Nonprofit Finance Fund

 

 

 

“Imagine that you’re an entrepreneur running a chain of coffee bars and you want to raise capital to open up in new locations. You meet a potential investor, and he says, “I’d love to finance your business, but only the chai latte operation, not the coffee, and only to support drinks you sell in Cleveland next year.”

It might sound absurd, but this is the kind of thing that people running nonprofit organizations hear all the time. Whether they are providing housing or preschool or vocational training services, social organizations typically find their funding restricted to specific programs, locations and time frames. That doesn’t make it easy to grow.

That’s why even the best social organizations grow slowly compared with companies. As a result, very few nonprofits ever go national — and those that do take the better part of a century to get there.

While things are improving for nonprofits in this regard, the situation is nowhere near as efficient as it is in the business sector, where successful companies like FedEx, Home Depot or Google can raise the money they need to build national or global operations in a decade or two.

What if great social organizations could grow the way companies do? Could we solve our social problems more effectively if we improved the way we finance them? There are actually many modest-sized organizations that get impressive results, doing things like boosting academic achievement, preparing unemployed clients for good jobs, getting homeless people into supportive housing. If they were businesses, they would attract investment. As nonprofits, however, they are like Ferraris on a dirt track. What if we could figure out how to help high-performing organizations get on the highway? Could success become more the rule and less the exception?”

(For Ambitious Nonprofits, Capital to Grow by David Bornstein, The New York Times, June 27,2012)

 

 
Nonprofit Finance Fund^® (NFF^®) makes millions of dollars in loans to nonprofits and pushes for fundamental improvement in how money is given and used in the sector. Since 1980, they’ve worked to connect money to mission effectively so that nonprofits can keep doing what they do so well.

Vision
NFF envisions a world where capital and expertise come together to create a more just and vibrant society.

Mission
NFF unlocks the potential of mission-driven organizations through tailored investments, strategic advice and transformative ideas.

Strategy
NFF’s strategy is to provide financial resources, in the form of loans, grants, and asset-building programs, in concert with management advice. NFF works directly and with funders to strengthen these organizations and the system by which they are funded.

 

NFF Philosophy

Our three overlapping practice areas, Capital Access Services, Innovative Practice Groups, and Research & Fact Finding, are inspired by our commitment to create a more stable nonprofit sector that’s better positioned to deliver on mission. Working with us, our funder clients are better able to:

• Embrace a “whole enterprise” perspective in grantmaking, one that takes into account the viability of the organization and the role of the grant within it.
• Ensure that grantees have access to all the kinds of capital they need for success and sustainability, including loans and other alternative resouces to complement grant dollars.
• Incorporate a financial and economic context into grantmaking strategy.
• Access knowledge of the social capital market and financial resource needs in a geography or subsector.

 

WHY NONPROFITS NEED FINANCIAL HELP

Times of crisis always expose our strengths and weaknesses — in all sectors and businesses. We rise to extraordinary challenges and falter in difficulties we’re unprepared to deal with. In our post-recession world, the still-growing demand for nonprofit services, depleting (or nonexistent) reserves, and funding cuts have sharpened the picture of our sector’s strengths and weaknesses. To rise above constantly changing economic conditions and maximize the social impact of money, we need to come up with innovative and flexible strategies to survive and thrive– right now and in the future. This is where NFF can help.

 

 

http://www.nonprofitfinancefund.org

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Romancing Donors on Valentine’s Day: The Write Stuff from 6 Nonprofits

(**Source)

by CAROL BUCKHEIT

Is there a better day than Valentine’s Day for organizations to ask donors to show their love for a cause?  Nonprofit communicators can do well by using key calendar dates like VDay to spark a creative fundraising appeal or advocacy event. (The Lightbox Collaborative’s excellent 2011 Editorial Calendar is a fabulous resource on this).

I love these superb online fundraising campaigns that sweep donors off their feet with appealing graphics and clever copy:

The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, dedicated to preserving the city’s parks system, asks donors to ditch the cut flowers this year and instead fund the planting of daffodils or a small native tree in the parks.

