Vol. 6, Issue 49
   November 28, 2000

President Announces New Philanthropic Initiatives

The president introduced the report, which found that giving has increased from 1.7 percent of GDP in 1995 to 2.1 percent in 1999, as one of a group of charity-focused projects that emerged from last year's White House Conference on Philanthropy. The report also found that Americans over the age of 65 are 25 percent more likely to give to charity than other Americans, and that they give as much as $600 more on average. (To read and/or download a copy of the full report, visit: http://www.whitehouse.gov/media/pdf/philanthropy.pdf.)

Pointing to a new Cone/Roper Raising Charitable Children survey showing that Americans strongly support teaching young people about charitable giving, the president also announced a $2 million Youth Giving Project to engage young people in philanthropic activities. Privately funded by a group of foundations, the project will offer opportunites for youth of all backgrounds to help support charitable causes in their communities and will provide guidance to nonprofits seeking to involve young people in their activities.

The president also announced the imminent release of a report from the President's Interagency Task Force on Nonprofits and Government that will provide a "road map" for creating innovative partnerships between nonprofit organizations and federal agencies.

"Radio Address By the President to the Nation: November 25, 2000." White House Office of the Press Secretary 11/25/2000.

"White House Fact Sheet on President Clinton's Radio Address to the Nation: Building a Stronger Civil Society." U.S. Newswire 11/25/2000.

Holland, Jesse J. "Clinton Cheers America's Charity." Associated Press 11/25/2000.

"Clinton Urges Youth to Volunteer, Support Charities." Reuters 11/25/2000.

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Survey Finds Strong Public Support for Youth Philanthropy

According to the 2000 Cone/Roper Raising Charitable Children Survey, an overwhelming majority of Americans (85 percent) agree that children should be introduced to charitable activities by the age of thirteen, and an even larger share (94 percent) feel that parents should play a key role in getting children involved. Yet almost three out of four (70 percent) parents admit their children are not involved in such activities.

According to the report, parental activity is a key factor in encouraging youth philanthropy: those parents who volunteer time and give money to charities are more likely to say their children are active in charitable activities. Leading factors preventing adults from participating in charitable activities and, by extension, from encouraging their children to get involved include skepticism that their donations will be put to good use, lack of time, and insufficient discretionary income.

"It is clear that there is a gap between what parents want for their children and for society and what they can deliver," said Cone, Inc. CEO Carol L. Cone. "Due to the time and financial constraints of most Americans today, a collaborative effort among a cross section of sectors will be critical to train and truly cultivate the next generation of philanthropists."

"Americans Want Children Involved With Charities, But Parents Are Struggling To Make It A Reality." Business Wire 11/25/2000.

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Rappaport Foundation Gives $3.5 Million for Public Service Programs

The new Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, to be housed at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, will work to open up city and state government to the region's top civic-minded scholars. The institute will support 10 students and provide yearlong fellowships of $15,000 to six graduates of Boston-area graduate programs.

"Universities have not mobilized and motivated people on the local level," commented Boston-based real estate developer Jerome Rappaport. "They have more people worried about Russia than about here."

The Rappaport Foundation also announced a $785,000 grant to support 12 public service fellowships for law students at Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, the New England School of Law, Northeastern University, and Suffolk University. The program will be run by Suffolk Law School.

Healy, Patrick. "Grants Support Public Service Careers; Foundation Gift Earmarks $3.5 Million for New Institute." Boston Globe 11/27/2000.

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New York Times Examines Hidden Problems of Working Poor

"Against this backdrop, you'd think the only people we have to serve in this country are the middle class," says Fred Grandy, the president of Goodwill Industries International. "There's an attitude that given full employment and a strong economy in most sectors, we've solved the problem of the have-nots. We haven't."

The combination of rising rents in many parts of the country with stagnanting salaries and a lack of health insurance has resulted in a new kind of needy family. While the struggle of the working poor is most apparent in areas of extreme wealth such as Silicon Valley, where a $45,000 salary can be a ticket to homelessness, human service charities across the U.S. are reporting increased demand for their services from the fully employed.

