Charitable Advisors’ Not-for-profit News was among the organizations receiving first-place prizes Friday night at the 2018 Best in Indiana awards hosted by the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Editor/writer Lynn Sygiel was
honored for her three-story series “Recent legislations’ impact on nonprofits,”
which looked at how changes in tax laws and a long-heralded student-loan
forgiveness government program affect nonprofits and their employees. The
stories were submitted in the Best Non-Deadline Story or Series category.
A weekly e-publication which provides information about area
nonprofits, the Not-for-profit News competed in the category for newspapers or publications with
fewer than 30,000 subscribers.
“We are very excited
for Lynn and the Not-for-profit News to be recognized for her excellent work,”
said Bryan Orander, Charitable Advisors president.
Charitable Advisors
is a social-purpose business that since 2000 has focused on strengthening the
nonprofit sector by increasing communication among organizations, creating a
one-stop jobs portal and offering consulting services that help boards build
sustainability and bridge leadership transitions.
The
entire list of winners can be found here.
Proceeds from the Best in Indiana contest help fund the Indiana chapter’s
college scholarship program. The two winners of $2,500 scholarships for the
2019-20 school year were Lydia Gerike of Indiana University and Emily Ketterer
of Franklin College.
Here are links to the Not-for-profit News’ winning series:
Diehard punk rock fans may know Peter Murphy as the former
front man for the once-popular British goth band Bauhaus. Bauhaus broke up in
the early 80s, but Murphy is currently back on stage with a 40th
anniversary reunion tour.
Getting excited? Getting your ear plugs ready? Calm down.
This story is not about that Peter
Murphy.
This Peter Murphy teaches
philosophy at the University of Indianapolis. He’s a bit more genteel, but in
many ways, beats a philanthropic drum as loud as his namesake rocker.
Murphy, who teaches a graduate course at U of I called
“Poverty, Ethics and Effective Giving,” trumpets a philosophy known as
“effective altruism,” or more simply EA.
As part of the class syllabus, students are introduced to
the tenets of EA, and their final assignment is designed to apply what they’ve
learned. Each year, Murphy secures funds from local donors, and as a group, students
must reach a consensus about which organization or organizations will be the
recipient of those funds.
“When they try to persuade one another that this is the
organization we should give money to, they always set up rules. (One is) you
have to give evidence, and the evidence that you give has to meet some kind of
rigorous standards,” he said, which is an EA hallmark.
But for Murphy this isn’t just a course. Over the past 25
years, his philosophy students have studied Peter Singer and other scholars who
have written about poverty ethics. Murphy was introduced to Singer’s 1972 paper
“Fame, Affluence and Morality” as a college student, but his interest in the
plight of the world’s poorest people was actually sparked earlier by his
brother.
“When my brother went to college in the mid-1980s, he
brought home a book that was quite popular at the time called “How the Other Half Dies: The
real reasons for World Hunger” by Susan George. It was a best-selling book in
the United States, and it was reporting on how roughly half the people in the
world were dying of easily preventable causes,” said the Canadian-born Murphy.
Curiosity led him to
continue to investigate EA, which has Singer’s ideas at its core. EA, a philosophy and social
movement, started in
2011 at Britain’s Oxford University and uses evidence and reasoning to
determine the most effective ways to benefit others. It differs from other
philanthropic practices because of “its emphasis on quantitatively comparing
charitable causes and interventions with the goal of maximizing certain human
values.”
“I really see effective altruism as the convergence of
people in philosophy who have been interested in ethics with social scientists
who came in with randomized-controlled trials,” said Murphy. “The trials have
brought out a lot of surprises at least in international giving. There are all
sorts of things that have turned out to be absolutely ineffective that are very
counter intuitive.”
Effective altruism has also provided a framework for Murphy
and his wife, Dana Harrison, for
personal donation decisions.
“When we met, we were
almost kind of at extremes, and for both of us individually, our personal
charitable giving was really important. When I first learned about effective
altruism, it was really challenging, and I definitely had a defense response,”
said Harrison, who, when she met her now husband, had just left her role as
executive director of Dress for Success Indianapolis. He challenged her to
think about her investments based on scientific data, not just emotion, in
order to do the most good.
The couple encourages others to learn about
EA’s framework when making charitable contributions, and they also think it’s
important that Indiana’s nonprofits are aware of and keep track of the
movement.
Cindy Collier couldn’t agree more.
For the past 15 years, she has been a consultant to
corporations, government, foundations, nonprofits, and prior to that, worked
for Health and Human Services at the national and state levels. She believes
that the EA movement is helping to harness commitment, good work and people’s
desire to make a difference.
“Instead of just trying hard, we’re
going to succeed more often, and I think that’s the really wonderful aspect of
the whole movement. It’s not just caring and trying, it’s taking the caring and
the trying, and really making change,” said Collier. She has read “Doing Good
Better” by William MacAskill, one of the co-founders of the EA movement, and
has recommended it to friends.
“You want to feel good about helping
people, but if the next year you come back and nothing has changed, that good
doesn’t really feel so good when you haven’t really made a difference,” she
said.
