​An embattled nonprofit with close ties to top state lawmakers, the NYS Association of Black & Puerto Rican Legislators, in 2017 hired a prominent Albany lobbyist to boost its fundraising capabilities, according to newly released tax records.
The hiring of Patrick B. Jenkins and Associates paid off, as the nonprofit, which is the focus of an investigation by the state attorney general’s office, raised substantially more revenue and gave out almost as much scholarship money to needy youth as it had for the three previous years combined.
Even before Jenkins’ hiring, questions had been raised about the lawmakers’ charity receiving significant funding from interests with business before the state Legislature. Jenkins, meanwhile, in the past has raised significant campaign dollars for lawmakers by soliciting donations from its own roster of influential clients, then lobbying some of those same state lawmakers for the clients.

​The filings also reveal several inconsistencies in the charity’s previous filings submitted to Attorney General Letitia James’ office, and raises more questions about the charity’s spending for that year and those prior, including how much money it was giving to students in need.
The group’s new filing, which covers the 2017-18 tax year, is a focus of the state attorney general’s probe, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. The tax documents apparently were posted to the attorney general’s website within the last two days.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment, citing its ongoing investigation. Assemblywoman Latrice Walker and Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, the nonprofit’s chairwoman and treasurer, respectively, did not return calls for comment.
A spokesman for the association, Hank Sheinkopf, said Walker restructured the organization when she took over as chair in 2017.
“A new accounting and auditing team has been hired and the attempt is to ensure that everything is being complied with and all filings are being brought up to date,” he said.

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​Donors are pouring money and goods into Australian bushfire relief efforts, as organizations struggle to direct the contributions to where they can do the most good. Charity directors say some donors likely have only a vague sense of where their money is going.
A Facebook fundraising event for a rural fire service that had a goal of $20,000 took in $34 million, making it the largest one ever on the platform. A fire commissioner said the organization will likely spread around the windfall to fire victims or other fire services.
Meanwhile, the Australian Red Cross has raised about $67 million in individual contributions since July 1, compared with $7.5 million during a drought appeal last year. And a wildlife rescue group in New South Wales has raised $9.6 million, likely siphoning off donations to other regions as donors may have thought they were contributing generally to help animals caught in the inferno.

​Australian philanthropist Andrew Forrest is touring the U.S. seeking support for efforts to prevent and mitigate fire disasters worldwide. He and his wife, Nicola, have pledged $48 million through their Minderoo Foundation in response to the bushfires raging in Australia. The foundation has set up a fire fund to accept donations and hopes to raise more than $344 million for fire-resilience efforts.

​LifeWorks continues their fight to end youth homelessness in Austin this year with a brand-new affordable housing facility for young people and families. The Works II is a 29-unit building in east Austin, adjacent to their existing facility. The grand opening is January 21.
There are two bedroom, one bedroom and efficiency units to fit the needs of each individual client. Their stay can range from one to two years, or even longer if that’s what they need to get on their feet.
“When we have youth coming right off the street and into an apartment, this could be their very first home,” Hanckel said. “To see our clients and youth walk in and burst out into these big smiles and their eyes well up with tears, it is such a heartwarming moment.”
With each unit, a step closer to their goal. In November 2019, residents began moving in to the Works II, and the building is currently at 72% capacity.

​“That may not seem like a lot. It may seem like a very small number given the work that we have to do,” said LifeWorks Director of Communications and Marketing Julianne Hanckel. “But as we continue to move forward, and we continue to spread awareness, we really want to create that feeling that this is achievable.”
The goal they’re hoping to achieve: becoming the first major city in the U.S. to end youth homelessness by December 2020.
They base their success off the government definition for “functional zero.” That means the number of young people entering homelessness is equal to the number of young people who are being housed.
Hanckel said right now, LifeWorks has identified 450 youth, aged 18-24, in need and he said they are “on track,” but there’s an exact dollar amount they need to achieve “functional zero”: $4.9 million.
“We’ve spent years trying to pinpoint the amount needed financially to scale our programs, hire the staff and address the numbers of who are in need of the most immediate services,” Hanckel said.
The money will be used for not only housing and shelter, but programs to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring for these youth.
“That means we address their homelessness and then exit them from it in 30-45 days,” Hanckel said.
LifeWorks will also partner with other groups to get young people jobs, a GED, or counseling, enabling them to keep a roof over their head. “This is a solvable problem,” she said.

