Nonprofit AF

Exploring the fun and frustrations of nonprofit work

NAF logo
NAF logo

funding

Thanks, Foundations, but 6% or Even 10% Payout is Not Enough

Posted on by

[Image description: Black and white photograph of six police officers in riot gear–shields and helmets–standing in a row, barricading the street and sidewalk. Image by StockSnap on Pixabay]

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing OK during this time of Fascist Extremist Assholes Reign (FEAR). If you’re free this week, March 4 to 6, please join me at the virtual Nonprofit Marketing Summit: Evolve, which is FREE. My session will be on March 5th at 11am Pacific Time, and is called “Nonprofits, Bans, and Burnout: Surviving in 2025 Without Losing Our Collective Minds (or Tax-Exempt Status).” Please register here, attend, and say comforting things in the chat in case I break down weeping into a stuffed unicorn.

***

Last week, the MacArthur Foundation received a lot of praise for committing to increase its payout rate for at least the next two years from the legal minimum of 5% to 6%, which will add to the foundation’s total giving by about $150M. Here’s an article on it (Content warning, the article immediately displays a picture of Agent Orange, Russia’s most valuable puppet, in case you are trying to regulate your stress level). Here’s a piece from MacArthur’s president, John Palfrey, encouraging other foundations to do the same:

“We are inviting other philanthropies to join us: set it at six. We hope others in a position to do so will consider voluntarily raising their baseline payout rate to 6 percent, from the 5 percent as mandated by law, for the coming two years, at a minimum […] Philanthropies are well positioned to respond during periods of crisis. Many stepped up during COVID-19 and put out more funds when the social sector needed it. Today is a time when severe budget shortages again call for an infusion of additional capital.”

Continue reading →

Funders, stop bringing spreadsheets to knife fights!

Posted on by

[Image description: A hand holding a serrated knife, seeming ready for a fight. Image by Paul Volostnov on Unsplash]

A few weeks ago, which now feels like an eternity ago, Inside Philanthropy gave me the award for Philanthropy Critic of the Year, saying “Through his blog Nonprofit AF, he’s long advanced a critique of funders that is irreverent, hard hitting[,] and often cuttingly funny.” It’s nice to be recognized for my ramblings, even if IP didn’t even use the Oxford Comma in the recognition, which is rather hurtful.

Among the other awardees are two that stood out to me:

Highest Return on Investment: Donating to the Heritage Foundation: “We’ve long argued that public policy grantmaking offers the greatest leverage for funders. Exhibit A is Heritage’s long record of outsized influence, which is set to hit a new peak in a second Trump administration with Project 2025 or its equivalent.”

No Kidding Award: The Generosity Commission: “Debuted with much fanfare in 2021, the blue-ribbon commission set out to study the decline in ‘everyday’ donors and found that, well, yes, small-donor giving is down. There’s more in the commission’s hefty report, but was it worth all the rigamarole?”

While it irks me that the Heritage Foundation gets lauded and platformed, there is no denying how horrifyingly effective this funder has been. What we are seeing now with the destruction of democracy and the rise of fascism can be greatly attributed to the work of the Heritage Foundation and aligned right-wing funders. And it will only get worse, as we will find out when Project 2025, which we failed to stop, gets implemented in full and erodes our rights over the coming years, if not weeks.

Continue reading →

Script for The Matrix, if it were set in nonprofit and philanthropy

Posted on by

[Image description: A hand, pointing straight at the camera, while concentric circles of ones and zeroes in green text, as well as a curtain of green codes, appear in the foreground and background. Image by geralt on Pixabay]

Welcome back to work, everyone. I hope your holiday break was restful. I was able to hang out with my kids, and when they were asleep, binge-watched all the episodes of Shogun; it was glorious! But now we’re back to the grind, and it is cold and miserable. Sometimes, I think the people who believe we exist in a computer simulation may be on to something, and I find myself looking around, trying to break the fourth wall, hoping whoever is running this simulation would just give us all a reprieve from all this. Maybe they could simulate a world where the forces of good win for once.

Anyway, I’m reminded of the movie The Matrix, where the main character, played by Keanu Reeves, realizes he’s been living in a simulation, trapped along with other humans by sentient machines that are using humans as batteries while creating a fake reality to subdue them and keep them from rebelling. Of course, that makes me think about our sector, and what it would be like if The Matrix were set in nonprofit and philanthropy:

Continue reading →

It’s time we acknowledge that “family foundation” is a weird concept

Posted on by

[Image description: A cute little hedgehog in the grass, staring at something to our right. They have white fur and white spines and big dark eyes and a little brown nose. And I checked that this is not AI-generated. Image by szabfer on Pixabay]

A couple of announcements before we tackle today’s topic. In acknowledgement of Indigenous Peoples Day, just the annual reminder for all of us that less than one-half a percent of philanthropic dollars go to Native American-led nonprofits in the US, which is disproportional to the Native American population, which is 2.6%. So, funders out there, increase your giving. The rest of us, donate to Native orgs and support Native businesses and individuals.

Meanwhile, a couple of webinars that might interest you. This week on October 17th at 4:30pm Seattle time, there’s a virtual rally for Harris/Walz, with specific focus on getting more representation for the nonprofit sector in the new administration.

Also, you may have read this amazing essay “You’re not feeling imposter syndrome, you are an imposter: Identity and belonging in nonprofit work” by the brilliant Esther Saehyun Lee. Next week, on October 24th at 12pm Pacific Time, I’ll be in discussion on this topic with Esther and our colleague Aleeka Morgan (director of Nurturing Wāhine Fund). It’s FREE; captions enabled. Register here [None of us are getting paid for this, so expect a casual conversation probably filled with cussing].

Continue reading →

A bootcamp for clueless businesspeople who want to involve themselves in nonprofit!

Posted on by

[Image description: About a dozen people, mostly adults, sitting around a roaring campfire in the dark, surrounded by the silhouettes of trees. One person is holding a guitar. A couple of people are holding books or notebooks. Image by Laura_O on Pixabay]

Hi everyone. Today, a colleague sent me this text: “There’s a CEO of a family foundation who is adamantly against giving unrestricted funding. Do you have a blog post in particular you think would be good for me to send him? He’s a middle-aged white man who has never worked for a nonprofit in his life.” I sent over a couple of posts, including The ethical argument for general operating funds and “How the focus on overhead disenfranchises communities of color and fans the flames of injustice.” There’s lots written on this topic.

Heck, there’s been tons of stuff written about all sorts of topics. But we continue to see colleagues from the for-profit sector come into this sector as donors, funders, volunteers, and board members and have no clue about how things are yet are still adamant they know what’s best for the nonprofits they’re supporting. Worse, like the clueless CEO dude above, they often hold a lot of power.

So, what we need may be fewer articles and webinars, and instead, a week-long immersive overnight boot camp designed to help prepare our friends from other sectors so they can viscerally understand what it’s like for nonprofit professionals. And luckily, because I procrastinated on working on my book today, I already planned out a sample schedule for this boot camp!

Continue reading →