Posts Tagged ‘charity’

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What’s Next for Me is What’s Next for Philanthropy

January 2, 2012

I’ve been advising people about their philanthropy for over a decade. In person and through this blog I’ve always encouraged them to go beyond giving money to charity and think about all the assets they can bring to the table, and how they can especially use their power as investors and consumers to bring about the changes they want to see in the world.

Philanthropy as we have known it for the past few decades has been about giving money. But as we progress in the 21st century, I believe it will be about spending money: people are becoming more aware every day that we are shaping ourselves and the world around us by voting with our pocketbooks everyday.

The evidence is everywhere:

  • The exploding local food and “slow food” movements, rejecting the agro-industrial complex in favor of healing the economic, environmental and social health of our communities;
  • The growing fair trade movement, which provides fair wages and working conditions for workers and prevents the exploitation that often accompanies the production of cheap goods for consumption in the US;
  • The call echoing out from Occupy Wall Street for conscientious citizens to move their money from big commercial banks to local community banks, personified in the Move Your Money campaign;
  • The surveys that show that consumers want to purchase from socially responsible companies;
  • The growing voices of Millennials looking to work for socially responsible companies, or better yet, that want to start their own;
  • The expanding corps of investment advisers who specialize in “socially responsible investing” or “impact investing” a market estimated to grow to over $500 Billion in invested assets in the next 5 to 10 years;
  • The rise of services like Moxy Vote, which help you vote your values on any shareholder resolutions that come before companies whose stocks are in your investment portfolio

In addition to these trends, maybe you have heard the term “collaborative consumption,” which is being used to describe an emerging approach to people and their stuff–an approach based on borrowing, renting, sharing and accessing rather than owning outright. Early examples include Netflix for DVDs, car sharing services such as ZipCar or iGo, and more recently the peer to peer travel booking site Airbnb, and for designer gowns, Rent the Runway.

I’m so drawn to the concept of collaborative consumption, I am excited to tell you that I have launched my own social enterprise, one that applies the concept of collaborative consumption to an industry out of control: parenting.

Good Karma Clothing for Kids is a subscription baby clothing service that provides busy, socially conscious parents with like-new baby clothes in sizes newborn through 24 months so they don’t have to spend a fortune keeping up with fast growing little bodies.

We send a bundle in the size the baby is now, they wear, wash, enjoy, then send them back in the prepaid, reusable shipping bag when they need to exchange them for the next size up. We only use environmentally- and baby-friendly Selestial Soap to further reduce the environmental impact of the clothing, and we turn stained, ripped or worn out clothes into “upcycled” hand-made bibs, baby quilts or stuffed animals.

Our web site is live and we are now in our public beta. Check it out at www.goodkarma.co

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Posted in corporate philanthropy, Giving Money, Lifestyle, Social Enterprise | 2 Comments »

Respect the Bird This Holiday Season

November 21, 2011

This week marks the beginning of the traditional holiday shopping season, starting with “Black Friday” the day after Thanksgiving. This year, Black Friday is spilling over onto Thanksgiving, with more stores open at midnight and some even opening for Black Friday on Thanksgiving night!

One Target employee, aggravated with his family day of thanks cut short, started a petition on Change.org to pressure Target (and presumably other big national chains) to allow employees to truly have a day off:

“A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day.  By opening the doors at midnight, Target is requiring team members to be in the store by 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. A full holiday with family is not just for the elite of this nation — all Americans should be able to break bread with loved ones and get a good night’s rest on Thanksgiving!

“Join me in calling for Target retail stores to push back their original opening time of 5am on Black Friday.”

One of the signers of the petition, Deborah Schwartz of Hoboken, NJ, gives her reasoning for adding her name:

I’m so tired of turning on the news the Monday after Black Friday and having to hear about how much money the big retailers did or didn’t make. As if that’s the point of our year-end holidays. I’m tired of Christmas being promoted BEFORE Halloween. I’m sick and tired of these attempts to brainwash us into thinking Christmas is about how much money we spend. Every American has the right to spend Thanksgiving with their families…

When using my Allrecipes.com app on my smartphone, I ran across another grassroots effort to keep Thanksgiving as a non-commercial holiday called “Respect the Bird”:

Respect the Bird supporters have a mission. They are determined to ruffle feathers as much as possible and restore Thanksgiving to its rightful place as a meaningful, respected American holiday, not one that’s merely a one-day delicious afterthought between Halloween and Christmas. Tapping into its original roots—thankfulness, a celebration of friendships, family, and gifts from the earth—Respect the Bird supporters want to create a Thanksgiving experience extending beyond meal planning. It is, after all, one of the treasured holidays that’s not about spending.

