Last Tuesday evening The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a national, living memorial honoring President Woodrow Wilson, was in town to fete four Austin leaders. I attended the event as a Board member of the Long Center for the Performing Arts . The Wilson Center honored Dr. James Truchard and Jeff Kodosky, who created National Instruments, with the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship. The award recognizes executives who, in their business practices and personal actions, show a deep concern for the common good beyond the bottom line. Dr. Truchard and Mr. Kodosky cofounded National Instruments in 1976, along with Bill Nowlin, establishing themselves as visionary leaders and technology pioneers. The company has recently been recognized as one of the top 25 multinational workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute and FORTUNE magazine. Kodosky and Truchard are Austin pioneers in business and in philanthropy each sharing their wealth with our neighbors and encouraging their employees to, as well.
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Two fascinating articles came my way this week, thanks to our crack team.
The New York Times reported, in a nutshell, that an interesting shift is taking place in funding for arts, culture, health and human services across our country. Government is distancing itself from funding any of these programs. Higher wealth individuals and foundations tend to be investing in root causes of social problems or in businesses that produce benefits to society. These folks tend to want to teach people to fish. Who, then, helps provides the fish, while the fishermen and women are learning? Perhaps those of us who want a quicker return on our philanthropic investments do. Those who don’t have time to spend in deep philanthropic research and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing our dollar provides a meal for a homeless person or a ticket to a concert for an underprivileged child. I say it takes a village of government, foundations and the general community all giving meaningful gifts to make our system work well.
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Last week Leadership Austin announced their 2012 Essential Class roster. I was struck by the huge percentage, right at half, of the class working in the nonprofit arena. What does this say about Leadership Austin, and about the nonprofit community?
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Having grown up in San Antonio, I’m very comfortable with a “military presence” in my community. I lived in neighborhoods and went to school with lots of kids whose dads, mostly, served in the Army or Air Force. But in San Antonio in the late 60s, early 70s, soldiers walked around in their uniforms. You saw them and knew they were there. Not so in Austin. I had no idea of the significant number of military families there are in Austin. According to the American Red Cross of Central Texas there are 130,000 veterans in the Austin Metro area.
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What does it take to birth an organization? Vision, passion, friends and colleagues. Most of all energy and perseverance! And what do you get in return? Challenges, frustration, immense satisfaction and pleasure, new friends and colleagues. In October 2006, I left United Way Capital Area
to focus fulltime on a project we began in 2004 in collaboration with Public Strategies, Inc. , the Austin Community Foundation , The Austin Chapter of the Ass’n. of Fundraising Professionals and The Junior League of Austin . We launched I Live Here, I Give Here one year later and I, along with more friends and colleagues than you can imagine, have been pushing the campaign forward, full-tilt, since.
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Yesterday was a quiet, restorative day at Casa Martin. After a whirlwind trip to help Mackenzie find a new home in Ft. Worth, I needed it. For me, a restorative day looks a lot like sweating in the garden. “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.” There’s something about those roots! It’s hot in Austin on June 5, and my kitchen garden is bearing fruit. I’m picking okra, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers mostly, along with an occasional squash and a few green beans. Having sent Jack off to work in Miami on an early Sunday plane, I came home and thought about what I, and only I for a change, wanted to eat. Then I thought of my harvest. I made a delicious salad of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from the garden. I added an onion from Youth Launch’s Urban Roots booth at last week’s farmers market and a splash of Newman’s Own balsamic vinaigrette.
And then I Live Here, I Give Here kicked into my relatively calm brain and I began to think… Because I made my salad with onions purchased from Urban Youth and dressed it with Newman’s Own, whose packaging proclaims, “all profits go to charity”, am I a philanthropist? I say no!!! Newman’s Own is the philanthropist. I can feel good about supporting a philanthropic corporation that makes delicious salad dressing, which they very much want me to do, by the way. It’s called cause marketing and everyone is doing it! I can also feel great about supporting a local nonprofit who does fantastic work with Austin youth. And I can thank them both for enriching my salad. Delicious and satisfied, yes. Philanthropist, no.
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Yesterday’s New York Times had a story about Greg Mortensen’s “spilled tea” in Afghanistan under the section Headline “Philanthropy” yesterday. I suppose it was under philanthropy because the message, though disturbing, is about the complexity of much philanthropic work. Mortensen, best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones to Schools, has done a great deal of good work educating girls in Afghanistan through his Central Asia Institute.