The big-hearted organizers of the annual St Valentines Day Hair Massacure in Alberta, Canada have raised over $4 million for cancer research since 2002– all by cutting off the hair of their supporters!  How’s this for a stunning graphic?

The Nature Conservancy sent out this lovely Valentine’s email this week:

The Mercy Corps Valentine’s Day home page appeals to romantics and curmudgeons alike:

SOS Children’s Villages scores high on the “cute meter” with this Valentine’s donor appeal:

And one more from Latino Community Services in Hartford, Connecticut: With this email campaign, they ask donors to make an online donation, and LCS will post their special message on the LCS website.

 

#NextGenDonors

It can be said that nonprofit organizations are based upon the idea of philanthropy, in the sense of caring for, nourishing, improving, and enhancing the quality of life for human beings. But who funds these organizations? Who cares to be a part of and continue the work of an organization that does not make profit in such a money-driven world?

A report on wealthy Next Generation donors from 21/64 and the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy seeks to answer these questions. On something no one has researched in depth in the past, we can only wonder about the hands we are leaving our world’s future in, and what they will do for it. Two generational cohorts examined in this report were divided as follows: “Gen X” (born 1964-1980) and “Gen Y/Millennial” (born 1981-2000). These cohorts were found to have an unprecedented amount of wealth and will wield more philanthropic power than any previous generations. Why?

This study listened to members of the two cohorts with ages ranging from 21-40. A national online survey (310 total responses) and in-depth interviews (30 totals) revealed what makes this generation so powerful. The Key Findings were divided into four categories:

• Driven by Values, Not Valuables: What separates this generation a part from the past, is that many of these next gen donors come from families with wealth and resources, rather than families struggling through world wars and great economic depressions. The members of these generations are also experiencing a world that has more rapid social change than ever before. Rather than taking their privileges and legacy for granted, these people learned from their parents and grandparents and the hardships their elders faced to give them easier lives. “They are mindful of the privilege they have inherited or that comes with the wealth they are creating.” These people seek ways to honor their family legacy while assessing the daily resources they need. They fund causes that support their own values as well as those of their families. They want to give as their families have, but they also want to make sweeping advancements in new manners within this changing world. 

VS  

• Impact First: They intend to change how decisions are made and how research and due diligence are conducted, utilizing multiple sources for information and all of the “tools in the toolbox,” as one of them describes it. They see previous generations as more motivated by a desire for recognition or social requirements, while they see themselves as focused on impact, first and foremost. They want impact they can see, and they want to know that their own involvement has contributed to that impact. They want to use any necessary strategies, assets, and tools – new or old – for greater impact.

• Time, Talent, Treasure, and Ties: These next gen donors don’t just want to give a little here and there, they want to go “all in”.  “Giving without significant, hands-on engagement feels to them like a hollow investment with little assurance of impact. They want to develop close relationships with the organizations or causes they support; they want to listen and offer their own professional or personal talents, all in order to solve problems together with those whom they support. They have grown up volunteering, and they still want to offer their time, but in more meaningful ways, not just holding a seat on a gala organizing committee.” In these times where social media is thriving and very few people do not have smart phones, the next gen donors are more highly networked with peers than ever before. They learn from their peers while sharing their own ideas, which can be done in a matter of minutes in the cyber world. These donors believe that collaboration makes them all better and extends their impact to places they could not reach alone. 

 

• Crafting Their Philanthropic Identities: As much as they discuss what and how they think about philanthropy and what they definitely want to do when they take over, these next gen major donors are still figuring out who they will be as donors. They learn most from seeing and doing, or even hearing from others about their own authentic experiences of seeing and doing. Rather than waiting until the sunset of their lives to decide who they are as philanthropists and what legacies they want to leave, these next gen major donors actively craft their identities now and actively think about their own legacies.

 

 

So…what’s next? No one can be sure, but with people like this who care so much, we can feel assured that the future will be bright.

 

 

You can visit http://www.nextgendonors.org to learn more about this research.

