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Jul 18

Three key fundraising opportunities for Indiana nonprofits

By Sponsor Insight

By Jen Pendleton, CFRE, vice president-Indiana, Aly Sterling Philanthropy

In my new role as vice president with Aly Sterling Philanthropy, I’ve been meeting with nonprofit leaders like you, all over Indiana.

While you and your fellow leaders represent a diverse group of organizations dedicated to a range of causes, I’ve discovered that, regardless of your organization’s size or type, you share many of the same challenges.

Can you relate to any of the following?

  • Is your nonprofit struggling to increase annual fund giving and also bring in major gifts?
  • Do you feel alone and unsupported within your organization when it comes to fundraising?
  • Do you struggle to engage your board members fully?

Now, I choose to be optimistic and refer to these challenges as opportunities – because that’s ultimately what they are! Every one of these issues is solvable with some planning and careful thought to address the issue at its root cause.

Consider the areas of OPPORTUNITY below and how they apply to your organization.

  1. Leadership

Many of you shared your struggle to find board and staff leaders who are great at what they do, willing to work hard and, most importantly, able to stick around longer than a year or two.

Consider these points:

  • Plan ahead for succession and dedicate time to strategically recruit and onboard your leadership. It’s one of the most important things you can do all year.
  • Look in your current donor and constituent pool and proactively recruit people who already love your organization and care about your mission.
  • Take time to get to know each board member individually. Meet with each of them (or at least call) once or twice a year to talk, catch up and see how they think things are going. You’ll be amazed what an impact it can have on you and your board member!
  • Make sure you and your fundraising staff have support from organizational staff and board by encouraging intentional collaboration.
  • Take time to celebrate your successes and say thank you! It makes everyone feel good and keeps staff and board energized and committed.

  1. Time and resources

Every organization says resources – people, money and time – are the biggest challenges to their mission. The “overhead myth” seems to be alive and well, and most of you are still trying to do more with less.

Consider these points:

  • Assess where you, your staff and board are spending your time. Is it on the most important things?
  • Determine what you can stop doing, what you should start doing and where you need to invest to accomplish your most strategic goals.
  • Ask your board for the resources needed to meet your mission. Show them a plan for reaching your goals and ask for their investment.

  1. Building a culture of philanthropy

In most organizations, only one or two people focus on stewardship and/or fundraising. At least one organization I spoke with doesn’t have any fundraising staff.

Why does this matter? Because best practices show the most successful organizations are those that create a “culture of philanthropy.” This means they involve everyone in every department at every level in raising money and stewarding donors. If you think your development director is your #1 fundraising tool, think again. That grumpy, uninformed person answering your phone or working the front desk can undo months of cultivation in one conversation.

Consider these points:

  • Assess how many people are focused on fundraising and stewardship in your organization.
  • Consider what would happen if you leveraged all staff and board to be evangelists, “thankers” and cultivators of your donors and mission.
  • Start small. Determine what your culture of philanthropy looks like and build a pilot culture with a few key people… then refine and launch to board and staff when you have some wins!
  • Don’t be afraid to try new things. To grow to the next level, change is required. Assess what you can stop doing and create the time to start doing more meaningful work that matters and helps bring more revenue and resources in the door!

It’s true that collaboration, resources and culture – mixed with planning and careful thought – are the keys to solving organizational challenges as well as the larger issues impacting our community and world. You’re immersed in the work of both, and I’d like to help.

Let’s get started! I’m happy to meet with you and your team to brainstorm soon. It’s how we do business – build relationships first – at no cost to your mission.

jen-pendleton Jen Pendleton, CFRE, is vice president of Aly Sterling Philanthropy, leading the firm’s work in Indiana. Before coming to ASP, Jen served as president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Boone County (Indiana), where she led a campaign to raise $1 million in matching funds from the Lilly Endowment for the county’s Community Impact Fund.

Jul 05

Can schools be held accountable without real consequences?

By Education, Feature

By Matt Barnum, LA School Report |

California is hoping to redefine school accountability in the “California Way.”

