I’m telling you, someday someone is going to write a book about Alan Graham, founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes. No, a book isn’t right. Too flat.

They’re going to make a movie about him. He’s just that charismatic of a guy. But it’s beyond charisma; it’s the way he uses his brain.

Alan Graham has the rare ability to find the shortest path from problem to solution. You won’t spend 10 minutes talking with the man before he says something so fresh and so startling that the only possible reaction you could have to what he just said is, “Duh.”

Not in an “Everybody knows that,” way but rather in a “Well, shit, why didn’t anybody else think of that?” way.

For example, a couple years ago a short-lived ice storm hit downtown, closing office buildings and reducing traffic to almost nothing. The shelters and soup kitchens were closed, but people still needed food that day, probably that day more than others. Alan Graham got a phone call. Could he bring a truck down?

No, he couldn’t bring a truck down. But he could send some pizzas. How many pizzas did they need?

He called pizza delivery, made them a deal, and had several dozen pizzas delivered downtown. Couple hundred bucks. Lots of people fed.

Maybe that sounds obvious now, but who else thinks to deliver pizza to homeless people during an ice storm, when no one else can come up with a way to help them? Duh.

I just don’t have the time. And I’d be happy to assign them but I just don’t have the money. So instead, these stories sit and wait. Would you believe I mentally sketch out GivingCity stories all the time? Very frustrating.

1. Giving Circles

Reportedly, giving circles are on the rise and proving to be very popular among donors. Examples of giving circles include groups like Impact Austin and the recently formed Futuro Fund.

But while they’re a great way to empower the giver and pool individual donations to make a bigger impact, the size of the donations limits the nonprofits the giving circle could consider. Impact Austin, for example, awarded five grants of $102,000 each. In order for a nonprofit to handle that amount of money, it needs to have the infrastructure in place, and apparently that takes a pretty sophisticated and established organization.

Does this matter? I think only if more donors join giving circles than choose to give as individuals. But I’m not sure. To write this story I’d start with Rebecca Powers who founded Impact Austin and who advises other giving circles.  From there I’d talk to development professionals of large and small nonprofits. The point would be to help you decide whether to join a giving circle and, for you nonprofit pros, how to win the grant.

2. Slacktivism

Another trend that bothers me, though I can’t figure out why. I’m not against them but I also can’t quite support them. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve done this myself. Examples of slacktivism include

• RT a Tweet from a nonprofit seeking volunteers or donations.
• Attending a Tweet-up or Charity Bash-type function where your intentions are really just to party
• Joining a Cause on Facebook
• 26 Miles for 26 Charities (maybe)

I’m all for people engaging in their community at any level, but I worry these simple, non-committal acts are a replacement for real engagement. For this story I’d interview some of the beneficiaries of these “party for charity” events, some development people on how much work it takes to create and manage a Facebook cause – and whether the return is worth it – and some of the organizers of these event to find out if they feel they’re achieving their goals.

I’d want to reader to come away with permission to engage in these activities but I’d want to make sure they understood the real impact of their action.

3. Social Entrepreneurship

What the hell is it? I’m reading, learning, talking, linking and just overall trying to soak in as much information as I can about this emerging trend. Apparently, the concept of genuine social entrepreneurship is still new to Austin, but there are lots of folks trying to create a bottom  line of social impact.

From what I understand, social entrepreneurs identify a social need first, devise a solution, then worry how to pay for it. Their bottom line measures social impact. As opposed to entrepreneurs who identify a market, create a product or service for that market, then worry about how to pay for it. Their bottom line measure profit. I think.

The point of the story would be to explain all this, offer some examples of social entrepreneurship here in Central Texas, offer some kind of five-step how-to become a social entrepreneur sidebar and explain why it’s so difficult to “sell” this concept to the nonprofit world and to consumers.

So many stories, so little time.

The good news is in 2008 30.7 percent of people in Austin volunteered. That rate puts the city at #11 among large cities in the United States. This is indeed a totally decent ranking.

