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Nonprofit Radio for December 18, 2023: Lessons From The UPenn President’s Resignation

 

Doug White: Lessons From The UPenn President’s Resignation

Doug White

Two weeks ago, the president of the University of Pennsylvania resigned, in large part because major donors to the University harshly criticized her publicly, withdrew their donations, and encouraged others to do the same. Can you prevent an uprising at your nonprofit? How do you manage one if your nonprofit’s core values are at stake? Doug White has been studying ethics for decades and he returns to share what can be learned.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d come down with. So Mathenia, if you weakened me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, this week, it’s lessons from the U Penn president’s resignation. Two weeks ago, the president of the University of Pennsylvania resigned in large part because major donors to the university harshly criticized her, publicly withdrew their donations and encouraged others to do the same. Can you prevent an uprising at your nonprofit? How do you manage? One of your nonprofits core values are at stake. Doug White has been studying ethics for decades and he returns to share what can be learned on Tony’s take two. I’m thinking about you were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box.org here is lessons from the U Penn President’s resignation. It’s a pleasure to welcome Doug White back to nonprofit radio. He returns as a longtime leader and scholar in our nation’s philanthropic community. He’s an author and advisor to nonprofits and philanthropists. One of his books, abusing donor intent, chronicling the historic lawsuit brought against Princeton University by the Children of Charles and Marie Robertson. We talked about that here and it’s Doug’s recent book that is the one that’s most relevant to today’s conversation to frame things. The president of the University of Pennsylvania was forced to resign by donors, faculty and politicians. Last weekend, she resigned four days after testifying before Congress about what constitutes anti-semitism at Penn. There had been calls for her resignation before her testimony, enormously, wealthy donors who had made 78 and nine figure gifts to Penn, withdrew their gifts and their support of President Elizabeth mcgill. The board chair resigned the same day. We want to examine the role of the donors in the forced resignation of the nonprofit’s president. What should you expect? How can you prepare, how do you manage a similar crisis? What lessons are there for you and your nonprofit where a major gift may be? 45 or six figures, Doug White. Thank you for coming back to nonprofit radio to talk about this and it’s good to be with you again. Tony really is, what’s uh what’s your take? Well, did I leave out anything uh essential to the, to the framing that, that, that uh that you think needs to be filled in or what’s your take on the, what we’ve seen over the past week? Well, I think everybody knows the major headlines of the past week, the three presidents of Penn, the University of Pennsylvania. I should say MIT and Harvard went to a committee in Congress to answer questions about their policies on free speech on campus. And as you, as we all know, many Congress people are upset with not only that testimony but also in general, what they think is going on in the campus world. And so the question became, what kind of policies do you have and what are you doing to, to change them if anything? And in a nutshell, the outcome was fairly negative for the presidents because they basically equivocated, they did not answer the questions directly. And that I think as you’re implying, created a groundswell of criticism and many people asked for the resignations of those three people as we’re speaking right now. And as you mentioned, uh the president of 10, uh her name is Elizabeth. Um mcgill resigned along with the, the president of the, the, the president of the board this past weekend. And just today, Harvard University affirmed their support or the board did uh their support of Claudine Gay. And I don’t believe that the mit president’s position is, is in any danger at this point. And as you’re also saying, a lot of that criticism is coming from politicians. Uh and um some of the constituencies at the universities and one of those constituencies and an important one is the donor base. And so the question I think that you’re asking is what, uh, what role the donors have played in all of this. So I think you’ve, you’ve set it up here, I don’t think there’s anything you missed, but it’s a, it’s a unique time in, I think the world of, of higher education and, and I think nonprofits generally, you know, any uh any uh it goes beyond the, the free speech conversation because a major donor at any nonprofit could be upset about any direction that they see or even maybe, you know, so granular to be a, a particular program or the, the administration of a particular program. So that, you know, it’s, it’s uh I, I it’s a conversation about how we manage our, our donors influence uh expectations uh so that we don’t end up in this kind of a crisis where, you know, maybe it doesn’t rise to calling for the, the CEO or executive director’s resignation, although it certainly could. But, you know, the influence generally that is uh you know, beyond what they’re, what they’re giving relates to. So, you know, the, these donors at uh the University of Pennsylvania, one of the, one of the uh so in one of the instigators uh is a uh is a, is an advisory board member to the uh to the Wharton School, which is the the Penn, you know, the Penn Business School now, you know, his giving and I’m, I’m, I’m gonna assume this, I think it’s safe, but at least for our conversation, I’d like to assume that, you know, his, his uh and he was the uh one of the nine figure donors. So we’re talking about $100 million or more gift, um probably doesn’t relate to free speech. It relates to programs at, at Penn. Um And he’s cons he expressed concern about the direction that he saw in the Business School. So it’s, yeah. So, so again, assuming beyond, it’s assuming that it’s beyond what they’re giving relates to what do we do when donors uh exercise influence? Well, uh you’re bringing up, I think this is the meat of the question. You’re bringing it, bringing it up. And for me, it, it’s almost i it’s really a fundamental question, the person you’re sp speaking about, I believe his name is Mark Rowan. He’s the uh either the head of or he was on the Wharton advisory board. Now, University of Pennsylvania, there’s a university and the business School is Wharton and Wharton has its own advisory board. They’re not a governing board, they’re an advisory board, but they’re very influential as many advisory boards are. Uh but at universities, it’s the governing board that is going to make a decision about whether the president is fired or hired. So he, he was not in a position to say, ok, I want her, I want her uh Elizabeth mcgill to be fired, but at least statutorily, but he did start a campaign that lasted for several, like several weeks actually saying that she’s got to go, she’s gotta go. And you’re right. He was one of the, I think it was 100 was it 100 million? That was 100 million dollar donor. Yeah. And he started to with withdraw that gift and encourage other major donors to do the same. The one of those major donors was John Huntsman who has a foundation out in, in Utah. He had, he’s a former governor and a former diplomat. Uh He was very upset. Uh Dick Wolf, the uh creator of the Show Law and Order. A graduate of U. Penn also said that he was upset. So Mark Roan, he uh the way I understand it, the people I’ve spoken with have said that he wrote to all of the trustees kind of like bombarding them on a daily basis saying she’s gotta go, she’s gotta go and she’s gotta go. Uh And this was well before the um the testimony on the fifth of December, it started the day after Haas attacked Israel. So he was very, very upset and to say that you’re gonna not give $100 million even to a place like Penn, that’s a big, that’s a big threat. And so Penn’s going to listen to it and I think where you were just heading a moment ago if I’m reading this correctly, is that, what kind of, what kind of influence should that kind of a donor have over this kind of a question at a place like Penn or any other university or any other charity? And my answer is complicated. One is we have to understand one of the highest levels of philanthropy is that a donor in the United States? Anyway, a donor has the right to give or not give to any organization he or she wishes. Uh That’s just a personal decision. Uh You can’t be, the person can’t be made to think that the gift has to be made or can’t or can’t be made. So it’s a personal decision. And in that context, uh Mr Rowan had every right to say you do not have access to my checkbook a if you do this. So I think that’s, that, that’s a guiding principle for me, Tony when it comes to philanthropy uh that said uh universities and many other charities. But right now we’re talking about universities here. They are in the, the spotlight when it comes to current affair, uh Current affairs. And it’s been a decades old um controversy where universities have been thought to be much more liberal than many conservatives would like to see them. And so the, the accusations have been that there have been conservatives who have not been able to make their speeches or people who have been invited, who are conservatives have been, uh, kept from speaking and, and that’s been, that’s been a, a mantra of the conservative voice in the United States. And quite frankly, uh, I, I see where that’s coming from. I do see where that’s coming from. So, what you’ve got here is the, the, these three presidents are saying, look, uh, we think what happened, what Hamas did was terrible. They all said that by the way, and then when asked more directly, uh whether you would uh condone that kind of speech on campus that says that, that says that Israel is basically uh en engaged in genocide. Uh should that be Condoned? Should that speech be Condoned? And they, they were, they were saying basically no. And the answer was supposed to be yes. Yeah. Well, they, they, they equivocated uh uh certainly uh Elizabeth mcgill did at Penn, but they were giving sort of legally le le legal scholarly answers uh to uh to a political panel that doesn’t, doesn’t engage in academics and, you know, uh and pedagogy uh nuance for that but, or new, right? Um But, you know, sort of, I was gonna, I was gonna say one other thing though, in terms of that, the legalese question, uh I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, but I am when Mike Dukakis ran for president back in 1988 he was asked a question at one of the debates about uh rape. And the question was framed about his wife being raped, which would really, in anybody’s reality, would the person would say? Of course, you know, Mike Dukakis relied on a very legalistic answer and there was no emotion in it. And I think the any lost points. I mean, the there was a moment in his campaign where it was not a highlight where he just didn’t say dolly, we gotta get the guy. This is what was missing last week with these presidents. They didn’t just say we got, we can’t have that. We have to con we have to condemn that kind of language. II, I wanna, I wanna focus on something that you said about the, the donors, you know, they, they have a right to give or not give where they would like to or, or, or not? So, does that bring things down to, you know, for our, for our listeners where major gifts are, like I had said, 456 figures. Um Do, does that bring it all down to the money talks? And you either accede to the wishes of the, the, the donor’s influence uh uh uh or, or you uh or you suffer the consequence? Well, this is what I was going to say earlier when I, what I said is kind of a complicated answer and I think you’re going into that second level of my, my answer there. What would have been my answer? Then, and that is that I would answer your question in a direct way to say no, they shouldn’t be exceeding all the time to a donor’s uh whims. Uh But I’d like to make a distinction between a donor that is given money uh with certain expectations and a person who is not given money and also the donor who is given without expectations, but who might be upset with the organization. So let me begin with the donor who’s, who’s made a gift with expectations. And that is an example of that. It would be the the Princeton gift where the donor was giving $35 million in 1961 to establish the graduate to endow the graduate program of what was then the Woodrow Wilson School of International Relations and the lawsuit that came about in the late early two thousands and went to the late two thousands that said that the school prison wasn’t doing what the donor wished. Um We won’t rehash that whole that whole scenario, but I will say this, that the case was one of saying I made you, I made this gift and you’re not following what we agreed upon. And in that case, I believe the, the university or the, the charity has an obligation to follow what it said it would do. I, I believe wholeheartedly that the, the university or the uh the charity needs to do what it said it was going to do. It’s in many states, it’s becoming uh there’s beginning to be some, some history, legal history on this. Uh and so many states are taking a closer look at it than they were back 25 years ago. But uh from a moral perspective, if nothing else, charities need to do that, it’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor Box’s online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms to far-reaching easy share, crowd funding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in-person giving with donor box live kiosk. Donor box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and moves the needle on your mission. Visit donor box.org and let donor box help you help others. Now back to lessons from the U Penn president’s resignation. That’s the one that we talked about on, on the show. When, when you uh abusing donor intent was published, the, just to distinguish that from uh what’s happening. Uh I think at the these universities, but we’re we’re broadening the conversation beyond them. Uh Donors are exerting influence beyond the likely beyond the terms of their, their gift, their gift and their gift agreements, and all the documentation. I I don’t, I, I’m, as I said earlier, I’m, I’m assuming that these donors uh Mark Rowan, uh Huntsman Ron Lauder was another one of the SD Lauder of Fortune um that, that they’re giving doesn’t relate to freedom of speech on the campus or, or conversations about anti-semitism. So I know, I know, I know you have three different um examples that you wanna talk through. Just, I just want to distinguish that the, the Robertson case was around the terms of their specific gift. That’s correct. And that’s why that’s in that one category, but you’re bringing into the other, in the current situation, this other category where the donors aren’t really supporting that as an issue, they’re not giving in response to this issue. In fact, I believe, and I don’t have it in front of me, but Ross, excuse me, uh Mark Roans gift was to establish a uh a financial uh kind of institute was Wharton. And so, yes, it had nothing to do with the, the free speech question. But when you get to the question that is at hand at this university uh at Penn and Harvard and mit, you’re talking about a fundamental purpose behind the organization’s existence. Uh And so any donor who is giving for whatever other reason has the likelihood to have an opinion about the university’s uh position on this rather fundamental question. Um The, the free speech question. And so you’re right, they, they, they, they’re giving their, their philanthropy over the years hasn’t had anything to do with, with uh I’m sorry about this, my dog in the background. I have a dog in the back of that. We’re family friendly nonprofit. We’ve had babies, dog, dogs. Your, your dog is relatively quiet compared to some. Yeah. Well, it says when somebody walks in the yard or something. Uh, but no, you’re right. It has nothing to do with the, the issue at hand. So, does this donor, should this donor have any sway in the university’s, uh, examination of this fairly large and fundamental question? I believe that these donors have gone further than what they should. I don’t believe that quite frankly, I, I, I believe in the sanctity of a university and what it does in terms of fulfilling its, its core obligations and one of its core obligations is to provide a what a uh an environment on campus that allows people to feel like they can express themselves and at the same time feeling comfortable doing it, not only expressing themselves but hearing other people express themselves and that tension as we have seen develop over these last decades. But I think it’s really coming to a head right now that tension is not going to be resolved one way or the other. The best that can happen is that it gets managed in my view and the managing of that isn’t up to a donor, it’s up to the administration of the university. So I do feel even though I said earlier, this is why it’s kind of complicated, even though the donor should not feel an obligation to make a gift or not make a gift. It’s up to him or her. It’s a personal decision. But at the same time, I feel that donors need to have a higher regard than what I’m seeing right now for how the university would deal with these questions on its own, rather than having a donor take, take a shot at this. And I feel the same way about politicians, by the way, uh uh free speech being a, as you said, a fundamental value of a university and, and in other nonprofits, uh they all have fundamental values, whether it’s uh valuing might be free speech, valuing people. Um uh a commitment to uh diversity and equity and inclusion, um Commitment, maybe to their environmental impact, reducing that, you know, whatever, whatever their core values are, we all all nonprofits have them. So, so you know how to manage the instance where donors start to exert influence over the, over the, the management of your, your core reasons for being and, and is there a way to prevent a donor from overreaching? I’m, I’m uh I, I, I’m not, I can’t envision one, but I’m interested in your opinion. And so is there a way to, to safeguard ourselves from the kind of crisis that these three nonprofits are finding themselves in? Many organizations have gift acceptance policies. And my thinking is this, that this issue needs to be part of that process. I sometimes ask organizations if they have a separate in addition to the gift acceptance policy, a separate policy for ethics. And I would put this question into that ethics category, whether it’s part of the gift acceptance policy or whether it’s in its own policy that they address this, because there are a lot of other issues where donors can be a problem uh in the, in the development of uh of, of the fundraising process. And uh last week I spoke in Indianapolis about donors who became problems. I would use Harvey Weinstein and, and Bill Cosby as examples of that. Um But here, we’re not talking about that kind of a problem. We’re talking about a problem where a donor is going to exert some influence. So I think it’s up to the uh charity to anticipate that there could be issues that donors have problems with at that charity. We’ll just use pen as an example or the three that spoke last week as an example and say, look, uh we have our core fundamental values. We don’t, we don’t claim to have all of the answers, but it is part of who we are as an organization to address this question as best we can. And there’s going to be tension over time and we expect you to permit us to deal with that tension without interference. And, and, and what, and I’m talking about the donor who’s made the gift so far, the, the guy who says, look, I gave you $10 million and now you’re doing something that I don’t like and I, I’m gonna kind of raise my voice in opposition and that voice has, has, has purchased because of that $10 million. And what the chair is saying before that all happens is saying you don’t have, you don’t have the authority and you’re making that gift knowing that fact that charities so far are, would be very reluctant to do that. They, they’d say, well, why would we want to create an enemy before we get started? I get that. But my, my concern is you don’t have any, you don’t have any real argument once this is all played out and you haven’t established that as a part of the ground rules, then you don’t have any real ability to say, look, we have this, we have this uh quest in uh within our own world here and you’re not part of that argument. Uh At least in terms of what you’ve given us. So my, my suggestion is for charities to look at this, this, this is a tremendously important learning moment for the charities to say, what can we do to prevent? Not so much the different, the, the, the, the problem that comes on campus here or whatever problem that comes with any charity because you can’t, you can’t know. Uh but you can put donors on notice saying we are who we are and your money is going to change our, our fundamental values. All Right. Let, let’s, uh, hypothesize the, the, um, forward looking charity that, that has, uh, an ethics statement that accompanies the, their gift acceptance policy and the donor has signed the, the ethics statement that they, they agree and it says that they will abide by it and something gets under their skin and they just ignore the agreement and do exactly what, um, Mr Rowan did at, at, at Penn and they pull their own, they pull their own donation and they start to encourage other major donors to do the same. Where, where are we just, we’re, we’re, we have an ethics policy that the donors signed on to. That doesn’t, doesn’t feel very uh reassuring in the face of losing a, a, a major donor who’s encouraging others, other major donors to go with him or her. Well, that, that was another part of this, by the way, I’ll get to the substance of the response and I don’t mean to delay it, but, but I do have to interrupt you, I’ll hold your feet to the fire, the academician. I, I do believe that, that, that campaign really to a daily campaign uh to dus the trustees at Penn was low handed. I, I don’t think that was a very, very highhanded uh maneuver on his part and that’s a little bit connected to some frustrations I have with some of high net worth individuals who think that because of that net worth, they have kind of an ability or an, an intelligence or an experience that they really don’t have. Uh, and they’re just shoving it, uh, into somebody else’s, uh, some charity world, I guess that comes with having the ego that it takes to make $100 million. So, you know, that’s not me. But, uh, make, make even more because you have 100 million that you can give away. Well, exactly. He’s got billions, I’m sure. Uh, but getting back to your question, uh, you’re right. The, the, uh, it’s only a piece of paper and it’s not a legal commitment or anything of that nature but what it does, uh, and it, it doesn’t solve