Gift Hub

ReelMedia.Org: Change the World One Film at a Time

J.D. Lasica interviews Hal Plotkin, founder of ReelChanges.org,  a curated, donor-supported site providing  documentaries. Those proposing a documentary can post their plan online. Funders can contribute tax-deductibly towards getting the project made. Is this the longed for alternative to advertising supporting corporate media news? (Crowd sourced patronage?) Via CauseWired.

Helen LaKelly Hunt, "Will Women Fund Their Own Revolution?"

Helen LaKelly Hunt, "Will Women Fund Their Own Revolution?" One of the best articles you will ever read on women's philanthropy in the context of a male-dominated (in other words hard headed and emotionally obtuse) estate and financial planning process.  I have read this article over and over trying to take its messages to heart.  If in certain circles philanthropy is gendered female, and if the woman's philanthropy is limited to a philanthropic budget (to a small share of income and zero share of principal), that may be because in her world the door to the counting house is locked and bolted, leaving her in the parlor to make nice with small dollars. When a woman's wisdom is excluded from the planning process, the overall legacy plan may be blind. Worse, perhaps, as in this case, there may soon be two legacy plans, his and hers, once the divorce papers are signed.   Getting the woman's wisdom to partner with the male perspective and rule the entire legacy plan, not just the giving budget, strikes me as a very big opportunity for planners, families, and society. Nonprofits can promote this.

The Good Life - 8 Vignettes Produced by Kathryn Davison

At The Fortunate Isles you (whether loser or winner, rich or poor, wise or foolish, envious or admiring, Master or Servant, Milady or Ms. Nobody) can find The Good Life, eight video vignettes,  produced by Kathryn Davison. These short films dramatize what life is like when married to, or a child of, or a  grandchild of a Master of the Universe.  We see marriage, children, friends, trust officers, lawyers, heirs, playing each other in a world of silences, privileges embraced, and duties shirked. We see a Diamond as Big as The Ritz, and I found myself scanning for literary antecedents: Petronius? Flaubert? Fitzgerald? Edith Wharton? Henry James? The Robert Lowell of "Life Studies"? How can we as a nation make democratic sense of what these videos depict? (An enervated, narcissistic culture of wealth without humane competence, open communication, or social conscience.) Well, once again, I noted in the advisory roles a bow-tie wearing machiavel, serving as trust officer, and a soft spoken and sinister Iago type in the attorney role, both male, of course. What I did not see was a Falstaff, a Hermes, a Trickster, a Jeeves, a Holy Fool, a Pippi Longstocking - unless, as I suspect, that is the implicit trouble-maker, boundary breaking, role played by Kathryn herself.

Horace, a bit of a courtier in his own right, in the court of Augustus, famously said that "Art holds the mirror up to nature." Human nature? Making life-like portraits of the ruling class is a dangerous game, as Goya understood. The portraits if true to life may be hideous and then you get accused of being satirical, impertinent, insubordinate, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or a traitor to your class, or a teller of tales out of school, or the bad child who never learned good manners. If as an insider you do not keep your mouth shut about how things are in the family circle and its closed world you might just get yourself ostracized, shunned, or disinherited. So, maybe, it is wise to not go too far. Let the portraits speak for themselves, and hold the camera steady.

The Good Life, if you trace that title back, comes from Aristotle's Ethics. In that work he suggests that we only find happiness by exemplifying excellence as part of a well-ordered polis, or community, founded on civic friendship among the leading citizens, the cultivation of civic virtues, and the largeness of mind that characterizes a vigorous, productive and responsible aristocracy. Yup. Our Aristocracy, by contrast, sort of sucks. That is the explosive, subversive, charge these videos discreetly deliver, from inside the firewall. If the explosion is muffled, that may be because  the firewall is very thick, and built to sustain even tactical nuclear weapons, should revolutionaries ever get their hands on any.

