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Why is Gates Foundation Giving Money to Journalists?

Since January 1^st this year more than 2,393 newspaper jobs[1] were cut in the United States. With fewer reporters, who will gather, report, and write about local, state, and regional activities? Blogs clogged with opinion won’t fill the absence of fact-based, vetted information.

See the blog on Gates Foundation's gifts.

What are the implications for the nonprofit community?

Without reporters, who will tell your stories? Who will investigate, report on, and describe topics in regards to the issues, public policies, and trends relevant to your work? Who will provide independent, third party validation of your work, impact, leaders, and supporters?  Will nonprofits have to go the way of the Gates Foundation and underwrite critical reporting on issues they care about?

What Happened?

The golden age of journalism may prove to be the period between 1950 and the turning of the new century, 2000. The business model of newspapers worked during these times: there was enough advertising revenue to support large newsrooms, investigative reporting, and a wide range of news services. As ad revenue plummeted in recent years, the business model broke. Some already describe it as a dead model. Seeking to reduce costs, owners cut wherever possible. Newsrooms were obvious places to “save” great costs. The golden age is over and it’s not coming back.

Nonprofits NEED Reporters

More than they suspect or acknowledge, nonprofit organizations rely on validation provided by news and feature stories that reporters write and produce. With fewer reporters at all levels, it is likely only the largest groups or most dramatic stories will be covered.

What will be the implications of this shift on your ability to tell your story in a credible fashion, to build community awareness, and to generate buzz about important community issues or special projects?

Validation through reporters’ stories distributed through a variety of channels seems to be taken for granted. Nonprofit leaders celebrate when they get a front page, “above the fold” Metro section story or when a local columnist features their work or one of their volunteers. Paper copies are made and mailed; electronic copies are forwarded far and wide via email; links or PDFs are posted on the organization’s web site; and excerpts are placed in newsletters and in reports. Board members brag about the stories at social events.

It is valuable when an independent outsider chooses to write about and describe the work of a nonprofit. Donors to nonprofits often proudly talk about coverage of their favorite groups. “Did you see the story about _______?” is a common question at donor gatherings. Seeing “their” group talked about in newspaper and magazine stories is validation for donors: it tells them that they made the right choice. For many donors, this is an invaluable experience that encourages continued, and even increased, gifts. It has been my experience that this is important to donors at all gift levels. Some groups have actually based their revenue/funding model on continued attention in the media. They are even more vulnerable than others at this time of media change.

Will there be a new definition of “newsworthy”? Will it trend toward only the most dramatic stories, or the nonprofit scandal of the day, or perhaps only to those that provide prepared content?

It’s Not ONLY About You.

With fewer reporters and dramatically different distribution channels for information, will policy makers and community decision makers get the information that will help them make the right big-picture decisions? Such choices have the potential to deeply affect the work of nonprofit groups at all levels. From the group that works with pre-school children, to others that help feed those in need, to those making sure we have clean water, all rely upon fact-based digging by reporters. With a greatly reduced supply of information, how will this affect the nature of public and private interactions and decisions?

How will nonprofits fill these gaps? In effect, their marketing, education, and fundraising efforts will all need to increase in response. One of the consistently reported and documented needs of donors is for detailed information about the work and impact of the groups that they support. As reporters and news distribution changes, nonprofits may be forced to increase their sophistication, volume and channels of information distribution.

The need to expand communication and accountability reporting will lead to some increase in costs of operations. Today, most accountants would group this into the category of “overhead”. Yet rather than being burdensome “overhead”, such expenditures are wise, vital, necessary expenses without which organizations will not likely succeed in the fundraising market. This suggests that the narrow budget or functional breakdown of nonprofit activity consisting of program work and “overhead” is likely flawed and will need re-structuring or at a minimum re-interpretation.

Without enhanced public education, targeted donor education, and increased donor/volunteer/activities stewardship, program work may be severely inhibited or even hindered. The line that used to be somewhat clear between program work and everything else will blur, perhaps even disappear. This has implications for most nonprofit job descriptions, performance metrics, and staff skill sets.

Changes Outside

Mean Changes in How Nonprofits Think and Operate

As a result of these accelerating changes, here are some issues that will have to be addressed by nonprofits wishing to thrive in the coming years.

• How will you provide donors, supporters, and policy makers with the news and information that they need to make decisions that affect your work?
• What will you do to ensure the information reaches the people you need to reach?
• What data do your donors need?
• What data do policy decision makers need?
• What data do community leaders need?
• What data do other organizations and those linked to your mission work need?

Reporters were wonderful allies in helping translate or illuminate the work of nonprofits. Their independence was highly valuable because it gave donors an experience of transparency.

Transparency is linked to integrity and trust; it is also tightly linked to the size and frequency of donations. But there is more to transparency than news stories. It is the ability of donors and community members to get the right information in a timely manner, in a useful form, and then be able to use or understand that data.  Often reporters not only accumulated data from hard- to-find sources, they also interpreted it. The result was a valuable service. How will it be replaced?

