Helen Brown Group

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Donors that are stepping up right now

While it becomes increasingly easy to believe that the nonprofit sector’s glass is half empty at the present moment, the reality is that people want to help nonprofits, and they are stepping up. If you don’t believe it, I thought I’d share some of the many places you can go to get some really good, heartening news.

At the same time that 80 percent of US nonprofits surveyed were telling the BBB Wise Giving Alliance that they expect revenues will be down in 2020, Fidelity Charitable announced that giving from its donor-advised funds was up 36% this March compared to the same time last year.

Fidelity surveyed its donors who had given at least $1,000 during the second half of March. Over half had no plans to decrease their giving this year, and 25% said that they planned to increase their giving.

Including support just for COVID-19 related giving (which was $160.7 million as of yesterday, and up $20m since last Friday), total giving from Fidelity’s DAF donors so far in 2020 is well over $2 billion. This month Fidelity issued a “COVID-19 Relief Challenge” to its donors to give $200m before #GivingTuesdayNOW on May 5. This is clearly having a positive impact on their giving numbers.

If you haven’t yet read the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s April 9th article by Michael Theis titled “Giving From Donor-Advised Funds Surge as Pandemic Spreads” you should get on that now – it’s a barn-burner full of hope and a call to action. From the article:

 Money is not simply flowing out of the funds. Donors are also contributing to their accounts, even though the slide in the stock market and the tumbling economy might have caused some supporters to pause their giving.

Deanna Spaulding, a spokeswoman at Fidelity Charitable, declined to provide figures for incoming gifts, but she added that the number of new fund accounts opened has also grown since the start of the year.”

And it’s not just Fidelity. DAF sponsors large and small all over the country are reporting the same thing.

Giving from funds at Schwab Charitable were up 21% February 14 – March 31 compared with the same period last year. Schwab “asked the Center for Disaster Philanthropy for a list of organizations responding to the pandemic globally and highlighted them on its website. Those organizations saw a nearly 450 percent increase (emphasis mine) in grant dollars from Schwab account holders.”

Over the past few weeks, the new CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the place where tech millionaires and billionaires send their philanthropic dollars to DAF, has been calling donors asking them to spend at least 5% of their invested funds now. And she says they’re seeing donors answering the call.

Even smaller DAF sponsors are seeing a huge uptick. ImpactAssets DAF reported to Barrons that by the end of the second quarter of 2020 investments in its fund will exceed $143 million, more than total investments made in the fund for all of last year. Their DAF donors made more than 1,000 grants totaling $11 million from their DAFs last month, two times the number made in a normal March.

If there was ever a moment for DAF donors to allocate those funds they were saving for a crisis, it’s now, and they seem to be stepping up.

Who else is giving right now? Startups.

Earlier this month, Crunchbase reported that a number of startups had accelerated their philanthropic giving due to the pandemic. Their initial article listing 24 startups grew so fast that they abandoned adding to the article and embedded a running spreadsheet of companies, which is now up to 140. Check out the interactive list to see if there’s a company donating in your area.

Also, private and family foundations, companies, and LLCs

Candid reports on their new popup COVID giving/tracking webpage that total coronavirus giving they’ve counted so far stands right now at nearly $8 billion.

Just like the number of coronavirus cases out there, there is likely lots more giving that just hasn’t been counted yet.

Donors are eager to give and, as we pointed out two weeks ago, there are plenty of companies and industries that are doing really well right now. We may have to adapt or throw out some old ways of doing things and adopt new technologies and strategies, but it appears that as the need for funding has risen, so have the numbers of donors who want to be helpful.

FURTHER READING

Charity is off the charts amid the coronavirus. Is that a sign of America’s strength or weakness? By Laurence Darmiento, LA Times, 4/20/2020

Community Funders Balance Priorities in the Face of Overwhelming Needs, by Paul Karon. Inside Philanthropy, 4/22/2020

Special Report: Covid-19 and the Charitable Sector. Give.org BBB Wise Giving Alliance

Want to see some fascinating stats on email solicitations right now? NextAfter has created a web page chock-full of real-time analysis of 90 nonprofits with lovely charts and graphs showing

  • The types of verticals in the analysis
  • Median monthly visitors for each vertical (the top nonprofit type has 4x the visitors of #2)
  • How has the average number of gifts changed Jan-April this year vs last?
  • How has avg. revenue been affected in recent months? (Spoiler: it mostly hasn’t)
  • How has each vertical changed their volume of messaging in recent months? (these numbers were really interesting).

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Prospect Research for the Here and Now

In the midst of any crisis, after the first moments of stopping and taking stock of what is happening around us, the next thing people normally do is jump into action to help. This week my colleague Grace Chandonnet shares her perspective on practical ways that we in prospect research can jump into action to be helpful to our organizations. Be well. ~Helen

We’re a few weeks into the new (for now) normal and lucky to be in an industry that lends itself well to remote work. It seems like a good time to be strategizing around ways to get through an economic downturn with our organizations intact, and also a good time to look ahead and prepare for the future.

