Where Most Needed

Older charities almost inevitably become land rich, even as their membership declines.  The Wall Street Journal focuses on the dilemma of Boy Scout Councils who can sell off camps for huge amounts.  (WSJ requires subscription, but if we find the article elsewhere WMN will post a link to it.)

The Boy Scouts are typical of many large charity movements:  there is no single organization, but rather local councils that do their own fundraising and main their own corporate structure.  The American Red Cross, United Way, and other charities are organized along similar lines.  That means each local unit has its own dynamic and internal politics, which can mean everything from wild meetings to lawsuits.

And even excommunication.  The Catholic Church in the US has a similar organization with local archdiocese responsible for their own fiscal affairs.  Their real estate issues have recently hit the news with the breakaway parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka in St. Louis, where the local parish council holds the deed to the church (a very atypical arrangement).  This has led to excommunication of the parish council and suppression of the church by the local archbishop, who wants the church property turned over to his control. 

The first rule of charity regulation is: give the people what they want.  So California is ready to say yes to charity poker, but once again comes out against professional fundraising, which many people associate with telemarketing. 

California's Attorney General Bill Lockyer is sponsoring a bill to allow charity poker tournaments, which is advancing through the state assembly with little doubt of passage.  Though the bill would limit charity poker, the problem with charity poker is that, once it's legalized, there is little respect for the limits and no enforcement resources to maintain them.   California should take a look at what's happened with charity poker here in the East Coast and the concerns noted in this recent USA Today article.

At the same time, the AG issues his annual press release slamming professional fundraisers.  Supposedly these groups short change charities by passing on little in the way of contributions.  Formerly, these reports used to provide the details, as with this (big) report from 2001.  The closer look shows that the AG is not giving the professional fundraisers an even break:

• They don't include pledges, only cash, even though many charity fundraisers raise as much or more in pledges.
• They don't take into account event costs.  Under IRS reporting rules, a charity can deduct the cost of an event before it considers its fundraising cost.  But professional fundraisers are not allowed to deduct this cost in their reports to the states.  So it looks like professional fund raisers are much worse than charities themselves, but it's not an apples to apples comparison.
• Always the worst performers are the professional fundraisers who specialize in solicitation for public service (police and fire) organizations.  These typically aren't charities.  The result is that the whole industry is tainted, but the law enforcement organizations are chiefly to blame. 

It seems to me that Stephanie Strom of the New York Times engaged in a stretch this weekend: grouping several unrelated situations into an overall conclusion that poor nations are complaining that charity is not reaching its victims.  It's not an echo of US concerns, it's projecting US concerns on the rest of the world. 

• Niger: the health minister there complains that charities overstated the famine crisis there to raise money.  Perhaps, but the Niger government had downplayed their food crisis from the beginning.  It seems more like a case of a government failing to address a crisis rather than charities withholding aid. 
• Sri Lanka complained that Doctors Without Borders redirected contributions from the tsunami to other crises.  In reality, Doctors Without Borders was the first agency to say that it had collected enough for the tsunami, chiefly because there were relatively few injured victims.  The organization asked donors permission to redirect contributions to other areas of the world with more pressing health crises, and three out of four donors agreed.  Doctors Wihout Borders is just one agency and it has a very specific focus on health rather than shelter issues. 
• Indonesia complained that NGOs built fewer houses for tsunami victims than it committed to. For instance, an unnamed NGO went from 6,000 promised homes to 1,500 built.  Here there may be some validity to the complaint, but the real issue is not charity performance but timber supply and construction cost inflation.  To give the accusation due credit, a World Vision spokesperson is quoted in the Times as saying they will build 4,000 homes, but earlier reports indicated that WV would build 15,000.  However, these large scale reductions may be due more to the shortage of timber and the resulting inflation in costs, which was identified by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization early in the reconstruction process.  At that point four months after the tsunami, timber prices had already doubled and reconstruction had not begun in earnest.  This serious problem has not gained much visibility in the US press. 

The press seems to be fixated on the issues of charity performance and donor intent, the issues that dominated after 9/11, rather than reporting on the genuine complexities of rebuilding after a catastrophic disaster. 

This week saw  another story in the ongoing alleged telemarketing crime wave of Global Mindlink Foundation & Select International Donors.  These charity scams allegedly lure seniors into paying repeatedly for phony memberships and raffles, supposedly for charity, and allegedly also make unauthorized withdrawals from the victims' checking accounts.

