Philanthropy This Week

Gesi Schilling

Good morning.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which supports journalism, the arts, and community projects, has named its first woman president.

Maribel Perez Wadsworth, former publisher of USA Today and president of Gannett Media, succeeds Alberto Ibargüen, who announced his retirement in March. She will now lead Press Forward, Ibargüen’s last large commitment, a $500 million joint effort led by Knight and the MacArthur Foundation to support local news organizations.

The goal is to help bolster local news outlets, which have been drying up for the past 20 years as more people look elsewhere online for information, she told Alex, but she hopes it will also inspire other grant makers and donors to join the cause. “Those regional philanthropies are going to ultimately play a big role in augmenting this,” she said.

Here’s what else you need to know:

With overall giving down, GivingTuesday is taking on greater urgency this year, and nonprofits are using matching gifts, social-media appeals, and collaborations to encourage contributions.

The most successful drives connect with donors over a long period so the earlier groups start their campaigns, the better, report Rasheeda Childress and Emily Haynes. To pump up giving, nonprofits are sharing testimonials from people who have benefited from a charity’s work, offering multiple ways to give, including volunteering, and engaging young donors, who can become bigger donors down the road.

It will be hard to match last year’s $3.1 billion GivingTuesday haul this year, said Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday, but, she said, “we’re trying to put all the tools and resources that we possibly can out into the nonprofit ecosystem to help nonprofits do the best they possibly can.”

In other stories about the decline in giving:

• Fewer donors of color are giving, especially Hispanic and Asian-American households, but two new reports say that building trust could help bring them back, reports Rasheeda.
• One contrarian number in the giving landscape: Contributions to donor-advised funds soared last year, even outpacing gifts to foundations by nearly $40 billion, reports Drew Lindsay. Grants from DAFs also reached a new high.

The Chronicle

New rules proposed for donor-advised funds do not address the primary concerns of many critics: among them, that donors can get tax deductions for giving to a DAF but have no requirement to distribute that money within a certain timeframe.

Donor-advised funds also come under fire because people can use them to give anonymously, and foundations can contribute to DAFs to help satisfy the federal requirement that they distribute 5 percent of their assets to charities annually, writes Alex Daniels.

The proposed guidelines, issued by the Treasury Department, can’t add such regulations without a mandate from Congress, and attempts to get lawmakers to address those issues have so far gone nowhere.

Scott G Winterton, The Deseret News, AP

Nearly half of Americans think philanthropy can help break the grip of polarization, a new poll has found.

Nine in 10 respondents said all sides must work together to tackle the country’s most difficult challenges, according to the survey, commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation. Forty-eight percent said mission-driven organizations have the ability to bring people together, surpassed only by small-business owners, reports Drew Lindsay.

Ways to do that include increasing voter access, ensuring fair elections, promoting leaders from disadvantaged groups, fighting misinformation, and boosting government institutions.

“People are very skeptical of motives these days,” Kristen Soltis Anderson, founder of Echelon Insights, which helped conduct the poll, told Drew. But leaders in philanthropy are “more willing to do the hard work of putting their own interests aside.”

Let Us Help You

Navigating Fundraising Uncertainty

Join us Tuesday, December 5, for Insights From the Field: Navigating Fundraising Uncertainty. Our panel of fundraising leaders will explore what’s working to attract donations during these challenging times. A just-released Chronicle survey of 1,000 fundraisers at nonprofits of varying sizes and missions provides fresh insights into the current fundraising climate. Learn how to keep your 2024 giving on track from the Chronicle’s exclusive research and our expert panel, including Ali Colbran of Feeding San Diego, CJ Orr of the Orr Group, and Whitney Philippi of Mohawk Hudson Humane Society. Sign up now.

— Marilyn Dickey, Senior editor for copy

WHAT WE’RE READING ELSEWHERE

A former nurse in Florida has quietly used her Subway sandwich fortune to become “one of the biggest philanthropists you’ve never heard of,” Forbes magazine writes. (Forbes — subscription)

The Georgia voting-rights nonprofit founded by Stacey Abrams that is often credited with helping secure Democratic victories in the state faces allegations of financial mismanagement and a chaotic workplace culture. (Politico)

Months after touting its growth to employees, Google billionaires Eric and Wendy Schmidt are moving on from one of their philanthropic corporation’s programs and have abruptly parted ways with its CEO. (Forbes — subscription)

Some survivors of the January mass shooting in a Monterey Park, Calif., ballroom say they have been unfairly excluded from a compensation fund set up after the massacre. (Los Angeles Times)

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has cut 20 positions as attendance continues to lag pre-pandemic levels. (San Francisco Chronicle)

An emerging movement is harnessing the wealth and political engagement of older Americans to support the climate agenda. (YES! Magazine)

Anti-vaccine crusader and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. has used his connections and his famous name to make tens of millions of dollars over the years from nonprofits, law firms, and private companies, according to a report in the New York Times. (New York Times)

In Los Angeles, the world’s largest AIDS charity runs a network of rundown, last-resort housing and has kicked out scores of tenants over unpaid rent while running high-profile campaigns against evictions. (Los Angeles Times)

Two sponsors of the National Book Awards will sit out the ceremony after hearing that some of the authors on the program would make statements about the Israel-Hamas war. (New York Times)

Note to Readers

We will not be sending Philanthropy This Week next Saturday, November 25, due to the Thanksgiving holiday, but we will be back in your inbox the following Saturday, December 2. In the meantime, we will post any breaking news on our website.

NEW GRANT OPPORTUNITIES

Your Chronicle subscription includes free access to GrantStation’s database of grant opportunities.

Performing Arts: Shakespeare in American Communities, a theater program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, aims to connect young people across the United States to Shakespeare’s plays. Grants are provided to nonprofit professional theater companies in the U.S. that produce Shakespeare’s works to support performances and workshops in middle and high schools and in juvenile justice facilities. Grants range from $15,000 to $25,000. Intent-to-apply deadline is January 25, 2024.

Education: The Advancing Informal STEM Learning Program seeks to fund research and practice, with a focus on investigating a range of informal STEM learning experiences and environments that make lifelong learning a reality. The current solicitation encourages proposals from institutions and organizations that serve public audiences and specifically focus on public engagement with and understanding of STEM. Application deadline is January 10, 2024.