Givingnet Brings Operations to a Close

Givingnet: Enhancing Community Foundations of America:

In light of this changed funding environment, the board and management of GivingNet have decided that it is best to complete the organization’s original program on a high note, declare a limited victory, and thus allow all involved to re-focus resources and energy on future opportunities.

Consequently, GivingNet is bringing operations to a close as of September 30, 2008, with a final financial reporting to subscribers to be distributed shortly thereafter.

So, does this leave a market niche open to the forprofit providers of technology and information services to community foundations, and to those who create online community foundation surrogates?

I got a question, though. I understand that philanthropy, like any other human motive, can be colonized, branded and sold. I understand that smart marketers and venture capital can grow anything to scale if it is rooted in a reasonably common buyer-motive. I get that smart money wants to do good and get rich, and will succeed, particularly on the getting rich part. My question is about birth, baptism, circumcision, marriage, last rites. I understand that much of this too can be bought and sold, as, say, a funerary urn can be, or a drive through marriage or divorce in Reno. But are there any communities of conscience where we can dwell, raise children, and remain faithful to some tradition deeper than markets, so that markets serve them, rather than replacing them? If I were running a community foundation, those are the questions I would be asking as I see my pitiful technology, and my rudimentary donor sales process, being supplanted by the juggernaut of American Bidnis. I would be looking for the hunger for community that a mall or market place, no matter how branded, will not satisfy. And I would differentiate my community-building, soul-making, child-forming, life-enhancing services from the market, rather than aping the market, only to lose to better funded ventures. I am not sure that was the perspective of Carla Dearing, a former investment bankers who ran Givingnet, and who was faithful in her adherence to market-speak, as a way of "being-in-the-world," largely unsupportable for many consumers (as sales show) without anti-depressants.  When philanthropy and nonprofits lead in the voice of the poet, prophet, crank, social critic, community organizer, or holy fool, they will find that Fidelity lags.   

How best to enhance community foundations? Serve what is highest in the donor in community with others. Subordinate asset gathering and transactions and technology to the ending end of all. If that end is unclear, follow the lead of Givingnet, and close your doors.

Planned Giving - Can We Do Better, Please?

Adapted from a recent job ad for a planned giving officer at a national organization:

• Provide prospects, donors and professional advisors with information and materials about the ABC Organization's services, support groups and research programs.
• Coordinate suggestions for planned giving vehicles with the prospects and their advisors in order to meet their estate/financial planning goals and those of the ABC;
• Submit 50 proposals of $10,000+ within a fiscal year.
• Meet personally with prospects, donors and professional advisors (approximately 190 face-to-face scheduled contacts annually).
• Manage a portfolio of 250 qualified, active prospects through various stages of moves management.
• Maintain a high level of expertise regarding state and federal taxes, gift and estate giving methods and the legal aspect of charitable giving

What is missing, or under emphasized:

• Treat donor as an end, not a means
• Work with advisors to help donor determine whether he or she can be more generous without  scrimping on other goals
• Work with donor and advisors to position gift to have the biggest positive impact now and later on ABC Charity, while having the smallest negative impact on the donor's other goals.
• Work with donor and heirs to make this gift one that will bind the family in common purpose.

Prognosis

• Those organizations that persist in seeing planned gifts a process that can be managed (as entry level sales people are managed) towards repeatable transactions, will get transactions, many and small. Those gifts will often be given with mixed emotions.
• Those organizations that take the more enlightened approach will receive fewer, larger gifts, per planned giving officer, but those gifts will be transformational for the donor and the organization.
• Gifts given in the more enlightened process will strengthen donor charity relationships, lead to referrals, and position the organization as a leader in the field.

IRS Issues New Guidelines for Donor Advised Funds

Via National Committee on Planned Giving:

On August 1, 2008, IRS issued new guidelines for qualification as a Donor Advised Fund. A review of DAFs by Treasury was directed by the 2006 Pension Protection Act, which also included a number of changes to the tax treatment of DAFs and subjected sponsoring organizations to a regime of excise taxes similar to those applicable to non-operating private foundations. NCPG appointed a DAF Task Force in early 2007 to respond to an IRS request for comments in regard to the Treasury study. To read NCPG's comments click here.