Unfortunately, we have to still say "allegedly" and it may not be the end of the story, because the result in this case was a civil settlement with the Attorney General with no admission of wrongdoing on the part of the charities or their principals, restitution of $350,000 and an agreement to cease operating.  The case has been referred for criminal prosecution. 

The investigation in Florida showed a pattern which seems typical of these scams.  It was founded in 1995 by Stephen Colangelo, a house painter from New York, who turned it over to his daughter after he went to prison for shooting a man in the arm outside of a bar.  The decade long run of this charity scam seems typical. 

Though the group apparently collected millions over the years, the penalties so far have been small.  The same groups scored similar slap-on-the-wrist restitution-only civil penaties in Oregon ($74,892) and North Dakota ($12,000).  The organization was also spotted in news stories in West Virginia, but apparently without follow-up.   And it appears that the organization continued operating until June of 2005, nearly a year after the Oregon settlement. 

As Oregon's Attorney General Hardy Meyers put it (back in August, 2004), "Seniors and their caregivers must be vigilant in guarding against such scams in the future."  That's certainly the case, since law enforcement seems incapable of bringing them to justice and putting them out of business for good. 

A recent report by Bill Sizemore in the Virginian-Pilot on Rev. Pat Robertson's charity, Operation Blessing International Relief & Development Corp. focused on the issues of proselytizing and hiring discrimination, but there are other aspects of this charity that make it an interesting case study in accountability.  Looking at the organization's Form 990s for 2003 and 2004 prompts some other observations:

• The organization's almost total reliance on in-kind rather than cash contributions
• Incomplete disclosure of program expenditures
• Inadequate spending on accountability and stewardship
• Very high management salaries
• Financial reports delayed or unavailable on line

These concerns contrast with the overall positive findings of the Wall Watcher's Ministry Watch, and Where Most Needed is checking to determine their response to these concerns. 

By odd concidence, the Pope's encyclical this week ties in a very direct way to the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian Parliamentary elections:  and the tie is organized charity.

In addition to references from scripture and church fathers, Benedict XVI pointedly refers a letter from the neo-pagan Emperor Julian  ("The Apostate" C.E. 331/332-363) in which Julian gives credit to the Christians for their charitable works, which Julian hoped to include in his revived and reformed paganism.  The encyclical also includes a large section addressing contemporary institutional charity in the church, including some interesting observations about the need for professionalism and organization, the importance of not proselytizing, and emphasizing the importance of charity at the diocese level. 

Turning to the occupied territories, Hamas has succeeded where Fatah failed:  in building a civil society, with a strong base in health and social service organizations.  For a Palestinian is more likely to associate Hamas with charity than with suicide bombings.

What seems to be missing in the US is a recognition of the strong tie between organized charity and civil society.  Increasingly, the charity that is encouraged in the US is solo and spontaneous.  Large charity efforts are disdained and viewed with suspicion.  But the Pope and Hamas know better:  the way to a nation's heart is through large scale charity. 

While the world comments on Oprah's apology for defending James Frey's fabrications, Where Most Needed wonders about the role of the Hazelden counsellor who contacted Oprah's producers to out Frey's lies, according to the New York Times [Update: apparently based on this earlier story]. 

This version of the story would appear to be a violation of Hazelden's own privacy policy.  It lists a number of instances where patient information can be disclosed without patient authorization.  Discrediting a former patient's best seller is not on the list. 

[Update:  The earlier story is somewhat clearer that none of the quoted counsellors spoke with direct knowledge of Frey's claims.  However, as with Frey's story, talking in general about Hazelden protocols isn't terribly engaging journalism.  Inevitably, the "defense" stories too become telescoped to something that sounds more sensational.

So all the "former Hazelden counsellors" coming forward to defend Hazelden could leave a worse impression about the institution than Frey's book could.  Few active addicts read best sellers (I'll venture to guess), but many more watch television.  What's more, until this point, only insiders knew of the involvement of Hazelden.  Now it's part of the media circus, including commentary by Stephen King in Entertainment Week.]

It's not wrong for the Times to run with the information; it's certainly newsworthy.  But from a public policy and public relations standpoint, Hazelden's lapse should be seen as a more serious wrong than some lying junkie's tale. 

