Here’s the announcement I received from Chicago Public Radio:

Next month is the 2010 Global Activism Expo and it’s shaping up to be the largest public gathering on the Chicago Public Radio calendar.  With over 100 activist groups, four onsite volunteer opportunities for the public to “get involved,” eight restaurants selling food, Goose Island Beer, workshops all day long, this thing has expanded like one of those spongey kid’s toys!  On top of all the fun, it is notable that there isn’t another gathering of globally responsible groups like the GAX on the entire Face of the Earth.

We need app. 30 volunteers and everyone coming needs to participate in our Orientation Party (pizza, beer, soda, comprehensive instructions for the Main Event, and tie dye with Jerome McDonnell)

Saturday, April 17, 2010
10:00 AM to 7:00PM
UiC FORUM, 725 W. Roosevelt Road

Hosted by Worldview’s Jerome McDonnell, Chicago Public Radio Presents… is thrilled to again present this remarkable celebration – complete with food, music and over 100 Chicago-area Global Activists, all featured guests of Worldview’s Global Activism Series. On the air for seven years now, the Series continues to be inspirational, and bringing everyone together for this Expo has quickly become an annual event.

This year, in order to properly prepare for the estimated 5,000 people we expect to attend, we’ve arranged for a special GAX Volunteer Orientation Party. In order to volunteer for this intensive event you will need to be available for both the event AND the party.  We will assign duties, eat pizza, drink free beer, and make special tie-dyed volunteer tee-shirts with Jerome at Navy Pier on Tuesday, April 6 from 6:00PM to 9:00PM.

We need thirty (!!) volunteers to staff this huge event – duties will include general ushering, box office, assisting with workshops, and controlling the mayhem of this amazing all-day experience.

If available and interested, email me at donhall@chicagopublicradio.org with GAX in the Subject Line.

Please join Sunda & UNICEF Tap Project Chicago for a very special evening kicking off World Water Week, March 21-27. Join us in our new private dining room for a sit down, four course dinner from Executive Chef Rodelio Aglibot including wines, cocktails and more!  Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will be served at 7PM and dinner at  8PM. Cost is $100 per person including tax and gratuity, seating is limited. Proceeds go to UNICEF’s water and sanitation programs bringing clean water to millions of children around the world. To purchase tickets and for additional  information email: cathy@sundachicago.com

More than Money: Expanding Your Philanthropic Toolbox.

Many times donors think their primary contribution to the cause comes when they write a check.  In fact, passionate, committed supporters bring so many more assets to the table besides their financial wealth–including their own networks, skills, reputation and so much more. In this session you will hear how different populations, including ordinary individuals, foundations, celebrities and businesses, can mobilize the full complement of resources at their disposal to bring about social change.

Scott Lazerson, founder of the Interface Foundation, and I have developed a worksheet to help Interface Celebrity Global Ambassadors think through all the many assets they can use to further their philanthropic goals.

Financial:

1. Donate ____% of my gross income, or  $__________ during the next twelve months
2. Donate ____% of proceeds from my (book sales, speaking fees, designated product, etc.)
3. Clean out my closet/basement/garage/trophy room and donate at least ___ items for auction or resale to benefit my charity; Donate gift baskets for charities to re-gift/auction
4. Work with my financial advisor to ensure that my investment portfolio is aligned with my values
5. Ask my sponsors/business partners/vendors to donate merchandise to benefit my charity
6. Use my consumer purchasing power and give business to organizations who are helping the Millennium Development Goals, i.e. buying fair trade coffee, handcrafts, etc.
7. Ask for donations in lieu of birthday/anniversary/graduation/wedding gifts

Time and Talent:

1. Dedicate ___ days this year to volunteer with my charity or attend fundraising events
2. Appear in Public Service Announcements, promotional videos or printed materials
3. Donate my professional skills, such as writing, web development, marketing, or accounting
4. Allow my charity to use my name publicly

Traditional Media:

1. Mention my charity in at least ____ interviews or media appearances this year
2. Wear charity clothing items/logos at ____ public appearances
3. Provide a link on my website to my charity
4. Take pictures and allow media access when I participate in charity events
5. Include information about my charity in my personal newsletter

Social Media:

1. Recruit ____friends, relatives to support my charities
2. Tweet once every day/week/month about charitable projects; Tell my followers to be sure to follow my charity’s tweets.
3. Blog: Write ____ posts about my charity this year
4. Join a Facebook group, Ning network or other social community for my charity
5. Use a charity badge as my social media icon for _____ weeks this year
6. Include my charity in my email or iPhone tagline (instead of “Sent by my iPhone”)

What other assets do you have that you can use in service of your philanthropic goals? Leave me a comment to share your ideas.

