The Seattle-based Paul G. Allen Family Foundation has announced fourth-quarter grants totaling $6.6 million to fifty-eight nonprofits serving the Pacific Northwest region. Grants were awarded in the areas of arts and culture, asset building...

A high-ranking official resigned Tuesday from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity after a dispute over whether the group should give funding to Planned Parenthood , according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press ....

YouTube and See3 Communications are now accepting submissions for the 2012 DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards , an annual event to showcase and reward some of the best video work from nonprofits. The awards will honor nonprofits in four...

Harvard Business School just released its first  study of U.S. competitiveness , reporting that almost two-thirds of U.S. businesses will locate their new plants outside the U.S. None of this is surprising. But for me, one finding was...

In the wake of a public outcry over Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s now-rescinded decision to defund Planned Parenthood, Karen Handel—who was Komen’s vice president for public policy—steps down.

February 7, 2012; Politico | Karen Handel, who was vice president for public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, has resigned after reports have surfaced pointing to her involvement in the now-rescinded decision to defund Planned Parenthood cancer screenings. Handel had joined Komen after a failed run for governor in Georgia. During the campaign, she had expressed her desire to defund Planned Parenthood.

Handel’s resignation letter reportedly references the Planned Parenthood funding debacle head-on, reading, in part, “I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve ... What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision [to sever ties with Planned Parenthood]—one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact—has unfortunately been turned into something about politics.”

The charges of political motivations have largely been tossed in Handel’s direction, however, by those who say that the defunding attempt was little more than a thinly-veiled anti-abortion statement as opposed to a decision in the best interests of Komen or the women it serves. Meanwhile, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said, “This is just more proof that Planned Parenthood will pulverize anyone who dares to question them.”

Nancy Brinker, Komen CEO and founder, acknowledged that the organization has made “mistakes” in its handling of the situation. –Mike Keefe-Feldman

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AlterNet’s Sara Robinson offers an updated take on Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” though they clearly draw on the successful organizing tactics of past decades.

February 3, 2012; Source: Truthout | Are Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals” still applicable to the social activists and community organizers trying to effectuate change in our society? AlterNet’s Sara Robinson, a self-described futurist, suggests that the lessons of Occupy Wall Street require a different lens on organizing for social change. Her ten-point architecture of new rules for radicals—or perhaps rules for anyone who wants to promote social change—begin with the obvious #1: “The rules have changed.”  She foresees “a whole new political era, one that runs by an entirely new set of rules—and one in which a great many impossible things may, all of a sudden, become possible.”

Robinson’s other “new rules for radicals” start with what she says is the most important:

#2: “No despair. Despair is a waste of time and energy.”

#3: Because no one really knows what will and won’t work—who would have ever expected Occupy Wall Street to accomplish what it has?—she advised, “try everything. Try it, even if you’ve tried it before and it didn’t work. Try it, even if it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Try it, just because it’s there. It’s going to take many thousands of experiments before we really understand the contours of this new political and economic reality we’re living in.”

#4. “Trust the vision,” she argues, meaning “a strong vision of what this nation can and should become.”

#5. “Focus on our goals, not on our enemies,” Robinson advises. 

#6. “Expect resistance,” or as she says more colloquially, “whatever you do, you are going to piss somebody off.” 

#7. “Find and nurture innovators,” she  says, referring to the “people in our midst who are really good at this stuff…comfortable taking a lot of risks, and not afraid of bombing out.”   

#8. “If there’s promise, stick with it,” Robinson says, “and give the innovator the chance to keep making it better.”

#9. “Celebrate every win, no matter how small. Every one matters.”  Even if the results weren’t totally what was desired, she reminds activists “to reward the politicians who actually managed to deliver the goods for once.”

#10. “Replicate success,” Robinson concludes, writing “if it works, use it. Good ideas belong to everybody, and nobody is going to flunk you for stealing them.”