“We need to be more agile and try
something different to get the results that we want whether it’s health,
education, poverty reduction, no matter what the topic might be. If the
needle’s not moving, we really need to think about investing in a different way
to get different outcomes,” said Collier.
Harrison has often described the
movement as “outcomes and evaluation on steroids.”
People who are EA followers believe in
flexibility and open-mindedness, said Murphy, and are prepared to abandon a
project if it isn’t working.
Local funders, too, have changed evaluations
about programming to include data, but not yet to the level of executing
randomized-controlled trials.
As a board member for Project Home Indy,
Collier remembers the Women’s Fund asking for evidence that the group’s local
model would work. As the first funder of a program for teen moms at risk of
homelessness, it sent a due diligence committee to meet with staff.
“We
have a lot of great foundations, and I have uniformly seen them ask those right
questions, thinking about metrics. I have seen them ask what it’s going to be
like after services, what’s the impact and what is being tracked. That really
changes the culture,” she said.
Harrison thinks that at a minimum every
nonprofit should research what models work before adding new programs in order
to ascertain that its model hasn’t been disproven already in a dozen
communities.
Which
is why she was excited to recently learn about the work of the George and
Frances Ball Foundation in Muncie. The foundation’s team just completed a study
of 130 communities in the U.S. that have had cradle-to-career efforts. The
team’s intention is to compare the components and identify what change
happened. This is of special interest to Harrison as she serves as TeenWorks’
interim chief executive.
Daydreaming a bit, she wonders what could change if the foundation presents its findings to its nonprofit community and shares which models work and which don’t.
“How would nonprofit leaders react if the three things that worked they would never consider or the things that didn’t work were core to their programming? What is the impact of that and what is our readiness to hear those messages?”
Both Harrison and Collier believe
applying EA’s model to areas like arts and culture would be difficult, and
acknowledge that measuring poverty and education gains are easier than
measuring enjoyment.
Small nonprofits don’t normally have
researchers or statisticians on staff or empirically researched randomized-controlled
trials. However, they do see
steps for nonprofits to take.
Collier has witnessed some funders
asking: When we give you this money, what will be different?
“The nonprofit has got to be able to
tell them, ‘Here’s what will change. Here’s the impact we can have.’ It’s thinking about the measurements and the
expectations.’
“To me, the great part about this
movement is not to make people cynical, but to make them more questioning,”
said Collier, and she believes it will become a permanent way to determine what
gets funded.
“When you are talking to donors, you are
appealing to hearts or checkbooks to make an economic difference. But effective
altruism is really about both. I think it’s a way to totally raise the bar
about what we want to support.”
And while MIT and other social scientists
are aware of EA, there has been limited application in the U.S. with most
trials being done in developing countries.
One area, though, that Murphy and others
have said is ripe for application is mass incarceration and sentencing. For
people in prison or jail, it may be possible to lessen hardship in communities
by cutting down the use of incarceration, and that is the leading conjecture of
those in organizations that are based on EA principles.
“Do you get any additional deterrents by
sending a person away for 10 years for cocaine rather than just 18 months or do
they actually become a more hardened criminal if you send them away for 10
years? So, they’re trying to measure things like outcomes on families,
employment rates and the economy in a local community. Oftentimes these young
men if they can turn it around, they can be at their peak economic performance
in terms of productivity and they can really be out there helping themselves
and their communities thrive,” said Murphy.
He also believes there are good candidates in the community
that meet EA’s principles and standards, making it a movement worth paying
attention to.
Compiled by Lynn Sygiel, editor, Charitable Advisors
The effective altruism movement started with a simple question: Was there a way to apply data and reason to altruistic acts?
In
1993, two economists Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster traveled to Kenya
for a vacation. Both had studied economics at the University of Oxford, met at
Harvard and married. At the time, Kremer was an MIT professor and Glennerster
worked for Treasury.
While
overseas, they visited a friend who was working in Kenya and wondered if there
was a way to scientifically test which good intentions are most effective. Kremer’s
friend worked for a Dutch charity that was providing child sponsorships in
Kenya. The group was trying to improve school attendance and test scores. But
which of their efforts were making a difference — uniforms, adding teachers,
flip chart or textbooks.
Kremer
suggested they try a randomized controlled trial to determine what intervention
was most effective. They would monitor and collect data from 14 schools of
which half would be a control group. By collecting data in all the schools,
they could see which fared better. The idea hadn’t been applied to development
world. Testing each program one by one, Kremer found that there was no
discernible improvement and these interventions had no effect on student
outcomes.
Then
a friend at the World Bank suggested deworming to cure parasitic infections in
children with an annual pill. Kremer did an experiment to see whether it had an
impact on education. What they learned was that the program worked to reduce
absenteeism, a chronic problem at these schools. What was more impressive is
that in a follow up 10 years later, children who had received the medicine
worked an extra 3.4 hours per week and earned 20 percent more.
Kremer’s
revolutionary approach gained a following and saw dozens of young economists
running trials of development programs. By then, Glennerster had become
executive director of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT and by 2007, the
couple cofounded the nonprofit Deworm the World Initiative, which provides
technical assistance to developing countries’ government to launch deworming
programs.
