Tweet of the Week Donation

With the donation from winning my second tweet of the week contest, I donated the money to Because International, the non-profit that manufactures/donates the Shoe that Grows. Fortunately for the organization (but unfortunately for me), they have had a lot of positive publicity recently and are currently sold out of their shoes in adults sizes (they make a small amount of the shoes they produce available for sale, while most pairs are donated). Though I was not able to secure a pair of shoes to show the class, I did donate all of the donation to the organization.

In addition, I also received my thank you letter for my earlier donation to the Rescue Mission. It had been sent to my home address instead of to Binghamton!

Tweet of the Week Donation - Week 2

Hey Guys!
Much like Bethany, I pushed off donating my tweet of the week winnings but for a different reason.  Around the time that I was awarded the money to donate to any organization of my choosing, the high school of one of my closest friends experienced a tragic loss:  Senior Sean Urda lost his life in a snow tubing accident after crashing head first into a pole.  The students from Elwood - John H. Glenn High School went through the various stages of grief and emotion that accompany the loss of a peer, but they also teamed up with the family to do something amazing.  Alas, the Sean Urda Memorial Soccer Foundation was born.  Below is the information from the donation page describing the situation and purpose of the scholarship fund:

"On January 26th in his High School Senior year, Sean Urda tragically lost his life in a Snow Tubing accident.  The greatest passions in his life were his family, his friends and soccer- which he looked forward to continuing at college.  To honor his memory and to create a legacy with these passions in mind, we are establishing this scholarship fund.  Each year, at least one deserving High School Senior who shows a passion for their family, their friends and soccer will be awarded a scholarship from this fund in memory of Sean."   http://www.gofundme.com/l01mz8

Throughout this entire course I have been passionate about the internal battle between heart and head and how this affects positive giving.   The decision to give to this scholarship fund is heavily driven by heart, and I therefore wanted to wait a little bit to ensure that this decision to give wasn't impulsive.  Checking the GoFundMe page today, they have raised over 4x their desired goal.  For a school where the graduating class is around 250 students, a small community came together with the goal of healing and growing as a community.  Through this class I have grown to appreciate organizations of all sizes and from all backgrounds, but sometimes the most meaningful giving for me is helping the individual and community that you call home.

You are a Philanthropist

“I am a philanthropist”. The first line of the first video we were assigned to watch for this class.  Remember this: four months ago, we entered Room 260 as a group of strangers. We introduced ourselves by name and year and explained why we were taking the class. For some it was a Scholars requirement, for others a PPL course, for others just a way to fill a gen ed. I would like to use this blog post to recognize how far we’ve come and what we’ve truly achieved.

On the first day of class, I explained that I was involved in theatre and hoped to approach philanthropy through that lens. I then proceeded to not do that at all this semester. Instead, I opened my mind to a whole new realm of possibilities. I soaked in everything that every one of you said and know that I’ve become a more informed and fulfilled person for it. I hope that you can all say the same.  We are philanthropists through our growth, improvement, and open-mindedness.

During our class today, as we deliberated how to finally divide our $10,000, I was struck by the power and integrity in the room. Some of the thoughts shared include: “Expansion is critical”, “Can our money have a better direct impact on other organizations?”, “This request has a sense of urgency to it” and “They gave us numbers for a reason”. These are questions and ideas we would not and could not have articulated back in January. This class has provided us with a new set of vocabulary and skills that most people our age don’t have, and that many people probably never will have. We are philanthropists through our understanding.

Some of us have expressed disappointment with our finalists; others have argued that we couldn’t have gone wrong in our decision-making. Many highly impressive and very deserving nonprofits applied for our grant, so did picking the “right” three really matter? I wholeheartedly answer yes to this question. Picking mattered, less because of our outcome, and more because of the remarkable process we struggled through together. We are philanthropists through our experience.

Once our decision was made, one class member mused “Maybe the heart won over the head for me a little bit” and many of us nodded in agreement. Will the heart always overpower the head, and if so did we waste our time debating between emotion and reason for so many weeks? I don’t think so. Heart alone would not have supported our process. Our hearts gave us passion. Our heads gave us values, criteria, and insight into the difference we could make with $10,000. Our reoccurring debate of Heart vs. Head perfectly sums up this class experience: we all came in with a lot of heart, but the heads we cultivated this semester led us to our final outcome. We are philanthropists through our hearts, heads, and the balance found between them.

