Funder Follies Takes Five

Sister can you spare 5 minutes?

After 28 Follies and interviews with experts I am Taking Five to ask … what do you, Dear Reader, want to hear to help you Do Good more easily?

What is great philanthropy?

In my mind, it’s the kind of courageous giving that supports the sustainable, difficult, problem-solving work that nonprofits do every day.

Strangely, philanthropy is often in conflict with this. Often, it is not great at all. It is – for the nonprofit – difficult philanthropy.

After 30+ years in fundraising, there is only one kind of nonprofit I’ve ever known that doesn’t continually struggle with fear of having to cut staff and programs for budget shortfalls: very, very large nonprofits.

And that’s ironic. Here’s why.

Of the 1.54M nonprofit organizations registered with the IRS, 66% of them have budgets less than $500,000. And nearly 30% of them have budgets less than $100,000. (When I searched “how many nonprofits…” Google’s top search suggestion added “… fail.” That’s messed up.)

Dialogues are more fun.

Sure, I can blah blah blah each week about ridiculous things that funders require of nonprofits and other really bad fundraising ideas, but I’d rather create a dialogue with you.

Riddle me this. Who in your world does philanthropy right?

Who is comfortable with the uncertainty of impact, because they respect and understand how hard a nonprofit’s work really is?

I hope you’ll email me or …

You know as much about this as I do. Let’s talk.

And please pass it around. There are a lot of folks out there smarter than I am – and I bet you’re one of them. I’d love to hear from you.