“I hope it sets a precedence that the holiday be celebrated by sharing thanks and good food with friends and family, not Black Friday shopping!” – Doug Matthews, Allrecipes.com Community Member and Leader of the Respect the Bird movement

If you would like to take the pledge to Respect the Bird, head over to the blog or like them on Facebook.

If you’re tired of the commercialization of the holidays, here are a few alternatives.

  1. Wait until Small Business Saturday. I’ve written before about the movement to support small, local businesses. By paying perhaps a little more for aspirin at a local pharmacy instead of a national chain, you leave more money in the community where you live, in the form of wages, sales tax and the community involvement that many small businesses engage in. As an extension of this effort, this year the Saturday after Thanksgiving has been designated as “Small Business Saturday.” You can find out more here, or take the pledge to Shop Small or find retailers in your zip code here.  ”If millions of Americans shop small, it will be huge.”
  2. Give a Charitable Gift Certificate. A new survey from the Red Cross shows that 79% of respondents agreed that “they would rather have a charitable donation in their honor than get a gift they won’t use.” So you make the donation but let them pick the recipient. JustGive is an online web site that allows you to purchase charity gift certificates. you pick the amount and receive a ncie card to present to the recient. they go online and pick which charity they would like to receive the money. On Cyber Monday (Nov. 28th), JustGive is waiving their usual fees and the service is free. Great alternative to stocking stuffers and dust collectors.
  3. Join or Form a “Cash Mob.” Take Small Business Saturday right through the end of the year. On NPR this weekend I heard a story about a “cash mob” and was absolutely intrigued. According to this press release,”Cash mob plans to gather on specific days at 6:00 at a predetermined location and target a store in the area.  It must be locally owned, have products for both men and women and have parking.  The store must be civic minded.  Armed with at least $20 each, the “mob” will make purchases at the assigned location in a show of support for their neighborhood businesses.” What? Awesome. I’m thinking of organizing a cash mob in Mount Prospect, IL, where I live. How fun would it be to do your holiday shopping–especially the “hostess gifts, teacher gifts, people who bought you something and you need something to give them back gifts”–through this whimsical approach. Facebook seems perfect to organize this…

What other ideas do you have that are an alternative to commercial holiday celebrations? How do you keep your priorities straight during the frenzied consumer free-for-all that is December? Do share.

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Posted in Gift of Giving, Giving Money, Giving Things, Giving Time, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Update on the Shopping Cart Brigade

July 8, 2011

I happy to tell you that the Shopping Cart Brigade was a great success during this year’s Fourth of July parade in Mt. Prospect, IL. We collected 100 bags of food, and $200 in donations during the 2-mile parade.

A volunteer fills my cart with canned goods collected from the crowd

We had a lot of fun pushing our carts and doing our three choreographed moves following our “drum major” Pat Leniux:

Our 2nd choregraphed moved, a "follow the leader" down the two columns

Audrey was one of two sweet little girls collecting cash donations, who could resist this?

"Thanks for helping to feed the hungry"

Afterward, as my own notes to my fellow “Crazy Shopping Cart Crew” focused on the fun I had, my deacon John Lorbach brought us back to why we did this in the first place:

“And although we had lots of fun, I cannot help but picture in my mind all the young Moms who will be able to call their little ones to the table for supper, along with everyone else who will have the opportunity to  enjoy a meal, because of you.  We shall never know them but may we be forever in communion with them!”

Amen!

Deacon John Lorbach at the head of the Shopping Cart Brigade

A big thanks to Mariano’s Fresh Market for letting us use their shopping carts, to Rich and Debbie Russo for sending the pictures (see Rich to the right of Deacon John above), and especially to Jan Saillard and Pat Leniux for organizing the whole thing on behalf of St. Raymond’s and St. Mark’s. Our family is already looking forward to next year’s parade!

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Posted in Giving Money, Giving Things, Involving the Next Generation | 1 Comment »

Reclaiming My 9/11 Birthday: 10th Anniversary of the Attacks is on 9/11/11

June 21, 2011

I’ve written before about how my birthday is on 9/11, a day which has come to be synonymous with an attack on our country–and the fear, terror and protectionism that attack triggered.

