Archive for October, 2008

Economy Expected to Take a Toll on Charitable Giving




By GERALDINE FABRIKANT

To the list of big losers in the turmoil on Wall Street, add these: some big foundations.

Several prominent foundations in the New York area have been particularly damaged by the recent collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and the difficulties of the American International Group. The biggest among them is the Starr Foundation, which held 15.5 million shares of A.I.G. in May. Its assets have fallen by at least $1 billion since the end of 2006, or by nearly one-third of its total value at that time. The 2006 figures are the most recent data available.

Some personal foundations of Bear Stearns executives have been hurt as well, because they held Bear stock. In addition, Bear’s corporate culture, where each year 1,000 senior managing directors gave away 4 percent of their compensation to charity, has disappeared.

The Lehman Brothers Foundation has $28 million in assets, and a spokesman said the foundation’s holdings were diversified. Still, there is no certainty that the foundation will get any new contributions. Some of Lehman’s operations have been acquired by Barclays Capital. Generally when companies merge, the foundations also merge.

Some of Lehman top executives, too, had foundations that played a role in New York philanthropy. A foundation set up by Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehman’s chairman and chief executive — the Kathy and Richard S. Fuld Jr. Family Foundation — gave away about $5 million in 2006. The Fulds are still on the philanthropy scene, and are among the co-chairmen at the New York Public Library’s annual gala on Nov. 3. But it is too early to forecast their future role, given the changing economic environment.

What this all means to the recipients of those foundations’ largess is still largely unknown. Foundations are required by law to give away at least 5 percent of their assets a year. But when their assets shrink, their donations tend to shrink as well. Gathering enough money to return to their previous level is often hard.

At the same time, individual and corporate gifts to foundations and other charities generally slow during hard times. According to research prepared by Giving USA, donations did not keep pace with inflation for three consecutive years around two economic slumps, in 1973 and 2001.

“The long and the short of it is that most foundations pay out what they have to, and if the 5 percent is a percentage of a lower amount, they will pay less,” said Joel L. Fleishman, author of “The Foundation: A Great American Secret” (Public Affairs, 2007). “To be sure, some foundations would rather dip into capital than cut back on commitments. They rarely do that. But in terms of new commitments, that is where the brunt of the problem will be felt.”

Florence A. Davis, president of the Starr Foundation, said she expected that the foundation would “be making smaller grants going forward.” She added: “At least for the time being, some of the initiatives will be put on the back burner. That is unfortunate because more than half of our giving over our 53 years has been in the city of New York: well over $1 billion.”

She was quick to add that the foundation was still large and “we have a lot of cash,” and that it would honor all its existing commitments.

The charities are clearly nervous. “We are getting a lot of calls from institutions,” said one foundation director, who asked for anonymity because the calls were private. “They are polite, but they are clearly worried.”

Phyllis Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Hospital for Special Surgery, said the institution received money from both the Starr Foundation and the Lehman Brothers Foundation. “We got a $1 million grant last year from Lehman Brothers when we honored Richard Fuld,” she said. “We got $400,000 so far. We don’t know what will happen.”

Randolph Peers, executive director at Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow, which helps disadvantaged youths and adults learn skills to get jobs, got $75,000 a year from the Starr Foundation for five years but will not get money this year. “We were told that the foundation was focusing on other priorities,” he said. Mr. Peers said he was grateful for the help, but “it hurts to lose $75,000.”

He predicts that the fallout from Wall Street “will impact us all.” As a result, he said, “We have to tighten out budgets. We won’t see such generous philanthropy coming our way, and people in my field are going to have a harder time finding jobs for disadvantaged adults when the job market is tightening.”

To be sure, foundations generally try to make sure that gifts do not drop precipitously. Starr appears to be planning to give away more than 5 percent of its assets this year, and it says it is completing its planned gifts. The foundation has pledged $7.5 million over five years beginning in 2006 to the New York Public Library, for example, and a library spokesman said it was on track to meet its pledges.

Starr remains one of the largest foundations in the country. It gave away $198 million in 2006, much of it in New York. The donations ranged from a three-year commitment totaling $50 million to a stem cell research project involving Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York Presbyterian Hospital and Rockefeller University to a $600,000 grant to train New York state teachers who work with the visually impaired.

Among the things that will be shelved for the future are efforts to fight childhood obesity and teacher training for math and science, Ms. Davis said.