This suggests that the way nonprofits report their results and financial data, and distribute their 990s and other evaluation information may need to take on new forms and require much greater levels of translation and even third-party review.

Many nonprofits have yet to post their 990s on their web site; some don’t even list staff names. If transparency is a valued objective, there is great distance to travel in a very short time for these groups.

“You are your own news reporter”

The disappearance of reporters, the change in the distribution of news, the growth of electronic media: all raise significant questions about how nonprofits have structured, presented, and distributed their key messages.

How will you tell your story?

Newsletters and donor communications will need to be fundamentally reformed, re-thought, and re-contextualized, to more of a newspaper-style news source rather than a chatty, informal collection of essays. New reporting styles and formats may take greater precedence as well.

As a result of these accelerating changes here are some issues that will have to be addressed by nonprofits wishing to strive in the coming years.

• How will you provide donors, supporters, policy makers with the news that need to make decisions that affect your work?
• What will you do to ensure the information you need to be successful reaches the people you need to reach?
• What data do other organizations and those linked to your mission work need?
• Will you need to tell “both sides of the story” as your role changes and there is a greater need to present the other side of the story in a fair manner?

 

Thanks to comments from Robert McClure at Investigation West for inspiring this column.

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[1] See http://graphicdesignr.net/papercuts/; also, research done by Investigation West.

Foundation Data Made VERY Public

Congratulations to The Seattle Foundation, which just started making publicly available its data, research and evaluations on more than 675 local nonprofits. The information used to be kept inside, available only to staff and a small number of people who maintained giving accounts at the foundation.

The web site makes it easier for donors of all kinds to learn key information about a wide range of groups. In times in which good information about individual nonprofits can be difficult to come by, the service may prove invaluable to many groups seeking support and to many donors seeking sound data to support their personal and business giving decisions.

See the article in the New York Times
See the data on The Seattle Foundation site

Nurturing Relationships for Today and Years to Come

Good fundraising is about good relationships. Board members and nonprofit staff often refer to donors as personal friends. But how many "good" friends can you actually have?

Donors report that communication quality and depth of relationship between them and the nonprofit are primary drivers for making gifts - both annual fund and legacy gifts (bequests). Donor research consistently reports that personalized and face-to-face interaction generates more in the way of gifts and resources for nonprofits.

But what if your brain is already filled up with the details of personal relationships? How many more can you add? Researcher Robin Dunbar suggests the most friends your brain can handle might be around 150 because of the way the human brain is hardwired.  Other research suggests the number of close or best friends may be far smaller. Therein lies the rub. How do you stay "friends" with the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who value the work of your organization?

"Nurturing Relationships for Today and Years to Come" is the title of a just published article written by Kevin Johnson that shows just how a method of creating and maintaining authentic relationships can work for a nonprofit group.

Links:

• Read the article

• Check out Grassroots Fundraising Journal

• Anthropologist Robin Dunbar interview

An Authentic Story Will Engage the Right Donors

July 29th, 2010
Thursday, 8:30 a.m. - 1:45 p.m. at
Kennedy School, 5736 NE 33rd Ave., Portland, OR  97211

Stories create a vital link between strategy, mission and donors. Your authentic story – one that connects with your deeper purpose – makes your own story unique and powerful.

Well crafted stories enable staff and engage donors.

Stories help donors understand what part your nonprofit plays in their vision and dream for their community and the world at large. Stories inspire prospective donors and allies.

Participants will:
•    Learn to apply the power of using stories as an integral part of  donor engagement and strategy planning  
•    Gain insights individually and as a leadership team on how to engage donors in strategy discussions
•    Have the opportunity to plan with your team on how to apply the insights and skills to your own situation
•    Connect with other non-profit leaders

Who Should Attend?

This session is designed for teams of visionary leaders from nonprofits. Each three person team will consist of 1) an executive director or division leader, 2) a primary development officer, and 3) a board member or key volunteer, all from the same organization. Up to two development officers or volunteer board leaders may attend per organization. Single attendees or incomplete teams are not eligible. NOTE: New executive directors and their teams will also find this particularly helpful.

Is your story BIG enough? Is it visionary enough?

We will explore your visionary stories and examine how tactics and strategies can be combined that fit how today’s world thinks and acts. 

How does “strategic planning” fit with your story? How can you connect donors and strategy together?

While the exercises will be focused on your own team, there will be a time for all the executive directors, board members, and development professionals to be together groups too.

The session will be filled with a combination of presentation, case studies, discussion and your own team work sessions. Please plan to attend during the entire workshop since the session after lunch will combine a number of discussion items and focus on your own next steps as a team of visionary leaders.

We will also have some advance homework so that your team will be able get to work immediately and come away with some concrete next steps. We will also have a survey tool that you can use with all of your board or staff in advance if you wish.

About the Event Hosts and Presenters

Guest Presenter:

Jelly Helm is principal of a creative studio in Portland. His clients include Wikipedia, Oregon Humanities, Infectious Disease Research Institute and Imperial Woodpecker. He is the former executive creative director of Wieden+Kennedy, and the founder/director of Wieden+Kennedy 12. Past clients include Nike, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Google, Farm Aid, Ecotrust and National Voice.

