The Philanthropy Network Blog

Is your organization ready for 5G?  Imagine extremely low latency full HD mobile video conferencing.  A series of connected devices streaming real-time impact data and stewardship information. Donor-to-Mission access that has been heretofore impossible.  Augmented reality technology for the most inspiring in-person presentations to your most capable donor audience. Imagine fully immersive experiences for prospective donors interested in proposed new (or renovated) facilities, conservation projects, or even medical research.  Preparing your organization for the 5G revolution will require an organization-wide commitment to Development Everywhere, which would start with an orientation to best practices in constituent management and donor engagement for every member of the organization.  Customer service and impact reporting will be required, perhaps even daily, as donors gain access to the work being done with their donor resources.  These daily metrics checki...

As a veteran fundraiser, I’ve lived through a fair share of disruption: The ‘98 Asian Financial Crisis, The 2000 Election, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina (my wife and I were living in New Orleans at the time), the 2008 Great Recession.  You’d think that  this uncertainty thing would be familiar territory by now.  And yet coronavirus has us drinking from uniquely powerful firehose of doubt.  And when there is so much doubt, it’s tempting to sit back and wait for something concrete, for the fog to lift, for the storm to lift before taking action in any direction. But for organizations that depend on philanthropy, we can’t sit still. And the ones who focus on creatively strengthening engagement and stewardship programs, sharpen and differentiate their storytelling, and boldly craft new initiatives can come out of the darkness stronger than ever, more engaged than ever, with a willing and capable body of enthusiastic supporters ready to build on your already bold vision. Even s...

Remember parties?   Seems like a distant memory right?  But at one time parties did actually exist, and when they did I would people would ask me what I do for a living. And when I answered “I’m a professional fundraiser” the conversation nearly always turned to crowdfunding:   Kickstarter .  GoFundMe .  IndieGoGo . These platforms have democratized fundraising in ways never before possible.  They’re intuitive, easy to use, but man is it a crowded space!  Fortunately, I had the thrilling chance to serve as an informal advisor in the early days of  GiveCorps , prior to their acquisition by The Network for Good . So when the party conversation turns to crowdfunding, my answer is always the same, and in the spirit of sharing (And in the absence of parties), welcome to  Seven Steps to Mastering your GoFundMe Campaign: Somebody is about to ask about Crowdfunding... 1. Do not be afraid! The feeling in the pit of your stomach?...

  The best part about working on the frontiers of scientific research is that you get to talk with donors about solutions.   Solutions to climate change. Solutions to cancer.  Solutions to water shortages.  Global WiFi provided by a network of low altitude geostationary satellites.  Being a fundraising professional for three global research powerhouses meant surfing the endless frontier of human progress.   But what I also loved most about working in scientific fundraising was that I got to make the case - day after day after day - for why donors should support projects and programs with current use dollars, rather than through endowments.  I would reason that the problems facing researchers today, from physicists and biologists to social scientists and even historians, are remarkably complex, requiring sustained, high intensity inputs to create the necessary escape velocity towards real solutions.  Besides, once a given problem is solved, the end...

When David and Jennifer Risher announced their decision to launch The #HalfmyDAF movement, I was immediately compelled to reach out to them to say thank you (and politely suggest that they didn't go far enough!).  Even without going The Full Monty , to me the Rishers and the #HalfmyDAF movement is the best thing to happen to philanthropy since on-line giving.   First, some context: The Donor Advised Fund was designed for donors who, for timing purposes, needed to make a tax-advantaged donation, but essentially did not know where to give the money and did not have a private foundation.  It has existed in some form since the 1930s, and over the ensuing decades, favorable legislation designed to prevent the proliferation of administratively expensive private foundations (which can be tracked via this handy dandy PDF at the Council of Foundations ) lead to the creation of the DAF, which by 2019 was the fastest-growing charitable vehicle in the US - an unintended consequ...

In 2007, I was the Regional Director for the MidAmerica Region in the Office of Leadership Giving at MIT when my wife accepted a job at a prestigious law firm in Portland, Maine. At the time I faced a choice: leave MIT, or pitch a "telecommuting" arrangement that would allow me to continue my career at the Institute. Rather than leave what at the time was my dream job, I started working with the MIT Office of Work & Family Life, the MIT Ombudsman's office, and my supervisor, I crafted a proposal to pilot a remote work arrangement. MIT agreed to a 6-month "trial".  A decade at MIT and 13 years as a remote advancement professional later, here we are - all working remotely together. I started my trial period at MIT as a single major gifts contributor and grew my responsibilities to include regional leadership and talent management, to eventually leading all capital fundraising for MIT.nano, then the largest basic research project in MIT History. At MIT I cultiv...

That's no moon. It's a space station. -Obi-wan Kenobi OK so you're about 14 days into your involuntary mobile worklife. If you're lucky, you've created a reasonably sound, functional work routine, connected with your staff, colleagues, bosses and friends, upgraded your at-home tech footprint, and found some continuity in terms of your own productivity. You have a strong sense of what to do when you start your day, a predictable re-entry plan for the end, and in between - well, you're figuring it out. Moreover, if you're like me, you're also grappling with the likely long-term reality of your kids on some distance learning platforms (mine are learning on BlueJeans, SplashMath, Duolingo, and Google Docs), a spouse or partner at home with you (my wife, a law partner, is working from an adjacent space), and your usually calm pets confined with the family, absorbing the stress in the house, feeling needy, and reacting to new family routines. So over...