And according
to William MacAskill in his book, “Doing Good Better,” it is a way of thinking
about how to make the biggest difference and uses evidence and careful
reasoning to try to find an answer.
MacAskill helped
develop the idea while he was a student at the University of Oxford and defines
effective altruism as “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit
others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.”
Effective altruism, according to MacAskill has five key
questions:
How many people benefit, and by how
much?
Is this the most effective thing you
can do?
Is this area neglected?
What would have happened otherwise?
What are the chances of success, and
how good would success be?
Initially, the
movement was focused on individual-level charitable giving, and MacAskill also
co-founded, Giving What We Can, with a fellow graduate student. The
organization encourages individuals to give at least 10 percent of his or her
income to the most cost-effective charities.
About the same
time, two New York hedge fund analysts starting GiveWell, an organization that
does in-depth research to determine which charities do the most good with every
dollar. It compares for example how much good $1000 will do depending on which
organization you give it to. GiveWell partnered with Cari Tuna and Dustin
Moskovitz and started the Open Philanthropy Project.
In the process, the term effective altruism (EA) emerged as
a community formed around these groups. Since 2013, EA has held conferences,
run by the Centre for Effective Altruism at Oxford University. In 2015, the
conference took place on Google’s campus in Mountain View, and in 2016 at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Last
fall, Vox Media launched Future Perfect, a new section
to cover under covered issues. The twice weekly
publication is inspired by the EA movement and is funded in
partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation.
By Annmarie
Novotney, audit and accounting senior manager, Blue & Co.
Your organization exists for a reason. You
have a mission to accomplish, and you’re driving hard every day to meet that
challenge.
Nonprofit organizations face unique
obstacles like identifying the best use of available resources, growing to
support increased services and remaining financially viable while maintaining a
strong focus on efficiency.
At Blue & Co., we understand the
challenges you face, and work – not only as your service provider but also as your
business partner – to help you navigate and overcome these challenges.
Our growing list of nonprofit clients (over
900 individual organizations) is proof of the abilities our experts demonstrate
in areas that are relevant to you as a nonprofit organization. Some of our
largest categories served include healthcare organizations, collegiate
membership organizations, higher education entities, community foundations,
social services groups, trade organizations and other membership organizations,
and private and corporate foundations.
Our titles may include accountants and
consultants, but we do much more than that. We are able to accurately identify
day-to-day management issues and operational concerns, such as internal
controls, segregation of duties, management effectiveness, and board
development. We offer practical solutions that add value and help ensure you
understand all aspects of compliance in your sector.
It is
our mission to support your mission. We want to stand with you as an invaluable
resource to advance your services in the community. We believe in our nonprofit
clients and are dedicated to helping them carry out their vision. Let us be a
partner to you as you drive your organization to succeed.
Here is a brief overview of our top
nonprofit services:
Annmarie Novotney is an audit and accounting senior manager at Blue & Co. Carmel’s office. She specializes in providing
assurance and consulting services to nonprofit organizations and is active
in the nonprofit community, recently completing a six-year term as treasurer
for the Susan G. Komen Central Indiana Affiliate. She is a member of the
Indiana CPA Society, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and
Executive Women in Finance.
Research repeatedly confirms that employee engagement drives organizational success. We know it’s important,but have trouble with misunderstanding of expectations and turn-over.
At last month’s HR peer group, Tony Dill, owner of HR Partnerships, discussed employee engagement with HR professionals at the HR peer group. With several decades of both HR experience and working for nonprofits, he has the perfect blend to understand nonprofit HR challenges. During Dill’s one-hour presentation, he clarified what engagement is and isn’t and how to develop your leadership team. If you missed the session, here are some highlights of his presentation.
When you hear the term ‘employee engagement’ what comes to mind?
A common misperception is thinking your staff is satisfied, happy and motivated. You’ve garnered from organization satisfaction surveys that your staff is pleased with the benefits offered and with the work environment. While those are important, they don’t measure the emotional commitment an employee has to the organization and its goals. In part that may explain why a seemingly happy team member jumps ship when a competitor’s offer comes along.
In contrast, Dill sees employee engagement defined by emotional commitment and discretionary effort.
Typically, emotional commitment is tied to people whom we are closest with — parents, spouse or our children. But according to theHarvard Business Review, workplace relationships are important to create a sense of purpose and ownership. Close work friendships boost employee satisfaction by 50 percent and companies with satisfied employees outperforming the competition by 20 percent.
It follows then if engaged employees have meaningful relationships at work, as a leader, you also need to invest in your staff and get to know them and invest in building relationships. This starts on day one. In fact, Dill recommends employee onboarding should last 6, 12, maybe even 18 months and includes socializing the employee into your culture. Some examples of what this would look like:
Ongoing, regular meetings with the new hire at least every 30 days to help with defining performance standards and meeting company expectations.
Solicit monthly feedback about the employee’s experiences, what would help him or her and how the work experience could be better.
Have socializing activities during work hours with new hires and current staff. A group lunch is an easy way to accomplish this.
The other component of engagement is discretionary effort. This is when an employee perseveres beyond what is expected and goes the extra mile. For example, those employees who are willing to complete a project under a deadline versus asking for an extension. Another way to look at discretionary effort is someone who looks for innovative ways to do things. Discretionary effort is motivated by a passion and is often linked to the mission or the well-being of team members, or both.
