Nonprofit Ratings: Just a Number?

Jennifer Kushlis

Since taking on a larger role in our firm’s new business efforts, I’ve seen a wide range of requests for proposal from diverse nonprofits and foundations. The first few steps to weighing an opportunity include reviewing available information about the organization, assembling an experienced team and conducting additional research related to the scope of work.

In responding to a recent RFP, I took those steps without running the simplest and arguably most important search. A week or two went by before I Googled the organization’s name. When I did, the fourth organic result and second text ad revealed its rating on Charity Navigator, a site that rates nonprofits in order to guide intelligent giving. This nonprofit’s one-star rating stopped me in my tracks. Should we decline to respond to the RFP because of the low rating? Or should we give the organization the benefit of the doubt and accept the challenge of improving and promoting its work?

I looked into Charity Navigator’s methodology, which calculates how effectively an organization would use an individual’s donation based on efficiency and capacity. As sound as this methodology was, I sought a second opinion. The Better Business Bureau’s website stated that the nonprofit failed to meet its “Standards for Charity Accountability.” Those standards examine charities’ spending and transparency.

Nonprofit ratings are sometimes just numbers. And they’re too often derived from numbers that organizations are required to report, rather than outcomes. Still, I encourage individuals to utilize available ratings before deciding to work for or donate to a nonprofit. Corroborate those ratings with additional research to determine which nonprofits to trust with your reputation or your charity.

Other nonprofit ratings systems to reference include:

• GuideStar
  
• GreatNonprofits
  
• GiveWell
  
• Philanthropedia
  

Digital Solutions for Arts Journalism

Adrienne Caruso

In this economic climate, budget cuts and shifting priorities have led to a difficult environment for arts and cultural initiatives. As a result, it’s more important than ever to bring attention to arts programming across the country.

Earlier this month, the Knight Foundation and National Endowment of the Arts announced a challenge among eight cities to promote local arts journalism, an area that is being cut from newsrooms across the country, especially in smaller media markets like Akron, Detroit, and St. Paul (three of the eight cities eligible for the challenge). 

According to the organizers, the challenge is looking for applicants to “rethink how traditional media systems function, harnessing the latest tools and technology to make the transition to the new information environment.”

In our work with nonprofits and foundations focused on promoting arts and cultural initiatives, I’ve seen how difficult it can be to tell these stories locally in the media. To reach key audiences, we often turn to digital avenues to help tell these stories – whether it’s hosting an online Q&A for journalists, releasing an infographic that synthesizes information in a visual way, or creating compelling video content to bring attention to an event or issue.

For example, we’ve helped the National Women’s History Museum in their quest for a physical space, but in the meantime, the museum hosts their exhibits online – a digital solution that shares their content with the public.

I’m encouraged by this challenge, which is sure to spark creative solutions to arts budget cuts and will encourage new ways of thinking about arts journalism in cities like Detroit, which is using the arts as a means of revitalizing one of the cities hardest-hit by the recession.

There are stories to be told, not only to share interesting content, but to bring attention to the broader need for including the arts in communities, schools and the media. It’s my hope that through the outcomes of this challenge (entries are open until Aug. 18), we’ll start to see more dynamic digital solutions that enable these amazing stories to be shared with the communities they serve.

Tech driven

Lauren Klein

In order for a nonprofit to stick around for more than 100 years, it must have the ability to adapt and re-invent itself from time to time.

The Boys and Girls Club of America (BGCA), an institution founded in the 1860s and known for supporting youth in communities all over the U.S., definitely has that knack for adaptation.
The 1990s saw the formal makeover of the “Boys Club” to the “Boys and Girls Club.” But the most recent transformation involves using technology, not only as part of their core mission to support and educate under-served youth, but as a means of communicating that new mission with their stakeholders.

Technology as part of the mission:
Recognizing that youth often need help acquiring computer skills, or simply access to computers, in order to succeed in school at even the earliest grades, they’ve left their “swim and gym” image behind to focus on providing vital computer skills that will be vital for success in high school, college and beyond.

It’s an important change in the organization’s focus, which seems to recognize and highlight the fact that while younger generations are often associated with being tech savvy, not all of them are actually born digital. BGCA is not the first organization to focus on digital skills, but as one of the largest and best recognized youth nonprofits, we might find other youth oriented organizations following their lead.

