The Ad Council launches a new ad campaign. Philanthropy about "nothing," at least for right now.

Typically, the council asks an advertising agency to create a campaign after receiving a request from a charity like the United Negro College Fund (“A mind is a terrible thing to waste”) or a government agency like the Department of Transportation (“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk”).

In this instance, however, the council, through a vote of the executive committee of its board of directors, commissioned the “Generous Nation” campaign. It is the first time in the history of the council, which was founded in 1942 as the War Advertising Council, that the organization itself is serving as the sponsor of a campaign, Ms. Conlon said.

The culprit: media fragmentation:

That is especially true because of “the fragmentation of the media marketplace,” Dr. Winsten said, which makes it increasingly difficult to reach consumers with what are known as pro-social messages.

The Ad Agencies kick it off:

The campaign is to be introduced at one of the first events scheduled for Advertising Week, the annual agency industry gathering in New York. As a way of bringing to life the concept of “Generous Nation,” the council plans to conduct a weeklong blood drive among agency employees and the general public.

Maybe not such a good idea.

Phil at Gifthub ponders the right wing's philanthropic association. Since Bushmania took over Washington in 2001, the Philanthropy Roundtable has become the hip little W Hotel for mainstream foundations. "We're so cool. We're super-liberal and we joined the Roundtable!"

It's not the sponsors, Lucy; it's the audience.

Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the world includes none of those pathetic little millionaires:

"It is a really big deal that it's all billionaires," said Forbes associate editor Matthew Miller, who edited the list and led the team that spent a year compiling it. "It shows economic growth and, as this magazine is a fan of capitalism, it shows progress."

Clearly, Mr. Miller relies on some economic indicators to represent "progress" more than others. And here's your new trickle down economy:

On the one hand, the fortunes have spawned a new age of philanthropy, by which private individuals can try to effect change with the power and reach of a government but without the bureaucratic shackles that often thwart aid efforts.

Let's promote economic policies that benefit the super rich so they, in turn, can get a tax deduction to help those who are unhelped by our economic policies.

Back from my bender. My esteemed colleague at White Courtesy Telephone has provided some literary criticism of the Google press release announcing its new giving arm:

According to the company’s own press release, Google.org is simply an “umbrella term” that “includes the work of the Google Foundation, some of Google’s own projects using Google talent, technology and other resources, as well as partnerships and contributions to for-profit and non-profit entities.”

It’s not a new philanthropy, it’s not a new way of doing philanthropy.  It’s a corporate giving program not much different from any other.

WCT also accuses the New York Times reporter I mentioned in my post last week [and who I stated wrote what I thought was an "insightful" piece on Google's new philanthropic venture] of hyping the story.

There are innovations in marketing and there are innovations in philanthropy. Sticking all of the "good" a company does, whether it be tax-deductable or not, under some corporate philanthropic umbrella is nothing new. I've never thought the tax code was much of a motivator for a company to cut checks to the local soup kitchen.

Perhaps the Times, by sending a business reporter off to cover the Google.org story [is there a segment of the news media that kowtows to the institutions it theoretically covers in an objective fashion as much as the business media?] made too much of it. And maybe Google's PR honchos are looking for some wet kisses for the company's newly conceived mechanism for generosity. I'd say Google's corporate track record of innovation bodes well for its philanthropy.

Maybe the New York Times should let reporter Katie Hafner cover philanthropy instead of the reporters who shot blanks at Wal-Mart. In one of the more insightful pieces about the "new" philanthropy, Hafner gives us an analysis of Google's approach:

By choosing for-profit status, Google will have to pay taxes if company shares are sold at a profit — or if corporate earnings are used — to finance Google.org. Any resulting venture that shows a profit will also have to pay taxes. Shareholders may not like the fact that the Google.org tax forms will not be made public, but kept private as part of the tax filings of the parent, Google Inc.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, believe for-profit status will greatly increase their philanthropy’s range and flexibility. It could, for example, form a company to sell the converted cars, finance that company in partnership with venture capitalists, and even hire a lobbyist to pressure Congress to pass legislation granting a tax credit to consumers who buy the cars.

Google's latest innovation: Rendering the charitable tax-exemption uncool.

I generally fall in the category of people who think, when the history is written, Wal-Mart will have done more harm than good to the overall well-being of the country. But if you're going to actually go after the big-box demon at least bring some logic and a few relevant facts.

I read the New York Times story last Friday insinuating Wal-Mart was paying off conservative think tanks with grants from the Walton Family Foundation, the private giving arm of the family that owns the company. The story alleged that, in exchange for grants, the think tanks placed Op-Eds in newspapers stating support for Wal-Mart's business practices.

The evidence was pretty thin. Two-and-a-half-million over six years went to conservative groups; this from a foundation that gave away more than $100 million in 2004 alone. All the grants cited in the story were, as the article states, tiny percentages of the recipient organizations' overall fundraising for any given year [$100k to the American Enteprise Institute over three years; AEI raised $24 million in 2004]. Every other graph contained a fact that eroded the underlying premise of the story.

The only element of the story that seemed to have relevance was the "fact" that the Op-Ed contributors didn't disclose they had received some dough from the company. That is, until this classic correction appeared today:

An article in Business Day on Friday reported that the Walton Family Foundation had made contributions to four conservative research groups whose analysts wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart Stores for newspapers and journals around the country. The Times article said that the groups and their employees had consistently failed to disclose the donations, and it said in the first paragraph that the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research was one of them. But a Manhattan Institute author had told The Times that he had indeed disclosed contributions from the Walton Foundation in an article he wrote, a fact that should have been included in the Times article.

The article also reported that Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation and Karl Zinsmeister, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, were among those who wrote articles favorable to Wal-Mart after their foundations received a donation.