all the problems. I will, uh, I will grant you that, Tony. And I think the listeners have to know that there is, I don’t have the, the magic bullet, but what it would do is tell the donor that you thought about this. In fact, I think it’s actually a cultivation tool because if you tell donors that you thought about this, you’re also telling them that you’re an intelligent caring, uh, thoughtful, charitable, charitable organization. And that, uh, as a result, your money is going to be well stewarded once it gets to us. But that’s just the way I look at it at the end of the day. You’re right. It is just a piece of paper and at the end of the day, the donor doesn’t have to abide by it at all. And he, and he makes the fuss just like, as has happened at Penn and Harvard too, by the way, we’re focusing on Penn, probably because MS mcgill did resign. But, you know, the, the Harvard problem was as severe. There were many, many, many donors who, uh said she should resign. So it’s not just that, but that paper, you’re right, that it’s not going to say it’s not gonna stop anything if the donor is really bent on making sure that uh a a resignation takes place. But it would allow, I believe the charity to say, look, uh we, we have thought this through, we, we think this through with our, in our world of philanthropy and we, we not only care about it but we respect our donors so much. We wanna, we wanna share this thinking with them. So there’s a, there is a high ground there in doing that even if the donor doesn’t really respect it. In the end, you have a book on nonprofit ethics. One of one of your earlier ones before I, before I knew you, you uh you were publishing. Uh and so we haven’t, we didn’t talk about that one on the nonprofit radio, but you, you published a book on nonprofit ethics. Yes, it was called The Nonprofit Challenge back in 20 gosh, 2010, 2011, something like that. And I looked at what was going on at uh the Red Cross after 911 and they had this, they had accepted a lot of gifts after 911 a a on 911 and shortly after, um, and, you know, the Red Cross its job is to take care of people who are victims of, of tragedy like hurricanes and, and fires and things like that. And I don’t wanna sound too brutal here, but there weren’t a lot of living victims after 911. And so the world of the Red Cross is, uh, it, it wasn’t the right fit if you will. They, you know, they got a lot of money but they couldn’t put it to what they would traditionally use it for that kind of a situation. Everybody gave money that I know of anyway, everybody tried to give blood. It was a, as a moment of, of national importance. And so of course, you’d want to go to the Red Cross and give, but they didn’t have enough places to put the money. So they, they put it elsewhere and a huge case came up afterwards, uh, because they had established a trust and, and, and the money didn’t go to the victims and the people who gave the money wanted them to go to the victims. So the question was, uh, not that anybody was stealing the money but, uh, ethically, what should the, what should the Red Cross have done? They have since changed their, their policy there. I, I think what the Red Cross is a great organization. Uh And that they, this handled that at the time is part of growing. I think uh we’ve never had a 911 before. The outpouring was huge. But that was just one example in, in the book on ethics. But the question there was how, how could we look at our ourselves? I think of, I think of charities, I think of the charitable sector, Tony as the ethical sector of our society. We oftentimes talk about ourselves as being the third sector of the business and government being the other two. So we’re the third sector. But I also think we’re the the ethical sector. We don’t have political pressures, don’t stop laughing. I understand there’s lots of politics that uh places like Penn and other charities. And we also don’t have the same uh need to make money for shareholders as as is true in the for profit world. And so we have a cleaner runway to look at ethical questions. And I’ve taken a lot of time these last several decades now examining the role far play in society and their, their ethical uh motive behind what they, what they need to be doing. And so uh yes, I feel like this what you had just asked about a moment ago in terms of a uh or what I mentioned a moment ago about the uh the, the ethics document or the, the agreement that the charity would have with the donor uh And if the donor doesn’t really abide by that, what happens? I think at least the charity would have the, the moral high ground to say we have thought this through. We have talked about it with the donor and we can’t, we can’t make the donor do one thing or the other at this point. But we can say that we’ve talked about it. And by the way, even at that point, if you take that down the road as you just did a moment ago, and the daughter is making a fuss, uh, the, the charity would still say, we, we respect the donor. We, we understand where he’s coming from or she’s coming from. This is not a us against him kind of a thing. But it’s a matter of saying, ok, here’s a, here’s a, a problem that has developed and we’re dealing with it the best way we can. And we can only hope that our donor sees that fact and tries to not use his or her uh financial ability to, to sway us in making decisions about our core, our core purposes. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. It’s December giving. I know how critical it is for you. I’m thinking about you. I’m on your side. I know I said a couple of weeks ago, but I wanna tell you again, if you do your best, then you can stand proud on January 1st knowing that there’s nothing more you could have done. I’m thinking about you this, these last few weeks of December. I’m with you. I’m with you. Do the best you can. That’s Tony’s take two Kate. Happy holidays and Happy New Year. Everyone. We’ve got VU but loads more time. So let’s go back to lessons from the U Penn president’s resignation with Doug White. The other dimension is that the, that, that donor is hurting the very beneficiaries that the nonprofit exists to help. In the, in the case of the universities, it’s, it’s students and, and faculty. Uh in the case of an animal shelter, it’s the uh it’s the animals that are housed in a, you know, in a no kill shelter. Uh in the case of a food bank, it’s the, it’s the folks who come in twice a week to fill grocery baskets and, you know, maybe come for lunches. Uh It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not only a question of surrendering the core values, but it’s a, it becomes an issue of being uh detrimental to the people we exist or, or the people or entities. What? However, I mean, some charities exist to help the environment, what whatever we’re about to help donor, major donors pulling their gifts hurts the, the, the cause that we’re, we, we exist for what you’re pointing out right now is something I was listening for or looking for among the people at Harvard and Penn and MIT. And that is to say you may disagree with this, but by withholding your support, you’re really, you’re really hurting the entirety of our organization. You’re, you’re hurting what you want to see us do and you’ve already given us support to do what we’re doing. And so clearly, you think that we’re doing that correctly. And so if you’re going to take a position on this other issue and we all agree, it’s important, nobody’s trying to say it’s not important. But if you do hold your money back because of that, then what you are interested in is less likely to be successful. And so you’re really, really taking away a lot of what we can do that you want to have happen. So the argument can be brought back to the donors saying you’re hurting yourself by doing this, you’re hurting your own interests by doing this. And, and I think there’s an argument there and III, I haven’t heard that from any of these. I don’t know if they have been talking about this internally in among the board members or among their staffs or whatever. I haven’t heard that, but you’re right. They are hurting themselves. The donors are hurting their own interests when they, when they take that position, see, it would be one thing if the donor, if, if we’ll just use Mark, since we Mark Rowan, since we, we’ve talked about him, he could write an editorial in the New York Times or the Philadelphia paper or the student paper saying how much he opposes this, which is his right and quite frankly his obligation if he feels that way. Uh, but that would be a separate activity from withholding his money. Now that, that was not, that was not sufficient for him. The, the coverage I read said that he did have an op ed in the, the pen newspaper. Ok. Well, I’m not surprised and I thank you for telling me that I didn’t know, uh, that doesn’t surprise me and, and clearly, you’re right, it wasn’t sufficient for him. Uh, but this, this tug of war, you know, we, we a lot of time we talk about conflict. This is what another thing I wrote about in the, the book that you just referenced the ethics. You know, it’s not a question of avoiding conflict or, or, or making sure gets resolved to everyone’s satisfaction that doesn’t happen in real life. What does happen in real life among people who are, who are care about a resolution is that we, we understand this tension. And I think the free speech question is probably the per the perfect example of this and that is we’re not going to solve this. This is one thing that both sides don’t, I don’t feel, I don’t see it anyway, understand. And that is that there should be this one solution where everybody’s gonna understand the rules and with free speech, if I say, uh Hamas is a terrible group because look at what they did and they are, and I will say that they are terrible. But then uh if someone who supports the Palestinian cause and has, has taken a look at what’s been going on there for the last several decades, lifetimes. Uh uh They, they can say, look, you know, Israel is a bad actor in this whole thing. Both of those things can be true. Both of those sentiments could be within one person. And what I think the the university’s goal is to tell people that that’s what it is an ethical decision. When we talk about an ethical dilemma. The reason we use the word dilemma is because there’s no black and white answer. There’s no clarity to, there’s no clean way to get from where we are at a dilemma to where everybody’s happy. And oftentimes there is no way at all. So you see him manage it. You say, look, this is going to come up and it’s gonna come up and it’s gonna come up and we’re not going to come up with a rule that says, uh this is the way it’s going to be all the time when a conservative person comes, comes to, to, to campus, we’re not gonna say he, he, he can always say what he wants to and the same is true for a liberal person or what whatever the, the argument might be, what we’ve got to do is say, look, we understand there, there are conflicting viewpoints here and where, where the, where I do believe the president’s got it right. They said it’s context, uh, this is just the worst place to say this, but it was context dependent and at least defen the person who was doing the grilling at that point in Congress was saying, are you kidding me? And quite frankly, she had the, she had the hearts of, of America when she said that and I me to it, I, I think, you know, I have differences with this fact but they couldn’t say uh no, this was wrong. They, we would condemn this on, on campus. So, but the policy itself is true that you have to take a look at, at the context of what’s going on in this. And if you’re really saying, look, we’re going to make you feel unsafe you Israelites because you guys have been beaten down the Palestinians for the last 5075 years. Um Then, then that’s wrong because you can’t make anybody else. You can’t threaten anybody else. Uh In my view, you can say, I, I support the Palestinians. You can’t say, I believe you can’t say that. And I believe that’s what the presidents of these universities were saying. And, but they were also saying that the, the, the Israelis have a position too. And what, what, what fuels this conversation right now is the atrocities that Hamas committed against the Israelis that that, that is, you, you, you know, one of the steps that I’ve created when it comes to ethical decision making because everybody thinks it’s, you know, kind of squishy. And, you know, I, I know ethics because my mama told me what’s ethical or, I know it’s in my gut. That’s what a lot of people think. But when you’re trying to deal with someone else who has a different mama or has a different gut, uh, you’ve got to have some common, some common language or, or you don’t go anywhere. And so, you know, you’ve got to say, look, uh, you’re gonna be uncomfortable. We’re not gonna try to take away the discomfort of being on campus. We’re not gonna try to take away the discomfort of hearing something. You really, really, really don’t like. That’s where I think colleges have gotten it wrong. This question of saying we’re gonna make everybody comfortable. So everybody’s happy all the time. That’s a recipe for disaster. And, and my, and my feeling is that, uh, you know, as long as you, uh don’t threaten anyone or imply that there’s a threat to anybody individually and physically that you’re taking a position on policy, then then anybody should be able to speak and people who are, and you, you’ve seen this a lot more where a conservative comes and the liberals kind of shout them down. I think on campus, the shouting down thing, you shout me down, you’re out of here. I mean, you don’t have a right to be in the room if you’re gonna shout something. Well, that goes right. And that, of course, and then that goes to the, the core values again, you know, what, each nonprofit supporting its own core values, what, what it stands for, uh, even in the face of, you know, uh potentially losing major, major support. Uh I wanna look at another dimension of this, that the uh these three university presidents are, are all women and at least at Penn, that’s the one we know the most detail about all the major donors are men. Uh So I don’t, I don’t know that that’s true at, at the other two universities. But, but again, I want, you know, I want to take it out of the university context. Do you think there’s a, there, there’s, there’s a gender bias here that it’s, it’s a bunch of, uh uh I is, it is a bunch of rich men picking on a bunch of uh uh female CEO S I, I can’t believe you’re bringing this up because this is the conversation I had with my wife a few days ago. Uh and she brought that to my attention and I’m thinking first of all that, the Ivy League has seven out of its eight pres uh eight presidents as women, which is, I think an astonishing thing given the history of the uh schools and astonishing and a good thing uh Dartmouth just got its new president, a woman for the first time this past fall. And so I’m thinking this is, this is great. I’m not looking for a woman necessarily. That’s not how I look at. No, but, but let’s deal with. This is a good thing to deal with the, this, the, the what, what seems to me to be AAA gender, a gender overreaching? Yes. And iii I think the answer. OK, so I will answer your question. I think yes, I think that’s a factor. Uh And uh but I don’t think it’s i it’s, it’s meant I don’t think that the donors at Penn have said we want to get this woman out of there. Now, there have been some donors at both Penn and Harvard. I think I was reading the other day about Harvard and Claudine. Gay people were against her even before she was, she was there. And one of the, I think was Bill Ackman, a lot of the financiers who supports Harvard who said that uh when you limit your choices to a woman of color, then you’re taking a lot of people off the table and that was wrong as a process and, and he, he can believe that and people would think he’s right. Uh It’s not a fact, it’s an opinion. So I don’t think you’re taking a lot off the table. You might be taking a lot off the table, but you’re leaving a lot on too. So I don’t think that was a really accurate. I don’t believe that was an accurate criticism but was there a gender bias in here? Um All of these women, all of these presidents are women? All the then all of the critic, criticizers were uh men uh at least the the most vocal but there were some women I know at Harvard who were on staff who, who felt uncomfortable with Claudia Gaines gays leadership. Uh But you can’t, you can’t ignore it, can you? I mean, you bring it up. My wife brought it up. I don’t think it’s something you could ignore. Uh And I think it should be part of the conversation. If I were a reporter, I would go to some of these really, really wealthy people and ask that question. Now, they might deny it, but I would like to hear them, deny it because I do, I, I, I’d like to hear their, their answers to that also final dimension that uh I’d like to bring up because we just have a couple of minutes left. Board support seems to be key here. Uh I at Penn, the board support eroded for uh Doctor Elizabeth mcgill uh at uh Harvard, as you said, just yesterday or today, today, the, the Harvard board has said we are behind president gay board support. Uh So I know knowing your board members that you, you’re not gonna be able to anticipate how they’re gonna react in, in the event of uh of a crisis. But knowing them having their support overall, it seems to be a, a distinguishing factor here. One of the points that was made in the news articles that I read about Elizabeth mcgill, who being fairly new was that she didn’t have time to create uh relationships uh really deep relationships with individual board members uh to your comment a moment ago. Yes, board support is crucial. Uh In fact, I mean, just, I’m sure your listeners know this, but just to get this on the, on the table, the board is the president’s boss. And so the board hires and it fires the president. Uh she, she kept the board from having to fire her by resigning. But, um, it could have been different at Harvard because she wasn’t going to resign and they could have fired her. Uh, but the board is crucial and, but what not the waters a bit here is that many of your major donors are also on the board. So you have, you have that going on that was going on at Penn too. But the board, the board really, the job of the board is to set, not only a strategic direction but also a philosophical direction for the organization and the president is meant to be the executor of the, of that philosophy. And so when, when you see a, uh uh uh a, a president who went out these three did or to Congress, they are saying what they are carrying forth the values of the university. That’s another, I’m so glad you brought this up because that’s another, quite, quite frankly, another big issue for me. The board did not have Elizabeth mcgill’s back. In fact, it was the opposite. Um and it was the opposite for a long time. It had been building up. Hamas was uh the, the, the, the, the testimony was just the last straw. But that said they, they, each of these women, each of these presidents were doing what they both, they all agreed to with their boards. And so the board walking away at that moment, uh I felt was, was unfortunate for those people. They, they need the support of the board. If I, if I were on the board and I really disagreed with what they said before Congress, I would say, let’s take this behind closed doors. I would not have done what they did know your board, know your board members. I think, I think that’s another takeaway. All right. Doug, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna uh give us a uh closing closing statement? I feel so strongly about charitable organizations. Sometimes people don’t realize that places like Harvard are charities and they’re so, so wealthy, but they are legally speaking, they’re in the same place in the IRS code as the local uh food shelter. Uh And, and so, uh I think we, we look at charities and say uh there are organizations that will do the work that neither government nor business does or no for profits do. And so we are so fortunate to have them and we need, and they need our support. They do not live uh solely on their earned income. And what I mean by that is uh in the case of the university uh tuitions, they need uh they need philanthropic support and it just so happens that the United States has many, many uh good philanthropists, I mean, by philanthropists, people who just give any amount of money that, that support to charity is crucial. And what I would hate to see is that this issue as big as it is take away the philanthropic support these organizations get and, and I do want to make a point here, Harvard Penn and mit all those organizations represented in Congress are all what we would call very wealthy organizations that is to say they have, they have big endowments, but that said they still need their annual support. We I can’t go into now as to why that is. But I can, I can say for a fact that each of those people legitimately, each of those organizations legitimately need uh philanthropic support in addition to their, their endowment, they do great work for society. And I would, I would really not want to see this situation as important as it is as fundamental as it is to these organizations that would not like to see this situation overtake our spirit of philanthropy to these three or any other party in the United States or any others. Those are, you know, the, all our listeners know the value of small gifts, annual gifts, major gifts, foundation support. We didn’t even talk about the institutional support. It didn’t, didn’t really doesn’t seem to have applied here, planned gifts, recurring the monthly. They, they’re all important and I hope this has helped folks to put some thought around how you might uh manage a AAA crisis like this, how you might help prevent a crisis like this. Doug Thank you very much for sharing your, your wisdom. Well, Tony, I appreciate your taking the time to have this uh conversation on this particular topic. It’s very emotional for many people. It’s emotional for me. I think of it as being fundamental to what we do. You and I and so many thousands of others across the country all to promote uh what I think is our ethical sector, Doug White author and advisor to nonprofits and philanthropists. You’ll find him at Doug white.net. Thank you again, Doug, my pleasure. Next week. No show. It’s Christmas the week after. No show. It’s New Year’s. We’ll be back the second week in January for our 2024 outlook with our smart contributors, Amy Sample Ward and Gene Takagi. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a great one. I hope you have a fun time, wonderful time with family and friends. Happy New Year. Of course, wishing you the best in the early weeks of 2024. And we will be back in the uh in the second week. I hope you enjoy your time off time. Well deserved. And Kate Merry Christmas, I’ll be seeing you in person for Christmas Week. So see you soon. See you soon were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us in a couple of weeks for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for those other 95% go out and be great. Happy New Year.