Technology as part of the communication:
With 4,000 chapters around the country, BGCA is an organization that is particularly well suited to benefit from social network campaigns that inform, unite and inspire its diverse audience. Their updated Facebook campaign, Faces of the Future, looks to engage their audience while encouraging them to support the Club Tech programs.

The result is an organization that has integrated technology into both its mission and its outreach — providing a powerful way to make a difference and connect with key donors and supporters.

Millennial generation challenges advocacy groups’ fundraising strategies

Jamaal Young

Member-based advocacy groups are looking into a future where long standing membership dues may not be a successful way to support budgets.

In fact, a recent Monitor Institute study indicates that while many of these organizations believe their budgets will continue to grow and be fueled by foundations and member support, changes in how younger generations donate in a networked world could impact their overall business model.

Boomers often lend their support over the course of a lifetime, with annual gifts and long-term commitments leveraged using traditional techniques, such as direct mail. Millenials, on the other hand, tend to be more sporadic with their involvement and use social media to self-organize around event-specific activities.

This doesn’t mean that engaging Millenials in sustained support of political and social issues is a lost cause. The Monitor Institute’s study presents two case studies—MomsRising and the Environmental Defense Fund—as peer-recognized examples of member-based groups that effectively use social media to communicate with a wide audience and garner support. A takeaway from their efforts seems to be that organizations should find and test new models of engaging constituents and then accelerate those attempts. And while these two groups are member-based advocacy organizations, they’re engagement focus is not on finding members to advocate on behalf of the organization’s cause, but on creating space for people to participate in cause-based activities and thereby influence a given issue. 

This may seem like a bit of semantics but it does have important implications for the nonprofit sector. If the reality is that foundations continue to be the largest source of philanthropic cash and demographic change necessitates the development of new engagement models, the Monitor Institute’s recommendation that funders support experiments in the use of social media should ring true. Some major funders, like our client, the Bank of America Foundation are already providing many of their grantees the flexibility to spend money on capacity building, which could include leveraging social media to grow members/participants. If other funders were to move in this direction perhaps a greater level of experimentation in the social media space could occur.

When a Foundation Listens…

Seth Levin

This week, I am attending a convening of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s 119 America Healing grantees. America Healing is a one-year-old, $75 million investment by the Foundation to support programs focused on racial healing and racial equity. The new initiative addresses issues at the core of structural racism – those policies and practices that continue to create barriers for children of color.

Like many nonprofit or issue-based conferences, the “America Healing: Building the Field and Connecting the Leaders” convening brings together grantees to share experiences, discuss best practices and learn from experts in the field. What sets this conference apart, is that it is focused (to paraphrase) not on what grantees can do for the Foundation, but what the Foundation can do for its grantees. In the end, I think the Foundation’s leadership will find that this approach was of equal benefit to both grantees and the Foundation. Here’s why:

1. The first day was devoted to grantees’ personal stories of racial discrimination and organizational stories of racial healing in practice, and we were fortunate enough to catch some of these stories on film (available soon on americahealing.org). Opening up emotionally facilitated grantees networking and sharing of best practices; collectively, these stories will help the Foundation tell the thematic story of racial healing and demonstrate the systemic nature of structural racism.

2. By developing panels and sessions based on grantees’ needs, the Foundation is providing more personalized support for programming, which I believe, will provide greater return on investment for the Foundation.

3. By listening intently to its grantees, the Foundation is gaining insights and perspectives that will allow it to create – and lead – a more cohesive racial healing movement with consistent messaging that still respects the diversity of its grantees and celebrates their unique approaches.

4. The grantees here feel like partners that, in the future, will be more willing and able to become involved in broader Foundation initiatives that go beyond the America Healing program.

5. I’ll share more insights from the conference as the week goes on. In the meantime, let me know what you think makes for a good foundation-grantee relationship.

Framing Messages around Racial Equity and other Social Movements

Seth Levin

Yesterday at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s America Healing grantee conference, Alan Jenkins, director and co-founder of the Opportunity Agenda, shared guidelines on how to talk about race in a way that mobilizes the base, persuades the “persuadables” and marginalizes opposition. Although he was focused on race, several of these principles can be applied to nearly any social movement and the way we frame our messages around the issues we are trying to address:

1. Lead with values: Tell people how or why your program or movement will affect opportunity, community and the common good.