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Too much pressure to meet unrealistic fundraising goals, coupled with too little pay and frustrating organizational cultures, is driving away fundraisers, according to a new Chronicle of Philanthropy survey.
Half of all fundraisers surveyed expect to leave their jobs in the next two years, the report says.
Even more alarming, 3 in 10 said they had recently left or plan to leave the development field altogether in the next two years.
While the large number of baby boomers in fundraising could account for some of that, it’s hardly the main source; only 12% said they planned to retire or had family changes or other personal reasons for quitting.
The new figures come from a survey of 1,035 fundraisers in the United States and Canada, conducted by Harris Insights & Analytics, through the Harris Poll, for the Chronicle and the Association of Fundraising Professionals. The online questionnaire asked survey participants about their job satisfaction; 5% of the survey takers included people who had left fundraising altogether within the past five years.

​Too Much Pressure, Too Little Appreciation
The new data shows that even after a widely shared study in 2013 sent a warning signal to nonprofit leaders about the anxiety and unhappiness of fundraisers, little has improved. Half of the top development officers in that survey, “Underdeveloped,” conducted by CompassPoint and the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund, said they were considering leaving their jobs.
The reasons the revolving door keeps spinning are numerous, our survey shows. But two findings stand out:
84 percent of fundraisers said they felt “tremendous pressure to succeed” in their role.
55% said they “often feel unappreciated” in their work.
Seeing an unpromising future at a job can stir a fundraiser’s restlessness, according to the survey results. At the jobs they left most recently, they were likeliest to be dissatisfied with their prospects for promotion (85 percent) or a lack of succession planning (83 percent).
Seeking More Time With Donors
The new survey did highlight some bright spots. Among them:
Fundraisers are driven by mission; 93% of survey participants said they couldn’t work for a charity if they didn’t have a strong connection to the cause.
They’re happy with their travel schedule (92%).
They appreciate their organization’s flexibility regarding their family and child-care issues.
They are satisfied with their level of independence in their jobs (83%), and the same share said they’re happy with their relationship with their charity’s volunteers (excluding board members).
In addition, fundraisers relish working with donors: 78% said they wished they had more time to spend meeting with supporters.
The survey provides valuable insights into how fundraisers feel about their work. “It helps us put a number on what we’re hearing anecdotally,” says Michael Nilsen, vice president for communications and public policy at the Association for Fundraising Professionals.
But those donors are changing, the survey found. Compared with five years ago:
Supporters want more information on their gifts’ impact, according to 92% of participants
They’re more aware of social issues (85%)
And donors are more likely to earmark their gifts for specific programs (77%)
Respondents also said that fundraising is getting harder: 1 in 3 said donations to their charity had dropped in the past two years. The latest “Giving USA” figures showed philanthropy over all down 1.7%  in 2018 compared with the previous year — including a 3.4% drop in giving by individuals.
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Last year was a tough one for many charities even though the overall economy was strong: Donations declined 1.7 percent, to $427.7 billion, according to the annual “Giving USA” report released Tuesday.
The drop in contributions — due largely to average Americans donating less — follows four years of sustained growth that reached a high of $435.1 billion in 2017.
A drop in total giving is relatively uncommon. “Giving USA,” which examines contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations, noted that the decline was just the 13th drop in overall giving it had charted in the past four decades.
The decline could be a sign of trouble ahead, particularly if a recession is on the horizon and changes to the tax code cause a long-term challenge for fundraisers. Or it could be a sign that the erratic stock market in the last half of 2018, combined with uncertainty about the tax law, made last year especially difficult. Emphasizing that their results were based off of projections, researchers were careful to say that it was impossible to know yet just how concerned charities should be that giving was off last year.
Americans decreased their giving 3.4 percent from 2017 levels, dropping from $302.5 billion to $292.1 billion.
Historically, individuals have provided at least 70 percent of overall giving, but in 2018 they gave just 68 percent. Another 18 percent of contributions came from foundations and 5 percent from corporations.
One reason for the decline may have been that donors were spooked by the stock market’s nosedive in December. “Stock markets really went down at exactly the wrong moment last year,” said Thomas Kurmann, director of development at Doctors Without Borders USA.
“Even though the economy’s good, the markets have been on a rollercoaster, and that rollercoaster leads to uncertainty,” said Steve MacLaughlin, vice president for data and analytics at Blackbaud. When people don’t have a clear picture of their future, they usually forestall major financial decisions, like a large end-of-year gift, he said.
This donor hesitancy is significant because in recent years, many charities saw big donors making up for large losses in the share of middle-class donors’ giving. But that wasn’t the case last year.
“For many years, the biggest gifts — the megagifts — have been able to sustain growth and made up for the loss of household giving,” said Laura MacDonald, vice chair at the Giving USA Foundation and principal at the Benefactor Group. In 2018, however, those big contributions weren’t enough to stave off an overall drop in giving.