Both those groups were called for comment for the Times article. Mr. Kane, who was not called, subsequently said that he did not know about the Walton Family Foundation contribution and that he had criticized Wal-Mart’s call for a higher federal minimum wage in an article he wrote. The Times also did not ask Mr. Zinsmeister to comment, but he declined to do so when reached after the Times article was published. Both Mr. Kane and Mr. Zinsmeister should have been asked to comment before publication.

Way to stick a fork in any credibility in your future reporting of Wal-Mart and its corporate giving. A little ecstasy for the wingers.

The Getty Trust is the gift that keeps on giving to the editors of the LA Times:

On a Saturday morning in early December, a group of outsiders dressed in jeans arrived at the J. Paul Getty Trust to carry out a secret plan: copying the computer hard drives in the offices of Chief Executive Barry Munitz without his knowledge.

...

The records also show that the attorneys spent a substantial amount of time investigating Munitz's previously unreported use of Getty funds to advance the career of a German art student whom he hired as a "senior advisor" and sponsored as an intern at another museum. They also reviewed his expenditures linked to a Russian researcher whose museum received a Getty grant.

The Getty has declined to disclose whether those expenditures were deemed appropriate. Munitz, through his lawyer, said he was a mentor to both women, as he has been to "students, colleagues and future leaders" over the last 40 years.

I'll bet.

Selfish Giving goes through the rebranding tunnel and emerges with savvy.

I've spun-off the Selfish Giver as its own website, SavvyGiver.org.  I dropped the "Selfish", much as I hated to.  The juxtaposition of the two words was edgy and jarring, which I liked.  But I did some informal polling and people thought it was too harsh.  One woman said, "I don't want to be called 'selfish' when I'm doing something good, even if I do stand to benefit from it."

I'd agree that "savvy" is much easier on the philanthropic palate. Best of luck, SG, with the new venture.

Kiplinger's reports:

If you're waiting for an inheritance from Mom and Dad in the years ahead, chances are you'll still be waiting. Despite all the headlines heralding the Greatest Wealth Transfer Ever, nothing of the sort has happened and the experts who analyze family finances say that it's not likely to. "It's not an upbeat picture," says John Gist, who has analyzed extensive Federal Reserve survey data for AARP's Public Policy Institute.

As WCT highlighted a few months ago, what philanthropy researchers predicted may turn out to be something of a hoax.

A bit off topic, but I had to link to this post about recent efforts of "conservative fake nonprofit foundations" to kill some legislation in California. Hilarious.

It appears we'll now be getting all the bloody details. Stay tuned.

I have a shiny new set of crayons and will use all the brightest colors to respond to David Hogberg's post at the American Spectator about my criticisms of the latest eye-opener from the Capital Research Center.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I can muster up enough intelligence to understand the point that "all the giving is a matter of public record." I wasn't questioning the data itself, but rather how it was interpreted. Foundation grants are generally made for specific projects. As I wrote, if a corporate foundation gave a grant specifically to the Brookings Institution for the publishing of a book extolling the virtues of welfare reform, categorizing those dollars as "left" is misleading.

Having some indication of why specific organizations received their categorizations would have made the study much more transparent. What data was used for categorizing the organizations? Web sites? Annual reports? A survey? Word of mouth? Given the entirety of one organization's work, what tipped them to one side or the other?

I dared offer my opinion [while calling out CRC for its subjectivity] on the accuracy of its categorization of Focus on the Family. Whatever one believes constitutes a "traditional value," Focus on the Family was quite vocal about its support for the Bush tax cuts and even more so for privatizing social security. Excluding [if indeed it was considered - more on that below] Focus on the Family's support for more government regulation of the television industry, my point, delivered however inelegantly, was that Focus on the Family is an example of a pretty straightforward call.

After some reconsideration [god forbid!], with the exception of "traditional values," and its leftie counterpart, "liberal values," I don't have a problem with CRC's criteria. The rest are fairly obvious. But did the Parents Television Council get an appropriate allocation of "left" points for its pressuring companies to pull their ads from a television show [how anti-free market can you be, really?] like Rainbow Push received for, as CRC's article calls it, Jesse Jackson's corporate "shakedowns?" And did the many organizations listed on the "right" that feel the FCC needs to play the role of television and radio censor get any "left" points for that particular little love affair with government regulation? And of the many, many environmental organizations on the "left" list, none was doing anything that might have landed them on the "right" [these guys and these guys seem to be straight down the political middle]?

As to my "distortion" of the Bank of America matching gifts, CRC states on its Web site that "Bank of America's charitable arm unapologetically funds ecoterrorism." Even if, for a mere $300, that statement is true, nothing about it indicates the authors feel the matching gift to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is an example of "indifference" on the part of the Bank of America Foundation.

Yes. I'm a lousy speller.

White Courtesy Telephone highlights the fact that the story that was the great liberal campaign finance reform conspiracy [otherwise known as "Pewgate"] has had all the legs of this little guy:

It has now been more than a year since discussions of Pewgate made the rounds of the Blogosphere, and Mr. Treglia has not been brought to justice.  This, dear readers, is because there simply was no crime committed.  In fact, Mr. Treglia’s actions didn’t even qualify as naughty.

As WCT points out, Pewgate turns out to be very little to do with nothing. Conspiracies in the right-wing blogosphere tend to die quickly and quietly.

The New York Times weighed in last week on Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who ruled against the Bush Administration's NSA spying program. Judicial watch is accusing Judge Taylor of having a conflict of interest because she sits on the board of the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan. Seems the foundation has made grants to the A.C.L.U., which opposes the NSA program. The grants were not related to the NSA.

Just one question for Judicial Watch. Say, hypothetically, Judge Taylor had ruled in favor of the Bush Administration's NSA policy. Would we be hearing from you?