8 leadership traits
If your organization wants to foster engagement where does it begin? Right at the top of the organizational chart. Organizations with a culture of engagement demonstrate eight characteristics in their teams. The leadership traits are: self-aware, authentic, humble, trust, innovation, vision, passion and confidence.
During Dill’s presentation, the audience elaborated on the top
three characteristics; their ideas are worth sharing.
Self-aware leaders continue to develop
themselves professionally and personally.
Authentic leaders interact with their staff
and get to know them as a person.
Humble leaders are servants. Putting others
first.
The management team needs to take ownership of these leadership
traits and demonstrate them first. Dill reassured that your staff does not need
to exhibit all eight traits. Yet, often, they will pick them up from the
“trickle-down” effect. Driving employee engagement and developing a company
culture often happens in tandem.
It all begins
with trust
Dill explained, as leaders embody the eight leadership
characteristics, they become more trust worthy and authentic. In return, staff will feel comfortable to
share. As staff gains trust, it builds a two-way commitment between the manager
and employee. When an employee feels safe enough to open up and share, a
feedback loop is created. Open communication allows the manager more
opportunities to clarify what the employee needs to focus on and this in turn accelerates
the organization’s productivity.
Dill offered advice to embrace this change in culture. First, help each team
member, even the hired hand in the warehouse, understand how their contribution
is linked to the organization’s strategic plan, and ultimately, its mission. Additionally, but equally important, have a conversation
about how staff’s goals play into the overall plan. In the nonprofit sector,
this is where things get a bit dicey.
As a leader, you’ll probably learn your staff’s goals revolve
around learning a new skill, getting a promotion and increasing compensation —
things that while commonplace in the for-profit community, are often a luxury
for many nonprofits. If your
organization is on a shoe-string budget, the attendees offered creative ways
your organization can help its staff achieve their goals. Such as, If the employee foots the bill for a
training, he or she can be rewarded with extra PTO time. Bring in an expert in
your industry for an employee lunch and offer a free lunch-and-learn. Create an
internal training program.
Remember, engagement discussions are not one-time conversations. Most people need to hear something eight times before they own it. Be creative and communicate your organization’s message in a variety of ways.
Julie Struble is
the marketing and sponsorship director at Charitable Advisors. With the company since 2002 and with five
years as a HR generalist, one of her responsibilities is to coordinate
educational opportunities for the CA’s affinity HR peer group, and secure speakers
with expertise to discuss the challenges in the nonprofit HR department.
By Kevin Kidwell vice president national tax exempt sales, OneAmerica®
It’s well documented that
Americans aren’t saving enough to fund their retirement. So the drumbeat in the
industry has been to remind participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans
of the importance to “defer, defer, defer” and set aside a portion of their
take-home pay.
Meanwhile, companies that
administer 401(k) and 403(b) plans have endeavored to provide clients with relatable
uncomplicated guidance, make enrolling and plan access simple, and provide
resources to keep everything on track. For example, some plans are designed for
automatic investment in a target date fund so that some employee participants
don’t have to lift a finger.
Broadly speaking, this
evolution to making things easy has
been borne out by studies in behavioral finance that have shown that these plan
designs work.
While we all agree that
saving for retirement is a good
thing, there’s a financial commitment from the employer that should be acknowledged
and also applauded. The retirement plan industry is focused on helping the
participant put aside enough money; but just as important, is a focus on
assisting the employers in creating the best structure for the organization’s
financial goals.
No employer wants to
experience hardship when it’s trying to do right by its employees in funding
retirement contributions. But some
cookie-cutter approaches, which may seem easy in design and implementation, may
not take into account the diverse needs of differently paid staff or worse yet,
create cash flow issues that endanger the organizational mission.
The value in saving for retirement
The National Institute on
Retirement Security[1] (NIRS) warned recently
that American workers fortunate enough to have a retirement account offered
through their employer still face a deep retirement savings shortfall.
Ultimately, the inability of
older Americans to be self-sufficient after a lifetime of work will have
negative impacts on the U.S. economy, government budgets and families, according
to NIRS.
How retirement plans work
Contributions made by an
employer to an employee’s retirement plan ─ whether the plan provides for
elective deferrals or not – is regulated by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),[2] and
it’s those complex IRS rules that outline the guardrails for a tax-exempt
retirement plan. (If you work for a nonprofit, that’s a common savings approach
at your organization.)
The IRS allows an employee
to defer his or her pay and allows the employer to also then make a tax-deferred
contribution. The plans have strict rules in order to maintain their
tax-deferred status. (The Employee
Retirement Income Security Act requires several tests each year to prove a plan
does not discriminate in favor of employees with higher incomes.[3]
These rules don’t apply to government plans.)
While it’s not given, over
time these contributions accumulate through the act of continuous employee/employer
contributions and compounding.
A match, where the employer
contributes an identical amount to what the participant invests, is not
mandatory, but is the most common type of contribution.
I would argue that there are
also other ways for employers to make contributions for the benefit of the entire
company.