Hosts/Facilitators:

•    Kevin Johnson, Retriever Development Counsel just published the book The Power of Legacy and Planned Gifts: How Donors and Nonprofits Can Change the World (JosseyBass/Wiley, 2010). His professional focus is on coaching nonprofit leaders on how to be more effective in strategy, charting new directions, and building sustainable funding models.
•    Karlene McCabe has over 20 years experience in leading communities and not for profits to find solutions to high profile challenges.  Her strengths include fund development and diversification, organizational growth and positioning and fostering staff /board leadership. She served as the Executive Director of the Greenbelt Land Trust in Corvallis, Oregon from 1996-2010.   She led the organization through major growth and change. This included transitioning from a founding board of directors to the third generation of leaders, going from a local to a regional trust, securing a variety of new funding sources from federal, state and foundation grants and significantly increasing the amount of planned gifts to the organization.  She served as the leader to design and pass a bond measure campaign for $ 7.9 million to purchase open space in the City of Corvallis.

Why Stories? Why Now?
More nonprofits report long-time strategies are losing ground. In the words of one nonprofit leader “we did everything that worked last year, but it didn’t work this year.” This begins to make sense if we recognize that many nonprofit strategic planning and fundraising practices evolved when members of the Greatest Generation were the primary players in the world of nonprofits. This generation trusted institutions – like United Way or Social Security – as well as nonprofits. Think Walter Cronkite, Billy Graham or Charles Schultz.

While the greatest generation trusted large organizations to make a positive impact (they won WWII and conquered polio that way), their children, the baby boomers, don’t trust institutions. The boomers have quite a different worldview and set of interests and needs.

“It’s about me.” Boomers trust stories if the stories help them figure out the role your nonprofit plays in their lives and in the world they want to shape or aspire to live in someday. (Adult learning research says the same thing.) How you tell your story will make the difference as to whether your nonprofit will thrive or not in the coming years.

Register: space is limited.

Overview of the day:

8:15 - 8:45 a.m.
Continental breakfast & check in

8:45 - 9:00 a.m.
Overview and introductions

9:00 - 11:15 a.m.
Linking story, resources, & strategy: a new paradigm
 
11:15 a.m. - Noon.
The Power of Stories

Noon – 12:30 p.m.
How Donors will help you craft and tell your story/vision.
       
12:30 - 1:00 p.m.
Lunch
buffet including vegetarian options

1:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Your Next Steps: What Inspires YOU?

Combining our discussions and choosing next, realistic steps

1:30 - 1:45 p.m. 
Closing
(Note: we will end promptly at 1:45 p.m.)


Teams only please; each team should consist of the executive director or division leader, board chair or board volunteer, and primary development officer.

The fee for each three person team is $225. Additional team members may attend for an additional $50 each. Refunds available up to 7 business days before the event.

Continental breakfast and lunch included in fee. Vegetarian options will be available - no need to request them.

Register

I saw this picture of a sign resurrected from the World War II era again in Jelly Helm's post on his blawg. (By the way, his accompanying post on staying present is worth reading.)

Continued fascination with WW2 in the form of books, movies, and mini-series suggests to me more than a passing interest in history. Or perhaps not an interest in history at all. Instead, these recent movies and books tell the stories of how men and women lived in difficult times; how they met challenges (big challenges); how life unfolded; they described what it was like to live in difficult times. These stories help us understand, or cope, or provide, in an odd way, comfort. In a sense its comforting to experience these stories -- because we know how things turned out. But we don’t KNOW how things are going to turn out today.

Perhaps you have seen the “Awareness Test” on YouTube. One version shows two team of basketball players passing the ball. The announcer challenges you as the viewer to count the number of ball passes one team makes. When I showed this to the audience at a conference recently many correctly counted the number of passes. But, they didn’t see the 6’ tall, moon walking bear that walked in and out among the players at the same time. It test begs the question that we see what we want to see and may not know what we don’t see or miss.

This brings me around to how many nonprofit board members and executives are acting these days. Some are focused on how to create a bright future – they know it will be different in both form and content. Other boards are acting more like checkbook managers with the perspective that they have to guard what little dollars remain.

When we consider the vital role that thousands of nonprofits play in our communities throughout the United States, which approach holds the most promise? It’s about what we CHOOSE to focus upon that will mean the difference between nonprofits that thrive in the coming years and those that will cease to be relevant to their communities and donors.

Another Fundraising Record

What nonprofit fundraiser had gifts 109% OVER its results for the same period last year? It's Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund. 

A Nonprofit Quarterly article reports that gifts were up to $270,000,000 the first quarter of 2010.  In addition, according to an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy the number of new accounts was also up 145%.

That's an astounding number. I have to wonder out loud what Fidelity Gift Fund is doing right -- it's got to be a number of things. What can the rest of the nonprofit world learn here?