Nonprofit Radio for September 20, 2019: Wounded Charity

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Doug White: Wounded Charity
Author and consultant Doug White returns with his latest book, “Wounded Charity,” positing that the 2016 allegations against Wounded Warrior Project were mostly untrue and that the organization’s board failed. Join us for a provocative and thoughtful analysis.

 

 

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Transcript for 458_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190920.mp3.mp3 Processed on: 2019-09-20T19:10:34.517Z S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results Path to JSON: 2019…09…458_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190920.mp3.mp3.868378293.json Path to text: transcripts/2019/09/458_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20190920mp3.txt Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% on your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I turn drama Tropic if you unnerved me with the idea that you missed today’s show. Wounded Charity author and consultant Doug White returns with his latest book, Wounded Charity, positing that the 2016 allegations against Wounded Warrior Project were mostly untrue and that the organization’s board failed. And the media. Oi Doug brings a provocative and thoughtful analysis on Tony’s take to take caution in your plan. E-giving relationships Responsive by witness E. P. A. Is guiding you beyond the numbers. Witnessed gps dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non-profits tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non-profits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. What a pleasure to welcome back to the studio. It’s good to be Don’t wait. Yes, he’s the author, teacher and advisor, two nonprofit organizations and philanthropists. He’s said he’s the soul. That’s the only part they want occupying those three those three categories. He’s co chair of the full proof foundations Walter Cronkite Project Committee and a governing boardmember of the Secular Coalition of America. He’s the former director of Columbia University’s master of science in fund-raising management program. Before that, he was academic director at New York University’s heimans Center for Philanthropy and fund-raising. That’s where we first met. His latest book is Wounded Charity. Lessons Learned From the Wounded Warrior Project Crisis will be published early October, and that’s what brings him back to non-profit radio. Welcome back as I say, It’s good to see you again. A pleasure. You’re our first live guest in our new studio. I can smell the paint. I can t o and the elevators better intoxicating. The elevator is bigger. There’s more than one, and it’s you. It sounds different to me. Uh, we got it. We got to get some things up on the wall, but it feels good. Just welcome to the new space. Well, thank you. It’s good to be a part of it. Um, yeah. Wounded warrior project. Very interesting. You’re You uncover some things that a lot of people do not know. Um, and you say that you’re actually you’re offended, Earl. I think early in the book you say that you’re offended by what happened to Wounded Warrior Project. The reaction that the board had you took offense at this. I did. But not at first. Because when you hear something on CBS or read something in The New York Times, you tend to think it’s true. And before I go too far, I want to make sure that people know that I like CBS News. I like most of the networks and I think the world of The New York Times. But this is a story that they got wrong and it was egregiously wrong and upon having learned what did happen, I am offended. I’m offended by the lack of journalistic standards. I’m offended by the way the board behaved. And every time I ask somebody about this story, did you hear about what happened to a wounded warrior project? I’ll have reactions to Oh, that’s that fake charity. That’s the charity spent all the money wrong, and I say, Where did you hear that? And of course, he’ll tell me where they didn’t. Of course, that’s where thatwas the times and CBS. But then I say there is more to that story and most of what you know is wrong. More to it. You. Ah, Now, at the end, you call it a long, long, nurturing hit job. A long, marinating hit job That would be the freezer. Long magnetic it job is the phrase you Yes, way Have a full hour together. So we have plenty time. Thio flush this out. But say little about long marinating the two people who were fired the CEO and CEO Steve Nord Easy and Al Giordano were fired in March will probably do a CZ. We go forward with the story of this, but they were fired in March of 2016 after scathing reports out by CBS and The New York Times. And it would be easy to think then, logical to think that as a result of those reports, the board looked at their leadership and said, we’re going in the wrong direction. It is my opinion that that decision was made well before those reports came out. Now. Yeah. Okay. We’re gonna get to that. All right. Wonderful. Um So the claims in the media were were scathing money wasted on travel and entertainment costs were too high. Morale was low. Programs failing. Um, some watchdogs, charity navigator and charitywatch, specifically low grades. Um, yes, this was This was all January 2016 a CZ you’ve said New York Times and CBS, but not in that order. Give us Give that what happened at CBS and then The New York Times And what was said I was home about nine o’clock on Tuesday night the 26th of January and enjoying my, I think, second bourbon when I got a text from a good friend of mine and someone you may know to Laura Fredericks. Oh, sure texted me and said, Did you see what CBS said about Wounded Warrior Project? And she’s also on the board off another veteran’s organization. So she’s tuned into these kinds of things, and I said, No, I hadn’t. So I looked it up and watched it, and I thought, Wow, this is Ah, pretty scathing report because it said that they were spending money badly, that morale was bad and everything you’ve just mentioned. And I thought this sounds like something I would be interested in because, as you know, with other books, another work that I’ve done. I’ve been very critical of charities because I don’t think charity should be badly run. I think they should be well run by people who care about the work they do and having a charitable ethos. And so I’m my intent are up when it comes to bad behavior charities. And so I thought, Well, this is just another example of that because I had no contact with Wounded Warrior Project Before this time, however, I had contact with a reporter of The New York Times about six or maybe four weeks prior. I had been called by day Phillips, who ended up doing this report about Wounded Warrior project, and at that point I knew nothing more than what was publicly available. You know, the information that was publicly available on nine nineties and other reports, and basically his take with our conversation, which, by the way, lasted about an hour or an hour and 15 minutes. What is the ethos behind an organization that is, that is growing so quickly? Is there a problem with that? Inherently. What about their programs? And all I could speak to was with what I knew publicly, and it was all very positive. I said, I get it That that there are criticisms. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they’re perfect, but I can’t see anything wrong with them. We ended that I think on a fairly good note. And I had no clue that he was working on this kind of a story. And I’ll tell you this much at that point, I don’t think he waas right. You think he changed his slant of the story when CVS came out with what you saw, I well, they knew CBS was coming. I mean, what happened was that Tuesday night, I knew it was gonna be a three part series on CBS. I wanted I did, right? Dave Phillips. And I said, Are you aware that CBS now has this big story scooping you? Yeah. And so I thought, this is not good. My answer came the next boarding When I read the New York Times when that story was in the New York Times above the front page above the fold. That’s correct. Now what? So I was curious about this. Why would the times if if you’re right, why would they slant the story because of what? Because of the direction CBS took. Why couldn’t they take their own tack if they were Maur? If you felt that Dave Phillips was Maur neutral about about wounded warrior, Yeah, and I think in the long haul of things I want to be gentle with Dave Phillips because I don’t think he’s the bad guy here. And I think I know he’s a very good reporter. I think what he had was what I call an evergreen story. It was not something that had a deadline to it nearly did, by the way, the CBS take have a deadline to it. But it was much more salaciousness. And so I think he tried to catch up to that salaciousness. That’s what I think happened. But he wasn’t finding that. And you don’t You don’t pursue this in the book. But it was a question I had. He wasn’t finding that in his You don’t think in his in his own in his own research, not originally. But then he got talking to people who are on a Facebook page. We’re all malcontents, former employee employees. And so he got inside the second chamber and listen to it after a while. And when he went down to wounded warrior project in Jacksonville, he had many interviews. Many of them were very positive in all of them. Got put on to the cutting room floor. So he at that point had shifted because CBS came into the picture late, like in December s so late, 2015. And so I think he had timeto switch gears. Okay, we have Thio take a first break, and that is for Wagner. CPS. They have a wagon or on September 25th Exempt or non exempt. You need to classify and pay everyone correctly under the Fair Labor Standards Act. And you need to document what you’re doing. Wepner will explain it so you can understand it. Weather cps dot com Click Resource is and upcoming events. If you missed it, live so many of our podcast listeners. I can understand that. Then go to re sources and recorded events. All right, let’s go back to ah, wounded charity. Um, so he so he caught up with the salacious side of it. All right, I’m still alright. This Yeah, There was the malcontent employees Echo chamber. All right, so Wonder Warrior Christ Wounded Warrior Project now has a crisis. There was a three part series on CBS over what, Over two nights a night the next morning of the following night. Oh, that’s right there and one in the morning and then the following night. And they’ve got this New York Times with peace. Which came the guest, the 27th of January. What is the board do? The board hires Simpson Thatcher law firm here and a group called FT I, which is accounting firm to do an audit of the organization’s finances. They did that almost immediately, probably within a few hours of the reports coming out because they wanted to find out what was going on with regard to the accusations that money was being misspent. They also at the same time silenced the CEO. Stephen aren’t easy stating our Daisy is a pretty savvy guy. Probably one of the better CEOs. What was his age at this point? Him and al what were their ages? They’re not really young, but they’re not old. I would say they’re probably in their fifties. Okay? Yeah, something normal helps me on. I think they’re about the same age they came through the world with the veterans world. Kind of the same time. At any rate, um, they were told they couldn’t talk to anybody. And Steve actually was very media savvy and good person in many ways said to the board, This is not the right strategy, because we’re gonna be out there hanging without any story. And we’re not even responding. He wants to get ahead of it. He wants to get ahead of grab it. Yes, like you would advise your own clients to do in an emergency. Silence is bad because the story takes story goes on without you. The stood out without your part of it. Well said, Well, that didn’t happen. And so he was muzzled. Reinardy xero Steve. Not easy as a CEO. Yes, Al Al Giordano CEO. Yes, two Italians. But what you didn’t pursue the Italian American discrimination pathway into this thing? These two, these two screaming Italians nor D. C. And Giordano railroaded by the board. You didn’t pursue that? You know, you’re the Italian American sentiment on the warrior project. Most of the lack of intellectual curiosity. Okay, I’ll help you. Thank you. Bring me in. Silences them now I had another something curious CBS offers. Did he say? Nor Deasy or not? D. C Easy, easy. Okay, The proper princessa Ditzy what? You wouldn’t zizi like brothers pizza? You don’t say Pisa pizza. Nor did Marty Martin, yet martignetti CBS offers, nor D z Rebuttal time. They offer him substantial time on a morning some on one of their morning shows with Formerly With Charlie Rose. Why did they do? And they say And they say in the email Ah, lot of time like we usually give guests three minutes, we’ll give you twice that or something like that and we’ll be willing to talk about other opportunities for you to be on CBS on other shows. Why did they offer that? Did they sense that that they had something wrong? Oh, I know they sensed they had something wrong. I mean, there’s nothing that says it on paper to my knowledge, but there could not be any other conclusion after watching this. And also there were people who talk to Gil. There were some internal e mails from internal emails that I was able to put my hands on that showed that there was something really wrong here. Why would CBS offer them or offer Steve This? This could have been an effort on their part to kind of come clean. But Steve knew that this this was baked in already. I don’t feel like there was any any anything to gain by coming back and fighting that. Oh, I thought he would have taken the opportunity if the board had allowed him to. Oh, well, yeah, but the board didn’t allow him to write, so, you know, I don’t. And he’s been criticized. He’s been criticized for that, Uh, but he wasn’t allowed. You’re right. Now there’s a question. Uh, we could talk about this now. Sure should. Should he have or, you know, where do you, uh, ready to draw the line between obedience to the board and loyalty to the organization and say, Screw the board? I’m going ahead. That’s the last profound question that I asked in the book toward the end. And I think it’s an open ended question. I don’t know the answer to that. Boardmember has, ah duty of loyalty to the organization. Staff member has duties to both the organization and to the board. When you see that the board is going in a different direction. From where you see the organization going, you have a profound dilemma on your hands. One person was extremely critical of Steve for not bucking the board. I won’t use the language he gave me, but that language is in the book. But he said that Steve should have and Al should have buck them and gone public with everything they could at that time. And which person which questions that you know, that was quote okay. Yes, You have a lot, by the way. Lots of footnotes couldn’t you couldn’t have cut the footnotes down 370 foot notes. It’s really got to go to the back of the book all the time to see this. It means a substantial because I was taught in law school. You always read the footnotes. You know that the footnotes used to be in academia couldn’t put them at the bottom. It’s so much easier when they’re the bottom of the page. But that looks bad. People won’t read books like it looks like it. Then it looks like an academic journal. That’s yeah, and it’s important to may toe have these facts correct. And this is not true about a lot of things that are written in general. And so I want to be sure that especially in a situation like this and I was this way with the book on Princeton, too, wanted to make sure that everything that I said was backed up in people new words being backed up. In fact, just to go down that line for a minute. I do worry and always do worry about what I have an anonymous quote. I don’t want people to think I made it up. And so I’ve asked people, attorneys and other people in the world of ethics and non-profits. How do I make sure that people don’t think I did that? And there’s really no way. Just, you know, the authority is otherwise there, so they’re gonna have to take your word for it. It’s like the times when they come out with an anonymous source, got to take their word for it. But that means that eyes the author have to take a lot of responsibility and have a lot of integrity, or try to have integrity anyway in the process. That’s why you have the footnotes Okay. Okay. It’s a yes, I imagine you have. You have a spreadsheet somewhere that says anonymous quote. Footnote number 2 14 Is this person? Yes. Something like that. So, Yeah, I do. We do have to trust you, and your lawyers will never see it. I can tell you that no matter what you do. Okay? You’ve assured everyone a lien on it. All right? So now nor D. C. And reinardy, xero, Dizzy and Giordano, highly rated by the board before this before this occurred. Yes. Talk about that talk about and how wounded Warrior Project was doing. Let’s give them their due now. Wounded. Well, they don’t need their do now. They’re just They’ve always been a great organ. I meant now in the show. Oh, in the show. Just at this point in our time together. Let’s do it. Great organization. It grew from a fairly small organization in the early two thousands. John Milius started it with backpacks out of his basement to take up. He noticed that when he got out of being wounded, Hey, didn’t have any essentials like a toothbrush or a water bottle or things like that. He said I’m gonna put together backpacks and take him up to Walter Reed. He was in Virginia and give them a way. That was really the way it got started. And at the same time, because there was a fellow out in Long Island. Peter Hoener Camp was also concerned about veterans coming back. He started something called Soldier Ride on DDE that raised money for Wounded Warrior Project. So they began to make money a few years after John Milius started it for real. And when Steve and Al came into the scene to really become the leaders of the organization from a staff perspective, they started. They said What? I think all charities need to do more off. They said, What is our task here? And when they defined their task of taking care of veterans when they’re coming back from 9 11 posted an 11 conflict, the money that it would take would be X. And they said, Okay, we’re gonna go out and raise X. It wasn’t like, Okay, we’re gonna raise $1000 see what we can do. What they say. They had an entirely different mindset and a good one, but as you can imagine, Tony. It was somewhat in conflict with the way the mindset works at many charities. So the pursuit of the money became itself something controversial at anyway. They grew and grew, and by the time they left they were earning almost $400 million which is pretty big. They went from 10 to $400 million in a decade, basically, and they had 20 programs. All of them were working. They were quantifying their results and from a an impact respect of the big word today and non-profits his impact. They were already doing it. They were already doing it from a quantitative and qualitative perspective for for many years prior to this point, they were doing a good job, and I think they still are. The vision, I think is reduced, and it’s a smaller organization right now, but it’s still a good organization. I don’t want to say anything bad about the organization today, but it’s a different organization. And nor did see not Dizzy and Giordano, as I said, highly rated by the board. Okay, let me get back to that because you did ask that a few months before they left their ratings and by the way, there prior ratings were all consistent with this. We’re fabulous. They were great. And Steve said, Well, look now I think we ought to slow down and start to become a different kind of order. We are becoming a different kind of organization, so we need to look at it in a more sophisticated way. We’re going to slow down a little bit. We won’t be pushing the gas pedal is hard, and what we want to do is make sure that we’re really serving everyone to the fullest that we can on DDE. That always reflected in those in those reports that the that the board had done on the board hired a firm to do this. And so they all concluded that they were doing a great job. This is just a few months earlier, and so it was really start when when this happened, the crisis came along. The reports just a few months after the glowing review by the board, and then a month later, the board says, we need to change very cryptic and very unsatisfying. In fact, after the two were fired in March, I think was the 16th of March in 2016 Tony Odierno went on the Bill O’Reilly show, and Bill O’Reilly was always a very big supporter of the wounded warrior project. Odierno. It’s board, chair and audio was the board chair, Thank you. And at that point he stepped in. His theory of an amputee also. Yeah, and basically his father was a war hero. He was the head of the military command over there. And so he’s a Tony. Odierno is, I’m sure, a very fine, upstanding, good person. He wouldn’t return any of my phone calls, but that’s another issue. I think that he’s probably a very good person, no reason to doubt that. But he so he came in. He had a full time job here in New York. Kayman is an acting CEO, and he was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly, and O’Reilly said, Why did you fire me? So we needed a change of culture? No, Riley, to his credit, said, Well, what does that mean culture? What it was this culture thing that’s going on here? Well, we really needed a change of culture. I’m making you have the transcript and you have the transcripts segment in the book. Yeah, but basically said that we needed a repeated himself. We need a change of culture, know, really, if you remember him on the show, is kind of a pugnacious fellow, and he said, and this is a friend, you know, This is a friendly interview He said, Well, what does that mean? Again and again, Tony said the same thing. And Cody Bill O’Reilly was just flummoxed. Why don’t you answer this? You’re not answering my question. And he said, Basically, since you’re not answering it, I guess we just don’t have anything more to talk about. Very frustrating and what it really? In addition to your alley’s frustration, the problem was that Tony did not have a good answer because there was no good answer. They were essentially saying the organization in their responses to the reports. The organization is fine, but we need to make a change of leadership. Yes, that was the 22 contradictory statements. Exactly. So you have a report that comes out in March, this report that was done by Simpson Thatcher saying basically everything that the media said was wrong. Still, we need a change in culture. We need a change and so and I got a hold of a letter that Simpson This report, by the way, was not written. Okay? There was no right. It was orelon. But there was a letter written Thio Grassley, Senator Grassley who was looking into this. That’s the letter I looked at. And Simpson Thatcher said, Well, clearly, Odierno, Excuse me is clearly reinardy Z and xero dahna have to go. I’m thinking clearly. What? What’s so clear about that? Everything you’ve said so far is supporting the work that they’ve done. And so where is this coming from? The report vindicated them. The report vindicated. There s so we’re getting to the long marinating hit job theory. Well, the report vindicated them. And as part of that report, they said, Well, there are some some tweaks we should make here. You know, there are some things that as a growing organization, you should do a little bit better. Well, by golly, what organization does not have that is it? It was like policy. Some of the policies and procedures need to be right. Revised, but they’re experiencing explosive growth. I mean, it’s not uncommon for policies the lag behind growth as you’re trying to raise more money and do more programs, and both Steve and Al were seasoned at growing. They knew what they were doing. And so if you take that, you say that doesn’t make sense. What also doesn’t make sense is that a few years earlier, Simpson Thatcher also did a report on the Clinton Foundation, and they were scaling. This is a conflict of interest here. There are no policies. Everything’s wrong. There’s just like it’s crazy now, one scintilla of a recommendation to replace anyone at the Clinton Foundation here. Everything’s going well. We have a few things that we think we should, you know, upgrade. But you know, those two guys that have authored this entire success for the last decade, they need to go clearly. Let’s bring in Richard Jones. That’s a good time for him. He’s on the board of Wounded Warrior project. Uh, still is. I meant at the time. But he still is. Yeah. You say he remained. I didn’t know if he still is today. Okay, I think he’s going off the board at the end of this, Okay? But I think you still think it’s the last line of your book. Richard Jones remained. Yes. Um, but he’s on a couple of other boards and he’s got a He’s got a duty of loyalty to CBS as well. Talk about him. Well, I can only remember offhand right now. One of those two other boards and one was Dixon House. The other was the Veterans Family Institute for Vets and Military Families. E M F. Thank you. And there were a lot of organizations that I implied earlier who didn’t feel comfortable with wounded warrior projects. Growing success. And these were two of them and he was on those boards. And so he comes in. I believe in 2014 or 2015 I get the years a little bit off. It was after the Super Bowl. CBS dedicated the Super Bowl add to the Wounded Warrior Project, and I think he had something to do with it all. Good. So after that, he wants to be on the board of Wounded Warrior Project, and I asked Steve about this and I asked him other board members. Richard Jones didn’t talk to you know, I didn’t see any interview note for them. Well, the interview note that I do have in there is that he didn’t talk to me. Okay, um, when I show what I asked him, I asked all of the boardmember is the same thing, and nobody talked to me. But he was on the boards of these two other organizations that itself wouldn’t so much. It would raise a little bit of a red flag, but it would be disqualifying. I don’t believe, even though they might have known that these other two organizations were in opposition or really didn’t like W W. P. But there’s a lot of that going on. So it’s not the issue. The issue of the day. What really got my attention was that he was also a senior executive at CBS at the very time this was going on. And the criticism that CBS had of Wounded Warrior project was the very area that Richard really Jones was overseeing. I thought there was a conflict there and and a story I still do. You know, I feel it was very wrong, and I I’m I’m really interested in knowing why Richard Jones was allowed to be so much a part of not just wounded warrior project of the investigation that followed. Yeah, you question the board vetting of him when they when they invited him to come on, The fact that he’s a boardmember of two other competing organizations. Well, yeah, I do question esos veteran service organizations. Well, I don’t know that the other two are vey CVS. Oh, that’s a very specific designation. Okay, that’s okay. That same same world. And I wouldn’t call them. I would call him competing in the sense that they didn’t like Wounded Warrior project. They weren’t in the same league. And what I say that I’m not criticizing their size or anything there A lot of small organizations that are doing your job. It’s not that. But he came on and he he wanted a state and al to be fired. I did talk to board members who told me this that they he wanted them to be fired. And he insisted on the unanimous vote that they be fired. He insisted the vote be, you know, he was gonna He threatened to resign. That’s that’s strange. He threatened to resign if it wasn’t a unanimous vote to fire. Nor dizzy. And, uh um, Joe dahna. Yes. And this is, by the way, as a decide one person. It makes it sound so personal. Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Yeah. And then you have CBS doing this hit job, and it’s zee kind of a thicket of crazy questions coming around. All right, we gotta take, uh, take another break. We’re gonna bring in the charity evaluators, charity navigator and charity watch, too. Um, where are we now? We are with, um, Cougar Mountain Software, koegler Mountain. Simple to use. And the support is phenomenal. With a program like quick books, you don’t have support. If you don’t have support, it’s worth nothing. That’s quote Christine Christenson, the owner of Broomfield Cheap metal who uses obviously uses ku Commander. You can’t learn from a small business owner who loves the support at koegler Mountain. Of course you can. They have a free 60 day trial. You’ll find that on the listener landing page, which is at tony dot m a slash Cougar mountain. Now, time for Tony’s Take two your planned giving relationships. Um, when you, uh, inaugurate your plan giving program, you’re gonna be talking to people, mostly in their hundreds. I’ve never spoken to anyone over 100 but I’ve had probably hundreds of conversations with or thousands in all those decades but many, many with folks in their nineties. And, um, some of them are. It could be a little lonely and look for a little, you know, one a little more of your time on the personal side. And that could be a little risky for your plan giving program. And I flush that all out in, ah, my video. What to avoid in your plan giving relationships. And you will find that you know where to find that pizza that tony martignetti dot com and that is Tony. Stick to. Now let’s go back to, uh, Wounded Charity with Doug White, the author, teacher, the author, teacher consultant v. The author, teacher consultant to non-profits and philanthropist. Let’s bring in, um, charting. Navigator and charitywatch don’t have too many kind words. You have some, but not too much for these to charity rating organizations. No, I don’t. I think they should just stop doing what they’re doing. They’re doing more harm than good on that. It’s interesting you bring that up. I mean, they were a large part of the story, but there are a large part of the story in a couple of different ways. It’s because I wrote an article about Charity Navigator that came out in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that week in January 26. That was pure coincidence, right? It was pretty much a coincidence. I had put it in. But then the Wounded warrior project came in and I was able to add a sentence or two. I called Stacey and that the Chronicle. Stacy Palmer, editor dropping names, look atyou, dropping names. I call him Mr Palmer, but you know where Stacy? So we got a line in there. But it came out that week and it was Peter Hoener Camp who had been given that article by a friend of Hiss. And that’s why he called me. And that’s how I got in touch with wounded were how they got in touch with me Now going back to what charity navigator. Is it Zen evaluator way? OK, I don’t like them because they do a bad job. They they do not evaluate charities. They take numbers and they’re competent at dividing and adding and multiplying. But the relationship between those things, that is to say, what is spent on program or how much of CEO is paid or how much is spent on fund-raising or how many assets they have in the bank or whatever that is, is not direct indicator of how charity is doing in terms of its in terms of its work. And so they’ve been struggling with this for a very long time and trying to find this right mix the right algorithm. Well, there is no algorithm. That’s well, well, they have this former formulas and altum they wait certain things. They include certain things. They discount certain things, which is all very subjective. S o they It’s sort of it’s ah, it’s an objective product from a subjective process. You’re So you’re so right about that? I don’t know if you know this, Baxter. You know, I started I had forgotten that. But you, uh you have told me that in the past. Yeah, on dso Ken Berger. Very well. Who was Who was then the chair? I was CEO. Yeah, and I like him. I like him a lot. And I like Pat Dugan who funded charity navigator Pat Dugan had just sold out of his company, and I guess 2000 and that’s when I came out to be a consultant for him for a while, and he said, I want to know more about charities and he’s a good guy and he’s a kind of hardscrabble smart guy and wanted to do more in philanthropy in his life. And he said, If I can get the information, I can get this information out and help people understand how good charities are. And I said, The only thing we have that we can use is information from the 9 90 and there are lots of problems with that. The first problem is that it’s about a year and 1/2 to 2 years old, so you don’t really He wanted a morning star kind of a thing for charities, and it’s not gonna be the same in any way. The information on it is subjective because many people have. But there’s a lot of gray area in interpreting the 9 90 Yes, and finally I said you wouldn’t get married to someone if the only thing you knew about that person was her 10 40. It’s a relationship thes people have with the charity. It’s not just a matter of saying OK, you’re fund-raising efficiency is 20% whereas somebody else’s is better. And therefore, I’m gonna support that charity. I wanna go to a charity that I feel personally invested in in terms of the mission in terms of my own values. And so from that perspective, I said, We’re not gonna get very far in evaluating charity says That’s okay, I get it. I don’t really want anything more at this point. This is what we’re gonna do and besides the only information we have. So we did that. So all of that waiting and all of that has been revised many times. But it was very beginning. That’s what we did. But I always knew that it wasn’t the full story and it would never be the full story. It could never be the full story. Now that isn’t to say there can’t be a full story from other data or other information, but the charity world hasn’t yet gotten there, but that certainly doesn’t do it. But because there’s a vacuum, it fills that vacuum, and so people go to it. And Ken Burgers, predecessor Trump’s Trent Stamp, another super guy in a lot of ways, put charity navigator on the map. And so he became the go to for a lot of media in terms of questions about charities. And I just knew again I like Trent to a great deal. But they would be. He was being asked questions that had nothing to do with his work. A charity navigator like what kind of issues a charity would have with regard to its programs or something like that. And that’s not what Charity Navigator does. Yet it’s become this name of a new organization that knows everything about charities. And that’s not true. Let’s go, Thio. The reports come out, CBS News, New York Times, Charity Navigator and Charitywatch react. Well, What happened first was the charity navigator. Numbers were in the report and shared an advocator. Said that only 60% of the money was going toward programs. And wasn’t this a scandal and everything like that and s. So what happened was I talked to Ken Berger, and that’s in the book to I interviewed him and the reason that number was what it was. And I’m not thinking there’s anything generically wrong with 60%. Let’s get that straight right now. But put that aside for a moment, but it was higher than that because they were not charity. Navigator was not taking into account allocated costs that were being allocated to different Double Double Kid. You gotta read the book for that level of detail. Just get the damn book. But it’s not that complicated. I’ll say xero for readers. But the point being that charity Navigator disregarded both with G A P, the General Accounting Principles General, the accepted A Carroll accepted and the I. R s guidelines for doing this and charted every said. And Ken is very blond about this. We just didn’t take that into account. We just cut it off. So well, that’s not very fair, he said. Well, but the charity head of the opportunity to call us and correct it. So why is it up to them to call you to correct your mistake? Because they were up by almost 50%. It was like 85 instead of 60 was 85. Yes, yeah, yeah, and we don’t want to dwell on that number anyway, you know, there’s the whole overhead myth and, well, there is the biggest hypocrisy because, uh, charity navigator was the signature one of those I know. I had all three of them on the show when the letter when the overhead myth letter came out. Yes. I had Jacob, Harold and Ken Berger and Art Taylor on. Well, the other two were okay, but what did Ken Berger say to defend himself in that he’s the one who created the myth. So now he’s saying, OK, now we’re against that, right? I don’t get that. Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m getting a little bit. But I did have him on the show. That was, uh, October, October 2013. That letter came out. Um, that’s, um, other folks on the show to you. You opened with Dan piela and Brian mittendorf. Yes. Say both of them. They’ve both been on the go. Um, I don’t know what tooting my own horn, but this well, Danza show, do whatever the hell I want. Uh, they’re both good thinkers in this world. So damn very provocative. And he had a lot to say about one warrior project, Of course. Oh, you gotta read the book. You gotta be the book to find out. Exactly. I mean, everybody knows him from the Ted talk about the way we think about charities is what dead wrong. Okay, so we were Oh, it’s a charity navigator. In reaction to the reaction to the bad media charity Navigator puts them on what watch list or something or downgrades them. Right? The watch list thing. This is like This is so bizarre, Tony. I just can’t get my head around it still, and I’ve been swimming in this stuff for about 45 years now. So they put him on a watch list, and the watch list is nothing more than if unorganised ation is in the media in a negative way. They’re automatically put on the watch list because now we have some concerns about it. But now we have some concerns about it. So the funny thing is that a week or two later, right after that’s put on the watch list, CBS does another story saying Charity Navigator’s on the watch list. I Wonder Warrior Project. What? I’m sorry. Yeah, they put on the watch is by charitynavigator. Yeah, and the thing is bad. It was self perpetuating. But the other thing is that the story had nothing about being on the watch list. The story was just a rehash of other stuff they’d already right. So CBS wanted to grab this headline and then did nothing with it because there’s nothing to do with smaller organization Charity Raider Charitywatch. They did something similar. Yeah, they did in reaction to the media. Yeah, and they’re in the same ballpark I feel is charity Navigator when it comes to looking only at the numbers. Dan More shop. I don’t know if you’ve ever had him on. He’s out of Chicago. It’s a much smaller organization right on and again coming up with these ludicrous comments about the way charity should be run and no offence. Well, I guess I do mean to give offense. Let me be frank about my own intentions here. I don’t feel that Daniel Borisov is adding very much to the conversation about the charity world right now, and so I do criticize that, and if he’s going to sit there and criticize expenses, you should look in the mirror because his expenses with regard to his own salary a lot higher than anybody’s with regard to you. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, in relationship to the entire, but it’s like 1/2 $1,000,000. Your organization isn’t a tiny place. Okay, Um, all right. We still have another couple minutes before, uh, before before a break. Uhm All right, so they get this financial audit, it’s Simpson, Thatcher and f t. I. Very clean, with minor policy and procedure to minor things on you point out in a lot of detail the differences between the wounded warrior, project evaluation and the Clinton Foundation, but by the same firm Simpson Thatcher from, um, I guess we should start to, uh, hone in on the board a little bit. Now. You feel like it was left. Everything. Anything major out. I wanted to bring in the Richard Jones character. We left anything out. I mean, they were Well, yeah, jealousy. Okay, let’s take a look it for we analyze the boarding. Let’s look well, hard to analyze the board without Richard Jones being a part of it, and vice versa. But in terms of Jones role here he was the head of the audit committee, right? He’s the head of the Dam Art Committee that oversees the production of the 9 90 Yes, and he’s He’s flabbergasted by by these thieves. Media reports about overspending and lavish conferences. I’m sorry. Come back to take a break. Yeah. Let me get a break in. Because I know you’re on a roll for our last break. Turn to communications, PR and content for your non-profit. They help you tell your compelling stories and get media attention to those stories on and build support for your mission and your work. They do media relations, content marketing, communications and marketing strategy and branding strategy. Doug and I were talking about the Chronicle of philanthropy, and the assistant editor of Chronicle of Philanthropy is former assistant editor Peter panepento is a principle of turn to communications there. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. We gotta get the live listener loving Doug White. You brought, uh, you said you were out soliciting listeners. We got a lot of lot of live love going out. Thio Duncan, South Carolina, New York, New York Glenside, Pennsylvania, Jacksonville, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina. Close. Thank you. Close to Emerald Isle. Tip of Florida Tampa floor. Like I’m 14 my voice breaks Atlanta, Georgia in New Bern, North Carolina Even closer. My goodness. Live love to there. Um, before we go abroad, Wallingford, Connecticut, and field Connecticut, Oakland, California, Arlington, Virginia. Franconia, Virginia. I know. Franconia. I think I might know that is, uh, somebody might actually be listening to me instead of you, Doug. 11 person. Uh, maybe this too. Uh, live love out to all of you. Philadelphia P A as well. Huntington Park, California And thats everybody, you know, and, uh, Br What is this? California. Where That br What you’re writing there. Braila. Braila, California Live love to all our domestic live listeners. Thanks so much for being with us. Let’s go abroad. Thio El Salvador. Guatemala. Lord is Guatemala multiple Guatemala. Welcome. Welcome. Live love to you Guatemala. Um Brasilia, Brazil. So Juan Korea, Inchon, Korea and, uh, Machado’s Brazil as well. Wonderful. Multiple Brazil, multiple Guatemala. And, of course, our friends in South Korea. Always checking in live love to each of our live listeners. Thanks so much for being with us and the podcast pleasantries. That’s where you know. Not that we’re focused strictly on the numbers, but the vast majority does listen by the podcast live listeners. You’re welcome to join the podcast as well for times when you can’t catch us. Friday 1 to 2 eastern time join the over 30 13,000 people listening live listening on the podcast. So the pledges trees the pleasantries and the AMA said pageantry is but the passing key pattern trees and the pleasantries go out to the podcast. Listeners, thank you for being with us. Got butt loads more time for, Ah, Doug White and, uh, wounded charity. Okay, um, I got so effusive, but I forgot. Over what? What was I? Oh, that’s right. This guy, Richard Jones, is the chair of the audit committee, for Pete’s sake. Yes, go ahead, Tyr, the audit committee and you have to go back and look at that broadcast that CBS did that first night, but also all three. But in that first night, and it was like, Shaq, you’ve got this terrible 9 90 out, and I’m shocked, shocked to learn that there are in proprieties financial proprieties at the wounded warrior project. But the fact is, there weren’t any minute they weren’t that. In fact, they did a evaluation of all of the budgeting for the prior seven or eight years. An audit. They didn’t find anything out of place, Not a dime. That’s right. I gave a bad remark. That was a bad film reference because the French lieutenant’s exactly what’s going on. It is bad and yeah, that was That was a bad reference. That’s okay, because of what? It really wasn’t any gambling going on in this in this there was not. But but Richard Jones was a boardmember and was also a senior executive at CBS and also very involved with the veterans community is a highly regarded guy. I mean, you know, when it comes to anything personal or anything, nothing there. I wanna be clear that I have found nothing in these people’s lives. That or anything but stellar. But in terms of evaluating what happened here, we have to be clear. Yeah, it was It was a crisis and people reacted badly and the board, collectively failed, failed the organization. Right? And I would also be clear about that with regard to, as I mentioned before, Dave Phillips and also Chip Reid. Stellar reporters Chip Reid was the CBS Carson, this guy. So getting back to Richard Jones, the report comes back orally. Remember that it’s not been anything delivered in written format, and there’s a news conference that the wounded warrior project has on March. I believe it was 9 March nine and says this is what the results were. And on top of that, we’re getting rid of our two top guys that same night that came through. But during that month, when that that audit was taking place, Richard Jones was involved in the interviewing process. So here he is being involved in the interviewing process, along with Simpson Thatcher on matters that he was very much overseeing very much a part of overseeing at Wounded Warrior project, about how CBS had had written and reported its stories. So there’s, you know, I’m not stretching for this one. There was a conflict of interest there. He had a duty of loyalty to both his employer and because of his board relationship with Wounded Warrior Project duty of loyalty there. Yes, he did, as well as Karen Obedience. That’s correct. So the question that I have never been able to ask, even though I did accept the answer even though I did ask it, is why he was permitted to do that, why he wanted to do that. I suspect a couple of things. One is he could do whatever you want to do because he’s boardmember and you know that’s what they do. Sometimes he was also very influential. I think that and I wasn’t able to really put thes two dots together. But I think that his having been somewhat instrumental in getting the Super Bowl ad brought him into the full W W p. And nobody really thought anything about it at the time and even asked Steve, how did he come into the board? And I asked him, boardmember is how they how he came into the board and they really couldn’t remember any kind of moment. But one boardmember said that he was very upset that Jones did not disclose his relationships with the other two organizations. So here he is, and I’m thinking something is going on here. But that was on the relationships worrying his LinkedIn profile. Those relationships wearing Richard Jones is linked in profile. That is correct. The board would not have had to dive deep too far. You don’t need a private investigator to find those you’re making good pose board relationships. Yes, you are making good point for a moment there, after I had badgered him with thes e mails. I think his LinkedIn profile became not public. But then I went back. About a year later. It was there. So maybe it was my fault, I don’t know. But at any rate, he was in a curious place in this whole drama here. And so I began to wonder, Did this this ousting process begin? Well before this crisis and was the crisis basically invented? So I’m thinking that it waas on. It was fairly easy to get some disgruntled employees, but I don’t know why. Eric Millette, the face of the of the CBS reports, came out to be so negative against Wounded Warrior Project after he himself had been so effusively positive about Wounded Warrior Project had been rated best charity to work. That’s that’s all comes from employees ratings. Yes, I’m not making any of this stuff as I am, he’s saying, Oh, I have great thoughts about W. W. P. This is all external stuff, right? It was a couple of years in a row or something. It was it was number one or number two number one charity to work at for a couple of years in a row in there, like the top five for others. But there was this Facebook page of disgruntled employees who felt that there there was. There were firings for trivial reasons. And they felt if you didn’t fit in, you got fired, right? Is that the basis of basically what their complaints were? That is what their complaints were. But it’s funny because the firings were for cause and there is some fairly big deal firings. One guy was caught stealing from the from the till fundraiser, and two people following that were fired because they allowed it to happen. They knew it. And so it was the opposite of what you’d find in a scandal. They were doing everything you should just to stay clean. Al was really on top of that. He would. And the other thing I want to be clear about here is that these people loved Alan. Steve, Steve, Steve was in a very public place and and Alice always been in the operation side of it. But in my interviews, I don’t think I had one person that I interviewed who wouldn’t didn’t go out of his way to say, you know, if it weren’t for Al here, he is the CEO of this multi $1,000,000 organization. Hundreds of millions of dollars of or he’s the second guy CEO Seo. And he’s he’s taking time to get me through this crisis or that crisis or worked with the V A. They used to make calls. They would make the calls to some of the recipients of the services. Yes, because at its core, W, W, P, and all of the V esos and others exist because VH has some cracks in it. That’s yeah, that’s that’s flushed out of the booth. Got a by the book to get you to get that detail. There would be cracks no matter what. But there’s severe crisis. So Alice going through in trying to help them navigate this Byzantine system and they love for Al. It was overwhelming, all right, we need to switch to the board. Doesn’t wanna spend time positivity and bored, and what the board should have done it so clearly the board should not have silenced do not have been silent itself on. Dhe should not have silenced. It’s to it’s to talk to duck guys. Steve went to Tony, Tony oh, tea or no and said we have to have a strategy here. And he had already created some outlines for a strategy with Live Strong. And I think Coleman and another group who had gone through crises and what the fund-raising resulted in from that and they were not interested in pursuing that. Now they have the crisis coming up there. They’re winging it and doing a bad job of it, right? He had encouraged crisis management training long before this all happened. Yes, and they didn’t invite eso. No crisis management training could be very valuable for you, For you, for you and your board. That’s right. And I will speculate, and I have to label. This is speculation or opinion or whatever. I believe that the crisis was somewhat manufactured, right? Well, that’s the long marinating his job. So the board Okay, so you want to get to the board and I taught board governance for 20 years at N Y. U and Columbia. I still do this Southern University, so I think, and I think board governance is where it’s at when it comes to really understanding. Non-profits and non-profits don’t really advertiser. Their boards are. It’s always the CEO. It’s out there in the face of the public. And so we really don’t know what boards do or who they are, which is, I guess, OK, But they are your listeners to know they’re the guys who are really running the show from a strategic and long range perspective. And so they really are the decision makers when important issues come up on. And in this particular case, they, I think, made a lot of bad decisions. And, uh, toward the end, I think they let Steve and Al do what they needed to do. But Allen Steve always made sure that the board was on board and that the board’s suggestions and opinions were always taken into account. And there are examples in the book where that is proven to be true. So, boardmember, who says Stephen Al just flew off? We had no idea what was going on is demonstrably false. Yeah, that all these right? All the lavish conferences the board had approved the conference expenses. You point that out? Yes, and they were sighted at $3 million they were under $1 million in one example Almost almost 30. Yeah, Exactly. Okay. What else? What else can. Non-profit takeaway. Well, board wise, it’s not. Everybody’s going to be in the cross hairs like Wounded Warrior Project. So it’s It’s a specific organisation there, but any organization can be caught and to be in trouble. So what should be? What should aboard do? The board should have a tremendous relationship with its senior staff. If there’s a bad relationship with the senior staff that has to be taken care of before anything else is done, that might mean getting rid of a few board members that might be get mean, getting rid of the senior staff. Make sure that’s there. The thing is, the thing about this is that was the case. There was a good relationship between Steven now and the board. But the problem is, and I think this is where Richard Jones played an oversized role in the whole process. They were allowed Thio fire these guys a Ziff. They deserved it and they didn’t deserve it. And so the board, the board has to be on top of this from a public relations perspective as well as an operational one, in my view, and the public relations perspective is not unimportant, it’s not just the dressing on the whole thing. It’s what’s really ruined. Or, I should say hurt. Not ruined. Hurt. Wounded Warrior project. Since that day, they have lost over 1/2 a $1,000,000,000 in revenue. The half 600 I think $50 million in revenue from that day in the last three years take caution. Get the book because there’s there’s a lot more detail that we were not able to cover. It is wounded Charity lessons learned from the Wounded Warrior Project Crisis, published early October, But you can advance by it on on Amazon. I know for a fact again, he’s Doug White, author, teacher and advisor to non-profit organizations and philanthropists. Thank you so much, Doug. It’s been a pleasure to see you again minded get mine as well. Next week, I’m working on it. I have I ever let you down? There was that one time with the fermentation show, but that was so long ago. I was I was only 52 then. Youthful indiscretion on that show. Um, if you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by Wagner CPS guiding you beyond the numbers record. Cps dot com by koegler Mountain Software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for non-profits tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn to communications, PR and content for non-profits, Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. A creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is By Scott Steiner, Brooklyn. They’re with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit Ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking Alternate network. You’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in Sumpter potentially ater. Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Beyond potential Live Life, Your Way on talk radio dot N Y C. 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Nonprofit Radio for September 22, 2017: Robertson v. Princeton

