In January, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation announced a $12 million initiative to support drug prevention education in Marion County schools over the next three years.
The Prevention Matters initiative will work to address the opioid crisis for the next generation by giving students tools need to avoid substance use. The foundation hopes it will also decrease the use of drugs such as methamphetamine and marijuana and tobacco.
Foundation President and CEO Claire Fiddian Green said the foundation did a lot of advance work to locate effective solutions for preventing people from getting addicted in the first place.
“There’s so much focus right now on helping people get access to treatment, which is incredibly important and valuable and worthwhile, but we couldn’t help asking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if people didn’t struggle with addiction in the first place. What’s going on with prevention?’
“So that’s what led us to launch the Prevention Matters initiative earlier this year,” Fiddian Green said.
The initiative is part of a multi-pronged effort by the Fairbanks Foundation to combat the opioid crisis. In addition to prevention, the broader initiative aims to expand access to treatment and other services.
Prevention Matters funding is divided into two phases. Planning grants, which are due at the end of March, were designed to help schools find a program that’s a best fit. The first phase is non-competitive, so any school that submitted an application received a planning grant.
“We have identified some prevention experts and asked them to identify what are the very best evidence-based programs that exist today for elementary, middle and high school that have been proven to help children either avoid using drugs or stop using them if they started using them. They developed a short list, which is available on our website and anyone who applies for this Prevention Matters grant opportunity has to select one of those programs,” said Fiddian Green.
Additionally during the planning phase, the prevention experts were able to provide technical assistance to schools to help figure out the best program fit. This included identifying places to visit to see the program in action and help envision what it would look like in their school or district.
After the planning stage, if schools want to implement and desire funding, they submit an application. Those that are accepted and selected will receive a three-year grant.
“This is a competitive grant-making process. The $12 million isn’t enough to fund every school, but it will help many schools in the county,” she said.
The selected schools will again work with the technical assistance providers to put together a feasibility plan to sustain the program after the grant period.
“As all of us in the nonprofit sector know too well that you can have a great program that goes away when the money goes away. We know that’s a challenge and we are hoping that these prevention experts can help schools come up with useable plans to find ways to sustain them,” said Fiddian Green.
“There are schools all around the country that have found a way to implement prevention programs and sustain them with their public dollars, so we hope that we can find some good models that be good examples for Marion County schools.”
This is one in a series of articles about area foundations and is intended to give readers insight into a foundation’s giving and designed to increase transparency and understanding in Central Indiana.
Who says you can’t go home again? Not Claire Fiddian Green, the president and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation.
Fiddian Green is what is called a boomerang or a come-back employee. After nearly five years away, she returned to the foundation in 2015.
A Kronos and Workplace Trends study found that returning employees can positively affect workplace cultures and they have the advantage of knowing how the organization functions.
Fiddian Green agrees with that assessment.
During her first three-year stint, she was a program officer for the foundation. In 2010, she left to become president of The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that works to improve public education by encouraging entrepreneurs to develop or expand educational initiatives. Her next career move was to the public sector, first as executive director of the Indiana Charter School Board and then as the governor’s special assistant for education innovation and reform.
When Fiddian Green returned to Fairbanks, she brought with her vital background knowledge of grants, and previously established relationships with both grantees and staff.
She not only had a new title but a new charge – to work with the board to create a vision for the foundation’s future.
For nearly 30 years, the foundation operated under the guidance and leadership of its founder and president, Richard M. Fairbanks, who had established broad giving parameters. When he passed away in 2000, Leonard J. Betley stepped up as board chair and president/CEO.
In late 2014, winds of change swept over the organization. The board elected a new chair – Daniel Appel — and announced Fiddian Green’s hire. And there were other changes. Betley stepped down, but remained on the board, Roger Snowdon, board vice president and treasurer, left those two positions, and Betsy Bikoff, the vice president and chief grantmaking officer, who had been at the foundation since 2002, left to start a consulting practice.
Together with Appel, the new board chair, Fiddian Green dove in.
“It gave an opportunity for the board to take a step back and reflect. It was a great time to take stock of the past 15 years, and think about where we would like to be headed. We had most of that first year to plan,” she said, because Betley and the board had intentionally committed to multiyear grants.
