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Newsletter
March 2015
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Save the Dates
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RESCHEDULED WINTER EDUCATION SESSION
Giving with Impact
Guest Speaker:
Katherina Rosqueta Founding Executive Director of The Center of High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania
April 22
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Reed Smith, LLC
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ANNUAL MEETING
Monday, June 1, 2015
FAC Meeting in Progress
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Moving beyond one million, giving as one
Dear ,
Spring has arrived and with it a robust grant proposal review process. While many members are immersed in this exciting and essential part of Impact's work, the Board is also planning for next year! Impact is seeking nominations for five positions on our Board of Directors - Vice President, Secretary, Co-Chair Communications, Co-Chair Membership and Co-Chair Grants. Please click here for descriptions of the available positions.
As a volunteer organization, Impact relies on members' generous financial donations to support the day-to-day expense of running our organization, but equally vital is our members' gracious donation of time and talent.
Involvement on the Board is a rich, rewarding, creative and collaborative experience. It has truly been an honor and a privilege to serve with such wonderful women. As Impact100 evolves into a more mature organization, there are numerous opportunities for personal and organizational growth, and joining the Board is one of these fantastic opportunities.
Please consider nominating yourself or another member for one of the board positions listed above. Nominations are due before the deadline of Monday, March 30 and should be sent to Jacquie Stern at elsjbs@aol.com.
Thank you all for your continued support.
Sue Dubow and Jacquie Stern
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Impact100 In the News!
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Founders Fellowship Update This fall, Impact100 Philadelphia launched the Founders Fellowship to educate young women ages 21-35 and involve them in the experience of collective philanthropy. The program, inspired by the work of Impact100's founders Mary Broach and Beth Dahle, offers a full year of Impact100 membership benefits while underwriting the $1,000 annual contribution. Our goal is to engage younger women in our process of learning about and working to address the vital needs in our community. In exchange for the Fellowship opportunity, these five women are already making an impact on our organization! Fellows are participating in our FAC process as members of committees, involved in outreach to inform nonprofits about our grant award opportunities, working with our Communications Committee to address critical technology issues, and contributing articles to our monthly newsletter (see article below by Janea DeVeaux and Jessica Franzini). This exchange and opportunity is very much in the spirit of our work, engaging and educating women about grant funding and the needs in our communities. If you would like to support this initiative or sponsor a fellow for the 2015/2016 grant year, please contact the program's chair Ellan Bernstein at foundersfellowship@impact100philly.org.
We are tremendously excited about the Founders Fellowship program and look forward to growing the program over the years.
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Focus Area Committees Take Charge!
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Emily Biscardi Speaks to FAC Participants
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On the evening of February 19th, 130 Impact100 Philadelphia members joined forces to kick off an exciting next few months of lending their time, talents, and expertise to Focus Area Committees (FAC's). The committees will collectively review 50 grant proposals, conduct site visits, and effectively collaborate to select five finalists. Each finalist will then give a presentation during the June 1st annual meeting, where Impact100 members will award project and operating grants totaling $377,000!
"Being an FAC member is so rewarding," explained Abby Spector, a six-year member of Impact100 Philadelphia, at the February event. "Not only do you become more connected to the vital needs of the region through the grant review process, but you learn so much from the talents of your fellow FAC members! I am always amazed at the wealth of knowledge and experience around the room."
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First Meeting of the Arts and Culture FAC
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Each FAC - Arts & Culture, Education, Environment, Family and Health & Wellness - is comprised of approximately 35 women, including two members from Impact100's Financial Review Panel and one Founders Fellow per committee. About half of all FAC members are first-year members! First year member Shaina Olitsky left her FAC session "excited about reviewing grants and choosing beneficiaries of the grant awards." The FACs will work diligently to select the best nonprofit organizations to compete for the top $100,000 grant awards in June.
The meeting covered the important fid
uciary responsibility of FAC
volunteers, organization eligibility
criteria, Impact100's project priorities, and key evaluation tips for the FAC members to consider during the grant evaluation process. As stewards of Impact100's 377 donors, members left the meeting prepared for the task and excited to be a part of Impact100's philanthropy process!
~~ Submitted by members Janea DeVeaux and Jessica Franzini
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The Impact of Size
If you've served on a Focus Area Committee, no doubt you've seen Impact100's financial review process in action, as you listened to the feedback on applicant organizations from the Financial Review Panel (FRP) representative. On each committee, an FRP person pores through the numbers to insure that each year's applicants are financially stable and have managed their resources well. There are some special challenges in testing for financial health, since Impact100 targets a "sweet spot" of smaller organizations from around $300,000 to $5 million in revenues. If you aren't very familiar with the nonprofit world, it might surprise you that this range is considered "small", but when you look at organizations like the United Way with $80 million in annual revenues, you see that we are working with smaller, and often younger, organizations. So what is Impact100 looking for and what are the special challenges for a smaller organization? The FRP representative looks to confirm that they have: adequate cash on hand to pay their bills, manageable debt, diversified and stable funding sources, and sufficient (and ideally, growing) Net Assets In many ways, smaller nonprofits are like a young professionals early on in their career. They have to manage their money carefully, and probably don't have much of a financial cushion (or in our world, "Net Assets") to fall back on. Meanwhile, older professionals who are well-established in their career are much more likely to have built up savings - in college funds and for retirement. When Impact selects a small organization for a grant, it means that their good work and financial track record indicate that they can continue to grow into a successful and sustaining organization - and Impact100 will have given them a truly meaningful boost along the way. ~~ Submitted by member Laurie Sherman |
Grantee News
Often, Impact members are curious about opportunities to volunteer with former grantees. Many of our grantees work with children in the Philadelphia School district and offer a myriad of options to get involved. By way of inspiration, Impact's 2014 grantee, ArtWell, recently published a
blog post about volunteer Cathy Cohen called Fostering Young Poets.
In the post, by Erin Cech, Cathy says,
"I have learned that if a child has missed something or is experiencing a problem that may be particularly challenging, there is always another way to learn it. . . By breaking down tasks, we can more easily assess their strengths."
Also,
ArtWell founder Susan Teegan-Chase invites members to:
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Participate. Create. Connect. Dream.
Join us for a day filled with music, live performances, poetry readings, art reception, make-and-take art activities, tasty food trucks, and much more - as we celebrate the students, leaders and community members who are a part of the ArtWell family and make Philadelphia a better place. All ages are welcome. FREE!"
The event will be on May 31 at Oxford Mills, 100 West Oxford Street, from 1:00 - 5:00 pm. More information is available at
Neighborhood Bike Works is looking for volunteers to help out on Saturday, April 18 and Sunday, April 19 at the Lower Merion Public Works Complex. Community members are invited to bring outgrown or abandoned bicycles to donate to enthusiastic young riders in NBW's youth Earn a Bike program. Bring a bike, inventory bike donations, help load bikes into vehicles! Also, Neighborhood Bike Works publishes a
newsletter detailing other spring volunteer opportunities. Check it out.
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