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News You Can Use
The Center on Philanthropy has released its Progress Report for Fiscal Year 2006-2007, Touching Lives: Innovative Leadership, Individual Impact. The Center continues to address issues that are at the heart of philanthropy, assisting those who change lives and communities. Across generations, for all types of organizations, from South Dakota to Indianapolis to Kenya, the Center touches lives. As it celebrates 20 years of moving philanthropy forward, the Center is helping to set the pace for research, training, education and public service. Impact from the Center's programs effects individuals and makes a world of difference. Read the report.
Over three days in August, the Center on Philanthropy hosted its fourth annual Philanthropy Summit sponsored by the McCormick Tribune Foundation. Expecting Too Much? Promising Too Much? Assessing Accountability for Grantmakers and Recipients convened more than 50 leaders from nonprofit organizations, foundations, governmental organizations, and corporations to discuss organizational effectiveness. Participants reached some common understanding and talked about practices to improve the performance, accountability and impact of nonprofits and their funders.
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) has named Dr. Eugene R. Tempel, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, a winner of the 2007 James L. Fisher Award for Distinguished Service to Education. The Fisher Award is given for extraordinary service to education of national and/or international significance, beyond service to a single institution or state. Past recipients include J. William Fulbright, The Ford Foundation, Herman B Wells, Robert L. Payton, the United Negro College Fund and Lilly Endowment Inc.
The AIM Alliance recently partnered to organize a conference called NP2020: Issues and Answers from the Next Generation. Convened at The Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at Grand Valley State University and attended by several Center staff, students and alumni, the conference provided opportunities to learn about the need to attract and develop new senior nonprofit leaders, and to discuss the future of leadership for the sector. Using Open Space Technology, participants created the agenda, organized breakout sessions, and posted discussion items and notes to a "Wiki"--a Web page designed for multiple users to edit.
The Center welcomed three new Philanthropic Studies faculty members to begin the 2007-2008 academic year. An assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, David E. Campbell's research focuses on the influence of communities and schools on civic engagement. Campbell is currently collaborating with Robert Putnam to examine the changing role of religion in America's civic life. Laurence Lampert is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at IUPUI and studies the intersection of philosophy and philanthropy. Lampert will advise one of the Center's Ph.D. students, Marty Sulek, for his dissertation on the concept of philanthropy in the works of several philosophers. Anne Beeson Royalty is an associate professor of Economics and the director of the Graduate Studies of Economics program at IUPUI. Anne is currently utilizing a Center research grant to study the impact of health care costs on employment in the nonprofit sector.
The Center has an exciting new partnership with Amazon.com. As an Associate Affiliate, the Center now offers visitors to its Books Web page access to texts about philanthropy and its related disciplines. Scholars, practitioners and casual readers alike can purchase desired books at a discounted price and locate hard to find items. All book sales made through the Center's site (not just books related to philanthropy) generate a 4% commission for the Center. If you are planning to purchase a book, please click on any of the product or book links on our Web site before you start shopping at Amazon.com. The Center will then receive its 4% commission on your entire purchase!
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Moving Philanthropy Forward
2007 marks the Center's 20th anniversary and two decades of increasing the understanding of philanthropy and improving its practice through education, outreach and public affairs. The Center planned 18 months of events across the country. Over 250 national and international nonprofit leaders attended a signature 20th anniversary celebration in Indianapolis November 4-5, two full days of events that included lectures, a symposium and panel discussions featuring some of the brightest and most influential current leaders of the field. Read a summary of the November events.
20th anniversary sponors recognized the Center's leadership role, allowing it to share its vision for the next 20 years and beyond. Half of the gifts from Platinum sponsors David A. Noyes & Company, Eli Lilly and Company, Grenzebach Glier & Associates, Inc. and the McCormick Tribune Foundation will be dedicated to the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS) and matched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Event participants and others have signed the online 20th Anniversary Guestbook. Please take a moment to read some of the comments and leave a message.
