Fast Lane Philanthropy

posted by Terri Wogan, Executive Director Social Venture Partners Arizona

Imagine you have just stepped onto the stage before some of the Valley's most influential leaders. A passionate social entrepreneur, you have built an innovative approach to tackling one of our toughest social issues. Your organization is on the verge of a breakthrough. The audience is bursting with other investors capable of bringing significant additional resources to fuel your expansion.

You step to the mic with three minutes to prove you are what today's donors most want nonprofits to be: focused, innovative, self-sustaining, and, above all, effective. ...It's SHOW TIME!

This is the exact scenario that eight finalists of the "Fast Pitch Social Innovation Expo" will face on March 2, but many nonprofit organizations face a similar situation all of the time. Phoenix is considered one of the most entrepreneurial communities in North America for business innovation and performance, and Valley nonprofits also are doing innovative and impactful work, creating significant social wealth. We aim to expand the network of individuals and organizations that value innovation, accountability and operational stability in top-performing nonprofits.

Research Friday: "Executive Compensation"

posted by Stephanie La Loggia, M.A. Manager of Knowledge Resources ASU Lodestar Center

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing weekly series, each Friday we invite a nonprofit expert from our academic faculty to highlight a research report or study and discuss how it can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice. We welcome your comments and feedback.

Oh, the high-wire balancing act of nonprofit CEO compensation. Pay your CEO too little, and you won’t attract a skilled leader. Pay too much, and you’ll raise the eyebrows (or ire) of donors, clients, volunteers, and anyone else who looks up your 990 in one keystroke. And should a nonprofit really go over the top with CEO pay, the IRS will come knocking at the door.

What’s an impact-driven nonprofit organization to do? Two things come to mind. First, consult the research and data available on nonprofit CEO compensation. Comparable compensation data helps recruitment and hiring, and protects against excessive compensation claims. For nonprofits in Maricopa and Pima counties, the latest issue of Nonprofit Research Abridged details CEO compensation across budget size and type.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, join in on the conversation about CEO compensation. What are your thoughts on this issue? What has your organization experienced? Did a raise or a bonus help retain an effective CEO? Did you lose a successful CEO to another organization, or another sector, because of compensation? What benefits and perks are important to recruiting and retaining an effective CEO?

These are important questions. We are, after all, asking our nonprofit CEOs to take on enormous tasks: things like, "can you and your organization feed the hungry?—oh and while you're at it, can you please end all hunger everywhere?" Or, "Please give this family a place to stay for the night; and why don't you see if you can eliminate homelessness in the meantime?" Or, how about this one: "Make sure these kids stay busy and have fun; but what we really need is for them to be successful in school, contribute at home, and work effectively with people from different cultures towards a better world."

Relationships Matter

posted by Travis Manzione, Director — Assessment Tools The Center for Effective Philanthropy

In almost every facet of our lives, the types of relationships we form and maintain not only define how we perceive others, but also how we are perceived by others. Our interactions and communications should characterize the expectations we have for others and the expectations they have for us. When thinking about important relationships in my own life, the ability or failure to acknowledge and accept that we each have a unique and differing perspective determined the relative success of each relationship.

So why should relationships between funders and their grantees be any different? The relationships grantees have with their funders – the quality of interactions and the clarity and consistency of communications – are the key predictor of not only grantee satisfaction, but also grantees’ views of a foundation’s impact.

For grantees, it is about relationships with individual program officers. Program officers play a key role in grantees’ experiences and are the main interface between foundations and their grantees. Therefore, the right program officer can make or break grantees’ experiences with a foundation. However, program officers perform with varying levels of quality. This is true not only among program staff across foundations, but among program staff within foundations.

In the Center for Effective Philanthropy's research on strong funder-grantee relationships, we looked at a subsample of our grantee data: responses from almost 30,000 grantees representing 175 funders across the United States of all different types, sizes, and focuses. We sought to determine not only the essential elements of strong relationships, but also what it takes to develop them.

To hear more about our latest research on strong funder-grantee relationships and the keys to success, please join me on March 4^th for the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation’s 13th Annual Forum on Nonprofit Effectiveness, "Nonprofit Grantees & Funders: Building Strong Relationships - Assuring Community Impact."