Local officials are evacuating a dilapidated homeless shelter set up in a former thrift shop in Pensacola's North T Street antiques district after finding numerous violations of safety codes and a leaky roof covered by a canvas sheet.  Approximately 80 residents have to find alternative accommodations.  It appears to be a case of a well-intentioned but hopelessly overwhelmed Director,  who has not been able to raise the resources to keep the facility in compliance, and, it is said, also has trouble working with social service agencies. 

The contrast between what the facility looked like before the media attention and afterward is hard to exaggerate, but doesn't really address the situation.  Certainly the response of church volunteers is welcome, but the homeless residents will need ongoing care, not just a festive meal, used clothes, and building supplies.   

This is one of the too common consequences of the current policy of reliance on ad hoc charitable responses to major social problems.  City officials seem more concerned with appearances and lawsuits rather than addressing the multiple needs of the residents. 

There are different forms of double dipping (including one popularized by Seinfeld), but this one is about state employees who receive supplemental income from a supporting foundation.  In this case, the museum director and various staff of the North Carolina Museum of Art received additional payments from the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization designed to raise funds for the museum. 

The news stories aren't as interesting as the audit report itself, which summarizes conversations between the auditor and the director.  In one, he explains that he wouldn't have worked there if it hadn't been for the supplements.  Later, he uses that to justify his policy of paying supplements to any other staff who claimed to be considering leaving for a position with more pay.

The audit report adds other interesting background, like the fact that the supplements were paid to employees as independent contractor income on IRS 1099 forms rather than W2s.

Associates of the foundation claim that the practice was known even to state legislators, but these sorts of defenses are not very persuasive in an audit situation.  The rules are still the rules. 

After heavy lobbying by church groups, the Massachusetts House defeated a bill to require financial disclosure by churches identical to that required of other chariteis. 

In an unexpected move earlier this week, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts had signalled that he will veto a bill to end the exemption for churches from charity reporting requirements.  Initially, he had supported the idea behind the bill but never gave it an outright endorsement. 

The bill has 4 principal provisions:  ending the exemption of churches from annual reporting requirements for charities and for corporations, including a list of real estate holdings as part of the required charity disclosure, providing a definition of related organizations, and a provision to exempt very small organizations that do very little fundraising. 

It's a mixed bag of a bill.  While editorials may support the bill as reasonable, it's a burden to apply the requirements of an audit to any organzation with annual revenues under $2 million or so.  For example, the 2004 Nonprofit Integrity Act in California recognized the $2 million threshold.   The reformers missed an opportunity to gain support for the bill by not proposing an increase to this excessively low threshold for audit. 

While the basic principle that churches should be subject to the same requirements as other nonprofits is sound, the church groups wield the argument that disclosure is too burdensome and involves government in internal church affairs. 

A hacker attack at Notre Dame University may be the first to hit a computer holding donor information. The university has informed people who donated between November 22, 2005 and January 12 of this year that their personal data, may have been exposed.  A school web site suggests steps to take. 

After informing donors by email and letter of their potential exposure, the university handled hundreds of phone calls, but most were to verify that the emails were legitimate. 

One alumnus complained that giving a donor system server access to the Internet violates principles that he learned when he received his degree in Management Information Systems from ND.  This is not so much a case of "practice what you preach" as it is evidence of the deep disconnect between program and administration that characterizes wide swaths of the charity sector. 

And it is easy to imagine that thousands of smaller nonprofits regularly expose their donor databases to attacks and lack the resources even to know that an attack has occurred. 

There's not much sympathy on the Internet for the decision of the Vatican to enforce copyright of papal writings.  The official decree was actually promulgated last May, shortly after the election of Benedict XVI, but evidently now the first actions in defense of copyrights are raising a clamor. 

Yet the issue here is whether charities have the same rights as other organizations, which of course they should.  Any prudent charity needs to copyright its written materials, if only to prevent them from being used inappropriately or exploitatively. 

Not that the Vatican material is kept hidden.  If you click on the picture of Peter in the Vatican web site (in English), you have access to a huge amount of published writings of the last 10 popes (back to Leo XIII 1878-1903).  Even the recent instruction from Benedict XVI relating to gays in Catholic seminaries is there. 

If the Vatican pursues its present course, unofficial Internet sites like Papal Encyclicals Online may soon go the way of Napster.   

Just like the US, Australia is moving toward a system of philanthropy for people with moderate wealth, mediated through stockbrokers and financial advisors.  In this emerging system, people do not give directly to charity, but rather to a charitable intermediary, called a private prescribed fund in Australia, with the same tax benefits to the donor as giving to a charity. 