I’ve been thinking about things that we fundraising intelligence pros can do to make the present moment more productive and satisfying that will also help prepare us to move ahead through – and past – turbulent times. Here are some practical things that we can do now.

Projects and Planning

This might be a good time to consider all those things on your to-do list that you never seem to have time to fit in. What can you be doing to look to the future and be ready to hit the ground running when we emerge? For example:

  • In-person events are off the table right now, but can you work on prospecting projects for future event attendees?
  • Now is a great time to plan and implement analytics projects to find the hidden gems in your own databases. Consider appending free or inexpensive data to make your data insight projects even more robust.
  • Research and draw relationship maps to identify strong prospects who might know your organization’s friends and family and want to be engaged?
  • If you’re working at a school or university, now is a good time to re-imagine your parents research programs as we’re heading into summer.

Supporting the Front Line

Now is a great time to be looking for additional ways to support our frontline fundraisers. Our extroverted colleagues may be really struggling in a time of enforced social distancing. The logistics of business as usual – building relationships with donors and prospects – has been suddenly altered drastically.  If you’re a prospect development pro, take the opportunity of having more planning time with frontline colleagues and discuss their priorities and concerns to strengthen your relationships with them.

  • Work with fundraisers to help them re-balance their portfolios to set them up for future success. This could include re-assessing capacity with an eye toward the industries that are recession-proof vs. those that might not be – we can lead these discussions and also touch on the overarching economic outlook.
  • Use the aforementioned analytics and prospecting projects to target the prospects that will help fundraisers meet their visit and solicitation goals.
  • Set up some interactive trainings or presentations geared toward frontline fundraisers – perhaps a quick training on basic research – to give them tools for things that they can do themselves to get ready for a meeting or phone call when there is no time for formal research.
  • It might also be a good time to focus on process-oriented training, such as short sessions on entering research requests, prospect management moves, and/or contact reports into your organization’s CRM.
  • Now might also be a great time to host a few virtual coffee breaks – that have no set agenda – with small groups of fundraisers and you or your team of researchers just to get to know each other a little better.

Take advantage of trainings and webinars

We can also be focusing on our own professional development. Apra and many of its chapters  as well as  familiar vendors like iWave and DonorSearch offer ongoing, as well as timely and relevant virtual trainings and webinars on a variety of topics relevant to our industry and ways we can weather the pandemic. Is there something that you’ve been wanting to know more about? Wishing to take a deeper dive into certain industries, or know more about the hands-on intricacies of data analytics? With fewer research requests in the queue, it could be a good time to set aside some time for some of these free training opportunities.

Breathe

“Self-care” is an oft-used expression that means different things to different people, but there is no doubt that most of us are experiencing an increase in stress and anxiety, and a little self-care couldn’t hurt. It’s more important than ever to take a few minutes during your day to stand up and stretch, step outside and maybe take a walk around the block (as weather and social distancing guidelines allow), try out a meditation app, or to just sit quietly and breathe for a few minutes.

I do believe that our industry will weather this. We are a resourceful bunch (literally!) and we’ve been through troubled waters before. Let’s have each other’s backs and we and our organizations can emerge stronger than before.

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Working From Home and Homeschooling

For the past several weeks we’ve been sharing our best advice to help you deal with the new normal of working from home – or more appropriately for most – trying to work while being at home. For many, this also means adding the job of teacher into the daily mix, so I’m so pleased this week to welcome my colleague (and one of several parents on the team) Angie Stapleton to the Intelligent Edge. In today’s article, Angie shares some great tips and advice for working and schooling at home. ~Helen

“So, we’re homeschooling now?”

This was the message that popped up in a group text of my mom friends a few weeks ago. In the span of a few days, most everyone on the text was making the transition of working in an office to working from home. On top of that, we were now making the transition of working full-time from home to also homeschooling children.

My guess is that some of you have recently found yourselves in a very similar group chat. Needless to say, the past few weeks have been an adjustment for us all.

Currently – four weeks out of the initial shock and into homeschooling – we’re beginning to find our rhythm. We’ve figured out a few things that have helped us to navigate the new normal.

Here are some things that have saved our house, and I hope will help your families too.

If you can, make your schedule work for you

Starting off, I’ll recognize that I’m in an incredible place of privilege because I have a job that is stable and can be done completed remotely – and for that, I am very grateful! Our company leadership is also generous in their acknowledgement that work/life balance matters. During this time, I am hoping that leadership everywhere will recognize this is a time when standard work hours may need to shift to allow for employee productivity.

For our family, I have found working longer hours but taking more breaks throughout the day allows me to get more work done and be available to my new “co-worker” for homeschooling questions (and hugs throughout the day). If your kids are older, maybe that looks like starting earlier and plowing through your day while your kids are completing virtual learning so you can end the day early. If you have littles, maybe that looks like working an hour or two after they go to sleep so you can really focus.

