Author Archive:
Paul Penley
Social-profit enterprises: stop debating and get them going
The wall between non-profit and for-profit organizations is crumbling in the US legal structure with the recent creations of B-Corps, L3Cs, and now FlexC’s. In actual practice, the social sector moved beyond the value of …
Giving poorly can be worse than not giving at all
What if your donation to fight human trafficking paid the salary of a human trafficker? What if your donation to support widowed law enforcement families went to a felon’s bank account? What if your child …
Modern proverbs for giving – from the Philanthropy Roundtable Annual Meeting
‘Even if grants don’t fully succeed, we only fail if we don’t learn.’ This adage from Jeff Raikes (Director of the Gates Foundation) is one of many exchanged at the 2011 Philanthropy Roundtable Annual Meeting. …
New Charity Navigator ratings based on old tax forms
Charity Navigator added nonprofit transparency practices to its financial efficiency formula to produce new charity ratings for thousands of US-based organizations. The new calculation for rating charities affected almost 50% of the organizations (2,626 new …
Can non-profits be profitable? The movement toward self-sustainability
If you read annual reports from young community development organizations in Africa, you will most likely encounter a new gold standard: the self-sustainability percentage. It seems that the push to inculcate for-profit business practices into …
Online giving contests: good or bad idea?
In the last 5 years, charitable giving ‘contests’ have grown in popularity in the United States. In 2006, the Network for Good/Yahoo Challenge demonstrated how online contests could attract significant involvement. The Case Foundation expanded …
