Philanthropy

A Billion + Change Celebrates Pro Bono Week

Posted on by Case Foundation

This post was written by Jenny Lawson of the Points of Light Corporate Institute on behalf of the Case Foundation:

Over the past two years, we’ve seen more than 500 companies pledge $2 billion in pro bono services to nonprofits through the national A Billion + Change campaign.

Pledge companies are inspiring others to lend their time and talent to nonprofits through the powerful business and social impact that pro bono offers.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so to celebrate Pro Bono week, we’ve partnered with A Billion + Change to release an infographic showcasing the broad social impact and business value the pledge companies are generating.

So, for Pro Bono Week, why don’t you join us in celebrating the scale of pro bono around the world and the new innovations that are emerging? How can you lead the change through pro bono?

We invite you to read the recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article on the “three trends in creative collaborations that are leading to larger-scale success” authored by Jenny Lawson and Kate Ahern.

A Billion + Change Infographic

Black History Month: Celebrating African Americans in Philanthropy

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This post was written by Stacey Walker on behalf of the Case Foundation. 

As February comes to a close, the staff at the Case Foundation has enjoyed spending the month reflecting on the great achievements and contributions of fearless African Americans that have transformed our communities and the world. These contributions span the fields of medicine, civil rights, arts and culture, and science and technology. And in looking back, we’ve found that the story of African Americans in philanthropy is equally impressive and groundbreaking.

The philanthropic community has been greatly influenced by the work of household names like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, and Magic Johnson. These individuals have brought about meaningful change on an incredible scale, and in doing so have impacted millions. In addition to the great works of these celebrated individuals, it’s also important to recognize the efforts of countless other African Americans working tirelessly to affect change through philanthropy.

Oseola McCarty washed and ironed clothes for a living, and one or two dollars at a time, she was able to save $150,000 in her lifetime. She gave it all away before she died to endow a scholarship that would give young men and women in her hometown the opportunity to go to college. Will Allen has championed the issue of food security and sustainability through his urban farming companies. Geoffrey Canada has empowered thousands of young men and women in Harlem through innovative education techniques. And the paragon of hope and generosity within the African American community – the black church – has long been a mainstay of charitable activities, serving as one of the very first grantmaking institutions to black Americans seeking to build schools and providing college scholarships to deserving individuals. Philanthropy throughout the African American community is pervasive, but the truly extraordinary thing that several surveys confirm is that African Americans don’t even view their gifts of time and money as charitable activities, but rather as their collective responsibility to others.

The Case Foundation strives to lift up people and ideas with the potential to change the world, and this groundswell of African American changemakers in philanthropy is encouraging. Giving back and helping others is the fundamental premise of philanthropy and this premise has been a central tenet of African American culture. The distinguished researcher Mary Winters notes in her study on Endowment Building in the African American Community that perhaps out of survival, “Black Americans have been compelled to share and give back from the moment they arrived on the shores of this country. When they have money to give, they give; when there was no money to give, a generous heart, a strong back or a keen mind. As a value, “giving back” is firmly rooted in black history.” Research by the Kellogg Foundation supports this belief. The report, “Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Color,” shows that African Americans give away 25 percent more of their income per year than white Americans. These findings go to show just how deep the spirit of giving runs within the black community.

The story of African Americans has been one of continual progress. It began with slaves coming together and sharing secret messages through song to plan their escape to freedom. It was aided by the fearless Harriet Tubman who along with others helped to create a sophisticated network of passageways and hideouts for runaway slaves. The struggle continued onto the fields of battle, where a divided nation confronted the slavery question with arms. After Reconstruction came an even longer battle for equality complete with the protests of millions of people, inspired by the dreams of a young southern Baptist preacher from Georgia. And out of these movements came some of the first institutional giving platforms dedicated to the Black American cause. Dr. Emmett Carson, President and CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, maintains that the era immediately following the Civil Rights Movement gave rise to the professionalization of black charitable giving. This was represented by the National Black United Fund, which was founded in 1972 “to provide a viable, systematic, and cost efficient mechanism for black Americans to make charitable contributions to black American organizations engaged in social change, development, and human services.”