The bad news is in 2007 35.3 percent of people in Austin volunteered, which put us at #5.

Did I also mention that in 2006 37.9 percent of people in Austin volunteered, which put as at #3?

In just two years we lost 7 percent in our rate of volunteerism. This is not because we don’t need more volunteers.

Why are we sinking? I know there are many people who are trying to figure that out so they can do something about it. All I know is, if we were dropping like this in our ranking of “best places for start-ups” or “best places for tech” more people would be doing some serious scrambling. Where will we rank in volunteerism for 2009?

I am learning every day. I used to think Austin had too many nonprofits. Now I think we need to encourage, support, and even nurture more.

A nonprofit is an opportunity for people to donate, volunteer, engage, and we need more of these opportunities, not fewer. Each nonprofit has something different to offer, just as every person has something different to offer. How does it benefit Austin to have fewer organizations/people who can help?

I look at it this way: Let’s say there’s a single, working mother of a child with a disability. She needs a hand. If a single person – even one with all the resources in the world – were to try to address her problems and put her on the right track, would that person do better than job a group of people, each with a different skill set, a different way of looking at the world, and their own set of resources?

Our problems are complicated. In the example above, the woman doesn’t just need job training, she needs someone to care for her son while she works, she needs transportation, she needs help sorting through medical bills. And her son needs physical therapy, medical equipment, a role model… How would it benefit them to have fewer nonprofits in Austin? Wouldn’t it be better to have a large number of people/nonprofits working together on their behalf?

Too many people are thinking about the number of nonprofits from the donor and resources perspectives – as in there aren’t enough to go around – when maybe we should be thinking about it from the client’s perspective. For us to assume that only certain nonprofits are capable and therefore the only ones worth investing in is like saying only certain people have something to contribute. And that just doesn’t sound right to me.

I’m sure I’m not making the analogy correctly with my example above, but it’s worth considering.

A successful collaboration or merger can seem like a miracle. As the former associate director of Community Action Network and a nonprofit consultant, Sam Woollard, a GivingCity contributor, has participated and lead the formation of a number of collaborations around  Central Texas.

“Collaborations and mergers are all about the timing,” she says. “Even if there’s a consensus to work together and a strong action plan, a single change in a funding model or at the legislature could seriously impact the effort. Plus, participants must come to the table with the needs of the entire community in mind, not just the needs of their board  or their constituency.”

Here are some Central Texas collaborations in which Woollard has participated.

Aging Services Council: Addresses  depression in older adults; coordinates home  repair programs; started a caregiver university.

Success by 6: Supports the annual child  well-being report card; supports quality child  care initiatives; supports education about early  childhood.

Central Texas Afterschool Network: Hosts the annual Lights on After School;  convened a forum about middle school students  and afterschool needs; conduct training for  after-school teachers and administrators.

Ready by 21 Coalition: Created a local  youth council; just released a Go to College  Guide for Educators and Youth service  professionals; manages an initiative to  increase the quality of after school  programs.

Basic Needs Coalition: Coordinates the annual Poverty  Awareness month each January;  coordinate the Best Single Source  program; coordinating a benefits  enrollment assistance training on  May 28th.

Children and Youth Mental Health Planning Partnership: Conducts an annual awareness event each  May; addresses the systemic issues impacting  children and mental health.

Re-entry Rountable : Addresses issues related to people leaving the criminal justice  system.

Ending Community Homelesnes Coalition (ECHO): Coordinates the  Continuum of Care grant every year; conducts  an annual homeless awareness forum in the fall;  sponsors the Let’s Get to Work Forum on May  21st to identify pathways to work for people  experiencing homelessness.

Victim Services Task Force: Conduct  awareness activities during the annual Crime  Victims Rights Week, support legislative efforts to  increase the crime victims compensation fund.

HousingWorks: Hosts annual housing  summit each fall; provides a speaker’s bureau for  housing issues; identifies and advocates for  policies that will support affordable housing.

This article first appeared in GivingCity Austin #3 magazine. To download the entire magazine, click here.

