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Fluff Free Fundraising
From Access Philanthropy
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February 2022
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VIRTUAL VOLUNTEERS – DEADLINE CALENDAR IS BACK – 2022 WORDS TO AVOID
Science fiction author Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes) has two great travel quotes:
- Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness
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You've got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.
We recently facilitated a staff meeting for a nonprofit. All these young people felt lost and uninspired. (Of course, it’s so much easier to take a chance when you sell millions of books, like Bradbury, or you’re lots older). It’s important right now for the more experienced among us to encourage young NPO people to take chances and to know it’s okay to feel lost once in a while.
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For years, Grantseekers told grantmakers that the only way they’d receive a grant was if a corporate employee was on their board of directors.
The pandemic sort of wrecked that plan.
Not that Employee Involvement with a nonprofit is less important. It is still worth lots of bonus points when it comes to grantseeking. And, corporations are still working to encourage it - but it is leading some to now look for virtual volunteer opportunities for their employees: Mentors, fundraising, connecting with isolated constituents, and even teaching classes or workshops.
Here at AP, learning of this got us wondering:
Survey Time: Who among our readers has such opportunities?
Please share this with us, and we'll publish what we learn in the next newsletter.
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Tell us about your virtual volunteer opportunities.
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We don't currently have any, but we'd like to.
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They wouldn't be right for our organization.
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Funding Notes
Pahoua Yang Hoffman is leaving her role as Senior Vice President of Community Impact at the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation to join HealthPartners. “In her new role at HealthPartners, Hoffman will address community health, equity, and access to culturally competent care.” Nice article in the Sahan Journal about Pahoua and her journey.
Last month, we talked about the six new hires at the Bush Foundation. This month, we have a few new faces at McKnight Foundation, especially in Vibrant and Equitable Communities group:
Ben Hecht, Visiting Senior Advisor, Urban Revitalization.
New to the Foundation: the Black Seed Fund will award two-year gen op grants to Black-led groups that “move us towards liberation.” Funds will be awarded to nominated groups. You can’t nominate your own organization, but individual supporters or community partners can put your name forward.
Besides attending the very first Headwaters meetings, we have been privileged to attend the birth of several women’s funds and community-owned funds in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Denver, New York City, D.C., and Chicago. Many of these funds were great ideas and had great supporters, but none of these funds have become the type of community leader that HFJ has. Good work, HFJ. Our congrats to you guys.
MCSF’s mission is to improve health, enhance wellbeing, or otherwise advance medical care in the Jewish and larger communities, honoring the history and legacy of the Mount Sinai Hospital. Several giving circles and legacy funds are part of the Foundation, which operates from the Minneapolis Jewish Federation’s online grant portal. Grants of up to $10,000 in a two-tier system. LOI deadline is February 10th, and if invited, the final deadline is April 1st.
G4GC moved over $10 million to over 200 Girls of Color-led or -serving organizations across ALL 50 state, including MN. A relatively new organization, G4GC is a great example of how funders can really collaborate.
After an end of year hiatus, the Bremer Trust case is back in court, with closing arguments scheduled for this week, but perhaps delayed until March. The Star Tribune has a recent update.
BofA published its philanthropic strategy this week. Pretty much the same as last year, with a bit more detail. Because MSP is a larger market, grants to local groups may be in the $5,000 to $50,000 range. Check out the FAQ and Eligibility Criteria links on the RFP page:
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Economic Mobility focused on needs of individuals and families (workforce development & education and basic needs). Applications accepted 1/24/2022 – 2/18/2022
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Economic Mobility focused on needs of community (affordable housing, small business, neighborhood revitalization). Applications accepted: 5/30/2022 – 6/24/2022.
By the way, BofA now has more than 25 outlets across the Metro Area. While it doesn’t really help to have a local banker, connecting with a local BofA banker let’s BofA grantmakers know that you really want to be connected to the company.
The 8th largest Black-owned bank in the US is opening a branch at 3430 University Avenue SE in Minneapolis. Based in Detroit, First Independence has received several awards and recognitions for its work with young professionals, small businesses, community development, community advisory boards, financial literacy, and CDFI work. Several Twin Cities banks, such as Wells Fargo and B of A are helping First Independence to settle in the Metro Area. Currently, the bank is stronger as a corporate sponsor than nonprofit grantmaker.
