Feature Stories - December 2010

Industry Focus

Non-Profit

    Unfortunately, when times are tough, one of the first budget cuts is charitable giving.  Non-profits throughout the state are feeling these cuts like no other industry.  There is a bright spot, however.  Many non-profits have noticed that while companies cannot contribute financially, they are finding other ways to give back and volunteerism continues to rise.  Recently, executives representing Nevada’s non-profits met at the offices of Holland & Hart in Las Vegas to discuss these trends.

    Connie Brennan, publisher of Nevada Business Magazine, served as moderator for the event.  These monthly meetings are designed to bring leaders together to talk about issues pertinent to their industries.  Following is a condensed version of the roundtable discussion.

How has this economy affected your ability to raise the necessary funds for your organization?

Patricia Falvey, Catholic Charities: What I’ve found is that while the donations may not be as large, we are getting more and more donations.  People are giving smaller amounts.  We are doing okay; it is a very giving community.

Carole Fisher, Nathan Adelson Hospice: We definitely saw a decrease last year, about 30 percent in contributions.  We are moving back up again, so that is nice to see.  I am noticing more people volunteering.  It seems that people are jumping in and contributing that way.

Gian Brosco, Nevada Community Foundation: One of the things we have seen is that, while giving is down, there is still some trepidation that we want to stay out of the top line until we have a greater comfort level that is happening locally and nationally.  But, people are finding ways to become more engaged, so that is an interesting change.

Angela Quinn, Building Hope Nevada: Our organization has a bunch of revenue, the donor base has come roaring back very strongly, within ten months and I don’t know why.  I don’t know whether it is because we talked about the organization differently or we have shown the organization as being necessary within the community.  It wasn’t supposed to be around this time last year and it is now healthy and strong.  I don’t have an answer for that.  I’m pleased, but I don’t have an answer.

Estelle Murphy, Safe Nest: I have seen the giving trends change from last year to this year.  We had about a 40 percent drop last year in donor giving and now it’s going up this year.  People are finding, in challenging times, interesting ways to give.  People are doing drives for us because they can’t give financially, they are finding other ways.

Julie Murray, Three Square: What we are finding is more non-profits collaborating.  Instead of one-by-one applying for funding, several of us have come together to work with one donors so that the funds would be shared by all of us that are working on a project.  Although I have seen reports where Nevada is ranked lowest in philanthropy and lowest in giving, I don’t know if those trends are so in 2010.  I have seen increases in philanthropy and volunteers because of the way we are all coming together to collaborate.

Stacey Wedding, Nevada Gives: Part of our challenge locally is that we don’t have a lot of the infrastructure in place to track the philanthropy, to have people share what they are doing from a philanthropic standpoint.  There are many businesses that we’ve talked to and asked to share where they are giving, how they are giving, and there has been a little hesitation about that.  Partly because people don’t have the staffing and capacity internally.  They don’t have the systems in place to track what they are doing and how they are giving.  

Ed Guthrie, Opportunity Village: Opportunity Village has always had a huge amount of community support.  It hasn’t changed.  With the Magical Forest, it is open for 50 nights.  You are running 50 fundraisers in 50 consecutive nights and it takes 70 volunteers a night to operate the Magical Forest.  We have the volunteers all the time.  I know of no other community rehabilitation program in the entire nation that has the number of volunteers that we have; that has the amount of community support we have.  Less than 25 percent of the money we receive comes from government grants, fee-for-service or anything else like that.

What role do businesses play in support of your organizations?

Fisher: We have 20 outstanding well-known folks on our Board of Trustees that contribute in their area. We use people according to their expertise.

Murray: I would say that, looking at many of my colleagues and friends around the table, we couldn’t survive as a non-profit organization without the support of corporations. They play such a vital and valuable role. Not only do they provide funding, but, in tough economic times, if the funding has to be reduced, they will provide any kind of services and will support that with volunteers.

Wedding: A large majority of our support comes from businesses of all sizes, small and large.  Part of that is because of the role we play with businesses. We facilitate something called BCIC, Business Community Investment Council.  The idea behind the BCIC is to get corporate giving professionals and corporate grant makers together to talk about giving trends and how they could collaborate.  This will make it so funders are not just telling non-profits to collaborate, but funders themselves are collaborating to pool their resources to make more impact. At the end of the day it’s about their bottom line and how to find a way to work with them so we are meeting their needs and meeting our needs in concert.

Guthrie: A lot of volunteers we get are businesses saying we will sign up for a night at the Magical Forest and 75 of their staff will show up. They will use it as a team-building event, as well as doing some donation, and then you have others who will be sponsors. They find creative ways to do it so we are not necessarily getting a major donation, a six-figure donation from somebody.