But as much as 9/11 brought out some of the worst in American ideology (anti-immigration, anti-Muslim sentiments and “preventive war,” among other bits of ugliness), it also brought out the best in Americans–helping neighbors, a renewed spirit of civic duty and a calling to public service.

In an effort to highlight the best of the American spirit, I believe we need to set aside 9/11 as a special day to serve our neighbors and reflect the best of our country.

Chicago Half Marathon Logo

Today I am beginning my 12-week training program to culminate in running the Chicago half-marathon on 9/11/11. While this is a meaningful goal for me personally (I currently can run only about 1.5 miles before stopping to walk a while), it’s also a community event: I’m running to benefit an organization that I am dedicated to, The Cara Program.

I hope you’ll join me. In fact, to make this more of a community event, I’ve started up a challenge using the Nike+ platform.  For every person who joins my challenge at Nike+ and completes a half-marathon on 9/11, I’ll donate $1 to charity (max $1500), split 50/50 between The Cara Program and the Chicago-based charity of a participant.

So join the effort to “Reclaim 9/11,” you can start training today and be ready to run 13 miles on 9/11, 12 weeks from now. And if you click here and join my challenge and leave a comment with the name of your charity and why you support them, you could raise up to $750 for the charity of your choice.

Spread the word to all the runners you know–you don’t have to be physically in Chicago or at the Chicago half-marathon to participate. You can run anywhere in the world as long as you upload your run to Nike+.

Or, start now to plan your own way to Reclaim 9/11. As Nike might say, “Just do SOMETHING”

(Thanks for asking! You can pledge to support my half-marathon run for the Cara Program here)

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Posted in Giving Money, Giving Time, Lifestyle, Raising Money | 4 Comments »

Advice for Donors to Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute

April 26, 2011

I’ve had a lot of people asking what I think about the recent allegations against Greg Mortenson about falsified stories in his best-selling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools, and gross mismanagement of charitable funds donated to the Central Asia Institute. What follows is purely my own opinion, but so many people have focused on whether the allegations are true or not, and I thought I would contribute some thoughts on what to DO about it.

If you haven’t followed the controversy, I’d rather not get into it here. Feel free to

In short, there are clear management challenges, at the very least.

So what’s a donor to do?

If you believe in the work being done by the Central Asia Institute, I encourage you to be patient and wait for the dust to settle. A lot more ink will be spilled before this is over and it’s hard to say what will shake out. But in any case, before donating to the Central Asia Institute again, I would want to see the following steps taken by the organization:

  1. A new CEO hired that takes over the “business” of running a $20 million/year charity while Greg pursues the mission. This is for two reasons: one, Greg has admitted that he lacks organizational skills (and even his most ardent supporters agree) and he needs someone supporting him who demonstrates those skills; and two, it shows that the board is taking these allegations seriously and that they are trying to build an organization that is larger than any one man.
  2. Additional board members appointed who can provide greater oversight and accountability. Again, this would show that the organization is taking this seriously and is dedicated to good governance. Also, the existing board members seem to lack experience in some key areas of nonprofit management. Their response so far has been defending the mission but they need to do a “mea culpa” on some of these governance and management issues if they are going to retain any credibility.
  3. Audited financials every year. A charity this large should absolutely be getting an audit every year for sure.
  4. A clear travel expense policy put into place that would govern the use of charitable funds in the field. This seems to have been handled very casually, but needs to be tightened up.
  5. A copy of the attorney’s report showing they did not engage in “excess benefit” transactions with Greg. They apparently had their attorneys investigate this issue and the attorneys found no excess benefit. Great, let us see this report. I am especially curious about this one because the charity has made statements that there was no excess benefit because CAI benefits from the speaking/book tours more than Greg does. I believe this is an inaccurate explanation of excess benefit, which does not compare the benefits accrued to the individual versus the benefits accrued to the charity, but rather compares to benefits accrued to an individual versus what is considered “reasonable.” See this explanation of excess benefit transactions especially written for non-lawyers like me.
  6. If CAI feels that Greg’s speaking appearances are a critical part of fulfilling its mission and a fantastic fundraising tool, I can understand that position (I bet a lot of organizations that raise $20 million spend $1.7 million or more in fundraising costs). However, in that case they need to adopt a new policy that all speaking fees and proceeds from events surrounding Greg and CAI are paid directly to the CAI, and Greg’s compensation comes in the form of a salary from CAI. If they need to increase his salary to be more commensurate with his value to the organization, so be it.

