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Jun 30

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By Feature, Governance, Leadership

By Zac Kester, executive director, Charitable Allies |

After reviewing the U.S. Department of Labor’s proposed changes, I believe that this would have a significant adverse effect on the budgets and operations of small nonprofits, especially those who currently pay their executive directors (or an equivalent position) and administrative support staff less than the new thresholds.

The Department of Labor fact sheets 17C, 17B and 17A outline the requirements for the exemption that allows employers to NOT pay executive and administrative employees overtime. Among other things, those requirements are that employees make at least $23,660.

Many small nonprofits pay staff on a salary basis and do not pay overtime. With the new standards, which will move this threshold to somewhere between $42,000 and $52,000, any employee who makes below that threshold would be entitled to overtime, regardless if they otherwise met the test and qualified for the exemption. Many nonprofit organizations employ people in this range ($23,660 to $42,000/$52,000).

If this regulation is adopted, nonprofit managers and boards will have to be careful to monitor their employees’ time and pay them overtime wages to which they will be entitled.

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Jun 23

DIY: Make a bylaws cheat sheet

By Feature, Governance

By Jan Masaoka, director and editor-in-chief, Blue Avocado |

“What does it say in the bylaws?”

“Does anyone have a copy of the by-laws?”

“I know I got one when I started on the board but . . . ”

Here’s a new idea: a bylaws cheat sheet. Even if there is a copy of the by-laws handy, it’s tedious to have to look over all the legalese when you want an answer to a simple question. So a nice 30-minute Do It Yourself (DIY) project is to create one.

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Jun 23

Starting a nonprofit: five tips and a warning

By Feature, Leadership

By editorial staff, Idealist |

The world is in the midst of what one observer has called an “associational revolution.” New nonprofits are being formed for every sort of purpose on every continent at the fastest rate in history. If you are thinking of joining this vast worldwide movement by starting — or helping to start — a nonprofit, here are some crucial things to think about.

Tip #1: All nonprofits are local. Even the globe-spanning, household-name organizations that operate in hundreds or thousands of places must learn about, and live with, complicated rules that differ greatly from place to place. Almost certainly, the second thing you will do when starting a nonprofit is to register with the local government agency that handles new “nongovernmental organizations” in the community where the organization will operate.

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Jun 23

Advice from the pros

By Feature, Leadership

By Lynn Sygiel, editor, Charitable Advisors |

Been there, done that. In any endeavor, experience goes a long way. In the Indianapolis’ nonprofit world, wisdom is in no short supply, particularly from longtime executives. Many have seen changes in the field over the course of their careers.

Recently, at the request of Charitable Advisors, five retired nonprofit high-profile executives participated in a roundtable discussion about their careers and shared advice for new nonprofit executives. Participants were:

  • Ellen Annala, former Central Indiana United Way president, spent 23 years with the organization and retired in 2013 after 15 years as president. Her career was spent working for Indianapolis nonprofits.
  • Betsy Bikoff spent the first 25 years of her career working for-profits and then was the first employee of the Fairbanks Foundation. She was its chief grantmaking officer and vice president until the end of last year. Early this year, she launched Betsy Bikoff Consulting.
  • Willis Bright spent 25 years at Lilly Endowment as director of youth programming before retiring in 2012. Currently, he is president of Bright Visions.
  • Hoagland Elliott, CEO for Raphael Health Center for the past decade, also served as chair of Indiana Primary Health Care Association.
  • Jim McClelland retired in April after 41 years at the helm of Goodwill.

Habitat for Humanities of Greater Indianapolis hosted the hour-and-a-half roundtable conversation. The executives’ insights will be featured in a series of stories in the next month. This week, we feature these former leaders’ advice for new nonprofit executives. These are the highlights:

WILLIS BRIGHT: I think my advice to an executive director is first of all, know thyself and be passionate about wanting to be an executive director and be clear about the kind of staff you and your board need to achieve the impact that you want in the community.

HOAGLAND ELLIOTT: My advice would be to really believe in your mission and act on it. I think many times it gets left in the drawer. Treat your clients with respect. People who are disadvantaged need more respect than others.

JIM McCLELLAND: I would add understanding your context, understanding where you fit in the communities you’re operating in, where you fit in the fields you’re engaged in and how what you’re doing relates to what others around you are doing. Don’t develop tunnel vision.

ELLEN ANNALA: I’d probably just underscore again the importance of getting it right with your board. Figuring out how to make that work so that’s it’s working for your mission.

Another piece of advice is actually something I learned from watching Goodwill. I remember when I was at Big Sisters thinking when you’re smaller you’re more nimble, and you can turn on a dime. Well, you can’t, because when you’re smaller, it’s real easy to get consumed by survival. I watched you (McClelland) be the nimble one that was able to turn on a dime.

