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June 2018

Jun 25

Art Fair: an opportunity for community connection

By Sponsor Insight

By Jen Pittman, Assistant Vice President for Community Affairs, OneAmerica

When OneAmerica® went all-in as a title sponsor of the Broad Ripple Art Fair (BRAF) in 2016, our goal was to paint a brighter picture of support for the arts in Central Indiana.

Each spring since 1971, BRAF brings our community together on the grounds of the Indianapolis Art Center to highlight the creative current flowing through Indy. It’s an enriching community gathering, Indianapolis Art Center’s largest fundraiser, and a unique, vibrant opportunity to support artisans. BRAF also reminds us that we have much to celebrate, because arts and culture are thriving here.

So what’s the connection between arts and financial services? First, art and the artists who create it matter to us because they make our hometown more vibrant. We simply can’t imagine an Indianapolis devoid of creativity or artistic perspectives. In celebration of those talents, our home office is filled with the works of Hoosier artists that enhance our workspace and elevate our spirits. Participating in BRAF is another opportunity for us to connect with and support our creative community.

BRAF also helps illustrate why our work in financial services is so important. “403b” is an essential phrase at OneAmerica, because it refers to a special type of retirement plan for nonprofit organizations – like the Indianapolis Art Center. The mechanics of preparing for retirement may seem complicated, but our philosophy is simple. Everyone deserves to retire with financial peace of mind, especially those who have dedicated their careers to serving others and making our community a beautiful place to be.

Since 1964, we’ve been helping nonprofits in our hometown and across the country with their tax-exempt retirement plans. And in 2016, OneAmerica launched a Tax Exempt Center of Excellence (COE) website [https://www.oneamerica.com/campaigns/Tax-Exempt-COE/Tax-Exempt-Center-of-Excellence] to serve as a central hub for financial professionals to access everything from market insights to information about tax-exempt products and services. It’s another way we serve those who serve others, by sharing our expertise of the unique challenges and opportunities in the tax exempt marketplace and providing other financial professionals supportive tools and resources.

Our work comes full circle with BRAF. Connecting with art, investing in community vibrancy and providing excellent business services for nonprofits are all things that strengthen us as individuals and as a community. For an organization whose roots in Indy go back more than 140 years and plans to continue to grow here, community strength is paramount. The OneAmerica Broad Ripple Art Fair helps paint a picture of a strong, vibrant hometown for decades to come.

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. Neither AUL, OneAmerica Retirement Services, McCready and Keene nor their representatives provide tax, legal fiduciary or investment advice.

Jen Pittman is a leader with passion for building a stronger Indianapolis community.  Her professional pursuits and personal endeavors represent a unique blend of corporate, government and nonprofit impact.

In 2016, she joined OneAmerica – an historic Indianapolis company with a legacy of strong community engagement – and now serves as Assistant Vice President, Community Affairs.  In this role, she is helping OneAmerica maximize the impact of corporate philanthropy for our community and for the company’s 2,000 associates.  Her partnership model brings together the company’s multi-million dollar annual community investment with the time and talents of employees through volunteering and leadership development.

Prior to OneAmerica, Jen held a variety of roles with the City of Indianapolis. Serving her final year there as Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Greg Ballard, she had an impressive service record during her time in local government.  She led the City’s message of “Indy Welcomes All” in response to proposed legislation threating the local tourism industry and played a leadership role in the transition team between outgoing and incoming administrations.  She previously served the City as its Marketing Director and Deputy Director of Indy Parks, with a focus on elevating the City’s international profile and instituting the “My City, My Park” program, which encourages partnering with private companies to improve services and provide critical programming at the City’s 200+ local parks.

Jen also has served as Vice President of Programs at Simon Youth Foundation. In that role, she supported educational programming in 22 Simon Youth Academies nationwide.  The non-traditional high schools support at-risk students, encouraging them to stay in and graduate from high school. During her tenure, she worked with the Indianapolis Public Schools’ administration to return an Indianapolis Simon Youth Academy back to a Circle Centre Mall location in the heart of downtown. More than 15,000 students nation-wide have graduated from Simon Youth Academies at more than a 90% graduation rate, surpassing many traditional public schools.

At the community level, Jen is a respected champion for financial fitness and helped create and launch Indy’s Campaign for Financial Fitness with Indy’s First Lady Winnie Ballard, where she served as an Advisory Board member for 6 years. Currently, she continues to advocate for and support this work through involvement with United Way of Central Indiana. Jen is a mentor for young professionals with Pass the Torch for Women, a member of the board of directors of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee and a committee volunteer with United Way of Central Indiana. At the neighborhood-level, she has been engaged in causes including the Washington Township Parent Council (recently working on referendum activities), serving as a volunteer for Wyldlife (Young Life’s group for middle school-aged children), and as a PTO volunteer at Allisonville Elementary and Eastwood Middle School. She is also an active member of Bethlehem Lutheran Church.

Jen earned her undergraduate degree from Franklin College.

She resides in Indianapolis with her husband, Al Ensley, and their two school-aged children.