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Doug White: Robertson v. Princeton

Doug White is the author of “Abusing Donor Intent: The Robertson Family’s Epic Lawsuit Against Princeton University.” He returns to tell how trust eroded between donor and university, and a $35 million gift from 1961 ended in a messy lawsuit. He’s got lots of lessons to share to help you avoid the same. (Originally aired May 9, 2014)

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Hey, you could catch maria simple on msnbc this weekend. She’s going to be on your business with j j ramberg on sunday at seven thirty a m eastern, so check out our prospect research contributor maria simple on msnbc sunday morning. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with care. Arai assis, if you wormed in with the idea that you missed today’s show robertson v princeton doug white is author of the book abusing donor intent, the robertson family’s epic lawsuit against princeton university. He returns to the show to tell us how trust eroded between donor and university and a thirty five million dollars gift from nineteen, sixty one ended in a messy lawsuit. You’ve got lots of lessons to share to help you avoid the same and that originally aired on may ninth twenty fourteen on tony’s take two five minute pg marketing we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by wagner, cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com you’re not. A business you’re non-profit apple owes accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com here is doug white with robertson v princeton first piece. I am very glad to welcome back to the show and back to the studio. Doug wait, author, professor, advisor to non-profits and philanthropists he’s on the faculty in the masters in fund-raising program at columbia university. Abusing donorsearch intent is his fourth book. You’ll find him at doug white dot net. Welcome back, doug. Wait. It’s, good to be back and to see you again. I have to ask the question. That’s on everybody’s mind though. Cerebral ischemia. What is that? That’s? A well, that this week that’s that’s. What? I’ll suffer if i find out that someone had not heard this week’s show a cerebral it’s a form of a stroke ice since kenya’s had a sense that’s what? It was what i wanted to ask you, being an attorney and all. You probably come up with all of these terms. Yeah, well, we make the well back. When i was practicing law now we would make these things. Up there the way were we would defend against people who had made them up as if the slip and fall in aisle seven on the relish that’s that caused it, and an approximate cause of the ischemia twelve years later, that that was there was actually a cause and effect relationship and that’s what we were trying to defeat it’s great to see things haven’t changed and that’s actually kind of a segue way to a lawsuit story. I don’t know, i’m sure that’s true and that’s why i don’t practice law any longer because i was not interested in the relish bill in aisle seven, but this lawsuit that we’re going to talk about is a lot more meaningful than then slip and falls and trips and falls. You you spend your a lot of time thinking about ethics and fund-raising last time you were on, we were talking about your book around ethics, and this is, uh, donorsearch trust and loyalty. How were all these? How are all these related in your in your professorial authorship? Mind? Well, someone might accuse me of having a cerebral something else because of all of the mishmash that goes on. In my head on this stuff. But i won’t. But really, i think that there’s a lot to think about in the nonprofit world that we don’t otherwise think about, we think about fund-raising and we think about boards and all of those things are important, but i’m tryingto get a handle on what society does with its non-profit sector and how the non-profit sector responds back, and so it takes me to these corners that are really weird, and in this particular case, it took me to a story that had something to do with trust and a lot of money and a huge university. And the question is, how could someone accuse princeton of doing something so egregious and that’s? Not an easy question? Answer. In fact, when i went into this story, i didn’t think princeton was really all that guilty of anything, uh, ok, because, uh, as i read through the book, i sensed you trying to be objective. But in the end, i was left with the sense that you felt princeton really had wronged this. The robertson family. You want to tell the end right now? I’m trying to get people to buy the book here in the story. There you go there. Is going to see oil or alert? We only have an hour together. There’s lots of information that people going by the book around because you were just going to school is going to touch the were scratching the surface that’s in a mere hour. The book is very well worth buying. Nine just kind of yes, i know, but now that was the that was okay, we’ll get into the details of that, but i think it’s sort of a tease, you know, that is that was kind of what i was left with, and two thousand six i had finished the book called charity on trial and was interviewed on television station in washington, and somebody brought up the princeton case because i had written about it a little bit, it hadn’t gone anywhere. It was still in the lawsuit stage, and the interviewer asked what i thought of the princeton case, and i thought that princeton had a pretty good case to defend themselves on. I said that at the time, and i felt that for a long time because i like i’m sure many, many people feel like a place like princeton really has its act. Together and is a pretty good place, and i say that knowing that it’s, i still feel that way. But there were issues that i discovered along the way that i felt really made them look bad. Okay? Okay, and we’re going toe t c we’re going to follow your evolution, okay, you’ve you’ve you’ve come, you’ve come around. I know you’re thinking has evolved. Let’s, let’s not tease any longer. This this goes back to ah nineteen. Sixty one gift from charles roberts heimans set up a little bit for you. Charles robertson, co founder of the great atlantic and pacific tea company the mp supermarkets nineteen sixty one gift to princeton university. Well, let me just do a little bit of a nuance on that. Exactly. The wife, marie robertson, who is the heiress of the mp fortune. She funded it, right? She actually tent. Technically, did fundez yes way say that there were donors, but technically, there was one donor, and that was marie robertson. Okay, but charles robertson, her husband was such a large player in the gift you’re gonna you’re gonna hold my feet to the fire on the details. Well, you’re an attorney and i can’t. Well, i was i was that’s the second time. Now you’ve accused me. I’m not an attorney, sabelo you’re recovering attorney. Yeah. I mean, i do fund-raising more than i do. Attorney work. It plays a part, but i didn’t say it disparagingly. I say it with no i d s marriage, but but you should hold me to the fire because you wrote a book and oh, and i’m glossy. Andi, i you know, ignoring details. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Marie robertson was actually the donor. Yeah, technology. But we think of them as donors and that’s. Fine. She was the heiress of the mp fortune and her one tenth share of the stock when it became available to be invaded after the trust was dissolved in nineteen. Fifty seven was about ninety million dollars. She got ninety million dollars one day from the trust. And charles, her husband, her second husband. I was an investment adviser and he new two things. One is not only should this stock portfolio within the family be diversified, he also did not have any faith in the management of the mp at that time, after the original people died off. He didn’t think it was going to go anywhere. And he was actually right on dh. You could predict anything, but in this particular case, he was right. The mp actually filed for bankruptcy just a few years ago. I don’t know what status today, but it did have a lot of difficulty. The stock did go down, so they were right to a diversify. And also the other part of that in terms of wealth management planning was to make a charitable gift to save on huge, huge taxes. The marginal tax rate at that time was ninety one percent. So this brought them to the woodrow wilson school at princeton university. It did. Ah, charles was a graduate of princeton, so let’s get that out and they were both very interested. Or he was really the intellectual driver behind the gift and it’s purpose. He was very interested, but they both were. They were both interested in international relations. This was an era of that. Today we find it hard to even think happened. There was an optimism in the united states, and there was a lot of challenge because of the height of the cold war, too. In nineteen sixty one, kennedy had just been elected. And so there was the sense of america. Khun do it. There was this idea that we were going to go to the moon, which we did. There was this idea that we could almost conquer anything which we didn’t. But there was a sense, this vibrancy and the robertsons felt that it would be really great if we could go to a really great school, like princeton, the woodrow wilson school which existed before the gift, by the way, and have people go into the foreign service of the government to go out and spread american values, not in any political sort of away or ideological sort of way other than democracy, but do it through the idea of foreign service through a peaceful way. And so the idea was to get students who were at the woodrow wilson school graduate program to then go into the foreign service oppcoll the negotiations ensued, of course, a lot of talk about what the donor’s objectives were, and how to achieve those objectives of a sze yu put it, you know, the broad goal of strengthening the foreign service in the united states. And using the doing that through the woodrow wilson school, their phrase was strengthening the united states government pretty clear, it’s clear, but it’s also abroad. The specific phrase that i think we are probably gonna have to talk about a little bit is the phrase particular emphasis, the idea that students would go into the foreign service area or some branch of the government that had dealings with the foreign service, and that the school would put particular emphasis that’s in the document on putting those students in those positions. Okay, we’re gonna take our first break. Onda of course, doug white stays with us. We’re going to keep talking about the the evolution of this, the the gift and the lawsuit and the lessons, of course. That’s, you know, that’s important that we want to leave you with takeaways so that you can avoid something like this may not be epic in your in your case, but could still be very seriously want help you avoid problems like princeton had with his donors. So stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick, ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Duitz welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m sorry, i can’t send live listener love today. Ah, directly live, because we’re pre recording today, but doesn’t you were listening live. I send you my thanks. Thanks for listening. And, of course, podcast pleasantries to those of you listening everywhere else but live very glad you’re with us. The now we have an hour, but we only have an hour. So we have to fast forward a little bit now, too. How things started. Teo devolve from charles and marie the parents to bill robertson, the son of charles and marie. Things started to break down over time in the in the relationship. One of the interesting aspects of this case is they started to break down a lot sooner than princeton had been saying. Charles robertson himself was very upset. Within a few years of the gift with the lack of results at the school, he had done a lot of research on what the school could do. He had talked to important government officials before setting up the foundation. And by the way, this was a foundation to support the program at the woodrow wilson school. Today, it would be known as, ah supporting organization back in nineteen sixty one, they didn’t have that, but that’s what effectively acted as and so he was on the board as well as two other family members. So there were three family members and for people from princeton on the board of this foundation called the robertson foundation that’s important, i think three family members, four people from princeton, absolutely. That was important for a lot of reasons that turned out to be one of the reasons that there was eventually a lawsuit, but it was also important for the irs to give its blessing to the charitable stature of this organization. So charles robertson knew that princeton would have the four votes they would have control. There was no real question in his mind, but he also wanted to have the families input too over the years over the generations. And so there was this balancing act that they were trying to accomplish, and i think they were all going into this in good faith. There’s no, in my view, any question about that? At the point, the gift was made, but there was always some question as to what the school was going to do. In other words, this was going to be a great program for international relations, and it is today. And i want to be clear about that it’s one of the best in the united states or the best in the world. But the gift was made in order to make room for students to go into the foreign service. That was the whole point of the gift. That was the point of the gift. It wasn’t to make the woodrow wilson school great. It was to put people into the foreign service or in the foreign relations positions in the united states government and that’s what wasn’t happening. And only a few years after that, charles robertson started to look at this and say, what’s our progress, and over the years, i don’t know the exact figure right now, but up until twenty or two, i would say perhaps thirteen to fourteen percent of the students actually went into the government, which was an abysmal failure from charles robertson’s perspective, and so he was upset from pretty pretty much the beginning, and i got my hands on documents that proves this. This was not something that bill robertson is inventing he’s able to show me letters that his father wrote angrily. I mean, there was a lot of emotion in these things to show that he was very upset with the progress of the woodrow wilson school bill robinson comes into the picture because he’s young at this point in nineteen seventy two i think he graduated from princeton himself, so he wasn’t really old. He came out of the board after one of the other family members went off and took basically his father’s place on the board on his family portion of the board in nineteen eighty one after his father died. And so bill took over that mantle of keeping a sharp eye on the progress of the woodrow wilson school graduate program, and continue to be unhappy with it. So it did go from charles to bill, but another dynamic here that we don’t often times take into account. What i tried to describe in the book was bill’s intense loyalty to his parents and in this particular case, his father he felt that his father and mother put this gift the hugest gift basically that had ever been given to a university to that time. And he felt that things weren’t being done correctly. And and his mother, too, was very there’s. Ah, something you say in the book that that bill feels very strong that his mother relied on on princeton and this gift up until her death? Yes, on dh. Trusted them. Yes. Yes, this trust was a big deal, and trust is a big deal in all of our lives, and i don’t know that we really analyze it well or feel it about it their way we might, but i feel strongly that both bill excuse me. Both charles and marie were hoping for more from this gift, and they were trusting princeton probably more than they should have been, but that’s another issue point is that by the time bill took over his seat on the board, things were not improving. And so bill kept up that as i say that that i on on the progress, that isn’t what triggered the lawsuit, but that was always ah, thorn in the side of the of the meetings on dove, the progress of the woodrow wilson school, they were not happy on dh there. I don’t know that there was based on what i’ve seen, i can’t say that i would actually say that there would be a point in that forty year history where they were ever happy. Okay, um, i have my favorite character in in the in this epic lawsuit, but i’m not going i know that i want to. Hold that dahna print co-branded an investment committee plays a big role here, and i think that has a lot and has a lot to do with the donor university relationship. Print go. You’re right, it’s the princeton investment company, i think. Oh, company. Yeah, those committee no. Close, close. Not bad. I’m gonna check you on that. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Check me out. Okay. While you’re doing that, i didn’t bring the book with me that i never bring the book because i don’t want to be, you know, page seventy four. You said all right, i’ll have to check later. This is the problem. Open book tests in high school. That’s why they don’t want to go ahead. All right. So the idea of going into a broader strategy for investing was anathema to bill, as it would have been to charles. In fact, part of the original document talked about how investments had to be put together. The idea was that print cho had been established a few years earlier, and the princeton and dahna, which had gone into several billions of dollars. At that point, i was going to be managed in a more modern way from them or traditional life and bill was way in the early eighties. Now we are in the early eighties. Yeah, we are actually. And charles did not want to get too risky with the investments, and neither did bill and bill, by the way, grew into a financial investment advisory capacity in his own right outside of this. And so he had some chops when it came to investigate. He also didn’t want to go to what became a pretty big norm at university investment houses. And that is to say, by the nineties late nineties, especially the idea of alternative investments was very, very popular, and the thieves were hedge fund these head from investing foreign in foreign companies. Yes. Now every every i have to say that what i was in this business in the investment business for charities, i understood there were lots and lots of asset classes and that’s fine way should always be on the cutting edge of understanding how finances and investments work. But they’re became a time when everything was going up and this happened throughout the two thousands to ana and what became really popular was what we call alternatives. Or the alternative investments like you say hedge funds and other things, and bill was really against that idea and print cho was going forward. He went down to print go because they were in another office and said, show me around and tell me what’s going on. And he was just not impressed with the idea of alternative investments and, quite frankly, again oppressions being what it is in twenty late that’s exactly what brought down these university endowments. In fact, princeton was so reliant upon investments they had about fifty percent or a little bit more in their endowment devoted to alternatives which, when i was in the world of investments back in the early nineties, we would think of two or three percent of a large and and so it got turned upside down, and that the tension was whether print coe should be investing the foundation assets along with the university endowment or and in the eyes of the roberts bill robertson that it should not print go should not have control over the investment exactly and that’s what triggered the lawsuit? It was that issue if you’re looking at one moment where the decision was made to actually file a lawsuit. It was one bill robertson finally got fed up after the after the board for two three voted to go to print cope, put the assets in the print going by the way that thirty five million dollars had grown to about eight hundred million dollars. That thirty five million dollars had grown to about eight hundred billion dollars by two thousand. Wow. Okay, that’s. Excellent perspective. All right, now we’re in the lawsuit. What else did the the lawsuit alleged besides the investment? Misappropriation? Well, not miss probation, but they were a couple of expenses and things like that. That right lawsuit alleged what happens? And you probably know this much better than i. But i learned this a little bit more during the course of writing the book. There was a complaint filed. We feel something is wrong, x and then there’s a response. And then in the process of looking at the issue’s, the plaintiffs have an opportunity to go through what’s called discovery. And in the process of that discovery, they discovered a lot of things that they didn’t know beforehand. So the original complaint had to do a lot. With print go, and it also had a lot to do with why students weren’t going into the foreign service. But during discovery, the plaintiff’s found that a lot of the money wasn’t being spent well, either. For example, people excuse me. Other departments at princeton were getting money from the foundation, and those departments weren’t really helping with the woodrow wilson school. The school princeton defends that and says, i’ll just use the phrase they use academic freedom. They say that academic freedom allowed them to make all of these decisions and bill’s perspective, as well as as well as the attorneys. Of course, for the family was that academic freedom, while it’s a cherished concept and we really want to make sure that we never really violated it still has its limits. You can’t, for example, well, maybe you can we don’t know this never was adjudicated by judge or jury so it’s we’ll never really know. But there was this guy this comment during the depositions, where the attorney for for the robertsons asked one of the president’s what what kind of expenditure would be allowed? And the person said, well, almost anything and the attorney said well, how about the hiring a basketball coach? Would that be allowed? And he said yes, oh, my yes, oh, my that’s a university president. That was the university. Yes saying this i forget whether it was the president or dean, i think it was the president and he said yes, because if we need to hire someone at the woodrow wilson school who likes basketball or whose husband or wife, teacher, our coaches, basketball or some connection and that brings that person to the woodrow wilson school, then we will spend that money on the basketball coach’s salary. Well, you can imagine how the robertsons would react to that. Yeah, and understanding that there is an idea, a fundamental, cherished ideal of academic freedom, we still are violating something very fundamental when that answer comes to the fore. Um, now listeners know that we have jargon jail on twenty martignetti non-profit radio, but i didn’t want to put you over there very simple. You know, the complaint that’s just i’m going to get you out of jargon job because i’m glad that you’re back for a third time on the show, so an attorney is going to get me. Out of the u s attorney’s doing all the time. We’re not all they are not. I’m not practicing law. I am not practicing law. There is that explicit. If i made that clear, those who do practice law often are getting people out of prison. It’s one of the noble or things that we do is restore someone’s freed that they do. They do pronoun trouble eyes restoring freedom to those erroneously held incarcerated. So yeah, the complaint is just that’s the way you you have a complaint. So that’s, how you start a lawsuit and discovery is exchange of all kinds of documents, and in this case it was emails and letters. Metoo certainly notes of notes of conversations you wanted. There was a lot. There was a lot in there that, as you said, the robertsons discovered that they hadn’t known about what was going on with the money in this discovery process of thousands of pages, you know, thousands of pages. Not all of them were stingingly terrible. Now, of course, a lot of it’s very mundane. Very, very monday, and you just have to sift through it because you never know when that nugget is. Going to pop out. But, yes, they found that this money was being spent all over the place at princeton and princeton will say, look, a woodrow wilson school is a great place. Okay, well, there’s, no question about that nobody’s arguing that but what we’re talking about is the intention of the donor and the document that was signed in nineteen sixty one that princeton agreed to, and so that the woodrow wilson school is a great place is true. But your relevant to this this question, the other thing was academic freedom. We can spend money pretty much however we want to. And the robertsons wanted to pull back on that. The another big issue in this was the how the robertsons legal fees are being paid. And that was being paid through the banbury fund. Another robertson family foundation let’s touch on that just lights. Just a little. Okay, princeton didn’t want that to happen, and the robertson said that they could do it. They got opinion letters from their attorneys and also had some precedents from the irs, both in private letter rulings and revenue rulings. So they were, i think, firm ground, but princeton still fights that battle today. They still say that it was improper for the banbury fund, too. Pay the robertson legal expenses. But from what i could say they were they were in a good place to do that. The robertsons work. Okay, um, starting to hint at some of our lessons for later on there was issue in the complaint also or in the subsequent complaint after the discovery around financial transparency. Yes. And disclosures that had not been made to the yeah, the robertsons family. Towboat robertson. So not only do we have these money, these dollars being spent their being spent without the family’s knowledge one was a a building that was being constructed almost entirely from the robertson. That was wallace all while, asshole. Yes. And if you ask bill robertson what the big reasons he went to court work, wallace hall was one of the three and a large part of that was they were not told this was taking place. So in other words, they took the position that not only could they use this money outside of direct connection to the woodrow wilson school, they didn’t have to tell the family about it. Forty three is this warner hall? I’m sorry. While us all was not part of the woodrow wilson school, not at all. It was not so to bill robertson. This is as far afield is hiring the basketball coach and paying for it exactly. He was very upset about that, and i don’t blame him. I mean, there were a lot of places where princeton didn’t have toe go to a lawsuit that could have done so much, and we’ll get to those in lessons later on. But when wallace hall came about, bill was livid. Yeah, well, s o you know, the institution does bad things, and then it covers it up and that’s the that’s, the financial transparency that was that was lacking, and it became part of the complaint. I’ve got more, of course, with doug white and the robertson lawsuit coming up first. Pursuant, their newest resource, the intelligent fund-raising health check downloaded for nine key performance indicators to measures your organization’s health. Ten universal characteristics of orders that are thriving in fund-raising eleven pipers piping, twelve drummers drumming i confess i had looked those up. I thought it was eleven lords leaping and i think it should be because you want to hit you wanna punch the the thehe liberations eleven lorts leaping i think i think the blue a chance that well, the who wrote the twelve days of christmas i think you blew a chance anyway, it’s not eleven lords leaping things. Only seven of those, but go to aa teo tony dot slash pursuant that’s where you’ll find the intelligent fund-raising health check acquisition campaigns pursuing had the webinar to help you acquire new donors. Now watch the archive, it’s. Never too late. Well, it’s going to be too late soon, actually, but it’s not too late. Now again, tony dahna slash pursuing the webinar is going to drop off that custom page that pursue it has for non-profit radio listeners. So get there. Check out that web in r and you can download the intelligent fund-raising health check also. Tony dot m a slash pursuant you gotta use a capital p wagner, cps. 