“I think the board was excited to think about what our new direction would be, and they’ve been incredibly supportive,” she said describing the internal visioning process with her 10-member board.
In addition, Ellen Quigley, the foundation’s newly promoted vice president of programs, and Fiddian Green spent a lot of time talking to people in the community to get their perspective on what were the big challenges and opportunities facing Indianapolis.
In a concentrated three-month time period, they met with about 60 community leaders, some foundation grantees and some not.
“That was very informative to hear what people who represent different sectors were thinking about what’s going on in Indianapolis and where their minds were,” Fiddian Green said.
“And the number one thing, over and over again, was talent. That’s our biggest challenge as a community. We need to do a better job preparing our talent in schools, we need to do a better job attracting talent and then retaining that talent here. And people said it different ways, but that’s kind of what it boiled down to.
“And then the second big thing that people were just starting to talk about was the opioid crisis. They told us, ‘We’ve got this problem. And it’s impacting our ability to retain employees and hire people,’” she said.
Outside the city, they also talked with a number of foundations that were similar to Fairbanks – city-focused with common focus areas. They also benchmarked with affinity philanthropic organizations, Grantmakers in Health and The Philanthropy Roundtable.
Changes made
“Our board went through about an eight-month process, and at the end of 2015, it adopted a mission statement, it codified values that the foundation had always operated by writing them down, and it established a third focus area. We had been making grants in education, but had not called it out as a focus area. We also reaffirmed health and the vitality of Indianapolis as giving areas and sharpened all the focus areas to increase impact,” Fiddian Green said.
For each of the three focus areas, the foundation determined goals and matched its giving to those priorities. Today the foundation has about $300 million in assets. What didn’t change was the application process, which is still fluid and requests can be made anytime. One staff member is the contact for all initial inquiries.
Research initiatives and advocacy were added to the foundation’s giving portfolio. During the planning process, staff had identified foundations that resonated — the Joyce Foundation based in Chicago, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in Houston, the Houston Endowment, and the Lumina Foundation. All are involved in policy work, which Fairbanks saw as an important role for the foundation to play.
Challenges to address
As a focus area, health was especially challenging to fine tune. Past giving had been mainly for infrastructure building, making grants to public health, and operational dollars for safety-net clinics. These included projects like the establishment of the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health on both IUPUI and Bloomington’s campuses.
As part of its process, the foundation brought in Paul Halverson, the founding dean of the School of Public Health, as an adviser and asked him: “What in your perspective is going on from a public health standpoint in Indianapolis?”
“Halverson helped us identify what were the big issues informed by data and from there we said, ‘What are the root causes of our poor health outcomes?’ The one thing we were really shocked by was that Indianapolis and the state of Indiana ranked at near the bottom of almost every measure of health. And so we asked the next question: ‘What are the drivers of that?’”
“The number one driver was addiction. Tobacco, opioids and obesity. We decided those were all really big challenges that we were just going to focus on two, and so we selected tobacco and opioids.
“We shifted from the 15 years of infrastructure building to say, ‘OK, there’s great infrastructure in place, but we still have really poor health outcomes.’ So what if we were to shift our grantmaking to focus on root causes and see if by directing some resources to target those two things, we can actually help to being part of the solution and make a difference in improving health outcomes for the city.”
Communicating these changes
Just over a year ago, the foundation formally communicated the changes and shifts at an open house for its new downtown offices in Regions Tower.
They had learned from focus groups that unless an organization was a grantee, members in the community thought the foundation was affiliated or an extension of Fairbanks Hospital. Up until this time, the foundation had been under the radar and had not proactively communicated its work.
If Fairbanks was going to be a thought-leader in the community and affect policy, there had to be a clearer community understanding of the foundation and its work.
The foundation spent nearly a year researching the issues, especially about tobacco and opioids.
“We knew they were problems, but we wanted to make sure we really understood the issues. We commissioned two reports from the School of Public Health, which were published in September of 2016,” said Fiddian Green.
So with a new brand, website and research reports, it started communicating the foundation’s work.
