MCF staff members at the 40th Anniversary and Annual Member Meeting
2009 was a great year for us with many notable highlights — among them celebrating the organization’s 40th Anniversary and a very successful MCN and MCF Joint Annual Conference. Thanks to all of you — members, nonprofit allies, and friends — who made this year such a success. Here’s to a Happy New Year to you and yours in 2010!
Although the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan endures, a new generation of veterans is coming home. A first-of-its-kind report reveals that many want to serve as volunteers, and that this volunteer work may be crucial to welcoming and re-integrating them into their home communities successfully. Effectively engaging this force for good on the home front will require cultural awareness and new tactics on the part of all of us in the independent sector.
The new report on the civic engagement and volunteerism of veterans is the first of its kind.
The report, released by Civic Enterprises and funded by the Case Foundation and Target Foundation (a member of the Minnesota Council on Foundations), is entitled All Volunteer Force: From Military to Civilian Service.
Report Highlights:
What Nonprofits, Faith-based Organizations and Grantmakers Can Do
Perhaps one of the most powerful things that organizations in the independent sector can do to engage veterans is simply to ask them if they’d like to volunteer. Many of those respondents currently volunteering reported that being asked to volunteer was the reason they began volunteering in the first place.
Faith-based organizations can also help ease the transition for veterans by recognizing them during services and asking congregants to invite veterans into their homes to share a family meal. Many returning veterans are Millenials and members of Generation X. These individuals are high technology users and may be contacted via forums and using other online communications vehicles. If you have a Twitter account or enewsletter, consider making a special appeal to veterans to volunteer at your nonprofit or serve on your board of trustees.
The report outlines many other strategies — from national policy down to the grassroots — for effectively engaging and re-integrating servicemen and women into their communities. The full report can be viewed and downloaded for free at civicenterprises.net
Join the conversation: Have you talked to your colleagues about how to reach out to veterans? If you’re a veteran or service member, what advice do you have for organizations who would like to engage you?
1 Comment | 
communication, nonprofits, volunteers | Tagged: Case Foundation, Civic Enterprises, Target Foundation, veteran volunteers, volunteerism, welcoming veterans | 
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The government is looking for your thoughts on the criteria it will use to award millions of dollars to grantmaking organizations as a part of the Social Innovation Fund. The Corporation for National Community Service is looking for feedback by January 15 on its draft Notice of Funds Available (NOFA). The NOFA contains important provisions that outline the requirements to be considered eligible for the grant awards.
The agency plans to award five to seven grants, ranging from $5 to 10 million, during the 2010 fiscal year. These funds will be granted to what it has dubbed “intermediary grantmaking organizations” who are committed to evaluating the effectiveness of the grants they award. These organizations will, in turn, parcel out the funds in smaller amounts to nonprofits that embody the Social Innovation Fund’s definition of innovative programming.
The complete Notice of Funds Available can be read on the Corporation for National Community Service’s website. Feedback may be submitted online by sending an email to SIFinput@cns.gov.
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I’m sure your mailbox has been like mine these past few weeks – plenty of letters soliciting year-end financial contributions mixed in with the holiday greetings. The challenge has always been how to sift through all this and make the decisions to give to some causes and not to others.
Before you uncork a bottle of bubbly on New Year's Eve, will you be making any last minute donations?
How is the tough year affecting your year-end giving? Do we choose to support nonprofits that address hunger and housing? How about organizations that are filling a need created by government budget cuts such as those providing education or medical care and support to those who struggle to afford it?
Or do we support those nonprofits that may have experienced a drop in giving this year (like arts groups, for example), because a good base of their support now is being directed toward basic needs and they are not perceived as such? Do we support dire needs in our own zip code, state, country or across the ocean?
In this economic climate, difficult choices are coupled with our own decisions about how much we’re capable of spending, giving away and saving.
Given the amount of mail I’ve received (via the regular postal service and via email) now is a time of great need for the causes I support (as well as for those for which I’m not sure how I got on their distribution list).
Working in the nonprofit field, I tend to view fundraising appeals through a somewhat more critical lens, thinking about messaging, impact and other nuances.
A couple of recent articles caught my attention. In his monthly e-newsletter free-range thinking, Andy Goodman recounts a study conducted in 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University in which researchers studied the giving of students who received appeals using data alone to illustrate need, a personal story alone outlining need, and data plus story. The results in a nutshell: Story alone is a more effective appeal than data alone and surprisingly, data plus story.