I remember when a contract got pulled, and Goodwill turned right, and part of it was it had the resources to do that.

McCLELLAND: I so agree with you on the nimbleness. If you want to succeed over time, you’ve got to have impact and you have got to know what that impact is. You’ve got to be sustainable; if you’re constantly struggling to keep your head above water, you cannot do a good job of accomplishing your mission. You need a certain level of financial strength if you are going to do the job. The third is the adaptability. You’ve got to be able to adapt quickly and effectively as new needs and opportunities arise, and as the external environment changes. All three of those are absolutely essential over time.

BRIGHT: Jim, you said something earlier that I think is so critical. You talked about your engagement with your colleagues around the country, and finding out what they’re doing, maybe bringing some things back. Part of the tunnel vision that folks get into is just thinking about what they are doing — never even asking folks across town, executives across the street. They especially need those ideas from folks who are doing what you are doing somewhere else. Call somebody else.

BETSY BIKOFF: That’s what my advice was going to be. Go to school on other people, whether it’s next door, across the city. There is always somebody else like your nonprofit somewhere. There are other foundations, other nonprofits, other leaders whom you can ask. Somebody else has probably already invented what you are doing.

McCLELLAND: But not necessarily only in your field. There’s a quote in one of Gary Hamel’s books that says most people in an industry are blind in the same way. They’re all paying attention to the same things, and not paying attention to the same things. You have got to broaden your perspective. Learn, learn, learn, where you can. You’ve got to get outside your own arena, if you’re really going to grow and learn.

BIKOFF: Talk with people outside your age group. If you only talk with people in your own age band, you’re not going to get the other kinds of thinking.

McCLELLAND: And that’s older and younger.

BRIGHT: Borrow freely.

Jun 18

GIVING USA 2015 annual report on philanthropy – analysis

By Feature

Join JGA as we delve into the latest release of Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy and uncover what the data says about the state of fundraising and donor trends. We’ll be joined by Patrick Rooney, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Research with the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, who leads the Giving USA research team. Patrick and Angela White, Senior Consultant and CEO of Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates, will help you dig into the trends behind the data in the June 2015 release. You will hear from the experts what these trends mean and how to interpret the numbers and understand their impact on your advancement efforts.

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Jun 16

Nonprofit startups are just like their counterparts

By Feature, Sustainability

By Sarah E. Needleman, reporter, The Wall Street Journal |

What’s different about building a successful for-profit and nonprofit startup?

Not much, according to Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, an elite accelerator program in Mountain View, Calif., that accepted a nonprofit for the first time this month, Watsi.org. “You could never tell there was a nonprofit mixed in,” he said in a phone interview on Friday.

Watsi, a medical crowdfunding platform that launched in August, is among 47 startup businesses in the latest Y Combinator class. Past graduates of the competitive three-month program include DropBox, Reddit and Airbnb.

Mr. Graham began thinking about inviting nonprofits to join Y Combinator about a year ago. “I was talking to a friend who wanted to do a nonprofit project and I realized I was giving exactly the same advice I’d be giving to a startup,” he said.

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Jun 16

A social entrepreneur transforms nonprofit to profit-making

By Feature, Sustainability

By Esha Chhabra, contributor, The New York Times |

In 2013, The New York Times published a case study about a social entrepreneur, Saul Garlick, discussing what kind of legal structure would be best for his enterprise, ThinkImpact, which encourages entrepreneurship in third-world communities. He fundamentally had three options: continue as a nonprofit, go commercial, or find some sort of hybrid route.

The Times asked three experts which option would be best. Pamela Hartigan, director of the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford, who is constantly advising aspiring social entrepreneurs, suggested that Mr. Garlick hop off the “treadmill of donor dependency.” Jonathan Lewis, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a social entrepreneur himself, also suggested going commercial. Lastly, Shivani Siroya, an entrepreneur who runs InVenture, a hybrid organization, noted that it was possible to raise revenue even as a nonprofit and thus suggested that ThinkImpact should not dismiss a nonprofit model too quickly.

Many commenters agreed with Ms. Siroya, suggesting that Mr. Garlick use revenue streams as a nonprofit to raise money rather than going purely commercial. Others, however, noted that the nonprofit field is evolving and a profit-making enterprise can be driven by social impact and not the bottom line. Several readers pointed to new legal structures like a benefit corporation or L3C, which incorporate social impact into the core mission of a company. The Times contacted Mr. Garlick for a follow-up conversation, which has been condensed and edited, to see which option he chose.