Here’s what could make a
difference and is worth consideration:
Look at the usefulness of creating three separate
retirement plan pools — one that matches automatically for everyone who opts
into in the retirement plan, one that is reserved for specific groups of
employees with high-demand jobs, and a third that’s targeted to profit-sharing
based on performance.[4]
Consider a formula that factors in the Social Security
Replacement Ratio. Not many people realize Social Security’s payout structure
provides benefits progressively, so that people who earned the lowest wages at
a company upon retirement receive a higher replacement rate than did the higher
earners. As a result of this Social Security policy, the law allows employers
to make contributions to offset the Social Security deficit for middle and
higher income workers – compensating them for what Social Security is not going
to pay out when they are eligible to draw it, in other words.
Consider unique retirement plans at companies or
organizations with specialty occupations, such as the medical field,
acknowledging that the retirement-saving needs of “late entrants” into the
workforce (attorneys, physicians, accountants and other professionals of
occupations that require years of schooling) are different than other members
of staff. Adults who left their careers to raise their children missed out, so
they could be eligible for unique retirement plan designs that helps them catch
up.
Employers may also look at
the possibility of contributing more to the retirement account during a great
year for the organization’s bottom line, but also possibly contribute less in a
down business year.
Ultimately, the retirement
plan of any tax-exempt organization needs to mirror their mission. The plan
should be of optimal plan design and be one where the employer isn’t painted
into a corner by funding obligations.
We’ve found through our
experience that there are all kind of things we can do that makes sense. But
ultimately, if the system in place is not good for the employer, it won’t be
good in the long term for their 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.
Indianapolis-based
OneAmerica®, an organization that can trace its roots back to 1877,
has 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.
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.
The
views and opinions expressed in this material are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of any of the companies
of OneAmerica. Provided content is for overview and informational purposes only
and is not intended and should not be relied upon as individualized tax, legal,
fiduciary, or investment advice. Investing involves risk including potential
loss of principal.
Editor’s note: Since this story was published, 900 Girl Scouts selected the Shoe that Grows as their reward, donating a total of 523 pairs to this Kenyan school and far surpassing the chapter’s 120 pair goal.
Samoas and
shoes. What do they have in common? Very little, actually, but a group of
ambitious and forward-thinking Girl Scouts in Central Indiana are out to change
that.
Since early
January, as they do every year, the Girl Scouts have been selling cookies. Lots
of them. In Central Indiana, about 29,000 Scouts in 45 counties have been peddling
their snacks and fulfilling our guilty pleasures. On average last year, each girl sold 184 boxes.
As the cookie
season winds down, however, a first-of-its-kind project by the local council,
the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, is about to ramp up.
Traditionally, the girls and their troops earn group and individual
rewards for being top cookie-sellers. By the end of this month, girls can select prizes, such as stuffed animals, sleeping
bags, theme park tickets or trips with other scouts.
This year, however, the girls can earn shoes. Not pairs
of splashy tennies or the latest Doc Martens. These shoes they earn aren’t for
them, but for kids in Kenya.
Local Scouts will have the opportunity to forgo personal
prizes and do something altruistic. Each Scout who sells at least 125 boxes may
donate her “prize” to the cause. The reward for 125 boxes is equivalent to a
half shoe to a Kenyan elementary student. As the number
of boxes increases, so does the number of donated shoes.
These are, however, not ordinary shoes. These are Shoes that Grow, the brainchild of the nonprofit organization Because International. The shoes are adjustable and can accommodate five size changes. The shoes will be given to students at the Hope School, which is outside several small villages in northern Kenya. For kids in this African country, having shoes that fit — or even shoes at all — is not a given.
Ellen Winking, the vice president of membership and
“cookie manager” at Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, heard about the program on
a national news program and spent last summer conversing with local girls about
this as a rewards option.
To help Girl Scouts understand how this unique footwear
works, Winking used both an actual pair and a video to demonstrate. Both were
supplied by Idaho-based Because International, which distributes
simple, innovative products to help make daily life easier for people living in
poverty.
The video shared the story of a 12-year-old girl in Haiti
who could not attend school simply because she had no shoes. For local girls, it was an opportunity to
learn that schooling could be denied for not having shoes.
Buoyed by the girls’ interest, Winking contacted Kenton
Lee, founder of Because International, to discuss the possibility of offering
the shoes as a reward, and the nonprofit staff agreed to give it a try.
“I was excited
when they approached us with this idea, and we kind of brainstormed to see if
it could fit. The partnership with the council is really unique, and I’m really
looking forward to see what transpires. If it works, it definitely is something
that I would encourage other similar groups to think about doing,” said Lee
from his office in Nampa, Idaho.
This Central Indiana Girl Scout council’s goal for this
year’s annual cookie program is to provide 120 pairs of shoes for students at a
particular elementary school in Kenya. A part of the Girl Scouts’ training
model is for each girl to self-identify a personal and troop goal for cookie
sales.
“Adding the
shoe is a slightly different twist because girls are forgoing a prize to do
this good for others,” said Danielle Shockey, Central Indiana Girl Scouts’ CEO.
According to Lee, 400 kids attend the school in Kenya, but
those are just the kids who have the ability to go to school.