A New York Times article recently touted Dec. 31 as the “most lucrative” day of the year for many nonprofits, especially those that solicit online giving. Nonprofits, the article says, are increasingly using a last-minute email appeal to entice people to take advantage of any tax benefits for giving during the preceding year.
Join the conversation: Has your mailbox seen more, less or about the same amount of fundraising mail this season? Which appeals do you find most impactful? Any examples you’d like to share? What’s your experience with New Year’s Eve giving? How much giving do you do then? Or, if you’re a nonprofit, is that a “lucrative day” for you?
- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate
Comments Off | communication, economy, fundraising, holiday, nonprofits | Tagged: last minute donations, New York Times, online giving, year-end giving | Permalink
Posted by Chris Noonan
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has long been a proponent of evaluation to assess the effectiveness of grant-funded programs. As a leader in the field, RWJF recently developed some new program evaluation resources and tools to help program officers, grant recipients, evaluators and others as they begin to assess the strengths and weaknesses of particular programs or initiatives.
Need better tools for stakeholder evaluation? This new guide may help.
A Practical Guide for Engaging Stakeholders in Developing Evaluation Questions, commissioned by RWJF and written by FSG Social Impact Advisors, is just one article in this series. The authors, Hallie Preskill and Nathalie Jones (experts at FSG’s Strategic Learning and Evaluation Center), define stakeholders as anyone with a vested interest in the program being evaluated – from clients, to program managers, policymakers, funders, academics and community members.
Evaluation findings will be most useful, relevant and credible when the opinions and concerns of stakeholders from different cultural, racial, ethnic, geographic, political, organizational and linguistic backgrounds are taken into account early in the evaluation process, the authors say.
So, how do you engage such a broad range of stakeholders in developing evaluation question? The authors outline a five-step process, and provide four worksheets to help.
Step 1: Prepare for stakeholder engagement: Before doing anything else, take the time to understand the program’s history, what it aims to accomplish, and how it defines success.
Step 2: Identify potential stakeholders: To assure the evaluation’s findings are useful to a broad range of audiences, consider stakeholders with different perspectives, expertise, responsibilities and influence.
Step 3: Prioritize the list of stakeholders: Balancing a diverse group of perspectives with limited resources takes discipline. This section provides tips to help prioritize stakeholders.
Step 4: Consider potential stakeholders’ motivations for participating: How you engage different stakeholders is likely to depend on their various motivations for participating. Different motivations will require different methods of engagement.
Step 5: Select a stakeholder engagement strategy: Finally, how to involve stakeholders in developing an evaluation’s key questions? This hefty section outlines a variety of factors and methods to consider.
This guide is practical, informative, and free of jargon. The hands-on planning worksheets are straightforward, and the additional evaluation resources comprehensive.
– Juliana Tillema, MCF research manager
1 Comment | collaboration, evaluation, research | Tagged: A Practical Guide for Engaging Stakeholders in Developing Evaluation Questions, evaluation, FSG Social Impact Advisors, Hallie Preskill, Nathalie Jones, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, stakeholder engagement | Permalink
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On Friday of last week I joined more than 200 attendees to hear Jon Pratt, Christina Wessel and Ruth Duran Deffley of MCN present the findings of their Nonprofit Current Conditions Report and the Minnesota Nonprofit Economy Report.
Their findings in a nutshell — “grim”:
Many nonprofits are trying to stay afloat by cutting staff, creating hiring and salary freezes and reducing employee benefits. The outlook for 2010 according to survey’s nonprofit respondents? Gloomier still than 2009. What are nonprofits to do?
Marcia Avner, public policy director at MCN, says, “This is not a time to wring our hands.” Marcia went on to make a plea for nonprofits to band together in these troubled times and create a unified voice to advocate for creating a sustainable state budget through participation in Invest in Minnesota, a coalition of nonprofit, faith and labor organizations.
The response panel carried forward this theme of defiance in tough times. Mark Peterson of Lutheran Social Services challenged attendees to build “a culture of possibilities” by developing practices in their organizations that encourage everyone from staff to board to innovate, create goals and execute them.
