Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund at the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia announced yesterday the creation of a Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. To my knowledge, this is the first time in our organization’s 31 year history that we have actively engaged in fundraising for a cause that was not squarely centered on our region.

Like the rest of the world, we are horrified by the devastation in Haiti from the January 12 earthquake. Images pouring out of the region on Wednesday the 13th were heartbreaking and impossible to ignore. Those images raised some questions for us last week. As leaders of a local community foundation, what role could and should we play here? Should we attempt to fundraise for relief efforts? And if so, were there other leaders from the broader community who would want to help?

By close of business Thursday, January 14, staff had sent out targeted emails to Board members and certain donor advisors we believed might be open to providing a matching grant for victims of the earthquake. By noon on Friday, we had raised $12,000 in matching grant commitments. With these funds in hand, we then reached out to the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce, the Loudoun CEO Cabinet and others, asking if they would be willing to distribute notifications to their membership base advising them of the Fund and requesting contributions.

As I write this blog post, we have built the donation page for the new Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund on our website. All contributions, including the original $12,000 in seed matching grant funds, will be donated to the American Red Cross. Our donation page for the Fund went live Monday morning, January 18, at which point the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Northern Virginia Technology Council, and hopefully others distributed the email, Facebook and Twitter announcements of the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund’s creation at the Community Foundation.

Philanthropy, 2020 - Post # 2

As foundation leaders, what will be the greatest opportunities and the most daunting challenges in the decade ahead?  The January 14, 2010 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy decides to take an educated guess. This is the second of three posts on the topic.

Technology Gets More Interactive

What will be the impact of technology on the nonprofit sector in the next decade? This article in the January 14 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy tries to envision this.

According to some United Nations research, 6.3 billion people, or a whopping 83% of earth’s population, will own a cell phone by 2014. This ever increasing connectivity and resulting networking and access to information will certainly modify the nonprofit world’s fundraising activities, communications with donors, and program evaluations. It will also enable donors to better understand how their dollars were spent.

Of course, there’s a predicted downside as well. There will be increased competition from other entities who will find it increasingly easy to attract resources to their causes.

I personally enjoy the challenge of staying on top of our technology communications game. But technology is just a tool. Like community foundations everywhere, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia works hard to more deeply understand the needs of our community and focus philanthropy on them. It is our primary purpose. If we do that job well, then the technology tools we choose to communicate the resulting knowledge is just a question of organizational process.

Philanthropy, 2020

As foundation leaders, what will be the greatest opportunities and the most daunting challenges in the decade ahead? The January 14, 2010 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy takes an educated guess at this using known demographic data. This is the first of three posts on the topic.

The Graying of America

Today, 13% of our population is over 65. That percentage will rise to 16% by 2020. The graying of America will continue to present both opportunities and challenges.

First, the opportunities:
1. The over 65 population in the next decade is going to offer quite an impressive cache of skills and experience. The volunteer opportunities alone are significant, let alone the part time employment pool.
2. The “explosion” of philanthropic wealth is staggering. The article says that baby boomers will pass on $41 trillion to their heirs before all is said and done!

Next, the challenges:
1. Funding the increased demand for health care services will certainly be a huge challenge.
2. Growing philanthropy to help address multigenerational issues will also be a trend.

Social Innovation Fund Grant Opportunity: Post # 2

Under "Read More" below you will find a full copy of my comments to the Corporation for National and Community Service's request for comments on the Social Innovation Fund NOFA.  Their NOFA was posted in late December 2009, and comments from the field are due January 15, 2010. 

In addition to providing input on their specific questions around how to define "low income communities," how to evaluate the intermediary foundation grantees, and how to evaluate the nonprofit subgrantees, I also included a request that they drop the minimum grant level from $5 million to $1 million.  Such a drop would enable community foundations like ours to apply as there is a 1- for - 1 dollar matching requirement imposed on community foundation (and other intermediary foundation) grant recipients.

It would be very disappointing if the mere level of potential SIF grants put us out of the running.  I'm sure I'm not the only foundation leader in this boat.  So if there is any chance you may be interested in trying for one of these amazing SIF grants, please send in your comments to the Corporation.  The link to the Social Innovation Fund, above, takes you to a page from which you can submit comments.  From that link, see the "Seeking Feedback on Draft Funding Notice" box to the right.

Fast Company Blog on Nonprofit Volunteers

For foundation leaders, Alice Korngold’s nonprofit related blog posts on Fast Company are worth the read.  On December 28, 2009 she published a post entitled “Why People Who Volunteer Are Value-Add Hires For Your Company.”

She thinks that nonprofit volunteers make excellent hires for a number of reasons, including:

• A work ethic that can’t be beat
• Leadership skills that are honed and developed through nonprofit volunteer experiences
• A tendency to self reflection and thoughtfulness
• Great community based networks of colleagues and friends
• Knowledge of the community

How true, and how useful when we're composing job references for our volunteers to remember this handy list of attributes.