“There are even poorer kids, who live out in the rural
areas surrounding the school. I would also like to give to local leaders extra
pairs of shoes so as they identify more kids that don’t go to the school that
they’d be able to help them by providing shoes if that’s a need that they
have,” he said.
The Girl Scouts’ national office said while other troops
have provided funds for causes like saving sea turtles, Central Indiana’s council
is the first to offer this type of philanthropic reward option.
“I’m really
excited about this opportunity with them,” said Lee. “This is a first. We’ve had other kids do more
classic fundraising — lemonade stands, yard sales, mowing lawns or using their
birthday — as fundraisers.”
Proper footwear, according to Lee, is a critical way of reducing
the risk of injury, parasitic diseases and foot infections in Third World
countries. For many, it is a necessary part of a school uniform. But, he knows,
it doesn’t solve every problem.
“It is a very simple thing. But even a small thing, even
something that doesn’t solve the entire situation, still makes a big difference,”
he said. Lee estimates there are over 300
million children who do not have shoes, and countless more with shoes that do
not fit. Sometimes they receive shoe donations, but children’s feet grow and
they quickly outgrow donated shoes.
After attending Northwest Nazarene University, Lee thought he was destined to be a
missionary. But since his religion requires a three-year commitment in the
field, he traveled for a year, ultimately working in an orphanage in Kenya for
six months in 2007 as a way to test his future path.
During a walk with children at the orphanage, he noticed
one girl whose shoes didn’t fit, which sparked an idea that he jotted in his journal.
Homesick, he returned to Idaho, but his idea percolated.
“It
really was just kind of a random idea that popped into my head just based on
the situation, based on the context,” Lee said. “You know the orphanage
couldn’t afford to buy the kids any new shoes, and yet their feet were always
growing. And then from that point, I had an idea for a growing shoe, but I had
no idea how to make it happen. That’s what took the six years.”
First he tried
and failed at designing a prototype. He tried to give the idea away, but after
multiple rejections from shoe companies, he found a small shoe-design company
in Portland, Oregon.
“They loved what we were trying to do and took us through
about a yearlong design process. Then we made about 100 prototype pairs that my
wife and I took back to Kenya and put in four different schools,” Lee said. “We
had kids try them out for about a year, got some really good feedback, and then
we made our first official batch of the Shoe that Grows. It was essentially
just a hobby at that point. I had a few thousand pairs in my guest bedroom, and
I tried to get them out to people I knew working with kids. It was just kind of
a small part of my life at that point.”
Now, the shoe
is in 100 countries, mainly near the equator including parts of Central
America, through sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, and a bit of Asia. Overall,
the nonprofit has distributed almost 250,000 pairs in the last four years and
has worked with over 1,500 partner groups or distribution partners to deliver
those shoes.
To simplify distribution, the Because International has begun
to identify factories
closer to the need. Right now a Kenyan factory is working to produce a sample.
If all goes according to plan in 2019, the shoes for the Kenyan school will be
made at that factory in Mombasa and shipped to Nairobi. Haiti and Ethiopia also
have manufacturing plants.
Lee said his organization
doesn’t attach any strings to the shoes for either the recipients or the
donors. Recipients are not required to send thank yous or Skype with the
donors.
“Above all else what we want
is for the local people — the leaders and the kids receiving the shoes — is
for the shoes to be a benefit to them and be a valuable resource. But if the
Girl Scouts want to make contact with the school and vice versa, we’re happy to
make the connection.”
Besides sending shoes to Kenya, girls who select the shoe
reward will receive a patch, which includes the Shoe that Grows logo, a heart
designed from a footprint. For Girl Scouts earning patches and badges for
successfully completing requirements is something of honor.
For the Girl Scouts, philanthropy certainly is not new.
CEO Danielle Shockey, herself a Girl Scout alumna, said it’s embedded in everything
the organization does.
“Philanthropy is really just part of our DNA, and the
whole idea of making the world better place is our mission statement. I’ve
never met a troop who doesn’t think about some kind of community service
project,” and the cookie program provides troops with annual funds to be able
to do this. At the younger levels, girls think about how to give back to the
local community, and as they get older, they begin to think about the world
around them.
According
to a study at Arizona State University, altruistic children do grow up to be
altruistic adults.
Since 2009,
the Girl Scouts in Central Indiana have been involved in Operation:
Cookie Drop. Customers are asked if they would like to purchase
additional boxes to be distributed to soldiers stationed at military bases
across Central Indiana, to military veterans and for the first time this year, to
local first responders. Last year, the scouts delivered 96,000 boxes to Stout
Field to military families.
“They are really glad to meet the girls and physically
move the boxes together. We are purposefully making sure that they’re seeing
the effort and the result. I think we do some very deliberate things, as much
as it is a part of the things that they earn and their badges and the gold
awards, we also want it to be intrinsic too,” said Shockey, who became CEO in
January 2018.
Both Lee’s nonprofit, Because International, and Girl
Scouts working to earn a Gold Award have a goal of solving societal problems.