Maybe these are lessons from the Occupy movement that are making an impression on community organizers and political activists inside and outside of the nonprofit sector, but Robinson’s vision of Occupy-inspired rules for radicals sound much like the principles of good organizing practiced by Alinsky and every other successful grassroots organizer. Alinsky would have consciously changed the rules, always resisted despair, reveled in pissing off his rich and powerful enemies, and tried things that no one else would have ever tried, things that others might have described as silly and absurd, and then tried them again, reminding us that “if a tactic works, it’s not frivolous.”

Robinson’s new rules for radicals in today’s era of technology and social media trace their roots to effective grassroots organizing tactics that have been practiced over the decades.—Rick Cohen

The majority (63 percent) of private equity fund managers — regardless of fund size — are receiving new commitments from Limited Partners (LPs), according to the third annual PErspective private equity study by BDO USA , one of...

Six young women in East Stroudsburg Area School District's U.N. Aspire group found themselves part of a real-life "Pay it Forward" after reading the award-winning book " Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women...

The Chicago Tribune recently pulled the “Doonesbury” comic from the paper because it referenced Donorschoose.org, a charity that assists people in giving to classrooms in need.

February 6, 2012; Source: The Washington Post | Last week, The Chicago Tribune pulled the “Doonesbury” comic from the paper for the day because it mentioned Donorschoose.org, a charity that assists people in giving to classrooms in need. The reason they gave cartoonist Gary Trudeau is that the cartoon promoted Trudeau’s “self interest.”

While Trudeau’s son is a teacher in a low income neighborhood, he rejects the paper’s justification, saying that he has no connection to the charity, though he admits that his son’s classroom has received supplies from it. This is the second time that Trudeau’s column has recently been pulled by the Tribune. In September, Trudeau had excerpted passages from Joe McGinniss’s unpublished biography of Sarah Palin for “Doonesbury” and the Tribune pulled the strip, saying that it was unfair to excerpt from a book that was not available and therefore not reviewable by the Tribune. –Ruth McCambridge

Mikhail Prokhorov , Russia’s third richest man, said he’ll give $17 billion of his $18 billion fortune to charity if he defeats Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and three other candidates to win the Russian presidency next month. ...

In a troubling finding for those seeking a strong sense of corporate social responsibility to local communities, a Harvard Study suggests that most U.S. businesses want or plan to move overseas.

February 6, 2012; Source: Triple Pundit | For all of the corporate sector’s hoopla regarding metrics showing increasing corporate social responsibility, one critical component seems to be on the wane: corporate responsibility to local communities. The decline in this kind of social responsibility is seen via corporate willingness to pack up their business operations in American cities and towns and move manufacturing or processing overseas. According to a study designed by Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter, two-thirds of American businesses want or plan to move their facilities out of the U.S. Just over one-fifth of U.S. businesses think that a business doing good for its communities translates to doing well for the bottom line. 

Porter is the competitive strategy theorist known in nonprofit circles for his co-founding role in the Foundation Strategies Group (now FSG-Social Impact Advisors), the Center for Effective Philanthropy, the Monitor Group, and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, as well as his co-authorship (with Mark Kramer) of iconic articles such as “Philanthropy’s New Agenda: Creating Value” (1999), “The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy” (2002), and most recently, “The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value” (2011). Porter has long been a critic of the ad hoc and non-strategic uses of corporate social responsibility (for which Porter prefers the terminology “shared value”). The study seems to imply that corporate leaders may not necessarily follow the prescription of doing well by doing good.

Has the nation’s corporate sector moved into a dark alley of talking about social responsibility more so than practicing it? Or are corporations sensing a new recessionary attitude from consumers—or investors—pushing them to focus more than ever on corporate profitability over corporate citizenship? Or has the nature of the world changed, as the Triple Pundit author suggests, such that the competitive posture of state capitalism in China has induced corporations to redefine the communities that they serve to be the communities in which they have offices and plants? —Rick Cohen

The Obama administration blocked a bid by the state of California to require co-payments from Medicaid patients.

