Stanford Social Innovation Review

Stand for Something

Imagine you are the new CEO of a publicly-supported grantmaker that has suffered declines in funds raised over the past 10 years. Would you choose to: 

• Redefine your primary purpose to be fighting poverty?
• Lead your large board of directors, overwhelmingly from large corporations, to make a substantial commitment to policy advocacy?

Such a strategy carries high risk, but it may also offer high rewards. In their canonical article “Philanthropy’s New Agenda: Creating Value,”¹ Michael Porter and Mark Kramer identified “changing the environment” in which grantees operate as the highest level of strategic impact a foundation could hope to achieve. (The others, in ascending order, were consistently choosing the best grantees over time, attracting support to those grantees from other funders, and improving the performance of grantees.) Not all “game changing” initiatives involve policy changes, but in many fields, such as health, human services, the environment, education, and social justice, potential policy changes comprise a commanding share of potential high-impact strategic goals. 

The same case for pursuing a policy strategy applies to nonprofits as well as to foundations. This is something I’ve always emphasized to nonprofit boards and executives when discussing the propriety and benefits of policy advocacy. Organizations trying to prevent foster children from becoming homeless, for example, should also keep an eye on how policy affects that purpose.  Sounds reasonable enough – that’s the case they should make to their boards of directors, and be prepared to make to the broader public.

That’s all fine for foundations with their endowments, I often hear; but what about the risks to a nonprofit’s ability to raise funds and attract volunteers? 

Community foundations have struggled with this dilemma for many years.  Facing competitive pressures from organizations like Vanguard or Merrill Lynch, some community foundations have sought to compete on the basis of efficiency and service to donors, while others have instead emphasized the change they hoped to help create through their philanthropy. Emmett Carson, president of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and former president of the Minneapolis Community Foundation, has made a very persuasive argument that, while it may alienate some donors, taking leadership on community issues in the end should attract even more donors and more passionate commitment to the organization. 

The United Way of Greater Los Angeles is one organization that has taken this high-risk strategy. Its example may hold a number of lessons for advocates of funding for social change, and for funders who, whatever their motives, are looking to boost their impact. (I describe why and how they made this shift in this article in Responsive Philanthropy, NCRP’s quarterly journal.) It is too soon to tell whether its new strategy will reverse the downward trend in donations to UWGLA, and there are some who are skeptical about the motives behind the shift. But there is little doubt that the new focus is widely perceived in the Los Angeles philanthropic world to be a major step forward (based on comparing data from interviews with funders over two years ago to similar interviews last summer).  When I asked Elise Buik, UWGLA’s President, about Emmett Carson’s argument that asking donors to join a cause will attract more support over time, she responded, “Well, when you stand for something, you definitely attract new people, and good things can follow.”

UWGLA’s example also may say something about whether board members, who can be quite conservative and risk averse, are as likely to oppose adding policy goals to the mix as is commonly thought. I was recently fortunate to make a presentation to their board about the law governing policy advocacy for nonprofit organizations. Having made dozens of similar presentations to nonprofit directors and leaders, I was amazed at how little controversy was expressed among the board members about the decision to commit to take policy positions. Some of this, no doubt, was due to the work UWGLA staff had done over many months to prepare the board for this step, but it also seemed that the board members – three out of four from large businesses – already knew well the value of lobbying. As Matt Miller has argued, big business has found that well executed lobbying can deliver unbeatable returns. 

1. Free access to the article is also available here – use your own best ethical sense.

Peter Manzo is the director of strategic initiatives for the Advancement Project, a civil rights advocacy organization, and a senior research fellow with the Center for Civil Society in the UCLA School of Public Affairs. Previously, he was the executive director and general counsel of the Center for Nonprofit Management. 

Posted by Katie Harrington

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Bernholz’s Law of Philanthropic Adaptation

Late on a Friday afternoon (April 8), feeling a little punchy after a long week, I posted Bernholz’s Law of Philanthropic Adaptation 1.0. Then I wound up thinking about it most of the weekend. Here is the first upgrade.

Bernholz’s Law of Philanthropic Adaptation, 1.1:

The rate and cycles of philanthropic adoption of new technology follow a fairly predictable pattern, regardless of technology. This pattern is:

• Phase Zero – ignore new technology.
• Phase One of philanthropic adoption of a new tool is fundraising. (See this application of iPhones)
• Phase Two (in the case of bet2give phase one and two are simultaneous) is using charitable giving as a means of attracting customers to some other business model. (See good2gether  or goodsearch)
• Phase Three is using the tool to publicize the philanthropic status quo (see almost every foundation website)
• Phase 3.5 – meanwhile, real change will begin happening on the edges, as innovators recognize the implications of lowered transaction costs and global attention (see globalgiving or networkforgood).
• Phase Four involves trying technology to change the edges of philanthropic practice (see Packard Foundation’s Nitrogen Wiki).
• Phase Five brings us to the conference circuit, where we will learn (perhaps with some bemusement) about technology applications that “came in from the edge” and are now discussed as mainstream. ( globalgiving and networkforgood)
• Phase Six – we watch in envy as a real twist or two in the playing field as we know it happen, and kiva.org reshapes microfinance and donorschoose catches public school foundations off guard. They also get adoring press attention.
• In Phase Seven – big foundations amplify attention on “little” innovations and while attention is directed there…
• …Phase Eight begins, in which the reality of how change happens is setting in and new philanthropic supports for these new ways of being are being created (while we’re looking elsewhere.) In other words, we’ve entered phase one of a new cycle.

Lucy Bernholz is the Founder and President of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc, a strategy consulting firm that helps philanthropic individuals and institutions achieve their missions. She is the publisher of Philanthropy2173, an award winning blog about the business of giving and serves as Executive Producer of The Giving Channel on Fora.tv.