For the first time, people were systematically donating money to causes and institutions that were not necessarily known to them personally, but that they believed would benefit the African American community as a whole. Today, armed with growing capacity, the descendants of slaves now generate philanthropy that benefits many families who continue to struggle both here in the United States and communities in need around the world, just as their forefathers and mothers before them (Winters, 109). A lot these folks may never make the Forbes List of wealthiest people, but their value-add to society is immeasurable. It is an honor and a privilege to salute these individuals during this Black History Month.

Know any outstanding African American professionals in the philanthropic sector? Show your appreciation for them by sharing their name in our ongoing conversation via Twitter. Be sure to use the hashtag #blackhistorymonth when you do. Our staff will be chiming in with their picks as well. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Additional Resources:

Celebrate Valentine’s Day as Generosity Day

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This post was written by Katya Andresen on behalf of the Case Foundation: 

I love the idea of Valentine’s Day. Expressing how you feel about others is a lovely concept. But somewhere along the way, the occasion has become fraught – and not in a good way. My single friends find it lonely and friends in relationships find it weighted with obligation. Where’s the love?

Two years ago, I joined Sasha Dichter’s Valentine’s Day experiment in generosity. The idea was simple: reclaim Valentine’s Day and imbue it with true love – the kind where you give without expectation. Generosity Day is when you seek to be selfless and see what happens when generosity becomes your default.

The first year, we had a small groundswell. Last year, it grew. And this year, thanks to a group of amazing volunteers like Parker Mitchell and Arpit Gupta, we’re going big, hoping to inspire a million acts of kindness.

So do something big or something small. Give of your money, your time, your talent, your love or anything special that in unique to you. We’ve seen people buy coffee for strangers, take someone to a homeless shelter, make dinner for a friend in need or give blood. You could write a letter to someone who touched your life. Tell a friend why they’re wonderful. Or smile at everyone in the street. There are more great ideas here.

When you set out to be generous all day, you may find what I have – that it comes with two interesting emotions. First, fear. If you put yourself out there – especially to strangers – it can feel uncomfortable. That’s not a bad thing. As the Case Foundation has so wonderfully highlighted, living fearlessly means feeling scared and doing something anyway.

The second feeling is happiness. Once you help someone, you will feel amazing. There’s a scientific explanation for this: helping others activates the pleasure center of your brain. Researchers Lalin Anik, Lara Aknin, Michael Norton and Elizabeth Dunn have shown that people who commit random acts of kindness are significantly happier than those who don’t, and spending money on others makes you happier than spending money on yourself. They also have discovered happier people help others more, and they give more. A positive mood makes you nicer! This makes a circle: giving makes you happy, and when you’re happy you give more, which makes you happier, which makes you give more.

So let’s make this February 14th a day to open our hearts and share our generosity. You could choose to begin the day with a simple act of kindness. You could be wildly generous all day long. You could do that beautiful and needed thing that your heart’s been whispering to you to do. What better way to spend Valentine’s Day?

P.S. from the Case Foundation: if you feel like being generous on February 14, or spot some generosity, upload a photo or video to GoodSpotting.org, or by using the hashtag #GoodSpotting on Twitter.

Into Fearless, Uncharted Territory: The Brain Cancer Expedition

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This post was written by Max Wallace on behalf of the Case Foundation: 

We often say that Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure’s role is like that of Lewis and Clark — we go out into the wilderness, create new trails, and send back maps for others to follow. In our case, the wilderness is brain cancer. This year, our small expeditionary and experimental team will build the first model system that will enable a large number of patients to have their brain tumor fully profiled and then use that information to help them get the most state-of-the-art treatment for their exact tumors. We’re calling it the “Precision Medicine” project and we believe it’s a disruptive innovation that can revolutionize the field.