February 6, 2012; Source: Business Week | The Obama administration blocked a bid by the state of California to require co-payments from Medicaid patients. The payments would have levied fees of $3 to $5 for drugs and $100 per day for hospital stays. Visits to the doctor or the emergency room would have come with a co-pay of $5 or $50, respectively. The proposed change would have allowed health care providers to turn prospective patients away for an inability to meet the co-payment. If the measure had been allowed, it was expected to save the state $575 million in the next fiscal year.

The federal government refused the waiver because there was no support for it in law or policy. California is expected to appeal the ruling to Health and Human Services Secretary Katherine Sebelius, but it is not expected to prevail. –Ruth McCambridge

Providence, R.I. Mayor Angel Taveras says nonprofit property owners must agree to significant increases in “voluntary” PILOTs payments if the city is to avoid bankruptcy.

February 6, 2012; Source: Associated Press | If you nonprofits don’t start forking over bigger moneys, the city of Providence, R.I. could go bust and you’ll be to blame. That’s essentially the message—though not in those words—from Providence, R.I. Mayor Angel Taveras, who says that the city faces bankruptcy unless tax-exempt institutions such as the city’s several colleges and universities, including Brown University, don’t ante up larger payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs).

At a city hall press conference, the mayor warned that the state’s capital city will run out of money by June. “Everyone must sacrifice or everyone will suffer the consequences,” he said forebodingly. One target is government pensioners. Mayor Taveras said that the city cannot afford to make the annually guaranteed cost-of -living increases of five or six percent.

According to the Associated Press, Taveras also wants nonprofit property owners to contribute an extra $7.1 million on top of their existing PILOTs payments just for this year, and to increase their multi-year commitments. For example, he would like to see $40 million more from Brown over the next ten years; currently, Brown pays the $4 million a year in “voluntary” PILOTs. Brown’s board has approved an increase of $2 million a year over five years, but that doesn’t look like it will satisfy the mayor, who says he favors state legislation that would compel nonprofit property owners to make payments to their municipalities. Mayor Taveras believes that Brown had agreed to—but eventually reneged on—the deal for an additional $4 million annual payment to the city. The largely corporate-supported Rhode Island Statewide Coalition has endorsed the mayor’s efforts to whack retiree benefits and to go after the nonprofits for higher payments.

Nonprofits disagreed. For example, the Hospital Association of Rhode Island, which defended the $9.5 compensation paid to the CEO of the Lifespan hospitals in FY2009 (compared to one-third that amount a year before), said the compensation didn’t indicate that the hospitals could afford to pay more to the city. 

The battle lines are being drawn. On one side, the mayor, local businesses, and homeowners think that nonprofit property owners should be paying something closer to the $105 million the mayor says that Providence’s nonprofit property owners would have to pay if they were taxed at the full assessed value of their properties. Across the battlefield stand the nonprofits, an array of big and small organizations that worry about facing increasing demands on their coffers based on a property tax analysis that contravenes the meaning of “tax-exempt.” –Rick Cohen

It’s easy to find out where to donate on most major breast cancer charity websites, but if you’re a woman in need of a mammogram, your site search will likely be more complicated.

February 7, 2012; Source: Tampa Bay Times | The major breast cancer charities are so focused on fundraising, writes Deni Elliott in the Tampa Bay Times, that they have evidently forgotten that women needing services may be looking to them for references.

Elliott, who holds the Poynter Jamison Chair of Media Ethics and Press Policy at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, is working on a book to be titled What You Think You Know Can Kill You: Busting the Myths of Breast Cancer. She invites the reader to explore the websites of the wealthiest breast cancer charities to get a true reading of what matters to them. 