 

 

 

Project HOPE

“Project HOPE has worked to make health care available for people around the globe. We are committed to long-term sustainable health care. Our work includes educating health professionals and community health workers, strengthening health facilities, fighting diseases such as TB, HIV/AIDS and diabetes and providing humanitarian assistance through donated medicines, medical supplies and volunteer medical help.”

Volunteer Efforts:

Project HOPE operates within more than 35 countries and has a unique partnership with the U.S. Navy where medical volunteers are on board U.S. Navy ships and travel around the world to provide medical assistance, health education programs, vaccinations, and humanitarian assistance.

 

Health Care Education:

Project HOPE uses Health Care Education to train health field staff and give them the skills and expertise necessary to operate the hospitals, clinics and community health programs in the regions that the organization works in. These programs focus on areas including primary care, reproductive health, and maternal and children’s health for community health promoters while also establishing tertiary care postgraduate medical programs such as nursing and health professional continuing education.

 

Humanitarian Aid:

Project HOPE strives to provide emergency assistance during disasters and to strengthen the educational programs and facilities with medical products. During disaster emergencies, Project HOPE endeavors to create a long-term access to vital medicines and supplies.

 

You can hear more about Project HOPE in this article from the Huffington Post, or you can visit their website http://www.projecthope.org

 

Rock and Wrap It Up!

Mission: Rock and Wrap It Up! is an anti-poverty think tank. Using greening tactics, we recover food and other assets to agencies fighting poverty, increasing their operating budgets. This allows the agencies to hire more services such as tutors, social workers, job placement counselors and mental health counselors to attack the root cause of poverty.

The Rock and Wrap It Up! Program boxes up all prepared but untouched meals following rock concerts, sporting events and schools then delivers them to local food banks and charitable agencies. Rock and Wrap It Up! also collects and distributes toiletries and cleaning products from hotels, schools and other participating donors. Since its inception in 1991, Rock and Wrap It Up has: Donated to over 43,000 shelters and places of need Collaborated with 60 sports franchises, 150 bands, and 200 schools Collected more than 250 million pounds of food Fed more than 500 million people

Rock and Wrap It Up wrote and helped pass the Federal Food Donation Act which encourages all federal buildings to feed the poor and not put food into land fill. We reduce the planet’s poverty footprint by reducing society’s carbon footprint.

There are six sectors that Rock and Wrap It Up! work in which include Sports, Music, Education, Hotels, Entertainment: Film & TV, and Advocacy. Rock and Wrap It Up! partners with teams, bands, schools, businesses, etc. and make arrangements and create programs to have the participants and members of these groups find ways to gather leftover prepared but unserved food that can be donated.

 

If you would like to learn more about the programs and partners, or would like to learn about how to donate or volunteer you can visit http://www.rockandwrapitup.org

 

 

The Global Soap Project

Facts:

• The average person encounters 100 chemicals before breakfast.
• We absorb 60% of the substances we put on our skin.
• 7 million children have died due to disease that could have been prevented with proper hygiene since 2009.
• Handwashing with soap is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrheal diseases and pneumonia, which together account for 3.5 million child deaths annually. UNICEF. Soap, Toilets & Taps
• 1.4 million deaths can be prevented each year by handwashing with soap

“Each year, an estimated 2.4 million children die from hygiene and sanitation related illnesses.  The Global Soap Project is working to prevent those deaths and improve global health by recycling used hotel soap and turning it into new bars that are distributed to vulnerable populations around the world.  We work with organizations that have existing operations in these communities to ensure the soap is distributed to those in need, and to ensure that proper hygiene education is provided in addition to the soap.  Our goal is to ensure our impact is sustained, so we work with our partners to create both short-term and long-term positive outcomes.

With 4.6-million hotel/motel rooms in the United States, an estimated 2.6-million soap bars are discarded every day. By participating in our program, hoteliers are diverting tons of waste from the landfill and bolstering environmental sustainability programs. Hotel managers, housekeepers and guests become more environmentally conscious and more sensitive to the needs of vulnerable populations.” -GSP

Currently the Global Soap Project works in 28 countries around the world.

