posted on: Friday, January 29, 2010

By Kevin Laskowski

More than $528 million have been raised for Haiti relief in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake that killed as many as 200,000 people and left 1.5 million without homes. As people texted donations, downloaded music, and contributed to relief efforts, there was no shortage of good advice and principles for giving effectively:

Give cash: Stephanie Strom of the New York Times put it succinctly, “Don’t send shoes, send money. Don’t send baby formula, send money. Don’t send old coats, send money.” MSNBC intoned, “From volunteer medical teams who show up uninvited, to stateside donors who ship boxes of unusable household goods, misdirected compassion can actually tax scarce resources, costing time, money, energy — and lives, experts say.”

Give to local groups with significant experience on the ground: For instance, like many others, GiveWell recommended Partners in Health (PIH), citing “its significant local experience and capacity in Haiti.” After all, PIH got its start serving the poorest regions in Haiti in 1987. It has been working there ever since and provides medical care to poor communities in 12 countries around the world.

Give general operating support: In his perhaps misleadingly titled piece, “Don’t give money to Haiti,” Felix Salmon argued against earmarking your donations for Haiti. He pointed out that “the Red Cross has still only spent 83% of its $3.21 billion tsunami budget — which means that it has over half a billion dollars left to spend.” That’s right: the Red Cross alone could match the combined millions that have been donated for Haitian relief right now, but it can’t use any of that money in Haiti because of donor restrictions. Flexible dollars not only help groups respond to disasters quickly but help prepare them for the next.

Give over the long-term: Under an equally contrarian headline, “Don’t Give Money To Haiti Now,” Perla Ni contended that “donors need to stagger their funding and guarantee it over many years, instead of sending the money all at once.” Donations for Haiti relief are already beginning to slow despite the fact that relief efforts will likely cost $3 billion and reconstruction will certainly take years. People want to make sure that the resources for rebuilding are there long after the Hope For Haiti Now relief album disappears from the charts.

In sum, give, and, when you do, give flexible, long-term support to local groups (or, at least, groups as close to the people you’re trying to help as possible). It’s great advice—and not just for Haiti.

In following news of this disaster and our response, the hallmark of modern foundation philanthropy—the annually renewed (maybe) project grant with its restrictions and requirements—is absolutely nowhere to be found. In its place, I find all the best advice pointing in the opposite direction, and a responsive public texting millions for a country in crisis. Certainly, that’s partly because grantmaking takes time, but I think it’s also because, on some level, we understand that if we really want impact when the stakes are high and need is great, this is what we ought to do.

I’m all for giving thoughtfully, strategically, even catalytically. However, times such as these remind me that the constraints we often put on our dollars in the name of effectiveness can be luxuries others can’t afford and we can do without. As foundations contemplate their responses to this crisis, I’m hoping they take that lesson to heart—both in this hemisphere’s poorest nation and around the world.

Kevin Laskowski is field associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

posted on: Thursday, December 03, 2009

By Kevin Laskowski

More than forty D.C.-area leaders in philanthropy gathered Tuesday to discuss the new book Change Philanthropy: Candid Stories of Foundations Maximizing Results Through Social Justice (Jossey-Bass, 2009). Authored by Alicia Korten Epstein, the book features case studies of foundations and organizations working successfully for change, bringing to life “the real challenges and exhilarations of grantmaking that seeks to address critical social issues of our day.”

Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change (CCC), opened the event to explain why the Center sought to publish the book.

“Real change always comes from expanded democracy,” he said. “Now what is the role of philanthropy in this? The challenge for us is to move beyond charity and give life to democracy.”

He noted the mounting challenges before the sector, including economic instability and inequality and climate change, joking, “Not to put too much pressure on you, but the fate of our society and planet hang in the balance.”

Marjorie Fine, Director of CCC’s Linchpin Campaign and project director for Change Philanthropy, moderated a panel discussion with Korten and representatives from two of the book’s featured philanthropies: Dave Beckwith, Executive Director of the Needmor Fund, and Christine Doby, Program Officer at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Korten outlined “Six Principles of High Impact Giving,” lessons learned from the more than 200 interviews that resulted in the book:

1. Develop a theory of change.
2. Match your goals to your resources.
3. Use all your resources.
4. Know your potential grantees.
5. Amplify grantee voices.
6. Evaluate work.

She noted how these might be principles for any grantmaker looking to be more effective. However, she said, the case studies in the book featured foundations who brought an additional “equity lens” to their work.

Beckwith related how such a lens lead the Stranahan family, the family behind the Needmor Fund, to fund community organizing and to invest in a socially responsible way.

“I’m from the Needmor Fund and we fund community organizing,” Beckwith said, tracing the development of Needmor’s grantmaking from its beginnings in 1956 through its “two nuns and a fax machine” phase to its current support of local community organizing groups.

“We’d give grants to organizations, and they were basically two nuns and a fax machine,” he said. “We’d give them a grant to raise hell.”