“The top 10 each claimed revenues of more than $4 million in 2010, according to the nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator. The websites provide multiple ways to donate, participate in fundraisers, or consume for the cure from user-friendly one-click locations on the home page. But if you go to those websites as a woman who needs funding for a mammogram, you’ll have a far more frustrating search. Finding financial assistance for screening is certainly part of achieving the awareness that they all promote,” writes Elliot, but, “only one of the top 10, American Breast Cancer Foundation, provides a phone number for the individual who can’t afford a needed mammogram more prominently than providing an opportunity to donate.” And the only exception to this rule was given lousy marks by Charity Navigator for spending more than fifty cents of every dollar raised on fundraising and administrative costs.

Elliott notes that even Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which had revenues of $312 million in 2010, has nothing on its home page about where a woman in need might get financial assistance. Elliott suggests that, for both those seeking to get help and those wishing to offer financial support, it would be better to start by looking to local groups such as one’s local Planned Parenthood chapter. –Ruth McCambridge

As funders grapple with how to allocate their grantmaking dollars to meet rising need, nonprofits looking for grants should find ways to align with a funder’s mission and priorities, and to collaborate with other nonprofits, foundation representatives said at a conference of fundraising professionals.

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JetBlue Airways redesigned its website and mobile site, and has also launched an iPhone application, all with the intent of personalizing and simplifying the customer experience, the airline said on Feb. 6.

Facebook has hired Rebecca Van Dyck, SVP and CMO at Levi's to join the social network as its first head of global marketing, according to reports.

The American Red Cross and the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative are undertaking a major analytics study in an effort to turn one-time donors into ongoing supporters.

February 1, 2012; Source: Knowledge@Wharton | The American Red Cross is partnering with the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative (WCAI) to study a pool of more than 500,000 donors who made a contribution to the Red Cross in the last five years.

The goal is to improve the Red Cross’ fundraising efficiency by examining customer data and then creating tools that can look for trends in the outcomes of different types of messaging on donor response rates. For example, analytics may provide messaging solutions for turning one-time disaster-response donors into those ongoing donors who support the organization’s core mission, a widely-acknowledged issue for the Red Cross.

Tony DiPasquale, senior director of market intelligence for the Red Cross, says that only 10 percent of those that give in response to a disaster return the next year. “The single biggest channel through which we can acquire new donors is in response to a disaster," says DiPasquale. "What we have long had difficulty doing is moving these donors from being disaster-response donors to ones who support [our organization's] core mission."

This would be important to the Red Cross, which has run into major problems with “donor intent” by using the spikes of donations made to relief of one disaster for other efforts—most notably with regards to the Liberty Fund established after 9/11. In this effort to strategically target donors for effective dollar outcomes, the Red Cross and WCAI partnership will also work with six teams of researchers across the nation, including experts from Baylor University, the University of Pittsburgh and the IBM Watson Research Center.

Peter Fader, a Wharton marketing professor and co-director of WCAI, says that analytics tools also come with risks and new responsibilities. Organizations that utilize such data must undergo a cultural shift if the information that comes from such models is to create new programs rather than merely justifying those programs or decisions already in place.

Kurt Kendall of the Consumer Marketing Analytics Center at McKinsey, says, “Today, if you look at all the contact touch points companies have with their customers, it is easily in the double digits…You have your website, related Internet sites, social networking sites and mobile devices. And the amount of data these channels create has expanded significantly, too. The technology has developed to combine all this data so that you have a 360-degree view of that customer," he says. “That includes not only when customers interact with you, but also when they interact with someone else. That becomes a tremendous asset—but it can also be massively overwhelming. You can capture greater and greater amounts of information, but that doesn't mean you are ready to use it.”

This, of course, may raise some privacy issues, but Fader argues that a lot of personal information is less than useful. “Demographics like race, income and gender tend to be very poor in terms of predictive power," he says. Instead, more straightforward data—including the frequency of someone’s donations and the average size of their past transactions—are better indicators of their future behavior.”–Saras Chung