There is a web community called Big Think that brings thought leaders across disciplines together to share big ideas. This week, they featured a video conversation from Tal Ben-Shahar, a Harvard University lecturer on happiness on the topic of “Five Ways to Become Happier Today.”

According to Ben-Shahar, one of the key emotions correlating to happiness is gratitude. We often forget to be grateful until we experience loss or the possibility of loss–we’re grateful for our health after we’ve been sick, or we’re grateful for our jobs when we see others losing them. But cultivating our gratitude everyday helps us focus on everyday moments of happiness.

So How Do I Do It?

His big recommendation is to start keeping a gratitude journal. Each night before you go to bed, take a minute to write down five things you are grateful for, big or small. With my kids (who are 3 and 5), my approach is to ask them each night when I tuck them in to tell me three good things that happened to them today, or three things they are thankful for. When the answers tend toward “dessert,” I try to gently ask them about playing with their cousins after school or doing a puzzle with Daddy before dinner. They quickly catch on.

Gratitude Leads to Generosity

Ben-Shahar doesn’t go into what happens when you are more grateful and happier, but in my experience, gratitude leads you to realize just how much you already have, and that in turn make you realize just how much you have to give. Grateful people are generous people. Grateful people are philanthropic. If you want your children to grow up to be charitable, teach them empathy and gratitude by modeling empathy and gratitude.

Learn More

To learn about the other 4 things Ben-Shahar recommends in order to be happier, watch the full video by clicking here.

This is the basic concept of The 3/50 project, created in March by Cinda Baxter, a retail consultant and professional speaker from Minneapolis. The Chamber of Commerce in my Chicago suburban community has endorsed the plan and it warranted a short article in the Local section of the Chicago Tribune.

According to The 3/50 Project, “for every $100 spent in locally-owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures. In contrast, at national chains, only $43 remains in the community.” And when you buy a book from Amazon online instead of at a local book store, $0 stays local. Absolutely nothing. Nobody local gets paid to fill your order. No local sales tax is collected. No local property tax comes due. No overhead expenses like office supplies that get spent at another local brick and mortar business. Nothing.

More philanthropists are starting to focus on economic development as the underlying foundation to other charitable causes. Education, the arts, health care and employment depend on a healthy local economy, local taxes (including property taxes paid by brick and mortar businesses), and local businesses and business owners giving back to their community by supporting the local high school marching band or the girl scout troup. There is such a minimal cost to us–maybe paying $3 for that tube of toothpaste at the local pharmacy instead of $2.50 at the big box store–in return for so many benefits.

While we may continue to support causes we are passionate about with the funds earmarked for “charity,” The 3/50 Project shows us that we can do so much for our community by using other parts of our budget in smart ways.

So the next time you need cough syrup in Mount Prospect, IL, stop in to Keefer’s Pharmacy right across from the train station on your way home (they still have penny candy behind the counter). You can also get your hair cut at the Halo Hair Studio, and I already know you’re getting your ice cream at Cappanari’s. For locally owned businesses in your town, check your church bulletin ad pages, and look up the Chamber of Commerce for your town.

Try it this month–Just $50 you were going to spend anyway, but directed to local independent businesses.

Top Posts (with total clicks).

Men vs. Women: motivation to give to charity	917
Product (RED): Inspi(RED) or Ti(RED)?	718
Should you give money to panhandlers?	701
Reclaiming My 9/11 Birthday	520
Charity Gift Certificates	404
Individual Donors: Evaluating Charities	383
Google.org Shakeup: What Does it Mean?	315
About	307
How to Get a Socially-Responsible Job	303
iGoogle “Themes for Causes”	299
Donate Your Car to Charity	267
Top 10 Ways to Be Charitable When Money is Tight	240
Top 5 Celebrities Using their Fame for Good	236
Welcome Tweets!	232
Hey Kids! Not a Masochist? Then the Nonprofit Sector “DOESN’T” need you	199

Most frequently searched terms:

Some of my personal favorites from the last year:

Product (RED): Inspi(RED) or Ti(RED)?

