Dr. Campbell and some other students in the class expressed confusion as to the religious nature of the Rescue Mission. I would like to clarify on that:
Yes, the Rescue Mission is a Christian organization.
No, the Rescue Mission does not force residents of their shelters to attend Christian religious services. The only thing that the Rescue Mission does encourage is that residents volunteer in various events in order to give back to the community, just as the community is giving to them.
Many people in the class have also expressed concern over the need for donation bins when the Thrifty Shopper is capable of receiving donations itself. The simple answer behind that is what Kyle pointed out multiple times during our presentation yesterday: the Rescue Mission knows how to run a business. When trying to grow and expand a business, it is important to capitalize on new markets. I believe someone (I apologize for not remembering whom) yesterday made the comment that if people really wanted to donate clothes, they could just drive to the Thrifty Shopper instead of going to a bin. While that may be true, the purpose of the bins is to attack people in new markets who do not really want to donate clothes. They are searching for the market of people who have clothes to donate, but have not yet donated because of a lack of convenience.
Though the argument can be made that I am comparing apples to oranges, the Rescue Mission's need for donation bins is for the same reason that there are 367 McDonald's in NYC: to capitalize on new markets. Capitalizing on new markets in the Southern Tier will help the Rescue Mission to generate more revenue, allowing them to build a women's shelter and expand their services in the future.
As this topic seemed quite controversial in class, please reply with any arguments/concerns/comments that you have below. I think that it is great that so many people in our class can have differing opinions on our organizations, and I think that it really contributes to the process of learning how to work together as a group and decide on our final grantees.
Amanda, thank you for the clarification. I do like rescue mission, and I think it is definitely an organization we should consider to provide grant funding. I agree that the bins will capitalize new markets and expand revenue. As of now the only organization I feel less likely to donate to is family planning for reasons I will bring up during our discussion in class. Yesterday did get a little tense at times and I feel we need to focus on the objective of what these presentations are here for. (Learning and asking questions about these organizations). We are already running into ideological gridlock because we are starting to discuss pros-cons and reasons why we do not like the organization. I feel like if we keep these beliefs to ourselves for now, and bring them up during the discussion, we will have a more fluid learning experience. With this said, we can also ask more questions because we will have more time to learn about the organization. Thank you for the clarification! This has opened my eyes to Rescue Mission and has clarified some questions I had that I was not able to ask due to the time constraint.
ReplyDeleteGreat Post!
Best,
Pat LaBuff
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ReplyDeleteGreat post Amanda and thanks for the reply, Pat. I really appreciate your clarification about the religious affiliation and how it’s clients are not required to attend services as a condition of their program.
ReplyDeleteYes, yesterday did get a little tense. It seems really unfortunate that with such an incredibly bright group of talented students that the final funding decisions are seemingly going to come down to popularity versus due diligence. It seems that most “teams” have dug their feet in and are more concerned with winning than doing what is right.
We all agreed at the beginning of the semester that this would be difficult. Everyone was eager to learn and paid special attention, even asked many questions, as to what the Learning By Giving Foundation, and Doris Buffet in particular, would like for us to do. It seemed so simple: Do a landscape of the community to see what the LOCAL needs are, learn ways to evaluate the performance of an organization, review and investigate the applicants and make a decision based on the above.
It seems like a lot of that has gone by the wayside. Someone lambasted me the other day because I was supposed to be “representing the Rescue Mission” not pointing out their flaws. WOW! I thought I was INVESTIGATING the Rescue Mission as a representative of the class. I thought I had an implied fiduciary responsibility to do proper due diligence and report my bias free findings to the class.
One of the presenters got a bit irritated when I asked about one of the highlights of their presentation: the idea that the charity has a 70% fundraising efficiency. It was one of the primary reasons why I was being told that this was a “GOOD” candidate for funding. The only problem was that none of the presenters had any idea what any of that meant. They could not explain whether that meant that it costs 70 cents to raise a dollar (a Felony in some states), or whether they had a 30% fundraising cost. What they collectively came up with was that they “make a profit of 30 cents for every dollar that they raise”. At that point, I stopped asking questions. Holy cow! Where was everyone for the three to four lectures where the nature of what being 501 (c)(3) is? Instead some people were anxious to attack the Rescue Mission for questioning their stellar investigation work.
Kyle, you are absolutely right that the purpose of the investigations was not to 'represent' the organizations we chose but to present the clear, cold facts about the organizations as well as offer our professional opinions. It seems that people do seem to be showing biases against organizations and we definitely need to focus on getting back to the basics of the class. I for one can see both pros and cons to each of the finalist organizations, and I think that our small group discussions tomorrow will be interesting to see what other people think. As Dr, Campbell says, we must use "emotion constrained by reason." I think that the class has a whole has gotten very emotionally involved with the organizations that they chose to assess, and we must step back and see the bigger picture more reasonably.
DeletePS. I am not quite sure why everyone seems to have the idea that I am Amanda! Though for some reason my Google Account does only display my first initial so I am somewhat at fault for that.
-Alec
Sorry Alec! I should have known better. Thanks for your post!
DeleteAnother group, who are solidly banned together with the “win at all cost” mentality, is the group from Family Planning. If they just read their own slide on why we should fund they will abandon their lobbying efforts for that charity. The only thing that was even true on that slide had to do with Family Planning’s sliding scale for fees. UHS gives bias, inaccurate medical information? Bull! Are they really meeting the greatest LOCAL need? Are they well managed? Since you spoke for the community and stated as a reason for funding that they are highly respected, why won’t the local community support them and help with the chipped paint, broken walls and leaking roof? Is birth control really Broome County’s greatest need? My parents always taught me that there are natural and logical consequence for behavior. It costs about $620,000 to raise a child from birth through masters degree. People should think about that before having unprotected sex. Family Planning does not meet, especially through its rural, once-a-week, outreach program (that they BOUGHT a building for) the needs of this community. Family Planning is NOT well managed.