The data referred to in this article can be accessed via Greenlights here.

The data is in – the Austin community has more nonprofits per capita than any other city in Texas. Now what should we do about it?

We demand efficiency from nonprofits, requiring them to do more with less – and these days to do even more with even less. So when we see two or more nonprofits with the exact same mission, going after the same donations from the same people, we might wonder why they don’t join forces.  We might also wonder how they survive in this economy. Inevitably, the market will take care of it, right? Just as it does in the for-profit world?

Well, sometimes the market doesn’t  take care of it. That’s because nonprofits aren’t fueled by just donations, they’re also fueled by passion – which is sometimes all you need to keep your organization going. And thank goodness for that; we’d be in serious trouble if it weren’t for volunteers and underpaid nonprofit professionals. On the other hand, you have to ask yourself, as a donor or a volunteer, “Am I supporting a nonprofit that shouldn’t exist?”

Austin has more nonprofits per capita than any other city in the Texas. Which means we’re caring and entrepreneurial on the one hand, but probably frustrated and disillusioned on the other. When someone starts a nonprofit it means they feel there’s a need in the community that’s not being met And while one can appreciate their energy, it takes more than a 501c3 classification from the IRS to be an effective nonprofit in the long-term.

We asked five nonprofit advisors their views on the issue; these aren’t just nonprofiteers, rather they’re people in the position of changing the way Austin nonprofits work as a community. Here’s what they had to say.

Deborah Edward professor at the RGK Center, a nationally recognized philanthropy think-tank.

The idea that there are too many nonprofits in Austin is a refrain. But while we complain about it, a city like Boston boasts about it.

From our perspective that means we’re not thinking collaborations or efficiencies. We’re not taking advantage of opportunities. In business, these new ideas for a company come up, and you get investment bankers invested so they can see the idea, and in the end, everybody makes money and everybody’s happy.

But in the nonprofit world, we don’t have those investment bankers…except for these funders. They are in the wonderful position to respond to these new nonprofits and say, “Hey, why don’t you get together?” I bet you can find a number of funders that have experience asking two organizations to merge, but the lessons learned are kept within the family. They don’t have a forum to share those stories and encourage people to think differently about going from the initial idea of merging to creating a program that’s sustainable.

I think we need to map the different nonprofits visually in terms of access, value, and fees you can see distinct dimensions … but who’s going to make that happen? The funder’s in the position because he gets 20 groups that knock on his door, and he can do a better comparison than the groups on the ground. It’s not that he has the responsibility to do it, but he does have the opportunity.

Greenlights has done a great job of helps nonprofits discover opportunities for synergy. But otherwise there’s nobody driving the train. The Austin Community Foundation would be a great place, though traditionally it has been donor centered. The Community Action Network or the United Way have that macro view that could be enlisted to help with this. The zeitgeist is to say that there are too many nonprofits. The challenge is to flip that and say, “We are the best connected system of nonprofits in the United States.”

Matt Kouri, executive director of Greenlights, which helps Central Texas nonprofits by providing consulting, resources, and nonprofit training in areas from fundraising to how to start a nonprofit.

What’s most remarkable about this data we’ve put together is that it validates what I’ve been hearing from funders anecdotally – that we do have a disproportionate share of nonprofit organizations, especially compared to other cities of similar make-up. The data for Austin is not totally inconsistent with what we see in other communities. And we might have a disproportionately large share of nonprofits that don’t serve Central Texas solely or that serve all of Texas. But we share the belief with donors that having too many nonprofits is a problem.

That being said, there are some positive sides to having so many. It can mean that more is being done in our community and that there’s lots of innovative problem solving at work. But it can also mean there are some redundancies and inefficiencies in the sector.

The silver lining in this down economy is that it might force more nonprofits to realize that they can’t cut it on their own and maybe it’s time for them to make some hard decisions. That’s our hope. I can think of at least 10 different organizations now that really need to do it, and they’ve needed to do it for a long time, yet they continue to bang their head against the same wall every year.