The important thing here is to be open and honest about what you need to create the most value for your company and your family in this season. Talk to your leadership, and this is important: go with a plan. Draft a schedule that works for you and your company and ensures that you’re meeting the deadlines that matter.

Give your new co-worker(s) a special work space

This suggestion came from my boss, Maureen. (Aren’t you ever so grateful for the veteran moms in your life?!)

Creating a special work space for your child helps them to feel valued, productive, and a part of the process. Making sure all the supplies they’ll need for the day are immediately available allows for more self-direction and less interruptions. Using only the “fun school supplies” helps kids to be excited about school and makes homeschool feel like a novel adventure. Basically, never underestimate the power of a fresh notebook and a new pack of multi-colored pens!

As I type this, my daughter is sharing half my desk. While it may seem counter-intuitive to have an inquisitive seven-year old next to you all day, having her space so near mine means I’m always there to answer a quick question.  On the flip side, she can also see when I’m really focused on something and she needs to wait before asking.

Plan and when plans change, be flexible

Taking time over the weekend to create lesson plans for the week has been key! It allows me to make sure we have all the materials my daughter will need throughout the week printed, organized, and available so I’m not rushing around to print a worksheet minutes before a conference call.

If your teacher/school allows for it, let your children have a say in what they are learning. Part of planning over the weekend means my daughter can help me choose what she wants to learn. A biography or cultural site for social studies? Paint or clay for art? I love seeing what captivates her imagination. And selfishly, I also know she will stay focused for far longer on her tasks throughout the week if she is studying things that really matter to her.

Though we have a basic framework, plans change. New meetings are scheduled. Requests come in with short deadlines. So throughout the week, adjust. The overall goal here is to pair your child’s activity (based on how much of you it requires) to whatever work you have planned at that time.

Similarly, if plans change for your kiddos, adjust.  In this time of physical distance, we’ll always shift to take a video call from a grandparent or a friend. We’re flexible if she needs more time to finish an art project or read “just one more chapter” before moving on to the next activity.

Schedules keep us organized, but flexibility keeps us sane.

Respect Your Bandwidth

A note on staying sane… There are a million wonderful free resources available right now. It’s amazing! And, it’s overwhelming. Look at the lists, ask your teachers, ask your mom friends, and then choose what’s right for your family and go with it. Please hear this: you don’t have to do it all.

Right now, I am feeling very lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to become acquainted with several ed tech apps through my work with HBG’s education reform clients. Because I’m already familiar with them and trust the quality of the platforms, we’re primarily using the same five to 10 websites for my daughter’s daily studies.  Also, that’s because that’s all the mental bandwidth I have to take on right now.

We’ll likely add new ones as we go, but for now, what we’re doing works. Everyone is happy – she’s learning and I’m able to focus on work throughout the day – and that’s what matters.

Incorporate the things that are important to you

One of the major benefits of homeschooling is that we get to include the subjects that excite us. For example, in addition to the core subjects taught at my daughter’s school, we’ve added in time for foreign language, coding, and projects intended to help cultivate a spirit of gratitude and self-confidence. We’ve tailored her social studies and science to create projects based on awesome female scientists. And, we definitely make sure there is ample time for art, music, and movement.

Since we are a family of faith, we are setting aside time in the morning for a Lenten devotional and to pray for specific groups of people affected by the pandemic. This helps our family to see the bigger picture and give thanks for how lucky we are – but also allows us time to talk through any fears/anxieties my daughter has and to brainstorm ways we can be “helpers” or sources of encouragement to our community.

So, what matters to you?  If you can find ways to incorporate your values into homeschool, it becomes a lot more than just lessons and certainly a lot more fun to manage.

Be Intentional About JOY

My first priority for this season is that my daughter remember this as a time filled with JOY. When so much of the world is filled with fear, anxiety, and a bit of panic, I want my daughter to be able to look back and know her home was a place of peace, joy, and lots and lots of laughter. That it was a place where she felt safe and loved.

Because we have unlimited together-time and I still have work to do, we had to set some boundaries. I intentionally built our schedule in 15/30/45 minute blocks of time. Arranging our schedule this way allows me to plan my work time accordingly. For example, I know I can check email in a 15 minute slot of time, make a call during a 30-minute slot, or really focus on a deliverable when I have 45 minute slots.

But, we were also intentional about scheduling specific times during the day for joy. For impromptu dance parties or finding a few pieces for the puzzle splashed across our dining room table. We created a “Social Distancing Bucket List” as well as a calendar of special nightly activities.

It can be hard, especially for littles and elementary age kids, to understand that you’re home but you aren’t necessarily available. With joy factored in, kids have something to look forward to when they are practicing a self-directed activity.

Lean into community (or at least lean within 6 ft. of community!)