While state officials are hard at work designing a system in line with the oversights demanded by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the new federal K-12 education law, they also want to remain true to the state’s ethos of de-emphasizing test scores and focusing on helping — rather than “punishing” — struggling schools.

“We have had now basically three years without a functioning accountability system and we’re approaching the moment when we actually have to put something in place,” said David Plank, a Stanford professor and executive director of the research group Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE).

A report released in May by a task force convened by the state superintendent lays out a series of metrics — beyond standardized test scores — for judging schools, but says little about what happens to the ones that persistently score poorly.

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Jul 05

Teach for America retools efforts to recruit graduates from top colleges

By Education, Feature

By Emma Brown, national education reporter, The Washington Post |

Teach for America has spent most of its 25 years working to expand, growing from a concept outlined in a Princeton student’s honors thesis to an education-reform juggernaut that places thousands of idealistic college graduates in some of the nation’s neediest classrooms.

But that growth has stalled. Applications for TFA’s two-year teaching stints have plummeted 35 percent during the past three years, forcing the organization to reexamine and reinvent how it sells itself to prospective corps members. It has been focusing particularly on how to engage students at the nation’s most-selective colleges, where the decline in interest has been among the steepest.

“It’s going to take us time to recover,” said Elisa Villanueva Beard, TFA’s chief executive, noting that the organization’s leaders are trying to “step back and take a really honest look” at why TFA is struggling to attract interest and how to reverse the trend.

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Jul 05

Don’t let outdated practices hamstring your nonprofit

By Sponsor Insight

By Teddie Linder, business manager, Netlink, Inc. |

Recently, Netlink assisted a for-profit property-management company in its acquisition of multiple apartment complexes in another state. The client planned the acquisition and worked with us to ensure a timely takeover regarding technology. In advance of the transition, the only variable not completed involved obtaining master settings, licensing and passwords from the previous IT management resource. This info is needed to make sense of what is in place, make changes, install new software, create new accounts and connect to the new management company’s network and IT resources.

Unfortunately, the property-management company’s existing IT provider wouldn’t address any needs in advance of the changeover.

The staff arrived to work on the first day under new management only to find their systems didn’t work properly. They were unable to conduct the routine daily business like moving tenants in and out, and handling maintenance requests. The manager in charge of the transition was upset, frustrated and angry; the transition took longer and was going to be more expensive.

Even after it was resolved, a single question remains: What happened?

Instead of handing off the administration rights, the IT staff simply wiped settings and licensing from the computers. All of the programs were removed. Netlink’s staff faced a long day of configuration, relicensing programs and resetting equipment in multiple offices, before the company’s staff was back online.

Did the previous company do anything wrong? Not really; they simply followed a system that was advantageous for them, but one that hamstrung the client. The end-result was that it made life difficult for the owners, executives and staff by creating an unneeded “hostage situation” for technology assets and tools: the servers, workstations, software and subscriptions that allow a business to operate.

This “standard practice” involves the IT company setting up accounts in its name, not under the client’s. It is an outdated approach that many times involves billing the client for additional services with a markup. The problem with this relationship is the client doesn’t “own” the setup, server, the subscription or the license. So when it is time for the client to make a change or move on, they have to start with brand new setup, sometime new subscriptions (increasingly used for software licensing or programs), and migrate company data to the new setup.

This practice creates a level of stress and a lack of mobility that is unnecessary.

A different model to consider is “client-owned, provider-managed.” Each account is established with the client as the owner of the account. Payment is made directly by the client company to the vendor of the service(s) and the IT provider is paid only for managing those services. This keeps the role of the client, the IT Management provider, and the services vendor clear and allows the client to change as the market or other forces require.