Outside of the “Giving USA” report, other philanthropy trackers are finding similar trends extending into 2019. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which measures annual fundraising rates, has seen donations from individuals continue to fall this year. In the first quarter of 2019, the number of donors shrank by nearly 6 percent, while overall donations decreased just over 2 percent.
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​Jonathan Soros, an investment manager who is one of George Soros’s five children, wants nonprofits to raise money online without spending on pricey software.
So, in a move that’s raised some eyebrows, he and his wife, Jennifer, founded Give Lively, a company that started offering free digital-fundraising software to charities a year ago.
The company provides the basics: a way to generate donation forms for websites and emails. But it also gives charities the ability to raise money through text messages, the means to have supporters create their own fundraising pages, and, soon, a tool to sell event tickets. Nonprofits pay only a relatively small, but standard, payment-processing fee.
The couple wants to save nonprofits money and deliver online-fundraising services that are just as strong as what’s on the market today — if not stronger, says Jonathan Soros, 48.
Jonathan says he and Jennifer are not out to make money. Because the company offers free services, the couple — mostly known for backing liberal causes — sees it as a philanthropic project, despite Give Lively’s status as a limited-liability company rather than a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Jonathan Soros likened the couple’s funding of Give Lively to an "impact investment," albeit one where no profit will be made. Effectively what we’re doing is subsidizing the entire field of nonprofits that use this product," he says.
Most of the nonprofits that have used Give Lively so far are small. Still, some have recognizable names, like the Malala Fund, StoryCorps, and the Women’s March L.A. Foundation.
The company might be one to watch if it catches on with lots more nonprofits, experts say. But many nonprofit tech consultants and people who work at competing companies are skeptical of its offerings.
Civic Nation, which launched in 2015 and houses an array of advocacy and awareness campaigns, started using Give Lively’s donation pages starting in mid-2017, says Jenn Brown, the group’s executive director. The products are simple to use, she says, and "by far the best deal for our nonprofit."
Today, the charity, which projects that it will raise about $10 million this year, uses the company’s text-appeal services and its tool to allow donors to create fundraising pages for campaigns.
"As a nonprofit, my number one priority is to ensure as much money as possible is going toward the causes that people are donating in support of," she says. "So my priority is to work with online processors who charge us the lowest fees possible."
To generate a profit, other companies that offer similar products to Give Lively's tack on fees — sometimes up to 5 percent, depending on the service being used and how large the nonprofit is, experts say. Most providers also ask charities to pay for a monthly or annual subscription, with the price based on how large the transaction fees are.
By not asking for any payments beyond transaction fees charged by Stripe, a payment processor, Give Lively is a veritable unicorn. Its promise of free software is virtually unheard of in the nonprofit-tech space.
And that’s made some observers skeptical. How can a software company continue to grow, improve its tools, and compete with the likes of Classy, Network for Good, and Blackbaud with only one source of funding and no revenue?
"Seems unsustainable," says Sarah Sebastian, director of brand communications at Qgiv, a company that also offers digital-fundraising tools.
Some have questioned whether there’s another agenda. For instance, is the company looking to hook a lot of nonprofits by giving away services, only to sell its company to another vendor?
The answer to that is "no," DeParolesa says. "Our ethos is such that the idea of selling to a for-profit entity is sort of the antithesis of how we began," he says.
In late August, the Soroses approved a company statement drafted by DeParolesa called the "Forever Free Pledge." The pledge promises that all Give Lively’s current services — and some items still in the works, like the event-ticketing tool — will be free in perpetuity to all users, with no commitments. "We will never charge any annual fees, setup fees, hidden fees, or platform fees for our Forever Free Services," says the statement, which went online in August. "We pledge to offer each of our Forever Free Services for so long as we run each service."
A footnote at the bottom of the pledge says: "Stop trying to find a catch. There’s no catch."
Give Lively has some limitations.
The company can integrate its fundraising tools only with Salesforce. That means charities using other donor databases — like Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge — won’t get supporter data sent directly to their systems. They’ll have to download it and then manually import it into their databases — creating an administrative task that many charities don’t like.
Give Lively will be investigating ways to work with other fundraising software this year, but DeParolesa is unsure how long it’ll take to offer such services.
Today, nonprofits also need to use the payment processor Stripe as part of their Give Lively account. That service typically takes two days to verify credit-card payments for nonprofits. It takes seven days for contributions made by donors directly from their bank accounts. Among other reasons, the company uses Stripe because it offers good rates for processing nonprofit donations, DeParolesa says.
Give Lively, however, will start allowing nonprofits to use PayPal as its payment processor later this year, which charges fees similar to Stripe’s, but can send money to nonprofits faster in most cases.
Jonathan Soros acknowledges that it might be hard to get nonprofits that are used to doing business with other companies to join Give Lively.
"The transaction cost of shifting is not zero," Soros says.
Still, he thinks all nonprofits — no matter their size — care about saving money: "It really feels difficult to hand over a percentage of your revenue to anybody, whether you’re small or large."
​Michael Towner