During this time of physical distancing, social interaction is important. This is a great time to make sure the parents on your team feel supported. On our team, schedules are more fluid. Our Zoom chat has been filled with resources parents are using for homeschooling – in addition to our normal work-related banter. We expect to see children (and fur-babies!) on our team calls. My daughter has even become pen pals with a colleague’s daughter so they can pass the time together.

At the end of the day, challenges are always opportunities to strengthen relationships and to build trust on your team. This is no different. If handled well, we’ll come out a stronger team at the end.

Offer yourself (and your co-workers) some grace

This is hard. It’s ok to say that. It takes a lot of work and a lot of preparation, and you’re going to get it wrong some days. Shoot, I get something wrong pretty much every day.

During this season, I’m learning to ask myself two questions each evening:

  • Did my clients get what they needed from me to do their jobs better and raise more money for their cause?
  • Did my daughter feel loved and maybe learn something today?

If I can answer “yes” to both, then it was a good day. If I can’t, then I know what needs more of my attention tomorrow.

Our Work/Homeschool Schedule and Available Resources

For practicality, I’m sharing our homeschooling schedule which is geared towards elementary aged children, though a lot of the resources have activities for multiple age groups. As mentioned above, I really encourage you to find what works for your family and unique circumstances – but sometimes it just helps to know what others are doing too.

This schedule works for us because it provides enough self-directed time to allow for eight hours of work, which if we’re honest is (hopefully!) around 7 quality work hours after all the “Lois! Mom! Mom! Mommy! Mommy! Mama!” coming your way.

Here, I’m including the resources that we’re primarily using. For additional options, check with your local school district (ours has a list of recommended resources) and Amazing Educational Resources, which  has compiled a list of hundreds of online learning companies and organizations currently offering free resources or services. For younger kids, check out this Google Doc for additional ideas.

 

Time Subject Favorite Resources
8:30-8:45 Set Daily Intentions Family devotional, meditation or mindfulness practice
8:45-9:30 Math IXL and/or Khan Academy
9:30-10:00 Reading Check out your local library’s online offerings!
10:00-10:15 Family Time – Child’s Choice
10:15-11:00 Movement Cosmic Kids Yoga or Koo Koo Kanga Roo
11:00-11:45 Creative Time Crafts, cards, clay, painting, sewing, Legos, etc.
11:45-12:30 Lunch & Family Time
12:30-1:00 Afternoon Reset Gratitude Jar, Big Life Journal (lots of free printables!)
1:00-1:45 Social Studies BrainPop/BrainPop Jr. (click here for free access) or Museum Virtual Tours
1:45-2:30 Science Scholastic, BrainPop/BrainPop Jr., or Zoo/Aquarium Live Cams
2:30-2:45 Foreign Language Duolingo or IXL (Spanish only)
2:45-3:00 Family Time – Parent’s Choice
3:00-3:30 Music Practice a musical instrument
3:30-4:30 Movement Go outside and play!
4:30-5:00 Coding Code.org
5:00-6:00 Educational TV Our favorites: Storybots, Magic School Bus, Wild Kratts, Disney Earth, Any National Geographic, MythBusters, NOVA

*Note:  Blue font indicates time spent with family and not working.

So, now I’d love to hear from you! For those of you homeschooling or taking care of littles while also trying to work, what has been most helpful for you? Do you have any resources you can share with our community? We’d love to hear them!

 

 

 

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Life in fundraising’s fast lane

A couple of times every week my other half and I are on a particular section of highway in rush hour that is backed up for 7-10 miles. I am always grateful that there are the two of us, but most especially those times because we slip into the HOV lane and speed past the bumper-to-bumper madness to get to work on time.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to say to kick off Research Pride month this week, it occurred to me that prospect research, prospect management, and fundraising data science are a nonprofit’s HOV lane. Its warp drive, if you will. A nonprofit can certainly fundraise without fundraising intelligence, but it’s a bumper-to-bumper slog.

In fact, academic research undertaken at the University of Kent by Nicola Williams, MA, showed that 100 percent of fundraisers surveyed felt that research is necessary to helping them understand a prospect’s capacity to give. Eighty-six percent felt it was necessary to prioritize prospects, and 80 percent for understanding a prospect’s affinity with their organization.

84% of fundraisers said that prospect research helps them raise more money.

Those of us in research, prospect management, and data science have always known it in our bones, but finally the academic research (and most importantly) the opinions of our colleagues – frontline fundraisers – bears out the truth of our impact.

This #ResearchPride month, whether you’re a frontline fundraiser or prospect development professional, please tell your impact stories in staff meetings, on social media, at professional conferences, or wherever you gather.

If you’re a frontline fundraiser, how has fundraising intelligence made an impact on your work, on your campaign, on your fundraising totals? If you’re a prospect development professional, celebrate those prospects you found that turned into major donors or share the impact of your new or renovated prospect management system.

