SD Grantmakers Update
"To achieve greatness: start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. " --Arthur Ashe
In This Issue
Member & Community Partner News
YOUR ORGANIZATION COULD BE FEATURED HERE! Don't forget to let SDG know what's new with you, from grantmaking to awards, events, and more. We want to share the good news about all of our members. To submit an item for the newsletter, email nancy@sdgrantmakers.org.
Several SDG members were highlighted in Pacifica Magazine's series on San Diego philanthropy, including Aaron Contorer and SDSVP, The San Diego Foundation and SDG, the San Diego Women's Foundation, Price Charities, and Amylin Pharmaceuticals.
The California Wellness Foundation is accepting applications for its Sabbatical Program, providing grants so that executive directors of nonprofit health organizations can take sabbaticals.
Holland America Line exceeded its $250,000 fundraising goal for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure three months early. Commencing April 2006, Holland America Line and the Holland America Line Foundation took the fight against breast cancer to the high seas with On Deck for the Cure™, an onboard, non-competitive 5K fitness walk.
The Jacobs Family Foundation is among the inaugural recipients of the Council on Foundations Critical Impact Awards, which recognize family foundation-funded projects that have had a demonstrated impact on the common good and serve as models for others in philanthropy. The Jacobs will be traveling to Washington, DC this week to accept the award at the COF Family Foundation Conference. Congratulations!
The Jewish Community Foundation has won the Kaleidoscope Award for Exceptional Governance awarded by University of San Diego’s Institute of Nonprofit Governance, for its transparency, its network of volunteers who participate on Board and committees, and its efforts to promote leadership and good governance among
community organizations. Congratulations!
The Kenneth A. Picerne Foundation is launching a new program this month: The Senior Artist Project will enable accomplished visual, performing and literary artists, living in North San Diego County and San Clemente, the opportunity to provide educational, mentoring and therapeutic experiences for underserved populations. The Foundation is currently accepting applications from experienced artists who are motivated to teach their artistry, and to work in depth with underserved and in-need groups. The application deadline is March 31st 2007 and artists must be 55 years of age or older. For more information, or to complete an application, click here.
The San Diego Foundation was featured in a San Diego Union-Tribune column about its efforts to create local community foundations in North County, such as the Carlsbad Community Foundation.
The San Marcos Community Foundation was featured in North County Times.
San Diego Grantmakers will be represented well at the 2007 Foundations on the Hill event: representatives from SDG, The San Diego Foundation, Jacobs Family Foundation, and Otto Family Foundation will report back from their meetings with all five San Diego-area Congressional Representatives and our CA Senators.
March 7 Lunch Program on Providing Operating Support
We hope that you will consider attending the March 7 lunch program on funding General Operating Support. Starting with a report on recent research by the Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management on California grantmaker practices in this area, we will move to an important discussion about how funders can effectively support nonprofit operations. Interestingly, while many foundations shy away from granting to operations versus programs, in California, three-quarters of foundations surveyed did indeed make general operating support grants in some way. A few of the questions we will discuss:
- How can partnering with a charity in this way advance a grantmaker's strategic agenda ?
- How can you best deal with reporting requirements when the support is unrestricted - i.e. how do you measure an operating grant's impact?
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How has operating support impacted or changed the relationship you have with the nonprofit?
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How long should you provide operating support - temporarily through a crisis, or in the long term so the nonprofit can continue the work you care about?
- How do you differentiate operating support from capacity building?
Earlier this month, SDG hosted a program examining recent trends in California foundations with Dr. Jim Ferris, the Director of The Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy, USC, and author of the study, California Foundations 2004: Trends and Patterns. Click here (pdf) to view Ferris' powerpoint presentation. One of a number of interesting points that Dr. Ferris made is that national funders invest in certain regions because they know they have effective nonprofits where their grant dollars will be put to good use. Right now, San Diego is not even in the top ten counties in California in terms of grant dollars received. If we were better able to strengthen the capacity of our San Diego grantees, might we attract more outside dollars to our region's nonprofits? Something to think about...
Top Philanthropists
The 2006 "Slate 60" list is out: Slate magazine's annual compilation (in conjunction with the Chronicle of Philanthropy) of the largest American charitable contributions. It now also includes a searchable database, for the data-hounds among us. Not surprisingly, Warren Buffett tops the list, with $43.5 billion donated or pledged. Irwin & Joan Jacobs came in at #29 and Ernest & Evelyn Rady at #31. Click here for the entire list. Last year, twenty-one Americans gave over $100 million to charitable causes, according to the list. Click here for the Chronicle's story describing the gifts (and givers) making the list.