Whether we gave money to your favorite organization or not, we should all be proud of what we have accomplished this semester. We have transformed from 25 strangers to 25 collaborative, understanding, and enlightened students. Please take a moment to consider how much you have changed personally and academically since our first day together in January. I would love to hear if any of you have specific memories from class that have defined this process for you, or rather that have helped this process to define you. Congratulations to everyone and thank you for this experience! We can now each say with pride and honesty “I am a philanthropist”. 

Fundraising and Our Class

Hi everybody,

As our class comes to a close, I’ve found it really interesting to both reflect on my own feelings about the course, and also on what we as a group seem to find important. What I noticed during our evaluations of our finalists was that we were pretty interested in how they went about their fundraising. I thought that was particularly thought-provoking, especially since we never really went into an in-depth discussion of fundraising in our class, or participated in any fundraising ourselves (I know we touched on the subject here or there, with minor questions about efficiency or ethics, but I don’t think we ever devoted a full class block to it).

What I want to discuss is how fundraising could have factored into our class model. Our grant was given to us, and while the $10,000 is an amazing gift, I wonder if our experience in the class would be different if we were the ones who had been in charge of raising the money we would give away. I’ve posted a link to this article in a comment a while ago, and I think it’s important to mention here, too. In the class that the article focuses on, the students are both responsible for giving away money to charities, as well as raising the money for future classes to use. I think that this gives them important insight into the kind of fundraising processes that many charitable organizations must go through, but also gives them a deeper connection to the money that they are giving away. Furthermore, they leave the class with the added experience of fundraising that they can use in their future philanthropic actions. I’m not saying we haven’t been passionate about our own decision thus far, but I wonder if our feelings would be different if we had worked for the money we were distributing, instead of just receiving it as a grant. Obviously, raising such a substantial amount of money would take a lot of time, just like it does in the class mentioned in the article, and is something we probably couldn’t accomplish in the short semester that we’ve had together. Maybe we could adopt a similar timeline as that class, and maybe make the course span two semesters, with one focusing on fundraising and planning and the other zoning in on a decision.

A lot of the recent blog posts have been discussing what our class would have been like if it was carried out differently, so what do you guys think? Is studying fundraising a truly crucial part of the decision making process? If we were asked to raise our own donation money, do you think it would be a good learning tool or group builder?

I’m looking forward to your responses, and I thank you all for a really great semester. I’ll miss our class discussions and debates, and I wish you all luck in any philanthropic experiences you have in the future! 

DENTAL SURGERY

OK, so here we go….. I can hear the high-speed drills, smell the scent of burning enamel, and I’m bracing for pain…..

While it would not be difficult to point out all of the good that each of the finalist organizations does in this community, it is important for me to point out some concerns that I have.  For the purpose of this blog I am going to focus on Rescue Mission, the organization that I am most familiar with.

Please allow me to begin with this:  EVERY organization that I have reviewed does something positive, something good and helps improve the overall landscape of the community in some way.  In other words, every NPO that we have considered (or are considering) strives to accomplish something good.

It is very easy to go into even the best run company, institution or organization and find something to criticize.  Until one walks in the shoes of the people, working day to day to fulfill the mission of that organization, it is nearly impossible to have a comprehensive understanding of all of the how’s and why’s of that group. 

With that being said, I am certain that the Rescue Mission performs a valuable function in this area.  I know they do, as I spoke with several of their “clients” and staff, all of whom confirmed their good works.

It does concerns me that all we focused on is their “retail operations” and very little on their overall outcome.  Why did it take eight years to open Whitney Place, when by their own admission the Binghamton Thrifty Store generated two million dollars in their first year?  Did Whitney Place really cost Sixteen Million Dollars ($16,000,000.00) to open?  Why does it cost three million dollars per year to run Whitney Place when they claim to serve between 9 and 16 men annually?  That equates to between $180,000 – $300,000 per person, per year.  If ending homelessness and hunger is their stated mission doesn’t that seem inefficient?  Why not just give 16 people One Hundred Thousand Dollars per year and run the program at half its current cost.

The Rescue Mission can tell me to the minute, square foot, bin, pound, week, day, month and year how much the Thrifty Stores generate from used clothing and merchandise and yet they can tell me little to nothing about their outcome results (on the “Mission” side).   9 out of 10 people employed by Rescue Mission work at or on behalf of the Thrifty Store not the program side of the “mission”.