There are still fundraisers at nonprofits struggling in the slow lane, and some of them don’t even know that prospect development exists. Get the word out about your great work, and share your pride!

#ResearchPride

#PDPride

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Is philanthropic influence always a bad thing?

You may have seen that Forbes magazine recently came out with their “100 Most Innovative Leaders” list. Compiled by a panel of four male contributors, the list-makers built algorithms designed to highlight the best-performing CEOs at publicly-held companies with turnover over $1 billion. As you have probably heard by now, the list contained 99 men and one woman.

After an indictment of sexism in the court of public opinion, Forbes put Moira Forbes, publisher of ForbesWomen on the hot seat for a public response with “We Can Do Better And We Will.” It must have been kind of a drag for a woman who champions women business leaders to be asked to defend the efforts of her male colleagues on their nearly women-less list.

Forbes editor Randall Lane then issued a tepid apology with a companion article, “Opportunity Missed,” which partly argued that it wasn’t really that the guys purposefully excluded women, it was the algorithm that did it. And also, there aren’t any women leading billion-dollar publicly-held companies, so, he implies, the business community should get right on that.

I’ve looked at hundreds of richest/most innovative/most-powerful/40-under-40 lists in my career so far, and usually the feeling I experience when finding a woman on a list like that is like the joy you feel on finding that half smooshed mini peppermint patty in the bottom of your bag when you desperately need chocolate. You’re so grateful to have found it, but it’s sad that you had to look that hard.

The Forbes list made me think about the female innovative/powerful/leaders in fundraising, and I noticed with interest that the newly-minted group of Certified Fund Raising Executives this year is 80 percent female. Sixty percent of directors of prospect development at Ivy League universities are female. Sixy-nine percent of the Apra board and 75 percent of the NEDRA board are female. We may not be leaders at billion-dollar companies, but we’re definitely represented and leaders in this profession.

I’ve been thinking about this even more lately because the HBG Book Club is starting our new book Funding Feminism; Monied Women, Philanthropy and the Women’s Movement, 1870-1967 by Joan Marie Johnson next week. The new book comes at a pivotal time in philanthropic current events.

Why pivotal?

In the first two chapters Johnson discusses how wealthy women strategically used their money, and purposefully threw around the weight that came along with it, to bring about the 19th Amendment – the recognition of the right for women to vote.

Even though Funding Feminism focuses on history, Johnson’s discussion of how mega-philanthropy can allow donors to wield undue power over the cause or nonprofit they support and use it for their advantage – whether it’s social acceptance/mobility, reputation laundering, or to change entire political systems – is pretty current right now.

In fact, David Callahan’s The Givers and Just Giving by Robert Reich (which we also read in the book club) argue adamantly that wealthy donors wielding power and undue influence through philanthropy is a dangerous thing.

But is allowing a handful of wealthy people to influence public opinion or public policy in such a way that society is changed forever always a bad thing? If a previously underrepresented segment of society, such as wealthy supporters of the suffrage movement, band together to radically change an unjust system, should we cry undue influence? Will we only know a hundred years later if that influence was okay?

I’m really looking forward to hearing my fellow book clubbers – and your! – thoughts on this topic.

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A snippet of usefulness from the World Wealth Report

Prospect research is an artfully scientific mixture of fact and conjecture. We spend a lot of time delving into sources of record like newspapers, SEC documents, real estate records, contact reports and other records from our own databases. Then we add informed opinion like white papers, rich lists, and our own experience. If we’re lucky, we can include some data science into the mix.

As we mature in the profession, what we become comfortable with is a curious amalgamation of truth and speculation that we use to rank, score, and predict which groups of people or individuals are likeliest to give to our organization.

It’s not a perfect science yet, but over the years we prospect development pros have gotten pretty good at uncovering useful information and helping organizations use it successfully. According to a recent MarketSmart major gift benchmark study, 84% of nonprofits that use prospect research meet their fundraising goals every year. Only 65% of nonprofits who don’t use prospect research meet their goals (which, you could argue is still pretty good odds, but why not be better prepared and 20% more likely to succeed?)

Last week I highlighted the Fidelity Donor Advised Fund Charitable Giving Report, which is worth adding to your reading list if you haven’t already (especially if your nonprofit type is in one of the top 5 giving priorities).

This week I want to highlight a key graphic in the 2019 Capgemini World Wealth Report (WWR) and add a little context.

In the graphic we can see the different categories of assets that high net worth individuals (HNWI) worldwide tend to hold, and the percentage of their assets that each category is.

How can we use this?

Research on people who live outside of the US is traditionally more difficult than domestic research, so any piece of information on international prospects is potentially useful. But specifically, let’s say you know one piece of the puzzle; that your French prospect has two properties beside their home. Once you find the value (or relative value) of those two properties, you know from the chart that those properties make up 14.5% of their total wealth. Calculate a back-of-the-envelope total visible asset figure et voilà.