Posted by Katie Harrington

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Nonprofit Silos Choke Off Conversations

Smart fundraising is no longer a one-way stream of information, where organizations tell would-be donors whatever will motivate them to give.

Fundraising has become a conversation. 

There’s just one problem: In many nonprofits, especially the larger and more professional ones, the people actually charged with conversing with donors have little incentive to do so.

They’re typically found in the Donor Relations department, and they report to managers outside of Fundraising. So while fundraisers may want to nurture rich two-way conversations with donors, the people who answer the phones, emails, and complaint letters would rather eat cockroaches drowned in mop water than engage in conversations. And because they’re in a different department, they’re being measured for efficiency and other very non-conversational skills.

So you have a Talking Department (Fundraising) and a Listening Department (Donor Relations) working in different silos and holding different goals and conflicting philosophies. Sounds like a mental illness, doesn’t it?

Add to that an independently operating Marketing Department (which, for the sake of the metaphor, we’ll call the Yelling at Random Strangers Department) and the Online Department (or the Navel-Gazing Department). If this nonprofit were a person, he’d be locked up!

Nonprofits that allow bureaucratic turf to get in the way of listening to and serving donors won’t survive the change in how donors interact with their charities. When donors get a taste of the rich, respectful relationship they can have with a nonprofit that has its organizational act together, they’re going to drop those who can’t make the change.

The time to explode your silos is now.

Jeff Brooks is creative director at Merkle, a direct-response agency serving the nonprofit world.  He blogs at the Donor Power Blog.

Posted by Katie Harrington

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Big Challenges in Nonprofit Growth

The charitable marketplace keeps growing, putting even greater pressure on nonprofits and their supporters to run smart, lean, responsible operations.

Nonprofits employ more people, generate more revenue, and contribute more to the U.S. economy, says the just-released Nonprofit Almanac 2008.

But growth alone does not ensure that nonprofits are making the best use of their resources.

Sadly, the charitable marketplace is saddled with fat and inefficiency.

Fueled by a sense of entitlement and righteousness, far too many nonprofits focus more on perpetuating their own organizations than on improving the way they do business or deliver services.

And while their services often overlap, far too few nonprofits are willing to truly consider, let alone pursue, consolidating their operations or even merging their organizations.

Having cultivated their own donors, volunteers and customers, nonprofits invest more time in defending and expanding their turf than in looking for the best way to put common community resources to work to address common community problems.

Nonprofits do not bear sole blame for the sloppy and self-absorbed way many of them operate.

Lacking the will or courage to ask tough questions or to encourage collaboration, foundations and other supporters are the enablers of nonprofits’ waste and turf-driven mindset.

By continuing to invest in nonprofits without challenging them to be more efficient, open and collaborative, foundations and other supporters simply perpetuate the feudal fiefdoms that divide and weaken the charitable marketplace.

To address the symptoms and causes of the urgent social problems we face, the charitable marketplace needs to do a lot better.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C.

Posted by Katie Harrington

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

The Word That Can Destroy Your Marketing

• You are probably younger.
• You know too much—perhaps too much to see the simple clarity of the issue at hand.
• Like it or not, you have more agendas than the work at hand.
• You are paying too much attention.  You’re being paid to read this stuff!  Your donor isn’t.

Jeff Brooks is creative director at Merkle, a direct-response agency serving the nonprofit world.  He blogs at the Donor Power Blog.

Posted by Katie Harrington

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Privacy Matters

It’s oh-so un-hip, perhaps, to suggest this in a Web 2.0 world. But it’s time to start fighting harder for donor privacy.

According to recent polls, people who give money to charities and other nonprofits—including universities such as Stanford, Columbia, and others—are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the personal information that fundraisers are collecting about them and the growing ease with which these fundraisers can collect their information online and archive what they have collected digitally in-house. A recent survey by the BBB Wise Giving Alliance and Princeton Survey Research Associates, for example, says 85 percent of donors think it’s not okay for a nonprofit organization, including a college or university, to raise money by selling donors’ personal information to others.

Of course, much donor data still gets reaped the old-fashioned way—from personal relationships and the social networks of the wealthy. But as the number of nonprofits continues to expand and as the economy sours, the digital rivalry for each donor dollar is intensifying—making it much more tempting for nonprofits to outsource their fundraising and sell donor data to the highest bidder.

There have always been issues about donor recognition versus anonymity, and such issues are fairly common ones in the philanthropy world. But there are some new privacy risks that didn’t previously exist from the continued proliferation and evolution of Web 2.0 social networking sites, the growth of the mobile Internet, and the increasing use of fundraising from social networks—not to mention the increasingly exposed lives of the young and wealthy on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

To be sure, it’s getting easier for people to give away more information and much easier for charities to knowingly (or unknowingly) send it around. “People are now having conversations by email about prospective donors that are now on their Palm Pilots and Blackberries and iPhones so donor information is now living in more places digitally than ever before,” says Sree Sreenivasan, dean of students at Columbia University Journalism School and an international expert in Internet research. “It’s very hard today to know where your information is going.”

Promises by charities to keep these digital donor-dossiers completely private are becoming harder to keep. “There are tens of thousands of lousy nonprofits out there, and when I say lousy, I mean they may be great at what they do for those in need but still terrible at managing the privacy of their donor data,” says Jeff Brooks, the creative director at Merkle/Domain, a Seattle-based fundraising consultancy and the author of donorpowerblog.com, a blog about donor-friendly fundraising. Making matters worse, privacy experts admit, philanthropic donors remain largely unaware of the large amount of personal information there is about them in cyberspace. Says Marc Rotenberg, founder of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based privacy advocacy group: “I think very few charitable donors really know what is known about them by the person who approaches them for a contribution. Privacy still matters.”