A similar process has been extremely successful in the US, where donor advised funds like the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund have become a dominant presence in philanthropy. 

These funds are most efficient for relatively large fortunes, but are becoming popular among people with much less to give.  The effect of these funds on charities is to introduce a delay in giving.  Donors receive the tax benefits when they give to the fund, but funds may not go to working charities for years.  In the meantime, those holding the invested funds enjoy the benefits of the management fees. 

The charity fan's day at the Richard Hatch tax evasion trial was Friday the 13th, when prosecutor's focused on the Horizon Bound charity that Mr. Hatch had set up.

Or not.  Mr. Hatch was given a donation check for $25,000 as a result of an appearance in a TV pilot (for a show about celebrity charities).  He asked that it be made out to Horizon Bound - Richard Hatch and, so the testimony suggested, he deposited it into his own account.  There was no indication that any steps had been taken to actually create a nonprofit organization.

Now, in contrast to the Indiana attorney who worked for a decade to hijack a foundation, this seems pretty unsophisticated.  Yet if Mr. Hatch hadn't also neglected to pay taxes on his Survivor winnings, it might not have even come to light.  When it comes to charities, there's often nobody watching where the money goes. 

March 19, 2006: See the upate on this article here.

Indiana Attorney General Steven Carter is suing the Olin B. and Desta Schwab Foundation to bring it back to Indiana, after board chair Richard H. Blaich used foundation assets to buy a $1.5 million home in Vegas and then relocated the foundation there.  The process took nearly 10 years to eliminate staff oversight and craft an accommodating 3-person board. 

The original investigative report by the Ft Wayne Journal Gazette back in August shows in some detail how easy it is for a determined person to wrest total control of a foundation.  There's also a shorter chronology of the steps that Blaitch took over a decade. 

What is interesting is that it took the investigative report to bring the situation to the attention of the attorney general.  Even after the first story broke and a state investigation began, the foundation skipped town without the knowledge of either the Indiana or the Nevada AG's offices.  Makes one question how may other similar hijackings are successful and how many others are in progress. 

The ironic turn in this is that the foundation's namesake created the foundation because he couldn't trust other charities with his money. 

Update: Further investigation is turning up that the charity has done very limited reporting of its spending over the years. 

In the current climate of scandal, a charity in Alaska may become another lightning rod.  Federal agents searched the home and church of former Fairbanks mayor Jim Hayes, in connection with LOVE Social Services Center.  While the details have yet to emerge, officials at HUD have confirmed that the organization is under close scruntiny in connection with grants that were earmarked for the agency by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.  Earmarking is a process by which Federal grants to specific organizations are written into appropriations bills, a practice more widely known as "pork barrel" in connection with highway construction.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy covered the pros and cons of earmarking in an article last summer, noting that Alaska has particularly benefitted during Sen. Ted Stevens tenure as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.  The state charities alone received earmarked funds of just over $80 per capita, compared to Georgia with about $2 per capita. 

At the crossroads between celebrity charity and family foundations sits the new NASCAR foundation, announced this week.  The limited press coverage focused on the appearance of Bill France Jr. in Daytona for the announcement.  (More here with a photo of the 72-year-old France and here for still more photos.)

The stated reason for the foundation is to move NASCAR charitable activities beyond the industry charities it now supports.  I count 25 of them, most named after legends of the sport.  The foundation will be chaired by Bill Jr.'s wife Betty Jane France and the executive director will be Sandy Marshall, senior manager in charge of NASCAR Community Relations. 

This is a move toward corporate maturity for NASCAR, the only major family-owned sport, and a recognition that new responsibilities require new structures.  For background in the relationship between NASCAR and the France family, take a look at the 2003 New Yorker profile of NASCAR, no longer available from the New Yorker, but perhaps still sitting in this Google cache.

Communities even in Anchorage are compaining about Wal-Mart's change of policy to end local donation of food that has passed expiration date.  There is also major concern in Sacramento, which complained about the inadequacy of claims that liability concerns prompted the change in policy. 

But bloggers are doubting that this means much change in actual practice; they question whether many local Wal-Marts or Sams Clubs were donating much to begin with.  This is confirmed in Dallas, where the local food bank said it only received canned goods from the retailer.  It could be just a corporate policy to stamp out those relatively isolated cases of local compassion. 