No, it’s not hard, specific, factual, information about the individual you are researching, but it is another piece of the puzzle that you can use to get a less fuzzy picture of your prospective donor.

Something else I found interesting in the report was the discussion on how those asset allocations have changed since last year. Nervous HNW investors (whose wealth decreased last year) are moving their money out of equities and into cash, cash equivalents, fixed-income investments, and alternative investments like commodities and private equity. Does this point toward another global recession? Maybe not, but it sure doesn’t suggest that they’re bullish.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the World Wealth Report, and if you found anything interesting in it that you’d like to share here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hidden gems in the 2019 Fidelity DAF report

Today I’d like to draw your attention to the Fidelity Charitable Giving Report, 2019 edition. You can download it for free here. The report summarizes Fidelity’s donor advised fund activity for the past year, and there are some important opportunities I noticed that I wanted to share with you.

In case you’re not familiar with Fidelity Charitable(™), it is the largest sponsor of donor advised funds (DAFs) in the United States. Fidelity is cagey about the total assets under management, but donations made last year from the superfund’s 204,292 (and growing) DAF donors totaled $5.2 billion.

While you might expect that a super-large fund of funds would be a great place for privacy-seeking billionaires to cache their philanthropic dollars, the median DAF size at Fidelity is $17,670. Just 8 percent of Fidelity DAF accounts hold over $250,000 in money waiting to be donated, but even so, that small slice of funders gave over 582 donations of $1,000,000+ last year.

That $5.2 billion in donations last year was an increase of nearly 20 percent over 2017. Fidelity says that the majority of donations – 60 percent – were specifically unrestricted. Normally with a DAF gift distribution, a donor can suggest a gift designation but the DAF sponsor – Fidelity in this case – can choose to honor or ignore the restriction.

Of course, they’d be operating at their peril to ignore the donor’s wish in all but the most outlying cases, so DAF managers generally pass that restriction along to the nonprofit. The fact that this growing number of Fidelity DAF donors largely gives unrestricted money is good news, considering that most foundations won’t cover overhead and major gifts from individuals tend to be restricted.

The report breaks down giving by recipient type and a companion piece slices the data by geography, and I found these two breakdowns fascinating:

Recipient type

DAF donors give differently than average Americans do (as described in Giving USA). Year after year, their pie charts show us that religious organizations receive the largest piece of the pie in terms of dollars. Last year, religion received 29 percent of total giving, which amounted to $124.52 million.

But although Fidelity’s DAF donors gave the highest volume of gifts to religion, the segment which received the most dollars was education, which at 29 percent of all giving was nearly double the amount of religious gifts, at 15 percent. Religion actually came in third place, just after ‘society benefit,’ which was 18 percent of DAF giving at Fidelity.

And that’s not unusual. In fact, according to the report:

 Since Fidelity Charitable launched the Giving Report in 2013, education has regularly received the most yearly grant dollars; religion has received the greatest grant volumes.”

From a prospect identification / donor segmentation perspective, that’s pretty interesting, eh?

Geography

A companion piece to the report provides a closer look into what Fidelity calls the 2019 Geography of Giving, where you can drill down on each of Fidelity’s top 14 markets as it compares its “Top Cities for Giving“. They are:

Atlanta, Boston, Bridgeport, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

There are all sorts of interesting statistics for you to find in each city’s one-sheeter. Take a look at Chicago, for example. Human services, religion, and education may be the top 3 charitable sector priorities for all Fidelity DAF donors in that city, but nestled among the top five most popular recipients of donations are two public media nonprofits.

Hmmm, that’s interesting! What about New York? The top three priorities are education, human services, and health, and (well, look at that!) at #1 for donations is New York Public Radio and at #4 is WNET. Again, two in the top five.

So of course I had to check out my home town, Boston. Top three priorities for Boston DAF donors? Just like New York, the top three are education, human services, and health. But look here: at number 3 for largest dollar support is the WGBH Educational Foundation (yay Masterpiece!) and at number 4, Boston University (which beside being a university also houses Boston’s other major public media station, WBUR).

In San Francisco, the number one spot for donations is KQED. In Atlanta, public media is at #4 (under the guise of the Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative).

If I were working in public media, I’d be paying a lot of attention to my Fidelity DAF donors right now (or maybe these numbers point to the fact that they already are…)

But even if you’re not in public media, there’s a whole lot more in these reports of interest to all organization types that can help you think creatively about donor engagement strategy. These are just two areas that I wanted to highlight that grabbed my attention. Take a look and see what information you find that’s relevant to your nonprofit – and if you find something that grabs you as fascinating, share it with all of us in the comments!

 

 

 

 

 

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An Active Kindness

The complaint I hear most often about social media, and Twitter in particular, is that it’s a cesspool of people screaming ignorance, inanity, incivility, or ill-will. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but so far I haven’t experienced anybody leveling vitriol at me, and if I see someone I follow doing it elsewhere, I just unfollow and/or block them.