Security leaks are also getting more frequent publicity in the blogsphere. New sites such sites as Breach Blog, PogoWasRight.org, and the Attrition.org Data Loss Archive and Database track the breaches and the lawsuits that can result from poor security policies at charities, businesses, government agencies, and other entities.

But failure by nonprofits to notify donors when their data is leaked remains a large, and fairly common, problem. Just ask Allan Benamer, who writes the Non-Profit Tech Blog. Benamer last fall reported that hackers had gotten access to the email addresses and passwords of thousands of donors to nearly 150 charities—including CARE—that used the online database software and services from Convio, Inc. The New York Times picked up the story, and some but not all of the charities affected made an effort to notify donors themselves. There’s a reason for the fear. According to the Times, many of the 20,000 online subscribers to a newsletter put out by United Animal Nations, an animal assistance group, was affected by the breach and quite a few were angry about the leak. “We’ve had losses (in membership),” Nicole Forsyth, the president and chief executive of the charity told the Times last winter. “About 2 percent of our online subscribers have unsubscribed.”

Regardless, silence and secrecy do nothing to solve the challenges of protecting privacy in the Digital Age. And it’ not enough to outsource the security problem to a technology vendor. To be sure, privacy must begin in-house, with improved employee training and organizational policies that are strongly enforced from the top down.

It’s also time for the creation of sector-wide privacy standards. These would both raise awareness of the problem among charities and donors and lead to more meaningful privacy protection and controls that go beyond the small-print of a Web site privacy policy.

Thanks to Barack Obama’s success with online fundraising, charity leaders have been clamoring in recent months to learn more about the art of online fundraising. Let’s not encourage more online fundraising without first demanding more from sector leaders on donor privacy.

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Just the Facts, Ma’am?

Fundraising copywriters reflexively reach for adjectives when describing situations. (I know I’m one of them). We sprinkle words like “brutal,” “wonderful,” “terrible,” and “exciting” all over our copy; all of them opinions. Because, after all, a “great program” is better than just a “program,” and a “devastating food shortage” is better than a plain old shortage.
Right?
Not quite, any more.
In our current state of information overload, people have developed finely tuned BS-meters. These people (including you, since you’re reading a blog) are learning to tune out unprovable, opinion-based statements.  Instead, they prefer verifiable, fact-based statements.
“More than 300,000 people have died in Darfur since the conflict began” is a fact statement. It’s either true or false. But “The genocide in Darfur is the most brutal and despicable act ever perpetrated by a modern government” is an opinion. Perhaps uncontroversial, but an opinion nonetheless.

That’s tough: Decisions to give (like all human decisions) are emotional. Facts by themselves are not persuasive, and do not motivate people to give. 
So what’s a poor fundraiser to do? It’s what separates the boys from the men (so to speak): Stick to fact-based, verifiable statements, but make them emotional.
It’s true craftsmanship, and there’s no single way to do it. But work at it. Stick to the facts. Make them drip with emotion.
That’s not to say we should drop all opinions from our fundraising. After all, you are communicating with people you share values with (I hope). Certain opinions are likely to be read as “facts,” and are still persuasive. Just go easy on them. They signal “hype” and can hurt your case.

Jeff Brooks is creative director at Merkle, a direct-response agency serving the nonprofit world.  He blogs at the Donor Power Blog.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Fundraising Fuels Social Change

Charitable fundraisers are critical to the job fixing our communities, and our communities are taking on a dramatically new look.

With non-white minorities now expected to become the majority of the U.S. population in 2042, eight years earlier than previously projected, fundraisers have an unprecedented opportunity to help transform their organizations and philanthropy.

The challenge is to engage the emerging American majority in the charitable marketplace.

According to a new report from the Census Bureau, the new majority will consist of Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander.

That new majority, which will eclipse non-Hispanic whites, will reshape the demand for services from nonprofits, as well as the pool of donors, board members and volunteers that nonprofits will need to engage to sustain themselves.

Key players in helping nonprofits tap that giving pool are professional fundraisers, whose job is to connect their organizations with givers in addressing the symptoms and causes of social problems.

Fundraising aims to engage individuals and other partners and secure their money, services, products, time and know-how in making our communities better places to live and work.

And with the U.S. population undergoing sweeping demographic change, including the growing role and influence of younger generations, fundraisers have a big job to do preparing their organizations to better serve the new majority and provide it with a compelling case for getting involved in giving.

That will require that fundraisers better understand the changing dynamics and demographics of giving.

Despite the emergence of the new majority, organized philanthropy and the nonprofit sector remain predominantly white enclaves.

But that is changing.

In North Carolina, for example, a donor-advised fund known as NCGives works with consultants as partners to build the giving capacity of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, women and young people.

Located at the North Carolina Community Foundation, and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Mich., NCGives is working to help ensure that all Americans can be effective investors in the work of healing and repairing our communities.

With their fundraising staff leading the way, nonprofits can do a lot more to engage communities of color, women and young people as staff, board members, volunteers and donors.

By more closely reflecting and connecting with the populations they serve, nonprofits can find ways to better sustain themselves for the long-term and more effectively address the problems facing their communities.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Wall Street Plunge a Wake-up Call for Charity

The financial quicksand swallowing some of Wall Street’s biggest players is a powerful reminder that nonprofits must find solid ground rooted in the basics, and that givers can dig deeper to address urgent social needs.

Instead of stressing, nonprofits should focus on strengthening their operations, stepping up their fundraising, and diversifying and cultivating their donor base, experts say.

“These situations are always a reminder of the importance of saving and preparing as a nonprofit for the lean times, whenever possible,” says Fred Stang, director of development at the Triangle Community Foundation in Durham, North Carolina.