The rise of the working poor comes at a time when government cutbacks have pushed an ever-increasing share of the work of providing services for poor people onto nonprofit organizations. And while charitable donations have been up across the board in recent years, the share going to social services declined to 18.6 percent last year from 21.7 percent in 1998. Experts express serious concern over what will happen when the economy slows and donations decrease.

"[T]he cruel hoax is that churches and nonprofits are already stretched beyond even their expanded means," says Harvey Robins, assistant executive director for policy and planning at the Children's Aid Society in New York.

Lang, Anne Adams. "Behind Prosperity, Working People in Trouble." New York Times 11/20/2000. (Free registration may be required.)

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Bay State Organizations Adjust to New Economy Philanthropy

In many ways, the apparent anomaly represents the polarization, in terms of giving strategies, of new donors and their older, more traditional counterparts. While young "venture" philanthropists are often generous with their time and with gifts to their own foundations and charitable programs, their hands-on approach can leave more established charities out in the cold.

Take the Waltham Salvation Army, which has had an especially difficult time trying to raise the $75,000 it needs this holiday season to support such projects as an after-school program for children and a soup kitchen for the homeless. "We're just struggling," says the Rev. Steven Lopes. "The way we're trying to reach [donors] is not working."

George McCully, a trustee of the Boston-based Ellis L. Phillips Foundation and coordinator of the foundation's annual "Catalogue for Philanthropy," says the Salvation Army's fundraising difficulties may be symptomatic of a paradigm shift in charitable giving. "The institutions which dominated philanthropy, even the kinds of institutions that dominated philanthropy in the last half of the 20th century, are having to reconsider themselves," says McCully. "In paradigm shifts, the institutions which are identified with the old model often go under."

FCnote: The Ellis L. Phillips Foundation (MA) had assets of $7,350,550 and made grants totaling $505,115 in the year ending 06/30/99

Kong, Delores. "When the Giving is Gone: Old-Line Charities Feel Left Behind in New Economy." Boston Globe 11/24/2000.

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New Charity for Critically Ill Children Wins High-Tech Support

While creating a successful charity from scratch is a frustrating and arduous task, Fitzgerald, whose charity is devoted to providing online resources for the families of critically ill children, has made the feat appear almost easy. In addition to Brave Kids' impressive list of corporate supporters, the organization has attracted donations from Infoseek Corp. founder Steve Kirsch and e- Bay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. And recently, the starting quarterbacks of both the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders signed-on to become national spokesmen for the organization.

"Number one, she is fearless," says Brave Kids board member David Mohler of Fitzgerald. "She is very good about finding out who she needs to talk to and then getting to them." Mohler says that Fitzgerald then wins donors over with a "combination of energy and sincerity." "She is clearly on a mission," he adds.

Brave Kids' most innovative asset is its online database of medical resources. Searchable by zip code, the database can be used by parents to find listings of pediatric specialists as well as corresponding health insurance information. At the moment, the Barve Kids database provides information on 3,000 resources in the northern California region, and the organization is working on an Los Angeles directory.

FCnote: The Microsoft Charitable Trust (WA) had assets of $1,466,017 and made grants totaling $90,000 in the year ending 06/30/99.

FCnote: The Cisco Systems Foundation (CA) had assets of $65,370,504 and made grants totaling $7,675,024 in the year ending 07/31/99.

FCnote: The Sun Microsystems Foundation, Inc. (CA) had assets of $4,835,004 and made grants totaling $1,430,228 in the year ending 06/30/99.

Delevett, Peter. "Peter Delevett: Charity is a Start-Up with a Mission." San Jose Mercury News 11/20/2000.

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New Social Ventures Partners Group Launches in San Francisco

Affiliated with the San Francisco Foundation, SVP Bay is the latest regional group modeled after Social Venture Partners Seattle, which was created in 1997. Founded by young tech tycoons, three of them retired Microsoft employees, the new organization is designed to facilitate the philanthropy of New Economy donors.

Fifty people have already chipped in a minimum of $5,000 each to join SVP Bay. Lily Kanter, the former head of Microsoft retail in the western United States and a founding member of SVP Bay, says the group initially will focus on youth and education. Kanter added that she expects the first SVP Bay grants to be announced in the middle of next year.