Life’s too short to deal with angry people spewing hatred. A bad day every once in awhile is understandable, but I can’t deal with constant cortisol.

I actually get a lot of positivity from social media. The people I follow tend to be aspirational and inspirational to me. Leaders I learn from. Colleagues doing cool things at work and at play. Consultants who teach me how to be better at what I do. News sources and industry press that keep me current on the world and topics that impact my work. And the occasional account that just makes me chuckle.

I started noticing something new popping up in my feed a couple of months ago from fundraising consultant Susie Hills of Halpen Partnership. It was right about the same time that I did a mass purge of accounts I’d been following to stay aware of current events that I found were really stressing me out, and Susie’s posts were focusing on kindness. It was really what I needed to hear right then.

I noticed she was regularly tweeting recognition of people doing random acts of kindness, small and large…

…and adding commentary that resonated with me:

I thought it was really nice. But, you know, was focusing on kindness a bit sappy? Then I saw her post this:

In that quote from Allison Vesterfelt (now Fallon), I got what I think Susie is trying to do. It’s active kindness. It’s doing and recognizing simple kindnesses, but it’s more than just that. It’s standing up for integrity. Grit. Honesty. And purposefully working toward Platinum Rule-style justice.

I haven’t spoken with Susie, and we’ve never met. She doesn’t know I’m writing this article and I don’t know if she’ll ever see it. But her #teamkind initiative inspires me and is proof that putting kindness out there can resonate.

She’s not alone in the fundraising world recognizing how critical kindness is right now in our world. The Carnegie UK Trust in Scotland puts its money behind studying, quantifying, and bringing kindness into action in society. They have recently published several white papers (and a video) on the results of studies quantifying kindness and how it impacts public engagement, and on the practice of kindness from regional Kindness Innovation Networks.

It’s practical work, not kumbaya stuff.

In his article “Joining The Dots,” Carnegie UK Trust Policy and Development Officer Ben Thurman writes about the studies they funded:

 But we also learnt ever more about the limitations and the barriers that inhibit social connections and relationships. Kindness is contingent on other factors – the way that we design our physical environment, the nature of our public and civic spaces, the policies and procedures that govern the behaviours of organisations. Increasingly, we have found that all of this ‘infrastructure’ gets in the way of kindness…

…There is a whole raft of tensions: between kindness and risk, relationships and professionalism, emotions and performance management. Alongside this, we have perceived a sense of fear of ‘radical kindness’, which is perhaps unsurprising in a (public sector) context that does not always support risk-taking nor provide the time and space to invest in doing things differently.

We do not have all the answers. But we do know that any response to the complexities of kindness must be based on flexibility, trust and support to empower people and professionals to behave in a way that is authentic and, above all, human. And we also know that creating the time and space for challenging conversations about the type of communities, organisations and society that we are striving towards is a vital part of the process towards change.”

Over the past few years, maybe you, like me, have become worn down by the lack of civility we see in politics. I also have concerns with how the tech community and other businesses act regarding privacy and our data, and about how our young people are going to make it personally, professionally, financially, and physically in a changing environment.

But lately I’m given hope and being inspired by Susie and others. Even though kindness is generally the way I try to approach the world, I know that being actively mindful about recognizing it will positively impact both my work and my own inner dialog.

I’m on #teamkind now, and I hope you will join me.

 

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Usufruct

I listened to a fascinating, highly recommended episode of the Vox podcast series “Future Perfect” this week that was embedded in an article called “Dead people leave billions in their wills. How long do we have to listen to them?”

The theme of the podcast – should foundations exist in perpetuity? – is a topic that has increasingly appeared in fundraising periodicals and in our HBG Book Club discussions of The Givers (David Callahan), Just Giving (Rob Reich) and Winners Take All (Anand Giridharadas). Each book has a slightly different angle on the topic, but generally the consensus is that endowed foundations and donor advised funds take money out of circulation that could be used to solve problems now.

And further, maybe it’s not just that problems could be solved now, maybe it’s a problem that, for some of them, the needs for which the endowments were established no longer exist. Or the original terms were just really repugnant to begin with.

For example

The Vox podcast entertainingly shares two stories illustrating those case scenarios. One story describes a Georgia pleasure garden built for the perpetual, exclusive enjoyment of a city’s white citizens. What happens when, 50 years later, a foundation’s trustees or a municipality are charged with re-examining a donor’s intent? (In the garden’s particular case, the municipality shoots themselves in the foot. Listen to the podcast to learn more.)

If times change but the purposes for which a foundation is established can’t (or don’t, or won’t) change, does it even make sense for foundations to be allowed to exist in perpetuity in the first place? What happens if the disease for which a perpetual trust is established to remedy is eradicated? Sure, we can say that the trustees just have to go to court to get the money freed up for another purpose, but as the New York Times reported, sometimes the trustees don’t actually want that to happen.