ReplyDeleteBinghamton University is one of the premier public research universities in the United States. You are the some of the brightest minds at this premier institution and quite frankly I hope that we can do better as a class than we have been doing. This is not a popularity contest. This is an educational exercise in due diligence. You are much better than drawing a line in the sand and doing what it takes to WIN. Let’s all do our best to fulfill our responsibility to the community, the University, the LBG Foundation and each another.
Kyle Washington
Kyle, I appreciate you perspective on the issue.
DeleteI really do think that one of the great aspects of this class is that we all have different kinds of people, from different backgrounds and of multiple opinions. With that being said, your blatant attack on the Family Planning group is wildly inappropriate and a hindrance to creating a space where we can discuss finalists based on facts and real information, not opinion. I will be the first to admit that our group was not as prepared as we should have been. We had a major lack of resources for information and we unfortunately visited the site during a time where the more informed employees were out in the community doing programs. Though this is absolutely no excuse, I would like you and our fellow classmates to understand that we are still looking for more information and working with Professor Campbell to find everything that we can to share with you all during our upcoming class discussions. Just to clarify, our mentality is not to win; we want to garner support for a charity that we believe in, not simply "WIN AT ALL COSTS" because we get a gold star and a juice box. Unfortunately, some of your opinions are formed with prejudice and really don't belong in our conversation; I suggest you check your privilege first before asserting that poor people should not have sex, especially if they cannot afford contraceptives. I don't think that anyone said during our presentation that birth control availability is the greatest need in Binghamton. But based on the Community Health Assessment of Broome County (2013-2017), teen pregnancy rates (ages 15-19) are steadily increasing, Broome County experiences triple the cases of Gonorrhea and Chlamydia than the rest of New York State, about 17.6% of its population lives below the poverty line, and female-headed households with no husband present have poverty rates that are more than six times higher than married-couple households; Family Planning addresses these growing issues with education and access. I see that many of your opinions are one-noted and don't look at the context behind why free health care and contraceptives are important to both the people of Binghamton and in Sidney. We are all here to learn about philanthropy and we all make mistakes, but there are better ways to suggest that somebody get more information or look into something further than what has been done on through your blog comment. Hopefully we can all take a step back from this and really look into each organization with an unbiased, well-informed view instead of attempting to personally attack people.
Do you really appreciate my perspective on the issue? I read your reply twice and I must have missed something. I certainly never said that poor people shouldn't have sex because they can't afford protection - but since you brought it up, that's not a bad idea. Or, maybe they could just walk into the Southern Tier Aids Program and reach into the huge fish bowl located at the reception desk and fill their meager pockets will all the condoms that their hearts desire.
DeleteI'm happy that Professor Campbell is helping you do your research. The only problem is that the time to present your findings was Tuesday. I would have liked to see a slide presentation that was full of the type of facts that you presented in your reply above not a bunch of opinions as to the great work that Family Planning does, most of which was inaccurate and not factually sound. Many organizations in this area address the problems associated with teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, birth control and termination of pregnancy alternatives. You have done a great job in presenting the FACTS as to why these issues are important in this community. You have provided nothing to rebut my professional opinion that Family Planning is mismanaged. Planned Parenthood, the national, well-managed. organization that broke off ties with the local chapter (Family Planning don't simply "change its name" as Professor Campbell told us, Family Planning dropped them). I suspect that since that time Family Planning has lost a lot of it's management infrastructure and lacks appropriate direction (now that's an opinion).
I want to thank you, however, for making this week's blog post interesting and I appreciate that you care about your cause. If you could channel all of that energy into making a compelling and logical argument as to why Family Planning deserves our funding then I would probably support your funding recommendation. Your comments about the appropriateness of my findings are without merit and it is ludicrous to say that my comments are prejudicially formed. I have a great deal of experience as a fundraising professional and over 17 years as an investment banker so I not only understand NPO's but I have a keen ability to analyze financial performance. Family Planning is one of the worst managed NPO's in a region where MOST NPO's are very poorly managed.
BTW, the information used to determine the cost of raising a child should have been cited. I used the USDA's website found at http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/tools/CRC_Calculator/
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate that you increased the visibility of this issue by creating a post instead of a comment. I was really surprised that there was so much backlash to the Rescue Mission, but I understand the confusion, especially if organizations such as this one have not been prevalent in your life. For as long as I can remember, we have donated our old clothing in bins. For this reason, I have never considered bringing clothes to a store, and therefore find the bins to be necessary.
ReplyDeleteTo just touch on the discussion that has been stirring in the comments, I think that it is incredibly important that we don't make this decision process personal. I know that I have my own ideas of how the money should be spent, but decisions should not be made to spite others or defend friends. All of these organizations were qualified enough for us to choose them, so it's up to us to dig deep and learn who we want to support AS A GROUP!
Alec, thanks for your post. I really admire your enthusiasm for this organization. I think they do great work and after your group's presentation I am definitely considering them as worthy recipients to our grant. I understand completely why they need donation bins, i think it's important. My one question though, is why do they need our grant to buy the bins? I understand that they need all the money they can get for program expenses but your group made a very convincing argument in support the Rescue Mission's excellent business model, so why can't they just buy the bins for themselves if they will reap so much profit within a year? The financial aspects of their organization have been pointed out many times, they are an excellent business that should be looked to as an example. But I don't think that the purpose of our grant is to reward good businesses, I think we should give the money to an organization that really needs it.
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