Wondering how your organization can raise resources during this time of enormous uncertainty?  The answer might lie in the $121B Donor Advised Fund industry. For the uninitiated, Donor Advised Funds are monies donated by individuals for a specific tax benefit in a specific year, but instead of going to support the non-profit sector, those funds are managed by (and generate fees for) financial institutions for the future benefit of qualified charities. For those in the philanthropy industry, it has been long argued that DAFs are some of the most unproductive assets in our society – anywhere. In times of massive social disruption – like oh I don’t know, a pandemic – we should invite reflection about why these vehicles exist in the first place. $121B would do amazing work for the non-profit sector, guaranteeing ongoing services and support for teachers, nurses, conservation workers, homeless advocates, and the like – not to mention lightening the extraordinary mental load broug...

Welcome to the hustle. -Robin Arzon So suddenly you're a mobile philanthropy professional. Welcome to the club! For some of you this might be a finite journey, a month or two of rocking the virtual workplace. For others, as I've experienced over the past 15 years, mobile work could become the most exhilarating and fulfilling chapter of your life and career. Either way, week one can feel a bit like walking into a waterpark wearing jeans and a sweater. You're nervous and a little excited, but you're not exactly able to get the most out of the experience. Plus you may feel weird being at a waterpark in the first place, “out of sight” of your boss and colleagues. But don't pack up your gear and bolt just yet, it's just that you need to lock down the basics. Let me explain. First things first: Time for a quick tech assessment. It's nearly impossible to be effective in a mobile environment without reliable, accessible, and most importantly, dedicated t...

Today's COVID-19 epidemic offers nearly every worker in the philanthropy industry the chance to glimpse life as a mobile professional, experience increased workplace satisfaction and productivity, and engage with modern and inexpensive mobile technologies. Then there is the pure joy of not commuting to work, of never looking for parking, of never having countless interruptions during the work day (not to mention the benefits of avoiding The Vending Machine...p.s. when the hell did they start taking credit cards!). And for supervisors, it means no more tackling microissues of personal space in the office, administrivia related to who has the bigger window, or the newer desk chair. A frustration reduction smorgasbord. And after 14 years as a "mobile fundraiser" I've concluded that productivity is almost always enhanced - sometimes orders of magnitudes enhanced - when working, developing and supporting a culture of mobile work. My experience as a veritable remote-wo...

People often ask me, how do you create a better experience for major donors? What first I think it's important to define what you see as a major donation within your organization, and develop protocols to recognize and acknowledge donors who make gifts at that level. And once the donor does make a gift at that level, continue to acknowledge every donation they make your organization as if they've made a major donation. It's also important to create communities around major gifts, that could include the donors to a specific building getting together on regular anniversaries to celebrate the accomplishments of the facility, donors to endowments supporting a specific area getting together to celebrate the recipients of that support, or Donors to unrestricted receiving regular updates on major challenges facing the Institution - some which may or may not be front-page news. This level of intimacy is critical in order for donors feel part of something larger, more than just a ...

I love technology, and love imagining technology as a platform for a better future for the planet. Using technology to advance humankind is elementary, as Bill Gates shared in a recent article on the topic of human health (http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bill-gates-interview-human-health), and the grand benefit that technology bestows on humanity is the lowering of resource barriers to improving people's lives. That is why, at least to me, BitCoin is so interesting, since a universal currency would improve upon the highly inefficient process of resource delivery, purchasing, procurement, etc. in the delivery of social services worldwide. For example, charities accepting BitCoin can distribute funding to disparate parts of their organization with the benefit of lower overhead, processing or conversion fees. But the moral hazard is real, and could pollute organizations willing to risk accepting BitCoin as a donation vehicle. On the speculative side, I can't help but feel lik...

Coursera, EdX, Kahn Academy, Saylor.org, OpenCourseWare. All are infinitely scalable, infinitely deployable, and infinitely cheaper alternatives to the bricks-and-mortar learning experience. How, where and who consumes a heretofore inelastic product - education - is being reshaped, unwrung, and disruptively transformed in ways not seen since the invention of the printing press. Today's world needs a highly educated, adaptable, technical workforce, capable of being retrained and redeployed from less productive to more productive industries. The prohibitively expensive (and slow!) 4-year residential education model is no longer suited to the modern, global economy. Thus it is this blogger's belief that we are about to witness the beginning of a Cat 5 university endgame: the emerging on-line learning colossus spawns a legitimate credentialing industry leading to collapsing tuition revenue from decreased enrollment, leading ultimately to many under-capitalized colleges and uni...