Indulgences Sold Here–Just 1% of Your Profits

Top 10 Ways to Be Charitable When Money is Tight

Loking forward to the next 100 posts!  Suggested topics are welcome.

In one example of absurd critique, the authors of the study note that “65% ($5.82 billion) of all Gates Foundation global health funding was shared by 20 organisations, including five global health partnerships—such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and GAVI Alliance, which together received a quarter of all funding through ten grants.” The study expresses concern that so few organizations receive such a large chunk of the funding.

If the foundation didn’t give large, multi-million dollar grants to trusted intermediaries, they would be attempting to get to know hundreds of smaller organizations, administer thousands of grants each year. To reach $2 billion–the amount the foundation distributed in 2007– in increments of $250,000, you’d have to give out 8,000 grants.  The staffing needed for Gates to do due diligence, coordinate the logistics and effectively gather data from 8,000 smaller organizations would be overwhelming–and the “watchdog” community would be frothing at the mouth over the “wasteful overhead.” The Gates Foundation offers this explanation on its web site: “Most of our grantmaking goes to large intermediary partners—organizations that in turn provide funding and support to those doing the work in the field. This lets us take advantage of expertise that others already have, and it builds up expertise among people in the field rather than simply on our staff.”

A Question of Influence

In reality, the use of well-respected, widely-connected global health partnerships and intermediaries like the Global Fund is the only viable option for distributing billions in philanthropic funds.  At the same time, after first criticizing them for being too narrow and playing favorites, the authors then fault the Gates Foundation for being too widely-connected to the global health community:

“The Gates Foundation funds a wide range of contributors to global health, extending from UN agencies to global health partnerships, the World Bank, universities, and non-profit and non-governmental organisations. All the key contributors to global health have an association with the Gates Foundation through some sort of funding arrangement. Coupled with the large amount of money involved, these relations give the foundation a great degree of influence over both the architecture and policy agenda of global health. Through its funding of non-governmental organisations and policy think tanks, the foundation also confers power and influence on a selected number of organisations and in doing so, establishes some leverage over the voice of civil society.

These observations are pertinent because the Gates Foundation is not a passive donor. The foundation actively engages in policy making and agenda setting activities; it has representatives that sit on the governing structures of many global health partnerships; it is part of a self-appointed group of global health leaders known as the H8 (together with WHO, the World Bank, GAVI Alliance, the Global Fund, UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], and UNAIDS); and has been involved in setting the health agenda for the G8.

Actually, this coordination role of the Gates Foundation is in some ways its most important function.  A private foundation has the luxury of independence.  Without the need to raise money like the charities or earn votes like the government actors, the foundation has its own endowment that provides seed money for a thorough investigation of the problem.  In the worst case, that can mean a foundation operates at the whim of the founders but in the best case it means that the foundation can play an important coordinating role among many actors.

“Strategic Philanthropy”

I used to work for the Pew Trusts, a foundation that develops their programmatic strategies with input from a cadre of experts, drawn from academic, practical, public and private organizations.  They assess the problem, look for the points where the infusion of money and know-how can make a difference, evaluate the capacity and reputation of organizations in the field, and get the various pieces all moving in the same direction.  Where many actors on the public stage have a particular capacity, and they may execute their programs exceptionally well, few have the independence and wide-ranging expertise to handle all aspects needed to create systemic change. Foundations can bridge these worlds, between academic research, front-line service delivery, grassroots community development,  grasstops advocacy, for-profit entities, and so many other silos, to get all the oars rowing in the direction of an achievable solution.

Let’s be realistic: most foundations aren’t operating in such rarefied air.  That why we like to critique them for not being as effective as they should be at creating (supporting?) measurable social change. And yet, whenever foundations actually do this, when they are actually effective at influencing society, somebody starts attacking them for being influential.  Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

The people who start attacking them, though, always seem to be the people whose personal passion, or whose pet project, wasn’t funded.  People who disagree with the foundation’s conclusions.  That is, because the Gates Foundation didn’t choose their preferred program areas, they assume there was no legitimate process for selecting program areas. Ironically, if they actually did examine and analyze the foundation’s method for selecting program focus areas, THAT would be relevant and useful.  Given the inevitable influence of the Gates money, it’s important that their decision-making process be carefully designed. Did the Gates Foundation solicit input from a wide range of medical practitioners, scientists, global health experts, international development organizations, etc.? Or is their circle of advisers too insular? Did they successfully explain and defend their analysis of the problem? Or were they drawn too early toward one theory, like a homicide cop focusing on one suspect without properly investigating the others? What assumptions are built into their decision-making, and is there evidence to defend those assumptions?  What is their basis for believing their portfolio of grants will make a meaningful impact on the problem? Are they watching for signs of success, of failure or of unintended consequences and reacting to them? Or do they set the programs in motion and wait and hope they have the intended impact?*

