Over the past year, as I’ve been writing for various publications of the Minnesota Council on Foundations and reading extensively on philanthropy, the word that’s rising to the top more and more is “leverage.”
Dictionary.com defines the word several ways, but the most relevant to philanthropy are:
The power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions, etc.; sway.
The use of a small initial investment, credit or borrowed funds to gain a very high return in relation to one’s investment, to control a much larger investment, or to reduce one’s own liability for any loss.
As part of my research for our spring issue of Giving Forum, which will focus on innovation in philanthropy, I am reading the annual reports of several MCF members. The 2009 report of West Central Initiative (WCI) was filled with stories of how it is leveraging its funding in the nine counties and 83 communities the foundation serves in west central Minnesota.
Among the highlights:
WCI’s Community Organizing and Visioning Grant was joined with a variety of public and private funding to energize stewards in Bemidji, Alexandria and Fergus Falls to create “destiny statements” envisioning the future of their communities and measurable goals to achieve.
WCI is acting as fiscal host, grant writer and coordinator of the Early Childhood Dental Network, which has grown into a regional effort to combat a deficiency in access to oral health care.
Gap financing – such as that provided to local entrepreneurs, including TFC Poultry in Ashby – is supporting job creation and business establishment and expansion in rural Minnesota.
WCI used its expertise to help community organizers map out a fundraising effort and create the Pelican Rapids School Fund to raise and administer funds when the school levy referendum failed and the school district faced dire cutbacks.
These are energizing, motivating and inspirational ways WCI is bringing to life the concept of “leveraging” – using its resources to push other resources as WCI pursues its mission in greater Minnesota.
– Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate
Ridin' the range and ropin' the headlines so you don't have to.
Your biweekly roundup of media coverage on the world of nonprofit and philanthropy (yee-ha).
Bush Foundation Invests In Teacher Prep Programs
(Minnesota Public Radio) This month the Bush Foundation announced a bold, $40 million, 10-year initiative to improve teacher preparation in 14 colleges in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Opinion: High Demand for Aid Exceeds Folks’ Supply of Empathy
(The Star Tribune) In this powerful and very personal article, columnist Jon Tevlin talks about his own experiences growing up in a family that relied on food stamps for a time to survive, and how he sees troubling stereotypes about the poor that he became familiar with then, playing out in the giving (or sometimes the lack there of) today.
The Minnesota Wild Launches Foundation
(Twin Cities Business Magazine) The Minnesota Wild has launched their own foundation which aims to support educational initiatives, children’s medical support and the advancement of youth hockey in the state of Minnesota.
Northwest Area Foundation Awards $500,000 to Native American Prosperity Building Efforts
(Press Release) The Northwest Area Foundation recently awarded three grants, totally $500,000 to Native American organizations. Intended to support the growth of financial and human assets, the awards are a part of the Foundation’s strategic plan to redress the inequalities and poverty that many Native communities and other minorities are confronted with.
United Way Launches WarmSafeFed.org for Families in Need
(MPP Southwest Journal) The Greater Twin Cities United Way has launched a new website and a new grant to help families in need. The website WarmSafeFed.org has detailed information about the struggle that many families are facing in current economy. The grant money is intended to support area shelters as they assist homeless families in their transition from shelter to stable housing.
Did we leave something out? Please email your Minnesota grantmaker and nonprofit news to Cary Lenore Walski, MCF web communications associate, at cwalski@mcf.org, or leave a comment to this entry below.
Not unlike many other foundations, the Otto Bremer Foundation responded quickly last winter when the economy started its free fall with no end in sight.
The Bremer Emergency Fund (BEF) was a joint response – with foundation grant dollars supplemented by donations from the Bremer banks. In January, the fund gave 81 grants totaling $4.2 million to community organizations in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin to provide emergency financial assistance to families and individuals struggling to provide basics such as food, warm and stable housing, health care and reliable transportation.