How Can Traditional and Venture Philanthropies Learn from Each Other?
From Philanthropy Journal: "New philanthropists are generating excitement in the charitable world but also creating risks for it, the president of the Ford Foundation says. While it is attracting attention from the news media and among funders and nonprofits, mega-donors' business-oriented approach to giving could hurt philanthropy by prompting other donors to abandon traditional strategies for those favored by the new generation, Susan Berresford told a Duke University seminar.
To retain the strengths of traditional philanthropy while adopting the innovations of newer philanthropists, and to counter a popularly perceived 'dangerous dichotomy' between 'old and new philanthropy,' she said, foundations need to do a better job telling the story of their accomplishments accurately." Click here for the rest of the article, which outlines Berresford's other thoughts on how new venture-model philanthropists and more traditional foundations can learn from each other.
Fleishman and Foundation Reform
Last month, we shared some new books available in the SDG library (email Nancy to check books out!), including The Foundation: A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World by Joel Fleishman, a Duke University professor and foundation board member/trustee/consultant. Fleishman has received a lot of media attention (click here for a WSJ article) about his work, where he argues that foundations are too often unwilling to assess the value of what they do and how they do it. A new article in The Examiner called "Foundations: Reform Yourself or Be Reformed" explores the book further, calling it "tough love" for foundations. Click here for a similar review from The Economist.
College Student Grantmaking
Seminars and courses related to philanthropy are an increasing sight on college campuses. Colgate University, for example, offers a course that allows students to make a $10,000 grant. For more information and a list of other universities providing such courses, click here. Right here in San Diego, the UC San Diego Student Foundation, a governing body made up entirely of students, recently awarded a $1,000 vision grant for outreach to youth about engineering and science. The Foundation manages an endowment of over $170,000 and has awarded over $30,000 in scholarships to UCSD students.
More Philanthropic Headlines
Wealth Transfer Outpacing Estimates
The biggest transfer of wealth in history is exceeding expectations, say the researchers who predicted it. "We have new data that indicates the wealth transfer is not only on track, but is exceeding the conservative estimates we have been emphasizing," says Paul Schervish, director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College. In 1999, Schervish and John Havens, the center's senior associate director, estimated at least $41 trillion would be transferred between generations over a period of 55 years through taxes, charitable bequests, gifts to heirs and costs for settling estates, with at least $6 trillion of those funds going to charity. Click here to read more.
Charities Have Raised at Least $25 Million From New Tax Break
Nonprofit groups have jumped on a temporary tax break that allows older people to donate up to $100,000 a year to charity from their individual retirement accounts, reports The Wall Street Journal. The provision, part of the Pension Protection Act, allows for tax-free donations as long as the money goes directly to charities and is not funneled through another type of account. Organizations have pursued those donations aggressively because the tax break expires at the end of this year. However, charities are pressing Congress to extend the provision. Click here for more information.
Special Report on Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education features a collection of articles on "School and College," including a profile of recent philanthropic efforts, from the Gates Foundation's billion-dollar programs to much smaller, localized projects addressing many different aspects of education reform, scholarship assistance, and more. Other articles deal with college readiness, school reform successes, programs aimed at sending more at-risk students to college, and a series of commentaries.
Resources
Ways to Involve Foundations in Public Policy: Click here for a Fieldstone Alliance newsletter on this topic.
New Report on Family Foundations: According to Key Facts on Family Foundations (pdf), family foundations represented more than half of all independent foundations in 2005, and larger family foundations provided similar shares of funding for similar types of support compared to independent foundations overall. Common areas of funding included education, health, and religion
. Areas less likely to receive funding included human services and arts and culture.
New Paper on Grantmaker Effectiveness: The Foundation Center has a new paper, The Evaluation Conversation: A Path to Impact for Foundation Boards and Executives(pdf). Its author, Patricia Patrizi, suggests rethinking the purpose of evaluation in philanthropy and argues that foundations should look outside themselves to the fields of endeavor they support for the primary benefits and benchmarks of evaluation.
Teleconferences: The Forum offers an Effectiveness and Accountability Educational Series of teleconferences and webinars for grantmakers, including several on each of the following topics:
Social Entrepreneurship & Enterprise
Traditional foundations haven't as yet provided much support for it, but new research suggests social enterprise has become a veritable movement, one in which increasing numbers of individuals and organizations are mixing commercial and social activities. That's according to Research on Social Entrepreneurship: Understanding and Contributing to An Emerging Field, a volume of research papers edited by the Aspen Institute's Rachel Mosher-Williams and published by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). The Social Enterprise Alliance is hosting a conference in Long Beach from April 17-19, 2007: click here for more information.
