See What’s Out There

The New York Times Magazine on Sunday was all about philanthropy.

Here’s what you need to read:

What Makes People Give?

This article is really about how some social scientists, economist types are looking at why people give. It turns out that much of what fundraisers think they know is right, but there is a lot of subtlety. The main example in the article is about matching programs. The research suggests matches lead to more giving, but the type of match — whether 1x or 2x or 3x the gift — had no impact at all. The article looks at the psychology of giving.

Some highlights:

For a long time, philanthropy was mostly ignored by social scientists. It’s not an especially large part of the economy, and most charities operate on a shoestring, without the resources to finance research projects. But this is starting to change. Americans gave $295 billion to charity in 2006, equal to 2.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, up from about 1.8 percent from the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Most philanthropy still comes in the form of small gifts, but there is also a growing group of donors, like Bill and Melinda Gates, who are interested in bringing some of the quantitative rigor of big business to philanthropy.

Academics, for their part, have come to realize that charities provide an excellent laboratory for studying human behavior, in part because so many of them are desperate for the kind of free-of-charge consulting Karlan was offering. 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 fund-raisers have developed terrific intuitions, passed on through the fraternity of fund-raisers,” 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. …

…Last year, Princeton University held a conference at which List, Croson, Andreoni and others who study charitable giving got together with fund-raisers from Africare, the National MS Society and elsewhere. I spoke with three people who listened to the academics present their work, and all said they found it invigorating. “We all have different strategies and takes on how to reach out to potential donors,” said Nicole Eley of Africare, which sends development and relief aid to Africa. “Many of them work, some don’t — it’s a trial-and-error process.” It’s easy to imagine that the academic research may eventually serve as the building blocks for a unified theory of how to raise money.

The Celebrity Solution

This article is about celebrity involvement in philanthropy and specifically looks at Natalie Portman, someone who has become the spokesperson for the growing field of micro-lending.

Some highlights:

In 2004, Natalie Portman, then a 22-year-old fresh from college, went to Capitol Hill to talk to Congress on behalf of the Foundation for International Community Assistance, or Finca, a microfinance organization for which she served as “ambassador.” She found herself wondering what she was doing there, but her colleagues assured her: “We got the meetings because of you.” For lawmakers, Natalie Portman was not simply a young woman — she was the beautiful Padmé from “Star Wars.” “And I was like, ‘That seems totally nuts to me,’ ” Portman told me recently. It’s the way it works, I guess. I’m not particularly proud that in our country I can get a meeting with a representative more easily than the head of a nonprofit can.”

Well, who is? But it is the way it works. Stars — movie stars, rock stars, sports stars — exercise a ludicrous influence over the public consciousness. Many are happy to exploit that power; others are wrecked by it. In recent years, stars have learned that their intense presentness in people’s daily lives and their access to the uppermost realms of politics, business and the media offer them a peculiar kind of moral position, should they care to use it. And many of those with the most leverage — Bono and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and George Clooney and, yes, Natalie Portman — have increasingly chosen to mount that pedestal. Hollywood celebrities have become central players on deeply political issues like development aid, refugees and government-sponsored violence in Darfur.

For Good, Measure

This article is about how foundations have found Jesus in metrics.

Some highlights:

The question that troubles many of the newest philanthropists, though, is whether their bequests will have a notable impact. Much of their money either goes into or comes out of private foundations, those largely opaque institutions with huge endowments that, in the jargon-rich environment of philanthropy, differ from charities like the Red Cross in their tendency to engage in long-term “strategic grant-making.” Such foundations do not exist to give emergency aid during crises arising from war or natural disaster; instead, their purpose is to attack social and scientific problems at the root, a process that sometimes requires substantial allocations of grant money over 5, 10 or even 20 years. That’s a long time to wait before you know whether your money is doing any good. As Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation since 2005, puts it: “Critics have talked about the field of philanthropy and said: ‘Has it really made a difference. And how would you know?’ ” To Rodin, these are perfectly legitimate questions, even when they’re posed indiscreetly by business titans who only recently entered the genteel world of charity. “If we really want to do work that makes a difference, work that has some effect, then we have to know whether it is working,” she told me recently. “And if you really do it well, you don’t only want to know what works; you want to know how it works.”