And that’s where usufruct comes in. The podcast presenters, Byrd Pinkerton and Dylan Matthews, interviewed Boston College law school professor Ray Madoff (no relation to the con man), who describes what the general feeling was in the days before Rockefeller and Carnegie-style foundations came into being. Here’s an excerpt:

Matthews: So Byrd, you promised me an explanation for why we allowed people to have trusts that last forever.

Pinkerton: Yes. So the first thing I learned from Ray is that is hasn’t always been this way.

Madoff: Historically we did not allow people to create their own donor-intent-preserved-in-perpetuity, right? We explicitly did not allow that for the first century after the country was formed. It was seen as aristocratic, it was not the American Way.

Pinkerton: We had literally just fought an entire war to establish democracy.

Madoff: These zombie entities that could live forever were seen as very disconcerting and not necessarily appropriate for a country that was supposed to represent the wishes of the people and that’s why Thomas Jefferson famously said that the world is held in usufruct for the living. And usufruct is a funny word, but what it means is life estate, that the world is to be held for the living for the time of their lives, and after that it is to be freed up for the next generation to hold the world as they see fit. And that was a very strong value of Jefferson and of a lot of the founders. The people in their time controlling the resources of their time for their time.

More generally, the word usufruct means having temporary access to another person’s (or entity’s) stuff, whether it’s money, or a private park, or some other benefit that you don’t actually own but you get to use, like that piece of clothing you borrowed with permission from your roommate’s closet. You get the benefit of it for a time, not for ever.

Things changed in America when the steel and oil and railroad barons started amassing more money than they could possibly spend, and public infrastructure increasingly needed upgrading. There was societal need and a sudden rise of income inequality in this first Gilded Age, but no mechanism or infrastructure for organized or institutional philanthropy was in place.

In modern history, nothing like this had happened before – commoners rising to the economic level of kings – and as far as the 1% of that age knew, based on history they would likely always be princes and the poor would likely always be paupers. An environment started to emerge that was more friendly to (or at least tolerant of) establishing charitable foundations in perpetuity to help keep the fringes of society’s infrastructure shored up.

So the rich (in the form of John D. Rockefeller), wanting to do something positive with this mountain of money, pressured lawmakers for change and eventually got it. The first endowed charitable foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, was given permission by the US Congress to be formed in May of 1913.

And now here we are, today, discussing changing the rules

Over the past century, the establishment of foundations has undoubtedly made our society better. But the eke-ing out of 5% of foundation assets hasn’t gone a long way to actually solving the issues that face us. It’s increased endowments and given the folks managing assets meant for the underserved a good living.

Much of the commentary we’re seeing in op-eds, articles and books by philanthropy historians and thought-leaders during this second gilded age call into question this trickle of band-aid funding when bolder collaborations could take place. Some call for measured thinking while others are more strident, but the voices advocating for change are getting louder.

Some want endowed foundations to be a thing of the past entirely. Others call for a 100-year existence with mandatory sunsetting. And many (including myself) want greater transparency, protection for donors against misrepresentation and usury, and and at least a minimum donation requirement (or better – a maximum life span) for foundations and donor advised funds.

Now that we’ve had a hundred or so years of seeing the best and worst of the philanthropic foundation and the donor-endowed funds’ legacy, where will pressure for change come from?

Do we even want change? Are we used to perpetual, yet rationed, usufruct?

When change comes, I can’t imagine that it would originate with a state or federal government, and it probably won’t come from within the foundation world itself. Change would be unlikely to be broached by nonprofits who hold an uneasy power position as foundation-fund applicants.

But we’ve seen a movement start already with the creation of The Giving Pledge – donors committing to give away at least half of their net worth during their lifetimes. Maybe change could come from the donors themselves.

Or maybe it’s the press that will push our sector to shift our perspective? Anand Giridharadas, David Callahan and other journalists are gad-flying adjacent to the wealthy 1% and the third sector. Maybe change will come from the buzz they’re creating.

Or it could be a collaborative mixture of voices from inside and out of the nonprofit sector. Just Giving author Rob Reich is an academic at Stanford who most certainly relies on philanthropic support to fund his research.

And these were some of the last words I heard on the Vox podcast: “Future Perfect is made possible by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.”

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How the wealthy say ‘I do’ to philanthropy

Since June is the most popular month for the pledging of troths, it got me to thinking about The Giving Pledge, which is an organization of billionaires who pledge to give away 50% of their fortunes while they’re still alive.

I realized that I hadn’t really heard much about the Giving Pledge when it resurfaced in the news recently with MacKenzie Bezos’s sign-up. That could be because interest in the club seems to have waned a bit in the decade since Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet splashed out the announcement at its founding. 122 people signed on in the first four years, but only 68 have committed in the five years that have followed. [Read more…]

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