Nonprofits “should not go into panic mode” and should “be patient and see how the financial picture falls out,” he says. “They might need to readjust fundraising projections to be more realistic, but they should not make the assumption that their donors do not have any funds available to support their mission.”

Nonprofits that previously may have taken a “fairly passive approach to their fundraising” by limiting their efforts to distributing newsletters and an annual appeal, for example, now have the opportunity to “step up” and use more active tactics like phoning donors, he says.

The slumping economy and turmoil on Wall Street will put more pressure on nonprofits that serve people who are “on the edge financially,” Stang says, with more people likely to lose their homes and jobs, and to find it harder to get loans.

“Things will most likely tighten up for a lot of their clients,” he says.

Doug Bauer, senior vice president at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York City, says that with last week’s roller-coaster ride on Wall Street, “people on both sides of the ask and give are kind of holding their breath.”

Nonprofits should have “as diversified a fundraising base as you can have,” he says. “So when you hit rocky times like this, you can navigate through it.”

And because the markets “have not performed to anybody’s liking,” he says, investment returns on endowments and donor-advised funds are down.

Individual givers, whether high-net-worth, ultra-high-net-worth or middle class, are “thinking twice about who they’re giving to and why, and probably sticking to groups close to them,” he says.

So givers likely will focus on “need-to-do giving rather than nice-to-do giving,” he says, and will “support institutions that really matter to them.”

The skidding economy, particularly in the New York metro area, is likely to reduce tax revenues, a reduction could cut into discretionary spending for nonprofits that support the social safety net, he says.

Charles Collier, senior philanthropic adviser at Harvard University and the author of Wealth in Families, says nonprofit fundraisers should “try to be a non-anxious presence when you meet with donors.”

Even if nonprofits do not plan to solicit prospective givers immediately in the increasingly grim economic climate, he says, “you can still have a cultivation visit with your best donors and that is a good thing to do.”

In the face of donors’ fears about the economy, he says, “you listen and try not to be reactive to their anxiety.”

At a visit with an older Harvard alumnus last week, for example, Collier says he “asked about and talked about his family, and in doing so got new information.”

Collier also asked about the alum’s estate plan “without asking if we were in his estate plan.”

Many prospects “will value and enjoy a conversation surrounding their family or their estate plan without having to focus on the downturn in the capital markets,” he says.

But he also says a couple he was scheduled to visit last week cancelled the meeting, most likely because “of their own anxiety about where the economy is headed.”

Stang of the Triangle Community Foundation says the economic slide represents an opportunity for givers to “step up to the plate.”

Those who are more fortunate, he says, can “realize that, though our own stock portfolios might have decreased, we still can eat, we still have shelter, we still have a job,” he says. “And that brings out the generosity in people.”

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

“Moneyball,” “Freakonomics,” & Philanthropy

Earlier this spring, The New York Times Magazine featured the fascinating article “What Makes People Give.” The article chronicles the attempts by John List and Dean Karlan, economists at Yale and the University of Chicago respectively, to understand why people give.

List and Karlan considered the usual answers—to make the world a better place, to see your name printed on the back of an annual report and the like—as too pat, too simple, and sometimes just wrong. Over the years, whenever one of them asked fundraisers why they did what they did, their responses were vague and unimpressive. There didn’t seem to be much empirical evidence to support the strategies employed by most fundraisers. So the two economists wondered whether charities were wasting a lot of effort.

When charities are designing their donor appeals, they often go by nothing more than a few rules of thumb, some of which may be profoundly insightful and others a good deal less so. “I think some fundraisers have developed terrific intuitions, passed on through the fraternity of fundraisers,” says Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif., which often works with charities. “But a lot of the intuitions don’t work. Look at how much junk mail you get.” Matching gifts were another good example. People figured that they worked, because—well, how could they not? They seem so sensible.

The story reminds me of two of my favorite books, Moneyball and Freakonomics.  Michael Lewis studied the Oakland A’s’ use of statistical analysis to drive the way they built their baseball team and played the game. In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner used economic analysis techniques to understand falling crime rates, the organizational structure of street gangs, and the inner workings of professional sumo wrestling.

What both books (and the New York Times Magazine article) use as their premise is that quantitative analysis is incredibly useful in understanding our world. Yet all three also understood that statistics do not themselves give you answers; they just help you understand your environment better so that you can more easily find the answers you are looking for. This is the promise of metrics and other quantitative measurements in philanthropy. They are not themselves the answers we seek, but they help describe the world we live in.

When used as tools to advance our understanding, metrics in philanthropy are wonderful. But when viewed as some sort magical answer that shows us the Truth, we are better off with Mark Twain as a source of insight than Moneyball or Freakonomics:

“There are three types of lies—lies, damn lies, and statistics.” - Mark Twain

Sean Stannard-Stockton is a principal and director of Tactical Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital Management. Ensemble Capital provides families both traditional investment management and philanthropic planning. He is the author of the blog Tactical Philanthropy and writes the column On Philanthropy for the Financial Times.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

2 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Nonprofits Must Gear Up For Tough Economy

Nonprofits stressing over the sinking economy and capital markets should focus on the big picture and work to make sure their finances, operations, and supporters are secure, says an expert on nonprofit finance.

“At the end of the day, the biggest risk is to the people we serve,” says Clara Miller, founder and CEO of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a New York City-based nonprofit that provides financial and advisory services to nonprofits and their funders.

Nonprofits should take a hard look at their finances to be sure their bank accounts are safe and their cash is accessible, and they also should assess their revenue streams, she says.

While the looming recession may cause giving by individual donors to dip, for example, and while causes like the arts that depend on discretionary giving could suffer a bigger decline than social-services, she says, individual giving historically has not declined as much during recessions as some nonprofits may fear.