An artificial intelligence start-up founded by three insiders at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center debuted with great fanfare in February, with $25 million in venture capital and the promise that it might one day transform how cancer is diagnosed.

The company, Paige.AI, is one in a burgeoning field of start-ups that are applying artificial intelligence to health care, yet it has an advantage over many competitors: The company has an exclusive deal to use the cancer center’s vast archive of 25 million patient tissue slides, along with decades of work by its world-renowned pathologists.

Memorial Sloan Kettering holds an equity stake in Paige.AI, as does a member of the cancer center’s executive board, the chairman of its pathology department and the head of one of its research laboratories. Three other board members are investors.

The arrangement has sparked considerable turmoil among doctors and scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which has intensified in the wake of an investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times into the failures of its chief medical officer, Dr. José Baselga, to disclose some of his financial ties to the health and drug industries in dozens of research articles. He resigned last week, and Memorial Sloan Kettering’s chief executive, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, announced a new task force on Monday to review the center’s conflict-of-interest policies.

Mic​Dr. David Klimstra, pictured left, chairman of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s pathology department and a co-founder of Paige.AI. Amid internal objections to the start-up, indicated last week that he would divest his stake.

At a staff meeting Thursday morning, Dr. Thompson and others, including Dr. Lisa DeAngelis, the acting physician-in-chief who replaced Dr. Baselga, described the recent events as a disruption and acknowledged that the hospital was under a microscope, according to several people who attended. Doctors said they were concerned about a lack of communication from hospital leadership, and one said patients were nervous that their health data was being commercialized by the institution.

Hospital pathologists have strongly objected to the Paige.AI deal, saying it is unfair that the founders received equity stakes in a company that relies on the pathologists’ expertise and work amassed over 60 years. They also questioned the use of patients’ data — even if it is anonymous — without their knowledge in a profit-driven venture.
 
​In addition, experts in nonprofit law and corporate governance have questioned whether Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the nation’s leading cancer centers, complied with federal and state law governing nonprofits when it set up the deal. The experts pointed out that charitable institutions like Memorial Sloan Kettering must show that they didn’t provide assets to insiders for less than the fair market value.