The bottom-line is business owners or executives should ALWAYS maintain access to their own information technology framework where possible. The client’s business should always have access to licensing, passwords, and configuration details that a reputable IT provider maintains on the company’s behalf, and can be repurposed when needed. Examples include:

  • E-mail hosting (Office 365/Google Apps/other)
  • Server & file access
  • Internet ISP connection (know who Internet service provider is, and have the account information accessible)
  • Domain network/registrar info
  • Website hosting info

Netlink, Inc. shifted to the client-owned, provider-managed model several years ago sensing the limitations and wanting to combat the perception of holding IT information hostage. It is a cleaner, clearer, and more customer-centric approach, different than reselling or recreating setups from scratch. Our clients own their configurations, which will travel with the them, regardless of whether Netlink manages the company’s IT or not.

The clarity of succession brings benefits to both the client and the IT provider. Both parties are clear on the IT provider’s role, as well as the cumulative benefit of maintaining configurations and documentation on the client-owned setup.

At Netlink, we believe strongly in the power of the client relationship — keeping the optimal customer experience as the guide for all that we do. Adding predictability and removing ambiguity benefits everyone. Like any good business relationship, simplicity, clarity and transparency are minimums and benefit everyone regardless.

teddie_linder Teddie Linder is the business manager for Netlink. A certified Green Belt in Six Sigma she focuses on process improvement that benefits the customer and the business. She can be reached at teddie@netlinkinc.net.

Jun 27

A long side profits, a shared value

By Feature

By Lynn Sygiel, editor, Charitable Advisors |

When Dora Lutz started her consulting company three years ago after working for a national trucking company, she planned to focus on nonprofit marketing.

One year into her venture, Lutz changed her focus after learning about the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and how it has evolved over the years. For her, it became no longer only about marketing messages or brand goodwill, but also about sharing value and using innovative business practices to make the world a better place.

With that shift, Lutz started a sister company, Giving-Spring.com, to help nonprofits plan for this changing environment and help businesses create giving programs.

“Corporate social responsibility has kind of segmented out in a couple of different areas. You have corporate philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and now you have this third thing emerging called shared values,” said Lutz. “Its principles eliminate the notion that social responsibility is a trade-off and instead provide a framework for collaboration, innovation and mutual benefit.

“You can kind of think about the segments as a continuum and have a bit of all three areas. In theory, a corporate partner is trying to say, ‘How can we engage meaningfully in the community?’”

The idea of corporate shared value (CSV) originated from an article by Harvard Professor Michael Porter and Harvard Kennedy School of Government Senior Fellow Mark Kramer.  The authors presented the concept of CSV in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article, and detailed it further in a January 2011 article.

In essence, companies try to address major social problems as a core part of their business strategies.

Last October, Lutz’s company was certified by the Shared Value Institute to be one of three trained in the methodology and process. Lutz harkens back to Milt Friedman, an American economist who received the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He believed that businesses exist to maximum shareholder value.

“What I see happening is that we’re correcting that and moving from that philosophy of an ‘either-or’ trade-off. It’s too black and white, and that’s not the reality of how our business systems operate. That’s why I think shared value is so fascinating. All the nuance of how this can change the world and how this can benefit our businesses.”

This conversation, in Lutz’s opinion, is becoming more widespread and more a part of corporate culture.

“I think businesses are recognizing that they need to do something for a few reasons. It started with millennials. HR staff think, ‘Oh, we need to do this to attract millennials. Then you’ve got the marketers who say, ‘We need to do something because this is how we’re going to create customer loyalty.’ Now, CFOs are putting out data around the value of goodwill, and use the term, fallow assets, to recognize brand goodwill as it relates to social responsibility.”

Lutz has also seen CEOs becoming more active.

“I think it has been moving up steadily through organizations and CEOs are saying, ‘We need to be paying attention to this.’ The conversation is evolving from branding, to, in order to be effective, shared value has to be part of your organizational strategy. With elevation to the C-suite, that ensures it happens more quickly.”

Some major companies, like Nestle, have begun approaching business explicitly using the CSV framework based on the United Nations Global Compact Principles. The company made 39 commitments in 2014 that it aims to meet by 2020.

Lutz sees Eli Lilly, for example, as a company that could have all three giving concepts. The company’s early learning initiative would be a philanthropic or CSR initiative that helps solve a compelling community problem, while working to solve diabetes in China would be a shared value initiative.