Similarly, Kate Barr of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund stated that, whereas 2009 was a time for “trimming the edges,” survival in 2010 and beyond will be determined by how willing nonprofits are to rethink their way of delivering services and maintaining back office operations. Short-term thrusters will no longer drive solutions for maintaining operations; organizations must look to the long term — three years out — and develop a plan for sustainability.
Renae Oswald-Anderson, director of MAP for Nonprofits’ Project ReDesign, asked nonprofit leaders to look within and define first what they do best as an organization, and then seek partners to shore up gaps. She stated that this strategy — sticking to your core services and finding opportunities to collaborate and share resources with others — may be the key to continuing operations for many nonprofits that are facing hard times in the recession.
“Now is the time to ask, What can we do better together?” Renae reiterated in her closing statement. Fortunately there are resources available for funders and nonprofits considering just this question. Project ReDesign has many resources available on its website, and Grantcraft recently released a guide for grantmakers on funding collaboratives.
Upcoming program: MCF’s 2010 Funding Outlook for Minnesota Grantmakers and Nonprofits
Registration is now available online for MCF’s Outlook event happening on January 29th in St. Paul. At the event philanthropic and nonprofit colleagues will convene to learn about the funding outlook for 2010, based on MCF’s survey of grantmakers conducted in October-November 2009, and to network and discuss opportunities to work toward shared goals. For further information and to register, visit mcf.org.
- Cary Lenore Walski, MCF web communications associate
1 Comment | collaboration, economy, fundraising, leadership, mcf, nonprofits | Tagged: Christina Wessel, Jon Pratt, Kate Barr, Lutheran Social Services, MAP for Nonrprofits, Mark Peterson, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Economic Outlook for 2010, Project ReDesign, Renae Oswald-Anderson, Ruth Duran Deffley | Permalink
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While the full force of the economic downturn reaches nonprofits, many are being encouraged by funders, the public and the news media alike to consider opportunities to save money by collaborating on programs and sharing resources for back office operations.
Likewise, many in the grantmaking field are doing similar soul-searching to increase the efficiency of their giving, and also to avoid being perceived as disingenuous by the very nonprofits they may be asking to make sacrifices.
As one foundation president quoted in Grantcraft’s report on collaboration stated:
“Funders are asking nonprofits to do so much more in hard times — like merge or even go out of business. But how many foundations are doing the same? It’s the credibility issue; you know, we need to walk our talk.”
Fortunately for grantmakers exploring opportunities to collaborate, Grantcraft’s new guide titled “Funder Collaboratives: Why and How Funders Work Together” offers insights from the field on how grantmaking organizations can pool their resources to give more effectively and produce better outcomes in the communities they work.
Highlights include:
Grantcraft’s guide on collaboration can be downloaded for free at grantcraft.org.
Join the conversation: Grantmakers, what strategies for collaboration and resource sharing are you considering? If you are actively engaged in a collaboration, what tips do you have for other grantmaking organizations who are considering doing the same?
-Cary Lenore Walski, MCF web communications associate
1 Comment | collaboration, economy, evaluation, mcf, research | Tagged: creating efficiencies, foundation collaboration, Funder Collaboratives: Why and How Funders Work Together, Grantcraft, partnering, report, research, strategy, survey | Permalink
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Resources from the recent conference held by the Facilitating Racial Equality Collaborative (FREC) are now online! The conference, entitled Overcoming Racism Why IS it So Hard, was held on November 6th and 7th in St. Paul and featured prominent speakers from the field including Zeus Leonardo, Victor Lewis and Heather Hackman.
Many of the speakers and presenters have made their PowerPoint slides, handouts and other resources from the conference available for download. To access those resources, please visit the FREC website.
In addition to these resources, you may also want to check out the upcoming programming opportunities that FREC has announced on their website. The next FREC Community of Practice meeting is on January 13. These bi-monthly meetings are opportunities for anyone interested in learning more about incorporating cultural competence, anti-racism, and organizational transformation into his or her business, foundation, or nonprofit organization.
The FREC has also announced the launch of ASDIC Anti-racism Study Dialogue sessions beginning in February. The registration fee for this unique, 12-week course is $150 (scholarships are available). Those who successfully complete the series can apply for continuing education credits. For complete details, download this flyer (pdf).
Comments Off | diversity, leadership, social justice | Tagged: Facilitating Racial Equality Collaborative, FREC, Heather Hackma, Overcoming Racism Why IS it So Hard, Victor Lewis, Zeus Leonardo | Permalink
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