“We recognize that timely financial assistance can sometimes make the difference between instability and security, enabling families and individuals to meet emergency needs and retain housing or jobs,” William Lipschultz, foundation trustee, said last January. “Once people are able to meet their basic needs and avert a crisis situation, they are in a better position to access community programs that can help them achieve long-term economic stability.”
Halfway through the one-year grant period, the foundation surveyed its grantees. The results of their responses were released today in an interim report.
“The Resources Available Have Not Kept Pace With the Need”
According to the report summary: “Three-quarters of BEF grantees are seeing more unmet needs than they expected, and many are expending funds much more quickly than they anticipated. Applicants for assistance are in deeper crisis than expected, with broader needs. More people are affected by job loss, and job searches are taking longer than in the past. Homeowners as well as renters are in need of support. Areas with high poverty rates have been especially hard hit.”
Measuring Impact
Grantees are measuring the impact of the BEF grants in a variety of ways, including:
Increase in number of requests for emergency assistance to which the agency can now respond.
Increase in amount of assistance the agency can provide to each individual/family.
Percent of clients’ needs agency could meet.
Ability to keep clients in their homes, with heating and lighting, and prevent homelessness.
Ability to provide access to food, assistance for transportation emergencies, help with medical expenses such as purchase of prescription drugs, shelter for homeless clients, assistance in budgeting.
Ability to help clients retain or find new employment.
Ability to help clients who have been turned away from all other forms of assistance.
Ability to help clients meet their goals, resolve the current crisis, prevent future emergency needs, improve family stability, and/or connect to long-term solutions.
Indirect impacts, which include preventing child abuse/neglect and domestic violence and ensuring school continuation for children.
Sharing What’s Been Learned
Grantees overwhelmingly expressed an interest in learning from each other and sharing resources. Foundation staff are planning to follow up by:
Facilitating learning among BEF grantees by helping them share information, tools and questions.
Conducting a final grantee survey in early 2010, the end of the funding period, to explore outcomes, impact and lessons of the grant-supported initiatives and the program as a whole.
Developing a final learning report on the BEF, including information about the creation, operation, impact and lessons of the program.
- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate
As Congress debates about how to pay for healthcare, America's Health Rankings points out the savings that could be made by encouraging healthy behavior.
The 2009 edition of America’s Health Rankings has been released. Produced jointly by United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association (APHA), and Partnership for Prevention, the Rankings report has tracked the health of the nation for the past 20 years. The report provides data useful for health funders and nonprofits, and its findings are particularly salient as we as a nation look critically at the state of our healthcare system.
Overall the report finds that the United States is adept at treating illness in individuals once it develops. However, the report warns that steps need to be taken to encourage behaviors that are protective against illness such as healthy eating, regular exercise and smoking cessation.
Minnesota is ranked as the 6th healthiest state, a drop from 3rd place in the last Rankings report produced n 2008. The state scored among the top 10 states in 11 of 22 measures.
Strengths noted include the relatively low rate of premature death, deaths from cardiovascular disease, low infant mortality and a low rate of uninsured individuals. Challenges for the state include low public health funding at only $41 per person, and a moderate level of binge drinking at a rate of 17.2% of the population.
A more complete overview of Minnesota’s rankings can be found at the America’s Health Rankings website, or you can download the full report (pdf).
Now, resources from many of these sessions are available online.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, unable to leave D.C. because of the health care debate, sent her keynote remarks via video. Below, she discusses how these unprecedented times for our country are a call to think and act anew – to meet the challenges head on – to examine every opportunity to bring together government, the private sector, nonprofits and communities to build a better future. She also highlights recent developments in D.C., as well as new initiatives in Minnesota. (Close-captioning for this video will be available in the coming weeks.)
Conference presentations and handouts from many of the breakouts are posted online and accessible on the conference website’s Download Center.
Despite the down economy, the 2009 Joint Conference of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and the Minnesota Council on Foundations drew a record 1,700 attendees. MCN and MCF partner to present a joint conference every three years.
- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate
New data generated by the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Listening Post Project reveal that health care costs are producing a so-far hidden crisis for America’s nonprofit organizations and the nearly 13 million workers they employ.
According to a survey conducted in July, 98 percent of responding organizations offering health benefits stated that they are concerned about their organization’s health care costs, and a striking 59 percent ranked health care costs as one of their organization’s top challenges.
Many report that they are already feeling the pinch as organizations have decided to: reduce or cancel health coverage, increase employee co-pays and share of insurance costs, hold down wages, shift to part-time employees, or even reduce mission-critical services.
Previously nonprofits have relied on decent benefits as a strategy for attracting and retaining quality staff. Employee retention issues aside, this trend toward cutting benefits also has the potential for nationwide ramifications, as the nonprofit industry is the fourth largest industry in the U.S.
“Our nation’s health care crisis is now threatening the ability of nonprofits to effectively carry out the tasks our nation expects of them – sheltering the homeless, training the unemployed, educating our youth, building affordable housing, counseling families, delivering health care, giving voice to the powerless, and enriching our lives with culture and the arts,” noted Peter Goldberg, chair of the Listening Post Project Steering Committee and CEO of the Alliance for Children and Families. “This is the hidden dimension of America’s health care crisis, and we need to fix it.”
To read the full report, “Health Care and Nonprofits: The Hidden Dimension of America’s Health Care Crisis,” download it from the Johns Hopkins website.
Tune in to TPT’s MN Channel on Sunday at 7:30 for the latest program from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation: “Growing Up Healthy: Kids and Communities — Addressing Social, Economic and Environmental Influences on Health.”
The half-hour program focuses on improving young children’s health through high quality early care and learning, safe and healthy housing, a healthy physical environment, and connections with caring adults. It features the work of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota grantees, including:
The National Center for Healthy Housing, documenting the positive health impacts of a green renovation of a low-income apartment complex in Worthington, Minn.
The University of Minnesota Regional Sustainable Development Partnership, reducing women and children’s exposures to pesticides in the Red River Valley and increasing residents’ access to locally grown produce.
Rice County Growing Up Healthy, working to connect residents of Faribault and Northfield to programs, services and resources to help them be healthier.
University of Minnesota Children, Youth and Family Consortium, working to ensure that Minneapolis families with young children have healthy home environments.
Also available are Somali, Spanish and Hmong discussion guides for an earlier program, “Shared Values: Health and Community — Shaping Minnesota’s Future with New Americans.” The program explores how individuals and communities become more interconnected and healthier when there are strong social support networks and opportunities to work together.
The national Council on Foundations’ (COF) annual conference began this morning in Atlanta. COF’s president Steve Gunderson writes, “There is energy and urgency in the air. It’s a critical time for the country and the world. And it’s just the right time for the more than 1,300 people here to reexamine philanthropy’s place, today and tomorrow.”
Tight budgets may be preventing many from attending this year, but you can still join the conversation and gather insights on what matters in the field of philanthropy.
The Council launched a new blog, which my colleague Juliana Tillema introduced to you on her Philanthropy Potluck blog post April 30. The conference blog, RE: Philanthropy, provides a place for those attending to post reports and reflections on what they see, hear and think. What’s the talk in the halls? Amid all the changes in the economy and Washington, what really matters now?
The blogging team is a mix of expected and unexpected writers, established voices and next-generation leaders, and includes Minnesota connections such as Trista Harris, executive director of Headwaters Foundation for Justice, and Emmett Carson, former president and CEO of The Minneapolis Foundation and current CEO and president of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The blog may also include video.
This morning’s posts include contributors’ responses to the question “What one question do you think philanthropy needs to address?”
COF says the blog will continue beyond the conference. So, check out what your colleagues in philanthropy are saying. Post your own ideas. And join the conversation.
- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF Communications Associate
Posted by Chris Noonan 