As to who’s responsible for identifying and leading these mergers and collaboration, I think funders need to be careful. They aren’t at the street level. They can demand and expect results and impact but it’s the nonprofit’s job to make sure those dollars are spent accordingly. At the same time, funders can exhibit influence over their grantees, especially when they see logical opportunities for collaborations.

Greenlights is investing a lot of time into this issue this year. We worked with RGK to develop a continuum of steps nonprofits can take in terms of strategic consolidation. A lot of nonprofits are already engaged in some form of collaboration, which donors may not realize. But there needs to be a lot more, and it needs to move further down the continuum toward merger.

People who follow the nonprofit sector know that in 2010 it’s going to see some radical changes. We want to help make that change intentional as opposed to just happening to us.

Barry Silverberg , president and CEO of Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations, a statewide organization that offers training and support to Texas nonprofits and individuals who want to start a nonprofit.

Personally, I don’t believe in the numbers games because they’re always a function of who’s asking the question. I’m also not concerned with donors who believe they are getting too many requests. I encourage them to make their requirements more clear.

I don’t believe it’s our responsibility to eliminate those choices. Obviously funders can openly decide the fate of the industry by not giving funds, but I don’t believe they’re in the position to say what a nonprofit should do to be more effective. I think the question should be, “How do we get nonprofits to be more effective?”

TANO believe individuals have the right and the means to create better possibilities to serve the community. We help people understand the issue and determine if the best response is to create a nonprofit. From there, we emphasize what it means to run an effective nonprofit.

I think the nonprofit sector has a significant advantage in that people engaged in that sector are able to “do good,” and I don’t think we do enough to leverage that. There are probably too many nonprofits that are ineffective… because they ignore the stuff that could help them be more effective. I also think that funders need to strike a balance between the information they can gather quantitatively on the various forms they use, with the information they gather qualitatively. The fact is, some folks aren’t as good as completing a grant application – but they have a passion that’s unbelievable. That passion, if it’s combined with skill sets and competencies, will result in something effective if it’s guided and focused.

Janet Harman , founder, and Jenifer Esterline, program officer, KDK-Harman Foundation, a family foundation that focuses on education for economically disadvantaged Central Texans.

Harman : It’s a complex issue because at first glance one would say there are so many that we should consolidate and reduce. However, there’s a lot of room for creativity, so squashing that innovation would be a mistake.

We have actually brought several national nonprofits to Austin, so I couldn’t very well argue that there are too many nonprofits here.

I really think it’s the job of a lot of area foundations and organizations like the Austin Community Foundation and Greenlights, to point out where there is some opportunity to optimize by merger.

We reach out to other funders on a regular basis. In fact, we co-founded an education funders group, Central Texas Education Funders, a little over a year ago. We meet every other month and there are 30 members. One of the projects we’re working on is to put together a matrix of our fundraising efforts to identify the gaps.

Esterline: The model for Central Texas Education Funders is based on the Ready by 21 Coalition, which put together this matrix identifying common indicators, and we’re trying to create a similar one for the funding community. It would help us, but it would also help the nonprofits; they create about 15 different reports to different foundations, so we’re doing this to learn what they’re doing and how they can do it better. Then the other part of that is communicating this information.

As far as whether there are too many nonprofits in Austin, I would say that we are not overwhelmed with requests, but we are pretty focused on what we fund. In conversations among the education funders, we see that everyone’s funding the same nonprofits. They’ve been identified as effective and able to show their impact, so they rise to the top every time.

Everyone has the responsibility to collaborate and communicate. The new face of philanthropy is more transparent, more cooperative. A lot of our colleagues are embracing this because of people like Janet Harman who are young, entrepreneurial, and have a new way of thinking about philanthropy.

To see a list of existing nonprofit collaborations in Austin, click here.

I go to church. There, I said it. I attend Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterianon William Cannon. I go to church for a lot of reasons, but the two biggest drivers are my children and the Reverend Larry Coulter.