The Starr Foundation is named for Cornelius Vander Starr, who founded A.I.G. in 1919 and later hired Maurice R. Greenberg, who would one day succeed him as chief executive and build the company into an insurance colossus. Mr. Greenberg, who was pushed out of A.I.G. in an accounting scandal in 2005, remains chairman of the foundation and is still embattled in lawsuits surrounding his role at the company.

His role at the foundation, too, has been an issue. There have long been questions about whether Mr. Greenberg used the foundation to further his own goals.

While the real sting of the Wall Street fallout has yet to be felt, some charities are at least trying to tighten their belts. Last spring, a breakfast honoring the veteran hedge fund manager John M. Angelo of Angelo, Gordon & Company raised a record $2 million for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

But the foundation’s executive director, Lorraine W. Egan, said, “Many people have lost a lot of their wealth.” Among the donors to the breakfast was Lehman Brothers, she said, “which gave us $25,000.” She added: “I think all charities are inevitably going to be hit. We have built up an endowment over 60 years, so we can dip into it. But the bad economy will definitely take a toll.”

Ms. Egan said she decided against hiring more staff at the foundation in an effort to control costs.

Some charities are already instituting new programs to raise larger amounts from existing donors who may have adequate financial resources.

“I think there is clearly an impact on philanthropy,” said Paul M. Cane, a senior vice president at UJA-Federation New York. “At UJA, for those who can’t make a gift now because of their jobs, we have asked the big givers to do more to offset those who can’t give. We are creating a challenge pool for the leadership that will match a percentage of any new gift as well as any increase in this year’s giving from existing donors.”

Even those who are still working are likely to watch their wallets in such uncertain times. “The wild swings create uneasiness in terms of what the future holds for individuals,” said Douglas Rothermich, vice president for estate planning and trust consulting at TIAA-CREF. “It is going to cause them to slow down in giving.”

Laurance R. Hoagland Jr., chief investment officer of the $8.5 billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, noted that foundations must pay out 5 percent. Accounting for inflation, he said, “You need an 8 percent nominal return to maintain your giving power.” But, he said, “Most foundations will have a negative return, so that is the decline in giving power. If it goes on for several years, that is a real dent in the giving power of the sector.”

Source: Economy Expected to Take a Toll on Charitable Giving

Top 30 Celebrity Philanthropists





Parade magazine released today The Giving Back Fund’s second annual Giving Back 30 survey, a ranking of the celebrities who have made the largest donations to charity in 2007 according to public records.

To compile the most accurate rankings, The Giving Back Fund culled media reports of charitable giving by sports and entertainment professionals; reviewed PF-990 tax-forms; contacted more than 250 publicists, attorneys, agents, agencies, and managers for information about their clients; sent inquiries to more than 150 charities known for their celebrity associations; and contacted the major sports leagues.

“Our hope is that celebrities will begin to become more comfortable sharing information about their charitable giving — perhaps not disclosing everything they give, but sharing enough that they will serve as role-models to their peers and fans,” said Marc Pollick, President and Founder of The Giving Back Fund. “We know that many celebrities re-direct income from sponsorship and merchandising deals to charity, or help to raise funds in other ways,” continued Pollick. “We are researching reliable means to report this information in a separate list.”

The Giving Back Fund did not include grants made by foundations in the list so as to avoid counting the same funds twice — once when the donor gave money to a foundation and again when the donor decided on a beneficiary for that money. The Giving Back did not calculate giving as a percentage of the celebrities income because there is no consistent way to calculate income when taking into account income from sponsorship and merchandise sales.

Donations to private foundations are disclosed in public documents. However, donations to public charities are not publicly disclosed and therefore may not be reported in the Giving Back 30.

Job hunt: More Americans hit the trail

By Marilyn Gardner | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor




June 8, 2007, is a date indelibly fixed in Gary Walters’s memory. That’s the Friday his boss at Nokia called to inform him that his job had been eliminated.

“He told me that by the end of the day, my access to e-mail and the company network would be terminated,” says Mr. Walters, who spent 10 years as a marketing manager with the firm, most recently in White Plains, N.Y.

It is a scenario repeated often these days. So far this year, 668,000 Americans have lost their jobs – with more layoffs to come in the wake of this month’s turmoil on Wall Street. The unemployment rate has risen to 6.1 percent, although those with bachelor’s degrees account for just 2.7 percent of the unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many fields have openings, workplace specialists say. Among them: biotechnology, healthcare, higher education, energy, engineering, green technology, and commercial construction.