Today, 41 people in the U.S. will die from the most common form of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). This happened yesterday and, unless something changes, it will happen again tomorrow. Sadly, we are still using the same basic treatment tools and techniques that we have used for decades and, in spite of our best efforts over that time, the average life expectancy for a GBM patient is still about a year.

However, brain cancer research is about to change dramatically thanks to advances in technology, and it’s our moment to let urgency conquer fear. Genetic information and robotic and nano processes are intermingling and leading us into a new era of genomically-informed “precision” medicine. Our understanding of the genomic basis of cancer is increasing at an exponential rate. We now know that not all cancers are the same, even those which arise in the same organ. More and more people are being treated with new therapies targeted at changes specific to their individual tumor.

We are also beginning to understand that one type of cancer may use the same types of biochemical pathways as another type of cancer. This raises the possibility that a drug that works for one (e.g., melanoma) can be selected and quickly adapted for use against another with a similar molecular profile (e.g., GBM).

Not long ago, it cost tens of thousands of dollars to have a tumor profiled and you could only do it in a handful of academic laboratories. These technologies are being standardized and the cost of doing a tumor profile has now dropped to around $5,000 (and will continue to fall). Even at current levels, we can begin to integrate tumor profiling into regular brain cancer care.

Our “Precision Medicine” project will bring together researchers, clinicians and, most importantly, patients to take advantage of these new opportunities and help develop the most state-of-the- art personalized treatments. If the system works, we believe that we can transform research approaches and clinical practice. If we can do that, 12 months of survival might become two years, and two years might become four, and so on and so on. At that point, brain cancer will no longer seem like such an impenetrable wilderness.

Max Wallace is the CEO of Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure, an initiative co-founded by Jean and Steve Case.

Facing the Fear of Thinking Big

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Written by Gisli Olafsson on behalf of the Case Foundation: 

NetHope collaborates with 35 leading international humanitarian organizations to better serve the developing world through innovative technology and communications. Their focus is on five practice areas: Connectivity, Field Capacity Building, Emergency Response, Shared Services, and Innovation for Development. NetHope’s Emergency Response Director Gisli Olafsson writes about making big bets and reaching beyond your bubble in the face of fear. He was recently named a finalist for the Microsoft Alumni Foundation’s Integral Fellow Award for his leadership in the field of emergency response and especially telecommunications and information management. Olafsson has worked in the sector for more than 20 years.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi

I remember how I felt the first time I read the quote above: it profoundly touched me and gave me the additional courage to keep advocating for the change of things I feel are inefficient or simply wrong. It is never easy to be the one that raises questions about the status quo. It is certainly much easier to take no action and use the excuse that “this has the way it’s always been done, so why change it.”

Many people talk about money and technology as keys to being able to drive development in emerging markets. But interestingly enough, money and technology usually aren’t the biggest hurdles when trying to address huge issues. It turns out that the more technologically difficult a problem is, the more smart people can be mobilized to find a solution. I have also found that the bigger the problem, the more likely donors will be interested; they understand the big impact solving a big issue can have and they are tired of endlessly funding small steps that often never lead anywhere.

The most difficult hurdles you face are usually political, organizational or personal in nature. Achieving a consensus, building partnerships, establishing a common vision and getting people to think outside of their own little box requires the biggest effort. Every time you introduce a new vision, new idea or a new way of addressing things, people and organizations are afraid that it will make their current role irrelevant, leading them to lose funding or jobs: helping others overcome that fear is the difficult task of change leaders.

I have had the great opportunity over the last year to bring together a broad partnership of organizations and individuals who believe in the power of open data in humanitarian response under a program we at NetHope chose to call the Open Humanitarian Initiative.

Bringing together all of these different organizations around the common vision of improved humanitarian response has not been easy, but by investing time in understanding our partners fears, concerns and needs, we are getting close to bringing about big impact to our field. Later this fall we will be formally launching this initiative then it will be one of the broadest and most ambitious public-private partnerships ever in the humanitarian sector. By facing our fears and helping others do the same we have been able to bring together enough critical mass to cause humanitarian response to move from the industrial age to the information age.