“That’s really step one, ‘OK, we’ve commissioned research, and we have some information that we’d like to share. And now that you know who we are, you understand where it’s coming from.’”
And communication was as important for their colleagues, and its added goal to collaborate and convene.
“When you’re talking about big problems like the opioid epidemic, there’s no one organization that can try to solve this problem on our own. Everyone has to work together, across sectors, certainly across funding partners from around the state and around the country.”
Evaluation and metrics
Internally, the foundation added capacity with one position focused on evaluation and research.
“We created and funded a full-time director of learning and evaluation. That has just been tremendous for us,” said Fiddian Green.
Alex Cohen is that staff person. He routinely scans the literature and reviews published research for studies and data that are relevant to the three focus areas. His work continuously informs the type of metrics the foundation should be tracking to determine if progress is being made.
For the focus areas, the foundation has created a dashboard, which is available on its website.
“The beauty of having the dashboard is that we’ve identified metrics that are going to tell us are we making any progress or not. In addition, we have metrics for each of our grantees and have committed to doing evaluations for many of our grants,” she said.
Adding evaluation capacity has added to time spent with grantees. Now, when the foundation make a grant, nonprofits are asked for the metrics they will use to track the impact of the work. That informs the reporting they provide and in turn informs the foundation’s board about the impact.
“We need to be really honest about the outcomes and if something is working, we should continue to support it, and if it’s not working then we probably need to try something new,” said Fiddian Green.
By Kevin Kidwell, vice president, national tax-exempt sales, OneAmerica
If your organization has a 403(b) retirement plan, then you may have already received — or should be receiving — a notice from your plan provider regarding a new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) document requirement.
For the first time, the IRS has pre-approved prototype plan documents for 403(b) retirement plans, typically sponsored by 501(c)(3) organizations.
The plan restatement requirement is happening now, not because of the recent tax reform legislation, but rather is a long-overdue response to many years of lobbying by retirement plan sponsors and service providers.
We think this is a good thing.
The IRS’ goal is simple — to get a certified, model blueprint similar to what protects 401(k) plans and has been available to 401(k) plans for decades.
It doesn’t mean if you have a 403(b) plan that your plan is changing or was poorly planned; it just means there will be guardrails.
There are a variety of ways that providers (or a third party) will engage with sponsors and service providers to make them aware of the IRS request.
While completing the request, this is also a great time for the organization to review and re-evaluate whether your plan is accomplishing what it was designed to do; and whether the objectives of your plan matches your mission and aligns with your values. Is there a better way to structure employer contributions to increase participation? Are you operating the plan as it is written within the plan document? Is the plan optimized to meet the desired outcomes while managing budgetary realities? And, if your plan doesn’t look right, maybe it is because your mission has changed, so does the plan reflect those changes?
At Indianapolis-based OneAmerica®, an organization that can trace its roots back to 1877, we’ve been helping organizations with their tax-exempt retirement plans since 1964. We believe a retirement plan should do more than help someone retire – it can help organizations recruit, retain and reward employees.
In Kevin Kidwell’s role as vice president of national tax-exempt sales, he works to provide ideas, knowledge, information – both technical and practical – in an effort to facilitate improved plan and participant outcomes. Since joining OneAmerica in 1988, Kevin has held various positions within the Retirement Services division. Beginning in 2000, his exclusive focus has been on healthcare and tax-exempt organizations.
OneAmerica® is the marketing name for the companies of OneAmerica.
Products issued and underwritten by American United Life Insurance Company® (AUL), a OneAmerica company. Administrative and recordkeeping services provided by McCready and Keene, Inc. or OneAmerica Retirement Services LLC, companies of OneAmerica which are not broker/dealers or investment advisors.
ByLeslie Wells, Assistant Director of Communications, SPEA at IUPUI
Huddled around a kitchen table, Cali Curley, Jamie Levine Daniel and Marlene Walk discuss their latest research project. They’re focused on the innovative concept of competitive philanthropy.
“We typically don’t talk about nonprofits in terms of competition, despite the fact that they are competing for resources,” Levine Daniel says. “While nonprofits often have a negative view of competition, we wanted to explore its true impact.”