And that is where nonprofits fit in.

Right now, according to Lutz, nonprofits think about the philanthropic arm of a corporate partner and just asking for money to support the nonprofit’s mission.

“Both need to think broader because corporations are not thinking about nonprofits and their ability to solve challenges. So instead of a company saying, ‘We’re going to solve this.’ They’re going to say, ‘Who are our partners who already understand the mission, who can help support us in this initiative?’

“What you see happening is the conversation in the nonprofit sector isn’t changing from philanthropy to shared values. So nonprofits aren’t prepared to say, ‘Here’s how we align to help drive your business.’

“This is very much an emerging field. How do we do this? The primary thought is coming from the corporate side because technically nonprofits cannot do shared value, you have to be profitability focused in order to do shared value. But nonprofits can apply these theories into how they’re approaching their corporate sponsors. The opportunity to apply it to your corporate-giving programs exists, but no body’s really doing that yet.”

She sees FFA (Future Farmers of America) as a great example. Currently a client, FFA has agricultural partners who are starting to talk about shared value. Lutz is helping FFA think about how it think about supporting a company’s shared value initiatives.

While Lutz doesn’t have statistics about the reach, she has seen the conversation shifting. She noted that the Indiana Chamber’s Biz Voice magazine recently wrote about it, and last year Fortune spotlighted 50 companies in its Change the World list.

It ranked companies that have made a sizable impact on major global social or environmental problems as part of their competitive strategy. The goal is to spotlight instances where companies are doing good as part of their profit-making strategy. Nominations are now open for this year’s list.

Locally, there are other ways to get involved. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has offering events called Health Means Business, and offering them in different states. In February, one was offered in Indiana. There were initially 120 seats, but 240 people signed up.

“I think that says something about our culture and the interest here,” said Lutz.

It was well received, and now the Indiana Philanthropy Alliance, together with the Indiana Chamber Foundation, is putting on a second event.

The July 13 event, Healthy Businesses Fuel Healthy Communities, is more focused on foundations and the nonprofit sector and ways to leverage resources collectively. For more information, click here.

This learning and networking event is designed for business owners and leaders with an interest in finding ways to combine their corporate service, giving, and wellness efforts to benefit staff and the greater community. The content is also designed to link executives and program officers at corporate foundations with individuals involved with social responsibility and wellness programs.

Jun 27

Executive education: Focus on leadership

By Sponsor Insight

By Sara Johnson, director of Executive Education, Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs |

As another presidential election campaign races to its conclusion, the topics of public management and leadership are getting a lot of attention and scrutiny. Questions such as “Whom do you trust?” or “Who is the most qualified?” are in the news every day.

For those vying for the top leadership position in the United States, there are obvious differences in style, experience and philosophy. Clearly, there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to effective leadership of government and other organizations that exist to serve the public.

Still there are common bonds, and perhaps “serve the public” is the key phrase here. If we assume those who seek leadership positions in organizations that “serve the public” are there to truly serve, would we not expect them to be “servant leaders?” Robert K. Greenleaf, who established the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, first coined the term in 1970.

According to Greenleaf, this philosophy and set of practices focuses on “enriching the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world.” To create a more just and caring world, one must have a heart for serving others and exhibit effective leadership traits.

That’s where taking courses in Public Management and Nonprofit Management can create an advantage. Skills learned and applied in these programs at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs prepare leaders for the unique practices and challenges in organizations that serve the public.

Executive Education courses at SPEA offer both graduate credit and non-credit programs to working professionals. Public Management and Nonprofit Management Certificates can be earned using a blended format of both in-person and online courses. Graduate credit earned in these certificates can then be applied toward a master’s degree in public affairs.

These Executive Education programs are specifically designed to develop leadership skills that will strengthen public and nonprofit organizations as they respond to their unique challenges, such as funding structures, breadth of stakeholders and potentially working with a large population of volunteer workers. The Executive Education program at Indiana University can also customize non-credit training for an organization’s employees, administrative team or board.