Say it ain't so. Businessweek examines competition among donor advised funds, community foundations, and [post-Buffetmania] private foundations:

With so much at stake—literally, tens of billions of dollars flowing annually into private foundations, community foundations, and donor-advised funds—it should come as no surprise that competition for control of those dollars should exist. The competition among commercial donor-advised funds is quite pervasive and very public. Yet a more subtle form of competition exists among community foundations in their struggle for charitable assets.

Faced with the rapid growth of commercial donor-advised funds and the powerful appeal of family foundations, community foundations have been struggling to preserve their donor base and increase their assets. For answers, community foundations have turned to a cadre of consultants and advisers, retuned their marketing messages, and gone on the offensive. Often, the target of their antipathy is the private foundation, for reasons that are not altogether clear—except, perhaps, that private foundations continue to dwarf community foundations in both number and amount of total charitable assets, and thus represent the largest potential source of new donors and new assets.

The community foundation vs. donor advised fund discussion has been happening for quite awhile. The idea that private foundations may offer a third option for would-be philanthropists is no doubt a nightmarish scenario for your average community foundation CEO. I await the announcement of the opening of the Ford Foundation's development office.

The kind folks over at CRC have updated their post and pointed out an egregious error in my latest post about CRC's earth-shattering new study that uncovered liberal bias in the grantmaking of the foundations of Fortune 100 companies. I wrote:

I was not aware that CRC published on its Web site the entire list of the recipient organizations of the corporate foundations it examined. As standard practice, it's helpful to mention in a print article the fact that additional data is available online.

Page two of the print article detailing CRC's research says:

For a complete list of the foundations and their grantees, see the August 4, 2006 highlight at http://capitalresearch.org.

It's always helpful, especially when employing the somewhat delicate art form of sarcasm, to get the facts right. Maybe I was distracted by the high-school-yearbook-quality of the adjacent photo of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond. Whatever the case, I've been sufficiently, and deservedly, chastised by CRC for my error.

CRC is free to use this oversight on my part as reason to dismiss me as a "self-marginalizing" critic. I'll continue to keep a look out for the release of a "study" from CRC that does anything other than confirm the organization's liberal conspiracy theories. Until then, CRC will continue to influence only its ideological soul mates.

I am forever grateful to Matthew Vadum at the CRC-Greenwatch blog [those greens need watching, you know; we might all end up with some clean air to breathe] for his thoughtful consideration of my post about the Capital Research Center's recent article detailing how many Fortune 100 companies are, through their corporate grantmaking foundations, inadvertantly [or secretly] aiding the regimes of Castro and Kim Jong Il.

I'll concede on a couple of points, and my responses to Vadum are detailed below:

1] I did, in fact, offer in my criticism a simplified explanation of the academic research process. I found it difficult to outline the many flavors of academic research models in a less-than-500-word blog post. However, if there's a single research project during which CRC suddenly realized theory A was totally off the mark ["the federal government can't find its ass in the bathroom"] and published the evidence in the form of an argument for theory B ["gee, maybe the federal highway system thingy is ok"], I can't find any evidence of it. I'm open to suggestions.

2] I was not aware that CRC published on its Web site the entire list of the recipient organizations of the corporate foundations it examined. As standard practice, it's helpful to mention in a print article the fact that additional data is available online. Then I'll know to go and look for it. Vadum did not respond to my point about two of the organizations listed in the article. The Cato Institute, defined as "right" for purposes of CRC's study, recently published a book castigating the Republicans for their less-than-sound fiscal policies. The Brookings Institution, defined as "left" for purposes of the study, recently published a book praising welfare reform. If, say, the Bank of America Foundation funded Cato and Brookings specifically for these book projects, right is left and left is right.

3] Given CRC's mission statement, it's very difficult to believe that as researchers were going about categorizing organizations as "left" or "right," the "left" bucket wasn't a lot bigger than the "right" bucket. It would've been some extra work, but having some indication of just why the organizations received their designations would've been helpful. It's not that I don't like the definitions themselves. Large organizations, in particular, are involved in a variety of issues; sometimes they side with conservatives and sometimes with liberals. Given CRC's political philosophy, it's not too far-fetched to believe that the tiniest of liberal indicators landed an organization on the "left" side of the fence regardless of the organization's overall focus.

4] Maybe the reason corporations won't give CRC data on their contributions that aren't made through their foundations is that if they do CRC will find a $50 employee match as reason to call them eco-terrorists. Kind of saps the veep of public relations' desire to truthfully fill out the CRC survey.

Finally, it's always helpful to have a free spell check service. We bloggers are well aware that our credibility is rooted in our grammatical correctness.

Link:

Hoffman, a noted Dallas philanthropist, died Sunday at an area hospital. He had been suffering from leukemia since December, according to his family.

He was a co-founder and managing editor of the humorous National Lampoon, spawned from the Harvard Lampoon, created while he was a student at the university.

...

Hoffman was named one of Business Week magazine's top 50 philanthropists for 2005.

A longtime art collector, he and his wife, Marguerite, in March gave 224 art objects valued at $150 million to the Dallas Museum of Art.

Philanthropic humorist [or humorous philanthropist] is not an oxymoron.

The Capital Research Center, which is to objective research what most congressional election campaigns are to truth in advertising, has released some new "research" on corporate philanthropy. We should not be "shocked, shocked" that CRC has determined corporate foundations to be the secret tools of Castro and Kim Jong Il.

In the world of real academic research, most study is conducted by bringing together all the evidence and allowing such evidence to determine the thesis that is put forward. In CRC's case, the process seems to be just the opposite.

The authors of the subtly titled article detailing the research, "Funding Liberalism with Blue-Chip Profits: Fortune 100 Foundations Back Leftist Causes," are thoroughly perplexed that corporate foundations would rather give dollars to environmental organizations that may have some appeal to soccer moms concerned about their kids' breathing soot from a nearby smokestack than to think tanks trying to rescue America from a descent into socialism.