Jun 11

Slow to adjust, nonprofit boards ramp up effort

By Feature, Leadership

By Lynn Sygiel, editor, Charitable Advisors

Diversity. Its definition may vary, but its merits are championed in just about all walks of life: schools, the political arena, the entertainment industry and especially the workplace, which includes the nonprofit world.

For over two decades, BoardSource, a Washington, D.C.-based organization designed to support today’s nonprofit leaders, has studied the issue in relation to how nonprofits are governed.

Late last year, BoardSource released Leading with Intent, a biennial study of nonprofit board composition, culture and performance. While there were some encouraging trends, the study laid bare some disturbing truths about board attitudes and actions regarding racial diversity and diversity in general.

The study found that the nonprofit sector has made little progress when it comes to building more racially diverse boards. The first study in 1994 found that just 14 percent of board members were people of color. The 2017 results increased that participation only slightly to 16 percent, although minorities now represent 39 percent of our country’s population. Twenty-seven percent of boards are 100 percent white.

That said, there are some encouraging local efforts to change the compositions of nonprofit boards.

Jeb Banner has been part of this movement. In 2006, he co-founded Indianapolis-based SmallBox, a creative agency working with nonprofits, and has since co-founded several nonprofits and served on multiple boards. Today he is the CEO of Boardable, a board management software company designed to help boards communicate.

While he’s often been in boardrooms where the topic doesn’t arise, he thinks there’s definitely intentional change happening.

As co-founder and past board chair of The Speak Easy, a collaborative workspace that serves entrepreneurs, Banner worked to balance the representation on the board.

“It was our intention to serve female entrepreneurs in particular because we feel like they’re under-resourced and the boys club thing has to be blown up in the tech world,” said Banner, who rolled off the board in 2016.

The Speak Easy, with two sites and three satellites founded in 2011, has continued this mindset, and later this week will announce its executive director, the third woman to lead the organization.

For Jenny Vance, who has been on The Speak Easy board for three years and is the current Speak Easy chairwoman, board diversity is critical and cited an example from television’s Tina Fey to illustrate her point.

Fey recently told the story of being the only female comedy writer on a team. She would write something that was funny, but it was more relatable to women and the men on her team didn’t get it. But because her opinion wasn’t relatable to others at the table, she wasn’t seen as contributing in a strong way.

“It’s about knowing there are people to relate to and who represent their interests. By doing that first, I think all those other things become possible,” said Vance.  

“By just having checkmarks of diversity, we’re not really meeting the reasons for having a diverse board. If we really dream big about who gives our members the best service, then once we’ve identified key roles to fill, I think it’s a matter of how we fill those roles while also ensuring diversity.”

She also knows that The Speak Easy continues to have work to do. The organization has matured, and is currently in the midst of this operational change. And while some board terms have concluded and the spots are unfilled, board members determined it wasn’t the best time to add new members, wanting the new executive director to have a voice in the process.

Impact is another reason to strive for a diverse board. A report released in February by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found that the simple pursuit of diversity could result in other areas of growth and progress that deliver rewards in the short and long terms.

The study “Impact of Diversity: Understanding How Nonprofit Board Diversity Affects Philanthropy, Leadership and Board Engagement” was researched by the school in partnership with Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates and BoardSource. One of the findings was that a diverse board improves the organization’s philanthropic engagement on three levels: participation, fundraising and advocacy.

Vance believes that takes work and that the community needs to invest in helping to grow new leaders to expand talent that is available.

“We need more people growing in the leadership roles. Investment in that is so important to us being able to see the future change in terms of diversity,” she said. “It’s got to be a community effort. It has to be part of our thought process in our government, in our entrepreneurial community, our tech community, our talent development.”

Two years ago, the Indianapolis Foundation, as part of its 100-year celebration, did just that. With help from organizations in the community, it identified a pool of candidates and then selected 10 young professionals as fellows whom they would invest in for three years.

Tamara Winfrey-Harris, CICF’s vice president of marketing and community, joined the staff just after the announcement and has become the fellows’ liaison.

The program was designed to add diversity to boards on the basis of age.

“There is a real barrier to entry for a lot of millennials,” said Banner. But I think that the reality is that some of these older leaders that have given so much to the community are going to have to step down, step aside in time, pretty soon to make room for women, minorities and the youth.”

The Indianapolis Foundation, besides awarding each fellow access to $10,000 annually for three years or a board term, has provided leadership training, and confidential sharing sessions. All 10 fellows continue to serve.

“In the first quarter of 2017, we brought someone in to talk about general board procedure and governance, and then the next quarter, we had our CFO talk about how do you read a financial statement and what are the things that you should look for as a board member. We tried to give them the tools that they need to be successful as board members,” said Winfrey-Harris.

Along with identifying these young professionals, the foundation tried to place them on boards of prominent organizations.

“Those boards tend not to be as diverse, there tends to be financial obligations that not always young people or people of color can meet, and those are boards where a board member has influence, and that’s important that we give those people influence,” Winfrey-Harris said.

Adrianne Slash, a Community Health Network diversity and inclusion consultant, was one of those selected. Slash is also president of The Exchange at the Indianapolis Urban League.