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But check out the video it sze three minutes of five minute marketing for plan giving it. Of course, that is at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s. Take two. And here is more of doug white talking about the robertson v princeton epic lawsuit. The great you’re still here, right? I am cool. So we have now this lawsuit and the discovery and the and the amended complaint based on what the robertsons learned through discovery. And this lawsuit is on for six between six and seven years. I imagine the relationship was pretty damn difficulty between the foundation board and the princeton university. Ah, the administration and the people who are on the board from princeton university. They have to get together for board meetings. Excuse me. Yes, they do. And the bill, sister catherine ernst, described it as having a boardmember and then attorney, then the boardmember and then attorney all around the table, and not only the family, but also the princeton side of the board. It was very tense. They describe how in the early days when charlie was alive, that the relations were very good. There would be lunch at the president’s house. There would be a lot of camaraderie, even the problems were developing. The relations were pretty good by the time the lawsuit comes around. Nobody’s talking. Anybody aboard? Yeah, board meetings. And it became the antithesis of what? And again, i teach board governance at columbia. And we talk about the need for ah, transparency and fluidity. And, you know, trust and none of that was was was there during this lawsuit so it’s very, very tense there, even they were actually having meals in separate rooms. That’s, right? They family really saying we’re family boardmember zand the princeton university board members would would have lunches in separate rooms. That’s, right? They did need an adult to come in and take things. It was they ended up doing there for the settlement, but at this point, it was just i can’t imagine how tense that had to be. Yeah, and over six, seven years, yes, right, yes. Okay, um, let’s. Bring us to the settlement. Twenty eight a lot of things are going on. First of all, it’s true that the robertsons we’re running out of money, even though the banbury fund was funding the lawsuits, the love fees added up to about forty five million dollars on each side, which is an incredible about the money and even a place like the banbury fund was starting to feel that now, if i’ve been a part of those teams, i’d probably still be practicing law. Yes, i would have been. The buildings are so easy when you’re in a lawsuit, but i just never got that far. I stuck it out for two years, and i never made it to this level. Well, the judge retired the one that everybody bonded. Teo in light and respected. He retired. The judge’s clerk left to go work for the princeton lawyers, which was interesting. The new judge could only give it one day a week. And that was maria psychic. And she i was only going to be able to do it for one day a week, which stretched the lawsuit out even further. Give a dog a car there. And so there was a lot of delay and and i get this even though we kind of make fun of this from time to time, that even though there was a delay and there was a slow down, the work still had to be continued. The law fees were continuing. And so the question of being able to pay for this was a very acute one for the robertson family. On the other side of the coin, the princeton investments were going south because the crisis was taking place. And they were, as i say, and alternatives. And so they were having a liquidity problem. I think they probably only source of liquidity. Most fat during that time was probably tuition paying parents was just a very tight time. They might not acknowledge it that way, but that’s pretty much how i see it. And so they were both ready. I think, to talk settlement. They had tried beforehand they didn’t get anywhere. Bill originally wanted to take the entire endowment away and put it somewhere else. And that would have been a really riel problem for the princeton. Because if for no other reason, it would have been a real blow psychologically to this story. I really university. I get what they wanted to do there, so they were going back and forth. And the question was, should we force the university to repay all these dollars that they had misspent, which could have been an excess of about two hundred billion dollars back into the foundation? Or can we just take the foundation away? Or can we split away from the foundation and they wanted independence? They wanted to say, okay, we want money to go do our own thing, that is, to say what my parents were doing, who his parents were doing, and the and princeton really didn’t want that, so they said, okay, what we’ll do is we’ll consider chopping off some of this money and giving it to you if you let us keep the rest of it, you guys go away and that’s, basically, what happened? They did bring in an adult david gal fan from milbank tweed who came in and his whole approach was saying not to say who had the better argument legally, his approach was, how can we get out of this mess? And i think he was a good voice. He was not part. Of the litigation. And he was a good voice to be brought in at this time, and he actually did the settlement. He was very good. And the settlement wass that princeton would reimburse the banbury fund the forty five million dollars for the legal fees. And in addition to that, over a period of time, the university would pay fifty million dollars to a new foundation. It’s called the robinson foundation for government. And it now exists it’s, a family foundation, and has its own work and does what it’s predecessor was supposed to do that is to put students into the federal government. But it is completely independent. Totally invested in university. Yeah. And then the rest of the money which probably added up to around six hundred fifty or seven hundred million dollars. Because during that period of time, during the crisis, the dahna came dahna shade. But let’s say six hundred million then was left. I don’t know exactly. The robinson foundation, by the way, was dissolved the original one. And so the money that was in it and was left for princeton went into its general endowment specifically for the woodrow wilson school and today the robertson family does not have anything to say about how that money is being used. There is a complete divorce. Okay, i think that can bring us teo somethings that charity’s can can take away. Um, i still haven’t revealed my favorite character, but we haven’t talked about that person. Um, agreements, should we start with a gram? And this was all went back to the to the phrase a particular emphasis. So do we, which was in which was in the original document creating the foundation? Yes, let’s. Talk about what? What level of scrupulous nous we need to have around agreements with donors. Let me preface it by saying the this this conversation, this part of it right now has a lot to do with understanding that this lawsuit was a story and it’s true and it’s big but it’s really? A reason for being important is that almost any charity and almost any donor i can get into this bind. So it’s not just ah, large family or a large university. Any endowed gift or any restricted gift really, really needs to be put together with what i would call the lessons you want. Bring us. We could easily be talking about a ten or fifteen thousand dollars gift easily, easily and that’s really one of the big messages here? This isn’t just about princeton has got a lot of interest, but it’s not just about princeton and so donors and charities both have to be aware of this when we say when we use phrases like in with particular emphasis, it has a meaning, but it doesn’t have an absolute meaning doesn’t mean that one hundred percent of the students are goingto go to the federal government, but it also doesn’t mean zero percent or ten percent. So we have to have an understanding you and i about what particular emphasis means if it were seventy or eighty or ninety percent, i don’t think charles robertson would have had any problem. I think even if he were sixty or sixty five percent, part of the problem was not just the results, and this is another thing they discovered was that princeton never really cared whether the students we’re going to go and the evidence of that was they never asked on the application whether they were interested in going into the federal government, so there. Was that part of the equation? So and i think you can relate to this as an attorney, we sometimes think of the laws being black and white and here’s what’s, right, and here’s what’s wrong. But a lot of phrases we use are are vague on purpose. They they’re meant to be because we can’t assign a value our specific numeric value to the word emphasis we just can’t do that. And yet, it’s an important idea in an agreement. So if a person is making an agreement today, one lesson is too if you’re going to use that kind of a phrase, uh, define it a little bit more than they did. One one word that gets us into trouble, i think, and fund-raising agreements and that is the word in perpetuity of the phrase in perpetuity because in perpetuity has has a meaning if you look it up. It’s very clear what that meaning is it means forever and forever has a meaning. And so, by definition, we cannot put into legitimately into an agreement, in my view, the word perpetuity because we cannot know what’s going to happen forever. So we have to be more careful. And crafting the language that we’re using. I want i made a gift to my own high school. This is a in the nineteen eighties of deferred gift. Where’d you go to high school exeter, phillips, exeter. And it was back in the day when pulled income funds were popular. You probably remember that yourself. None of our listeners will. There were there was a thing it’s, an antique drug in jail. Again. Well its way. But we have to define it’s now an out of date. Really? Life, income gift. A method through which donors got variable income for for their lives. And the variability became a big issue when interest rates were declining and the varying the variations were all down. And these have pretty much falling out of favor among among non-profits so that’s enough for me. So then come front. When i was doing the agreement, they said and i wanted to honor my english teacher and they said, this is back in like, nineteen, eighty four they said, you know, this going to sound weird, but we might not teach english forever, right? I thought, how is that possible? But it may not be possible. But it was also not conceivable that we wouldn’t be riding horses forever. So had an escape plus, saying that if this ever did happen that they be able to use it to a purpose is closest possible. Something, something that deals with ian practicability of yes, continuing the gift. Yes, and i’m tryingto bring this and tryingto respond to your question about how donors can and charities. Khun b take steps to avoid what happened to princeton so that we don’t just use words capriciously. We just have about a minute before a break, and there’s certainly board implications here, too. I mean, the princeton board reviewed the documentation and probably was involved in in a good degree in the negotiations board oversight of gift. Yes, this is a good example of that. Now, i don’t really fault the board at princeton to too much because it was nineteen, sixty one and not twenty fourteen, and so we’ve learned a lot in the last half century about board oversight and so forth, but that said thie gift was basically shoved through. It was a last minute quick kind of a thing had nothing to do with there at the time current capital campaign and the president really did not have the fullest discussion with the board about this gift, and they should have so board oversight of that process is really critical. We could go out front brake, and when we come back, doug and i will keep talking about the lessons from this epic lawsuit robertson v princeton like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, i’m bill mcginley, president, ceo of the association for healthcare philanthropy. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. As we make our agreements more specific and and defined terms as you’re suggesting, we can actually get into trouble because the specificity now binds us two teo, try to predict what’s going to happen and try to predict what issues are goingto a result. So there’s a there’s a balance between specificity and flexibility there is, and when i was saying earlier that we need to be more specific, er not use words capriciously, you’re right, i had that in mind to that there is a balance and it’s there’s always going to be tension. And so the question is, how do we avoid this kind of a thing going into the future? And one of the things that you can avoid has nothing to do with the agreement. It has everything to do with relations. If princeton had done so much differently, this wouldn’t have gone to where it went. But it was the lack of trust, the erosion of trust over the decades that really set the stage for this. Then you can go to the agreement say you’re not doing this well if you have the trust going on at the same time, you don’t need to go to the agreement, say you are or are not doing something but that’s it so so that’s probably the best lesson that anybody can learn from a charitable perspective anyway, to stay in touch with the airs at the donors and the heirs forever. This is an obligation, and if you don’t feel you can do that, you don’t feel you, khun obligate your success is that the organization to do that, then don’t promise to do that that’s part of the deal here in plan giving, when i was in plan giving, doing these kinds of things and talking to you too plant giving directors, i would say you’re you’re actually making an agreement here that will go on for well past the time you’re here, and probably perhaps well past the time you’re even alive. So many generations of successors after you are going to have to do what you’re agreeing to do today, keep that idea in mind when you make these agreements and this particular agreement, nothing was going to erode the idea of a federal government or the need for foreign relations, but still there could have been mohr a trust and more. Specificity, i think, in the agreement, although i don’t think the specificity was the issue here, i think the idea was pretty clear, i mean, with particular emphasis might be a vague term, but it does have enough of a meaning and enough of an understanding by people who consider the table to know that thirteen percent just doesn’t cut it. You know, you know, the good communications and keeping in touch, and in this case, there were there were different presidents who could at any time i thought when, when there was a new president, he or she could have said, you know, we’ve made some mistakes in the past, obviously i was not in charge then, but here’s what here’s, what happened and here’s what we’re gonna do, teo, and make sure that this doesn’t happen again, that humility is so crucial, especially the non-profit i can understand boisterousness from ah for-profit especially if it’s a big one, but at a non-profit there’s this extra special place that non-profits haven’t talked about that in the other book, the non-profit challenge where that humility plays a large large role or should now, just so you’ll know, since this book was published other organizations, air writing reviews and trying to talk with both me and princeton. Princeton refuses to talk about it. They give the same press release that they give that they gave after the settlement they do not want to acknowledge, but something went wrong. How they could possibly agnostic. Now i could understand them having a defense, but to say they were totally in the right, it blows my mind, you know that? Yeah, that sounds like lawyers giving advice and and driving the decisionmaking vs people who are more interested in the long term relationships with donors and alumni. That was paul volcker’s perspective. I interviewed him because he’s, a princeton alum, and he also had a perspective on this situation at the woodrow wilson school. And he was complaining about the woodrow wilson school separately and before the lawsuit ever came, so he was doing it entirely independently. And when the lawsuit came around, he told me, i think the lawyers are driving this. They’re saying, princessa can admit to nothing but i’m thinking, okay, i get that it’s not good, but i get that. But here we are, what, five years? Seven years. Six years after the settlement and they’re still saying we didn’t do anything wrong. Is bill robertson willing to talk now? Yeah, bills bill is going to be speaking with me up in boston next week. Oh, i could’ve had bill roberts instead of you. You could have a visible the name in the lawsuit instead of the guy who just follows it later on, you’re in the gundam, maybe it’s somehow it’s done now. Alright, alright, to settle for this second best. Okay? And so, as we are crafting these agreements again, the board’s role in reviewing agreements whether whether it is appropriate to buying this organization forever in perpetuity, or should we stop short of that and the board is really the last step two that can raise a red flag for the organization it is, unless you can come to some agreement as to what in perpetuity means as they did at the a museum of ma metropolitan museum of art a few years ago. And philippe de montebello said, we think in perpetuity really means seventy five years on the donor agreed to that. Well, that’s ok, that’s coming is a definition. There was a definition, right? So in perfect, what he didn’t really mean what it means in addiction, right? Fright, but yes, you’re right, i think the board has to be very cautious of that. My favorite character, we didn’t talk about her, but you dedicated the book to jessie lee washington. I did, i don’t want to, i’ll let you explain, but we just have it. We just have a couple minutes explain the crucial role just a jesse was an employee at that. The university was asked to look into endowments at the divinity school and found some irregularities and did a report, and it was put away for a while. Then she left on dh. Then the lawsuit became really big, and she said, you know this? What i was working on in the divinity school is very similar to what the lawsuit is alleging. So she came out and went to the lawyers for princeton with seth lap ido and said, i have a story to tell you, and when she got on the phone, seth said, we’ve been waiting for you to come. He didn’t know who it was going to be, but he figured there would be some other person in princeton who would be familiar with this activity that princeton was doing in the endowment accounting and she really represent she she i think, was very courageous. She put her reputation on the line and said, i am willing to go on the record to say what’s wrong here, and he dedicated the book to her, and that was so touching. And i think, well, she’s, my favorite because i believe that most people want to do the right thing and she’s a perfect example of stepping forward being courageous the way you describe most people in non-profits and donors want to do the right thing. I think you’re right. I know you’re right. Doug, wait, author, professor, advisor non-profits and philanthropists. He hangs out at columbia university teaching at the masters and fund-raising program. You will find him at doug white dot net. The book is abusing donorsearch intent. The robertson family’s epic lawsuit against princeton university it’s a very, very good story and very well told doug white. Thanks so much. Thank you, it’s. Good to see you again. Pleasure. Did you think that i was going to wrap up this show without live? Listen, love. Podcast pleasantries an affiliate affections lima, lima, lima podcast pod papa papa an alfa alfa. Certainly not certainly not can’t happen. So the liveliest naralo let’s go abroad. I like the start abroad today in ah poon a india i believe i’m not sure i’m pronouncing it right, but india is definitely with us. Germany. Guten tag. We can’t see your city, russia i’m sorry, we can’t see your city. I don’t know if i should be surprised there, but we cannot, um anybody else abroad? Yes, none, none name none in china ni hao and nobody from nobody from south korea. You know what? I bet south korea’s there, but we just can’t see them, so i’m certainly going to send on your haserot comes a ham nida to our listeners in south korea, there always there and, uh, come in a little closer to home. Coming. Georgia, georgia, i cracked again. Elizabeth, new jersey! I know elizabeth well, i don’t know this, but this is my grandmother used to work at a plant. It was a pharmaceutical plant in elizabeth going back-up a number of years. Elizabeth, new jersey live. Listen love to you also live love goes out to tampa, florida. Woodbridge, new jersey, south orange, new jersey. Why would get jersey checking in lots of places, mostly north. Let’s. Cool, though. And bayside, new york and queens live. Listen love to each of you. Thank you so much for being with us and we’ve got to send the podcast pleasantries to the over twelve thousand listening in the time shift. Thank you. Pleasantries to you. The affiliate affections are am and fm listeners always goes out my affections to you as well. Next week, it’s all giving tuesday, including amy sample ward. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com here’s our sponsors pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com regular sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers when you’re cps dot com at plus accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and we’d be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dotcom are creative producers. Claire meyerhoff family woodson’s the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez and this music is by scott stein do with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out on the green. Thanks. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent it’s inauguration day today we have a listener of the week i know which is more important for non-profit radio listener of the week is more important. Karen graham she e mailed me your whole hair thing is cracking me up. Thank you for bringing that joy into my day. Well, karen, thank you for taking such an interest in my exceedingly long hair. Longest it’s ever been in my life. I’m glad it brings you joy and i would ask you to speak to my mother about this, please, because she is routinely reminding me that her salon also cuts men’s hair on dh she’s threatening scissors while i’m sleeping, so i’ll give you her contact info. Ah, now karen is executive director of idealware, which i admire very much idealware dot or ge, i did a video praising them a few weeks ago, which you’ll find at tony martignetti dot com i don’t think you’ll find the video at idealware dot orc, which i’m most disappointed about franklin att leased a link you could’ve shared the link, i thought, but idealware is a very good organization dahna karen graham, executive director congratulations on being our listener of the week. I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with keto acid urea if you rained down on me with the idea that you missed today’s show twenty sixteen giving report and the twenty seventeen forecast no need to wait until june. Atlas of giving ceo rob mitchell releases the atlases analysis of last year’s giving and their initial forecast for twenty seventeen also have insightful commentary from professor of paul schervish for boston college and doug white on tony’s. Take two videos from the non-profit technology conference we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. Wee bey e spelling dot com i’m very glad to welcome rob mitchell back he’s uh, but on the show three, four times or so he’s, the ceo of atlas, of giving, you’ll find that at atlas of giving dot com he’s at philanthropy man or, as i like to say at philantech roman, which he probably gets tired of hearing me say, but it’s my show. I do whatever the hell i want. Is that philanthropy? Hman? That’s the end of it. Welcome back, rob mitchell. Thanks, tony it’s. Always great to be with you. It’s. A pleasure to have you. Thanks for coming up from texas. Thank you very much. So you’re you’re here to well, you’re here to release the the review of twenty sixteen and the forecast for twenty seventeen remind us, please. What is going on it atlas of giving. What is this all about? Atlas of giving at the atlas of giving what we do is we measure and forecast charitable giving by sector by source and by state, including washington d c and we release our information monthly it’s. Our forecast is updated each month. Our calculation of giving is updated by sector source and state each month. And our methodology is based on sixty five algorithms. What we did was we we had a team of twenty five phd level statisticians and analyst revue factors that we thought affected giving and two that they they added fifty percent mohr and they actually determined and what fact? What economic? Demographic and event factors are involved in charitable giving. And what their relative weights were for each category. For instance, the algorithm for corporate giving is very, very different from the algorithm for ah ah, church giving let’s say, so this this there are some commonalities, but they’re also. And when i say when i say correlation, this is based on what’s called correlation science a correlation, even a strong one does not necessarily indicate that that there is a relationship, and one example i’ll give you is that in our in our corporate giving algorithm, one of the key factors is auto parts sales. Now we don’t for a minute believe that auto parts sales have anything to do with charitable giving, but there is a strong there is a strong relation that variable correlates with that form of giving exactly for reasons that we could speculate. But in numerical regression analysis, those factors air correlated those two variables exactly correlated and just just so you know, this is the same kind of technology that the fed uses hedge funds use. I trust you, you’re a bona fide and and interestingly enough, the the auto parts sales is also part of one of the feds algorithms we found out so and one of the things we found recently because we’re continually trying to improve our algorithms and learned from them is that large equipment manufacturing index has a strong correlation with national giving. Okay, all right. We’re not gonna go too much into the mechanics of the details of it. Okay, but that’s, interesting large equipment manufacturing. And what was i just i’m sorry. What part in order parts sales, uh, related to fund-raising who knew, right? We do. We do now. Okay. You have a headline for us. Let’s. First talk about what, twenty sixteen looked like for fund-raising. What happened? Well, in twenty sixteen, we had a record year for dollars given, and the dollars given was just shy of half a trillion dollars. It was four hundred ninety seven point four billion dollars given nationally doll causes. How does that relate to twenty fifteen? That is a four point one percent increase. Okay, over twenty fifteen. And what was twenty fifth? Twenty fourteen to twenty. Fifteen. Remember that? What was that increase? It was it was a double digit increases. Wass it? Wass okay. We’re coming on the tail end of the recession, i guess. Well, a lot of that had to do with what was happening in the stock market. And we’ll talk more about that. Ok, as we go on, okay, maura that alright. So four point, one percent increase from fifteen to sixteen were just under half a billion, half a trillion dollars in giving for one other important point to make is that. For for most people who are affiliated with non-profits or the non-profit industry, they have assumed, based on other information, that charitable giving has been pegged at two percent of real gdp for as long as we can remember. Yes, you have an announcement for this. Go ahead, we have we have charitable giving at almost three percent of real gdp, so two point nine, seven percent of real gdp and that is huge because the country has been talking about the stalled percentage of two percent of gdp for a long time. I mean, it certainly the six years that i’ve been doing this and probably longer than that. So now you’re putting at just under three percent of gdp, which is enormous, fifty percent increase your saying yes, all right, all right. And there’s a reason why, okay, we’re gonna hold that reason, okay? Till after this break, you’re gonna hold that and we’ll go away for a moment. But of course we’ll be back. We’re talking about the twenty sixteen review the twenty seventeen forecast to professors joining us, paul service and doug white. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Durney welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent want tease i want to do a little live list, their love just a just a touch of the live listeners college station, texas, raleigh, north carolina and multiple right here in new york, new york, of course we’ve got our listeners abroad will get to those but still it’s a little taste of live listen love for now. All right, almost three percent let’s call a three percent two point nine seven what’s three one hundred’s between friends and colleagues let’s call it three percent of gdp. Why do you believe we’ve had this fifty percent increase? Well, there are a number of reasons they’ve been growing. One is the number of non-profits continues to grow and so now we way have but that’s always been the case and we always assumed to it seemed to be a zero sum game more non-profits entered, i don’t know, fifty thousand a year, so maybe one of the professors has a better number than that. But many, many new every year, and it’s still always stuck at two percent. Well, yes, but now we have technology and so there’s so many more different ways for people to give there’s so many there’s, so many more ways for people who are raising the money to get good information and good targeting about how they’re going to solicit money so fund-raising has become much more efficient, okay? And the only moral if, if that’s if it’s related to technologies, probably more adopting technology that we’ve had for a while, except for maybe you do things like text text to give is that is that that the person that would be one of one that i one that i love is crowdfunding kind of technology where you’re using social media to raise money for a cause? And so that didn’t exist. The other thing that well, i mean, it didn’t just come into existence in twenty sixteen. No, we’ve had crowdfunding no, no, no, no, no. Several years, no and but we didn’t just jump from two percent to three percent and one year either. Okay? It’s been creeping out. So what was the percentage last year? The percentage of gdp? The percentage last year. Wass i don’t remember. Okay, but it was something less than two point nine seven it wass okay, okay. Um all right, so we’re we’re at three percent now. That’s that’s, that’s a big deal. It is a big deal. This has been stale or stagnant. Stay lt’s. Wrong word stagnant for a long time. Okay, um, let’s talk about some of the different sectors that have benefited from this this increase since since last year there four point, one percent increase. I always i’m always crease about religion because religion is you and i have talked over the past couple years has always been a shrinking proportion. It’s been the largest of all the sectors but it’s been a shrinking proportion. Yes, ten years ago, gifts to churches and congregations accounted for fifty percent of all giving in the urals. Now, it’s, what thirty would you have? A thirty one. Thirty two percent metoo and did it lose lose a percent from last year? We’re projecting that it’s going to lose a percent from this year to next year. Okay, so it stayed steady because last year it had lost a percentage. Yes, it from fifteen to sixteen and lost a percent. And i’m pretty sure from fourteen to fifteen lost two percent, so i’ve never talking about that with you. Because now it’s steady. But you’re projecting a loss for next year. Yes. Okay. But it used to be fifty. Used to be fifty now. Thirty two. Okay. And the reason why is that the united states is becoming more like western europe. It’s becoming more secularized. Fewer and fewer people are joining congregations supporting congregations. But what’s interesting is that you mentioned zero sum game? E-giving is still growing so that the gifts air going. Other places. They’re just not going to religion. Yeah, clearly right. And really one of the one of the fastest growing sector of the fastest growing sector over the last three years has been the environmental sector and it is the smallest sector. It only accounts for two percent of all giving. But at the rate it’s growing it’s, it’s, it’s astounding. And then human needs organizations have also done quite well and education. The education sector has grown. Those air the three fastest growing sectors and have been for the last three. Well, really, since the end of the recession? Um, education is explained by the way that they raise money because one of the things we found at the alice of giving is that it’s not so much about the quote economy, its factors in the economy, it’s factors of demographic that’s because about your algorithms, you’re your algorithms have found the variables, the aii factors that that car late with e-giving so are two professors air well well acquainted with the fact that most universities go from campaign to campaign and lots of campaign contributions come out of come out of aa gains in the stock market or gains in real estate. And so when the stock market does well, education does well about the environment. What what’s what’s happening there? I think that the biggest factor in the environment is awareness you can’t not. You cannot turn on any of your i once heard a guy say a few years ago that the time has come when you can pick your version of the truth through the news. Yeah, and so but truthfully, no matter what your source of news is, you can’t escape the fact that we’re always talking about the environment now, climate change, we’re talking about climate change. We’re talking about the instruments to defer climate change things like solar panel and wind power and other alternative energy sources i mean, elon musk is making ah is making billions of dollars capturing energy and batteries and using that do you see in your twenty seventeen forecast on increase in market share for the environment from larger than two percent? No, you don’t say no. You see it’s continuing to grow, it is narrowing and it’s growing faster than to grow, but not more than than its current share. Two percent not more. That’s correct. Okay. We could be wrong, though, because remember this is this forecast that we’ll talk about today. It’s just the first of eleven for forecast will do throughout the year. So we update we we update our forecast every month. And the example that i love to give is two thousand won two thousand one was bumping along to be a great e-giving your ah relatively good giving here. And then september eleventh happened. And if you were a non disaster charity what we know today having backfilled information now for fifty years is that giving dried up? If you’re a non disaster charity, pretty much for six months and then came roaring back let’s stop talking around. The forecast