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Jun 09

Giving circles and the classroom

By Feature, Fundraising, Programming

Compiled by Lynn Sygiel, editor, Charitable Advisors |

Emily Denton is a teacher, an original Giving Sum member and board member. What she values most about her experience with the giving circle is the exposure to many exemplary nonprofits in Indianapolis. Those connections have made a different in her classroom.

After meeting with VSA Indiana staff on a site visit, she continued the connection. That connection led to her St. Thomas students volunteering for the Arts-for-All event that was held on the lawn of the governor’s residence, a short walk from school. Her students worked side-by-side with VAS teaching artists to support children with disabilities, and met the state’s first lady Karen Pence.

Based on her experiences, she saw the value in replicating what young professionals were doing with her eighth-grade English students. Four years ago, she used the activity as a motivating end-of-the-year project.  

Application in the classroom

“As a writing teacher, I wanted to create an end-of-year project that would engage students in a meaningful way — but also still require writing.

I told my students a little about Giving Sum and my involvement. The students were especially interested in the philanthropic aspect and were surprised that a relatively small group was able to give a $50,000 grant to an organization each year.

The students bought into this project right away, and I think that was in part due to me opening up about my involvement in Giving Sum and the projects that Giving Sum members had made possible.  They were especially interested in the playground we’d built for the children at Coburn Place.

Organizations did not apply; I gave the students a list of nonprofits in our city, explained the request for proposal process that many nonprofits use to fund their programs, and told them they were going to get to create an RFP for the organization of their choice.

Students selected an organization. They did some research individually, and then worked in groups to devise a plan for convincing the class that their nonprofit was most deserving of the grant money. Students spent a week of class time creating presentations with slides to address each requirement of the proposal request. I used a rubric that included all the elements required in the Giving Sum RPF form.

They presented to the class and each student was allowed to vote for one organization, but not his or her own, to receive the grant money.  To add to the real-world element of this project, the students were told that one group’s organization would be chosen to receive an actual $100 grant. I actually provided the $100 grant, not the students and made a one-time donation to our class winner — the American Red Cross of Greater Indianapolis.

Volunteering was not involved, although my hope was that through exposure to these organizations, the students would be inspired to get involved in some of the great services these organizations provide in our city.

Junior high is a great age to be exposed to philanthropic and service organizations. St. Thomas students are required to complete service hours throughout the school year. My hope was that the Giving Sum grant proposal model would expose my students to nonprofits in our city, create a little competition through the request process and provide a real-world writing situation.

It is also a great age to introduce service learning and giving circles.  Students this age have so much to gain by looking beyond themselves and learning about how many people in our own city are in need.  When my students reflect on their time serving others, they often mention how positive and capable the experience made them feel.”

The impact they have on others leaves an impression on them, and they learn more about their own passions through their service. So often teenagers feel that, even if they have great visions, they can’t create real change on their own. Introducing the giving circle model empowers students and demonstrates the larger impact individuals can when they pull their resources for a common goal.”

Jun 09

Engaging a city, building a community

By Feature, Leadership

By Efrem Bycer for The Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee |

Indianapolis has the potential to become one of the most civically engaged cities in America. Currently, Indianapolis ranks 16th, placing it behind many of its peer metros, including Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville and St. Louis. To break into the top 10, Indianapolis may seek to apply successful practices in these cities.

This report aims to identify those replicable practices and provide recommendations for short-term and long-term strategies to improve volunteerism, especially among young professionals.

Young professionals, or Millennials, are a focus of this report because of the key role this generation plays in supplying talent to the region’s leading companies. The youngest generation of the workforce, Millennials are staying single longer and waiting until later in life to have children. On one hand, they have time early in their careers to get engaged in the community. On the other, they are an increasingly mobile generation able to move from one city to another

for professional opportunities or a change of pace. Civic engagement and volunteering play key roles in helping this generation develop an attachment to place, a key indicator of an individual’s likelihood to move. This makes volunteerism an important component of any comprehensive talent attraction and retention strategy.

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Jun 02

The impact of giving together

By Feature, Fundraising

By IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, research study report |

Giving circles are made up of individuals who pool their resources and then decide together where these resources should be distributed. They also include social, educational, and engagement aspects that seem to engage participants in their communities and increase their understanding of philanthropy and community issues.

This research report presents data from a study to understand the impacts of participating in giving circles on members’ philanthropic and civic behavior, knowledge, and attitudes. Philanthropy is defined here as giving money and other resources, including time, to aid individuals, causes, and organizations. Civic describes areas related to government’s roles and responsibilities, political and social values, and engagement in the community and political process. Beyond exploratory research to understand the overall giving circle landscape and motivations of members, and a number of case studies on specific types of giving circles, insufficient research has been done to understand giving circles’ impacts on members.

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