Besides offering solid course work, the programs are receiving national recognition. The most recent rankings from U.S. News & World Report rated the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs first and fourth in the nation in nonprofit management (Bloomington and IUPUI) and third in public management based on ratings by educators at peer schools.

Faculty members are industry experts, many of whom have led nonprofit and public organizations prior to teaching, and include former mayors, economic and health policy experts and authors of books about nonprofit governance.

Why not build your leadership skills by working with some of the industry’s best?

For more information about SPEA Executive Education visit the website at Click Here call 317-274-3418 or email execeduc@iupui.edu.

 

sara-johnsonSara Johnson is the director of Executive Education and a clinical assistant professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Johnson has been a lecturer for SPEA, where she teaches executive leadership, as well as the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI, where she taught both graduate and undergraduate students and was director of undergraduate programs.

Jun 20

States scramble to protect student data and privacy

By Feature, Technology

By Sarah Breitenbach, reporter, Stateline/Pew Charitable Trusts |

What if a child’s performance in a fifth-grade gym class could be used to set the rate for a life insurance policy when they’re 50? What if a computer program advertised interactive tutoring when your child struggled with long division?

Privacy advocates worry these scenarios could become reality as schools increasingly rely on outside companies to collect, manage and analyze the massive amount of data gleaned from standardized tests, transcripts, individual education programs and even cafeteria purchases.

This subcontracting is not new or uncommon, but it has often left school districts without explicit control over students’ personal information. And it has left some parents, administrators and privacy advocates worried that those companies might one day sell or mine the data for a profit.

With few protections on the privacy of student data beyond a decades-old federal law, states have been scrambling to regulate how student data is collected and stored. More recently they’ve begun governing how third-party companies can use student information.

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Jun 20

Making better use of big data

By Feature, Technology

By Sonal Shah & Hollie Russon Gilman, Stanford Social Innovation Review |

Big data has become a buzzword for private, public, and social sector organizations. For the social sector, there is a belief that “big” data is the new panacea to solving our greatest social challenges — whether criminal justice, health care, education, or international development. On the other side, there is concern about the cost of collecting data, the type of data we collect, and the real questions of privacy and ethics of data use.

We believe that data has the potential to help governments (local, state, and national) achieve real outcomes, but we need to ensure that we are collecting useful data, and governments need to put in place some practical safeguards before asking the public to invest in new systems and data collection. We need to examine the value of transparency of big data; understand the types of data needed to achieve outcomes; differentiate the differences between data, evidence, and judgment; and ensure that citizens are included in the conversation.

Why data matters

In the sciences, and increasingly in the social sciences, data has been a critical part of understanding, testing, and proving theories. It has the potential to more-effectively address critical challenges in our society — to target school interventions, improve health care, or help people find the right job training. Our ability to collect, analyze, and better understand data has become increasingly easier and cheaper. Even with limited resources, we can now collect micro-level information in real time, detect early warnings, and provide insights for effective, targeted interventions. Community- and heat-mapping techniques, for example, provide a wide range of valuable information, helping us better understand crime patterns and isolate hyper-local health conditions. In Chicago, data is helping Chicago Health Atlas identify health trends and provide hospital information. And Foodborne Chicago is using sentiment analysis (determining whether a piece of writing is positive, negative, or neutral) from social media and location-based 311 reports to detect food poisoning incidents. Data can help government provide better and more-effective services for its citizens.

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Jun 20

Software to fight terrorism, Microsoft-funded professor

By Feature, Technology

By Jing Cao, reporter, Bloomberg News |

Dartmouth College computer science professor Hany Farid — using funding from Microsoft Corp. — has developed technology to help scrub extremist content from the internet.

Working with the nonprofit think tank Counter Extremism Project, Farid built software capable of identifying and tracking photo, video and audio files, even if they’ve been altered. The software, unveiled Friday, would allow websites such as Facebook Inc. to automatically catch flagged content and remove it or prevent it from being uploaded.

On a call to discuss the technology, Farid, who is also a senior advisor to the CEP, said his software would allow companies to automatically remove posts that violate the sites’ terms of use. He also said deleting the content is not a freedom of speech issue because the companies have the right to dictate what’s suitable.