Several events in the 1980s pushed the Stranahans to consider the relationships—and contradictions—between their values, their investments, and their philanthropy. In one instance, The Champion Spark Plug Company, founded by the family, was building a factory in apartheid South Africa, and a shareholder resolution had been introduced to have Champion adopt the Sullivan Principles. The question was raised: how would the foundation vote its shares in the family business?

“What are our responsibilities as owners? How do we apply our values to all of our dollars?” Beckwith asked, saying that foundations need not give up their values or their expectation of return in the realm of investments. “Ninety percent of our assets are screened.”

He pointed grantmakers toward community development financial institutions (CDFIs) as an easy entry point into the world of mission-related and socially responsible investing.

Foundations carry a portion of their assets in cash for a number of reasons, Beckwith explained. Foundations can easily purchase insured certificates of deposit from CDFIs and not only secure a return but do good in communities as well.

Doby noted that her foundation’s practices were rooted in the founder’s vision of community and democracy.

“For Mott, democracy worked best when individuals were related to the community and its institutions, and when institutions were related to individuals,” Doby said.

She explained that community organizing becomes important because policymakers often already know what ought to be done but are “held captive” by other interests.

“The point is to build community voices so that policymakers have the political cover to do the right thing,” she said.

Tuesday’s event was sponsored by the Center for Community Change, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the Greater Washington Social Justice Forum, and the Hill-Snowdon Foundation.

Kevin Laskowski is a Field Associate with the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

posted on: Thursday, August 27, 2009

By Kevin Laskowski

In a previous post, I noted the announcement of a Philanthropy Policy Project and highlighted NCRP’s potential contribution to the discussion. Our Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best could provide an excellent starting point for the Project’s discussions of social inclusion, diversity, accountability, transparency, ethics, effectiveness, and more.

At the same time, I hope this Policy Project is a sign of a philanthropy more willing to change the rules—and not only those governing itself. As NCRP prepares to release its third Grantmaking for Community Impact report, I’ve been thinking about philanthropic involvement in public policy more broadly. I’d like to see this Policy Project set its sights high so that we don’t forget what all this policy is really about.

Because I’ve heard this before. The banking and investment sector created a number of fascinating financial vehicles that few understood or questioned. We called it financial innovation. We moved money around, and we called it profitable and productive. It made some people very rich.

Now our sector is fantasizing about the possibilities presented by its own new toys. These instruments are designed to facilitate a certain type of philanthropic activity, activity that’s already possible in a lot of ways, but we’re assured the tools will make philanthropy easier and more effective. Now the Policy Project proposes to contemplate the regulatory environment that will best facilitate and incentivize these capital flows. What prevents all this from turning out the same way? Nearly three years ago, Business Week was discussing the securitization of microloans. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month on the coming “bubble” in microfinance.

For all our engagement in policy, we may end up simply moving money around. The process may get a new alphanumerical designation. Intermediaries will take their cut and call it “innovation,” but that’s not change anyone believes in anymore. If philanthropists wish to dip their toes in policy discussions with real impact, there are matters that could use the Policy Project’s attention, ingenuity, and collective resources more.

If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that philanthropy is not as independent a sector as it might think. The greatest threat to philanthropic assets is not inefficient capital flows, or those who might reinterpret donor intent, or those campaigning for greater diversity on foundation boards, or a regulation-happy Congress. None of those things ever wiped out a third of our foundations’ philanthropic wealth. That took an increasingly unstable, unequal, and unsustainable world economy. Philanthropy may not seek profits or votes, but it remains at the mercy of those who do.

What policy changes would create a foundation that was, in the words of the F. B. Heron Foundation, “more than a private investment company that uses some of its excess cash flow for charitable purposes?” What policy changes would transform our sector into something more than an emergent effect of forces beyond its control? What kind of tax policy, economic policy, industrial policy, environmental policy, or health-care policy would support the stability and growth of philanthropic capital? Because these policies affect our organizations and their missions by orders of magnitude that dwarf anything that typically occupies the Taste section of the Wall Street Journal.

And philanthropy as a field is woefully unwilling to engage in these debates, ultimately to its own detriment. Our sector’s ability to weather public scrutiny hinges on how it deals with the weightiest of public concerns. What if, instead of weathering economic ups-and-downs as the inert beneficiaries of capitalist largesse, foundations stepped up as a group to influence the economic decisions being made? To make sure that, whatever changes came, they were equitable and sustainable? The public would leap to its defense should an enterprising congressperson ever seek to capitalize on scandal. As it is, even the civically engaged can’t name a foundation on their first try. And the benefits that philanthropists do create often do not trickle down to communities that may need them the most, leaving us without perhaps our best champions—the public we serve.