In the case of Because International, they have expanded
efforts and now have a mosquito net called Net Buddy for distribution in
countries where malaria is a health concern. Lee, the founder, is also working
with a colleague on a new program, the Pursuit Incubator, to help other
entrepreneurs pursue ideas for products. The group’s efforts revolve around
using small innovative products to fight poverty.
And as Girl
Scouts stay with the organization and reach their teens, they have the option
to earn a Gold Award, the
organization’s highest award. Last year, locally about 30 girls achieved the Gold
Award.
“To earn the
Gold Award, a girl must find a community challenge where she thinks she can
make a difference. So when we say it’s part of our DNA, girls are constantly
thinking about the world around and how they can make it a better place and it
manifests itself differently. Troops think about it, girls think about it and
also if they want to have our highest award, they have to think about it in a
very big way.”
Shockey shared
the example of a Zionsville sophomore’s project. She saw the documentary about Holocaust
survivor Eva Kor; and her message of forgiveness touched this 15-year-old teen.
“Soon after
there was the school shooting in Noblesville and she thought my community
really needs this message of forgiveness,” said Shockey. “And they needed to
hear it directly from Kor.”
So working with
her school superintendent, she planned two programs. At one, Kor would speak to
middle- and high-school students, and offer a similar program in the evening at
a local church. The proceeds from the 500 tickets sold were donated to
Zionsville’s Lunch Angel Fund, a program that pays off student lunch deficits
and provides needy students with extras they cannot afford.
The teen didn’t
stop there, Shockey said, because she wanted a sustainable program.
“So she worked
with WFYI to build education kits about the Holocaust. Now every history
teacher in Zionsville has a Holocaust kit to use with future students,” said
Shockey.
The leaders really walk the talk of girls leading the way,
and so they will wait to see how successful and how popular it is before making
additional plans and connections.
“Did girls make it part of their goals? I think at the
end of this year, it will be pretty telling. Take Operation Cookie Drop that started
over 10 years ago. It’s now 96,000 packages,” said Deana Potterf, the chief
communications officer. Who could have imagined.
Nonprofit leaders often
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By Tyrone Freeman,
assistant professor of philanthropic
studies, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
Save the dates
Interested in learning more about diversity and philanthropy? The Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy Speaker Series will feature Dr. Noah Drezner of Colombia University speaking on LGBTQ philanthropy on March 27 and Sandra Vargas, the former head of the Minneapolis Foundation discussing Latinx philanthropy on April 24.
In the nonprofit community, donors of color are being referred to
as ‘new and emerging,’ by fundraisers and organizations looking to engage them.
However, this phrase belies the fact that people of color have
given for hundreds of years and continue to give via mechanisms such as individual
giving, giving circles, donor networks, donor advised funds, family foundations
and other forms.
Let’s start with history. Donors of color like Thomy
LaFon, Colonel
John McKee, Madam C.J. Walker, Annie
Malone, Sheila
Johnson, LeBron James, and Oprah
Winfrey reflect the reality that people of color have been significant
donors for generations. These individuals and their generous philanthropy have
supported causes ranging from schools to churches to social services to arts
and arts education to scholarships throughout the past 200+ years.
This generosity, however, is not the sole domain of the black elite
or wealthy. Donors of color across various economic levels have utilized
diverse giving tools and approaches to participate in philanthropy. In recent
decades, giving circles, the latest version of the generations-old habit of
pooling and sharing resources to meet personal and social needs, have become a
particular area of focus. Groups like Black Benefactors in Washington, D.C.,
Sisterhood of Philanthropists Impacting Needs in Denver, the Community
Investment Network in North Carolina, and the more recently created African
American Legacy Fund of Indianapolis are organized by black donors
at all income levels and ages who support their communities.
What’s more, organizations like United Negro College Fund and the
Thurgood Marshall Fund have long existed to develop black and other donors who
support black advancement, and black religious, educational and social service organizations
attract donors of color to support an even wider range of causes.
The Young, Black and Giving Back Institute in Washington, D.C., is
engaging young, highly educated professionals of color, a group it says has
been ignored as the nonprofit world focuses on how best to cater to millennials.
Regional Blacks in Philanthropy groups, along with others such as the Association of
Black Foundation Executives and the African American
Development Officers Network, have long brought together grant-making and
fundraising leaders of color to advocate for social justice, equity in funding
and diversity in the grant-making and fundraising professions.
These groups and individual donors of color have given and
continue to give at all levels and in different ways. Indeed, African-American
families have contributed the largest proportion of their wealth–including
savings, cars, land, and investment accounts – to charity since 2010, according
to the Urban Institute.
As a result, the true “new and emerging” phenomenon is not donors
of color, but rather the sudden interest being shown in them by nonprofit
organizations, which will not ultimately benefit the community unless tough questions
are asked, resources are committed and honest relationships are built.
Here are several suggestions for engaging with, cultivating,
soliciting, and stewarding donors of color.
Diversify your board, staff and programming.
Generally, donors of color, and prospective donors of color,
will want to see evidence of commitment to diversity and inclusion represented
across your organization or cause. Be prepared to educate them about what you
have done and are doing.
Learn about the rich traditions and histories of
giving in communities of color.
Understanding your donors of color as individuals within a
broader historical and cultural context of giving is critical to building
relationships and successfully engaging them. It’s vital to understand donors of
color on their own terms.
