As the HBG Book Club group read about tax-free zones called freeports last week in Jake Bernstein’s page-turner, Secrecy World, it was a perfectly-timed coincidence that this fascinating Planet Money podcast came out on that very topic. [Read more…]
Is Your Nonprofit Ready for GDPR?
The new EU data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on May 25th and it brings with it an entirely new set of rules that nonprofits world-wide – not just in the European Union – will have to abide by. I’m not seeing a lot of discussion about it here in the US fundraising community* and that concerns me. [Read more…]
Secrecy World
This week’s article is about a new keen interest of many of us on the HBG team, and especially those of us in the HBGBookClub: offshore finance. HBG’s own Mary Taddia sped ahead of all of us and read the whole thing to share her insights and – I hope – pique your interest enough to join us in reading it! ~Helen
During my time in prospect research, I’ve had to familiarize myself with ongoing trends in the philanthropic and financial world. As a former English major, I am usually much more comfortable discussing the works of Gabriel García Márquez than I am talking about SEC forms. [Read more…]
Mass Millions 2017; The year in major gift philanthropy
Back in the early 2000s my team and I started a database of gifts of $1 million or more by individuals or family foundations to nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts.
A million-dollar donation was still fairly noteworthy 15 years ago, but in recent years the figure to hit for exceptional giving (and website PR announcements) has crept up to $10 or even $20 million for medium-to-large organizations. [Read more…]
What’s up for 2018
Here on The Intelligent Edge blog we usually concentrate on news, trends, and articles to help you get the most out of fundraising intelligence (or to help you be a better fundraising intelligence practitioner), and we don’t talk much about what’s going on behind the scenes here at the Helen Brown Group.
But we’ve got some exciting developments coming up in 2018 at HBG and I wanted to share them with you today because they’re pretty cool and they were all created with you in mind. [Read more…]
The Palm Beach Season
“Palm Beach – Flagler Museum Courtyard” Photo by Roger W via Flickr
This week, HBG Senior Researcher Kelly Labrecque takes us into the sunny world of the Palm Beach season, that period of time when the wealthy leave northern climates and head to the tonier parts of Florida. The charity ball scene this year will be very different from years past – what will it mean for the nonprofits who benefit from them? ~Helen
As temperatures in the Northeast drop below 40 degrees, so begins the migration of the wealthy to their seasonal homes to wait out winter. Perhaps the most famous of these destinations is Palm Beach. Part of an 18-mile barrier island in Southeastern Florida, the town is known for its pristine beaches, mega-yacht clubs, five-star restaurants, PGA-rated golf courses, and elite equestrian facilities.
For more than a century, Palm Beach has attracted and played host to the world’s rich and famous. While there, these “snowbirds” generate millions for charity and the local economy. As a result, charitable organizations have come to recognize Palm Beach as a philanthropic hub for the cultivation and stewardship of major donors. [Read more…]
Are the rich less philanthropic than we thought?
When we try to estimate a potential donor’s gift capacity, the fundraising tradition has been to use statistics from the IRS that show that, on average, Americans give around 2-5 percent of their income annually to charitable organizations.
That average is derived from people who itemized charitable deductions. Even though that’s an average, for those of us in prospect research that’s been a reliable percentage to use because, by and large, only people who benefit from itemizing actually bother to do it – and that’s wealthy people. [Read more…]
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…]
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…]
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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