Are we moving toward a more prosperous, more equitable, more sustainable state of affairs, or is our greatest genius in creating “new” philanthropic instruments? A Policy Project that confined itself to narrow sector issues and the endless contemplation and reproduction of the giving tools already in use would be a recipe for irrelevance.

Bernholz says, “This is a perfect opportunity to invite nonprofit and philanthropy professionals, social entrepreneurs, social capital market makers, data wonks, think tanks and others to reimagine the regulatory and policy structures that guide and inform philanthropy.” It’s a perfect time for us all—perhaps led by philanthropy—to reimagine the regulatory and policy structures that have guided and informed our public life in general. And, thankfully, we already have a word, a true giving vehicle, for that discussion: democracy.

“What policies or regulations would improve philanthropy?” It’s a great question, but the discussion shouldn’t stop there. What policies or regulations would improve our world? And what is our field’s role in championing those changes? Philanthropists have got to start going there.

That’s not a shot on the Policy Project, just a vote for pushing the conversation through the sterile, inward-looking ground of giving vehicles and incentives to the more fertile, productive frontier of what all this philanthropic policy is for. Philanthropies can convene panels and exert collective power at the drop of a hat when it comes to things like charitable incentives or combating perceived threats to those incentives. However, when it comes to the policies that will do more to determine our shared impact and common fate than any proposed tweak to the accounting rules, we don’t have much to say, at least not together.

“What would better philanthropy look like?” For starters, better philanthropies would band together for something more than the continued comfort of their individual assets. Here’s hoping the Philanthropy Policy Project goes there.

Tell us about your own hopes for the new Philanthropy Policy Project in comments.

Kevin Laskowski is Field Associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

Proposing a Philanthropy Policy Project, Lucy Bernholz asks what better philanthropy would look like and what policies would guide it. The new placeholder blog for the project carries the tagline: can we change the rules to change the world?

A careful re-examination of the policies governing philanthropy could provide great insight into our sector and we could make great strides in encouraging effective philanthropy. In the past, NCRP has weighed in on the regulatory environment that would help improve the foundation world. NCRP applauded potential reform of the excise tax and directing that money to IRS oversight, which would remove the disincentive to higher payouts and improve enforcement.

More broadly, NCRP recently outlined what it thought exemplary philanthropy looked like in Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best (and it goes beyond a simple call for diversity):

• More grant dollars benefitting “marginalized communities,” including low-income persons, racial and ethnic minorities, women and girls, people with HIV/AIDS, people with disabilities, senior citizens, immigrants and refugees, victims of crime and abuse, offenders and ex-offenders, single parents, and LGBTQ citizens


• More grant dollars for advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement


• More general operating support


• More multi-year support


• Grant requirements commensurate with the size of the grant


• Larger foundation boards that include diverse perspectives


• Ethical, transparent boards


• Payouts that go beyond the legal minimum


• Investing assets in accordance with your mission

Overall, we think, and our endorsers think, that the sector would be more effective, and the world would be better off if more grantmakers adopted policies along these lines. That’s not necessarily a matter for regulation. Many funders have seen the value in these practices without government intervention. The Philanthropy Policy Project would do well to tackle the issues of social inclusion and diversity, accountability, transparency, ethics, and more and to work toward compelling, ambitious benchmarks. The Criteria provide an excellent starting point.

But the conversation shouldn’t end there. In an upcoming post, I’ll discuss my concerns and hopes for the project.

Kevin Laskowski is Field Associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

posted on: Thursday, August 13, 2009

By Muzna Ansari

A recent article by Paul Sullivan in The New York Times cited the feeling of entitlement many young, wealthy adults feel and consequently, their parents’ apprehension in light of the recession. The article posits the question, “How can parents help children with a healthy sense of entitlement adjust to the new economic reality?” It proceeds to offer recommendations ranging from emotional reassurance to financial planning. Specifically, the article highlights instilling values of financial responsibility in young adults that would have been inheritors of wealth, sans the economic recession.

While teaching the current and next generations the importance of earning money and spending responsibly (to ideally avoid future financial crises), the current recession gives us a golden opportunity for deeper evaluation. If the parents of affluent young adults are concerned for their children’s futures, what can be said about those on the opposite end of the economic spectrum? Limited career opportunities for those on the highest levels of the ladder hint at far greater restrictions for those on the lower rungs. The U.S. Census Bureau found that the national poverty level in 2007 was 12.5%; with such a high pre-recession statistic, we can only imagine what poverty levels are during and will be following the recession.

Ultimately, the crisis we are engulfed in allows us to step back and critically re-assess the very society we live in. While parents may focus on teaching their offspring more effective ways to spend money during recessionary times, they also can think critically about training their children to lead lives of significance that extend beyond individual consumption. Philanthropy is a key part of such a re-assessment. Whether or not these young adults will one day inherit or earn considerable amounts of wealth, they can always make a difference in the world around them. Instilling financial principles is one part of a larger moral project: one where young adults learn that what they contribute will be far more important than what they consume.