and let’s talk about the forecast for twenty seventeen. What do you see happening? We’re looking for growth of four point four percent nationally. Four point four versus four point one for this year. So a little bit more growth. Yes. And and what? What dollar amount? Does that come to the dollar amount over half a trillion. Right. It’s going to be over half a trillion? Yes. Okay, okay. Ah, looks like five hundred nineteen five in nineteen billion. Five hundred nineteen. Okay. Now again, we’re with the caveat. I understand this is your first forecast of eleven of eleven more to come for twenty seventeen each month. You update the annual forecasts. That is that right? We do well, so it’s a rolling twelve month forecast. So our forecast contains a forecast for next month for the next three months for the next six months for the next twelve months. And then we also update the calendar year forecast every month. Okay. What do you ah, what else do you foresee for twenty? Seventeen around around let’s. Talk about the let’s. Talk about the sources because you mentioned some of the sectors that you see sector. Growth in twenty seventeen about from sources, foundations, corporate bequest, individuals, et cetera. What do you have there for? Twenty seventeen? Well, the biggest change i see is in corporate giving and co e-giving as as many people know, is is not a large percentage of source giving in the united states, only five percent. We’re gonna talk about that when we bring the professors in, i might like to i’d like to chat a little bit about why that is to me that small maybe i’m wrong, but alright, so martignetti e-giving corporate giving this year this year just past twenty sixteen was double digit growth ten point three percent. What we’re projecting for next year for corporate giving is only one point, eight percent. All right? Uh still grow. I’m looking at that and i understand that’s growth. I’m talking about the share. The proportional share of total giving for corporations is only five percent. All right? I’ll tell you what, let’s, let’s bring in our professors because we’ve talked about the headlines let’s. Bring in doug white he’s, former professor and director of columbia university’s, master of science in fund-raising management, his most recent book is abusing donors intent, which we discussed here. I was going to tease him about that having been three years ago. And what’s happened since. But now i find out that he’s writing another book for later this year. Doug white, welcome back. Well, thank you for having me back. It’s. Good to see you again. Even with your long hair, can’t avoid it. Just call him sampson. You and karen clams. And i thought it was einstein. I prefer fabio. If you’re gonna if you’re gonna make any references. Let’s, make it fabio. Paul service she’s on he’s on the line with us from north carolina. He’s, professor emeritus at boston college, where he led the center on wealth and philanthropy. He helped to found the wealth and giving forum appear centered endeavour to deepen the philanthropic engagement of the nation’s seven thousand wealthiest families. Pull service. Welcome back. Hello. Nice to be back in a load up. Pleasure to have you all you both with us. Let’s. Uh, let’s. Give difference to the guy on the phone because he’s a slight disadvantage. Paul sharpish. What sticks out? Let’s? Start with the twenty sixteen review before we get to the twenty. Seventeen forecast which look out for you in the in the review of twenty sixteen, giving the that growth that occurred in twenty sixteen i think that the story in all of these numbers is that the amount of giving is growing twenty billion a year over the last few years and at four percent it’s going to grow faster than that. The compounding uh, this is a remarkable trendline that twenty sixteen confirms and the projections for twenty seventeen indicates the continuation of that. So you love about going the amount going charity is incredible and growing. You love this that we’re now three percent of gdp. Yes. And when we did our well transfer models, we found that if the goose’s growth and wealth and tdp the biggest growth and so after pete and so if the economy grows, we’re going to find dramatic, even greater dramatic roles in philanthropy. Doug white, let’s, let’s bring you in. But what strikes you about? Twenty sixteen? Well, what paul just said is a continuation off his studies back in the nineties and nearly two thousand with regard to what’s going to happen, and i think we’re seeing it take place. Right now twenty sixteen for me was defined by the mega gift there were so many of them and what i don’t have my fingertips is thie analysis of how the smaller gifts have grown. The number of smaller gifts have grown, but we do know that the mega gifts have have been more than they’ve ever been before. That has to be a fact er in your number’s right, rob it iss, in fact, twenty fifteen there were more mega gifts than there were in twenty sixteen, actually, so it is a factor you talk about a zuckerberg gift or another gift from the gates foundation, or or those kinds of things it’s it mega gifts are huge factor, but another factor is what we’re finding and i’d be interested in. The opinion of our two experts is what we’re finding is that millennials are a e-giving group of individuals and they’re looking for they’re not looking for cost per dollar, raised as their measurement there, looking for effectiveness and accountability on who they give, too, but they are an active force and philanthropy. The big gains that we’ve had in online giving in technology e-giving come largely from that group of people dug millennials. I totally agree with that and i think that’s one of the bigger challenges for the established charities around the united states who have become used to just the annual giving, continuing in continuing, which is fine, but i think the millennials, they’re saying they’re asking different questions, they’re not saying, am i loyal to this cause? They’re asking, even if i am loyal to this cause, how effective is my gift? And i think the question of impact we use that word, a lot of it is a topic of my new book. The question of impact is so important it should be, but now it’s important to the millennials because his roberts saying they give individually they give to causes that they can see an impact in or from paul what’s, your sense of what’s creating thiss terrific growth it’s, it’s, it’s, the dramatic growth of wealth at the very top. And what doug said is absolutely correct. Maybe gifts capture one dimension. What captures a larger slot? This is the million dollars and these air increasing and the list is getting longer, and i think, uh, that’s also helps explain the decline in religious e-giving ah, religious giving this to churches and the upper end does not give proportionately, uh, to their churches in the same ratio that the bottom ninety five percent of the population does so part of this change in religious e-giving is that so muchmore is going to education two new kinds of ventures to international to environment to social needs, and at the very top the percentage that they give to their churches is minuscule compared to how much they give the other causes. So that is part of not just the secularization which i agree with, but part of this is where the making gifts you’re going. Well, paul, how come we’re not cracking this seventy three, seventy four percent proportion that individuals account for in the total pie of giving? How come it’s it’s sticks there if we’re seeing all the us? Yeah, you? Yes, paul. We’re seeing all these mega gifts and the million dollar gifts. How come we’re not getting past the seven? The mid seventy figure? Well, one of the things is we just found out the foundation growth is is dramatic. Most of foundation growth and requests are individual gifts. And so when we’re looking at individuals, you have to understand what the is going on inside of individuals and that’s private foundations to it’s also the quest and it’s also remittances. Now, doug, i would say that report by your very astute ah research on remittances would be important. See what we’re finding out in some places that a lot of immigrants air not contributing, quote unquote to philanthropy. But the number iss between one hundred fifty and two hundred billion a year, that is sent back overseas largely to people in need buy-in immigrants recent immigrants alright, let’s, turn to let’s start to doug remittances. Well, that’s a good point that a lot of money does go back. And that’s, of course not counted in this whole process here in terms of generosity, the way we define charity, the way we defined, making the world a better place. That’s a huge part of that and it’s unfortunate. We can’t capture that. But we’re not talking about that and technical terms right now, but we really ought to, because it’s a an expression of our our society’s beneficence. And i really think that’s an important thing but there’s one other question that i just wanted to point out, or at least clarify from my own perspective, is that this really is a zero sum game. There’s only one hundred percentage points that we have to work with and so to actually ask or worry about, we’re only a seventy five percent those air living individuals, you know, on the other five percent, we have dead individuals, they’re still individuals. A question requests that’s really kind of eighty percent. I can’t. We could only go one hundred percent, but that’s on ly if nobody else gave anything, the foundations are the corporations. So i suspect it’s going to stay that way, in fact, has been their seventy five and five for the last long as i can remember. Well and paul’s point, of course, that a lot of the foundation giving is individuals directed by individuals. But it comes from the private found a it’s, just a medium. So as an expression of individual philanthropy, i think paul is correct. I would throw in the individual philanthropy into the foundation world and donor advised funds. Oh, yeah. We’re going to continue this conversation. I gotta do a little business. I have to talk about a couple of our response duitz and we’re going to get to donor advised funds after this pursuing pursuing dot com between brexit, the syrian refugee crisis and the inauguration of a new president today, the national and global climates have a lot of implications for what you can expect in your fund-raising we’re going to talk about some of those events later today. The next pursuant webinar is field guide to twenty seventeen fund-raising it’ll give you strategies that you need to keep up with. Everything is going on in the world. It’s a free web in or they always are. You register at pursuing dot com go to resource is and then webinars and i’m not too keen on that word. Webinars i don’t know it’s it’s in the lexicon now we’re stuck with it, but i don’t know i never liked it from i never like to from the beginning maybe i didn’t go public, but i’m expressing now webinars i don’t know, it’s just i think we could come up with something better than webinars. I understand where it comes from way have been seminar, but i don’t like it and i was early. I just i just wasn’t public early. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising they have a new video up it’s from a night that raised money for hfc, which is help for children. The organisation needed help for its programs for children they turned to we’d be spelling there’s one hundred and ten thousand dollars in a spelling bee night. Check out the video it’s at wi be e spelling dot com. I’ve got video interviews for you from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference. Twenty twenty sixteenth. God, i need an intern, so i have someone to blame the twenty sixteen non-profit the the video is titled virtual organizations and volunteers. There are four interviews in those areas, and they are on managing remote employees, managing remote volunteers where to find volunteers and leveraging your start or tech volunteers. My video from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference with the links to the four interviews is that tony martignetti dot com and i, uh i suggest you check out this year’s non-profit technology conference twenty seventeen and t c this is always a very smart conference. I say it often because i believe it. Check out. Ntcdinosaur washington, d c this year, march twenty third, you get the info it and ten dot or ge, and that is tony’s take two the rest of the live listen, love, you know, it’s got to go out. I mean, there’s, no question about that. Besides the ones i already mentioned, we’ve got tampa, florida we’ve got forming ten missouri welcome farming to missouri. You haven’t been with us before. Welcome and somerville, new jersey! Welcome live listener love to you, let’s. Go abroad, of course. Seoul, south korea, always checking in so loyal south korea on your haserot comes a ham nida. We’ve got kiev in ukraine. No, i don’t know the scouts just do it live listener love to ah to kiev, tokyo also very loyal multiple. We’ve got multiple tokyo konnichi wa and the podcast pleasantries to the over twelve thousand listening in the time shift so glad that you are with us whether it’s a week later, days, months later, glad to have you with us. Pledge industries toe are over twelve thousand podcast listeners and the affiliate affections fast on the heels of the live listen love in the podcast pleasantries toe are am and fm listeners throughout the country am fm stations. Let your station know that you’re listening little feedback affections to the am fm affiliate listeners. Okay, rob mitchell, you you seem to be chomping at the bit to talk about donorsearch vise dh funds e-giving first about donor advised funds. I am a big proponent of donor advice found about and i can tell you that they’ve been the one of the biggest contributors fromthe grants that they’re making out of donor advised funds, since the depth of the recession is this tract in in your algorithms is part of the individual giving. Is that where we see dahna vice funds? What? We saved an analogue kate id on allocated. Okay, okay. Don’t advise funds are are they’re not knew they came in with the tax act of sixty eight. Yeah, they they’re not new. But this company called fidelity an investment company. I saw an opportunity and the thing that i love about donor advised funds and and paul talked about this a bit. The rise of the million dollar gift i think donorsearch vice funds have a big part of that because a za contributor myself, if my daughter’s here in the studio, listening with us if our family adopted a charitable project for which we wanted to contribute. But we did not have enough money available to us to just scratch a check, we could create a donor advice fund, a add to it, let let it be invested so that it would grow so that we could meet our our charitable mission for our family in a future year. Of course, this is a subject of controversy, because there are people who have on the other side of this, and they’ve written editorials in the chronicle, as you have, who believe that there’s too much money parked in donor advised funds is not getting out to the charities it sits. The donor gets their charitable deduction immediately, but it could sit for decades or generations, theoretically in the donor of ice fund and never get to the charities that it’s supposed to be benefiting. Well, theoretically, that could be the case. But if you read the fine print, if you set up a donor advice fund with one of the big three fidelity vanguard er schwab, or with the silicon valley foundation or ah any number. Of different true charitable organizations, community community funds are our big proponents of donor advised funds they can’t carry on perpetually, and the other thing is just a mathematical, just a mathematical equation. Donorsearch foundations are required to give five percent of their assets each year, and so what do they give a little more than five percent of their assets? You know, this is the argument against requiring donor advised phone or it five contributed percentage each year donorsearch vice funds or giving over twenty percent of their assets as grants to end use charities each year. But there are people who would say, well, let’s, make it fifty or forty or forty or fifty will see an increase. All right, we’re going, we’re gonna leave this that because i want to talk about some of the want to talk more about what you’re involved in more concretely, let’s bring doug back, doug so there’s a lot going on in the world, not the least of which is presidential inauguration today. We’ve got brexit, the a great britain leaving the european union. We’ve got syrian refugee crisis in europe. How do any or these or other things that are on your mind ah, affect our twenty seventeen philanthropy? Well, about an hour ago, the new president referenced ah, a lot of america as being in a state of some carnage, that’s his word, and whether you look at it that way or not, i do believe that philanthropy is going to have to shoulder a lot more than it has in the past, but we all know that philanthropy can’t do all of the work. And so i think one of the questions as this administration grows into its maturity, will be what kind of services will be cut back where philanthropy will have to fill in even more of the gap. So i think one of the messages and one of the reasons i think that twenty seventeenth will be a great mother where’s, my damn intern will be a great year for philanthropy anyway, is that the messages will be very concrete and very strong about the needs that society faces. That a lot of government support, as we see it right now. It may not happen this way, but a lot of government support won’t be there for. So i think the philanthropic sector will have to really step up to the plate in this in this coming here. How about you, paul? What about world affairs and twenty seventeen? I am much more optimistic. You can look up the wall of fear listeners, and that will lead you, teo. Not sleep very well at night. About your money. Uh, the the issue with, uh, philanthropy making up for government spending has been does without due respect. Um, talked about when any republican has been elected. And you have to understand that the federal budget is three point eight trillion dollars a year. Philanthropy it’s five hundred billion. And most of that doesn’t go to social services, and most of it is never going to go to social service. So it’s not going to make up very much, uh, we could hope it will, but that nothing that can touch medicaid, medicare, food stamp budgets. But that is of the non discretionary part of the federal budget is all. This is two point eight trillion. Can the discretionary part is a trillion, so i don’t i don’t have that problem in the forefront of my mind that’s making up it just can’t okay let’s, turn to doug. I just want to be clear. I i probably made on incorrect impression a moment ago. I didn’t mean to imply that ah, charity would make up for what government does or does not do and you’re right. That question has been around for ever, and the answer has been around forever charity can’t can’t step in like that. What i meant to say and i apologize for saying it badly, was that this gives thie organizations and opportunity to make their case stronger, not because they will say we will make up the difference, but because the need is there and your philanthropic support is even stronger than it’s ever been, which is, i think, a slightly different way of saying what i meant to say before, because paul, you’re so right. This is this is a question that’s been around forever, and i don’t believe it’s just for republican presidents, i think no matter what we do, ah, there will be gaps, by the way that the government does. Not feel and that’s going to be a matter of policy, but that’s always going to be the case and that those gaps will not be filled by philanthropy. But philanthropy, the organization’s themselves, if we kind of shift the mirror over there, can then say, hey, we have a big job to do support us, so i hope that bridges those two comments, okay? So you’re saying it maura’s as opportunity for round and around messaging and marketing, basically for charities, but paul’s absolutely correct. I don’t think anybody would disagree that what what charity does to help society is nothing by comparison to the amount of the government could spend to do the same kinds of things pull anything else you want to? You want to add on that? No, i think doug’s explanation is just perfect. And i appreciate see that two professors in agreement. Wow, e-giving might give them a chance. Well, i’ve always in my heart is with paul he’s. Been one of my heroes for the last two decades. All right, doug, how about you with the international affairs and impacting? I’m sorry. Yes, i’m looking at robyn. I’m saying, doug, rob international affairs twenty, seventeen and beyond. What do you see? Well, first let’s talk about twenty sixteen. The first half of twenty sixteen was dramatically different in typically do not allow anarchy on the show. When i was about twenty seventeen, expecting getting there, but but, uh, you came from texas. I’ll give you the difference. Go ahead, anarchist. There was a lot of uncertainty. I mean, we had the weirdest presidential election in my lifetime. We had distraction from the olympic games. We had an increase in in terror events worldwide and e-giving was essentially flat for the first half of the year. And then it took a spike in july, flattened out again. And then the last quarter of the year after the election. What? What are algorithms show is that giving spike xero after three months of the year? So the growth in twenty sixteen was not linear? It was not. Lin. What was what was the first six months? Like it was point nine percent growth. So just basically one percent. But we got ended up with four point four. So four point one four point one. I’m sorry for point force for next year for point one. So that extra three point one three point two came on the second half came and you’re saying there was a big spike in july first in the summer? Yes, and then again in november, right after the election? Exactly. Okay, and and the spike in november continued literally. Is that my saying that correct, but it’s a word linearly. Okay, thank you for correcting me on that. But they’re two professors with this. I’ve got to be correct. We’ll have their mikes shut off. Xero it’ll be now it’s me. That was that was a linear progression. Okay? For november, october, november and december, and right now, but that’s what? It was, but there was a spike in november right after the election. November eighth. Absolutely. It was. Okay. I get just a tribute that teo stability. You know, the raucous election is over. I i think that there was some election relief involved emotionally, i think that people were people. They weren’t sitting on the sidelines, gifts were still being made. They just weren’t growing there giving at the rate they had been growing in past years. And we’re talking mostly about individuals but corporations corporate giving grew at a good rate this last year, now for twenty seventeen, um, i think there are a lot of unanswered questions, and we’ve got the expert on the phone with us professor schervish. You know, one of the one of the things that the new president has talked about in his tax plan is an elimination of the estate tax. And paul’s paul spent a great deal of his professional career talking about generational transfer of wealth, and we’ve all talked about what what would happen if the estate tax went away with what would the impact on charitable bequest giving b and so that’s one of those unanswered questions. We don’t know what the tax plan is going to be and it’s going to be a very, very interesting year, and i have more questions than i have answers. Frankly, all right, let’s, go out for a break. When we come back, we’ll ask paul about the estate tax repeal possibility on i also want to get this corporate five percent e-giving proportion, and i got another live listen to love one specific one. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises strong’s best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Special live listener love is right here in the studio because that’s alexey mitchell, visiting from she’s been she’s extremely well travelled twenty four year old india, thailand, germany, switzerland what am i leaving out? It’s? Amazing. Very well travelled france student at columbia university her proud father saying france. Lexie, thanks for being with us live. Listen love to you. Okay, let’s, bring paul in. Paul, you want to you want to ah opine about the possibility of the estate tax repeal and what that would mean? Well, i have done some research on that. Yeah, i’ve heard rumors to that effect. Yes, some but about the repeal on and so has the center on philanthropy. And what we’ve done is we’ve asked people in research what would be if there is in a state tax currently, what would be your distribution of your state? And it turns out that it’s, pretty much what it would be, uh, correctly, according to what is happening to distribution two heirs to charity and to taxes. But if we say what happens if you eliminate the estate tax, what will happen? People that don’t like the elimination of the state tax the issue for them is largely that less money’s going to government. The evidence is that from these studies now these are people giving their opinion is that mohr will goto philanthropy and more well, goto airs. The loser is government by definition. Now people that think that government is philanthropy are going to object to the appeal repeal of the estate tax. But even the government has shown in one or two studies earlier on that to repeal the estate tax has not led to a decline and charitable giving, and i predict because of how wealthy people are and needing to figure out for their own sake, what to do good with that body there’s not going to be a problem with the abreu teal of latex. Okay, you’re you’re pretty well recognized as as an authority, but i love that name. All right, you got robbed, mitchell’s vote and doug is doug eyes knotting. I’m not nodding off, no nodding, nodding office don’t know. I’d say no, no, no, i just wanted to clear up. If someone’s not, i’m not. I’m not gonna touch that with it can’t happen just doesn’t happen. Non-profit radio and it’s my intuition that because although i haven’t studied it as much as paul he’s absolutely correct it’s a non answerable question, but go for it. I mean, there could be other reasons to not eliminate the estate tax. And by the way, the estate taxes pretty much eliminated for most people by far because of the extremely high yeah it’s five million dollars that’s that’s. Ten million per couple. So i mean, what are we talking about here? I know i don’t think there’s been any decrease among people who are who have a states of less than that and their request terrible giving i i’ll give you an anecdotal. A demonstration of what paul’s just said our doug’s just that that is that i unfortunately lost my mother in november. We’re now dealing with her state, which is a non taxable size to state her charitable contributions to me were all striking, actually, yeah, they and she got no tax benefit whatsoever from for creating those charitable bequests. Wait that’s widely recognized people aren’t doing it for the for the tax benefit, for the most part, mint study after study, bank of america has studies of high net worth giving, and the tax benefit is like usually the third or fourth reason that people site for leaving leaving charity in their state. I want to turn to the to the corporate this is just a little bug, a boo of mind, maybe, and you’re welcome to tell me if i’m if i’m mistaken. Corporate giving is five percent of the van you’il giving, according to the atlas of giving that seem small to me. Are you doug? Is my my off base with court corporations only contributing five percent and tell me if i am? I don’t think you’re so much off base again. We have ah xero some game here, it’s one hundred percent. So what do they represent within that? They’ve been around five percent for, you know, for a while, but i think, really your question leads me to think about what their motive in charitable giving is and their place in society. They think corporations are becoming much more aware of the role they need to play in society, but at the same time they have one primary purpose, and that is to make money for their stockholders. We don’t do that in the charitable world, but corporations do that. And so there could be a huge uproar if corporations got more charitable, all right on. And i mean to distinguish that from the newly growing be corporation segment let’s get at it this way, rob, where what proportions of the different sources of fund-raising are are growing across a bequest, individual foundation, corporate missing other sources anyway, so we’ve got this now three percent gdp. Well, you have to somebody’s giving maur what proportion? Well sources e-giving you have to consider where the proportions are. So as a cz doug and paul of both pointed out, when you add individual giving to bequest giving which is actually individuals that’s, that’s, that’s a gigantic right so that’s gigantic number ok, and so that’s, where most of the growth comes from, no matter what the growth rate iss and so if corporations, as they did this past year, they their gifts grew at ten percent, which that’s the first time i’ve seen that since we’ve started the atlas of giving and it’s way above the annual growth of four point one. Exactly so, it’s it’s more than double. Okay, except that, but but paul’s exactly right. In the case of publicly traded companies there first, their first priority is to their shareholders. And if you don’t think that a shareholder of the shareholders meeting is going to stand up and challenge a charitable gift because it could have been something that enriched their shares, you’d be wrong. Now ninety five percent of the businesses in america are not publicly traded their small businesses. I i have a couple of them i give to charity dahna through my small business, but it’s much more difficult to measure those kinds of gifts than it is the large corp large, publicly traded corporations. We just have about a minute and a half left. So i want to just touch on some some state data because you track sector source and state where’s the most generous state in the country. You know, this year what we showed was this is close to you, mike. This is going to come as a surprise. Heimans north dakota. I really love north dakota. North dakota grew seven point one percent and the states that you typically look for our texas, florida, california and new york, north dakota grew family are the most populous states, those air three most popular, of course, california number one texas tune of new york is number three, so the north dakota phenomena is also a function of their population and the and the oil play that has happened and what we’re finding from the oil play, whether it’s in texas or north dakota, is that, um, there’s a delayed effect and charitable giving and the north dakota you’re saying the population’s a factor because it’s so small it’s so small, i don’t know what the population is there but it’s it’s small what? We love north dakota. All right, gentlemen, we gotta leave it there. I want to thank you very much. Ceo rob mitchell from atlas of giving alice e-giving dot com former professor at columbia university doug white. We’ll have him back when his next book is is ready. It’s on the wounded warrior project. And paul service professor mary-jo boston college, gentlemen. Thank you so very much. Thank you, tony. Thank you. Pleasure. Next week, amy sample ward, our social media contributor returns if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling, dot com, our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. Kayman what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple, in fact, when’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for January 29, 2016: 2015 Giving Report & 2016 Forecast