Government funding could decline, Miller says, and while some nonprofits actually could see an increase in government support to cover rising demand for services, the reimbursement rate for the services nonprofits provide could decline.

So while a nonprofit that makes home-care visits might receive more government dollars to cover more visits, for example, it might receive fewer cents per dollar on the cost of each visit.

The expected tightening in government funding for nonprofits likely will increase the need for charitable giving to fill the gap, “and that’s a tough place to be,” Miller says.

So nonprofits should move carefully and not look for quick fixes.

“It’s important not to panic and over-diversify lines of business,” she says. “This is a time to be watchful and keep the powder dry.”

Uncertainty about the economy represents an opportunity for nonprofits to “reach out and communicate with the board, staff, and funders,” Miller says. “That will make everybody feel better. Information is important.”

Nonprofits “do have a tendency to grit their teeth and make it through bad times,” she says. “That’s a strength. But it can be a weakness if in fact it’s so bad that we need to be talking to one another and making contingency plans.”

And in working with foundations, which often make grants based on a “two-year rolling average” and “often, especially in bad times, maintain their giving levels,” she says, “conversation is very important, reaching out is very important.”

Still, nonprofits should recognize that “foundations are not going to fill the breach lost by government cutbacks,” she says.

“If you get most of your revenue from fundraising from government sources, it’s unrealistic to expect philanthropy to replace those funds,” she says. “If government is looking at very bad economic times and cutbacks in direct services, that’s where we are going to feel some pain.”

And instead of working on strategic plans for the long-term, nonprofits should focus on contingency planning that looks at specific financial scenarios, Miller says.

Ultimately, surviving and thriving in tough economic times requires leadership, she says.

“We want to be here for people who need us, so part of what we’re trying to do is live to fight another day,” she says. “This is about making sure we preserve our programs and services for the people who absolutely need them.”

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Fundraising Focus Critical During Slump

With the economy tanking and its impact on charitable giving uncertain, nonprofits should stay calm, stay focused, and keep a long-term perspective.

Two new reports suggest Americans keep giving even in tough times, and nonprofits should gear for tough times by tuning up their fundraising fundamentals.

“When the economy shows stress, whether it is a recession or not, giving may grow more slowly,” says a new report by the Giving USA Foundation that looks at historic trends in giving during recessions and economic slowdowns. “It is important to note that giving still grows.”

A separate study for the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy that looks at historical data on economic cycles and charitable giving says total philanthropic giving during the past four decades grew at double the growth rate of gross domestic product, accelerating since 1996.

But the weak economy and political uncertainty could be a short-term drag on charitable giving, and while tax increases could reduce the cost of giving, they also could slow down wealth creation, the study says.

In its report, the Giving USA Foundation says the most important step nonprofits can take to raise funds during a recession or downturn is “to ask people for contributions in a clear and focused manner.”

Key steps to successful nonprofit fundraising, the report says, include:

• Working closely with the board “to make sure each board member is a current donor and an advocate for the organization’s vision and purpose.”
• Developing and following a “fundraising, communications, and stewardship plan” that will make it easier to stay focused, maintain momentum, and “say no to good ideas that could divert resources unproductively.”
• Focusing on efforts to renew gifts from current donors. “Take no donor for granted,” the report says. “Thank donors, recognize their contributions and let them know of the accomplishments they have made possible.”
• Maximizing the use of all fundraising tactics available, including thank-you calls by volunteers; online giving options; information about planned giving sent to loyal, long-term donors; and effective use of public relations and media relations.

The study for the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy says nonprofit hospitals and health-care systems enjoyed high growth rates since the mid-1960s because of greater professionalism in their fundraising practices.

So a key to effective fundraising in today’s tough economy, the study says, is “continued attentiveness to building the trust of established individual, corporate and foundation donors in the value and openness of our efforts.”

By putting their fundraising fundamentals in order, nonprofits can gear themselves to effectively address critical social needs that only will grow as the economic storm rises.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

1 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Nonprofits Need Generation Y Leadership in an Uncertain Economy

Pick up any newspaper on your way to work in the morning, and chances are, you’ll see another financial giant brought low in the current unstable economy. Everyone in nonprofits and philanthropy is wondering what the financial sector meltdown means for us. Not only are the for-profit folks worried about their profits and their jobs, us nonprofit workers are worried about our donations and our jobs, too. Of course, no one can know for sure what the outcome of all this will be. The landscape changes day by day and we could be in a very different place three months from now. But one thing is clear. Things in the game done changed.

What the economic crisis is showing the nonprofit sector is that we can no longer rely on corporate social responsibility, ongoing government funding, or stable donations from even our most loyal donors. In two recent discussion groups of fundraisers in Washington, D.C. about 20 of us shared very timely information about declining revenues, hard to sell event tickets, and foundation rejection letters. Although the nonprofit community has gone through challenging times before—think post 9/11, the dot-com bust, various recessions, etc. most of us are saying that we’ve never seen this before. It’s as if all of our supports are crumbling before our eyes all at once. It’s a fundraiser’s nightmare, I can tell you from my own current experience.

So what kind of leadership is needed for these challenging times? Everyone’s trying to find the fix that fits. And it’s clear that the old top-down hierarchy isn’t the best model for what needs to happen in organizations today. When we just don’t have time to come up with another 5-year strategic plan to survive in this economy, how do we generate new ideas to address issues head on? Yet, in all this uncertainty, the nonprofit sector does have a silver bullet: the energy and talents of the next generation of leaders in our organizations. Allison Jones recently wrote a great post about how nonprofits and Generation Y can benefit from a bad economy, and I do think it is this kind of optimism that will get us through the tough times nonprofits will undoubtedly face in our fundraising, program planning, and staffing. Samuel Richard, another awesome Generation Y blogger, writes a fantastic open letter to nonprofit leaders, urging us to flip the script and use this time to showcase the incredible impact we have in our communities.