Larry does exactly what I’ve always believed a church leader is supposed to do: He tells us what to do. There’s no more mystery! It’s obvious! Just do whatever Larry says on Sunday, and you’re golden!

What I mean is that he starts with the Bible, explains the passage by giving you the back story, offering a little about the main characters, the historical context, all the ways that passage has been interpreted. It’s interesting, actually. Then he turns on the light by telling you a relevant story from his own life. He’s had quite a life. Finally he makes a suggestion, and it’s usually something along the lines of, “… and so this is what God wants us to do.”

And somewhere in there, I have a little revelation. “Oh,” I think, “that’s what that means.

So today, when I read Andrea Ball’s column about the Campaign for Philanthropy in Austin, a.k.a. I Live Here, I Give Here, I thought about Larry’s sermon this morning about patience. (Mostly, I bring up Larry so I can source him, but he’s so much more articulate about this, that I wish I could quote him word for word.)

See, what Larry talked about today was patience and ”active waiting.” It’s about identifying what you can control and what you can’t, and preparing in the meantime for the event you’re waiting for. He likened it to farmers, waiting for rain. Farmers can’t control the weather, of course, but they can buy the seed, sharpen the plow, prepare the soil, and perform other tasks within their control. In fact, if they don’t do those things, they essentially forfeit the event they’ve been waiting for.

So we wait, but we don’t just sit there and complain about how people in Austin should care more about their community. The I Live Here, I Give Here campaign launched in September 2007, and the main reason I know this is because I had coffee with Patsy Woods Martin two days after the kick-off at City Hall. I wanted to ask her for feedback on the idea of a philanthropy and charity magazine in Austin. You can read my post from that meeting here.

ILH,IGH and GivingCity are both almost two years old now. And we’re still waiting. Are we making a difference in Austin? Are more people giving now as a result of our efforts? Has this been a good investment of our time, money, sweat, and tears?

I have no idea, but I thank God for Larry. Maybe we’re not having a significant impact now, but I bet we will in the long run. These are, after all, seeds we’re planting. We nurture them, we protect them, we pray for them, and we wait.

From the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts

Last month the Community Action Network – a partnership of 18 public, private, and nonprofit entities in Central Texas – hosted a learning session about how local government agencies will be spending the millions of dollars we might see in our community. More than 200 people filled the room to listen in; browse the links CAN is compiling on the subject here.

Right now it’s impossible to say how much money Central Texas will actually see because it comes in through state and local agencies, nonprofits, small businesses, individuals, etc., and each of them has its own deadline for requesting money – and no real requirement to report how much it gets.

See this post that describes why it’s difficult to track the money.

I wish there were a single, clear resource for finding out how the money from the federal Recover and Reinvestment Act is going to be put to use – and how to get some. It looks like everyone’s trying to find or create that same thing. The most useful site I found comes from the Texas comptroller’s office. Thank you to whomever created this site. It’s as well designed as it is informative.

In the meantime, read a letter from CAN to Jim Dunnam, Chairman of the Texas House Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabalization Funding, which describes how Central Texas would like the money to be invested.

The recent news about United Way Capital Area having to lay off 10  employees is disheartening. UW runs pretty lean, and the people there work around the clock and even on weekends to accomplish their mission. When you work for United Way you take on a lifestyle, not just a job.

Andrea Ball’s story was on the money; what got me was the comments. Can it really be that United Way doesn’t have a place in the nonprofit environment anymore?

As a recent data-pull by Greenlights shows (see our third issue for the story, “Are There Too Many Nonprofits?”), Austin has plenty of frontlines service providers, maybe too many. The concern is that not all of these nonprofits are effective, so one idea is to increase collaboration and maybe even mergers. From what I understood in putting the story together, collaborations can be more effective and more efficient than what a nonprofit can accomplish on its own.

But who’s out there putting these collaborations together? Nonprofits individually can be so in the weeds trying to get their own work done that they can’t spend enough time looking around for help. That’s where agencies like United Way can come in.