Bringing these different organizations together and helping them face their fear of collaborating has been a learning experience for me. It has helped me understand that my own fear of thinking big is one that is worth facing, because the bigger your vision, the more impact you can have on the world we live in.

Black Friday … Cyber Monday … here comes #GivingTuesday!

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This post was written by Henry Timms on behalf of the Case Foundation:

“Yes—these feel completely right!”

That was my first reaction to the Case Foundation’s five Be Fearless principles. My next was, “I need to double down on all five…”

I suspect many people have had a similar response. Certainly when we have made progress with the #GivingTuesday movement, it has often come from taking Be Fearless steps. Make Big Bets; Reach Beyond Your Bubble; Let Urgency Conquer Fear—these have proved themselves ideas to live by.

Following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday is a campaign to add a national day of giving to the calendar. This campaign came to life here at 92nd Street Y, in close partnership with our friends at the UN Foundation. And from a standing start, we have now been joined by over 1,000 organizations in all fifty states.

So on Tuesday, November 27, charities, companies, institutions and individuals will come together to encourage people to “commit an act of giving.” Whether that means participating in a food drive, making a special donation or volunteering your time, #GivingTuesday is a day to celebrate our country’s great tradition of giving, and to support the cause that matters most to you.

All kinds of plans are in the works. A group of pilots have come together to provide funding to enable people with disabilities to learn to fly. A newsroom of writers in Salt Lake City are drafting letters of encouragement to people in recovery. Families all over the country are planning book drives and family gifts to encourage the next generation of philanthropists.

Major organizations are making big bets on #GivingTuesday. Microsoft and Global Giving have partnered on a $100,000 matching campaign to support global youth. On #GivingTuesday, JC Penney will be giving up to $100,000 to the Salvation Army in an innovative button campaign (as well as having a live John Legend performance and free hot chocolate for New Yorkers!). Unilever will run its first-ever company-wide food drive for Feeding America, in 30 locations across the US.

It’s especially rewarding to see the innovative partnership that has been created between three #GivingTuesday founding partners, the Case Foundation, CrowdRise, and SixDegrees.org. On #GivingTuesday, the Case Foundation is providing $25,000 in matching donations, and SixDegrees.org is adding in additional $10,000—so if you use Crowdrise to contribute to any cause or nonprofit on #GivingTuesday on this page on CrowdRise, your contribution will be matched up to $35,000.

As we enter the holiday season, let me encourage you to add a new date to your diary. Join us on Tuesday, November 27—the first #GivingTuesday. And help make it a date that will live on the American calendar every year.

No matter what you give, no matter which cause you support, take the time to get together with people everywhere to participate in one of our country’s proudest traditions. And make sure you tweet and post about what you are giving.

In Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we have two days that are good for the economy. Help launch a new day that’s good for the soul.

Henry Timms is the Deputy Executive Director of Strategy, Content and Innovation at the 92 Street Y in New York City.

How can nonprofits plan for growth and impact?

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This post was written by Rohit Menezes on behalf of the Case Foundation:

Growing or scaling an organization and its impact in any sector is hard. All leaders face the day-to-day challenge of operations – what one of my heroes has called “the constant grind to get folk to do what they agreed to do.”

In the nonprofit sector, this challenge is compounded by scarce resources and an incomplete understanding of what works. In this context, simply thinking about growth is difficult, and planning for growth can feel like an indulgence.

In my experience, however, planning is a vital element of effectively scaling an organization and its impact. For nonprofits, there are many ways to learn about planning for scale including resources available at The Bridgespan Group’s website. In this same spirit, I want to share some practices I have noted of organizations that have scaled successfully as fuel for dialogue. They are:

  • Focusing on critical relationships
  • Embracing opportunism
  • Thinking exponentially

Focusing on critical relationships.