Africa

• Sierra Leone
• Zimbabwe
• Congo
• Nigeria
• Somalia
• Ethiopia
• Tunisia
• Malawi
• Cameroon
• Swaziland
• Ghana
• South Sudan
• Uganda
• Benin
• Kenya

Asia

• Bangladesh
• Afghanistan
• Uzbekistan

North America

• USA
• Haiti
• St. Lucia
• Dominican Republic

Central America

• El Salvador
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Guatemala

South America

• Bolivia
• Ecuador

 

The Global Soap Project welcomes support from everyone, however, they cannot accept individual soap donations due to the fact that they need large quantities of identical soaps to make the large batches with similar perfumes and consistencies. If you want to get involved you can volunteer  at their soap making factory in Atlanta, GA or donate to their cause. To learn more or contact the organization you can visit: http://www.globalsoap.org.

 

12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy Relief Concert

Just yesterday in Madison Square Garden, a relief concert was held to raise funds for victims of Hurricane Sandy. It is reported that over $30 million has been raised and will go to the Robin Hood Fund. Performances included Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys, Adam Sandler and many more.

“When are you going to learn,” comic and New Jersey native Jon Stewart said. “You can throw anything at us – terrorists, hurricanes. You can take away our giant sodas. It doesn’t matter. We’re coming back stronger every time.” -Huffington Post

You can take a look at this video to see some footage from the performers and concert.

 

The Hinman Foundation

The Hinman Foundation’s mission is to preserve the culture and heritage of Buddhism through community development and cultural preservation projects that reflect the spirit of the Buddha’s teachings. The foundation provides grants to various Buddhist communities to improve the quality of life, strengthen sustainable initiative, and enhance access to Buddhist teachings and spaces of practice. Currently, the Hinman Foundation has projects in Bhutan, Burma (Myanmar), India, Mongolia, Nepal, Tibet and the United States.

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Bhutan

Since 2009, the Hinman Foundation has provided several grants to support the restoration of the historic Buddhist temple in Shangkar, Bhutan. The Hinman Foundation also supports the Bhutan Nuns Foundation which was established to provide Bhutanese women with improved living conditions and access to education to promost socio-economic development.

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Burma

The Hinman Foundation launched an online campaign to help raise funds for one of their partners in Burma to help buy a rice milling machine for a Buddhist monastic school to help the school feed itself and generate income for ongoing school costs. Since 2011, the Hinman Foundation has made grants directly to monasteries and nunneries to help support education and community development and alleviate poverty.

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India

The Hinman Foundation has supported the Padmasambhava Buddhist Center since 2004 in its construction of a stupa, a place of worship that contains Buddhist relics, in Shravasti, India. The stupid is a representation of the Buddha and a permanent offering bringing merit to the world, “The Miracle Stupa is intended to last a thousand years, radiating the energy of love and compassion to all beings.” The Hinman Foundation also helped build the Orygen Samye Chokhor Ling Nunnery in Sarnath, India. The nunnery is a manifestation f the Venerable Khenpo’s commitment to providing equal access to education for both women and men.

 

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Mongolia

In 2007, the Hinman Foundation made a grant to the Foundation for the Perservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a non-profit organization established in 1999 to help the resurgence of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia. The FPMT provides integrated education to help students achieve the highest potential for the benefit of others, inspired by an attitude of universal responsibility. In an effort to share information about traditional Mongolian artists, the Hinman Foundation supported a grant to enable the curation of a photo exhibit, Mongol Visions: Winged Horses and Shamanic Skies – Contemporary Masters from the Land of Chinggis Khaan, held at Tibet House in New York in 2011.

 

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Nepal 

he Hinman Foundation helped support the creation and publication of unique historical documentation of the Tibetan refugee situation in Nepal. Caught in Nepal: Tibetan Refugees Photographing Tibetan Refugees is a photography book that documents the daily lives of Tibetan refugees in Nepal. It is both a historical document and cultural commentary. The photographs were taken exclusively by the refugees.