My inclination is to agree with this interpretation.  Gleaning is in many ways the antithesis of efficiency, and it would seem likely that Wal-Mart's culture of efficiency would decrease the likelihood that a store manager would voluntarily participate in food donations. 

Like an atomic bomb or a meteor impact, Hurricane Katrina has affected a much larger geographical area than those areas of direct impact that we see on the news.  This new report from America's Second Harvest is the first that I have seen that defines the boundaries of the secondary impact areas, which run in an arc from Austin and San Antonio, through Houston, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Jacksonville, and even South Florida. 

These results show a good fit to the model estimating evacuee distribution that I put together shortly after Katrina, based on city population & distance from the point of impact. 

More than three out of four adults have signed up for the Federal Trade Commission's Do-Not-Call registry, according to results of an online poll conducted by Harris Interactive.  Many of these adults say they have either received no telemarketing calls since signing up (18%) or that they have received some calls, but far fewer than before (61%).  Currently 94% of adults say they are aware of the registry.   Results are from a Harris Poll of 1,961 U.S. adults aged 18 or over surveyed online between December 8 and 14, 2005 by Harris Interactive.

Nonprofit organizations are exempt from the do-not-call limits, but there is a slight note of caution in the current poll results.  The percentage of people believing that polls and surveys are included in the do-not-call ban increased from 8% to 13% with the current poll, while only 24% of respondents know that they are exempt. (In fact, they are exempt.)  The more people that become aware of and participate in do-not-call lists, the greater the percentage of those who are misinformed about the actual rules.  And thus charities may increasingly bear the brunt of bad feelings about telemarketing.

There's often talk of how donors are changing, but how much has really changed?  The Boston Business Journal offers us a profile of a "new donor." 

It's a woman in her forties, account executive with Saatchi & Saatchi, married to the CEO of the Boston Celtics.  She joins the board of Perkins School for the Blind to help them with fund raising for new computers.  By the way, her son happens to be enrolled there. 

Perkins School is the alma mater of Helen Keller, as even a Google search will tell you.  The organization  has an annual income of $53 million.  Now on the board of the organization, our "new donor" is planning the spring gala, a $300 per ticket affair. 

What is new about this profile?  Very affluent, high profile people have always sought board seats on the most prestigious institutions, especially ones they have a personal connection with.  And the idea of a spring gala is nothing new, with a Google search turning up over 70,000 hits.  Computers for schools has been in vogue since the invention of the PC.

Same as it ever was. 

The battle between churchmen of the left and right is now joined, with the IRS as unpaid referee.  Some 30 pastors in Columbus are petitioning the IRS to take action against a Rev. Rod Parsley of World Harvest Church and the Rev. Russell Johnson of Fairfield Christian Church for sponsoring political events during the Ohio Governor's race. 

Marcus Owens, who directed the IRS exempt organizations division through the 1990s, notes that examinations of churches for playing politics are becoming more common.

This is on the heels of the IRS closing the case of a Miami church accused of politicking by a Washington-area political action committee after a visit to the church by then-Presidential candidate John Kerry along with U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. 

There remains the ongoing case of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, which involves not visits but sermons.  In this case, the church as posted its response to the IRS on its website (sent via the lawfirm of Marcus Owens). 

The IRS has promised to be on its toes with these investigations, after a report from the US Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration finding that some investigations of these sorts of complaints have not proceeded in a timely fashion.  (But the report aslo absolved the IRS of complaints of bias either in selection or disposition of cases of alleged political activity by churches and other 501(c)(3) nonprofits.)

Asia has been suffering from a cold wave, whose impact on the homeless is well covered by this article from the New Zealand Herald. 

New Delhi, at the same latitude as Orlando, Florida, cannot expect to be completely free of cold, yet most people lack warm clothes or even blankets.  The city has an estimated 400,000 homeless, many of whom work for a living but don't earn enough for housing. 

Temperature disasters, whether due to heat or cold, are deadly, but never raise the alarm or response of more acute, geographically concentrated catastrophes like floods or hurricanes.   In this instance, only the heavy snow in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has been noted in the UN's relief site.

The Washington Post reported the angry reaction of New Orleans residents to a plan to rebuild a much smaller city featuring a light rail line, leading to a lament by columnist Eugene Robinson.  What the Post didn't report is that the plan was formulated by an organization called the Urban Land Institute, whose role was identified by the Times Picayune and the BBC.