In conclusion, I think it’s worth pointing out that all of these suggestions merely constitute good governance. They are nothing unusual, and most charities of any significant size would already have policies and practices like this in place. To all donors, I can only reiterate that before giving to a “good cause”, you should investigate whether the program or organization in question also represents good practice.

P.S. I can’t help but wonder if some of this book tour accounting nonsense was an attempt to keep his salary artificially low as an unintended consequence of watchdog and donor insistence on low salaries at nonprofits. I can imagine supporters thinking Greg deserved to earn more for all his contributions and deciding it would be “only fair” for him to keep more proceeds from his book tour which wouldn’t raise alarms as compensation on the charity’s tax return. This organization, after all, received a 4-star rating for its financials from Charity Navigator, which speaks volumes to the limitations of ratios and, if I’m right, the perverted incentives that this rating system sets up.

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Posted in Celebrity Philanthropy, Giving Money, Governance, Great Nonprofits | 12 Comments »

What Nonprofits Can Learn from a Girl Scout Manual

March 2, 2011

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” -Lao Tzu

Don’t laugh, but I’m the cookie mom for my daughter’s Daisy troop. There are still boxes of Thin Mints and Samoas in the corner of my living room, along with the yummy-but-not-enough-in-a-box-to-justify-four-bucks “Thank U Berry Much” variety introduced last year.

We have to get rid of those extra boxes, and so I read some of the material provided by the Girl Scouts about site sales. What caught my eye was an admonition for the adults not to take over the activity:

“Adults act as coaches who help girls develop leadership skills by using these three processes:

  • Girl-led: Girls play an active part in figuring out the what, where, when, how, and why of their activities. They lead the planning and decision-making as much as possible.
  • Learning by doing: Girls engage in continuous cycles of action and reflection that result in deeper understanding of concepts and mastery of practical skills.
  • Cooperative learning: Girls work together toward shared goals in an atmosphere of respect and collaboration that encourages the sharing of skills, knowledge and learning.”

It’s a fine line between coaching and doing, especially when we all know “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.” Adults certainly organize better, market better, craft better thank you notes. If you left the girls in charge, they might forget to put the cost per box on the sign. They might not pick the best location with adequate foot traffic. They might forget to bring enough change. And they certainly would not sell as many cookies as a group of adults would sell under the same circumstances.

But as the Girl Scouts manual so delicately points out, the larger goal isn’t to sell a bunch of cookies. The larger goal is to teach the girls critical leadership and entrepreneurial skills that they can apply elsewhere. And to accomplish that goal, there is no more important step than putting the girls in charge of cookie sales with adults coaching them.

Among our nonprofit community, I think there is a tendency to forget that the point of our efforts is to accomplish some mission, not perpetuate our organization. In much the same way as well-meaning adults take over cookie sales for their kids, increasing sales when sales aren’t the point, nonprofits have a tendency to cultivate donors as “theirs,” and claim a cause as “theirs,” when owning the cause isn’t the point. Accomplishing the mission is the point.

Instead of cultivating loyal donors to our organization, we should be cultivating passionate advocates for our cause. We don’t own them, we empower them. We are not the end, we are the means.

How many of our strategic plans focus on the infrastructure and financial growth of our organizations, and how many focus on how we’re going to accomplish our mission? How many of our board meetings focus on leadership around our causes and how our efforts are or aren’t getting the results we want, and how many focus on fiscal responsibility and budgets and fundraising?

I have yet to hear about a board that spends too much time focused on the organization’s impact and not enough reviewing its financial report. If your board is interested in becoming more mission-driven (rather than duty-driven), I highly recommend the work of Hildy Gottlieb, whose YouTube videos provide only a glimpse of the passion and wisdom she brings to community benefit organizations.

And next year, my daughter may only sell 5 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. But she will have personally sold every one of them herself.

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Posted in Governance, Great Nonprofits, Raising Money | 5 Comments »

A Good Cause is Not the Same as a Good Program

February 22, 2011

Dan Pallotta’s recent column for Harvard Business Review calling on charities to start treating their donors as intelligent adults made me want to stand up and cheer. And in rising up to meet his challenge, I am here to tell you a hard truth. That truth is: most of you are doing a terrible job picking charities to receive your hard-earned money and carry the torch of your ideals.