Analyze your donor database and your social
network.
Who have you reached out to, and who have you not? Why? You
must understand the current situation in order to determine a way forward, and
you may have to expand beyond your organization’s traditional networks.
Engage with racial, ethnic, gender,
sociocultural, and other identities as appropriate for cultivation and
solicitation activities.
Ask questions as part of your cultivation strategy to
connect with donors of color as individuals on their own terms. How would they
like to be engaged? What are they currently drawn to within your organization?
What gaps in services or programs do they see and want to help address. Use the
answers to inform your strategy on how you want to engage with that donor.
Be intentional.
Be deliberate in investing the time, resources, and
attention necessary to successfully engage diverse donors. If they have not
been responsive to existing efforts and approaches, find out why and then
figure out how to adapt. Don’t place the onus on them for not being responsive.
Figure out why your efforts have not resonated with them and fix it.
A related
article by Freeman appeared in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Tyrone Freeman, Ph.D., assistant professor of philanthropic
studies and director of undergraduate programs at the Lilly Family School of
Philanthropy, researches and analyzes donors of color throughout history, and
previously worked as a professional fundraiser and directed educational
programs at The Fund Raising School.
For over two
years, Candice Perry has worked to develop nonprofit leaders. In her position
as the Welborn Baptist Foundation Nonprofit Excellence Officer, her key
responsibilities have been to strengthen nonprofits executives and develop a
talent pipeline. The foundation is based in Evansville and serves the Tri-state
area.
Perry has carved out several approaches for this work. Some
times for invitation-only programs, and at other times she or another program
officers may identify an organization that needs a consultant to strengthen its
efforts.
“The organization may be telling us in their application
that they need funding and programming, but we also know that they aren’t going
to be successful, if they don’t also put some effort into creating a
fundraising plan. So we invite them to share a little bit of information with
us, so that we can then connect them and finance the opportunity for a
consultant to work with them,” she said.
The foundation has also partnered with Indiana University’s School
of Public & Environmental Affairs (SPEA) to create the Next Generation
Leadership Academy. The program’s six modules cover governance, finance,
fundraising, evaluation, marketing, communication and strategic planning.
“We reached out to organizations that we are familiar with
and asked their leadership if they have a next-generation participant or
someone in the wings whose skills they would like to build and strengthen.” New
executive directors who don’t fall into that category, but need to gain
strength, might also be invited.
The academy is being offered a second time, and isn’t just
limited nonprofits that are grantees. Indiana University instructors come to
Evansville and spend two concentrated days covering a subject. Over the course
of nine months, the cohort covers all the topics and participants receive a
certificate upon completion. With the group size limited to 15, the program lends
itself to interaction.
“We want to offer it not every year, but perhaps every other
year or according to the need. There are a lot of organizations in our
footprint that are not aware that we’re doing this or that it is an option. It
gives us an opportunity to continue to know organizations that we really
haven’t had the pleasure of knowing or understanding,” said Perry.
Perry also realizes the importance of developing board
members. As a cohort-learning series, it offers Sustain-abilities. An executive
director and a board chair are learning partners and spend three full-day sessions
at the foundation. Between the in-person sessions, there are webinars with a
consultant who is the series facilitator.
The two primary focus areas are fundraising and building an
organizational culture. An organization is invited back, if progress is shown
and there is an interest to continue.
“What we have learned is that executive director and that
board chair have taken back their learning and shared it with the rest of the
board. There’s this embedding of information that starts to occur,” said Perry.
This particular series was an experiment that the foundation
had started prior to adding Perry’s position.
“It was one of the pilot offerings that helped inform them
that we need a Nonprofit Excellence impact area. There was a space that we need
to fill,” she said.
At the time, Perry was an executive director and attended the
pilot with her board chair.
“I can tell you first hand that I saw those aha moments that
my board chair was having throughout that series,” said Perry. “I saw the
change that occurred in that board chair and how it translated to how he ran
our board meetings, our development of our board members, the way that board
chair interacted with the other board members, staff and myself. There was a
definite shift that occurred for the organization that was strong enough and
still is there today, even though that board chair and I am not there. It has continued
for that organization.”
The foundation is now working to create a Board Leadership Academy.
The concept is to equip board members to better engage with a nonprofit by explaining
what is needed of them and what questions to ask when considering joining a
board. Perry started investigating this option by going to other entities that
were offering board trainings and then look at what fits the Evansville
community.
“And where we landed was going to some specific businesses
that are well-known in our community for supplying people to serve on boards,
and we worked with their HR departments,” she said.
Each corporation supplied three participants for a
consultant-led, one-day training. Each potential board member was assigned to a
local nonprofit for three months to receive an introduction to services and learn
about the organization’s financials.
“They’ll be treated as if they were onboarding that
organization. But there’s no expectation that they join that board.
In three months, together with the corporation’s HR person,
they will discuss how has this changed perspectives about community engagement.
The Welborn Foundation sees itself as a critical contributor
to Evansville’s nonprofit leadership development.
“Everything the foundation does has an evaluation plan
around it, so hopefully we can watch the needle move and the community will see
the change,” Perry said.