A SPEA research team now has its chance, thanks to the charitable organization Brackets For Good. Each March, the nonprofit hosts March Madness bracket-style online fundraising tournaments in cities around the country.
Since its inception, Brackets For Good has helped nonprofits raise more than $6 million. The Indianapolis-based nonprofit got its start in 2011 and has now expanded to 13 cities and states. Participating organizations try to out-fundraise the others. Each nonprofit keeps its donations, while each tournament’s winner receives an additional $10,000.
With so much on the line, organizers at Brackets For Good wanted to ensure their program was setting up participants to succeed. In 2015, Matt Duncan, co-founder and deputy director of Brackets For Good, and his team turned to the School for Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI for help in designing evaluation questions that would create a more balanced bracket.
“We really needed an academic-research approach,” Duncan says. “We knew SPEA could help us design questions that would help us better evaluate which organizations would be best suited for this tournament. That’s why we turned to SPEA.”
“The academic perspective allows them to say their process has been vetted through research scholars at a university, increasing credibility and notoriety in both the nonprofit and academic sectors,” Curley says. “This collaboration also allows Brackets For Good and SPEA to be on the leading edge of what’s happening in the nonprofit world with competitive philanthropy.”
Curley began reviewing the application survey for the tournament three years ago. She soon brought Levine Daniel and Walk on board, relying on their nonprofit research expertise to advance the project.
“We saw this as an excellent opportunity for research,” Walk recalls. “Current nonprofit literature already tells us how individual characteristics – such as gender, race, or religion – impact philanthropic giving. What we want to know now is whether there are softer forms of identity, such as a sports-identity or being competitive, that could drive or promote giving as well.”
The team began analyzing data and developing new application surveys. They examined features such as a nonprofit’s mission awareness, its number of employees and volunteers, how much the organization had in its unrestricted fundraising budget, as well as the nonprofit’s social media habits.
IUPUI students were also able to take advantage of this unique research and evaluation opportunity. Curley and Walk use the project in their classrooms as a learning tool for students spanning several majors, including Sustainable Management and Policy, Media and Public Affairs, Policy Studies, and Civic Leadership. Levine Daniel discusses the research in her courses, as well.
“This project provides students with an opportunity for experiential learning,” Curley adds. She points to the fact that students not only get hands-on experience in data and evaluation, they also learn about local nonprofits. “We approach it from this dynamic space of teaching students to learn about their community and be more engaged and involved, while also doing an evaluation for Brackets For Good in a meaningful way.”
The research team led by example, showcasing SPEA’s commitment to community partnerships. The team says this project allows them to keep their finger on the pulse of the nonprofit sector in Indianapolis, while getting a better sense of what makes it tick. The selection paper only used data from Indianapolis, allowing the research team to model selection statistically and provided a model that Brackets For Good could ‘scale up’ to other communities. BFG applies the survey and evaluation tool to all participating organizations.
While the research is still in the peer-review process, the initial findings from their research show commonalities among organizations that made the cut into the tournament. They rated higher on being tech savvy and were more active on social media. They had a higher amount of unrestricted funds and larger volunteer bases. In addition, organizations that had more community awareness of their mission were more likely to make it into the tournament.
These findings have allowed Brackets For Good to revamp its application survey, ensuring that divisions, rankings and match-ups are more evenly paired.
“SPEA took the competition to the next level,” Duncan says. “They created a much more fair and robust bracketology than what we had developed on our own.”
But can that bracketology predict which organizations will make it all the way to the end?
“If we can provide Brackets For Good with data and studies on topics such as effective messaging and risk mitigation, that will allow them to improve the guidance they provide to organizations, which hopefully enhances the experience for everyone,” Levine Daniel adds.
“We have not yet found out what actually makes organizations successful in the tournament. That’s the next step,” Walk says.
The team is currently combing through the latest data and piecing together the characteristics of winning organizations that will allow Brackets For Good to develop a toolkit for nonprofits. At the same time, Curley, Levine Daniel and Walk also are using this project to boost opportunities for students and SPEA.
“We’re building expertise and laying the groundwork for future research,” Levine Daniel adds. “Now, when people think about competitive philanthropy, they will think about SPEA.”