CRC neatly arranged the recipient organizations of the corporate foundations it examined into "left" and "right." In CRC's world, there is no "center." Not surprisingly, CRC offers a very very partial list of the organizations and their categorizations. On the left are the Brookings Institution [which just published a book, written by a Republican, extolling the virtues of welfare reform legislation passed in the '90s], and those evil, aged communists at the AARP Foundation. On the right are the Cato Institute [which just published a book titled, Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government], and [correctly] James Dobson's Focus on the Family. It offers a convoluted explanation of what constitutes "right" and what constitutes "left," saying "we also put on the right groups that defend traditional values..." Now, that's objective.

Perhaps the most glaring inadequecy of CRC's research is that it only examined the foundations of Fortune 100 corporations. Corporations give boatloads of money away directly, sometimes much more than they do through their established foundations. Using this limited sample to determine political intent is like trying to determine the annual beer consumption of Americans while excluding Budweiser and Miller.

Also playing a role in the liberal corporate philanthropy conspiracy, according to the article, are matching gifts programs, which allow employees to give to their favorite charities while having their employers provide a match. As evidence the article offers up a single $300 and a single $50 matching gift processed through the Bank of America Foundation. The $300 gift went to the Sea Sheperd Conservation Society, which CRC accuses of sinking fishing vessels, and the $50 went to International A.N.S.W.E.R., the leaders for which CRC accuses of "supporting the communist dictatorships of Cuba and North Korea" [note: this may be true].

The point is, $350 does not a conspiracy make. But when you're trying to prove a point ...

Lucy Bernholz on regulatory improvements for foundations:

Second, the regulatory system for organized philanthropy (foundations) relies heavily on penalties (see the post hoc note above). The problem with this is that no one really suffers from penalties on foundations. No CEO loses his/her job, staff aren’t docked salary, and the donor has already given over the funds to the organization so the money isn’t coming out of her pocket. The only ones who might suffer are potential grantees. Once the penalty fee is assessed the likely response is to decrease the grants budget (not cut salaries or jobs at the Foundation). So the community suffers, but these organizations have no power vis-à-vis the foundation to begin with so their pain is not a very effective deterrent.

While I'm not sure I agree that the suits in Washington can implement regulations that make foundations behave, I think Lucy is exactly right. Foundation executives are like NCAA coaches who commit recruiting violations. They don't lose their jobs, but the kids involved get booted off their teams. The only way a coach loses his or her job is if the university's students, faculty and/or community put pressure on the administration.

Perhaps an imprecise analogy, but I think communities can do a better job keeping foundations in line than any regulations on the books. The problem, of course, is that people or organizations that criticize foundations greatly decrease their chances of getting funding from the foundations they criticize. Unfortunately, it's the way the game is played.

Just a hunch that the Contra Costa Times won't be doing investigative reporting on the Gates Foundation anytime soon:

Several organizations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, lent a total of $350-million to MediaNews Group for its purchase of four newspapers: the Contra Costa Times; The Herald, in Monterey County; the San Jose Mercury News; and the Pioneer Press, in St. Paul, reports the Associated Press.

Program-related investment, anyone?

It goes without saying that over the past few years the Getty Trust was managed like a cookie jar in a household run by five-year-olds. Just when you think nothing else embarrasing could possibly be unearthed, the LA Times gave us this over the weekend:

David Gardner, the former chairman of the board of J. Paul Getty Trust, has returned nearly $100,000 of the money he was paid to write a coffee-table book on the history of the arts institution after he left the board in 2004 but never produced.

The Getty asked Gardner to pay back the money after an internal investigation concluded that the book deal violated tax laws prohibiting excess compensation and self-dealing, Getty spokesman Ron Hartwig said Friday.

Gardner is keeping 78 grand he was paid for the project. To date, he's produced an "outline" but hasn't conducted any interviews.

Which makes this announcement last week even more perplexing:

LOS ANGELES—The Board of Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust today announced it has elected Louise H. Bryson as board chair, replacing John Biggs, who announced earlier that he planned to step down and retire from the board by the end of October.  Ms. Bryson will assume the role of chair immediately.

Ms. Bryson, who is currently one of the board’s three vice chairs, has been a Getty Trustee since April 1998.  She currently heads the ad hoc Search Committee, charged with identifying a new president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust; she served as chair of the Investment and Finance Committee from 2000 to 2003, and since then as chair of the External Affairs Committee.

You'd think The Getty, having become a complete clusterfuck over the past three years, would look to someone outside the organization to chair its board. It's tough letting go of that cookie jar.

Mitt:

Governor Mitt Romney's private foundation -- which often sends money to religious organizations, schools, and social services groups -- gave $50,000 in 2005 to two prominent conservative think tanks that have provided him with a platform as he readies for a potential run for president, public records indicate.

...

Analysts with the Heritage Foundation worked closely with Romney in the past year to develop his healthcare initiative, which would require all Bay State residents to obtain medical insurance, a collaboration he often cites during his travels. Romney spoke at Heritage Foundation events at least three times since 2004.

The donations were not, apparently, illegal.

The Nonprofit Times includes Roy Williams, head of the Boy Scouts of America, on its list of the top 50 nonprofit leaders in the country:

It’s been a tough couple of years, with lawsuits from gay scouts and freak accidents resulting in deaths at scout camps. Through it all, Williams has led the organization as a model of standing up for what you believe and crisis management.

Forget that Williams stands up for discrimination. Hate-monger James Dobson of Focus on the Family is also on the list.