We learned earlier in this semester that NPO’s are limited (legally) to their stated mission purpose and do not have lawful authority to co-mingle those functions (even though many do).  The Catholic Church is a religious organization.  They operate churches.  The Catholic Church runs schools – education organizations recognized by the same 501(c)(3) and they also operate social service agencies (Catholic Charities).  It would be unlawful for the church to operate schools and social service agencies under the same umbrella, even though they are all non-profit.  For this purpose – conforming to the statement of purpose, the Catholic Church has a NPO that is the Roman Catholic Church, The Catholic School’s of whatever diocese, and Catholic Charities.  Three separate organizations.  To conform to the law, even though all of these entities are educational, charitable or religious groups, the stated purpose of each of them are different and therefore they must be separate entities.

Likewise, I believe that the primary “mission” of the Rescue Mission is it’s retail operations as that is where the vast majority of their resources are spent.  It’s concerning that they know so much about retail and so little about the outcome of their stated mission.

I really don’t want to upset anyone.  I realize that my method and manner of delivery has not been well received and I feel very badly that I have hurt the feelings of others.  Please accept my apology, if you felt injured by my words, as that was certainly not my intent.

The Novocain is about to wear-off so I’m going to go……  Have a happy and safe summer!

Kyle Washington

As we are winding down the semester we have learned so much about Philanthropy and Civil Society.  My last blog post was about how difficult gridlock can be in a class that is all about decision making.  This poses a threat to the effectiveness of our classes decision making on the overall donation process.  Looking back at all of my groups/group presentations I feel that we didn't have much gridlock overall.  While we were recently presenting we all seemed to agree on a majority of the 3 organizations we proposed.  I find this extremely interesting because a majority of us (including myself) illustrated doubts on how effective our decision making would be (due to differences in ideology).

1. Do you as a class believe it went fairly smooth and efficiently (so far)?

2.  If so, why do you think we hurdled a majority of the gridlock?

One of the most critical attributes we can use is the technique of active listening.  In other words, listening to the person until they are finished speaking.  Do not interrupt, and ask questions in a polite manner.  I noticed a majority of the class using this which is why I think we hurdled most of the gridlock.  I also think we all genuinely believe that these last 3-4 organizations would be great non-profits to chose as finalists.  In a way, we chose great finalists so no matter what... the money is going to a great foundation.

Please comment and tell me what you think!

Best,

Pat LaBuff

Tweet of the Week Donation (Finally)

Sorry for the double post, but I just wanted to talk about my tweet of the week donation!  I know it's been a little bit of time since I won (read: the first week of the semester), but I finally decided and finally made my donation.  I'm a very indecisive person in general, but I had a particularly difficult time making this decision.  I kept going back and forth about whether I wanted to make a local donation, what kind of organization I wanted to donate to, and what charity would put my small amount of money to good use.  Given the millions of non-profit organizations in the world and no real criteria to narrow it down, I was going back and forth between quite a few different charities that I liked.  Even though it was technically my money to donate, I did feel like I owed it to the class to choose something that everyone (or nearly everyone) would have supported.  Since the money for my donation came directly from you guys and Dr. Campbell, I really wanted to make a good choice.

After a lot of deliberation on my part, I decided to give my $100 back to the organization that I tweeted about, The Harry Potter Alliance.  I spoke about the organization a little bit in class, but they work for human rights, equality, and literacy all over the world.  Their mission is very general because they want to be able to do as much as they possibly can and they want to be able to help wherever there is immediate need.  They have succeeded in making all chocolate with the Harry Potter name fair trade, have raised money to donate to Haiti, have collected hundreds of thousands of books for underprivileged children during their Accio Books campaign, have brought thousands of people together in the fight for net neutrality, and have formed over 275 chapters that do work in local communities.  The organization is a GuideStar Exchange Gold Participant, meaning they are committed to transparency and communication with their donors and communities.  JK Rowling has spoken very highly of the organization, saying "I am honoured and humbled that Harry's name has been given to such an extraordinary campaign, which really does exemplify the values for which Dumbledore's Army fought in the books."

I really love this charity and all the different programs and initiatives they support.  I'm very happy and proud to be able to support them through this class and I hope everyone (Harry Potter fan or not) takes a minute to check them out at http://thehpalliance.org.  Thanks to everyone who voted for and nominated my tweet, and I apologize for being so indecisive about where I wanted to donate!