[content_box box_type=”normal”]Brackets For Good runs from March 2 through April 6. To learn more about organizations in the competition, build your own bracket or donate, click here.[/content_box]
Leslie Wells joined SPEA as its assistant director of communications in 2018. She previously spent more than a decade in broadcast news and three years as media relations manager at the Indiana Youth Institute.
By Pamela Clark,director of student services and admissions, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI
Maybe it’s a faint but persistent thought that you’re ready for a new challenge. Maybe it’s the not-so-faint feeling that you want to give more of yourself to help others make meaningful change in their lives, or maybe it’s the conviction that you want to help the nonprofit where you already work have greater impact.
Julia Kathary, executive director of Coburn Place, and Kathi Badertscher, director of master’s degree programs and lecturer in philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI, recognize firsthand those symptoms of the desire to change or advance your career path.
Since she was a child, Kathary has been helping people. “I really enjoyed giving back and making the community better.” She worked in an Evansville domestic violence and sexual assault shelter for nearly a decade. When she moved to Indianapolis in 2004, she faced a crossroads: Should she continue working in nonprofits?
“I decided to stay in the sector,” she says. “I had noticed, though, what difficult work it is to make a nonprofit sustainable over time.”
While working in a domestic violence shelter in Indianapolis, Kathary learned about the executive option in the master’s degree program at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, which allowed her to work fulltime while attending online and in-person classes part-time.
“It just clicked in my soul; I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” she says. “I wanted to have that skillset and that education on how to build sustainability.”
Toward the end of the program, Kathary started her own consulting business, working on capacity building and a range of issues, from deepening the impact of an organization’s mission, to addressing organizational sustainability, to program effectiveness and strategic planning. When the executive director position at Coburn Place came open, it was the merging of her passion, experience and education, and she was prepared to step confidently into leadership.
Kathary was a seasoned nonprofit professional before assuming the top role at Coburn Place. Badertscher, on the other hand, while philanthropically involved throughout her life, worked as a broker in corporate insurance for 26 years before making the leap into full-time philanthropy as her profession. “It was really good for a long time; I traveled, met people, and learned a lot,” she says.
About 12 years ago, Badertscher began re-thinking what she wanted to do. After serving on several nonprofit boards, volunteering in the community, and reaching a turning point in her insurance career, she realized it was time for a change. She found the Center on Philanthropy (now the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy) in a Google search and thought, “I can take a few classes and become a better board member, a more intentional donor, and overall be more systematic in how I approach volunteering and giving,” she says.
Those few classes rolled into a dual master’s degree and then a doctoral degree. Six months after she finished her Ph.D., the school had an opening for a director of master’s programs, and Badertscher was the perfect fit. She loves her new career, and encourages anyone who is thinking of a career change to follow through with it.
Think you’re ready to embark on a philanthropy career of your own? Here are some thoughts to consider:
Wondering if the philanthropic sector or a specific cause or issue area is right for you? Badertscher recommends activating your network from all parts of your life who are engaged with nonprofits. Ask about their experiences and conduct some informational interviews. She notes that you are “interviewing for a new field” as much as you are looking for a job.
“Do direct service and learn how the sector impacts the community,” Kathary says. Gain practical experience in philanthropy, whether through volunteering, interning or serving on an advisory or governing board.
Make a small donation to a nonprofit you may be interested in working with and see how they respond, Badertscher suggests. The thank-you and follow-up communication tell you a lot about the organization and its culture.
“Selling a product for a company is different than selling a mission,” Kathary says. “You’re developing a mission that matters and has impact, telling the story of that mission, and getting people to engage with their time, talent, and treasure.
“There are opportunities in the sector to utilize many different skill sets and turn them into something within civil society that gives back,” she adds. “So bring that skill set and then get innovative with it. The value of what you can do in the nonprofit sector is just as important to our economy” as what you may be doing in business or government.
Assess what knowledge you will need to acquire and explore educational, professional development and peer-learning groups.
Ready to advance? Consider these opportunities:
If you’re trying to advance within a nonprofit, it’s likely that you may be managing people in your next position, Badertscher says. “Look for ways to help other people grow” in their own roles and share your expertise, demonstrating your leadership qualities.