According to Dr. Sandra Hernandez, chief executive officer of the San Francisco Foundation, groups such as SVP Bay exemplify the trend toward peer networking among philanthropists. "In the past, much of the decision-making and thinking about how to work in communities from a philanthropic point of view have been held within families," says Hernandez. "[New donors] are younger and don't have families. They are developing connections with their colleagues on how to make a difference. In that way it's very new and very representative of the New Economy in how it works."

Boudreau, John. "Several Young Silicon Valley Retirees Pool Wealth to Establish Grant Program." San Jose Mercury News 11/27/2000.

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Venture Philanthropy the Morino Way

As a former software entrepreneur, Morino's approach to funding nonprofit organizations is decidedly businesslike. Like other venture philanthropists, he stresses a hands-on approach that goes far beyond the awarding of grants.

"When you go and fund somebody, typically they say, 'All I need is money.' But often they need a lot more than money and sometimes they don't even need the money, they need management or other help — everything from training to deploying and managing technology," Morino told Worth. "You see the same situation in the nonprofit sector. People want money but they also need a lot of help."

Citing the tendency of traditional grantmakers to provide program-specific support, Morino says nonprofits often face severely limited options for growth. "...[T]he way funding mechanisms work, donors tend to fund the organizations with the lowest overhead," he points out. "By definition, then, you're almost sentencing those organizations to limited growth."

In Morino's view, funding for nonprofits should be based more on "meaningful outcomes" rather than an organization's low overhead, grantwriting skills, or media appeal. While emphasizing outcomes, however, he concedes that the work of nonprofits requires a more compassionate version of survival of the fittest than that employed in the business world. "...[I]t shouldn't be bloodthirsty," he adds.

For more on the practice of venture philanthropy, see "Does Philanthropy Need To Change?" by Jed Emerson and Paul Shoemaker, also online in Worth.com's Giving section.

Fromartz, Samuel. "Outcomes Depend on Inputs." Worth.com 11/22/2000.

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St. Louis Chapter of United Way Reports Record High African American Giving Initiative

Only six years after its inception, the St. Louis African American Leadership Giving Initiative raised $1.25 million this year, surpassing the amount raised by similar initiatives in Atlanta, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Charlotte (North Carolina), and Houston. This year's amount also represents a 24 percent increase over last year's total.

Donors to the initiative include local businessman such as Anheuser-Busch's chief communications director John Jacob as well as Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee and St. Louis Blues defenseman Bryce Salvador.

"Not only are we leading the nation in the amount of money raised, we are also leading in the number of (Alexis) de Tocqueville (Society) givers, people who gave gifts of $10,000 or more," noted initiative co-chair David Steward. "It's mind boggling."

The initiative was launched in 1994 by St. Louis publisher Donald Suggs, who wanted to encourage existing and potential black donors to give more to charitable causes. According to Rodney Jackson, president of the Center for Black Philanthropy, although the African American community has a long history of philanthropic activity, individual African Americans are often neglected during fundraising campaigns.

"One of the great things about [the St. Louis] campaign is that it speaks to the fact that African-Americans are diversifying their philanthropy to include organizations like the United Way," noted Jackson. "That is a trend that you are going to see go up as the economy stays good and income in the African-American community continues to increase."

Tucci, Linda. "Record Giving." St. Louis Business Journal 11/20/2000.

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Los Angeles Muslims Unite to Save Free Clinic

According to the Times, community leaders view the campaign's success as a sign that American Muslims, many of them immigrants, are willing to contribute to causes in the U.S. as well as overseas. The effort also helped bring together Muslims of immigrant and African American backgrounds.

"It's the start of some really positive Muslim influence in America," said American Islamic educator Sheik Hamza Yusuf of the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward.

Muslims in the Los Angeles area are also working to raise $1 million to build one of the larger Islamic worship halls in the country. According to the Times, fundraisers for the project are hoping that the start of Ramadan, with its emphasis on charitable giving, will spur gifts to the fund.

Watanabe, Teresa. "Muslims Raise $284,000 to Halt Close of Free Clinic." Los Angeles Times 11/20/2000.

Lobdell, William. "Mosque Seeks Holiday Giving." Los Angeles Times 11/28/2000.

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The Foundation Center