The project began in 2009 as a collaboration between the Foundation and the author and activist Mikel Dunham, when ten inexpensive digital cameras were given to refugees in Nepal. None of the recipients had ever owned cameras and only three exhibited any knowledge or experience with photographic equipment. They were empowered to use these cameras to capture the reality of their lives in Nepal. This includes lack of legal status, denial of the right to own property or business, inability to register births or marriages, and inadequate education.

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Tibet

The Foundation began working with the Samye Monastery in 2006. The Monastery serves as a place of practice and education. The architectural design of this space has strong roots and symbolism in the practice of Buddhism, and its preservation has a symbolic as well as practical value for Vajrayana Buddhism. The project included replacing molded, rotten, and broken pillars that provided structural support to both the core of the monastery and the inner chapels. The chapels are used for both meditation and as a sacred place for pilgrims to make offerings, making this reconstruction a critical priority for the community.

 

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The United States

The Hinman Foundation is committed to supporting the manifestation and sharing of traditional Buddhist culture in the United States. It seeks to support initiatives to provide space for meditative practice, cultural exchange and engagement, and meaningful dialogue about Buddhist principles.

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If you are interested in learning even more about the Hinman Foundation you can visit http://www.hinmanfoundation.org

 

How Kiva Works

 

Microfinance is a financial service to low-income individuals or to those that do not have typical banking service to provide them with small loans. It is based on the idea that these individuals are capable of lifting themselves out of poverty with a little help and support.

“We are a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world. ” -Kiva.org

How Kiva Works, Simplified
1. The borrower meets with a Field Partner and asks for a loan
2. The Field Partner disburses a loan
3. The field Partner uploads the loan request to Kiva and it is reviewed, then published on Kiva.org
4. Kiva lends the loan request and sends the funds to the Field Partner
5. The borrower makes repayments and the Field Partner sends funds owe to Kiva. Kiva repays the lenders.
6. The Lenders can make another loan, donate to Kiva, or withdraw the money to their PayPal account

“70% of all lenders choose to make another loan!”

As of now, the total amount of money that has been lent through Kiva is over $350 Million. There are over a million Kiva users, and Kiva Field Partners are located in 66 countries around the world.

 

To learn more about Kiva you can visit http://www.Kiva.org

 

NonProfit of the Week – Children Beyond Our Borders

Since we are the NonProfit Monitor, I wanted to start having weekly blogs on various nonprofits throughout the nation. Whether they be education, environment or disaster aid organizations, there will be a variety to read about!

Children Beyond Our Borders (CBOB) is an international nonprofit that was founded by a young group of students in 2003 at the University of Florida to work with underprivileged and internally displaced children in Latin America. These students were a part of the Colombian Student Association and felt the need to give back to their homeland, thus, out of the community service committee they started this nonprofit to use Education as an Empowerment tool “to help cultivate a world of Peace, Justice, and Equal Opportunity” to help alleviate the pains from the internal strife in Colombia.

CBOB has now grown to be internationally recognized 501(c)(3) organization and has two major programs. These programs are the Nuevos Horizontes program and the I AM CBOB Scholarship. Nuevos Horizontes is an e-mentoring and vocational program that seeks to help at-risk youth gain important entrepreneurial skills that they can transfer to their chosen career paths. “Our students have learned to break boundaries and push themselves toward goals they once thought unreachable.” The I AM CBOB Scholarships consists of applicants that have completed the Nuevos Horizontes program and are pursuing a college education. If chosen, these scholarship recipients receive an all-expense paid college education. The funds go towards tuition, transportation, food, books, etc. The scholars have many personal stories to share that illustrate what has led them to their pursuance of higher education.

Currently, CBOB has begun a new campaign called “What does Education mean to you?”. This campaign seeks to find the value of education towards all individuals, whether you be a teacher, student, entrepreneur, scientist, etc. CBOB wants to know how YOU value education. To see more about this photo campaign and what people have been saying, click HERE.

If you’re interested in learning more about CBOB, participating in the photo campaign, or supporting the Nuevos Horizontes and I AM CBOB Scholarship programs, you can click the embedded links above or visit http://www.chbob.org.

Stay tuned for many more inspirational nonprofits! Have a lovely Tuesday.