RELATED:
If you’ve followed APs on bank philanthropy, you know banks which want to expand their consumer outlets (branches and ATMs) also need to expand their local grantmaking visibility. So we should expect more social investments and grants from these banks:
- JPMorgan Chase (which just awarded $25M to MSP Center for Economic Inclusion) will be opening 25 new branches/outlets in 2022
- BMO Harris (aka Bank of Montreal) will also be adding 20 new branches and outlets
- Pittsburgh-based PNC bank has plans to open two bank branches in the Twin Cities – in Rosedale and Edina.
- Midwest One also has plans, but we haven’t heard concrete info.
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BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION |
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You’ve probably heard already that there are three new folks on the B&MG Foundation board. They will be replacing Bill Gates Senior, who died some time ago, and Warren Buffett who recently said he wanted to retire from the board. Speculation was there might be more new people, and maybe a splitting of the Foundation into two or more separate funds
Well, “might” has actually happened, with three new folks:
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Strive Masiyiwa, is a telecom billionaire and philanthropist from Zimbabwe.
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Baroness Minouche Shafik, director of the London School of Economics, and formerly worked at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank of England.
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Tom Tierney, co-chair of the Bridgespan Group, which has advised the Gates Foundation, Mackenzie Scott, and hundreds of other foundations, nations, and colleges.
The Baroness and I have a mutual acquaintance at the London School of Economics. Our friend says the Baroness is a great listener, very humble and open to new ideas. Our friend also says she will be the “World Bank’s liaison to the Gates family.” Also, while several London college presidents are coming down hard on striking employees, we've heard from two sources that the Baroness has been gracious and open to LSE's "striking faculty".
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It’s not surprising that Melinda French Gates is not investing all of her billions into the Gates Foundation
Melinda French Gates recently talked about her new philanthropic commitments: “I commit to doing more than writing checks. I also commit my time, energy, and efforts to the work of fighting poverty and advancing equality – for women and girls and other marginalized groups – in the United States and around the world … I’ll continue to seek out new partners, ideas, and perspectives.”
In 2015, French Gates founded Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company that seeks to advance social and professional progress for women and families across the US.
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One of the best LGBTQI funders in America ($105 million to LGBTQI groups in the last 20 years) has decided to wind down its LGBTQI program. There will be two years of transition funding, but the board believes the Fund has done its work and needs to move on. Hmmm… This is/was a leader in the LGBTQI funding community. It will be hard to find a replacement.
Besides its donor advised funds, The Phillips Family Fund, and other unrestricted funds, the Minneapolis Foundation has EIGHT program funds:
NWAF’s Karla Miller recently wrote a piece for their website saying the foundation is keeping equity as a goal but focusing on justice. “Supporting equity is an important goal, but it doesn’t reach far enough. We need to cultivate justice. Our new grantmaking approach centers justice and systems change to help our priority communities thrive on their own terms. It emerged from our continual effort to be a better grant-maker and partner. We aspire to:
- Honor grantees’ worldviews and values
- Share power with grantees
- Trust grantees to know their challenges and know what might work for them
- Recognize that we need to do things differently from a traditional philanthropic approach
- Listen to our grantees
- Support healing within grantees’ communities
- Hold ourselves accountable to learning.”
Read the article on the NWAF website. The Foundation has recently spent a big chunk of cash and resources on American Indian causes, and immigrant and refugee issues.
PROPEL NONPROFITS announced their 2021-2023 Nonprofit Infrastructure Grant Program grantees. A great program in a deeply needed area. Congrats to our friends at Brownbody, one of Propel’s grantees. We love Brownbody’s tagline: “Skate Truth to Power.”
Why is that important? Every year the company awards 40 Neighborhood Assist grants. BUT this year, they’re awarding 100 grants of $25,000 to help fund neighborhood improvement projects. The program is unusual in two ways:
- Submissions begin on February 16 and close when State Farm receives 4,000 of them
After State Farm choose 200 finalists, anyone can vote (up to 10x day!) to select the winners.