Twitter Dashboards and the Dark Side of Tweeting

posted by
Kayla L. McKinney,
Project Specialist
ASU Lodestar Center

As a Project Specialist at the ASU Lodestar Center, I get to put my social media skills (and many hours spent facebooking…) to good use. With the explosion of micro-blogging, the nonprofit world has a fantastic new tool to connect with the public in exciting and creative ways. But what happens when bad tweets happen to good nonprofits?

A few days ago, as part of ASU Lodestar Center's promotion for our upcoming 13th Annual Forum on Nonprofit Effectiveness, we posed this scenario to our social media followers:

A nonprofit has a public scandal. How does it go about restoring credibility with existing funders and position itself with possible new funders to help "bring them back" and make the organization stronger than before?

Scandals have been all-too-common on twitter. Recently, the Red Cross faced this issue when a staff member accidentally posted a (very) personal tweet on the organization's (very) public twitter account. The organization maintained its cool and handled the PR nightmare well, though, and has been tweeting normally since the incident.

The Red Cross tweet mix up occurred because the staff member in charge of the account was unfamiliar with HootSuite, one of the many programs that allow users to access multiple twitter accounts from one dashboard. These programs, including TweetDeck and Seesmic, can be incredibly helpful for managing many of your nonprofit organization's social media outlets, but you'll want to make sure you spend time playing around with all of their various functions before you start sending out official tweets.

Have you ever had a social media nightmare? Tell us how you handled it in the comments section, or join us for our Spring Forum to discuss this scenario as well as many others!

(Psst! Click here to follow us on twitter!)

---

Source:
http://mashable.com/2011/02/16/red-cross-tweet/

$250,000 Collaboration Prize Finalists Announced

posted by Jill Watts,
Director of Capacity
Building Initiatives
ASU Lodestar Center

Today the Lodestar Foundation announced the eight Finalists for the 2011 Collaboration Prize. The Collaboration Prize was created and is funded by The Lodestar Foundation in collaboration with the Arizona-Indiana-Michigan (AIM) Alliance, of which the ASU Lodestar Center is an integral part. These model collaborations were selected from a pool of over 800 applications from around the country.

The winner of the $250,000 prize will be announced in April, and is chosen by a Final Selection Panel of national experts chaired by Sterling Speirn, CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The Finalists are: Adoption Coalition of Texas, Austin, Texas Community Voice Mail Federation, Seattle, Washington Feed More, Inc., Richmond, Virginia Graduate! Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Gulf Coast Consortia, Galveston and Houston, Texas Merger of Network for Good and Groundspring, Bethesda, Maryland The WAICU Collaboration Project, Several cities in Wisconsin Westside Infant-Family Network, Venice and Culver City, California

Lost Your Tax-Exemption? What Next —

posted by Pat Lewis,
Senior Professional
in Residence
ASU Lodestar Center

The IRS has begun to revoke the tax-exempt status for those nonprofit organizations that have not filed some form of a 990 (information report) for three years. Guidestar estimates that 350,000 to 400,000 nonprofits are in danger of losing their exemptions. A large number of these organizations are smaller nonprofits that previously were not required to file an annual return because their gross revenues were $25,000 or less.^[1] If your organization has not filed any of the 990 forms for three years it is likely you will soon receive a revocation notice.

How will I know if my organization has lost its tax-exempt status?

Charles Best is "Character Approved"

posted by
Travis Butterfield,
Project Coordinator
ASU Lodestar Center

In preparation for the upcoming 13th Annual Forum on Nonprofit Effectiveness that the Lodestar Center will be hosting in a few weeks, I have been working with the center's Director of Professional Development Education, Cristina Archibeque, to create postcards, e-blasts, and other promotional materials.  In the process of doing so, I happened to stumble across the following short video about one of our forum's keynote speakers, Charles Best.  It was produced by the USA cable network, as part of their "Character Approved" series.

Since I'm much more of a "tech geek" than a nonprofit guru, I must confess that I knew absolutely nothing about the keynote speakers we have scheduled for the forum.  This video really helped me get an idea of who Charles Best is, and how his philanthropic website, DonorsChoose.org, is making a huge difference in the lives of school children around the country — and even around the world.  He definitely is "character approved" in my book. Take a minute and check it out!