smart people in the marketing world are already thinking about what happens for them when Google search (as we know it) goes away.

We professional researchers need to be thinking the same way. [Read more…]

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Who do you stand with?

Due diligence research is a key part of prospect research in the UK and Europe. All of the prospect researchers at nonprofits that I know there – and not just the ones who work at human-rights or cause-related orgs, but researchers at universities, membership, animal rights, arts organizations, consultants – every kind of organization – they all include due diligence as part of their work. It’s just as important as finding wealth indicators or career history or interest in their organization’s cause.

They’re considering these questions: Do we want our organization to be associated with this person? Or this company? Or this trust/foundation? [Read more…]

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Another day, another hundred million dollars…

This week on The Intelligent Edge, HBG senior researcher Rachel Dakarian provides a window into the ongoing discussion that members of the HBG Book Club have had recently over our first shared book. I think in the beginning we thought that we’d all read this useful book, share our thoughts weekly, and then go back to our work. What’s actually happened has been a lively, ongoing, daily chat-room discussion as we toss articles to each other with comments of “hey, read this! It’s *just* what we were talking about yesterday!” punctuating our times between book club meetings. Rachel expands on our latest discussion beautifully in this week’s article. We’re interested to hear your thoughts as well! ~Helen

“Carnegie 1903”   Drawing by Louis Dalrymple

As you may have noticed, ours is the era of the mega-gift. This trend of non-stop blockbuster giving has left many reeling or salivating – not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, nor will this trend be ending any time soon. Wealth and philanthropy are often perceived to fit hand in glove, but we prospect researchers know firsthand how difficult it can be to verify wealth and encourage charitable giving. [Read more…]

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Gorilla Philanthropy

As I mentioned here on the blog a couple of weeks ago, a growing number of us on the HBG team are reading David Callahan’s latest book, The Givers; Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, and we meet weekly to talk about the latest chapter we’ve read.

Our discussions start with the book but we usually veer into the news of the day, pulling in observations from relevant and related articles from the New York Times, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, HistPhil, and more. [Read more…]

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The Third Sector and the Fourth Estate

Photo by Kai Mörk, freely licensed under CC BY 3.0 (Germany).

As a researcher, one of the things that has been most interesting to me over the recent few months is that I’ve noticed an increase in the number of articles relying on investigative journalism. Many larger newspapers have some sort of investigative unit, like the Boston Globe’s deservedly celebrated Spotlight Team.

But it’s been historically unusual to see skimcoat newspapers – that are more commonly slipped under hotel bedroom doors for business travelers – begin to do deep investigative research projects. It’s another reminder that that the information geeks of the world – we researchers – are the most important players speaking truth to power. [Read more…]

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Giving Collaboratives – a podcast

Have you been following the emergence and exponential growth of giving collaboratives? Giving collaboratives can be individuals, foundations, NGOs, and others that join forces (and their finances) around a particular cause or toward a shared goal.

Angie Stapleton

Elizabeth Roma

This is an emerging phenomenon in philanthropy that caught the attention of two HBG team members, Elizabeth Roma and Angie Stapleton, who deeply researched and presented on the topic at the 2017 Apra Regional Conference (ARC). Part of their presentation included an 18-page companion guide to Giving Collaboratives, now available in the Learning Media Library here on our website.

I sat down with Elizabeth and Angie yesterday to ask them to tell me more about Giving Collaboratives and the resource they compiled, and recorded our conversation in this podcast so that you can hear as well:

 Whatever it is that you are looking to fund…there is a group of people out there who are looking to fund it” – Elizabeth Roma

Elizabeth and Angie will also lead an Apra Best Practice Webcast on the topic called “Collective Giving: Philanthropy as a Team Sport” on Monday May 15th at 1:00 PM ET. If you can’t make that day and time, look for the recording on the Apra website under Apra University.

For further reading: 

One of the resources Elizabeth and Angie mention in the podcast is The Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers and their report More Giving Together.

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The New Gilded Age

The number of gifts of $10 million-plus at universities are at an all-time high, according to a Marts & Lundy study. Beyond lending just their names or faces to events, an increasing number of celebrities are putting in volunteer time and money for the causes they care about. And new forms of giving vehicles like LLCs are emerging to meet donors’ needs for flexibility. Articles about philanthropy are increasingly in the main stream news, describing how giving is changing our society – in fractal patterns. This week I’m delighted to welcome HBG Assistant Research Director Elizabeth Roma to the blog to help share her thoughts and expertise on our new Gilded Age.

Elizabeth Roma

When I started college in the mid-1990s, I had no idea what I wanted to study, but I knew that I liked to read and think. After taking a variety of core liberal arts classes during my freshman year, I concluded that majoring in English would allow me to spend four years doing just that, and I loved (almost) every minute of it.

I still like to read and think (and I bet you do too if you’re reading this blog), and it turns out that I managed to stumble into a job that allows me to do just that—and even get paid for it! (Side note for those soon-to-be liberal arts graduates—and their parents, siblings, grandparents, spouses, etc.: maybe prospect development is the career for you!) [Read more…]

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