I talked to John Turner, United Way’s director of marketing, to run by him some of the reasons why I think UW still has value. These are just some of the things I thought of off the top of my head:

1. Collaborations like Success By 6, which brings together more than 30 local nonprofits, community leaders, and concerned businesses to build more quality into the network of early childhood centers. SB6 has helped more than double the number of early childhood centers with a quality rating in two years.
2. Their 24×7 helpline 2-1-1 Texas, which fielded almost 200,000 calls last year from Central Texans in need of assistance, connecting them with help, whether with utility bills, finding a local food bank to escaping Hurricane Ike.
3. The over $140 million UW has raised in the past eight years for the community and nonprofits. What would happen if they were not here to go out and raise it? Most organizations do not have the resources or capacity to go out and raise that kind of money. It takes money to do it, and UW is an efficient way to collect and distribute donations.
4. The community engagement arm, Hands on Central Texas, organized and mobilized more than 2,500+ volunteers last year, and 3,000+ volunteer connection to agencies. They contributed over 6,000 hours to help local nonprofits and schools, again providing a valuable service to the local community.
5. Their new collaboration One Hour For Kids, which has several partners including E3, AISD and Manor ISD, and is recruiting volunteer mentors and tutors for middle school kids to help improve the drop out rate.

Again, these are the programs and accomplishments I can think of; UW does so much more than this. And I’m certainly not alone in my perception of UW being efficient. Charity Navigator, an independent online charity evaluator, gives it its highest rating for efficiency.

Thing is, United Way Captial Area does important work. And just because they’re reducing staff doesn’t mean they can scale back their mission. So how’s this going to work? There are only so many hours in the day…

If you think you can’t help United Way, think again. Any sized donation helps, but I invite you to share your thoughts about United Way with people you know or reach out to United Way to find out how you can support their work.

In fact, reach out to ANY nonprofit in Central Texas. They could all use a little more help these days.

See? I was just talking about this exact thing the other day: A public recognition site for volunteers. Except the RecognizeGood people have made a site with the potential for much more than that.

I’ve tried the site. First you register – name, city, etc – then you just fill out the thank you. You include the person’s email address so they can be informed about the thank you, and it’s otherwise totally obvious what to do.

You have the option to make a donation on the site, and that goes to the site’s hometown beneficiary, in this case Samaritan Counseling Center of Austin. But what’s cool about your donation is matched by the site’s corporate sponsor – and that part of the donation can go to one of 10 partner nonprofits. And the thank-you beneficiary gets to choose which one.

I spoke to Nancy Blaich of the Samaritan Counseling Center of Austin , founding beneficiary and lead nonprofit for the site, for a little more information.

Why this site now?
“I don’t think we say thank you enough. There are thousands of act of unselfishness that go unacknowledged, and we wanted to create a public forum for these thank-yous. We think that the stories of kindness and charity – all of our stories put together in one place have got tremendous power, the power to create a movement toward more kindness in the world, a cultural shift.”

How it started.
“In 2007, we gave our Ethics in Business Award to Tyrex Group. John Bosch, the principal an d co founder of Tyrex, at the same time he received this award from us, had some things occur in his personal life for which he received extraordinary acts of kindness. And he didn’t feel like thank you was enough. He wanted someplace public to tell the world what people had done for him. That inspiration combined with Samaritan Center honoring him inspired him to come to us as a business partner to develop this social media site.”

What you can do to help.
“Use the site, first of all. But also, help us spread the word! Take advantage of the Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, and other social media tools on the site to share it with friends.

“Our goal is to have 15,000 thank-yous. We also hope to take the site worldwide. Austin is just the first host city; our goal is to invite 500 other host cities, each with their own host nonprofit and then each of those sites will have their own nonprofit partners. We have 10 nonprofit partners… so if we can get thousands more nonprofits involved in this worldwide, that would be exciting.”
 
“We’re also looking for community reporters. These are people who will commit to finding five acts of kindness a week and reporting about them to us for the site and a future newsletter.” (If you’re interested in helping, contact Nancy at the Samaritan center.)

Check out RecognizeGood and let us know what you think.