$3 million was awarded to 26 organizations to provide business loans to disadvantaged entrepreneurs, women, and people of color. Our congratulations to friends at First Children’s Finance and African American Economic Development Solutions.
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Global Peace Careers magazine recently produced a list with descriptions of 40 social enterprise grants, investments, etc., such as Echoing Green, Draper Richards Kaplan, and SEED Replicator. Need a grant, or just need to know what social enterprise grants are? This is a good place to start.
The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits is back to publishing its list of Minnesota funders’ grant deadlines, this time with links to most funders’ websites. An invaluable tool for planning the upcoming quarterly grant request calendar.
Philanthropy Daily recently published a piece about rural grantmakers with the punchline, “Quite frequently, it’s the rural funders with modest financial means that make the biggest on-the-ground impact.”
They identify five non-financial assets that small rural funders provide. They:
- Put issues on the table – giving voice to big issues and to those without voices
- Build local infrastructure – provide or purchased tech assistance for local NPOs
- Educate the community – supporting public education campaigns on big issues
- Leverage fundraising capacity – support preparation necessary for bigger grants
- Grow local voices – train and mentor residents to speak out.
We agree. Small rural funders are often the best examples of community-funder partnerships. Some of our favorites include Greater Mankato United Way, K.A.H.R Foundation, George Nielsen Foundation, Northfield Area Foundation, Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation, Red Wing Shoe Foundation, Jones Family Foundation, and of course, regional Initiative Funds, to mention a few.
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NEVER WROTE A GRANT BEFORE?:
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When you’re finished, and you’ve submitted your proposal.... |
Visit Access Philanthropy to get your CERTIFICATE OF ACHIEVEMENT: MY FIRST GRANT credential. To honor new grantwriters, AP offers a personalized, suitable-for-framing, certificate that commemorates the sweat, worries, and work you put into your first grant effort.
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According to Candid (the merger of Foundation Directory Online and Guidestar), there are eight phrases that are not 2022-acceptable. Here are the eight and a link to get more information on blameless language in 2022:
- BIPOC (and POC)
- Devastated
- Differently abled
- Does that/this make sense?
- Impact
- Intersectional/intersectionality
- Low-level donors/major donors
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Possessive determiners – my, your, our, them.
Language evolves, meanings mature, and we change with the language. Dost thou get it?
As grantmakers become more isolated from most grantseekers, and most grantseekers become less visible to grantmakers, the art of writing becomes more and more critical to relationship-building success. There are a thousand good articles on good grant writing. Joachim Kreuger, a social psychologist from Brown University, offers these universal writing good elements:
Relevance: A good text conveys the information that matters, although a few exceptions can spice things up without much distraction.
Economy: Wordiness debases writing by diluting it. I began this post with the sentence "Good writing is hard," when I could have written, "It has long been recognized that writers must overcome many difficult challenges before they can deliver an appealing and comprehensible body of text." Look out for boilerplate and run-on sentences! Even if a sentence is sound, most adverbs and adjectives can be stricken without loss of information. Strong action verbs communicate better than noun-heavy phrases.
Vividness: Good writing evokes images in the reader’s mind. It is perceptual and hallucinatory. A poor text allows readers to hear the words in their minds without evoking images. Again, action verbs help.
Coherence: The text must hang together, tell a story, and follow a narrative arc. Lists don’t do this, and this post is playing with fire. Each part of the text has its own mission. Section headers can help, but an elegant text won’t always need them. When the writing is good, readers know where they are in the story.
Humor: A good text is entertaining, and humor is a spice that keeps boredom at bay. Good humor is subtle and not thigh-slapping. Good humor lets the reader in on a joke without being condescending or obscure.
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30-Minute Chats
AP Staff are participating and enjoying the 30 minutes chats we’re having with nonprofit folks who need a little advice, some information, or fundraising feedback. Our writers have a combined 100 years of grants experience. Our consultants have … well, more than 100 years of fundraising and grantmaking experience. Drop a note to 4info@accessphilanthropy.com to schedule a time.