Not a household name, but well known in high-profile real estate development, Urban Land Institute has an annual budget of about $36 million and operates mostly through district councils in major US cities and some in Europe (but not New Orleans up to this point).  Some of the plan recommendations, like that to create a Crecent City Redevelopment Corporation, resemble proposals made by ULI for the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan.

Heading up the ULI operation in New Orleans will be Former Pittsburgh Mayor Thomas Murphy, quoted in a ULI press release saying "If you do anything bold, 100 people will say you can't do it. But you have to be prepared to say, 'We are moving forward.' Your job is to make things happen."

When I asked about ULI on the Cornell Community Development Banking mail list, one respondent (Ann C. Robinson) noted,

Last year, they came to Bridgeport, CT for one week at the end of which time they made a slew of recommendations.  I am a little leery of the approach that they took in Bridgeport, swooping in for a week and then presuming that they knew enough to make valid recommendations.  I hope their work in New Orleans is more in-depth.

It does appear that ULI has made very broad recommendations, that may not be particularly sensititve to the history or culture of New Orleans.  It will be interesting to see how this nonprofit alternative to governmental due process plays out in the Big Easy.

According to a recent article in the Guardian UK, private charitable organisations, once viewed with suspicion by the authorities, are gaining acceptance, but only 100 national-level groups have been recognised in the past 10 years. According to the China Charity Federation, they received 5bn yuan (£350m) last year, accounting for just 0.5% of China's gross domestic product. 

But these organizations are only national-level groups and they exclude hospitals and universities, which represent the majority of large nonprofits in the US.   

The China NPO portal site lists 80 groups: 34 foundations, 29 social organizations, 14 grass roots organizations, and 3 private non-enterprise groups.  Their purposes are broadly identified as: poverty elimination (12), social service (14), education (8), public health (8), environmental protection (8), specific groups (including youth) (18), culture (5), science & technology (2), religion (2), NPO support (3).

However, other sources identify many more local organizations, such as 16,600 hospitals, mostly nonprofit or government run, and a surprising 78,500 private educational institutions (universities & colleges, primary & secondary education and kindergarten).

In a move recommended years ago, the IRS is now moving to revoke the 501(c)(3) nonprofit status of credit counseling agencies. This follows on the heels of an FTC settlement with the founder of AmeriDebt. 

The bad news: the credit counseling business is largely based on the tax-exemption of the counseling agencies and the consequence may be to deprive consumers of services.

The IRS was too lenient for years in approving 501(c)(3) status for credit counsellors, yet pulling the rug out from under the industry seems like a poor solution. 

But we can also fault groups like the National Consumer Law Center and the Consumer Federation of America who took a look at this mess back in 2003 and concluded that it could be fixed merely by better IRS enforcement of nonprofit status.  They failed to understand that the IRS has no practical way to fine-tune regulation of one small subsector of the charity industry using the vague standards of nonprofit charity status. 

The problem has to be addressed by the States or by the FTC, both of which have the expertise and means to develop standards for consumer financial businesses. 

Florida State University is now determined to return gifts totalling $11 million from its star professor Robert Holton rather than meet his demands about how the building will be built and staffed.  Holton and his MDS Research Foundation are suing in an attempt to force construction of the facility that he wants.

The press of course is presenting it as a clash of egos between Holton, developer of the synthetic version of the highly successful cancer drug Paclitaxel (Taxol®), and FSU President T.K. Wetherell. 

Here's a photo (T.K. Wetherell (on left), Robert Holton).

But the University press release suggests that investing in Holton's field of research is simply not the best bet for future breakthroughs as "science changes at the speed of light."  In effect, FSU is saying that synthetic chemistry is so last century.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, opinion has it that the Professor is just trying to save the university from itself.  One wonders how an opinion writer knows what's the best direction for cancer research. 

On a different scale, it's an issue that many charity managers face every day.  There are many ways that star staffers develop the means to generate their own resources to fund their own preferred projects, even in the social services (from personal experience).   

And this fun factoid from the St. Petersburg Times:  Taxol has generated $351-million for Holton and FSU. That's three times more than the University of Florida earned from Gatorade®.

The UK Disasters Emergency Committee has released its report on the Tsunami response.  Prepared by independent evaluators Valid International, the report covers a good number of issues in a scant 11 pages.  While expressing some critical views, the paper is far more sympathetic to the environmental constraints on the relief agencies, some of which received scant attention in the (US) press: 

• India's intial rigid and directive approach to relief agencies,
• the ongoing civil conflicts in Sri Lanka & Indonesia,
• Indonesia's threat to expel most agencies a few months after the disaster,
• media expectations of immediate results,
• constant allegations in local media against international agencies, and
• complex timber supply issues in Indonesia pitting environmental concerns against government reluctance to allow timber imports. 

