Big Changes to Tax Incentives for Donors
To be honest, this article is incredibly frustrating. I agree with President Obama as he says, “For too long we have tolerated a tax system that’s a complex, inefficient, and loophole-riddled mess,” in reference to the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealth. I believe these tax cuts should we allowed to expire in two years, but I fear that will be met with opposition, just like these changes in tax deductions will also be met with opposition. The argument against is easy to understand. People want to limit the power and control of the federal government, which I fully understand. The federal government doesn’t seem to be doing much good for the American public these days, so decentralizing it’s power and allowing the private and NP sector take care of philanthropy and civil services would likely be more effective. The fact of the matter is that government control can be limited, but it will never be eliminated. As nice as it would be to find solutions for the growing social and economic issues in the America’s communities, we cannot overlook the problems in the White House. America in is in SO MUCH DEBT!!! These tax cuts are Obama’s attempt to lower that debt, and we need to realize that extra money for the wealthy and potentially misguided philanthropy will need to be ‘sacrificed’ to reduce the national debt.
Donors & Nonprofits Face Defining Moment in Responding to a Crisis
“The new normal,” I love it! That’s an awesome term. The new normal, as in a normal standard of living and normal economic prosperity based on the grossly superfluous levels of both of these currently seen in America. As the article points out, “accelerating economies do not always increase standards of living equally across all income levels,” and as the housing bubble collapse has shown us, accelerating economies also have the potential to collapse and wreak havoc on the standard of living they created in the first place. If there’s one thing American culture and American decision makers are good at, it’s reacting to changes in the system. In this case I hope we get it right and react to the economic collapse by building up the NP sector to fill the void left by the downfall of greedy private sector companies.
Artist Endowed Foundations
Well, I’ll start by saying that I think that the Smithsonian’s critics are making mountains out of molehills in condemning the museum’s decision to remove the video, and this is probably an example of the media creating a story where there isn’t much of one. Nonetheless, I think it’s neat that artist-endowed foundations are increasing. You really can’t go wrong with fine art, and it’s nice to hear that the great artists of the world (or at least donors acting on behalf of the great artists of the world) are reinvesting in the future of their own craft.
How to Do Good & Prove It
Wow, this guy’s good! I like this article a lot, and I think there’s a lot of truth to Starr’s statements. Scalability is a must. In order to have an impact on the world you have to have an idea that can grow on its own and become its own system. Even if you want to make an impact on you local community you need to have an idea that can grow and evolve until it reaches a size that allows it to effect more people. Of course, his point on integrating impact into the DNA is a must as well. I think that’s generally easy to comprehend. Don’t bother creating a program or starting a NP that isn’t going to do anything. My favorite point, however, is the eight-word mission statement. I’d love a world in which I didn’t have to read long, boring, jargon-filled mission statements that don’t necessarily tell me what the company does. They might give an idea about a companies mission, but they’re often convoluted mixtures of the actual mission and the writer’s personal beliefs or rationale for starting a company. Keep it to eight words, agreed.
Chapter 10: Funders
The beginning of this chapter states that grants only for 3% of NP revenue, and I wonder how that number has changed in the past decade. At first I wondered if that NP could actually make any use of that 3%, but then I think the conclusion painted a nice picture by saying that “grantmaking in the US is primarily a story of leveraging” (O’Neill 208). Grants don’t provide a complete base for NP funding, but they can provide a boost that might make or break the future of an NP.
Chapter 11: Mutual Benefit
I was intrigued to know what this chapter would be about based on it’s title, but it was actually really interesting to frame a group of the NP sector as “noncharitable.” Sounds weird, but I guess I never thought about the fact that organizations can exist with the goal of helping other organizations. Nonprofits don’t always have to exist to provide social services or aid. Cool.