Because right now is an opportunity for young nonprofit professionals to bring fresh, innovative ideas for how we do the work of social change. As a sector faced with a myriad of uncertainty, our old solutions will absolutely not work. But don’t take my word for it; Albert Einstein tells it like it is (and always will be):

“We cannot solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

In my mind, there’s a very clear match here: a nonprofit sector in need of solutions in an uncertain economy and a cadre of young professionals eager to contribute in a meaningful way. Nonprofit CEOs are thinking: How do we fundraise differently? How do we engage volunteers more effectively? How can we cut organizational costs? How do we maintain the quality of our programming? These questions fill the whiteboards of so many nonprofit conference rooms even as I write this. And Generation Y is asking, how can I use my talent to help, to make a real difference in this organization, in this community? Current leaders have the perfect resource sitting right next to them and this is the perfect time to tap into the minds of young employees. This is indeed the perfect time to mine the knowledge from the next generation that can be much more useful and effective than ideas generated in a closed board meeting involving only senior management. But let’s get a little more specific here. Generation Y brings the very skills we need in these uncertain times:

• Advanced education: More Generation Y nonprofit workers have completed Master’s degrees and MBAs, learning the latest information available about the management needs of nonprofits. We really should be tapping into that more. Why put “Masters preferred” in our job descriptions if we aren’t really going to use their knowledge?
• A spirit of collaboration: More and more, young professionals realize that the huge social issues our nonprofits are trying to solve cannot be addressed by a single organization. Younger staffs working for nonprofits tend to be more willing to collaborate on projects, and naturally see the value of sharing information as part of the way we do the work. As big funding dries up, nonprofits will need to partner more to get the work done.
• Mastery of social media and new technology: Current leaders need not fear that they must learn all about Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. Let your younger employees take off with it and get the glory for your organization. We’re always thinking of ways to use social media to get more donations, more volunteers, more press attracted to our nonprofits. Why not let those ideas flourish?

While I certainly concede that the nonprofit sector is going to see challenging times ahead, I can also see so many ways that we can get through the bad economy even stronger on the other side if we only recognize the enormous opportunity for current leaders to partner with the next generation to come up with innovative solutions. It will take all of us to shift our mindsets, but it can be done. After all, most of us are starting the see the writing on the wall: the nonprofit sector needs to change or die. For now, I’m raising my fist in hopeful solidarity with my fellow Generation Y leaders like Allison Jones and Samuel Richard that we can use the resources we have to make the best of a bad situation.

Rosetta Thurman is an emerging nonprofit leader of color working and living in the Washington, D.C. area.  She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofit leadership and management issues at Perspectives From the Pipeline.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Warren Buffet’s Fundraising Advice

I don’t care much for rich dumb guys like the geniuses on Wall Street who got us into this current economic mess—and seem determined to keep us there. 

But I do pay attention to what rich smart guys have to say. Like Warren Buffett, who is now the world’s richest person, thanks to patient, low-glitz investing. Here’s what Buffett says:

“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

He’s talking about investing, not fundraising. But it’s something we all could take to heart.

The sloppy, fear-driven fundraisers who make up most of our industry are freaking out. They’re cutting budgets and crawling into their caves to wait this thing out.

There’s another way. Those fear-based cuts mean a less crowded fundraising marketplace: Less junk in the mailbox. It also means printers and mailshops, facing less business, are more willing than ever to cut us deals.

Better yet, treating donors right will keep them on board. 

All told, this is a time when you can spend less to get more. Unless you’re too afraid.  Unless the challenges of a down economy are your excuse to avoid fundraising.

When this storm finally blows over and mailboxes again fill up with junk mail—when the consultants are out again in full force with their all-new miracle programs—when every yuppie who does well in the market starts his or her own nonprofit ... that’s when you should feel nervous and thinking about retrenchment. 

Most nonprofits face pain in the coming months. But if you follow Warren Buffett’s advice, you’ll emerge faster, and in far better shape, than if you follow the freaked-out herd.

Jeff Brooks is creative director at Merkle|Domain, a direct-response agency serving the nonprofit world.  He blogs at the Donor Power Blog.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

1 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Foundations Can Provide a Giving Stimulus

Foundations can help nonprofits fundraise at this end-of-the-year giving season by providing a stimulus for giving. Take a page from the Columbus Community Foundation, which today announced a giving stimulus plan created to match gifts to local nonprofits. The foundation aims to “raise $1 million in 48 hours.” More details here.

At a time when individuals and families are feeling the pinch or hesitating with “let’s see how things are at the end of the year,” knowing that their donations will be matched can be a powerful incentive for them to give today.

Do you know about any other stimulus initiatives? Please share them with us. Post below. We need these creative ideas to boost giving during this time, when nonprofits are asked to provide more services than before. 

Perla Ni, founder and former publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, is the founder and CEO of GreatNonprofits. She is also a co-founder of Grassroots.com.

Posted by Perla_Ni

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

The Secret Sauce

Both Barack Obama and John McCain used the Internet to reach voters this election—but Obama mastered the medium early “and exploited it to the hilt,” says Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and co-founder of TechPresident.com. There’s no question: Election 2008 will go down in the books as the first nationwide political contest for social capital.