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Candid, the Foundation Directory Online/Guidestar merger, blogged that these are the 5 top fundraising trends to watch this year:
Flexible giving options: Data from Classy’s annual Why America Gives report shows that donors are not only starting, but completing, more donations on their mobile devices than ever before. There’s also growing enthusiasm around giving through QR codes, smartwatches, and wearables. Donors will respond well to flexible donation options including:
- Convenient digital wallets, like Google Pay and ApplePay
- Cryptocurrency donations
- Trusted payment apps, like PayPal and Venmo
Personalized donor experiences: Personalization will be critical to build relationships that result in loyal donor bases. Nonprofit interactions with supporters will need to be tailored according to their stage of life, intent, and preferences for communication.
Tech-driven events: Hybrid events in 2022 will benefit both in-person and virtual attendees with advanced, tech-driven experiences that take lessons from the many virtual events staged during the pandemic. If nonprofits are national, hybrid is a way to stay frictionless. For local organizations, hybrid events can open new opportunities to enhance donor relations. Technology-driven experiences will continue to bring causes beyond their physical city borders.
Evolved recurring giving: Recurring giving is already a valuable tool for nonprofits, accounting for 26% of online revenue for organizations that raise over $50 million in total donation volume on Classy, as noted in The State of Modern Philanthropy. There are still over $400 billion of offline donations that nonprofits process, many of which could be transferred online through recurring giving programs to save both time and resources.
Community through workplace giving: Employee engagement programs and the heightened desire to make an impact are leading people to look for more purpose in their day to day. Nonprofits can meet the moment by bringing their missions to workplaces knowing that donors are likely to find out about new causes through word of mouth within their close circles.
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The Center for Effective Philanthropy released two reports that indicated Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) and Native Americans continue to be overlooked by grantmakers. Specifically:
- AAPI and Native American nonprofit leaders report having fewer positive experiences with their foundation funders than nonprofit leaders of other races/ethnicities. This has been the case during, as well as prior to, the pandemic.
- Despite the significant challenges facing AAPI and Native American people, most foundations continue to overlook nonprofits that serve these communities.
According to the reports, both AAPI and Native American nonprofit leaders’ foundations fail to understand the broad diversity present in their communities – specifically, the many different national and tribal customs, beliefs, laws, and traditions.
Criminal Justice Funding
According to Inside Philanthropy (a daily periodical with great articles and some great insider information), funding for criminal justice has changed. Philanthropy for criminal justice reform surged in 2020. Some reasons why:
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Last year, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative launched the Justice Accelerator Fund, a $350 million, five-year commitment to criminal justice reform
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Open Philanthropy has transitioned its criminal justice reform funding into the new collaborative organization, Just Impact Advisors
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Galaxy Gives, the philanthropic vehicle of former hedge funder and now cryptocurrency investor Mike Novogratz, has given $100 million in grants since 2017. About half of this has gone to criminal justice reform organizations
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The Sozosei Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, is focused on funding efforts to decriminalize mental illness.
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THE MOST APPROPRIATE BIRTHDAY IN BLACK HISTORY MONTH |
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will be 154 years old (1868) on February 23rd.
Just a few of his achievements: co-founder of the Niagara Movement which became the NAACP; author of the seminal pieces The Soul of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America; organizer of the first Pan-African Congresses (African colony liberation); promoter of the Harlem Renaissance; nuclear disarmament and civil rights movement leader; internationalist; publisher of The Crisis; labor activist; suffragette; faculty member at Wilberforce University; socialist; and peace activist. No part of 20th century African American life went untouched by Mr. Du Bois’s activism, writings, or philosophy.
Imagine how many times WEB felt lost and uninspired.? WEB is a North Star, an inspiration.
Need to talk fundraising? Need a monthly injection of Fluff Free Fundraising?
Do your board or staff members need a little spark of FFF?
Steve at 651-295-4684 or steve@accessphilanthropy.com
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Steve Paprocki
President
Access Philanthropy
651-295-4684
www.accessphilanthropy.com
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Access Philanthropy Inc | 612-900-8861 | 2100 Stevens Ave., Mpls, MN 55044 | www.accessphilanthropy.com |
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