In the new guidelines, IRS has supplemented Part 7, chapter 20, of the Internal Revenue Manual with a new section 8, detailing the criteria for determining the exempt status of an organization sponsoring donor advised funds. The supplement takes the form of a guide sheet with accompanying explanatory text. Both items were distributed under a memo dated July 31, 2008. You can view all three documents here.

The Seasons Fund for Social Transformation

The Seasons Fund For Social Transformation: 

...invests in opportunities to couple the expansive power of personal transformation with the public work of repairing societal ills in the United States. The Fund, a collaborative effort led by several private foundations, springs from a shared belief that cultivating a rich inner life is both a worthy end in itself and an overlooked pathway to heightening the impact, effectiveness, and sustainability of social change initiatives. Together, we aim to raise at least $5 million to support those working for social, economic, and environmental justice to embrace a range of contemplative practices that can deepen their capacity to lead.

A wish: That estate planning were done in such a spirit, in spaces held open for that purpose. Organizations devoted to transformation of self and society might align their fundraising, particularly major gifts and legacy gifts, with such an enlightened process.  Here is what happens when the legal mind predominates to the exclusion of the meditative mind. When we plan "the final things," in what frame of mind should it be done? How can your nonprofit provide an appropriate mission aligned space for meditative planning?

The War on Donors

Robert Thalhimer: "Fundraising is war!" What if we just treated donors as we might want to be treated, Robert? Has that been tried and rejected as naive?

Why Clients Fail to Complete Estate Plans

If you do estate planning, particularly as an attorney, you really must read this article, Square Peg, Round Hole, in Private Wealth Magazine. Hannah Shaw Grove and Russ Prince interviewed clients who began but failed to complete their estate plan. (We all know that many clients start and stop.) What the study found is staggering:

1. 97% of attorney's whose clients failed to complete the work were "unconcerned."
2. 95% of clients who fail to implement say that the plan did not address their core goals, wants, needs, and objectives.
3. 93% say that the trusts and estates attorney made them "uneasy."
4. 90% of clients who failed to complete plans said they were so confused that they could not tell if the plan did what they wanted done.
5. 46% said their attorney talked down to them. 

This is a stunning indictment of planning as usual where coldness and mystification go along with what client's perceive to be indifference and professional hauteur. To say, "We don't do touchy-feely," as many estate tax attorneys I know say proudly, is tantamount to saying, "We don't do our job, don't plan to do it, and are unconcerned whether we help or hurt clients whose money we take and waste." Whether indifference to client goals, and inability to communicate planning in terms clients can understand, is malpractice under the canons of the bar, I do not know, but it is sure is stupid in the way that only highly educated people can be when they take their signals from each other in a professional clique. Pity the families and the society whose legacy plans are created by advisors who do  not listen to client goals, including the desire to make the world  a better place. 

Ordered Liberty in Capitalist China

China (says Naomi Klein via Wirearchy) is spending tens of billions on surveillance and security. So far the results have been promising:

In April 2007, officials from 13 provinces held a meeting to report back on how their new security measures were performing. In the province of Jiangsu, which, according to the South China Morning Post, was using "artificial intelligence to extend and improve the existing monitoring system" the number of protests and riots "dropped by 44 per cent last year." In the province of Zhejiang, where new electronic surveillance systems had been installed, they were down 30 per cent. In Shaanxi, "mass incidents" — code for protests — were down by 27 per cent in a year. Dong Lei, the province’s deputy party chief, gave part of the credit to a huge investment in security cameras across the province. "We aim to achieve all day and all-weather monitoring capability," he told the gathering.

You can buy stock in these Chinese double bottom line social ventures (making money and keeping the public peace) on the NASDAQ and NYSE. Returns last year were over 300%, showing you can do well and do good, if you know which bets to place on the world we want.