Is there any sense of competition amongst the non-profits?

Guthrie: Sure. That’s the American way. I mean, yes and no. Competition is the American way and competition is not necessarily a bad thing. Competition helps you raise the bar so you find out what somebody else is doing and you benchmark against that and say yeah, I can do that and maybe we can do just a little bit better than they are doing. That is the way each of us gets better at what we do.

Quinn: Historically there has always been a little sense around if I win, you lose, and sometimes that was as pleasant as winning. Now I think it is much less about if I win, it is much more about how can I be inclusive in my win. If I am going to go out and do something, how many people can I bring to the dance? I think it is easier for an organization or a corporation to decide to give a group of people a large chunk of money, knowing that group will play nicely, than to figure out how to give those ten or five different people smaller chunks of money. The tone has become much more of a sophisticated business-type tone and, as non-profits, you either rise up to that or you have to collaborate if you don’t get funded.  That funding could be a lot of different things.

Falvey: Even though we are all after a lot of the same dollars, we are all doing something good, so it is a kind of sharing.

Wedding: We had a summit on collaboration. It is called Collaboration Made Real. A lot of times funders will say we want you to collaborate, but it is not quite as simple as that sounds. I think there is an appetite for a lot of us to do it but we had non-profits in the room saying we don’t know who each other are. This has always been a challenge in this community. We don’t even know what exists or who is out there to collaborate with. We don’t have the time because we are so busy on that hamster wheel, running as fast as we can.

Fisher: Our hospice has 26 other competitors in our community and I don’t think people realize that. We are the largest, oldest not-for-profit, but it has been so competitive in the world of hospice, I hired a PR firm this year. I have done a lot to get some exposure, get us ahead and out there and telling our story better.

Brosco: What is different about the service providers is they don’t operate from a culture of scarcity and that is the reason why they are successful. For some of us who don’t do direct service, we love the collaboration because it allows us to go back to our donors and say look, we will provide a return on your investment.

Juliana Pisani, American Cancer Society: We are a national organization, a little different than others around the table, even though I represent the Las Vegas area. The Caring Place came to us. They went out of business and came back. We collaborated with them. So I think, in the cancer world at least, we are finding common services that we can work together and go forward.

Is it more difficult to run a non-profit than a for-profit business?

Fisher: I have been in not-for-profit settings and I have run for-profit organizations. I have to tell you a not-for-profit is much more difficult and challenging to run. People from the outside look at it and they have big hearts and they think they can replicate that. I think there is a real talent in my organization for balancing that mission and what we do with reminding folks we are a business.

Murphy: I think we have more unknowns too. If you are running a business, you certainly have the trends, you know what your distribution is and you know what your manufacturing is. With the non-profit, you don’t know from one year to the next what governmental grants are going to be out there, what your donor base is going to look like.

Do you pass up federal funding because there are so many strings attached?

Murray: We get a little bit but is its such a small portion.

Guthrie: All of the federal money we get is pass-through money that comes from the State of Nevada first and then the State distributes it. We don’t normally go after federal grants because of the level of documentation that they are asking for and they want it on their form, in their way. If you are going to ask for a great deal of money, then it makes sense to set up your accounting system to meet their needs. We tend to use private dollars and business revenue and things like that because that way, we just come in with generally accepted accounting practices and it is not some artificial thing set up by a governmental agency.

Murphy: Our accounting and reporting is a nightmare because we have 13 different state/federal grants, so about half of our budget is federal and state. What is interesting is that it doesn’t sound like a lot of us have a significant amount of our budget that is federal monies. What has happened is there are many foundations that were born out of a businessman or woman who left behind significant wealth to start a foundation, so, we are lucky in this state.

Quinn: One of the nice things that I like about the federal funding process is they typically are not [one-time givers] of money. There are certain programs that, if you can get into the program, you are in it to perpetuity.

What advice would you give to businesses looking to donate?

Brosco: The first question is always around their capacity. What I want to make sure is, six months from the time they first called me, they are not calling back saying hey, you put us in touch with this organization and it didn’t go so well. It is like matchmaking. It is different for different types of businesses, different sized businesses. We work with some of the more well-established casinos in town and also work with small law firms. Their needs are vastly different around what they are trying to get out of their philanthropy.

Wedding: There is a resource, I believe it is on the Nevada Gives website, as well as the Nevada Community Foundation website, it is a business giving guide that can help professionals who don’t have their own corporate giving staff or had downsized in the economy.