Fundamentally, you grow a business at the rate you are able to grow relationships. In the for profit world, customer relationships are paramount. In the nonprofit sector, relationships with funders, stakeholders, and political champions can make the difference for organizations. To grow effectively, organizations must “planfully” scale those relationships. In some cases, this means developing even more relationships. In others it means upgrading existing relationships to get the kind of engagement you need. Either way, it requires recognizing that relationships are critical catalysts for scaling and impact. Developing board members and re-developing the composition of a board over time creates ferment for growing a broader set of relationships – an approach taken by many organizations. At the same time, most organizations need to be even more focused on external stakeholder relationships.

One local affiliate of a national network in Texas took this challenge very seriously. Its funding historically had come mostly from special events, so it pushed to diversify its revenue sources through the cultivation of state government funders. But it encountered a problem: the organization’s leadership did not have any relationships in the state capital. To connect itself more purposefully to government funders, the affiliate actively recruited board members with the right relationships, including the former chairman of a critical state agency. It also created a position called honorary state chairman, which rotates bi-annually to a new appointee. A succession of powerful policymakers has held the position, including the attorney general and a U.S. senator, helping to contribute to a dramatic increase in government funding.

Embracing opportunism.

Sometimes growth and scale come not from formal planning, but from flexibly identifying and responding to the right opportunities. An organization’s ability to respond to opportunities is shaped by many factors – including decision-making processes and IT infrastructure. Advance thinking and planning around goals, and the ways and means of achieving them, can allow an organization to contextualize opportunities, respond swiftly and appropriately to the unanticipated, and be “strategically opportunistic.”

Thinking exponentially.

Scaling impact is about more than replication. At Bridgespan, we have been asking the question: how do you get 100x impact with just 2x the organization? To answer this question, leaders need to think creatively about leverage – from the use of technology, to scaling leadership or sharing knowledge, that create a true ripple effect. Think advocacy, or new technology such as social networking. I increasingly hear clients and others speak of “starting a movement” as opposed to providing “just” direct service. Bridgespan’s managing partner Jeff Bradach wrote of this in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in June describing among other examples KaBOOM!, which helps communities build new playgrounds for children. In its first 10 years, KaBOOM! built nearly 750 playgrounds. But its reach was partly limited by the number of staff it could deploy to each site. Then KaBOOM! shifted from hands-on management to a Web-based platform that helps communities organize their projects. The result: approximately 4,000 more playgrounds in just three years.
But these are just three observations from my experience about scaling. What are yours?

Guest blogger Rohit Menezes works with the Bridgespan Group, where his recent client work and research has focused on youth development and place-based initiatives.

The painful acknowledgment of coming up short

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“So, what do we do next?” According to reports, that is the response Bill Gates offered upon learning that the Gates Foundation‘s $700 million polio effort had fallen short of stopping the disease from spreading throughout Africa. Indeed, instead of putting a once-and-for-all stop to the disease, an outbreak had struck and was spreading through some of the very countries targeted for eradication. At the moment I read his response, I felt his pain. Imagine putting up such a significant sum from the goodness of your heart, committing your time, the talent of people you admire and respect and putting yourself out there in a really big way to meet a really big challenge and then … learning it didn’t exactly work the way you’d planned for and the way you passionately hoped it would.

When I say I get this, I really get this. On a dramatically smaller scale, at the Case Foundation we’ve had to face our own hard moments when reality has set in and you realize that the big opportunity you were chasing is looking more like a really big challenge that is hard to overcome. Things don’t materialize as envisioned, and you fall short of your mark. It’s easy to feel discouraged or even embarrassed. You can’t help but worry about what people will think, or the price you might pay in the court of public opinion.