The report concludes that collaborative systems were slow to develop and slower to become effective.  Clearly, coordination and communication remain the biggest challenges in disasters. 

The media remain on the sidelines of these concerns, often exacerbating the problems, such as giving validity to rumors and promoting a competitive attitude among agencies.

Some media have already indicated that the report calls relief agencies "opportunistic."  In the context of the report, the term is just as critical of the media as it is of the relief agencies.

In the short-term, the DEC will also need to manage expectations internally
and externally. They must ensure that a rush to achieve numerical targets
does not take precedence over quality of response. High media profile tends
to encourage competition, an opportunistic approach among the agencies and
poor coordination. Agencies distance themselves from intractable issues,
such as basic needs in temporary shelters, and compete for what can be done
rather than what should be done. The DEC itself has done nothing to increase
such pressures, but perhaps could do more to reduce them. Individual members
must be careful about claiming individual successes which may appear to cast
doubt on the validity of work by others.

Only in Europe could a church youth group publish a calendar showing nude scenes from the Bible. Fund raising can be too much fun.

Which reminds me about Boobs4BourbonSt, the Katrina fund raising site that matches donors with volunteers who have provided photos of the exposed body parts most in demand at various New Orleans festivities.  You provide them an email confirmation to a donation to a Katrina charity, then you get access to the photos.  Thankfully, the site reports total funds raised of a mere $32,435.50 (looks like the last posting, from November), so we won't be seeing this idea take off ....

Yet the chuch groups are hard to beat for the offbeat fundraising ideas.  This Oregon youth group is selling toilet paper, Angel Soft brand (headline: "Church Rolls Out Unique Fundraiser").  This is to fund an alternative Spring Break mission trip to Costa Rica.

Funny in a different way, and way more lucrative are the Super Bowl XL charity events, which expect to raise $8 million in host city Detroit.  Yet consultants are quoted as saying that the event costs can run up to 90% of the amount raised, one noting that actual charity proceeds are "gravy."  But that could just be a marketer talking.  Another one says the game itself is almost an afterthought to the parties and events!

News people are taking an interest in the charitable contributions coming from politicians in an effort to distance themselves from Jack Abramoff.  The Salvation Army chief communicator, Maj. George Hood, is quoted in the Washington Post as accepting the money as a case of "turning lemons into lemonade."  No different than the Salvation Army in the days of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (1905).

In apparent seriousness, a Kentucky newspaper columnist even suggests that this charity windfall could offset the Katrina effect.  Not likely.  Katrina's billions are no match for the mere millions being shed by politicians. 

In the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg uses the contributions as an index to measure the "bipartisanship" of the scandal, concluding that the scandal is 83% Republican, based on aggregate amount donated. 

More Katrina impact denial, this time from the Washington Post. 

Maybe donor fatigue isn't the right word for it, but in a poll conducted by CharityChannel shortly after Katrina, a number of comments indicated that major grantors had already told them that grants were being redirected toward Katrina recovery causes.  It isn't so much donor fatigue as it is significant reprioritization by the large grantors and I'm sure the same thing happened with smaller donors. 

Speaking of small donors, here's what they found in the UK Giving survey about the impact of tsunami giving on other causes:

Average giving to the tsunami appeal was £5.04 per head: roughly £4 of this tsunami gift represented an increase over and above what people would normally have given, and around £1 replaced giving to other causes.

If they could find a measurable impact on giving in the UK with the tsunami half a world away, surely there was some measurable impact from Katrina.  I'm surprised that none of the researchers (e.g. Lester Salamon or the University of Indiana folks who prepare Giving USA) have found a way to measure it, as they did in the UK.

[Update 1/20/2006] I forgot to mention the results of this survey of donors and charities by a group of nonprofit consultants in Colorado that found significant fundraising shortfalls as a direct result of competing needs as a result of Katrina fundraising campaigns. 

For the last year or so, I was calling myself "Charity Industry Observer" on various email lists, which generated a good bit of adverse and mocking comment.  That might work as a blog name, but I was looking for something a little less like an old-fashioned newspaper name.  I started fooling around with the concept of unrestricted contributions, which is a big thing for charities.  It also describes what this project is all about:  my contribution to the charity industry, without restrictions.