The nonprofit environment is highly collaborative. Identify and volunteer to work on projects in which you can collaborate successfully with others across your organization.
Many nonprofits don’t have time or capacity to revisit their policies on a regular basis. “Rules, systems and processes exist for a reason and have value, but it’s also good to question whether they are out of date or need to change,” Badertscher says. Raising questions and proposing appropriate solutions can show that you understand the bigger picture and have ideas that can help the organization move forward.
Evaluate the information and skills you will need at the next level and determine how you will develop the competencies you don’t yet have. Do you need different — or more — formal education? Can you learn what you need to know through professional development, training or workshops? Is there a professional certification that would strengthen both your knowledge and your credentials?
Consider membership in a professional organization or peer-learning group that can help you hone your abilities and bring new ideas to your organization.
Whether you want to embark on a brand new career in philanthropy or want to help yourself and your current organization advance, Badertscher advises, “Life is short, and if you have a chance and the desire to change something in your life, do it and you won’t regret it.”
Pamela Clark is director of student services and admissions at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI. Clark, in the role since 2013, has worked at IUPUI for 19 years in various roles. While working at University College she developed the first online learning communities designed for freshmen students and specifically for adult learners. She enjoys working with students and supporting them in achieving their academic goals.
It’s now a ubiquitous headline: Millennials are the largest generation. In 2016, they surpassed boomers at 79.8 million. By 2020, those born from roughly 1980 to 2000 are projected to make up half of the workforce.
For better or worse, millennials may be the most labeled, the most stereotyped generation ever. Millennials, however, are growing up, making waves, and making traditional institutions take notice.
According to the Washington, D.C.-based Case Foundation, the millennial generation is a “tech savvy, entrepreneurial, educated and independent-minded cohort that is driven to ‘do good.’ They are actively reshaping advocacy, engagement, service and philanthropy on a scale that has never before been experienced. As a result, traditional models of engagement, movement building and measurement are evolving to keep pace with their new ideals.”
Derrick Feldmann, the founder and president of the Indianapolis- and Florida-based research firm Achieve, has seen the movement up close. He has led The Millennial Impact Project for 10 years funded by the Case Foundation. The youngest members of the generation are now 18.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s get millennials involved because they’re going to solve it for us.’ At the end of the day, we have to move the general population from interest to deeper action,” said Feldmann, who is a 2001 graduate of the Lilly Family School on Philanthropy. “So that’s where I think we’ve got this challenge is whether this is a generational thing versus we’re in a new stage of how individuals get involved in social issues in our organizations.”
“Our future as a fundraising field is an organization’s ability to look at any individual who has any asset and say, ‘If you want to address this issue, we can do that with you, no matter what you have.’ So that’s the shift. And millennials are driving that shift, but it’s a shift that has started years before that. Millennials by sheer size and force are starting to implement it and make it happen.”
One arena where this plays out is the work environment. Millennials search for companies that are socially responsible and oftentimes check the company’s volunteer policy before applying for a job, according to Chris Herndon, United Way of Central Indiana’s chief marketing and engagement officer.
Part of United Way’s strategy was to find a way to help employers create an environment that offers community engagement, and at the same time introduce the age group to community issues. So three years ago, it started LINC — Lead.Impact.Network.Change — a membership group for young professionals ages 22 to 30. A fall event, called Plant it Forward, had members come together at Flanner Farms and build garden boxes for an urban garden.
LINC is designed to introduce its members to worthy causes and issues that United Way tackles, like poverty, mental health, financial sustainability, homelessness and childhood literacy.
“We hope that this exposes people to community challenges, helps them better understand how United Way is fighting some of these challenges, gives them an opportunity to see how they can connect through us to help address some of these issues. What LINC allows the participants is the try-before-you-buy approach,” said Herndon. “They want to volunteer or experience something first before they give, before they commit financial resources.”
Indianapolis was one of the first to implement this United Way national strategy, now with similar groups in at least 20 other major markets. With much of United Way’s fundraising done in tandem with corporations, the agency is the conduit for that engagement, and at the same time creating a consistent experience across markets.
“If you’re a company that employs in Indianapolis, and Atlanta and Houston, you want to be able to offer something that’s consistent across your company’s footprint,” said Herndon, who is himself a GenXer.
