FROM THE ARCHIVES:
“The doctrine of perpetuity insulates foundations from maximizing the value of their assets for society,” argues Buzz Schmidt in this article.
Escaping the Perpetuity Mindset Trap
Wrongheaded Thinking about Foundation Grantmaking
Imagine being an investor in the stock market—a scary thought in these times—examining investments in potential securities, but being unable to distinguish and disaggregate equities (stocks) from bonds, cash equivalents, and other assets. You may think you’re buying into a fund of large cap equities but you discover you actually just landed a bunch of U.S. treasuries or even a Real Estate Investment Trust .
Welcome to the bollixed up way we think about the similarities and differences among U.S. foundations!
Nonprofit Capacity Needs More Investment
Will nonprofit issues be high on President Obama's policy agenda?
Look at what he faces — a plummeting economy that could wipe out a slew of small nonprofits with thin fund balances and thinner operating reserves.
If you don't think that could happen, just imagine how the numbers of bank failures, job layoffs and the automakers' troubles will inevitably reverberate down to the nonprofit sector with devastating results.
Ethical Bull Droppings
I want to invite your questions for the Nonprofit Ethicist again but before I ask for your story I want to tell you one.
Watchdog or Lapdog?
Like any other sector of society, a healthy philanthropic sector needs the scrutiny of external watchdog organizations as well as appropriate governmental regulation and oversight. But ensuring that the watchdog does not turn into a lapdog is a challenge that bedevils even countries with well-developed philanthropic sectors and confounds those where the sector is only beginning to build an infrastructure.
The Obama Campaign: Lessons for Nonprofits
There are so very many things about this election that call us to a new future but if the future is showing itself to be radically different, we must become different too — or we quickly become irrelevant — and endangered.
Condemned to Repeat the Past: Lessons from History for Foundations and the Legislative Process
In foundation circles, it is an oft-repeated truism that McGeorge Bundy, when he led the Ford Foundation, and his foundation colleagues botched their relationships with Congress when they testified against federal regulation and specifically what led to the 1969 Tax Act’s controls on private foundations. Though their dire predictions of the collapse of foundations after the Tax Act hardly came to pass—in fact, foundations boomed in numbers and assets following it–Bundy and his big foundation colleagues have morphed into philanthropic archetypes of how not to handle elected state or federal legislators.
What the Council on Foundations Should Have Said to Its Members
Like many, the editors of Nonprofit Quarterly were disappointed in the Council on Foundations’ open letter to its members about what they and other foundations should do during this time of national and global economic distress (see the end of this article for the original letter ). Here is the letter we wish the Council had sent.
Your Organization’s Experience in Financial Chaos
On the assumption that we can all learn from one another, we would ask you to share your situation and decision making with us and fellow readers.
The “It May be Hard Times” NPQ Reader
I am sure you are thinking about the scenarios your organization might face over the coming year. What will foundations do? Will they become more conservative in their giving in anticipation of reduced assets? What will happen to government spending? Will people continue to give generously as individuals when their own futures are more uncertain? What will happen in our communities when local businesses feel even more squeezed? And how will we respond if entitlements are brought up one-by-one for review in the big political football game we are now calling democratic process?
Paul Hudson on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act
Broadway Financial Corporation CEO Paul Hudson is the first contributor to NPQ's series of expert opinions on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act
Scapegoating the Community Reinvestment Act
Even in the midst of the nation’s financial sector meltdown prompting a societal march toward a long and deep economic recession, far too many people who should know better have decided to blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the subprime foreclosure crisis and the implosion of commercial banks and mortgage brokers.
The nonprofit sector knows better—and had better get on the stick to advocate against efforts to weaken this absolutely vital component of national policy. Enacted in 1977 “to encourage depository institutions to meet the credit needs of lower-income communities" (emphasis added), CRA became a crucial tool for reversing the prevalent banking practice of racial and geographic “redlining.”