Those wacky Astors:

But even though the foundation stated that it aimed to raise money publicly, it is not listed in the telephone book. It has made no public mailings soliciting contributions. And one of its addresses, listed on the letter to Mrs. Astor, is the East 79th Street Manhattan apartment of Charlene and Anthony D. Marshall, Mrs. Astor’s son. A lawyer for Mr. Marshall said about $35,000 of the money had already been donated.

Peter J. Kelley, a Manhattan lawyer who was listed as an initial director of the foundation when it was formed, said he has heard nothing about the organization over the years and has never met or known of Charlene Marshall. Mr. Kelley said in a telephone interview yesterday that last year he resigned from the post he held in name only.

Moreover, the New York State attorney general’s office, which oversees charities, said that Shepherd Community Foundation had not registered with its charities bureau, even though it would have been obligated to do so within six months of taking Mrs. Astor’s $100,000 late last year. The attorney general’s office said that it plans to send the foundation a letter notifying it that it had not registered and requesting an explanation.

A high-society soap for us mere mortals.

Artist Dale Chihuly has found a nice way to profit from his nonprofit:

But in addition to providing art classes, the charity sells Chihuly's work in an unusual arrangement that helps fund the group's program and has put at least $1 million into the artist's pocket over the past five years.

No doubt just another innovative cause marketing effort in the eyes of Selfish Giving.

Let the debate continue:

According to Schley, however, investor Warren Buffett's decision to donate the bulk of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — and to stipulate that at least one of the Gateses remain actively involved in the foundation for his annual disbursements to continue — has revived the debate about whether or not it's always a good idea for wealthy individuals to create their own foundations and whether those foundations should be established in perpetuity. In fact, according to the New York City-based Foundation Center, starting in the 1990s more foundations were established by younger donors, many of whom were more inclined to set a time limit for their giving.

That's the beauty of the tax law. You can perpetuate or you can take your ball and end the game whenever you want. What's wrong with that?

Nonprofiteer gets it right:

So if you have $100,000 to spare, you can avoid all taxes by giving to charity, whereas if you don't make enough money to itemize, your gifts will come from taxable income.  This shouldn't be a surprise coming from the same people who believe that if you work for your money it should be taxed (the income tax) but if you inherit your money it shouldn't (the estate tax). 

...

And it's a disgrace that organized charity, in the person of the president of the United Way, endorses this as "reform."  If the tax system collected enough, organized charity would face a less impossible task.

Many large nonprofit institutions now seem to behave like greedy Fortune 500 companies. Any legislation that lines their pockets is fine; fairness be damned. If our sector can't stand up for fairness, who will?

Olasky at the World Magazine blog:

Brooks, who has a book coming out on this subject, concludes, "So who is more compassionate: the religious right, or the secular left? The answer appears to be the former. The reason for this, however, revolves around religion, not political ideology. The relatively large religious right and fairly small religious left are both far more compassionate than secularists from either political side. The most uncompassionate group of all - in attitudes and behaviours - is a subset of conservatives who are also secularists. Inordinate media attention to this group may help explain why conservatives are often accused of being uncompassionate."

Do we know what charities the religious right donates to? Perhaps churches that spew anti-gay hatred from their pulpits and praise the current administration's policies of giving tax cuts to the rich while opposing increases in the minimum wage? As Randall Balmer points out in his book, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, the term "Christian" has taken on a whole new meaning the last six years or so. I dare say we can't determine a level of "compassion" based purely on size of donations. You could get a tax deduction from donating to these guys.

Inordinate media attention to secular conservatives? Yeah, right. I read about them every day on the front page of the New York Times.

Phil over at Gifthub points us to an article in the latest issue of Family Giving News, published by the National Center for Family Philanthropy, about the value of bringing on non-family members on to the boards of family foundations. I found this interesting:

Although subsequent generations had little to say about the original donor's reasons behind the appointment, author Kelin Gersick surmises that in some cases the philanthropic work was seen as a natural outgrowth of a family business, in which case the most qualified person was brought on board to manage the process, family or not. In other cases, however, it seems clear that the presence of these representatives was intended to quell anticipated family misbehavior, which the founding donor feared might stymie the family's giving.

Now we know why Warren Buffett just gave it all to the Gates Foundation.

As an addendum to my last post, it's worth mentioning that the term "donor intent" is being tossed around like a dishrag by politicians and others in discussions about the Ford Foundation situation and proposed legislation to make Michigan foundations give more at home. I've said before if I had a buck for every time someone has said "Henry Ford would be rolling in his grave blah blah blah" I'd be on my way to financial solvency.

Donor intent can be an ambiguous thing, particularly for those charters that were written decades ago. I view the donor intent purists a bit like those who take an "originalist" view of the Constitution: If it ain't in the text it doesn't exist. Of course, the donor intent card is usually played by those who oppose a particular grant on ideological grounds. Ford could put a gazillion dollars into a school voucher program and conservatives would leap for joy, regardless of the fact that ol' Henry didn't mention the issue in the foundation charter. In most cases donor intent is a matter of ideological perspective.

That said, I think foundations hurt themselves by not at least providing tacit acknowledgement of their founders as they communicate publicly about what they do. Tying specific grants or grant programs to the vision of the founder is even better. Not doing so just gives the partisan donor intent police more ammunition with which to attack foundation executives for being out of touch with the beliefs and ideas of those who so generously established the institutions they now lead.

I’ve been wanting to comment on a couple of older stories because I think they offer some insight into the current state of institutional philanthropy. The Attorney General of Michigan, Mike Cox, is “investigating” the Ford Foundation for not giving away a larger percentage of its funding to organizations in Michigan. Ford, although located in New York, was incorporated in Michigan, and with the Michigan economy in the toilet, Cox and other politicians are searching far and wide for any strategies to pump money into the state’s economy. Of note is that Cox is up for re-election and this makes a handy “woe is we” campaign issue.