Maybe not as much as he has reported in his effort to raise funds for the work. And maybe he hasn’t spent every dime he has raised from donors to “build schools.” Perhaps you saw the 60 Minutes story on Mortensen.
All this hubbub makes me think of a couple of things. First, providing philanthropic services is often messy stuff. Not as clean-cut as we want it to be. We work hard to get our nonprofit agencies to quantify the impact of donor dollars. And while they can estimate impact, we have to remember that the problems they address are not simple. Second, it takes an investment to raise money. We see that in the for profit world, so why wouldn’t we expect that in the not for profit sector? However, we must be transparent with donor dollars.
Finally, buying into a very sexy story (#1 New York Times best seller) about helping deserving folks far, far away may not be the best use of donor dollars. We have deserving folks right in our back yard. 40% of all babies born in Travis Co. are born to moms who don’t have high school diplomas. How bout investing in some of the documented and effective, though perhaps not so sexy, programs in our own backyard, like Communities in Schools, to educate those moms? You can readily check on those philanthropic investments.
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I just returned from a trip to DC to celebrate the career of Jack’s boss’s wife, Gail Kern Paster at the Folger Shakespeare Library’s annual gala. The party was a beautiful tribute to Gail, who is retiring, and an amazing window for me into serious philanthropy, East Coast style. First of all, the Folger is a gift made to the American people by Henry Clay Folger and his wife Emily in the middle of the Great Depression. Mr. Folger was a President and Chairman of Standard Oil of New York, retiring in 1928, and he loved Shakespeare. He and Emily collected “Shakespeareana,” bought land next to the Library of Congress, built the amazing building to house their collection and endowed the Library’s operation. In its 2010 Annual Report, the Folger shows net assets of about $275 million. The gala was a gorgeous party and true celebration of Gail’s leadership and the work of the organization. It was clearly not, however, a desperate attempt to raise operating capital like most Austin fundraising galas are. We attended the party as major sponsors, making what was a “stretch” gift for us. And we did that to honor Gail Kern Paster because we admire her and Howard, her husband, and my husband’s professional leader and mentor. I awoke the morning after the splendid celebration wondering what it will take to move Austin philanthropically to the likes of the East Coast. Will our own business moguls need to make Folger-like gifts to the people of Austin and endow the gifts’ futures? Or is that passé in this city of entrepreneurs? I continue to believe modeling generosity and setting expectations are critical to addressing the philanthropy problem even in egalitarian and weirdly lovable Austin.
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Perhaps you’ve seen ABC’s The Secret Millionaire, yet another reality TV show, this time chronicling how millionaires choose to share their wealth with nonprofit organizations. The show also demonstrates vividly the personal impact of philanthropy both on recipients and givers. Thanks to my ever-vigilant Board Chair, Karen Frost, I read an interesting article on ABC’s competitor site, CNN.com.
As Karen noted, the article, entitled “Why ABC’s ‘Secret Millionaire’ Sends the Wrong Message”, provides opportunity for thought and discussion.
My first reaction was to the writer’s skepticism. Why are so many journalists skeptical about anything philanthropic? Reminder- journalists are, by nature and training, skeptics. With the power of their pens, their skepticism dissuades anyone wavering from practicing philanthropy. Why would they want to do that? And why did the writer devalue financial giving? It’s true when we are able see the direct impact of sharing our time and talent with another human being we receive in return bountiful gifts of fulfillment. To assume one can’t receive the same personal satisfaction and fulfillment by making a gift of cash is an uninformed assumption. What nonprofit organization or for profit business can run on volunteer hours alone? Most of the nonprofit organizations I know of are incredibly efficient and effective because they leverage all the gifts of time, talent and treasure they receive for maximum impact to make lives better.
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Because of impending AISD budget cuts, more Austinites are applying to private schools for their children this year according to KEYE. And tuition at local private schools ranges from about $8000 to over $20,000 per student per year for high school. Nothing against private schools here. My kids all went to private schools. I know there is no perfect school situation so the story made me think about what would happen if each of those applicants made a charitable gift to AISD equal to private school tuition. That can be done through the AISD Public Education Foundation.
How many gifts of $8,000 to $20,000 would it take to alleviate the expected budget cuts? What would the benefit be? Perhaps, a school district providing an excellent education to a broadly diverse community. A school district responsive to its donor investors. Opportunities for the donors kids who can invest in opportunities. Also opportunities for other kids. An interesting thought
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