2. Be rigorously solution-oriented: Rather than simply discussing the disparities and inequities you are trying to address, demonstrate how the solutions you are proposing address the problem. This will help to overcome cause-fatigue. 

3.  Link your solutions to broader solutions: show how your social movement helps solve issues facing individuals right now (economic recession, healthcare reform, equal opportunity) and over the long-term (more educated workforce, more opportunity for better paying jobs, more equitable society).

4. Recognize progress: To reach the “persuadable,” it is particularly important to note and celebrate milestones, while demonstrating there is still work to be done.

5. Talk systemically while maintaining the human story: Sharing just one story, while compelling, makes an issue or inequity seem episodic and isolated only to an individual, rather than an example of a larger social issue. Use a combination of stories and data to demonstrate the size and scope of the issue.

6. Carefully select vehicles and audiences: Think carefully about how and when different target audiences may be most receptive to your message.

Twitter Resonating With Nonprofit Health Organizations

Lindsey Ellerson

For nonprofit health organizations, Twitter is emerging as an online communications vehicle of choice for reaching target audiences and making a lasting impact. A study released this month finds that nonprofit and community health organizations are more actively engaged in posting information on Twitter than any other health-related institution.

“It is likely that nonprofit organizations and support groups recognize the rapid growth of Twitter and its value as an inexpensive but highly effective communication tool,” says Hyojung Park, doctoral candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism and author of the study. “Unlike business organizations such as pharmaceutical companies, nonprofit health organizations and advocacy groups may suffer from lack of funding, staff, and other resources in developing and implementing communication strategies for health intervention and promotion programs.”

The study, which examined nearly 600 tweets from organizations focused on health, found that 30 percent of the tweets were re-tweeted by other readers, further extending the reach of the messaging and promoting what Park calls “health literacy.”

Organizations like the Alzheimer’s Association (@alzassocation),  Susan G. Komen for the Cure (@komenforthecure) and the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (@CeliacAwareness), are setting a precedent for how Twitter can be an effective communications tool. For example, on Tuesday evening the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness held its second in a series of hour-long chats on Twitter with two dieticians answering questions about how celiac disease can affect women's health.

While Twitter’s 200 million users offer an engaging community for effective nonprofit outreach, Facebook recently established a strong stake in the game with the launch of a resource center geared toward aiding nonprofits in social media use. The resource center offers educational materials, video tutorials and discussion boards, as well as highlights current success stories in the space. The social network says it built this center to “bring positive change to the world.” According to Facebook, there are more than 30,000 nonprofits using Facebook pages.

Refreshing the SABRE Awards

Adrienne Caruso

In addition to April showers, May flowers, baseball games and spring vacation, this time of year brings with it many awards ceremonies in the communications industry. We recently wrote about Powell Tate’s PoliPulse being nominated for a Webby award, and last night, our work on the Pepsi Refresh Project was celebrated as the 2011 “PR Campaign of the Year” and “Best Social Media/Social Networking Campaign” at the Holmes Report’s SABRE Awards.

We’re extremely proud to have been a part of this collaborative effort across multiple agencies to make the Pepsi Refresh Project a success, but this award really speaks to the impact the program has had over the past year – on individuals, businesses and entire communities. Thanks to the funding Pepsi has put into generating hundreds of grants since early last year, we’ve seen theaters restored, playgrounds built for children with disabilities, and military members’ dreams fulfilled – because the public has chosen to support, and rally their own networks for, these projects.

The power of networking – both online and offline – has truly made the Refresh Project a success from the ground up. We’re honored to have taken home the award that recognizes this critical factor that’s allowed thousands of people to refresh their own communities.

Social Exhibits

Victoria Baxter

In the New York Times’ recent special section on museums, I was excited to read about how museums are using social media.

The American Museum of Natural History in Brooklyn hosts Tweetups – a free after hours event where participants meet the curators and learn about the exhibits, all in exchange for tweeting about their experience. The Smithsonian is getting into the social media space using crowdsourcing to gather information and content like photos and stories from around the world. 