 

In this same vein, two Michigan legislators, one from each side of the isle, have proposed legislation that would require private foundations in Michigan to provide half of their grantmaking each year to Michigan-based nonprofits. Crazy. But true.

 

In addition to the Michigan’s economic challenges, there are, I believe, two reasons why these sorts of things bobble up from the ocean floor. One is uninformed politicians looking to make a quick score in campaign season. If Cox and his friends have their way, they’ll do more for the Michigan economy than just the new money being pumped in by private foundations; they’ll need to create a new regulatory bureaucracy to ensure 1] Michigan-based nonprofits aren’t utilizing the donations to benefit those in other states [after all, what then would the point be?] and 2] track the legitimacy of all the new nonprofits set up to cash in on the windfall. Not to mention the fact that, if the legislation were to pass, any foundation in the process of being established would likely think twice about incorporating in Michigan; just across the border in Illinois or Indiana would grant considerable more grantmaking freedom.

 

The other, more important, reason, is private foundations' inability to communicate effectively to legislators -- and the public -- about exactly what it is they do. Schambra gets it right in his comment in the Chronicle of Philanthropy story:

"Like most of my colleagues in the foundation world, I, of course, worry when state A.G.'s start wielding political clubs like this," he said. "But I think foundations have brought it on themselves. Too much empty rhetoric about 'facilitating global-change processes' with precious little to show for it," he said.

As a result, he added, "the folks back home in the old neighborhood have even less to show for it."

This legislation is likely headed nowhere, since you can be assured foundations in Michigan will make sure it's lobbied into extinction. But its introduction is another example of how foundations, while publishing forests worth of annual reports and magazines and creating more sophisticated Web sites, are still well short of the finish line when it comes to effectively communicating about their missions and activities.

Next time any of you private foundation folks who fund organizations that do the fantastic work of advancing democracy around the world are asked to speak on that topic, feel free to crib any of the following:

 

"While the foundation is pleased to support efforts to advance democracy in parts of the world where the idea may just taking root, we are increasingly alarmed about the erosion of democracy here at home. We fully understand that after 9/11 measures needed to be put in place to better protect us from further attacks by terrorists. But the current administration has damaged some of the historical foundations of American society: Spying on American citizens without warrant, attaching signing statements to legislation exempting the President from complying, and yes, breaking the law, are not what we expect from democratically elected leaders. In the name of protecting Americans from terror, this administration has adopted tactics of regressive regimes. Regimes that our grantees in other countries have worked so hard to replace with legitimately elected governments. So, while we continue our commitment to supporting the growth of democracy abroad, we will speak out more forcefully about the chipping away of democracy here at home."

 

Just a thought.

In the category of "academics will do anything if you fund it":

The initial round of grants from the institute will support the work of physicists at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and other leading scientific institutions who are interested in examining questions such as whether the fundamental laws of nature are specially designed to allow life and whether there are truths about the universe that physics is inherently incapable of proving. Although start-up funds for the institute were provided by the John Templeton Foundation in the form of a $6.2 million grant, the institute makes its funding decisions independently of the foundation and is run by two well-respected researchers.

Still, while some scientists welcomed the institute as a way to fund research at the center of modern physics, critics voiced concern that its work would be used to blur the line between science and religion. "I think that bringing science and religion together is not a good thing," said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the University of Chicago. "It's not that different from the Vietnam War, when people wondered whether to take money from the Defense Department for their research, even if their research had no conceivable military application."

Conservate religious foundation seeds "independent" research institute that enlists professors from high-profile academic institutions to find god in our DNA. This is how evolution becomes "debatable."

Selfish Giving dissects an article at PRwatch.org about corporate giving. It was written by Inger Stoller, a professor at the University of Illinois. SG, in one of his more snide moments:

Inger suggests that if companies really want to help, they "should pay their fair share of taxes.  Then education, health care, research and other priorities could receive greater funding, with no strings attached."  Right.  Given the choice between waiting for Uncle Sam to mail me my no-strings-attached check or cause markeing my way through Corporate America, I'll take the risk of one day having to admit that I only have myself to blame.

Memo to SG: If corporations paid their fair share of taxes we'd have a stronger revenue base with which to address some of society's more intractable problems, public education and health care being two relatively obvious examples. That's not to say government is the answer to all of our problems, but I think government is more trustworthy to come up with objective solutions to our major societal challenges than some collection of Fortune 500 companies. You think Big Pharma's going to participate in forming a strategy for health care that reduces our reliance on prescription drugs?

I think we should rely very little on corporations to fix society's problems. On a very limited basis, for sure, corporations may contribute to the greater good. But there's an inherent conflict of interest in corporate philanthropy; companies are buying something with their contributions. Most often it's community goodwill; customers want to feel good about where they're spending their money [in addition to getting the lowest price], and companies contribute to charity to raise their community profiles.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think companies ought to be able to spend money just about any way they'd like. I just don't think, on the contributions side, the tax break comes much into play. Look at most Fortune 500 companies that have active corporate giving programs or foundations and I think you'll find those functions closely aligned with marketing and advertising. As long as that's the case, don't expect too much.

Utterly shocking news from the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Charities founded by hip-hop artists, such as the Ludacris Foundation, which focuses its philanthropy on children, sometimes find their efforts hampered by negative perceptions of the music behind their money.

Lyric sample here.

A conservative catholic philanthropist finds it hard to do the right thing:

His boldest charitable venture by far, however, is Ave Maria University, a four-year liberal arts campus under construction 30 miles northeast of Naples, Fla., to which Mr. Monaghan has donated or pledged $285 million so far. Along with the university, which enrolled its first students three years ago on a temporary campus, he and a local developer are building an adjoining new town called Ave Maria.

The bar for the school has been set high, with plans to eventually attract up to 6,000 students to what supporters, including Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, predict will be a top-tier academic institution devoted to the Catholic faith.