As a person who makes social change their full-time profession, I am often frustrated that big-hearted individuals hear about the mission of a charity and say “isn’t that a wonderful charity?”

Let me be clear: it is impossible to know whether a charity is good or bad, wasteful or efficient, simply by reading its mission statement. Why do I say this?

First, because I know that a mission statement is a statement of intentions, not a statement of accomplishments. A “good cause” is not the same thing as a “good program.” And we all have good intentions but the inconvenient truth in social change work is that Good Intentions Are Not Enough.

Think of the well-meaning missionaries whose desire to “save” children from post-earthquake Haiti almost resulted in loving parents and their children being permanently separated.

Or the recent effort by World Vision to send 100,000 misprinted Super Bowl champion t-shirts to people in the third world, improving their own overhead ratios by claiming the value of these gifts-in-kind as program expenses, while in reality sending goods that are readily available even to poor people in the target geographies, widely accepted by the aid community as having the effect of undermining local businesses and creating a culture of dependency, and otherwise causing harm to the very communities they purport to help.

Or consider the Battered Mother’s Resource Fund that never actually implemented any programs it was fundraising for and potentially scared women away from seeking help by falsely claiming that many shelters separate mothers from their children. It was also proposing a children’s ranch that experts said would do great psychological harm to kids if it were ever built. Despite the fact that it was ordered to shut down by the Attorney General, this organizations still has a profile on Change.org, with 30 well-intentioned supporters. I bet those supporters read the mission statement and said “that’s a worthy cause.”

You know, they’re right: it IS a worthy cause. But it’s not a worthwhile program. This idea that different women’s shelters  are doing radically different things, some of which might be actually harmful to women, is something we don’t often consider. But the same thing is true for all kinds of charities.

Some jobs programs help people spiff up their resumes and place them in dead end jobs. Others provide holistic training to prepare them for a lifetime of success in a new career. Sadly, some don’t even know what results they’re getting because they are too busy playing with allocation of costs to make their “overhead ratio” as low as possible.

As a person with good intentions, what can you do? You can pick an issue, and learn about it.  In fact, I insist on it. Don’t give to any organization that asks just because it’s a “good cause.” Don’ t give thinking “What’s the harm? What’s the worst that could happen?”  If you know nothing about that cause, that issue, that organization, you can be actually doing harm, as the examples above illustrate. Withholding your donation when you don’t know what you’re doing is as important a moral act as giving when asked.

The father of a childhood friend of mine used to say “Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”

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Posted in Giving Money | 12 Comments »

Tithing Your Time Online

January 12, 2011

I just read a fascinating post suggesting that we need to make purposeful choices about how we live our increasingly online lives, “choices that will determine both the quality of your life online and of your relationships offline.” The author, Alexandra Samuel outlines 6 decisions we often make without ever consciously making them.  But one in particular stuck out to me as an interesting idea.

Essentially, given all the time we waste online, Alexandra suggests that we do something to give back or be helpful to others with some of our online time.

What problems am I choosing to fix with the help of the Internet? The village that needs a new water pump. The prospect of climate change. The aunt who needs a new beau. The creative vacuum left by the implosion of your garage band. Whether it’s a problem for you, your community or the world, the Internet can help you fix it. Tithing 10% of your time online — from micro-volunteering to online activism to writing a heartfelt note to a lonely friend — is a structured way to ensure that the Internet becomes part of the solution instead of part of the problem. This can be the year in which you get serious about the Internet as the single most promising problem-solver in a world that faces many fast-growing problems.

Sounds like a great plan. What can you do with a portion of your online life to make the real world a better place? Ideas and suggestions welcome.

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Posted in Giving Time, Lifestyle | Leave a Comment »

Show Me the Money

December 8, 2010

One night last week, my husband read the book One Hen to our kids at bedtime. It’s a children’s book about a very grown-up topic: the power of banking. More specifically, the power of microfinance loans to provide opportunity for the poorest people in the world to build a business and improve their lives.

One Hen tells the story of a child in Ghana named Kojo whose community pools their money to allow each member in turn to buy something to improve their tiny businesses. The people use their purchase to increase their income and pay the funds back so the next person can borrow and the cycle continues. Kojo’s mother gets her turn with the funds, and in turn she lets him use enough to buy a hen.