Here are some of the phrases that charities use in their solicitations to indicate unrestricted contributions, along with their frequency in a Google search:

So winner in the "Name the Blog" project is what you see on the masthead.

David Cay Johnston reported on a study by the New Tithing Group that purports to analyze the generosity of Americans by income. 

The results appear to confirm the common observation that the wealthy are less generous as a percentage of income, but it also draws the conclusion that the younger wealthy are less generous than their seniors. 

But there's a lot to question about the report, most notably its method for estimating assets from reported investment income and average rates of dividend return. 

I hope to take a close look at some of the tables and try to draw some conclusions that do not involve that questionable analytical approach.

An animal shelter worker in Marin County says to National Geographic, "Given all the media attention, it won't take long to find new homes for Katrina pets.  It often makes us think, Boy, wouldn't it be nice if we could say that about all the animals in the shelter." 

So Katrina pets are a reflection of the overall Katrina rebuilding effort and its impact on other chartiable activities.  Some 12,000 pets in 300 shelters in 40 states might bring home the huge scale of the human displacement and the effect it continues to have on lives, livelihoods and human service charities. 

The Washington Post takes note of efforts to include planning for pet evacuation as part of disaster preparation, especially since people staying behind to be with pets were a significant complicating factor during Katrina.  It could be that our love of pets could get the US to take disaster preparation more seriously. 

And in the hurricane zone itself, there is a population boom in puppies as abandoned animals continue to roam free and do their thing.  Another unanticipated consequence that is straining the charity infrastructure.

With little fanfare (and no press release), the Conference Board issued a report that showed that for the first time in 2004, corporations made more contributions in kind than in cash.  The big advances in in-kind giving are in the area of pharmaceuticals, but there are several trends that favor corporate in-kind giving over cash. 

The Wall Street Journal noted that corporate in-kind giving has its basis in favorable tax provisions on the books since 1976 that allow large corporations to deduct up to double the cost of many types of donated goods and property.  (There's another version of the story on CFO.com, for the WSJ-deprived.) 

This article by KPMG LLP explains the details.

The generous deduction overcomes the qualms that modern corporate manager can have about the use of corporate funds for purely charitable purposes. 

The largest charities based on giving in kind are Gifts in Kind International and NAEIR (the National Association for the Exchange of Industrial Resources). 

The top 15 charities (by contributions) in the UK have joined with others in a joint effort to increase public understanding and to communicate with clarity and openness.  The effort includes over 20 specific codes of fundraising practice for a wide range of activities from telemarketing to raffles to workplace giving. 

Among the coalition's members are well-known names in the charitable sector such as Oxfam, Christian Aid, ActionAid, Cancer Research, Save the Children, the British Red Cross and the RSPCA.

The UK has gone far down the road of charity industry cooperation, self-governance and standards that does not seem possible in the US.  Still, the codes themselves provide some guidance on what can be considered acceptable behavior (behaviour?).

Veterans organizations came under scrutiny of Alison Young, an investigative reporter in Knight Ridder's Washington bureau.  The report included two stories, one about accounting practices and the other about spending patterns.

Setting this apart from run of the mill reporting are a couple of spreadsheets that summarize the financial statements and corporate interlocking relationships of various groups (the link is to the sidebar that includes links to the spreadsheets, not a direct link.  It's a promising development to see this kind of primary research in the mainstream press. 

And it's not everyday that you see a reporter digging into an accounting rule like the AICPA SOP 98-2 to understand the implication of joint cost policies on performance ratios. 

The article about teens and churchgoing also caught the attention of Chris Walton (blog: Philocrates).  He identified the study (and book) by University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith that is referred to but not directly cited in the NY Times article. 

Walton's comment:

"The Times has hung a story that is really only a modest depiction of evangelical teen churchgoing on a peg about a study that shows that a growing number of kids is sampling a much broader range of religious ideas and practices. What a wasted opportunity."

The study has prompted diverse reviews from the Daily Tar Heel and Andrew Greeley in the National Catholic Reporter), and even a story citing the study in support of home schooling(!).  Now I'm even more curious: about what the book actually says and about the reactions of others.

To me, it seems very likely that the study is going to turn up something of interest and applicability to non-church charities as well.

But unlike Philocrates, I'm not surprised at the delay in coverage by the NY Times for a study released in September.  I always keep an eye out for nonprofit coverage during very slow news periods.