Process Evaluation

With these questions in mind, this paragraph from the Lancet study is one of the most egregious: “Grant making by the Gates Foundation seems to be largely managed through an informal system of personal networks and relationships rather than by a more transparent process based on independent and technical peer review.”  Well, that sentence “seems” to be largely conjecture from someone who didn’t have a seat at the table. You don’t like the conclusions (the authors think they focus too much on vaccines and technology instead of infrastructure and want more money for maternal health) so you start trashing the process, an unfortunate logical fallacy. It’s legitimate to ask about the process, if a bit too early to conclude that it was insufficient. What do we know about their process?

On their own web site, the Gates Foundation lays out its decision making at a fairly high level.  You can read an entire document dedicated to explaining how they make decisions, but here are a few excerpts:

“Long before we make a single grant for any given issue, we listen and learn about problems that cause great inequity. Whether the challenge is low-yield crops in Africa or low graduation rates in Los Angeles, we begin by immersing ourselves in information about problems that cause great harm and get far too little attention.”

“As we learn about an issue, we ask whether we can make a difference with our money and our ability to bring partners together. We get involved only if we believe we can make a unique contribution.”

“For each opportunity, a program area considers its cost, the risk associated with it, its long-term viability, and, most important, its potential impact on people’s lives. Based on the answers to these criteria, and after extensive discussion, the program identifies a strategy, which includes a budget, the results they hope to achieve, and a plan to measure those results over the short and long term.”

This general explanation of process is a nice start, but if the Gates Foundation wants to counteract this criticism (and avoid being compared to evil genius Dick Cheney and his secret meetings with anonymous energy advisers) more specific transparency about the foundation strategies, who was consulted in developing them, what approaches were considered and discarded and why, etc. would be a great set of information to release to the global health community. The problem is, I’m honestly not sure what the Gates Foundation gets out of it.  People will take potshots at the experts they consulted, complain that their personal expertise wasn’t represented, disagree with the foundation’s assessments (and complain loudly that they were scaring away other funders) and generally be a pain in the ass. Practically speaking, it’s hard to overcome this set of disincentives.

Let’s Get Good Critique

I agree with some comments from study co-author McCoy that, given the huge amount of influence wielded by the Gates Foundation, it’s important to our collective global health that we have some degree of comfort with how this private entity makes their funding decisions.  That said, I’d be far more interested in an analysis of Gates Foundation activities by fellow change makers. By someone who truly understands the context of a U.S. private foundation, the realities of distributing huge amounts of money, and can ask the right questions about whether the foundation’s decision-making process is sufficiently robust to overcome the challenges of getting good information when everyone is motivated to tell you what you want to hear. On their own, the foundation has established a set of best practices for strategy development and grant selection, one I think the global health community would find quite acceptable, if only they’ll read it.  It’s that process to which they should be held accountable. If it’s all talk, the Gates Foundation gets an F and should be shamed into doing better for all of us. But if they walk the talk, we can argue about their conclusions and try to change their mind but we have to respect that they went through a good faith process.

Perhaps the answer here is to call on the Gates Foundation to hire someone to undertake an independent evaluation of whether they have followed their own process and how they could make their process more rigorous. Ask them to publish those findings and follow up on the recommendations.

In the end, I can’t help but wonder if that widely-applauded decision to sunset the foundation–the fact that’s forcing them to shovel billions out the door each year–might be reconsidered in light of the fact that so much money creates so much influence for a private actor.

“Disclosure: I was briefly a consultant to the Gates Foundation in 2004 and 2005 as they considered these questions and how to evaluate and hold themselves accountable as the world’s largest grantmaker. I also used to work in Planning and Evaluation at The Pew Trusts and was one of the authors of the document linked above.

I hope you’ll continue to be a regular reader no matter how you access our content.  As always, your suggestions and feedback are welcome, just email me at sharon.l.schneider (at) gmail (dot) com

My favorite quote from the article: “…scooter philanthropy is hardly a new thing.”