Faces of Social Entrepreneurship

You can learn about and see some social entrepreneurs.

Michael Gainer started Buffalo ReUse to creatively salvage materials from the 10,000 abandoned houses the city is demolishing over the next 10 years.

Other Articles worth reading include:

Self-Made Philanthropists

This is a profile of Herb and Marion Sandler

How Many Billionaires Does It Take To Fix A School System?

“Last month, The New York Times Magazine invited five interested parties to lunch to discuss the new world of educational philanthropy. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.”

At the Communications Network conference in Miami I am right now listening to Victor d’Allant from the Skoll Foundation’s Social Edge community. He is showing video and talking about how, for them, it is all about stories. They invite people to tell them stories in something they call X-Interviews. “Just a white wall, cheap video camera, tripod and a blue tooth microphone for good sound.”

They are uploading their videos on other communities and places like iTunes. Don’t expect everyone to know who you are or that they know what you do. Go and find people online in other places.

Here’s the video he showed. He stopped it right at the good part — and said if you want to see the rest you have to go to Social Edge. “I need traffic,” he said. (Of course, with YouTube, I embedded this right here, without going to Social Edge. That’s the promise and power of portable media — you don’t have to be the convener of all the audiences for your stuff.)

I recently wrote about matching fundraising campaigns where one donor agrees to match the contributions of a set of additional donors, up to a certain amount. A twist on this is a kind of contest with a big payoff for the organization at the end.

An example of that from a few months back was when Beth Kanter orchestrated winning Yahoo! and Network For Good’s charity badge fundraising competition on behalf of the Sharing Foundation. To the tune of $100,000.

The Ploughshares Fund has launched a similar contest with a twist. For the Yahoo!/Network for Good contest the winner was the one who raised the most money using a charity badge (a kind of simple widget) distributed on sites across the net.

The Ploughshares Fund has launched something called the Peace Primary. It is a kind of online popularity contest/election. But you can’t just vote. You have to pay $1 per vote (minimum 10) and those dollars go to the organization. So its a combination contest/fundraiser. Nice!

Here’s their FAQ. Go to the Peace Primary to vote.

Frequently Asked Questions:

How many groups can I vote for?

You can vote for as many organizations as you like. In fact, voting for multiple groups is strongly encouraged.

How many times can I vote?

Each vote costs $1. For each group you select, there is a 10-vote minimum and a 1,000 vote maximum.

Where does the money go?

Every dollar you contribute with each vote goes directly to the group you are voting for. All donations are completely tax-deductible.

I don’t know if I like the idea of money for votes.

Neither do we in actual elections, but in the Peace Primary nobody loses — every dollar raised goes directly to the the participating groups to support their efforts to raise the profile of peace issues in the coming months. There are also strict spending limits in the Peace Primary — no more than $1,000 per voter per group — to maximize every group’s chances of winning. And, unlike real-world elections, voters are allowed and even encouraged to vote for as many groups as they want.

When can I vote?

You can vote any time between September 1 and October 31, 2007.

How will the winner be chosen?

The group that receives the most votes will receive a one-time grant of $100,000 from the Ploughshares Fund, a public grantmaking foundation that supports the smartest people with the best ideas for preventing the spread and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and identifying new ways to prevent armed conflict.

How were the participating groups chosen?

The Ploughshares Fund submitted a list of organizations to an all-star panel of leaders (see above) from across the peace and security community, and that panel voted for the 12 finalists. The panel was chaired by actor Martin Sheen and also included writer, commentator and religious scholar Reza Aslan, a member of Ploughshares Fund’s Board of Directors; the Reverend Dr. Joan Brown Campbell of the Chautauqua Institute; Bonnie Jenkins, program officer at the Ford Foundation; former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey (R-CA); author Jonathan Schell; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor-in-chief of The Nation, and Ploughshares Fund Executive Director Naila Bolus.

What criteria were used to nominate the groups?