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Resources for Professionals and Researchers
American Express recently partnered with the Center to announce the release of the American Express Charitable Gift Survey, the first nationally representative study to address two frequently-asked questions: "How do people give online?" and "How much do they give per donation?" The study asked donors about their giving and found no statistically significant differences in the size of their most recent online and offline gifts. Only one in every ten donors takes advantage of the convenience of giving online.
Because the survey was fielded in the early part of the traditional fall "giving season" in the U.S., the researchers also asked respondents about how much of their giving occurs from Thanksgiving to New Year's. On average, people make 24 percent of their annual donations in those six weeks--or about twice what one would expect if giving were equally distributed throughout the year.
American Express sponsored the research for the American Express Charitable Gift Survey, which was conducted by Innovative Research Group. The Center on Philanthropy completed the analysis and the report. Download the complete report.
Nonprofit fundraisers are having increasing success with Internet and e-mail fundraising techniques in recent years, according to the latest Philanthropic Giving Index (PGI) survey released in September 2007 by the Center on Philanthropy. In the six years since the Center first asked about Internet fundraising, the percent of nonprofits reporting success with this technique has more than doubled, from 16 percent in 2000 to 34.4 percent today. However, fundraisers continued to rank the Internet and email as the least successful fundraising techniques. Read the press release.
Google partnered with the Center in early 2007 to estimate how much of the charitable giving by households in the U.S. focuses on the needs of the poor. The Center's analysis is now available to the public. It estimates that less than one-third of the money individuals gave to nonprofits in 2005 was focused on the needs of the economically disadvantaged. Of the $250 billion in donations that year, less than $78 billion explicitly targeted the poor. Read more about the study or click here to download the working paper.
A new Individual Retirement Account (IRA) Charitable Rollover law creates a one-step option that allows donors to accomplish three goals at once: support a nonprofit organization they care about, help to meet their IRA's minimum distribution requirement, and exclude the distribution from their taxable income. The new provision is set to expire on December 31, 2007, although lawmakers are currently debating a tax package that includes an extention. If you would like more informaton or are interested in giving to the Center on Philanthropy, please contact Kim Gattle, director of development and communications, at (317) 278-8918.
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Alumni and Student News
 As manager of corporations & foundations at the Indianapolis Zoo, Center on Philanthropy alumnus Matt Holley (MA '05) uses the latest philanthropy research to engage people with the Zoo and its mission. "My experience at the Center was the basic building block for developing my career," says Holley. "It made me aware of the larger philanthropic community, including its history and current challenges."
A 501(c)3, the zoo engages, enlightens and empowers people in the community to celebrate, protect, and preserve the natural world through conservation, education and research. It recently won a national award for its propagation and management program for endangered Jamaican iguanas. Holley believes that his role is to connect companies and organizations with the zoo's impact in new ways. "Like leadership, philanthropy is something both innate and learned," he states. "While I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family where there was a strong sense of public service, my education at the Center shaped my philanthropic initiatives both personally and professionally."
Holley previously served as director of the Alphi Chi Omega Foundation, worked as a volunteer leadership trainer at United Way of Central Indiana, and currently volunteers as a mentor for the Center on Philanthropy Alumni Association's mentorship program.
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Encouraging Philanthropy Internationally
In early September, the Center's associate executive director and director of academic programs, Dwight Burlingame, participated in an important meeting of the Benchmarking Nonprofit Organizations and Philanthropy Educational Programs project, or BENPHE. BENPHE's primary goal is to create the first undergraduate program in philanthropic studies in Europe, based in part on the Center's partnership with the University of Bologna.
BENPHE is a joint European Union-United States Atlantis Program that analyzes graduate programs in nonprofit management, social entrepreneurship, and philanthropic studies. Other planned outcomes of the collaboration include a database and comparison of those educational programs, and a summary of best practices in transatlantic cooperation and internship placement for those programs.
Ersta Sköndal University College in Stockholm, Sweden hosted the international gathering. The meeting addressed and reviewed data collected to date on programs and courses offered on the baccalaureate and graduate levels from the UK, Nordic and other continental European countries. Additional discussion focused on the development of curriculum appropriate for the exchange of students and faculty between partner institutions, including the Center on Philanthropy .
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