Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.
By Nell Edgington Leave a Comment
I’m out of the office this week, so in my place I am offering you two interviews this month. Tuesday was my video interview with Hope Neighbor. And today I’m talking with Geeta Goel, Director of Mission Investing at Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. In addition to traditional philanthropy, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation makes program-related […]
In part 7 of our ongoing blog series, Financing Not Fundraising, we are discussing finding and employing new types of money in the financial mix of your nonprofit. If you are new to this series, our Financing Not Fundraising blog series argues that fundraising in the nonprofit sector is broken. In fact, traditional fundraising is […]
Part 6 of our ongoing blog series, Financing Not Fundraising, demonstrates the critical importance of money for building nonprofit capacity and describes how to find it. There must be a recognition in the nonprofit sector, and among the philanthropy that funds it, that nonprofits need money to support not only their direct services, but also […]
Despite my frustration in an earlier post about this year’s Social Capital Markets Conference inability to fully integrate philanthropic and government capital into the discussion, I was reminded by a friend that we have actually come a long way in three short years. A keynoter at the first SoCap conference in 2008 noted that “we […]
Day 2 of SoCap was by far my favorite. It started with an interesting keynote from Julie Sunderland of the Gates Foundation. She offered a perhaps more realistic, bordering on the pessimistic, view of the social capital market space. She said that Gates struggles to find entities that can absorb the size investments they want […]
One of the sessions of the RISE Social Entrepreneurship track was a panel of investors who fund social entrepreneurs (both nonprofit and for-profit). One of the panelists was Scott Collier, Managing Director of Triton Ventures. Scott has been a venture capital investor since 1991, serves on the board of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas, […]
Lucy Bernholz is hosting a great conversation on her Blueprint Research and Design website called “What Capital When?” As part of their work with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in their Digital Media & Learning initiative, Blueprint is hosting this online conversation around the theories and strategies of program-related and mission investing […]
I am so excited I can hardly contain myself. There is something pretty amazing going on in the world of philanthropy in Austin, Texas. I have been talking for awhile about how PRIs (Program Related Investments) could be used by foundations in new ways to build the revenue sustainability of a nonprofit organization. Just to […]
By Nell Edgington Leave a Comment
The news in the philanthropy world this week is not good. It seems that our fears about the effect of the economic downturn on philanthropy are being confirmed in spades. The Ford Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, two of the largest in the country, are both reducing their staffs by 30%+ and making other […]
In order to maintain their legal status, foundations are required to distribute 5% of their earnings each year to nonprofit organizations. This 5% is determined by a 2-5 year rolling average of earnings. In years like these when earnings are very low foundations have less to distribute, which makes ideas like mission-related investing more appealing. […]