We experienced this recently, as we had to re-think our involvement in the PlayPumps initiative, which brings clean drinking water to rural African villages. When we were first introduced to the technology, we believed both the technology and the business model for its deployment had enormous potential and jumped in with both feet to help create PlayPumps International-U.S. as a US-based fundraising and marketing organization to support the initiative. As we’ve noted in the past, we’re proud of the successes the initiative has had – PlayPumps are now bringing play opportunities and improved access to safe water in hundreds of communities and schools in Africa. In addition, these efforts have helped spark a number of new play-related technologies now being offered by various organizations and the initiative has highlighted the important role that social entrepreneurship can play in global development. However, we also acknowledge that the organization has fallen short of the aggressive goals that were developed at the outset, and all involved have learned many lessons.

As I noted last fall, we learned that doing work on the ground in Africa is hard and humbling work, even more so than anticipated. We learned that PlayPumps perform best in certain community settings, such as at large primary schools, but they are not necessarily the right solution for other communities. And more broadly, we learned that however creative PlayPumps might be, they really are just one element in a larger portfolio of possible solutions that can be tailored to meet the safe water needs of specific rural communities. In addition, while there have been successes in implementing the PlayPumps technology, and we believe in the entrepreneurial approach of the PlayPumps model, a combination of factors made execution of the original model we envisioned when creating PlayPumps International-U.S. a significant challenge.

Of course, there really is only one appropriate response when things aren’t humming along as planned, and it is the same response Bill Gates offered, “So, what do we do next?” Because just like in business ventures, personal undertakings and public sector initiatives, things often go wrong. The unexpected happens. Reality doesn’t always play out like the business plan calls for. Look at any great business today and chances are their road to success was fraught with potholes – low moments that required fresh, new thinking and important course corrections. As a nation, I think we’ve learned that progress comes through trial and error, and much of what we enjoy today is because somebody somewhere was willing to blaze new ground.

In the case of PlayPumps, there were essentially three options. One was to stay the course, ignore the emerging realities, and stubbornly continue on a path that the growing evidence was suggesting was unwise. A second would be to pull the plug on the effort, and conclude that the time and capital was better invested elsewhere. And the third was to take a step back and regroup, and undertake efforts to go forward in a new and more effective way. For PlayPumps International-U.S., the third path was the right one. The belief that clean water was one of the great issues of our time hadn’t changed – but there were likely better ways to advance the initiative. In May 2009, the board of PlayPumps International-U.S. brought in a new CEO to identify a new path forward. Under his leadership, in October of last year, the organization announced a grant of funds and technology to Water For People, which now offers PlayPumps as part of a larger portfolio of solutions from which rural African communities can choose. At the same time, we announced an investment by the Case Foundation in Water For People to help the organization accelerate and expand its efforts in Africa. For nearly 20 years, Water For People has pioneered innovative approaches to safe water supply, empowering communities and utilizing local entrepreneurs for sustainable operations and maintenance, and we truly believe that their approach represents a step forward for the PlayPumps technology.

It sometimes feels like philanthropic efforts are held to a different standard than in the private or public sectors. All too often there is less tolerance for mistakes, which leads many organizations to become risk-adverse. And when mistakes are made, the tendency is to sweep them under the carpet – thus depriving the sector of important lessons learned. But in reality, the very nature of innovation requires that we try new things and take risks. Sometimes they will work, other times they won’t – but in all cases, we should learn from our experiences and strive to do even better in the future. Of course we would have liked PlayPumps to have achieved the reach and impact to date that we originally envisioned – it’s much more fun to talk about successes than disappointments. The bottom line is that hundreds of African communities now have greater access to clean water and the revised efforts working with Water for People will further improve its availability. Together with other sector efforts and replication of the concept, we do believe African communities will be better served and the interventions more sustainable because of the important course corrections we’ve put in place. Might we have to revisit the strategy again and adapt along the way? Maybe. Turns out innovating is hard work anywhere and anytime. In the developing world even more so. But if the philanthropic sector is transparent about mistakes and lessons along the way, and adapts as the situation calls for, hopefully we’ll all end up a little wiser and a little closer to solutions that can more effectively address the daunting challenges of our day.

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