Our Social Impact client Monticello has also been smart about social media. You can like their engaging Facebook page and see photos from Monticello and recipes from Thomas Jefferson’s time. Monticello’s Twitter feed provides updates to visitors and allows staff to engage with the many fans of architecture, history and Thomas Jefferson who are planning or are just back from a visit to the mountaintop.

I snapped this photo (see left) of new signs at Monticello with QR codes that link you to a blog that has content on the process of interpreting and restoring Mulberry Row, a part of the plantation where enslaved people lived and worked. The blog provides insights and updates about how this exhibition is being put together.

Museums are naturals for social media. They have rich content, research and stories to share. Sometimes they even have too much content; the Smithsonian has a half-million square feet of storage space. That’s a lot of stories left to share beyond the engaging exhibitions on the Mall and it’s perfect for social media. It’s a great platform for talking about the unseen aspects of museums, from the content not currently on display to a behind-the-scenes insights into how exhibitions are put together.

Museums provide a good reminder to all organizations to take a look around and think about how social media can help you tell your stories, share content and engage with priority audiences.

Changing the appeal

Adrienne Caruso

Tactical Philanthropy had an interesting post this week on the trend of rebranding philanthropy – essentially, turning the focus on giving from an obligation/”should” to an added value/”want.” The post references a recent article in Fast Company on the rebranding of baby carrots as junk food – turning the traditional health-food marketing tactic on its head. (If you haven’t read the piece, do so – I thought it was fascinating).

Coming up with creative ways to position philanthropy is something we as communicators focused on social impact are challenged with every day. In an ideal world, organizations would create compelling cases for donation or engagement to appeal to their community, creating a sense of urgency while avoiding over-soliciting (donors’ No. 1 complaint, according to Cygnus Applied Research’s 2010 Donor Survey).
Should more organizations be thinking about shifting their appeal from a “should” to a “want,” like Tactical Philanthropy explores?

Consider the ASPCA, well-known for their tear-jerker PSA campaigns that make anyone with a heart feel like they are obligated to save an animal’s life. Would it be more effective, for example, to feature happy pet owners walking their dogs in the park, touting the benefits of adoption and how their pets have positively influenced their lives?

Some organizations have their donation appeals down to a science, but many continue to search for the right way to encourage donations or volunteering without overloading their network. So what’s the middle ground? Is there an effective model for philanthropy that frames giving as something people will want to do, rather than something they should?

Baby carrots may have something to teach us — sales increased 10 to 12 percent following the junk food campaign.

Powell Tate Adds to Be the Match Registry

Clare Lynam

In honor of a colleague, with the full support of the global Weber Shandwick network, Powell Tate recently organized a drive to add individuals to the Be the Match Registry.  About 40 people were added as a result of our efforts.  The Registry matches donors with patients in need of a transplant of life-saving stem cells that come from a donor’s peripheral blood, bone marrow or umbilical cord blood.

Our colleague Jenna Langer has been diagnosed with a blood disorder that, left untreated, could turn into leukemia. Fortunately, Jenna, who is white, found a match through the Registry and she will soon receive her donor’s stem cells.  Other patients are not so lucky.  African American patients have only a 66 percent chance of finding a match, and Hispanic and Asian American patients also have a lower match rate than white patients.

It’s easy to join -- all it takes is a simple mouth swab.  The registry will contact you if you are a potential match for a patient.  I learned a great deal about the amazing work of the Registry in late 2007, when my husband and I were told that our son needed a transplant because his leukemia had returned.  We were fortunate to find several good matches for him through the registry.   

Please consider joining so all patients in need can have a chance at a healthy life. 

Collaboration in the face of recession

Jennifer Kushlis

Corporations strongly encourage collaboration. Foundations do too. In the face of recession and pressure from multiple funding sources, will nonprofits learn to work together? Will they have a choice?

These tough questions arose during multiple sessions at the National Conference on Corporate Community Investment (CCI), most often in response to audience questions about how the recession has impacted corporate social responsibility initiatives. Representatives from corporations said that, increasingly, they want to see nonprofits work together to maximize their impact. Doing so makes them much more attractive to potential funders, they explained.

Foundations have similar expectations of their nonprofit partners. Just last week, the Lodestar Foundation awarded its 2011 Collaboration Prize to a nonprofit organization chosen from more than 800 applicants. The best practices gleaned from these applicants are memorialized in the Foundation Center’s Nonprofit Collaboration Database.