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Rob Mitchell, Paul Schervish & Doug White2015 Giving Report & 2016 Forecast

We don’t need to wait until June! Atlas of Giving CEO Rob Mitchell releases the Atlas’ analysis of last year’s giving and their initial forecast for 2016. Adding commentary are professors Paul Schervish from Boston College and Doug White from Columbia University.

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hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host oh i’m glad you’re with me i’d be hit with deacon veins teno sinusitis if if you handed me the mere notion that you missed today’s show twenty fifteen giving report and twenty sixteen forecast we don’t need to wait until june atlas of giving ceo rob mitchell releases the atlases analysis of last year’s giving and their initial forecast for twenty sixteen adding commentary are professors paul schervish from boston college and doug white from columbia university because you can’t have a report without academic commentary it’s it’s just not done we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay mobile donation feature crowdster dot com i’m very glad that the latest data brings rob mitchell back to the show and the studio he is ceo of the atlas of giving reporting on and forecasting charitable giving in the us in his past he led national fund-raising for the american cancer society they’re at atlas of giving dot com and he’s at philanthropy man dot com which could also be read as philantech roman ah that’s on twitter not philantech roman dot com at philantech roman or if you prefer philanthropy man which is probably what he prefers or we could do at atlas of giving or adverse e-giving rob mitchell don’t start talking until i say welcome robin i’m sorry welcome back i’m not going i’m not going to tolerate anarchy on the show welcome rob mitchell welcome back it’s good to have you back thanks tony it’s always good to be back very welcome and don’t correct me no you can’t you can correct me actually i’m a little off today i’ll tell you what sam why don’t you bring down a paul and doug’s mike’s because robin are going talk for a few minutes and then ah we’re going to bring paul and dug in rob mitchell before we get to the announcement the big announcement i saw the press release today and everything tell us about atlas of giving what is this thing that you’re running atlas of giving as the only measurement of charitable giving in the united states by sector source and state that has produced monthly and we are also the only forecast of charitable giving by sector source and state produced updated monthly how do you do this report and forecast well we we had a i had a situation with a boardmember when i was at the american cancer society who was looking for a benchmark on how we’re doing and he suggested that charitable giving in the united states was tied directly to certain economic demographic and event factors and if we could identify what those were we could build a benchmark so we hired a firm of twenty five phd level statisticians and analyst and we were able to and we gave them forty two years of published giving data they were able to come back to us with an out they not only found what factors were involved in charitable giving they found out what strengths for each what the strengths of those factors were relative strength relative strengths okay this is called correlation science so they came back to us with an algorithm for national giving when matched with forty two years of past history matched at ninety nine point five percent which we call a correlation of coefficient of correlation and that was great so that was that was our first algorithm ok since then we’ve built algorithm we now have sixty five algorithms we have we have one for each of nine sectors we have one for each of forced sources so individuals foundations bequest and corporations and we also have one for all fifty states plus dc okay all right cubine business the same kind of technology by the way that hedge funds use and other forecasting and analytical firm to use today different from things that were created several decades ago that were things like on econometric model perhaps so well there’s econometric data in your algorithm they’re absolutely yeah they’re having a little is but on our algorithms get better that the more the more we use them the more we’re able to find out what the strengths of the factors are and what factors are involved for example in one of our sources there is a correlation with auto parts sales now that a correlation does not necessarily mean a relationship yeah it just means that there’s a strong correlation and in that case that correlation is a very strong correlation ah we’ve also recently found that there is a strong correlation with equipment heavy equipment leasing and interesting okay correlation not cause and effect but well sometimes like you finds an effect sometimes it is but it doesn’t have to be yeah okay and there’s numbers of factors for all these different algorithms that you have for the sixty five different okay on how many years have you been doing this we’ve been doing this since two thousand ten okay all right let’s get teo to the announcement for let’s start of course with the review of twenty fifteen way had a nice increase from two thousand fourteen tio two thousand fifteen did well we did have a nice increase not as good as the one from two thousand thirteen to two thousand or two thousand fourteen to two thousand fifteen minutes we’re doing two thousand fourteen to fifteen fifteen but this was your little nervous we’ve been on non-profit radio before i’m scared to death tony is the because i told you not to be an anarchist is i don’t know it’s because it’s hot it’s hot studio today because the professor is in the room it’s micah’s off you can’t even say anything well you can but we’re not gonna hear it now and paul is listening now you just i mean we did this last year you okay take a breath take a deep breath i’m ready to go okay came from san antonio so we’ll give him a break all right eso from twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen we had a pretty nice increase did we not yes we did we had a four point six percent growth increase in total giving in the united states for a total of four hundred and seventy seven point five five billion dollars which is the largest amount ever recorded and shared will giving okay and what way just have like a minute and a half so before i go out for our first break but you know we have the hour together so no rush no rush what are a couple of the highlights from the twenty fifteen giving just named too i would i would say that summer giving was actually better than urine giving which would be a surprise to most people yes it would okay we’ll talk about that on dh what else you got thie other thing is that since the depth of the depression in two thousand nine charitable giving has grown fifty one percent through two thousand fifteen okay since the depths of the recession in no nine okay we’re gonna go out for our break and when we come back rob and i are going to continue talking about some highlights and then we’ll bring in dog white and paul schervish all for the twenty fifteen giving report and twenty sixteen forecast stay with us you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right is there a better way there is find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes you can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way kayman duitz welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent okay rob let’s let’s start with this summer e-giving very interesting so we’re talking ah june july august bigger than october november december actually it was it was may june and july okay andi what do you think accounts for this well as you remember i said we’re working off of economic factors and one of the biggest economic factors were working off of force some of our algorithms is the value of the stock market yes which was down in december way down in december and then secretary yellin of the fed announced a rate increase yeah hi didn’t help either high interest rates bad forgiving high interest rates bad forgiving and there they are a harbinger of inflation coming o k we should say hyre i mean a stark values go interest rates are still low quite low very low but hyre okay spell it out for us why why does the higher interest rate i mean ah likely decline and give charitable giving well you have to consider the fact that seventy three percent of all charitable giving in the united states comes from individuals and so it’s all about disposable income so if you’re paying more money i know that you’ve just bought a new place if you’re paying more money for your mortgage you have less money to give if you’re paying more money for your car payment you have less money to give it if the interest rates are hyre you’re going to be paying more and inflation comes into effect in much the same way you’re paying mohr for the items that you usually pay for and so you have less disposable income okay and when seventy three percent of the pop of the charitable of all charitable giving comes from individuals but that makes a huge difference and the higher interest rates you said suggest inflation they suggest coming in coming inflation okay there are there a predictor of they are predicting a leading what we say what’s the call that a harbinger but yeah that that that’s not the technical term we’re going is not propagated we got the fancy leading leading indicator is the leading indicator is that right yeah okay i only have a bachelor’s degree in economics but and rob is alluding to the fact that i’m buying a home in north carolina actually on the beach in north carolina that’s what he was talking about my home purchase um okay so wait so i assume way i presume from all this we saw a decline in charitable giving from november to december yes we did and that’s what that’s what hurt the fourth quarter and so may actually started it i actually started from october to november and then it really took a dip in december so did we see a decline from september to october yes we did and then october and then november was lower than october yes uh yeah i’m not sure about that look at your looking uh maybe i remember wrong look at your charts no november was all slightly higher than lightly okay but yes smaller decline i’m sorry smaller increase and then no and then december was down from november correct okay um all right so that accounts for our fourth quarter not so good not so good okay and we’ve had other fourth quarters that haven’t been so good to thousand won is an example charitable giving was looking good until we had september eleven yes and then if you were a non disaster charitable organization non disaster related charitable organization you’re giving dried up for six months and we’re gonna get to actually is right now that not that that was a recession in two thousand one but we’ve recovered very nicely since you said two thousand nine in the in the midst of the recession yes it’s been it’s been a remarkable recovery fueled mostly by the stock market and and for us as we analyze the data it’s not so much about it’s not so much about um what’s going on it’s where your money comes from how do you raise money colleges and universities raise money very differently from a very large chair nationwide charitable organization or a church that relies on lots of small gifts from lots of donors and when unemployment is high one thing that we know very very specifically is that when unemployment is high it really hurts those large organizations that rely on those small gifts than those those events that rely on small gifts and it takes as many as two years after one becomes reemployed or finds a new job for them to reach for them to resume their giving and if they have a hint that they’re going to lose their job they stopped giving even before they lose their jobs there in twenty fifteen i presume unemployment what would’ve been helpful fight would have been a positive factor absolute employment was declining absolutely so that was a great spot for twenty fifteen okay and you said were up fifty one percent i think from two thousand nine from two thousand ninety okay um let’s talk about as a percentage of the gross domestic product now gdp abila e-giving says three and a half percent of gdp for charitable giving a real real gdp okay make the distinction please inflation adjusted okay thank you um the conventional Wisdom is 2 percent a lot of people out there saying two percent including e-giving yusa and a lot of others that’s the that’s the pretty common number uh is everything else wrong and atlas e-giving is right at three and a half you’re absolutely correct what’s the distinction this’s because we’re talking billions and billion many billions of dollars difference between three and five percent and two and a half percent two percent what’s really amazing tony is if you look back forty years over e-giving use a data they always come up with the same answer always two percent two percent yeah well they they and a lot of others they’re not they’re not the sole ones that they’re not outliers but there have been a it’s two percent and it’s been that for decades i believe but there have been some major things happen that haven’t that that aren’t accounted for for example technology i mean think about think about technology twenty years ago we didn’t have we didn’t have technology to support special events we didn’t have technology to support um donordigital bases we didn’t have this kind of stuff it sophisticated you’re saying the world has changed the world has changed dramatically plus where we’ve we have added a million and a half charitable organizations so not all of them are going to make it but there are a few that are going to make it and make it really big and that makes a difference also all right so the these air factors that would lead one to conclude they would they would suggest that intuitively that e-giving might have would have increased as a percentage of real gdp but that’s but that’s our intuitive sense i mean we need data that shows it’s three and a half versus two if you’re goingto ifyou’re the out you’d hear the outlier at three and a half percent so we have to we need more than just intuition okay well if you look a tte our Numbers 4:2009 they were at two percent but because of what’s happened since the recession and taking to account how how we measure um it’s it’s near three and a half percent now of gdp you’re seeing it rise you’ve seen it right now since two thousand i thought you’ve been doing this since a two thousand eleven i thought two thousand ten two thousand ten but we’ve also back wait built back at your base that goes back for sector source and state that goes back to nineteen sixty actually had the ninety nine point five percent accuracy ok just don’t keep you honest here please well there’s a professor not prohibited but that’s the least of our concerns this is non-profit radio that should be not columbia university and boston college non-profit radio should be your leading concern um okay so you’re you’re saying that since two thousand nine you have and the stoploss e-giving large has seen increases you know we’ll get to the factors okay but you’ve seen increase from two percent two three and a half percent of riel inflation adjusted gross domestic product absolutely edible giving as a percentage thereof yes okay speaking like an encyclopedia okay what are some of the fact that technology has improved mobile giving was i don’t know if we had mobile giving in two thousand nine i can’t remember but it’s certainly has become quite a bit more prevalent since two thousand nine two thousand ten what other factors do you attribute this um we wanted to have percent growth in we’ve had crowdfunding we’ve had prize philanthropy we’ve had that was the last one crowdfunding and what prize philantech price falling through what is that mrs jordan i’m putting you in george in jail prise philanthropy what is priced philanthropy i’ve never prize philanthropy a few years ago starbucks offered a four million dollar prize to the organization that could get the most votes on dh they brought okay broke it up so that your social media to get the votes and so prize philanthropy entered the equation okay other factors is a seventy five percent increase in as a percentage of gdp from two to three and a half absolutely well look at what the stock market did since two thousand ten it’s been it’s been on a terror now this year was different but it it definitely made a difference and another thing that has made a significant difference is donor advised funds if you look well fidelity fidelity announced this week just out today how many billions of dollars went toe twenty fifteen three and a half three and half billion i think help one hundred sixty six thousand one hundred sixty six thousand grants helping one hundred thousand roughly charities or so those air ball partners but the three and a half billion it was in the chronicle today now don’t advice funds are being criticized it was just also just two weeks ago or so in the chronicle there was a commentary op ed piece that enough money is not flowing out of them and very very harsh about against dahna advice funds too much money basically the the writer said parked in donor advised funds not being distributed to charities donorsearch vise funds have added more to the charitable economy than anything else has in the last i would say in the last five years and it’s because now for the commentator you’re talking about that that that did the opposite for the chronicle he provided no data and yet we have data from donor advised funds that show that donor advised funds have provided as much as four or five times as much in in terms of percentage for grants to other charitable organizations as have private foundations four to five times as much from dahna advice fundez provoc foundation absolutely all right uh not specifically on that point but we may get to it let’s that spring in our eyes our academic team doug white is here in the studio again welcome back he is director of operations at columbia university’s master of science in fund-raising management program he also teaches board governance ethics and fund-raising his most recent book is abusing donors intent chronicling the historic lawsuit lawsuit brought against princeton university by the children of charles emory robertson we covered that book with doug on non-profit radio dahna welcome back thank you for having me tony it’s good to see you thank you it’s a pleasure i love that deep deep radio voice wonderful let zoho general before we get to the details of dahna advised funds and improvement from the recession what strikes you about the twenty fifteen report from atlas of giving a lot of things first of all i think you’re right to focus on how different it is from what we’re hearing from giving yusa and what strikes me within that is we as a philanthropic community very much pay attention to what giving us a says and not very much attention to the alice of giving and i’m thinking that should change okay uh well way actually did a face off with atlas of giving and giving us a rob rob was on that show and there were representatives from the from the board and the academic team at indiana university the senator on philanthropy there and that was maybe a year and a half or two years ago so we had them we had them meeting and i’m not sure we uh well yeah i don’t think anything conclusive came of it they both believe that they’re the most accurate doug you think that atlas is more accurate well i don’t know for a fact but what i’m hearing makes a lot of sense i’m not a statistician and i think my life is better for that but i would say that the news that i’m hearing from atlas of giving that is so different from giving yusa is a little akin to me a cz if someone had told me that the way we measure the stock market growth is wrong it’s that fundamental because we rely on those numbers for so many things and it’s very much a part of our dna and our community our charitable community but i think we need to really do some investigating and find out really who’s right here and so far rob sounds like he’s got a lot of information that i think i’m hearing that e-giving yusa does not is that true rob is that what’s going on here it is true atlas of giving well e-giving yusa created their econometric model more than forty years ago they have tweaked it a couple of times um as i said they always come up with the same answer which is giving its two percent of real gdp so you’re claiming that they’re using an algorithm that’s forty years old and the factors within that algorithm algorithm have changed dramatically over that period of time and those you are on top of that’s what we’re on top come on let’s be fair that we got to be fair to giving us a sure not sure not here to say how their algorithm has evolved over and i’m not taking process has involved i’m not taking the side i just need to get out of the question i would say this is the major difference between the atlas of giving and giving yusa e-giving yusa is will not come out with their two thousand fifteen results until late june we have to wait till june right late june it’s not monthly it’s not contemporary and it contains no forecast yeah the june is a big problem because if you’re a big problem because if you’re basing your fund-raising projections and plan on what you what what happened last year although i mean i hope you have other factors besides his besides history but you have to wait till the middle of the year to get the review of last year and then there isn’t a forecast well there’s one other fundamental problem that they have and that is that they’re using irs data that is more than two years old to come up with their number for what happened in the year there measuring now i don’t know about you but i don’t know how you can predict the news or measure the news with a new york times from two thousand fourteen on this date to say what what happened today okay all right we’re going we’re going to try to leave that there we’ll see what paul service has to say i’m not comfortable going to much further because again the atlas is not here to latto defend itself essentially let’s bring in paul schervish he’s a professor emeritus and retired as professor of sociology and as director of the center on wealth and philanthropy at boston college with john havens he co authored the very well known nineteen ninety eight report millionaires and the millennium which predicted the now well known forty one trillion dollar wealth transfer from baby boomers he’s currently writing aristotle’s legacy the moral biography of wealth and the new physics of philanthropy welcome back paul schervish hello tony hi doug i’m happy to be here thank you paul what what i’ll ask the same question i asked doug what strikes you as a as a highlight of this twenty fifteen report from atlas of giving the a larger amount of giving that is chronicled by the atlas elearning in contrast to the e-giving yusa numbers um e-giving usa has about a total giving of about three hundred ah forty billion and the atlas of course is what is it uh for seventy something for seventy seven point five five seven years well yeah that’s right but paul isn’t that the that’s the twenty fourteen e-giving use a three hundred forty billion right that’s twenty fourteen they haven’t released their twenty fifteen they won’t until june that’s correct but they’re not going to go up to four seventy five ah and so ah that contrast is dramatic now we have done some research when looking into the independent sector study we were hired by kellogg foundation and by independent sector to evaluate their survey that was the benchmark for giving from the early nineteen uh nineties through about two thousand and we actually went to various households that were interviewed by the gallup organization and what we discovered as we sat there with the um uh with the interviewer and then sometimes talk to people separately was how muchmore giving when you asked the question uh more detail people are going to report so people understand more about what you’re asking and prompt them both in the in two ways one with bae is what sector they gave to you let’s say now what did you give to education and then you would prompt them again and say what would be the amount that you gave to that to education bye ah people coming to your door by being asked by an organization by answering and responding teo mail solicitation teo email solicitations and so on and we found out and this was actually research done in co ordination with i wrote it with patrick rooney and at centre on philantech being we found out that the more props you give the hyre e-giving its and the problem is invoked survey research you don’t get a chance to ask those prompts and secondly for the independent sector we found that it was underestimating e-giving and when you ask more carefully to the people that they had interviewed so some of our own behavioral research indicates that there is probably more giving than what is being picked up by the center on philanthropy which is the better which is the giving us a report you supplement the irs data with their uh center on philanthropy panel study for people who are you uh e-giving at lower levels who don’t itemize so they do have some additional data but i think that we’re missing a lot in giving okay well good that so i think that uh the atlas uh is probably more accurate and there’s some other factors we can talk about later about how we’re even even the atlas maybe under estimating e-giving okay all right we have tio take a little pause from our conversation sam maybe you can just doug’s mike because i feel like he’s you know it’s so comfortable you okay they’re all right mike mike was drooping okay don’t have droopy mic syndrome um and we’re going so we have more on this conversation coming up first pursuant they’re cloudgood based tool is one of their card based tools velocity designed to specifically help gift officers e-giving the gift officers the analytics that they need and that you need as an organization stay on task and raise more money data like number of active proposals that air out average close rate your average time to close and the all important dollars raised it’s a simple 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tuscaloosa alabama live love live listener love tto all the live listeners those and others affiliate affections gotta send affections out to the am and fm station listeners throughout the country our affiliate stations playing the show whenever they fitted into their schedule no you’re not listening live but your station has worked us in we’re very glad to be a part of your station timetable affiliate affections to the am and fm listeners and the podcast pleasantries over ten thousand people listening wherever whatever whatever time whatever device painting a house washing dishes driving subway ing training planing podcast pleasantries to be over ten thousand podcast listeners okay let’s go back to our review and uh and forecast paul i’m going to ask you about donorsearch vise funds what and then very shortly we’re gonna get to the forecast for twenty sixteen but paul service what’s what’s your take on donor advised funds i know you read that chronicle of philanthropy op ed that was critical i mean i don’t know you did but ninety nine percent likelihood of course you did okay um what’s your sense of donor advised funds eyes too much money parked in there was that a fair assessment of donor advised funds i don’t think it is um first of all we have money parked in every university endowment we have money parked in um in every charity that has an endowment and what people are doing with donor advised funds is complimenting there private foundations are like my wife and i do we park money there a little bit each year so it accumulates we make gifts from there but over the years we’re hoping to make a larger contribution to something that is very important to us and by being able to contribute each year more than we distribute from the donor advised funds we have a pool for a larger gift and i think uh that’s once after that’s very important for the wide range of people who have dahna advice funds and not just well hold uh secondly i think what’s good for the goose is good for the gander if we’re going to talk about donorsearch advice funds and it was correct doug was correct that the donor advised funds the fidelity report indicated he gave three point one billion dollars last year and if you look at the gates foundation it gives about two billion and it adds the one point but i am doing that it has to keep a way of from warren buffett each year that’s uh a three point five billion now that’s more concentrated more focus so does a little accomplish major changes across the world but in terms of sheer amounts of money this is rivaling the the the gates foundation okay doug white let’s start too you don’t know and doug also there was there’s a suggestion that donor advised funds should have ah requirement to give maybe it’s five percent the way private foundations do now from each donor advice fundez right doug what’s your what’s your sense of dahna advice funds and what do you think about putting ah mandatory donation requirement doug well if you do that you’ll be way behind the curve because the national philanthropic trust which gathers up data on all sorts of aspects of the donor advised found world reports that the average that on average sixteen or seventeen percent per year is being given out from metoo azan average as an average you know anybody who’s showing up saying that we should have a minimum will probably say five percent because that’s what the foundation minimum is s so i’m thinking okay you can make it a five percent minimum but that’s not going to really affect the real world and going after a minimum in this particular case is really the wrong argument i think we’re really wasting a lot of time on this that chronicle editorial was something i do disagree with i think there could be some mohr education on the part of donors and charities on how to distribute and what kind of organization should be getting that kind of a money that kind of broader education is a lot more important to me than having some arbitrary payout rule that’s going to be a lot less than what’s going on in reality anyway there is some there is one more thing though about that average that can aggregate average yeah but if you were to average things and take what percentage i give away so if you did the average for each fund-raising and that’s one of the arguments that made made in congressional hearings and so on right on the other side of that argument it isn’t sixteen percent that’s the aggregate average because there’s a lot of people giving away a larger percentage of what they hold but if you did an average of each fund we would be down toward six five percent okay hold on hold on paul let’s hear from doug and i totally agree with that but i think that that that point and i’m going to buy into a one hundred percent it’s still not an argument they have a mandatory minimum okay the number one but also i don’t know e i don’t know if you meant to say this paul a moment ago but you just gave a very good reason for not distributing you’re actually putting away latto smaller chunks every year based on your ability to do that so that you can aggregate it to a point at some time in the future when you can actually do something very major with that that’s not a bad argument yes thank you i’m confused about the five percent versus sixteen or seventeen doug can you sixteen years seventeen was what the national philanthropic trust that is the aggregate outlaw outlay of donor advised funds last year okay that paul’s pointing out that if you do it fundez fun there are a lot of funds that don’t come up to that number they maybe five or six percent which means a lot of them are thirty or forty percent you know it’s going to be that way so so all i’m saying is that the argument the conversation is a total waste in my view of having a minimum that’s the bottom line for me all right let’s move on gents we’re going to move to the twenty sixteen forecast which is as robb pointed out unique for the atlas of giving rob return it to you what can we expect for twenty sixteen not as good as twenty fifteen we are now keep in mind before i say what i’m about to say that we update our forecast based on based on economic demographic and event factors as they occur each month each month so this is the initial forecast this was the initial forecast for twelve months the calendar year for two thousand sixteen and our first forecast is that charitable giving will grow but only at a rate of two point six percent two point six versus the what we have four point two percent from fourteen to fifteen did you report it four point six four point six thank you okay also a two percent difference all right so let me ask you this back-up how much did your twenty fifteen forecast in january of last year differ from what we’re now reporting completely different completely completely and what well i imagine politics was a part of that the political campaign were the presidential what else what else stock market doc mark hood was hugh couldn’t predict what was going to start with anything else those those were two main okay doesn’t mean they’re not like to say well aside from the stock market in the presidential election what else you got way we’re not we were expecting we’re expecting a stock market correction earlier in the year were expecting it to be fairly sizeable ah janet yellen was also talking about raising interest rates in the first quarter of the year and she put that off until the last quarter of the year so that that made a difference to okay but way were updating the forecast every month so it kept getting it kept getting better okay the presidential election cycle yes year how does that factor in well we’ve talked about disposable income and when you talk about disposable income you talk about individuals you might be talking about corporations but if money is being channelled to political campaigns out of disposable income from individuals and corporations there is less for charity and so one of the things i’ll tell the listeners now is that we are actually working on a study going back several decades toe look at the impact of political campaigns on charitable giving from the past and we intend to release that in june okay all right so for the time being we would expect is it is simple as you know tend to be well simple minded is it as simple as we’ll see a decline in like august september and october of twenty sixteen because of the imminence of the election in november the timing i think is going to be spread mostly throughout the year okay more even okay okay um let’s see we just got about two minutes before a break uh doug you want toe not before we’re done but for a break doug you want to weigh in on ah presidential factor president presidential election is a factor of charitable giving i totally agree i think a lot of people were talking about it disposable income it could go one place or another and this has been such a an excited presidential cycle that a lot of money has gone there when we talk about that though my my mind is more on the dark money and the way c four’s air being used wrongly in my view and so a lot of money is being siphoned through our sector just not through the five o n c three portion of our sector and that is to me a very big concern all right let’s go out for a break early sam and when we come back we’re gonna continue this conversation focusing on the twenty sixteen forecast will bring paul service back in stay with us like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon craig newmark the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable interesting people in and around 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visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com i’m dana ostomel ceo of deposit a gift and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent full service let’s bring you back in what’s your thoughts on twenty sixteen i think that one of the major factors that is missed in a lot of this is the growth in wealth that is independent of the staff markets the privately held firms and the amount of money that is generated by privately help firms and the contributions that are made by the people that owned firms when you get over one hundred million according to federal reserve data that we analyze fifty percent of the equity that is owned of the assets that are owned by of their net worth they’re owned by the upper end isn’t a privately held this and so the stock market is one important factor and we know that there are just dozens and dozens of variables that rob puts into the model but i think that we’re goingto have a sustained reliability and it’s going to be higher than the two point six percent and i um uh the hot medicine that i have your key recently came out with the projection probably teo reflect what uh doug what rob is doing uh they came out with the projection of about six percent growth in the coming year that’s a problem we’ll find the center and philanthropy and so my view is that we’re going to find sustained giving at a higher rate and it’s because a large proportion of the e-giving is accomplished by the very very very a small number of hyo households five hundred thousand six hundred thousand seventy thousand and the best depending on whether you do it either income or by their wealth that group gives between twenty and twenty eight percent of all the charitable giving that’s less about one that’s about a half a percent of the households in the nation and so i expect that that wealth is going to continue to grow now it does reflect the economy what happens to these private businesses but the amount of money that’s being accumulated at the very top is something that we have to consider as independent of the stock market paul that wealth that you’re concerned about in the privately held companies does that end up typically being inherited wealth to the next generation or what happens to all that wealth well it’s that’s the debate isn’t at the giving pledge is that they’re going to give at least fifty t percent and lifetime or to their state of their these air people in a billion and more yeah ah ah and some of them are ten twenty and thirty billion dollars they’re going to get out of that are more to charity now that’s in the offing and as a group ages we’re going to find some of that coming through the states if they don’t give it through their foundation to their foundation to a foundation and through a foundation so i think that we’re going to find this continuing to be a major factor in full after pete philantech pretty is very very very top heavy and so i expect there to be ah greater than two places percent but i give the atlas great credit last year we talked about a five percent drop at this point and it corrected it as the year went on when it got more information so i think the yearly prediction is less valuable than what we’re going to find out each month along the way more accurately okay excellent um rob let’s let’s go back to you for twenty sixteen what do you see from the the sources of giving so you’re looking at corporate foundation bequest and individual individual being by far the largest do you see that staying mostly stable from twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen well one of the disturbing fax is that corporate giving has continued to decline as a percentage of all giving oh and that that that’s one of the trans little continue in two thousand sixteen what have you been seeing over the past couple of years so what percentage is that we’re seeing in the decline well from five percent to three point three percent growth that i think significant growing without a smaller rate is that running a smaller right ok the other the other thing is that and this is the elephant in the room is church giving ah fewer and fewer americans are associating themselves with churches their congregations of any kind and if you look back two e-giving yusa reports from fifteen years ago church giving amounted to fifty percent of of all gifts now we’re down to thirty three percent yeah it’s been you and i have been doing this together for two years it’s been this is our third year sorry it’s been declining like a one percent a year did you see the did you see it declined from twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen yes you did okay is like a percent percent a year so slowly declining what paul did you want to weigh in on that but what can i say what that was just at the upper end doesn’t he have a great proportion of their e-giving two churches and the more top heavy wealth gets the greater total proportion of e-giving churches is going to be down just as a matter of statistics but also it’s absolutely correct that church participation is down and what the relative amounts that are going to education and health are skyrocketing and that’s in the atlas on dh er that’s in a report from the center for the study of education on kaplan’s group that showed that e-giving as is actually covers two years because twenty fourteen some of the reports are are in a fiscal year ending in june or an obvious so it’s really covering twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen and that’s dramatically up this year thie amount that’s going to higher education rob good that represents the upper e-giving and so they’re proportion of the total amount of giving two churches has to go down when you have not only congregational participation slipping but also so much more of the total amount of money going from high end groups they get the education and other cars and one of those other causes this is a very interest this has been a very interesting thing to watch is that in twenty fifteen the greatest growth and giving occurred in the environmental sector which is the smallest sector has been the smallest sector of giving for a very very long time so the proportion of the pie is being redistributed less to religion mohr to environment human services and education as paul pointed out those those things are it’s it’s you know we like to say we’re we’ve got our finger on the pulse of american philanthropy and nothing nothing is going to know nothing’s in stone everything can change at any time and that’s why we we produce a monthly report we would love to produce one that’s weekly but we haven’t figured out how to do that yet dug anything you want to add about twenty sixteen well i’m sitting here in fascination that paul service is thinking that rob mitchell is being conservative because we’re talking about how how far out on the limb thie alice of giving is and yet ah hearing rob described how that’s put together is very valid to me and i think we oughta have this debate again that you were describing happened two or three years ago because i’m like i think it’s important that we get to the bottom of the fish off yeah yeah and then paul’s bring in some factors here that he’s saying that maybe the alice hasn’t yet considered the behavioral aspects of it and what he says makes a lot of sense to me i will say i’m going to wrap it up gents we did invite the atlas and giving us a to another face off it was several months ago wasn’t it wasn’t for this show today but several months ago and didn’t hear back from giving us a robbers willing but giving us a way also didn’t come through you also extended an invitation to blackbaud for the blackbaud index toe do another face often we never heard about it yeah it was very generous of me all right and they didn’t respond either we have to leave it there paul service doug white and rob mitchell thank you so much gentlemen thank you turned in a great flood here thank you thank you paul next week gene takagi returns he’s our legal contributor and the principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group if you missed any part of today’s show please find it on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go i’m still not sure about that for twenty sixteen taking my time to to make that decision we’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay mobile donation feature crowdster dot com our creative producer is claire meyer off sam liebowitz is the line producer gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by dina russell and our music is by scott stein thank you for that scotty be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great what’s not to love about non-profit 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