With this one hen, Kojo sells enough eggs to pay his mother back and then buy more hens. He eventually pays for his own school fees, then builds a large and successful business. When he’s older, he goes to the city and asks for a loan from the bank to buy an entire farm. Of course, the first banker turns him down, because by traditional banking standards he doesn’t look very creditworthy. But when another banker hears how Kojo has grown his business from that first little hen, he decides to take a chance and Kojo gets his farm. Now he’s supplying not just eggs, but jobs and stability to his community. People that he pays in turn buy goods and services from other community members and so begins a virtuous cycle of economic prosperity for them all.

One Hen is the story of microfinance: How loans that are too small to be worth the time of a commercial bank can be the ones that have the greatest impact on increasing the wealth of poor communities. How people that aren’t “credit-worthy” by traditional standards can still be worthy borrowers. It is in many ways the story of Opportunity International, a pioneer in microfinance that has been championing this work for almost forty years, and which is the nonprofit partner of One Hen. (The real-life inspiration for Kojo sat on the board of Opportunity International for many years and continues to be engaged with the work today.)

Grown-ups talk about rates of return, recycling capital and other fancy terms. But kids relate to other kids, and they especially relate to narrative. So what better way to draw them into the power of microfinance than by telling the stories of other kids?

“Show Me the Money”

Now one woman who was inspired by the book One Hen is creating a documentary to do just that. Show Me the Money will follow kids in the United States, themselves budding entrepreneurs, as they earn money through lemonade stands, bake sales or other micro-businesses and lend it to an entrepreneur in another country.

Then the film will follow the borrower—perhaps a woman in China buying a donkey to transport her goods to market, or a seamstress in Peru who buys a sewing machine to be able to make larger and more expensive items for sale—to show the joys and struggles as they try to build their business.

What a fantastic way to show kids the power they have to positively impact someone else’s life! No lectures, no guilt trips, and no powerless recipients of their handouts. Just the excitement of earning their own money and then putting it to good use, helping another human being halfway around the world move beyond poverty to a life rich with possibility.

Behind the Scenes

Producer Kathleen Ermitage is passionately pursuing the vision for Show Me the Money. As her partner in crime, she has recruited Emmy and Grammy nominee John Scheinfeld, best known as the writer, director and producer of The US vs. John Lennon and the critically-acclaimed Who Is Harry Nilsson?

They have imagined an inspiring and engaging film that humanizes the concept of microfinance to empower young people and show them that they can make a huge difference in someone else’s life. Once young people get drawn in by the film, Kathleen and her team will provide educational resources to teach them financial skills so that they can earn, save, spend and give in their own lives.

Kathleen says, “We aim to celebrate the American spirit of entrepreneurialism and the great power of micro-finance. And we’ve got the perfect director for it—to bring just the right tone to the material. What a great ride! We’ve met fascinating young people. And we will respectfully give them room … watch them make decisions that are very important to them. We’ve already witnessed their wheels turning in terms of how they develop financial skills—and true business savvy. It is an education that occurs inside the classroom … and outside, too.”

Although he is best known for documentaries about the lives of well-known individuals, John Scheinfeld says, “Kathleen’s passion for this project was so infectious and the kids’ stories are so inspiring there was no question—I had to be involved in making this movie.”

Show Me the Money will make the festival circuit, followed by a theatrical run and DVD and TV, but Kathleen will also draw on her background in creating educational media to develop web sites, videos, social media outreach and other tools. Kathleen plans to work closely with financial institutions and individual advisors to distribute the educational content so that kids, once inspired, can have outlet and direction for their energy and enthusiasm.

Kathleen says, “We can generate a great deal of content with a wide range of curriculum applications. The great fun and challenge for us will be to take full advantage of all of the media, distribution channels. Content is flourishing—and we will wrestle it to the ground and into the right formats for our end-users. We’ll have curriculum content flowing concurrently with filming in some cases, nearly real-time.”

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the film’s nonprofit partners, including One Hen, Inc., the nonprofit that converts Kojo’s story into interactive and classroom resources and Opportunity International,  a global microfinance agency that partners with One Hen. Investors will also have the opportunity to go along with the production to visit the entrepreneurs around the world.

Get Involved

If you are interested in getting involved with Show Me the Money, we’ll be sure to share details as they become available. Kathleen is in the process of pulling together the final financing for the film venture, which includes the educational products. If you are interested in this regard, please contact Kathleen directly at kathleen@steppingstonesmediaproductions.com.