Rand Paul Interview on Daily Show
This is sort of off topic, but I thought this was an interesting interview. Rand Paul, Republic Senator (and self-proclaimed member of the Tea Party) came on to the Daily Show to discuss some of his views on federal government. The interview is in three different parts, but I only put this clip in there because they talk about government control and the Bush-era tax cuts that has popped up in our readings for this week. Enjoy!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-7-2011/exclusive---rand-paul-extended-interview-pt--3
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Post 8: International Non-Profits
Mercy Corps
Well, I started out being a little confused about Mercy Corps. The first thing I read about them said that they “help people turn the crises they confront into the opportunities they deserve.” As if that’s not a broad generalization at all. Then I went onto their “WHAT we do” page and noticed they have 33 different work categories! I’m really impressed with their work, but then I looked closer to the actual category names and realized that there’s some definite overlap. For example, there’s a category for both Children & Youth, Food/Nutrition & Hunger, Citizen Involvement & Global Engagement, etc. I’m not saying they don’t accomplish a lot, and I’m sure they have an incredibly positive impact on the world, but I think they need to do some work on packaging their mission a little better. I’m curious to know how they choose their projects considering they have such a broad range of locations.
William Easterly, Why Foreign Aid Fails?
I think this is my favorite article we’ve been assigned throughout the entire quarter. At the same time it’s probably the most depressing clip we’ve come across as well. I’ve been a large critic of governmental aid through the quarter, and I think my blog group has noticed that I have a problem when we thinking throwing money at a problem - be it a problem in the environment, education, health care, etc – and expect it to work. As Easterly stated the money get’s lost along the way. There are leaks in the funding pipeline, and the real tragedy is that we don’t seem to care. “No one cares that this money is not actually reaching the most desperate people in the world for whom it is intended, people who live on less than a dollar a day.”
I also like Easterly’s point about foreign aid failing because of the lack of feedback from the recipients of aid. The poor, i.e., the intended customer of foreign aid, “have no right to complain and no right to turn down the product if they don’t like it. The poor just get foreign aid foisted on them by these ill-informed “experts”, and there’s no feedback from the poor – whether they’re satisfied or not, whether their money even reached them or not.”
Ngozi Okono-Iweala, Aid vs. Trade
One of the first things Ngozi asks in her speech is “How are we [African countries] using what is being given back [aid from foreign countries/entities].? Are we using it well?” What I think they should be asking is ‘are we prepared to use the aid we’re being given?’ She speaks about Spain that received $3 Billion in aid from the EU and Ireland that received $1 Billion in aid from the EU to build roads, cities and information super highways, and they she asks why no money or aid being given to build those same infrastructure improvements in African countries. My initial answer is that African countries might not be ready to build that kind of infrastructure. That infrastructure requires an educated population and politically sound government to create and maintain it, and the EU or the World Bank needs to make sure that the countries that are receiving aid are prepared to receive that aid. Not being prepared for the aid is the other half of the problem with throwing money at an issue.
Ngozi expressed later in the speech that she wants to make sure this aid goes toward a good cause. As she puts it she wants to “help them, help us.” She wants to leverage all this good will?” And in order to leverage good will, you need “infrastructure and discipline.”
Millennium Goals
It’s a nice outline of goals. I’m not really sure if asking whether or not they are ‘culturally appropriate’ is a good question because we’re trying to solve problems of human development across the entire global and as far as I know we don’t have a global culture. My one question is rather about the formation of these goals and the intended actions to implement them.
I’m still thinking about Ngozi Okono-Iweala’s speech and how she asked if international aid organizations are coordinating with the recipients of that aid to ensure that they are being helped as much as possible. In that sense I would like to know how the U.N. created these goals. Was there any process of asking those in need of aid what they would like to see? Or are these based on econometric calculations? Just a thought.
The Modern Story
The Modern Story is a non-profit that some of my sister’s friends started. Their mission is to bridge the technological divide by introducing digital skills and storytelling practices to you and educators around the world. They’re still a young organization so to my knowledge they’ve worked primarily in India thus far, and they have been collaborating with Google to develop their programs. Check out the video from this link for more info:
http://themodernstory.wordpress.com/about/
Non-Profit Nation: Chapter 9
Interesting stuff. I didn’t know that the international non-profit sector was one of the newer sectors in nonprofit work. It makes sense though consider that the world has only becoming more globalized each and every day. I guess nations haven’t always been wealthy enough or concerned enough about other countries to offer foreign aid. One of the things I’m surprised I didn’t mention while reading these articles is that I’m not sure why America and American organizations are so concerned with developing other countries. There are a lot of problems in our own country and they’re not necessarily easier problems to fix, but they are at least a lot closer to us and possibly more relevant to our personal lives.