Upcoming
SDG Programs
San Diego Neighborhood Funders Meeting:
Financial Education – Building Assets While Building Communities
March 2, 2007, 12:00-2:00pm
Location: Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation
Lunch will be served; RSVP required.
Guest Speakers: Ms. Heather McCulloch, Principal, Asset Building Strategies; Ms. Merle Lawrence, Senior Manager, Levi Strauss Foundation; Mr. Luis Granados, Executive Director, Mission Economic Development Agency; and residents of southeastern San Diego & San Francisco, CA.
General Operating Support: Funders’ Perspectives, Policies, and Practice
March 7, 2007, 11:30am-1:30pm (Lunch will be served)
Location: American Red Cross, 3950 Calle Fortunada,
San Diego, CA 92123
Ask a nonprofit what types of funding are the hardest to get and the most needed, and the answer is likely to be general operating support. This is no secret to foundations. Many foundations are exploring this funding possibility but wonder how to select grantees, how much to give and how to evaluate grant results. Carol. J. Silverman, Research Director of the Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management at the University of San Francisco will report findings from a recent statewide survey and focus group discussions on operating support. A panel comprised of Ruth Lyn Riedel, Ph.D., Alliance Healthcare Foundation President and CEO, Martha S. Campbell, The James Irvine Foundation Vice President for Programs and Richard Bockoff, San Diego Social Venture Partners Board of Directors, will respond and offer their experiences with this kind of funding.
Family Foundation Exchange: Leveraging your Giving through Collaborations and Matching Funds
March 13, 2007, 10:00am-12:00pm
Location: Northern Trust, 4370 La Jolla Village Dr., 10th Floor,
San Diego, CA 92122
The Family Foundation Exchange serves as a vehicle to explore new avenues of grantmaking, gain skills and knowledge, and find support and encouragment among peers.
Current Trends in Corporate Citizenship
March 14, 2007
Sponsor and Host: Amylin Pharmaceuticals
Location: Amylin Pharmaceuticals, 9360 Towne Centre Drive,
San Diego, CA
Our Guest Speaker will be Celina Pagani-Tousignant, President and Founder of Normisur International, an international management consulting firm that specializes in CSR, Community Involvement, Work/Life (W/L), Diversity, and Executive Coaching. Her visit here is part of a Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship outreach program.
Child Welfare Funders San Diego Agenda for 2007: Exploring Child Welfare Partnerships
March 27 , 2007
Location: TBD
Kate Welty, Project Director, Child and Family Policy Institute of California and Child Welfare Co-Investment Partnership, will facilitate this session. We will explore together how to ensure a coordinated, collaborative approach to the investments that are needed to substantially improve the child welfare outcomes of safety, permanency and well-being for foster children in San Diego. Invited Speakers (to date): Mary Harris, County of San Diego Child Welfare Services, Teri Kook, Stuart Foundation, Carole Schaufer, Youth Law Center and Abbey Smith, Alex Smith Foundation.
American Marketing Association Cause Marketing Conference
April 4, 2007
Location: USD Institute for Peace and Justice, San Diego, CA
Click here for conference session details and registration fees. There will be a special rate (TBA) and program for SDG members.
All programs are free for SDG members except where indicated.
To RSVP, please call (619) 744-2180 or email programs@sdgrantmakers.org.
Other Events of Interest
Association of Corporate Contributions Professionals Conference
March 4-7, 2007
Scottsdale, AZ
The Center for Effective Philanthropy Assessment to Action: Creating Change
March 8-9, 2007
Chicago, IL
Philanthropy Roundtable K12 Math & Science Education Conference
March 14, 2007
San Francisco, CA
The Council for Nonprofit Innovation 2007 National Conference on Funding Outcomes
NOTE: DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE: CONTACT SDG FOR INFO
March 15-16, 2007
Arlington, VA
International Corporate Citizenship Conference
March 25-27, 2007
San Francisco, CA
PRI Fundamentals for Grantmakers
March 27, 2007
San Francisco, CA
California Charter Schools Conference
March 27-30, 2007
San Diego, CA
Social Enterprise Alliance Gathering
April 17-19, 2007
Long Beach, CA
Council on Foundations Annual Conference
April 29-May 1, 2007
Seattle, WA
Palo Alto, CA
Alliance for Nonprofit Management Annual Conference
July 18-20, 2007
Atlanta, GA
For questions or comments about SDGrantmakers or our online
update, visit www.SDGrantmakers.org or contact Nancy Jamison, 619/744.2180
Nancy@SDGrantmakers.org.
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