While Feldmann sees merit in courting millennials, he cautions nonprofits not to stray too far from their past initiatives. He urges all organizations to look at their entire supporter base over the past 10 years.
“We know that there are approaches to take with millennials that will work, but the first thing is you cannot go off segmenting unless you understand and have the foundational element figured out first,” he said.
“If anybody raises his or her hand no matter what age, and says, ‘I kind of care about the issue to work on,’ then you can take and move them along a journey of engagement. Get people active in many different ways beyond giving,” he said.
He cites Keep Indianapolis Beautiful and Relay for Life as nonprofits that have sound supporter models by engaging all age groups. These nonprofits help individuals see others who believe in the mission just like them. Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society’s collegiate level and lower has allowed individuals to create their own narratives, rather than define everything.
“Look at it and say, ‘I have to create an opportunity for anybody whether you’re 18 or 80 to care about this issue.’” Feldmann said. “So I think our job should be, “How do we create campaigns — giving or not — that allow everybody to express their interest, their desire to help others, but yet all participate in the same action as well.”
“Once we get past the interest stage, there are approaches that make us get involved more. If you’re a women’s empowerment organization we need to make a message that works across all that focuses on a belief statement like, ‘This is the year to make girls impossible to ignore. Are you in?’
“Does it mean it’s a millennial message? They created a message based on the belief statement that anybody can get attached to it. So that’s where I think we’ve got this challenge between is this a generational thing versus we’re in a new stage of how individuals get involved in social issues in our organizations.”
And that strategy fits in with the largest cultural change in philanthropy – addressing issues together – according to Feldman.
Helping supporters understand an issue is key. Building Tomorrow, a locally founded nonprofit that builds schools in Uganda, helps its constituency understand its educational issues. On the organization’s website is a tool that helps a person calculate the difference in cost between his or her education versus a student in Uganda.
“If you’re invested in helping constituents understand the issue, to get them active on other things, and then have those opportunities to act, you’re in a pretty good boat. That’s the approach that organizations need to look at,” said Feldmann.
Today with technology, involvement in social-good initiatives is easier because it helps remove barriers. Added to that is that millennials were born with these platforms, so it’s a natural progression, and they should be leading the charge.
“Even though the same premise of doing good is present in all generations, it is that you have the tools and the resources to act upon the impulse and the idea and the notion in this minute that you want to do good. Are millennials rewriting philanthropy? I would say technology has allowed the general public to rewrite philanthropy.”
Technology, especially social media, can help take charitable giving to higher levels.
“If I wanted to ask a friend for money, I used to have to go walk over, share the envelope and say, ‘I’m riding in a bike-a-thon. Would you sponsor me?’” Feldmann said.
“Now, the greatest thing today is that we have a technology that allows me to do that. The same premise is still there. So the way that we interact with technology has really advanced the philanthropic opportunities we have.”
Liberty in North Korea, a nonprofit that resettles refugees, is one nonprofit that uses technology to connect its mission to millennials. With chapters at universities, it has one of the largest millennial bases in the country. It takes $6,000 to resettle one refugee, and this fall’s online campaign raised $580,000 from 3,800 millennials.
“They are always focused on elevating the individual in all of the narratives. The individual changemaker,” Feldmann said.
United Way’s Herndon knows that crowdfunding is a tool to use when there is an incredible need and sense of urgency, and not for ongoing needs. However, while there hasn’t been a disaster in the area in a while, Herndon said they have a draft plan and the tools in place together if needed. His agency is part of a group of about 30 United Ways nationally that have co-invested in digital strategies over the past two years.
In addition, United Way is working on a cloud-based program in partnership with SalesForce.org in San Francisco that will roll out this summer with some of its corporate partners. Basically an online philanthropy platform, it will allow individuals to manage all of their giving, volunteering and community interests. There will also be rich cause-related content.
But what’s not going to change, according to Feldmann, is sitting down with an individual and saying, “I’ve got an opportunity for you.
“That is never going to change. The person might have gotten to the table via technology, but I still have to use the practices I learned at the Fund Raising school to help you understand it and move forward.”