In the meantime, this holiday season consider the gift of the book One Hen and a $10 or $25 Opportunity International gift card for a special young person in your life, maybe a niece or nephew or God child. Read them the story about Kojo and show them how they have the power to give the gift of opportunity to others by going online together to find and fund an entrepreneur through OptInNow.org

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Posted in Gift of Giving, Giving Money, Involving the Next Generation | 1 Comment »

Top 5 Reasons NOT to Give to Charity Telemarketers Who Call This Holiday Season

November 28, 2010

When you answer the phone, you know right away from the extended moment of silence that it’s a telemarketer calling and you almost hang up. But then they ask if you care about helping women with breast cancer, or supporting firefighters’ families. So you give them a minute, because you’re a charitable person and you feel compelled to at least listen to their pitch. But I’m letting you off the hook with five good reasons to say “no” to these callers–and the exact words to say to them.

Number 5: These telemarketers are taking a cut–sometimes a huge cut–of your donation. Sadly, some cash-strapped charities sell their donor lists to for-profit telemarketers, figuring that the small percentage of donations they will receive is like “found money” and better than nothing, which is what they’d get without selling their donor list. These telemarketers may keep 75% or more of your donation. If you want to donate to the charity being represented by the telemarketers, do it through a site like Network for Good (which receives a 5% processing fee) or send the charity a check directly. And to prevent your name from being sold, ask the charities you donate to not to sell your name.

Number 4: The callers are counting on an emotional, not rational, reaction. The names of the organizations are often close to those of large, well-known charities so that they hopefully get the positive brand association you have with the larger organization. The mission they describe to you is focused on universally-beloved causes, like firefighters, police, sick kids or other vulnerable populations. What kind of a jerk would you be if you didn’t want to help those folks? Well, you can help those people without giving to telemarketers. So don’t let guilt get the best of you. Reputable charities don’t need to use pressure tactics.

Number 3: You have no good way to evaluate their work. A mission statement is simply an aspiration, it’s not an accomplishment. “Our mission is to help women who are diagnosed with breast cancer to access the best treatment possible.” Great mission statement. So tell me, how’s that going for you? How does the health of women you have helped compare to the health of women you haven’t helped? What specific services do you connect them with? How are you reaching out to the women who most need your help?

I don’t know if those are even the right questions to ask of a charity that purports to help women diagnosed with breast cancer, but my point is that it’s difficult to even think of good questions over a phone call, much less verify or evaluate the answers you get. Don’t ever let a charity sell you on a mission statement alone. A good mission statement does not equal a good charity. It’s about what they actually deliver. So if they sound interesting, ask for their Tax ID number and do some research on your own at Guidestar or Charity Navigator.

Number 2: Charities should be building a passionate base of year-round supporters who love and support them, not relying on last-minute holiday giving by strangers. If you’ve never heard of this charity, and never given to them before, it means they are “cold-calling” thousands of people just hoping to get a few who respond positively to their mission statement. But the strongest organizations cultivate donors over time by educating them about their work, inviting them to see their programs, building trust by delivering results and communicating about their challenges and needs. As a consequence, their donors come through year-round, and perhaps again in response to targeted year-end mailings. A charity that is relying on holiday telemarketing for donations seems to me like a charity that’s desperate for any money it can find–never a sign of a strong organization.

And the Number 1 Reason NOT to Give to Charity Telemarketers This Holiday Season: Giving to random charities distracts you from your true philanthropic priorities. Ah, there’s the rub. Even if you become convinced that it’s a legitimate charity doing great work with the majority of your donation going to firefighter’s families as promised, if firefighters isn’t your thing, you should stick to your guns. Or gun safety, if that’s your issue. Or local arts organizations, or homeless shelters, or whatever you care about. If your charity budget is limited, all the more reason to save those funds for the issues you care about.

And therein lies your response to the telemarketers. As they start to sell you on the importance of their cause, here’s what you say. “Thanks for your call but I have other philanthropic priorities.” Who can argue with that? Then hang up, guilt free.

For more on charities and telemarketing, see:

How and Why I Turn Down Charity Telemarketers a really nice post on the personal finance blog Finance for a Freelance Life

Five Best Questions to Ask Charity Telemarketers by the BBB’s Charity Information Network

Fend Off Charity Telemarketing During the Holidays by MSN Money

[Added 12/13: State Officials Warn Donors about Charities Fundraising Costs on The Business of  Giving]

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