We looked for organizations that represent a wide range of approaches to peace and human security; that have a commitment to action and policy advocacy; that have a base of grassroots support and a national or broad regional constituency; that have the capacity for online communication and outreach to constituents; and that have a record of making an impact.

Bill Clinton is busy these days trying to get back into the White House. But when I saw him speak early this summer at an evening in support of the American Jewish World Service, it was not politics on his mind. Bill Clinton — whatever you think of him — is doing great things for Africa, against HIV/AIDS, on obesity and nutrition, and helping poor communities generally.

He is doing this work in the context of the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. The Foundation is what it sounds like. The Clinton Global Initiative is a way to get business, NGO and government leaders together and get them to make some promises. For example, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group committed $3 billion to renewable energy projects over the next 10 years.

Clinton knows very well the impact of stories. He knows that to really move people to action, you have to take big scary issues, like HIV/AIDS or health care or malaria, and make it personal. He has always done this well and this is a big part of why he was so persuasive in public office and is so persuasive now with business and government officials around the world.

So I wasn’t surprised to see that Clinton is coming out with a new book. It is called Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.

Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve included one picture that says it all. It captures the beautiful face and bright eyes of a Cambodian orphan born with HIV. Basil was ten months old when this photo was taken. His mother died when he was only one month old, and her doctor arranged for him to be taken in by New Hope for Cambodian Children, an organization that cares for HIV-positive orphans and other vulnerable children. When Basil arrived at the home, he was six weeks of age and had both HIV and tuberculosis. His doctor, a Clinton Foundation fellow, treated him for both conditions, giving Basil lifesaving pediatric AIDS medication through my foundation’s partnership with UNITAID, which funds our efforts to treat children across the globe. Basil responded well to the treatment, gained weight, and, as you can see, is now healthy. He has a chance. That’s often all one person can give another. But it can make all the difference.

As my long time readers know I am very interested in the issue of corporate social responsibility as well as what Muhammad Yunis calls social enterprises, which are profitable companies that exist for the purpose of doing good. Two interesting articles in the Friday Times. One is about how Norway, with more than $300 billion in oil wealth, has decided to put a social filter on their investment decisions. This is a lot of money and it’s not making Wal-Mart or the American government happy, because of who is on their list.

The second article was about the Robin Hood benefit. If you don’t know the Robin Hood Foundation, they have a great message, ending poverty in NYC. That’s it. What they also have are hedge fund managers as supporters, among others. And so while American Idol raised $60 million by beating all of America over the head on national television, Robin Hood raised $71 million in a few hours with a bunch of very wealthy people. This event comes on the heals of the annual release of info about what these hedge fund guys make. I think I read that right… the top 25 hedge fund managers make $14 billion this past year. So yeah, it’s nice to give $71 million… but let’s keep it in perspective.

At See3 we create compelling media content for organizations to tell their stories. We create original video, we repurpose existing material and we help build organizational capacity so that nonprofits can integrate a culture of documentation and media development into their daily business.

But we don’t work in a vacuum. The priority of organizations is to advance their mission and to have enough resources to survive and thrive. So we frame our work in terms of its impact on program and on fundraising. The link is not always direct and so we have been thinking and collaborating on how to make donor programs more integrated with video and digital storytelling. How can organizations best maximize their use of compelling narratives to have a direct impact on their fundraising?

We just moved this initiative forward in a big way with our formal partnering with Norman Rosenberg. Norman is one of Washington’s most respected nonprofit professionals. With 30 years of experience leading major public interest organizations, Norman knows every aspect of nonprofit management. Now a consultant, his focus is unique in that he is not shying away from directly addressing major gifts programs and helping organizations build fundraising capacity. He knows what he is talking about, having raised hundreds of millions dollars from high-net-worth individuals and family foundations over his career.

I recently interviewed Norman about his work and his thoughts on collaborating with See3. Here’s the first in a series.

If you happen to be at the Council on Foundations conference in Seattle this week, come see us on the trade show floor. We are sharing a booth with DISH Network and Starfish Television Network. We will be announcing more on our relationship with those folks in the next month or so.