Mr. Monaghan, who has called the Florida campus and town “God’s will,” has even loftier intentions. He has said that he sees the university, which says it adheres to a strict interpretation of Catholic doctrine, as a chance to save souls. “I’m a businessman. I get to the bottom line,” Mr. Monaghan, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told The Orlando Sentinel in 2004. “And the bottom line is to help people get to heaven.”

Yet as he aims for the divine, Mr. Monaghan has been facing some unexpected earthly trials, including a revolt at his law school in Ann Arbor and sharp criticism by many of the conservative Catholics who once supported his foundation’s projects.

In many ways, Mr. Monaghan’s troubles illustrate how difficult it can be for wealthy, driven entrepreneurs to make the transition to full-time philanthropy, particularly when they have single-minded ideas about how they want their money spent. Traits that make successful business leaders — ego, ambition, determination, even a touch of imperiousness — do not necessarily go over well in charitable work, causing even the most well-intentioned projects to founder.

As the legendary investor Warren E. Buffett recently noted when he donated most of his $40 billion fortune to an established foundation rather than create one of his own, making a mint — as difficult as that is — can be easier than giving it away.

As he tries to build a new university and town in his own image, Mr. Monaghan has been experiencing some of those difficulties firsthand. Faculty members, students and parents tied to his Detroit-area schools have complained that he runs his charitable foundation like a sole proprietorship, starting and abandoning projects as whim strikes him. And they characterize his new Florida university as a vanity venture that could well prove to be a colossal waste of cash.

When your philanthropic mission is to save souls before the apocalype hits, you might encounter some difficulty trying to come up with consistent, well-thought-out giving strategies. With apologies to the Beatles, maybe money can't buy me salvation.

Regarding my previous post Phil asks, basically, what's the point? Why should foundations seek publicity? It's a good question.

Foundations began publishing information about themselves as a way of countering the accusations of secrecy and malfeasance that led to the Tax Reform Act of 1969. The mantra was, and remains, "transparency and openness," to the degree that the self-publishing [read: editing] of data can be construed as such.

Somewhere along the way, I'd say during the '80s, foundations got the bright idea to invest some resources in drawing attention to the work of grantees. They began to publish newsletters, magazines, journals, etc. highlighting what grantees were doing with their funding.

Then along came the Internet, which allowed foundations to broaden their audiences but, I would argue, didn't really change their thinking about how to approach the issue of publicity.

Today, if you ask your run-of-the-mill foundation CEO why she or he invests resources in public relations, you'll likely hear a homily about accountability and drawing attention to the work of grantees.

What I'm suggesting is that new ways of thinking about marketing, including use of new technologies, offer opportunities for foundations to tackle the issues they care about [and, ostensibly, that their founders cared about] in other ways than just donating money to charity. Say the Rich Socialites Foundation of Greater Palm Beach is dedicated to the preservation of contemporary dance as a viable art form. It could, of course, give a bunch of money to a variety of contemporary dance companies, ensuring their long-term survival. But it also might look at some other approaches. Wouldn't getting high school students interested in contemporary dance help meet the mission? How might Socialites go about doing that? In particular, if Socialites is a well known organization within the community, why not leverage its brand to accomplish its mission? Build an interactive Web site about contemporary dance targeted to teens? Form partnerhips with online portals already being used by teens in the community? Fund a buzz marketing campaign using star quarterbacks and cheerleaders?

I think it's time foundations start to play more directly in some of these spaces in which they've traditionally said, "Well we wouldn't do that but certainly we'd fund someone to do it."

That kind of self-limitation is why foundations get beat up in the marketplace of ideas.

An essay in the latest issue of Fast Company magazine got me thinking about foundations and hipster status. A number of Fortune 500 companies are hiring marketing agencies run by twenty-somethings to keep their brands cool:

Companies are outsourcing cool. They’re paying other companies – smaller, more-limber, closer-to-the-ground – to help them keep up with customers’ rapidly changing tastes and demands. Talk about a core competency! It’s like farming out your soul – or at least, asking someone what you should wear in the morning. 

Assuming for the sake of argument that foundations have souls, I wonder if they ever think about how building a more progressive [and, dare I say, hip] image of themselves among their audiences could contribute to their effectiveness as grantmakers. When’s the last time you read something about a foundation and thought, “Wow, that’s cool”? Something that would perk up the eyes and ears of your average 16-year-old?

 

Foundations are lousy brand managers. I think that’s because they think their images are derived from the identities of their grantees. How unfortunate. This plays itself out in two ways: 1] Foundations don’t recognize all of the other ways in which their images get shaped [example: speeches and presentations given by foundation employees to outside audiences]; 2] Only very traditional tools are used to for communications and marketing activities and adoption of new tools, particularly in the communications technology arena, is excruciatingly slow. By the time they get into a new marketing space corporations have long moved on to something more current and effective.

 

Back to the Fast Company essay:

To get closer to customers and speed the feedback loop, Samsung’s U.S. marketers established relationships with some 1,500 Web sites that serve its target markets, from fly-fishing sites to the home pages of rock bands. When designers in Korea give the word that a new product is on the way – often with only a few months warning – marketing puts out the word through its network. Presto! Instant product launch. 

I’m not saying foundations should look to organize groups of 14-year-old girls via text messaging to sell tickets to the local nonprofit community theater production. The nature of the business of foundationland has its marketing limitations. But it would be nice to see some foundations thinking outside the box a little bit when it comes to sharing their agendas with the outside world. Maybe take off the suit and put on a pair of hip jeans every now and then.

In a column for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Bruce Trachtenberg and Grant Oliphant make a few suggestions about how foundations and the news media can both do a better job getting the media to cover the activities of private foundations. Get away from talking about individual grants and grant amounts; the story isn't the money itself, they argue, but what happens with it.