“There is hiring going on,” says Kip Hollister, CEO of Hollister Inc., a staffing company in Boston. “Technology is very busy.” A survey from Hyrian, a recruitment provider, shows that 40 percent of job candidates receive two or more offers during their current search despite the ailing economy.

But for those who have not been in the employment market for five to 10 years, the landscape has changed dramatically. “The skills of looking for a job are different,” Walters says. “I remember being much younger and driving around filling out applications all day. Now I’m doing it electronically. I would love to have a nickel for every e-mail I’ve sent out in the past year with a résumé attached.”

Résumés have changed as well. “A résumé has to follow a particular format so it’s scannable by a computer,” Walters says. “If the combination of words they’re looking for doesn’t show up, it won’t get read.”

Walters has also learned the importance of keeping in touch with friends, alumni associations, and business acquaintances while cultivating new contacts. The mantra for job-seekers is network, network, network.

“There is an 85 percent probability that your next job will come from someone you know,” says Scott Kane, cofounder of Gray Hair Management in Chicago. “Only 7 percent of job placements come from postings and another 7 percent from recruiters.”

LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals, has become a popular tool. “LinkedIn makes it incredibly easy for people to reach out to their networks and explain what kind of job they are looking for, where, and why,” says Leila Bulling Towne, an executive coach in San Francisco. “Once someone in your network gets an e-mail that you are looking for a project-management position, he is already primed to think about his contacts and can easily forward your message.”

Career fairs offer another way to connect with employers. Last week hundreds of women at all levels of experience turned out, résumés in hand, for a job fair at a hotel in Boston’s Back Bay sponsored by Women for Hire, a recruitment firm.

“There’s definitely more interest among attendees, but there aren’t as many employers,” says Tory Johnson, the firm’s CEO.

Earlier that morning, 95 women crowded into a meeting room to hear Ms. Johnson offer tips. “Anytime you apply for a job, you should contact someone at the company so your résumé doesn’t end up in a black hole,” she advised them. “Tell that person, ‘I found you at LinkedIn. I realize we don’t know each other, but I’ve applied for a job and wondered if you would take a look at my résumé.’ ”

Waffles Natusch, president of The Barrett Group, a career management firm in Warwick, R.I., cautions that people go wrong when they turn their résumé into a handout. “It loses the perceived value of the document. Mass mailings just don’t work anymore.”

For Walters, there has been one regrettable misstep. When an executive marketing firm contacted him, offering to rewrite his résumé and cover letter and distribute them to appropriate companies, he signed up. “The whole package deal was a little over $9,000,” he says. But problems abounded. “They were not distributing my résumé, just my cover letter. Every day they sent me a list of jobs on job boards. I can do that myself for free.” He has had better success going through the career section of company websites.

“More and more, hiring managers are bypassing recruiters to save recruiting fees and passing along job postings to their online networks,” says Liz Lynch, founder of the Center for Networking Excellence.

Skills and experience represent only part of a candidate’s qualifications. “Employers are looking at cost per head count right now,” Ms. Hollister says. “They need individuals who can wear many different hats and are humble about it. What doesn’t work is coming into an interview with a big ego and controlling the conversation. You need to be a listener.”

Nearly half of respondents to the Hyrian survey said the worst part of the job search is never hearing back after an interview. “Employers need to have better manners,” says Daniel Solomons, CEO of Hyrian.

Still, Hollister offers this reassurance: “There are good jobs to be had and good companies to work for with great values. They’re looking for people with the right values to match up. Employers’ expectations have gone up, but it’s not all doom and gloom.”

If rejection does occur, Johnson urges job-seekers to brush themselves off and move on. She adds, “You should think, ‘Someone has to get that job. Why shouldn’t it be me?’ ”

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Promoting From Within Works When Handled With Care





Promoting employees to leadership positions from within a nonprofit organization has a tremendous upside for both nonprofits and their employees. The evaluation and hiring process must be handled carefully to overcome potential challenges that can include miscommunications and ill feelings, according to a recent issue Leadership Matters, published by Bridgestar, a nonprofit initiative of the Bridgespan Group.

