Note: In recognition of the upcoming holidays, we will not publish the Not for Profit News on Dec. 29. We all wish you season’s greetings and the best for 2021!

The United States of America unarguably has one of the most developed philanthropic traditions in the world. Having lived in four countries and visited more than 20, I have yet to find its equal. The fact that more than 1.5 million tax-exempt organizations are registered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gives statistical evidence of this fact.

In many countries, personal wealth is considered almost exclusively as a legacy for family. Many charitable organizations here, that do not have a particularly aggressive Planned Giving/Legacy departments, still receive a good percentage of their income from testamentary gifts.

But large gifts are not just part of a donor’s legacy. Food For The Poor (FFTP) received two record-breaking gifts of seven figures each during October from generous donors who are very much alive.

FFTP has 13 fundraising departments. Except for our Speakers’ Bureau of priests, pastors and ministers who are not able to visit churches during the pandemic for the safety of all involved, the remaining 12 departments have all done well — at times surpassing budget and 2019 results.

These gains were made despite the many hardships suffered by donors and FFTP staff — such as working from home, mastering new technologies, virtual events, radical changes in messaging, an atmosphere of worry, stress, fear, anxiety, loneliness, depression, and mourning.

American donors always respond well to crisis, whether at home (Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, Sept. 11, 2001) or abroad (Haiti earthquake of 2010, the tsunami in Banda Ache). Donors in this country find themselves with a need to give in times of crisis, at times for extended period, as long as the media acts as a constant reminder of the crisis.

The American donor generally gives single gifts, with the exception of child sponsorship, but more and more, the emphasis on the acquisition of monthly donors is beginning to popularize this form of giving with its many advantages — longer retention, better lifetime value and greater percentage of legacy gifts, to name a few.

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by Marc Morial and Tony Mason

  

The Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy hosted a discussion on racial justice featuring Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, and Tony Mason, president and CEO of the Indianapolis Urban League. Here are some of the key learnings from their conversation.

During Morial’s time as mayor of New Orleans, he created “gumbo coalitions.” With a nod to culinary traditions of the area, he made sure to make his committees inclusive of many points of view: “The principal was that with gumbo, you can make it in many, many ways, and adding many ingredients.”

Mason described the changes that the Urban League of Indianapolis has undergone since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic: “We’ve had to expand our services to meet the needs of the community in this moment. At the very beginning of the pandemic, one of the significant challenges that we had to undertake as the staff — and those of you who raise funds can appreciate this — was that we had to invest in outfitting our entire staff, laptops, and matching equipment. As you know, with a lot of nonprofits, we’ve got donated equipment here and there, and so it was a significant investment for us to do that.

“But maybe perhaps more importantly, as we started to transition to a remote operation, we began receiving phone calls from residents from the senior living communities located in the U.S., and the residents were expressing a concern about being able to have access to food. So, we facilitated a partnership between the senior living communities, Goodwin Plaza. The calls kept coming, and so we embarked on conducting weekly drive-thru food and resource distributions … every Tuesday here at the Urban League. In essence, 28 weeks ago, we were not in the hunger relief business.”

According to Morial, there is much to be learned from our forebears: “But I think we should listen to our elders, our seniors, our seasoned citizens in the community, our established leaders who may have confronted a different time, and we should learn from them. We should learn from them; they have the broader perspective.”

Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI: A project tracking executive orders from every state dealing with COVID-19 since March is now online, following research from IUPUI and the University of Miami. The Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI created the public portal in April to view COVID-related executive orders enacted across the country. Read more

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