Good advice, I'd say. There is much naval gazing within the philanthrosphere about why the news media can't seem to find an interesting angle on private foundations other than malfeasance. Name your theory: Giving away money just isn't that interesting; foundations use language that only foundations understand; despite posting Web sites and publishing magazines and annual reports, foundations aren't really that interested in having a spotlight on them. There some legitimacy in each of these theories.

Trachtenberg, who runs the Communications Network, an association of communicators within private foundations, and Oliphant, a veep at the Heinz Endowment in Pittsburgh, get it especially right here:

When reporters cover the business world, they produce articles when new products or strategies are announced, when money is made or lost, and when companies grow or fail. And in between the coverage of those developments, enormous attention is paid to the types of businesses they are, what underlies the decisions companies make, and what they could do to become more successful.

That same approach should guide philanthropy coverage. Reporters should be encouraged to provide in-depth and analytic coverage about the underlying problems in society that foundations are trying to solve, the likely results of their investments, and follow-up coverage about what did or didn't happen.

I'd put about 80 percent of the blame for why private foundations don't receive more analytical news coverage at the feet of the private foundations themselves. Talk all you want about openness, community accountability, etc., foundations are notoriously reticent to reveal any more than what's absolutely necessary to ensure they're looked upon favorably. In a field that in and of itself is difficult to explain to the outside world, why should reporters go the extra mile if foundations don't return their calls?

Memo to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:

Speak up.

As the "nation's largest philanthropy devoted to health and health care," perhaps you can shine some light on this "insidious, incestuous, insider system."

Your truly.

Um, maybe that big announcement wasn't such a grand idea:

But as the euphoria of Buffett's record-breaking act recedes, his gift has triggered another, entirely different result -- intensifying questions in Congress and elsewhere about how well charities spend their money, how accountable they are to donors and government and the general condition of "civil society."

Long live self-regulation!

I'll second many of White Courtesy Telephone's comments about the Bush Administration's latest budget shenanigans. Turns out the Bushies are cutting funding for a small schools program, stating in the budget that the availability of funding from the Gates Foundation and other private sources lets it off the hook. WCT makes some astute observations about the "scrimmage between public and private responsibility:"

Foundations that elect to stand firm should, at the very least, help de-funded organizations make the case for restored public dollars and/or help these organizations find new sources of support.  Foundations, in their treatment of grantees, should be setting the example for other funders.  This means making general operating support grants and grants to strengthen nonprofit infrastructure.  It means supporting an organization over several years to help it grow.  It also means never chopping an organization off at the knees by suddenly withdrawing funding.

This is exactly right. Foundations can play a role in ensuring quality organizations don't shut their doors if government funding dries up. I would add, though, that this scrimmage should be played on two fronts. While doing all it can to shore up the long-term prospects of the sector, foundations need to call bullshit on government when calling bullshit is required. The move by the administration to justify cutting funding for programs when private funds are supposedly available is blatantly cynical. It's lazy government. It would be one thing if the administration had negotiated beforehand with the Gates Foundation to fill this funding gap. No chance of that. And where is the criticism from the foundation sector? As has been the case with most of the disasters brought to us by the Bush Administration, it's the sound of silence.

Bryan Preston at Hot Air blathers on about 9/11 conspiracy theories promoted by the "hardcore left." This is to be expected, since Preston and his colleagues over at Hot Air such as Michelle Malkin like to dig up fringe characters and paint them as official spokespersons for the Democratic Party. This one statement from Preston, however, did catch my eye:

The anti-war left that poses as the voice of the little guy can’t seem to raise campaign funds without billionaires like Soros and assorted leftwing foundations shovelling in the cash.

I'm sure the IRS, in its current configuration, would appreciate a list of all those private, left-wing foundations that are doling out the campaign cash.

Perhaps give this a read before declaring sainthood:

That the myth of Buffett is so pervasive is no accident. The "Oracle of Omaha" actually gives few interviews outside of his famous annual meeting in Nebraska each year. Those whom he does talk to, such as Fortune's Carol Loomis, are either on his payroll or don't dare criticize St. Warren lest they lose access.

 

But people as successful as Buffett don't accumulate $44 billion in wealth through charitable dealing. Long after the public turned on smoking and health, Buffett infamously explained his investment in the tobacco business: "It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty."

A few things got lost in the avalanche of coverage about the world's second richest man giving most of his fortune to the world's richest man. Although hailed as unprecedented, brilliant, innovative, etc. etc., the deal has all the markings of a handshake on the 5th green after successful completion of a particularly troublesome up and down.

Let me state unequivocally before I leave the impression of the grinch who ate the charitable impulse that I think what Buffett has done is a good thing; better than, say, building a $37-billion house in Omaha. It's just a shame Buffett made the announcement as if he was striking up a distribution deal for widgets. We learned from the announcement that Buffett cares about three things: 1] Keeping his children's paws off the vast majority of his dough; 2] Getting the vast majority of his dough out the door more quickly than any philanthropist in history; 3] His friendship with Bill Gates.

We didn't learn if any of the areas in which the Gates Foundation funds are of any interest to Buffett. "I trust Bill Gates not to blow it" makes for an odd philanthropic strategy.

We're back. We've retooled a bit, and done some thinking about what we want this blog to be. After having a pretty loose focus [like a three-year-old in a sandbox with 30 toys], we've decided we really want to focus on the public face of institutional philanthropy and private foundations. What do they do well and what can they do better, particularly when it comes to advocating for the issues they care about? Of course, we'll retain the right to occasionally divert to other related topics. Thanks to those of you who payed attention to Philanthropybeat ver.1. We hope the next iteration will be a meaningful reentry into the ongoing dialogue about philanthropy occuring in blogworld.