Bridgestar’s Considering and Evaluating Internal Candidates for Senior-Level Nonprofit Positions suggests the following strategies and best practices when considering internal candidates for senior-level positions:

*Ongoing communication is key. Organizations should establish clear and constant communication with an internal candidate from the time the person first learns of the employee’s interest until the final hiring decision is made.

*Don’t forgo a full search. Even if an organization believes that the internal candidate is ideal for the position, conducting a full search will help ensure that the internal candidate is fully vetted and enables the organization to feel confident that it has gone through the process. It also helps to avoid any doubts and provide credibility for the internal candidate.

*Conduct due diligence. To further demonstrate credibility, internal and external candidates should undergo the same review. Even though it might seem unnecessary, it is helpful to conduct reference checks on internal candidates. When the employee was first hired, the checks might have focused on a different set of roles and responsibilities; so organizations should ask internal, as well as external candidates for references who can address the types of experiences they will need in the new position.

*Maintain confidentiality. To ensure that internal candidates are not considered lame ducks or feel embarrassed if they are not hired, it’s important to keep these interviews confidential.

*Address rejections delicately. According to Karen DeMay, Bridgestar’s regional director of talent and recruiting, if an internal candidate is clearly not a good fit for the role the organization should try to coach the person out of the process. If possible, allow the person to withdraw the application rather than have it rejected. When a strong candidate makes it to the final stages but does not get the position, it is critical to communicate clearly and sensitively.

*Organizations might consider an in-person meeting to tell the employee why the position won’t be offered, list the requirements of the position and explain how the other candidates more closely align with those requirements. In addition, organizations can communicate that the process was valuable and enabled them to get to know the employee’s background better. If appropriate, tell the employee there will be more opportunities in the organization.

*Communicate honestly with the new external hire. The new hire should be informed about any personnel changes or friction that might occur as a result of the hiring process. Tell the new hire that there was an internal candidate who was interested and how the situation was handled.
Source: NP Times

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13 Questions To Answer Before Jumping Ship





Sometimes the best way to help the nonprofit sector is to move around within it. That’s right, it might be a good idea to change jobs.

At a recent conference on fundraising, Janie Anderson of Janie Anderson Consulting Services said that fundraising techniques might best be applied to an individual’s career.

In other words, it might come down to a feasibility study, preparation and research, cultivation, solicitation, negotiation and a close.
Preparation would include not only a resume but also a log of accomplishments, a case and points for negotiation.

There are certain questions that should be asked, however:

*What is my future in this position?

*Can I advance, improve my skills?

*Is my supervisor likely to leave?

*Have I been in this position/organization long enough – or too long?

*What is the market for my skills?

*Will I be a good fit in a new culture?

*Will another job (or organization) further my career goals?

*Why did the previous person leave a position I am considering?

*Do I care about the cause?

*Are the expectations reasonable?

*What raise range can be expected here/in the region/in the sector?

*What have I accomplished this year?

*In what areas have I exceeded expectations?

Source: NP Times


Online job boards most popular recruiting tool, study shows





Online job boards are the most popular recruitment tool for small and mid-sized organizations, according to a recent study by the Inavero Institute for Service Research.

The survey included responses from hiring managers and human resource professionals on 1,000 hiring experiences across all industries.

More than half of the respondents said they had used an online job board in the past year. But local newspapers still remain a leading recruiting tool, with 47 percent of hiring managers employing the medium during the same period.

Hiring managers use newspapers 75 percent of the time when recruiting hourly employees.

In contrast, 72 percent of salaried employee recruiting situations involved an online job board as part of their search strategy.

Local newspapers are used 55 percent of the time when recruiting blue-collar workers and lead to the most job hires, but referrals, a company’s Web site and online job boards are also applied in many blue-collar hiring situations.

Online job boards are used in 40 percent of recruiting situations involving blue-collar positions.

The main tool used to recruit white-collar, full-time employees is online job boards, which help 68 percent of hiring managers locate prospective employees. Referrals and the company’s Web site were also often managed to fill these positions.

Positions with annual salary levels of $60,000 or higher require significantly more time to fill than lower salary positions. More than 20 percent of positions at that level take eight weeks or more to fill, compared with only 9 percent when the position offers a salary of less than $60,000.

Industry and regional job fairs led to the highest number of candidates interviewed, averaging 5.2 interviews per situation when they were included in a candidate search.

But only 4 percent of recruiters eventually hired the candidates from the industry/job fair while 12 percent of the hires were generated through online job boards.

Source: Biz Journal

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