The Database organizes best practices into three categories of collaboration:

• Administrative Consolidation
• Joint Programming
• Mergers

Unsurprisingly, there are three or four times as many examples of Joint Programming as there are examples of Administrative Consolidation and Mergers. It’s easier for nonprofits to work together on a project or program basis than to become a new or integrated organization – but the latter is achievable. The winner of this year’s Collaboration Prize is a shining example. Five different child-serving agencies merged to form the Adoption Coalition of Texas, pooling their resources and more than doubling adoptions in the state.

While the challenges of collaboration are many, Jon Bennett of TXU Energy reassured CCI attendees that the benefits will outweigh them in time. “As a company that has been through multiple mergers and acquisitions, and that has been bought out, we understand the problems. But it needs to happen.”

Do you agree that nonprofit collaboration is the way of the future – and that participating organizations will be awarded more funding? 

Powell Tate bone marrow drive

Pam Jenkins

Sometimes it takes bad news to motivate us to make a difference.

One of our colleagues, Jenna Langer, was diagnosed last month with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), a blood disorder that causes bone marrow to make dysfunctional blood cells that don’t mature into healthy cells.

But there’s good news. The treatment for MDS is a bone marrow transplant, and it appears that she’s found a donor who is a perfect match.

To show our support for Jenna and to possibly provide life-saving bone marrow to another patient, Powell Tate is holding a marrow donor drive in our office next week to help build the bone marrow registry.

As Jenna points out on her blog, 93 percent of white patients find a match while African American patients have only a 66 percent chance of finding a match. In addition, Hispanic and Asian American patients also have a lower match rate than white patients. These numbers underscore how important it is for people with diverse racial backgrounds to join the registry.

Right now, thousands of patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other life threatening diseases are looking for someone to donate bone marrow and help save their life.

I encourage you to join the Be The Match Registry. It’s a simple process in which you’ll have your mouth swabbed so that tests can determine whether you are someone’s perfect match. In addition, consider a financial donation to Be The Match.

We miss you, Jenna, and we’re pulling for you!

Disaster donations

Bradley Portnoy

The outpouring of support for Japan in the wake of the recent disaster there has been incredible, whether through social media, SMS donations, or simply general statements of support. But is it possible that technology has made it too easy to donate funds in the wake of a disaster?

The effective-giving experts at the GiveWell Blog posted over a week ago that aid being offered to Japan has far exceeded the aid requested, and likely exceeds Japan's final need. With millions being pledged to the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations, we must question whether today's tools has made it too easy for well-meaning citizens to donate in the face of a disaster.

I know that in recent days my own Facebook newsfeed has been full of friends donating through LivingSocial's donation match, which raised $2.3 million. Almost immediately after the disaster, the Red Cross announced it had raised $8 million, surely assisted by their excellent SMS (text) message program, which allows people to easily donate $10 simply by texting their short code. Global Giving's Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund page has over 33,000 likes, indicating a tremendous viral spread. And I personally made a donation to Direct Relief International, and appealed to friends on Facebook and Twitter to do the same. Now I think that that may have been too easy.

The unintended consequences of an excess of funding can be both surprising and frustrating. Annie Lowrey wrote for Slate that after the 2004 Asian tsunami, Indonesian groups found themselves with an excess of funding for orphanages. When parents decided they could no longer reliably feed and clothe their children, they abandoned them. If the organizations had been able to spend the money freely, perhaps more would have been allocated to food and clothing than to orphanages.

Luckily, there is a solution. Organizations such as the Red Cross can easily raise money after a disaster, but are chronically underfunded in normal times, despite continuing critical work. If you donate during a disaster, don't earmark your funds. Relief organizations can then distribute the money across issues as needed - including to disaster relief, if warranted. And these organizations can do their part to increase donation efficiency by more prominently requesting that donors not earmark their funds.

The tragedy in Japan is ongoing, but there is no reason to compound it by misallocating aid dollars that are needed around the world. I know that when the next disaster strikes, I'll make sure to think twice about where my money can best be used before opening my wallet.

Greg McCarthy

Senior Vice President

Bob Brody

Senior Vice President

Lance Morgan

Chief Communications Strategist