In an interview today with Cause Global, Rasiej credits Team Obama’s “culture of belief in the Internet” for building a movement for change among ordinary citizens energized via social media into a community of engaged, viral marketers for Obama’s campaign. The Web strategy, says Rasiej, was critical in helping the Illinois senator win the White House. (Indeed, an analysis of the vote today by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press says that without a doubt, “the overwhelming backing of younger voters was a critical factor in Obama’s victory.” Obama drew two-thirds—or 66 percent—of the vote among those younger than age 30, Pew reports. In addition, Trendrr, an online statistics mashup tool, shows Obama had a clear lead in using social media to connect to his audience, as well as an overall lead in winning the attention of the blogosphere as a whole. On social networks, Trendrr says, Obama held a big lead over McCain, with 844,927 MySpace friends compared with McCain’s 219,404. Between November 3rd and 4th (election day) alone, Obama gained more than 10,000 new friends, while McCain only gained about 964. On Twitter, says ReadWriteWeb, Obama gained 2,865 new followers between November 3rd and 4th, for a total of 118,107, while John McCain’s Twitter account only had 4,942 followers in total.)

Team Obama also saw an opportunity in exploiting the flagging credibility of mainstream media—again chiefly among younger voters. “[Obama’s team] leap-frogged the mainstream media by producing content that they knew would get distributed for them [via social media] once it was uploaded,” Rasiej said. Especially in the final days before November 4th, Obama’s campaign sent daily emails and text messages directly to supporters, urging them to vote with friends, participate in phone drives, and volunteer at campaign events—even offering up a contest in which last-minute donors could be selected to attend Obama’s election-night party in Chicago. Says Rasiej:

“Going forward, social capital will become increasingly more valuable than fundraising dollars…The political power of the future will be a question of how robust and engaged a political entity’s [social] network will be”—not just how much money a candidate has in the bank or how many friends he/she has in Congress.”

A key lesson for cause activists everywhere from the election? Says Rasiej: “What we’re really seeing here is the reaction of a new network publicsphere—or, you could argue, a whole new political media ecology, a generational shift that’s empowering an entirely new human experience of participatory, civic engagement. It’s taking our former notions of civic engagement and redefining it as something continuously very relevant to people’s lives.”

For more on the lessons for nonprofits in Election 2008, check out Tom Watson’s post today at onPhilanthropy.com, where he is a consultant and writer. Watson is also the author of the forthcoming Cause Wired, a book about the use of social media in advocacy.

Writes Watson: “While there is a temptation among those who track causes and online fundraising to separate political organizing from philanthropy, I think that’s a mistake—it’s wishing for a division that the audience simply won’t tolerate going forward. It’s like hoping that a print classified operation will continue to grow during the age of Craigslist. Young people don’t separate their causes into neat little boxes labeled politics and charity. They simply respond to what moves them, what their friends recommend, what they believe might change the world.

“...It’s no accident that my nonprofit clients are asking about Web sites like Barack Obama’s. The [old] order is rapidly fading.”

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Asking and Giving Critical in Tough Times

To cope with the sinking and uncertain economy, nonprofits should keep asking givers for charitable support, and givers should keep giving.

Nonprofits also should promote planned giving, which includes gifts that are complex or deferred or involve assets other than cash, such as stock or real estate.

And they should take the time to retool the way they ask for support, moving beyond a dry recitation of facts and figures about their organizations to telling compelling stories that capture the passion and importance of their work and its impact on the people they serve.

That is the view of Eileen Heisman, CEO of the National Philanthropic Trust, a $725 million-asset public charity based in the Philadelphia area that has raised more than $1.3 billion in charitable assets since it was formed in 1996 and granted over $715 million to more than 25,000 nonprofits.

Despite the “worldwide shattering of our financial system,” Heisman says, she is cautiously optimistic about charitable giving.

“Americans are generally philanthropic, but I think Americans feel poorer,” she says. “But I’m hoping the ultra-ultra wealthy will continue to give at the pace they’ve been giving, although that’s a small percentage of people.”

Research shows that 90 percent of individuals with a net worth of $1 million or more give to charity on an annual basis, she says.

But modest givers “may have a tough year” because “building confidence back in the marketplace will be really tough,” she says. “I don’t think we’ll have the pace of the past three years.”

Still, while “you can’t keep your head in the sand,” she says, “I’m very much an optimist.”

Her advice to nonprofits is to keep working to generate contributions.

“You cannot stop asking,” she says. “There are going to be loyal donors who continue to give. People still get their paychecks. A lot of annual giving comes out of paychecks.”

She also encourages wealthy givers who have commitments to nonprofits not to retrench.

“Even though your investment accounts may have shrunk, you can give from annual income,” she says. “Charities depend on your gifts.”

Yet many charities do a poor job “making their case” for support, she says.

“They state too many bare statistics and don’t talk about the impact” they have, she says. “If there’s any time to retool and look at your case statement and your direct-mail pieces, now’s the time.”

Donors will continue to give, she says, if nonprofits have “made a compelling case and it’s passionate and important. The best case statement is storytelling.”

The stories nonprofit tell should be about the people they serve and “getting people involved,” she says.

Citing the advice of fundraising consultant Mal Warwick, she says a fundraising letter “has to create a personal relationship with the reader about the personal impact” of the charity’s work in fulfilling its mission.

Heisman also encourages nonprofits to continually promote planned giving.

While it can take years after a donor sets up a planned gift for a nonprofit to receive it, marketing those gifts, such as simple bequests set up through wills, can provide “wonderful surprises” and an ongoing income stream, she says.

“It’s really important to keep that in the pipeline,” she says. “That’s all about making the case as well.”

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of
Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Breaking the News

A piece in The New York Times last week, on the front page, caught my eye. It was yet another reminder of the lessons in the current recession—and the grand opportunity for nonprofits (or for any cause, for that matter) to tell their own stories to the world using social media. Truth is, given the trends in the journalism business, telling your own story seems to keep getting easier.