“I thought it was incredibly ambitious for CICF and the Indianapolis Foundation to say, ‘We are going to do this work because it’s important for the future of Indianapolis,’” said Slash.

“The opportunity to develop homegrown, dedicated Indianapolis talent and to invest in them really speaks to their investment in us and those organizations that they are connecting to the younger generation.

“They took a chance on us and I like to think that we’re doing really well and that people are seeing the worth and the value of having a fellow on their board. I do think that the level of scrutiny that the foundation used in making sure that they had mature younger voices sitting around the table did a great service.”

At onset there were board-training sessions for the 10 fellows.

“The trainings have been phenomenal. In our trainings, we’ve looked at governance, we’ve looked at finances, we even had the hard conversation about the way things are reported out in meetings, and whether it’s the best practices or not,” said Slash. “We’ve learned how to ask the questions around finances, how do we engage specifically if there are board members who are not acting with decorum and respect for everyone at the table.”

Slash said that the meet-up time has allowed honest conversation about board membership.

“So when this fellowship is over, will I just curl up and go away or will more board service come from it? I think the answer is more will come from it.”

Jun 04

New study reveals funding intentions of budding nonprofit entrepreneurs

By Sponsor Insight

By Michael L. Jackson, Director of Marketing and Communications, SPEA at IUPUI

During his time as a senior fellow at the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership in Missouri Fredrik Andersson has counseled hundreds of nonprofit professionals on how to improve performance and organizational effectiveness.

He has also met with countless entrepreneurs who have great ideas for new nonprofit ventures. They all want to know the same thing: “Where can I find money for it?”

That ongoing query sparked Andersson’s most recent research into the funding intentions among nascent nonprofit entrepreneurs. His latest journal article, published this spring in the Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs, examines anticipated funding sources and amounts that budding entrepreneurs believe they’ll need as they formally launch their new nonprofits.

“I would make the argument that one of the most difficult things there is for anyone who wants to start a new organization is how to hayamix.com obtain and allocate resources,” said Andersson, an assistant professor of nonprofit management at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI. “There are so many different options for funding – individual donations, earned income, foundations, grants – and careful consideration of those sources is a key thing.”

Andersson collected data over the course of a year from 103 budding nonprofit entrepreneurs who were participants in seven “Planning a New Nonprofit” workshops at the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership. He found that the average number of sources in a funding portfolio was 3.12, with philanthropic grants (67 percent) and donations (57 percent) listed as the top two potential sources.

As for estimated start-up capital needs, 9 percent of respondents indicated they would need less than $5,000, 46 percent expected needs to fall between $5,000 and $10,000, 31 percent in the $10,000 to $20,000 range, and 14 percent estimated start-up capital needs exceeding $20,000.

While philanthropic grants and individual donations are clearly considered an important source of start-up funding among emerging entrepreneurs, they emerged as critically important for those entrepreneurs who expected start-up costs to fall within the range of $5,000 to $20,000. Nearly two-thirds of respondents in this group expected the two sources to cover a majority of their capital needs.

“There is a perception – and the idea must have been shaped somewhere – that a lot of start-up money is coming from (foundations),” Andersson said. “The reality is that a lot of these nascent entrepreneurs intend to compete for philanthropic grant dollars they are unlikely to get.”

Andersson and American University professor Lewis Faulk investigated foundation grants made to new nonprofits in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 2003 and 2012 and discovered that new nonprofit startups receive grants at significantly lower rates than already established nonprofits.

“Research shows that the greatest predictor of getting a grant from a foundation is getting a grant previously,” Andersson said. “Foundations generally want to know that something is making a difference before they invest. They want to see evidence that this is a risk worth taking.”

With his latest research, Andersson also discovered that previous start-up experience appears to play an important role when determining funding options for a new organization. He says those individuals who have prior experience starting a nonprofit are more likely to draw from personal savings, income, loans and credit.

These entrepreneurs’ intentions to utilize personal means and other funding sources like angel investors or crowd funding is a tactic that minimizes the need for external funding to allow the emerging organization to get going, according to Andersson.

“One interpretation of this finding is that that experienced nascent nonprofit entrepreneurs are more aware, through learning, of just how difficult it can be to obtain funding from external financiers,” Andersson said.

Regardless of the funding source or amount, Andersson says it’s important for nascent entrepreneurs to think beyond money. He cautions them to be prepared for what happens if they don’t get the start-up capital they expected and to make contingency plans.

“If you’re going to charter your success on whether or not you can obtain financing, then I think you disregard the fact that you can muster resources in other ways,” he said. “That is sometimes what is referred to as boot-strapping.

“Instead of buying a new building you work out of your home,” he continued. “Instead of buying equipment you borrow it from another organization. You partner and collaborate. Obtaining resources that are beyond finances is a critical element to startup success and should not be overlooked in the process.”

Michael L. Jackson joined SPEA as its Director of Marketing and Communications in 2015 following two years at the Kelley School of Business, where he helped launch the school’s physician-only MBA program in 2013. Previously he worked for The Indianapolis Star.