Well, I started out being a little confused about Mercy Corps. The first thing I read about them said that they “help people turn the crises they confront into the opportunities they deserve.” As if that’s not a broad generalization at all. Then I went onto their “WHAT we do” page and noticed they have 33 different work categories! I’m really impressed with their work, but then I looked closer to the actual category names and realized that there’s some definite overlap. For example, there’s a category for both Children & Youth, Food/Nutrition & Hunger, Citizen Involvement & Global Engagement, etc. I’m not saying they don’t accomplish a lot, and I’m sure they have an incredibly positive impact on the world, but I think they need to do some work on packaging their mission a little better. I’m curious to know how they choose their projects considering they have such a broad range of locations.
William Easterly, Why Foreign Aid Fails?
I think this is my favorite article we’ve been assigned throughout the entire quarter. At the same time it’s probably the most depressing clip we’ve come across as well. I’ve been a large critic of governmental aid through the quarter, and I think my blog group has noticed that I have a problem when we thinking throwing money at a problem - be it a problem in the environment, education, health care, etc – and expect it to work. As Easterly stated the money get’s lost along the way. There are leaks in the funding pipeline, and the real tragedy is that we don’t seem to care. “No one cares that this money is not actually reaching the most desperate people in the world for whom it is intended, people who live on less than a dollar a day.”
I also like Easterly’s point about foreign aid failing because of the lack of feedback from the recipients of aid. The poor, i.e., the intended customer of foreign aid, “have no right to complain and no right to turn down the product if they don’t like it. The poor just get foreign aid foisted on them by these ill-informed “experts”, and there’s no feedback from the poor – whether they’re satisfied or not, whether their money even reached them or not.”
Ngozi Okono-Iweala, Aid vs. Trade
One of the first things Ngozi asks in her speech is “How are we [African countries] using what is being given back [aid from foreign countries/entities].? Are we using it well?” What I think they should be asking is ‘are we prepared to use the aid we’re being given?’ She speaks about Spain that received $3 Billion in aid from the EU and Ireland that received $1 Billion in aid from the EU to build roads, cities and information super highways, and they she asks why no money or aid being given to build those same infrastructure improvements in African countries. My initial answer is that African countries might not be ready to build that kind of infrastructure. That infrastructure requires an educated population and politically sound government to create and maintain it, and the EU or the World Bank needs to make sure that the countries that are receiving aid are prepared to receive that aid. Not being prepared for the aid is the other half of the problem with throwing money at an issue.
Ngozi expressed later in the speech that she wants to make sure this aid goes toward a good cause. As she puts it she wants to “help them, help us.” She wants to leverage all this good will?” And in order to leverage good will, you need “infrastructure and discipline.”
Millennium Goals
It’s a nice outline of goals. I’m not really sure if asking whether or not they are ‘culturally appropriate’ is a good question because we’re trying to solve problems of human development across the entire global and as far as I know we don’t have a global culture. My one question is rather about the formation of these goals and the intended actions to implement them.
I’m still thinking about Ngozi Okono-Iweala’s speech and how she asked if international aid organizations are coordinating with the recipients of that aid to ensure that they are being helped as much as possible. In that sense I would like to know how the U.N. created these goals. Was there any process of asking those in need of aid what they would like to see? Or are these based on econometric calculations? Just a thought.
The Modern Story
The Modern Story is a non-profit that some of my sister’s friends started. Their mission is to bridge the technological divide by introducing digital skills and storytelling practices to you and educators around the world. They’re still a young organization so to my knowledge they’ve worked primarily in India thus far, and they have been collaborating with Google to develop their programs. Check out the video from this link for more info:
http://themodernstory.wordpress.com/about/
Non-Profit Nation: Chapter 9
Interesting stuff. I didn’t know that the international non-profit sector was one of the newer sectors in nonprofit work. It makes sense though consider that the world has only becoming more globalized each and every day. I guess nations haven’t always been wealthy enough or concerned enough about other countries to offer foreign aid. One of the things I’m surprised I didn’t mention while reading these articles is that I’m not sure why America and American organizations are so concerned with developing other countries. There are a lot of problems in our own country and they’re not necessarily easier problems to fix, but they are at least a lot closer to us and possibly more relevant to our personal lives.
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