I’m referring specifically to the piece that ran last Tuesday by Richard Perez-Pena, datelined San Diego, called “Web Sites That Dig for News Rise as Community Watchdogs.”

Increasingly, information and its consumption is becoming a nonprofit activity, more like public broadcasting than anything else.

Perez-Pena’s piece focused on Voice of San Diego.org which does original reporting at close to half the costs of what it probably would cost offline. Similar nonprofit Web operations have cropped up in other cities, including Chicago and Seattle; earlier this year, news nonprofits without a specific geographic focus—ProPublica, devoted to investigative journalism-for-hire—also became part of the new landscape of journalism that’s filling the void left by the near-collapse of the newspaper industry. In fact, 501c3 or privately funded news operations have become so numerous in the past year, that some of the people running them say they plan to form an association to fight collectively for future funding.

The question, then, is can this trend last long enough to grow to critical mass? Is this truly the future of journalism—a form of citizen-led advocacy, in its own right? The topic has been hotly contested for years, of course—but there seems no doubt, especially this week, that the trend toward nonprofit news is accelerating.

Spot.us, a new platform for community-funded journalism, officially launched this week. It will give the public a way to commission journalists “to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories” and its open-source platform promises to build a template that can be used by others. Stanford’s own John S. Knight Fellowship program, meanwhile, also just announced this week that it is revamping its vaunted program for mid-career journalists, to focus more on creating innovation in the use of social media to help ease and insure the continued proliferation of good, independent journalism, on and off-line. (Also this past week, the Knight Foundation launched a new community site called Knight Pulse, a place for discussing the future of information.)

Buzz Woolley, a San Diego businessman quoted in the Times piece, says that “information should be thought of now in the same way as education and public health. It’s one of the things you need to operate a civil society and the [current] market isn’t doing it very well.”

Bottom line? More people than ever are bound to be competing for nonprofit dollars in the coming year. Filing for that grant based on that part of your mission that seeks to “educate the public” will be tougher, no doubt, to win. The good news? There’s never been more ways to get your own story covered, nor as many people looking for work who can help. And that’s not all: thanks to inexpensive video cameras, Webcams, digital video cameras, and still cameras, it’s never been easier (nor cheaper) to make your own video and get it distributed online.

Remember that old saying, a picture tells a thousand words? This giving season may have already gone bust, but it’s never to soon to start engaging your supporters in the story of their lives.

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Recession Is Prime Time for Giving Sector

Times are tough and getting tougher, and the giving sector needs to step up and lead.

Even in good times, nonprofits are overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, always scrounging for support, and always under pressure from givers and funders to build their operating capacity and show their impact.

Now, instead of fearing the worst from the sinking economy and capital markets and hiding its collective head in the sand, the giving sector must dig deeper to better cope with urgent social needs that will only get worse.

Nonprofits should be laser-focused on serving their clients, streamlining their operations, minimizing their risk, sharpening their message, and understanding and engaging their donors, funders, and partners.

Using passion, metrics and compelling stories, nonprofits must make crystal clear the needs they address and the impact they have, helping charitable foundations, corporate giving programs, and individual givers see the need to give more.

And givers and giving organizations need to pay closer attention to the real operating needs of nonprofits and the rising demand they face for services.

In short, the giving sector needs to return to its roots, focusing on the nuts and bolts of serving clients well, running smart shops, and securing the right resources.

Coping tools for nonprofits in the recession will be the focus on an online webinar Dec. 9 sponsored by the Philanthropy Journal and featuring a panel of national experts, including Eileen Heisman, president and CEO at the National Philanthropic Trust; Doug Bauer, senior vice president at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors; and Jennifer Pryce, director of advocacy at the Nonprofit Finance Fund.

The panel will examine how nonprofits can build their organizational capacity, minimize their risk, make contingency plans, approach givers and grantmakers, build awareness about their cause and their needs, and make their fundraising case.

In tough times, the challenge for the giving sector is to be the best it can be, with nonprofits and givers alike looking for ways to dig deeper and work smarter to help make our communities better places to live and work.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

1 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Everybody’s Got an Idea for the Transition Except for Me and My Monkey

Every day brings another idea for the new administration—today, a group of ex-secretaries of state and defense suggested creating an office against genocide in the White House, certainly a creditable idea but not necessarily more entitled to immediate attention than the notion that President Obama should endorse the use of Esperanto. Still, rather than be left out of this season’s most fashionable parlor game, the Nonprofiteer offers her version of How Everything Would Be Much Better If People Would Only Run the Government My Way.

Here’s the idea:

This country’s most important work is done by amateurs—which is another way of saying that we have nonprofits, governed by volunteers, provide most of our social services, education, arts, and health care. If we’re going to continue to do this (and there are good social-capital reasons why we should), let’s give those amateurs the same tools the Small Business Administration gives entrepreneurs, namely expert advice and access to money.

Creating a “nonprofit business administration” would be a very low-cost way to capitalize on the spirit of service and volunteerism the President-elect created through his campaign and evokes repeatedly in his speeches. Volunteer effort is too valuable a resource to be wasted, as it is every time a nonprofit board has to reinvent the fundraising wheel. And the work of charities is too important to be stymied by a financial system which won’t give them access to working capital unless they beg for it—and sometimes not even then.

The Aspen Institute, a leading think tank on issues related to charity, recommended creating such an agency back in June, an idea which the Nonprofiteer dutifully reported as though she hadn’t had it herself in 1992.

Kelly Kleiman, who blogs as The Nonprofiteer, is a lawyer and freelance journalist whose reportage and essays about the arts, philanthropy and women’s issues have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and other dailies; in magazines including In These Times and Chicago Philanthropy; and on websites including Aislesay.com and Artscope.net.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

2 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments