Mitch Hurst Communications

Strategic Marketing & Communications for Nonprofits and Grantmakers

Good links

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A rundown of interesting Interwebby items from the past few days:

  • Online collaboration: Why it oftentimes is more efficient than face-to-face meetings, according to the Harvard Business Review.
  • Nonprofits in politics: Former aides to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush register nonprofit to collect untraceable donations to the not Jeb Bush for President Campaign. Bush’s spokesperson says, “nothing illegal here as Jeb is currently not a candidate for President.”
  • link iconMuslims and philanthropy: On HuffPo, California Community Foundation executive talks to three women leaders within the Muslim community about how foundations can better engage Muslims in their work.
  • Danger danger! Foundations with close ties to government officials are much more dangerous than corporations with close ties to government officials.
  • Underage prisoners: The Economist blasts the uniquely United States habit of imprisoning young offenders. Also, filed under prison reform, a NYT Magazine piece about a most unusual prison in Norway.
  • Unorthodox philanthropy: The makers of the x-rated party game Cards Against Humanity are donating the latest version of their game to provide scholarships to women in STEM. Cards Against Humanity is not a game you’re likely to encounter at your average nonprofit Holiday gathering.
  • Regional philanthropy: The Foundation for the Carolinas announced a big jump in asset growth in 2014. It has its work cut out as state legislators down that way do their best to turn the legislative clocks back to 1950, gutting civil society in the process.
  • Ironic philanthropy: Free market purist goes nonprofit. The National Review makes Milton Friedman roll in his grave.
  • Mobile giving: New app Tinbox loops corporations into the online giving game. An interesting twist on gift matching.

Culture

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Even foundations that produce reams of paper or volleys of tweets may not have a culture conducive to effective communications and engagement. The relatively new President and Communications Director of the Boston-based Barr Foundation — Jim Canales and Stefan Lanfer — write in a post for SSIR that the foundation needed to change its culture before it could launch a meaningful communications strategy:

At Barr, we initiated our change process by engaging our trustees in a conversation about how communications might advance Barr’s mission. We considered examples of other foundations that had successfully integrated communications for greater impact and aspects we might emulate. This created space to explore more thoroughly where there was the greatest enthusiasm and what concerns might exist. Ultimately, it helped us build agreement on a new vision for communications.

The rest of the post puts forth some useful, if fairly straightforward, advice about commitment from leadership and inclusion of a broad range of perspectives in order to tell stories that successfully engage audiences.

The real challenge in creating foundation cultures that are open and risk-accepting enough to communicate successfully in the age of social media may lie in organizations’ ability to help employees, particularly program staff, understand that everything they say and do reflects upon the institutions that pays them.

Scratch my back …

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Nonprofit Quarterly summarizes a recent survey of small and family foundations conducted by Exponent Philanthropy [formerly the Association of Family Foundations – I don’t get the name change but given the size of my bank account I’m probably not supposed to].

Here’s a nugget I found interesting:

back scratcherUnlike larger foundations, small foundations do turn to their trustees more regularly to provide certain professional services that would more typically be provided by outside firms. In the survey, 36 percent of the foundations reported that board members provided accounting, legal, investment, or administrative services. One would expect that these services would be provided at below-market rates or on a pro bono basis, but a surprisingly high proportion of the foundations reported that their trustees charged “full rate”: 41 out of 99 foundations paid the full rate for board members providing accounting services, 34 out of 95 foundations paid full rate for legal, 32 out of 105 foundations for investment services, and 56 out of 152 for administrative services.

This may all be legal, but what’s legal doesn’t always equate to best practice. How one can do the books as a hired hand while simultaneously providing oversight of the process of doing the books in the role of trustee is rather a mystery.

And if you’re wondering why everybody loves to call what they do “impact investing”:

Unfortunately, the lengthy analysis prepared by the Glenmede Trust Company examining the investment information in the report didn’t analyze the comparative returns of the impact investment or CSR aspects of the foundations’ portfolios, focusing on the more general risk and liquidity issues of the foundations’ investments instead. There was also no information on whether the foundations in the survey participated in shareholder proxy actions or if they divested from specific holdings due to social or other issues.

I’d like to be present at those stakeholders meetings.

Debunking the conventional

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The Economist Blog reports on a new study of philanthropy in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in Britain that finds economists who believe private dollars can replace public funding may have it all wrong:

In other words, rather than finding out that higher tax rates crowded out charitable giving, the study found that greater government support for the poor may well have encouraged the rich to boost their charitable donations. Taken vice versa, it also means that reducing public spending and taxation does not necessarily lead to an immediate rise in philanthropy.

There’s a reason matching gifts are often used as a fundraising scheme to generate additional donations; potential donors want others to have skin in the game.

The same might apply to public resources. If you pay your taxes you may want to view your philanthropy as an enhancement to public support for the poor.

Should charities pay celebrities to tweet?

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I’m a bit late to the party on this but a piece in the Feb 20 edition of the Guardian highlights a controversy about celebrities getting paid to tweet on behalf of charities:

Is there a secret culture of celebrity payments that sustains British charities? And if so, is that a scandal? It’s not a scandal that big charities have to pay their gas bill, after all, or salaries to their staff. When they advertise in the Sun they get no special discount for the kiddies. (I’ve checked. They don’t get one in the Guardian, either.) Many celebrities, including big stars such as Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, charge companies to promote their products on social media, and they certainly charge to appear in retail campaigns. When saying you like things is your product, is there any special reason, besides being rich already, why you should give it away to charities for free?

We are all free to judge individual celebrities on what they do with their time and how they accumulate their money. As the piece states, there was considerable backlash against one British star who accepted payment for a tweet. [Disastrous follow-up PR did not help.]

As with many other management issues, charities must decide if payment for this sort of thing is worth the return on investment, and the ROI should obviously factor in whatever public backlash might ensue as a result. But the path can be dicey:

At another leading charity, a campaigner who also prefers not to be identified has a few more niggles to share. She is not a celebrity manager, but works with celebrities on a daily basis, and explains by email that even though they are never paid, she finds some of them quite high-maintenance. “They have asked for expenses,” she says. “This can vary, and is certainly more than ‘normal’ people would request – for example, a makeup artist for photo shoots, taxis, hotel rooms. There have been issues with whether they get first-class air tickets, but we have that with UN officials, too. They do need to be pampered more than most – drinks, goodie bags – which is annoying but par for the course.”

Then there’s the always outside-the-box Stephen Fry, who has his own set of rules for how he goes about using social media to promote worth causes:

sfryStephen Fry sets an excellent example on Twitter, although he doesn’t charge. As his website explains, requests to tweet about a good cause must be supplied to him in plenty of time before an event so he can choose which to support. He also gives valuable advice on how tweets should be composed, and on the importance of charities preparing their websites for a sudden surge in traffic at the agreed tweeting time. It’s a practical rather than a romantic approach, but that’s how charities can do most good.