Myriad academic studies and citizen speculation have been devoted to the rising cost of college tuition, which is a blame shifting, blame assigning exercise of the 1st magnitude, and which unfortunately ignores the asymptotic demand curve for the product (in that demand should decrease for education as the price goes up, but the opposite seems to happen - people need more training, not less, for a 21st century career and are willing to pay (handsomely, I might add) for the privilege of operating in the modern world). And frankly, the cost of Harvard ($54,496) has always been about the same as a top of the line Buick (which I found to be the Buick Enclave at $53,775), and I have never heard a person complain about the rising cost of a Buick. But the cost of education is less of a concern to me than the problem of giving anybody with talent and drive level access to the product. University fundraisers and agencies dedicated to the advancement of one ethnicity or another have been sub...

Today I read an article by XConomy's Wade Roush, who attended a conference hosted by Kleiner Perkins and featured a presentation by famed Internet analyst Mary Meeker (the presentation can be found here: http://www.kpcb.com/file/kpcb-internet-trends-2012), which covered how mobile telephony and smart phones have begun to impact nearly every aspect of the human experience. The most ubiquitous omission seems to be Philanthropy, at least in my mind, but how can a decidedly human engagement experience (giving support for and volunteering time for causes greater than one's self) be mobilized - in the technical sense? Can philanthropy go truly mobile? And I am not necessarily talking about giving in the $10s or $100s of dollars, what I am talking about is mega philanthropy, in that: How can mega philanthropists immerse themselves where their donations, grants or in-kind support is provided? How can organizations that attract that level of philanthropy be expected to deliver a tru...

For those of us working for organizations with July-June fiscal year calendars, mid-May through June 30 can be one of the most misunderstood times of the year. One the one hand its time to confirm participatory gifts and remind our most generous donors of their outstanding fiscal year pledges, but its also one of the best times to conduct thoughtful, personalized stewardship, and remind those existing donors - you know, those who give during the other 46 weeks of the year - how important they are to your organization's success. I imagine that a fundraiser who's giving 110% to secure fiscal year end gifts finds significantly decreased marginal production for each additional 1% beyond (say) 85% effort. Reallocating some fraction of the day (perhaps as much as 20%) to pure stewardship, calling existing donors to say thank you for making the fiscal year a success, and engaging them in conversations about their next gift, the year ahead for the organization, summer events, etc.,...

Today, Facebook goes public. And the impact of its meteoric rise, and the enormous wealth it will (and already has) created, will become more apparent after the share lock-up period expires later this year, the social media juggernaut will profoundly impact the charitable landscape. Let's just start with the first employees and founders of Facebook. At 11am today Mark Zuckerberg will become one of the richest people in the world. Zuckerberg is introverted, focused, data driven and judgmental, and is known to have a high need for control. The causes and that he ultimately embraces and the organizations that he decides to charitably support, will need to adapt to Mr. Zuckerberg's view of how the world should work, rather than how it actually does work. This could be a good thing. He has paradigm shifting resources, has already influenced (for the worse, in this author's mind) the evolutionary trajectory of mankind (more on that later), and he could do the same for phil...

If you follow Dallas Maverick's owner Marc Cuban's blog, you probably know that he is something of a near futurist, but he's rarely off the mark analytically, and his latest entry on The Coming Meltdown in Higher Education is precision laser guided ( Check out the article here . Easy credit in the student loan markets has artificially subsidized the four-year degree granting market for three decades, and for many students college has become a four-year reality detour before embarking on the real work of real life. Student loan indebtedness exceeds consumer debt, and with an exceedingly competitive global marketplace where the best career options require more technical and intensive training and work ethic, those who are left behind (or who fail to prepare) will face a mountain too steep to climb. And fundamentally, the underwriting assumptions of student loans are similar to those of subprime mortgages, and the collapse of the market will put student borrowers onto unstabl...

I read a Forbes article recently about the demise of the Venture Capital Industry, which as you know has invested in, incubated and launched some of the most valuable products, businesses and services we enjoy and take very much for granted today.   What was most shocking about the article is that the prime reason cited for the demise of Venture capital is that the industry has become too good at raising money, and they are having problems putting $30B to productive use each year. Yes, too much money is a problem for the venture capital industry. As a non-profit professional I could not imagine a better problem to have.  The magnitude of the assets at their disposal is just short of overwhelming. $30B dollars is 10% of the entire Charitable Giving industry. Its equivalent to 90 American Cancer Societies; 50 Nature Conservancies; or 300 ACLUs. But the industry chases investment returns, different than the aims of most charitable organizations. However there may be a...

To celebrate the 8,000th member of The Philanthropy Network on LinkedIn, it seemed only appropriate to create an open forum for long-form opinions and analysis about the future of Philanthropy, trends in the non-profit sector, and ground shaking ideas designed to transform the way societal services are delivered. The foundational belief of the Philanthropy Network blog (and this blogger) is that altruism is an underrated and under-publicized virtue, and that today's non-profit leaders have the potential to be transformative forces for good in the world. So, welcome to the Philanthropy Network Blog, I hope this becomes a valuable content destination for you, as well as a forum within which you can share your best ideas about the future of our industry. Sincerely yours, Brad Smith Founder, Philanthropy Network