Philanthropy This Week

Nam Y. Huh/AP

Good morning.

One of the most vexing problems in philanthropy is the lack of up-to-the minute comprehensive data. That is especially the case when it comes to figuring out how many dollars are going to nonprofits led by people of color.

To be sure, small-scale studies have shown that the giving gap is large, with white-led organizations receiving the lion’s share of funding. Now Candid, a research organization that studies giving trends, is leading an effort to assemble more facts.

The new effort, called Demographics via Candid, is designed to create one simple form nonprofits have to fill out so they don’t have to provide specialized information every time they seek a foundation grant.

Ann Mei Chang, chief executive of Candid, told our colleague Glenn Gamboa at the Associated Press that she has already persuaded many foundations and grantees to experiment with an approach to reporting demographic data. Among those participating are small regional funds like the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation and big national funds like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

“Our hope is really to work towards a common ground application and common grant reporting to reduce the burden on nonprofits so that they spend more of their precious resources on the important work that they’re doing,” Chang told Glenn.

Here’s what else you need to know:

Sean Pavone, Alamy

A controversial report by the Philanthropy Roundtable equates lighter state regulation of charities with a larger corps of nonprofit groups, touching off a firestorm of criticism.

“When you regulate something to an excessive degree, you’re going to get less charitable vibrancy,” Elizabeth McGuigan, Philanthropy Roundtable’s senior director of policy and government affairs, told Alex Daniels.

But critics say state regulations are necessary to fight fraud and win the trust of donors. The methodology in this study was flawed, they say, and the data incomplete, and it didn’t take into account how well the regulations are enforced and how many small groups are exempt.

“This report makes some very large claims that the methodology just doesn’t support,” Erynn Beaton, a professor at the Ohio State University who serves on the Ohio Attorney General’s Charitable Advisory Council, told Alex. “The size of the nonprofit sector has much more to do with need and resources in the state than it does the regulatory burden.”

Alisa Ferris/Alisa Ferris

A Muslim couple who live in Indiana have given $30 million so far, most of it to foster a better understanding of world religions and to help people with autism.

Rafat and Zoreen Ansari are physicians who were told 30 years ago that their youngest daughter had autism and would never walk, talk, or live independently, writes Maria Di Mento. But she has defied expectations, and her parents have dedicated their lives to giving and advocating for people with disabilities and raising money for autism and other causes they care about.

Half of their giving has gone mostly to local nonprofits and half to creating the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion at the University of Notre Dame.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Ansaris, who are Muslim, saw the misunderstandings people had about their faith.

“We were all painted with the same brush, that all Muslims are like terrorists,” Rafat told Maria. “We were thinking about what we could do to bring all the faiths together and get rid of some of the misunderstandings. We have a lot more commonalities than differences.”

Nearly half of nonprofit leaders say recruiting volunteers has become a big problem – 30 percent more than said so two decades ago.

Seventy percent are saying the work of volunteers is a worthy investment, which just 43 percent said as recently as 2019, writes Sara Herschander about a study by the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and the Initiative for Strategic Volunteer Engagement. The report also found that many nonprofits are struggling with greater workloads, shortages of funding, and a continued drop in volunteer activity caused by the pandemic.

“The pandemic has profoundly changed the market for the services delivered by nonprofit organizations and the demand for volunteers,” the report notes, “which makes nonprofit leaders more convinced of the benefits of volunteer engagement but also more aware of the challenges of this work, especially when they are confronting shortfalls of people who can serve.”

Trust Matters

If you have time to read just one article this weekend, make it Holly Fogle’s essay explaining why she and her husband, venture capitalist Jeff Lieberman, decided to take a new approach to their giving in the wake of the pandemic.

They asked development experts and economic policy experts what would make the most difference to undocumented and vulnerable people in New York. The answer: give low-income mothers $1,000 a month with no strings.

That’s what they did, providing support to 600 families. “We trust mothers to know what’s best for their babies, whether it’s more diapers, healthy food, a working stove, or a stroller that allows them to navigate the city with a newborn,” Fogle writes.

That willingness to trust recipients of aid to do the right thing has influenced the rest of the foundation’s work. “We’ve replaced grant reports with informal conversations a few times a year. We no longer require letters of inquiry and instead accept unsolicited proposals, “ she writes. And nearly all our grantees receive unrestricted funds.”

An Update About the Chronicle

We have exciting news to share with you: Our plans to become an independent nonprofit are moving forward fast now that the Internal Revenue Service has approved our application for charity status.

We took this step so we could expand our work to serve everyone in the social sector better – and expand our work to educate the public about the important role nonprofits and foundations play in society.

Read more about our plans in our news release.

And in Stacy’s letter to readers.

We hope you have lots of time for reading and resting this weekend.

— Marilyn Dickey and Stacy Palmer

What We’re Reading Elsewhere

Turks and Syrians around the world are gathering money and goods to send back to their homelands, even as aid groups struggle to reach areas devastated by an earthquake that has killed more than 17,000 people. (New York Times and Wall Street Journal — subscription)

Contemporary tech entrepreneurs are using the same ambition and impatience that built their business empires to transform philanthropy. (Economist — subscription)

To fight an epidemic of drug overdoses, America has a small corps of overworked and underfunded nonprofits that are “hanging by a thread,” one worker said. (New York Times)

Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson’s philanthropy has given much less to charity than it has suggested, while spending heavily on administration, according to a USA Today investigation (USA Today and Seattle Times)

The idea of no-strings cash gifts to the poor has made some zealous converts in the past decade, but they seem less, and more, effective than their fans and critics tend to claim (Opinion). (New York Times)

Local chapters of the country’s leading ALS advocacy group and the national office have ended up in court. (Stat)

The past few years of pandemic and unrest have made this a change-or-die moment for many nonprofit theater companies, which were struggling even before the recent turmoil. (NPR)

Effective altruism, a hyper-rational approach to philanthropy dominated by young, white men, has bred “a toxic culture of sexual harassment and abuse,” according to several women connected to it. (Time)

In addition to examining newly elected Congressman George Santos’s campaign lies and political fundraising, investigators are reportedly looking into a dubious dog-welfare charity he said that he ran. (New York Times)