​Michael Towner

29 foundations capped the  3 day Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco with an announcement of $3 billion in new pledges to reduce the rate of global warming.

The funds will be deployed over the next five years. The announcement came in response to criticism that philanthropy has chronically underfunded one of the planet’s most vexing challenges.

There is no overarching strategy guiding the group of foundations. Each institution plans to attack climate change using its own approach, whether it means developing alternative fuels, "re-greening" deforested lands, pressing for carbon-emission limits, or another strategy.

The $3 billion is a "down payment" on increased philanthropic investment, said Charlotte Pera, president of the ClimateWorks Foundation.

"There is a strong recognition from the philanthropic community that this issue is both urgent and long-term," she said. "I’m confident that there will be a lot of coordination on how these funds are spent going forward."

In 2015, the most recent year for which Foundation Center data is available, less than 1 percent of grants from the nation’s largest 1,000 grant makers went to address climate change.

The tide of new spending from institutional philanthropy comes as the federal government has withdrawn efforts to fight climate change. In June 2017, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the multinational Paris climate agreement, which laid out pathways to achieve a slowdown in global warming.

​The $4 billion total includes a $600 million commitment that the Hewlett Foundation announced in December. That announcement, says Larry Kramer, Hewlett’s president, was part of a 2 year campaign to get other donors interested in the topic. He said it was a signal to other donors that climate change would impact their work even if they do not directly support the environment.
Larry Kramer is the current president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the former dean of Stanford Law School.

Harrison ford delivered a speech at Moscone Center for the Global Climate Action Summit sponsored by California Gov. Jerry Brown. Ford didn't name President Donald Trump in his talk, but some of his comments obviously referred to the U.S. leader.
"For God's sake, stop electing leaders who don't believe in science," he said. "Or even worse, pretend they don't believe in science. Never forget who you're fighting for."

​Michael Towner

When donors are asked what charity they would support if they could give to just one, 54% selected one of only 20 organizations, according to a new study.
 
​The findings show that a small number of national and international groups hold a privileged place in the philanthropy of American donors.
 
Even though they were not prompted with a list of charities to choose from, the respondents most often picked a brand-name group such as the American Humane Society, Doctors Without Borders, Feeding America, Goodwill Industries, Planned Parenthood, the United Way, and Wounded Warrior Project.
 
Among the 20 were five that were particularly popular. Thirty-six percent of donors picked one the following: Alsac/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the American Cancer Society, American Red Cross, Salvation Army, or Unicef.
 
Donors preferred large organizations, underscoring the challenges small charities face from well-resourced competitors. Only 23% picked a favorite charity with annual revenue of $50 million or less; only 5% picked one with revenue of $1 million or less. 38% picked a charity with annual revenue of $1 billion or more.
 
The favorite charities cited by donors had a median annual revenue — including donations, government support, and earned income — of $399 million.
 
A bright spot for small organizations: The top donors, those who gave $2,000 or more during the 12 months preceding the survey, were most likely to pick a favorite charity with revenue under $50 million.
 
Donors overwhelmingly favored organizations that work globally, as opposed to those that work exclusively stateside: 60% of donors chose a favorite charity that supports programs internationally. However, only 2% picked a nonprofit that works exclusively overseas. Political conservatives, parents with children at home, and Christians were most likely to favor global charities.
 
By cause, health-related charities were the most commonly picked as favorites, cited by nearly one in three donors.
 
Among other findings:
 
Impact matters. The three most commonly cited reasons for selecting a particular charity as a favorite were the organization’s results (32%), the donor’s trust (28%), and the donor’s personal connection to the cause or charity (22%).
 
Overhead spending doesn’t matter so much. Eight-four percent of donors picked a charity that spends 10 to 29 % of revenue on administrative costs, according to that charity’s informational tax forms. The average "overhead ratio" for the charities donors favored was just under 19%. But only 12% of donors said that using their money efficiently was the key factor in why they picked their favorite charity, and a February report by the same researchers discovered a charity’s spending on administrative costs had little impact on giving.
 
Religion’s influence is muted. 82% of people who attend religious services at least monthly picked a favorite charity that was not faith-based.

​Michael Towner