“We allow them to do it fast, accurately, automatically,” he said.

Many internet and social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter Inc., do have rules prohibiting posts from organizations that are involved in terrorist activity or organized crime or excessively violent, graphic content. But foul content gets posted anyway and relies on manual flagging and removal — more of a “Whack-a-Mole” approach, Farid said.

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Jun 20

Giving is up: What does that mean for fundraising?

By Sponsor Insight

By Una Osili, director of research, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI |

Last year charitable giving from individuals, estates, foundations and corporations hit a record $373 billion, according to Giving USA 2016: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2015.

The years 2014 and 2015 represent the highest and second-highest totals for giving in the past 10 years, adjusted for inflation. But total giving grew more slowly in 2015 — increasing by 4.0 percent adjusted for inflation — compared to the 6.1 percent increase we saw in 2014. The slower rate of growth in 2015 reflected changes in several of the economic factors that influence giving: while most were still positive, their growth was not as robust as in the preceding year.

Still, contributions from all four sources of giving and to all but one of the nine categories of nonprofits receiving those gifts (the exception was giving to foundations) went up in 2015. This suggests that while the giving climate was not quite as strong in 2015, the overall environment for giving remains favorable.

Individuals were responsible for the largest share of giving last year, providing 71 percent of the total, while foundations saw the largest year-over-year percentage growth among the sources of giving, increasing the amount they collectively gave by 6.5 percent.

The longest-running and most comprehensive report of its kind in America, Giving USA is published by Giving USA Foundation, a public-service initiative of The Giving Institute. It is researched and written by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Here’s a closer look:

2015 Charitable Giving by source

  • Individual giving, $264.58 billion, increased 3.8 percent in current dollars over 2014.
  • Foundation giving, $58.46 billion, was 6.5 percent higher.
  • Charitable bequests, $31.76 billion, increased 2.1 percent.
  • Corporate giving, $18.45 billion, grew 3.9 percent.

Highlights of 2015 gifts to selected categories of nonprofits

Five charitable subsectors saw large increases in 2015:

  • Education: giving increased to $57.48 billion, growing 8.9 percent.
  • Public-Society Benefit: the $26.95 billion given in 2015 was an increase of 6.0 percent
  • Arts/Culture/Humanities: at $17.07 billion, growth in current dollars was 7.0 percent
  • International Affairs: $15.75 billion, a jump of 17.5 percent.
  • Environment/Animals: the $10.68 billion estimate for 2015 was up 6.2 percent

While these results are encouraging, though, it’s what nonprofit leaders and fundraisers do with that information that counts. Here are some points to ponder:

  • Put the majority of your effort where the majority of the giving for your type of organization is. The new Giving USA report estimates that 87 percent of giving comes from or is directed by individuals, their bequests and family foundations where family members play a role. Some nonprofits’ missions may be more conducive to corporate or foundation support, but it’s important to have the right mix of funding sources for your organization. Adjust your outreach as necessary.
  • Review historical trends to inform your planning. While, as they say, past performance does not predict future results, what informed assumptions can you make about growth in giving over the next few years after reviewing patterns and trends over time? What might those trends mean for your organization? Do you have a plan to address them? Be sure to look at the trends for your type of organization, as well as for giving overall.
  • Develop a more focused and compelling case for support. Incorporate data and takeaways from Giving USA and other reputable research into your nonprofit’s proposals and communications.
  • Increase your volunteer leaders’ understanding of philanthropy. Show them how your organization’s funding patterns and potential compare to the national picture. Give them additional insight into the latest developments in philanthropy, how those might affect your nonprofit, and what steps you are taking as a result. Sharing this type of information will provide assurance that recommendations and decisions are based on the most accurate data available.

Explore Giving USA products and resources, including free highlights of each annual report, and find key tools to share with your board and donors at our online store. Select the full report, available in both digital and paperback formats, a PowerPoint slide deck, data tables and more.

 

una Una Osili, Ph.D., is director of research for the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI.