The NonProfit Times - December 1, 2008 - (Page 19)

Numerous nonprofits sent money and supplies to affected areas of China. Guo Xin, a Mercy Corps staffer and native of Sichuan province in China, helps get supplies to those in need. American Red Cross volunteer Jan Frost holds three-week-old Destiny Sibley at the Gus Young Red Cross Shelter in Baton Rouge, La. in November 2007 after it was revealed that he had an extramarital affair with a Mississippi chapter president. McGovern assumed the post in June, becoming the 10th CEO or interim CEO for the disaster relief agency in the past 12 years. There wasn’t much time for a honeymoon. Just two months earlier, the Red Cross had laid-off about a third of its staff in Washington, D.C., to try to close a $200million operating deficit. By summer’s end, the agency issued a public plea for donations to its Disaster Relief Fund, which had run dry after responding to floods in the Midwest, wildfires in California, and another round of hurricanes in the Southeast. These “silent disasters,” which didn’t bring huge media attention and with it a slew of donations, cost the Red Cross some $263 million to respond to since September 2007 but only managed to raise $63 million in donations, leaving a $100 million gap. After asking Congress for $150 million, the Red Cross was granted a $100-million appropriation,leaving it to raise the remaining $100 million to cover those $263 million in expenses by year’s end. About $43 million had been raised through October. While there was an outpouring of donations in response to an earthquake in China and cyclones in Myanmar in the spring, it wasn’t to the extent seen several years ago after the Asian tsunami or Gulf Coast hurricanes. In the weeks following the disasters about $70 million was raised but early on several relief agencies reported lagging donations. Not long after the Red Cross announced its new leader, The Nature Conservancy tapped a new CEO. Mark Tercek, director of the Center for Environmental Markets for Goldman Sachs, was appointed to succeed Steven McCormick, who left the previous October. Last month, Nancy Brown was ap- pointed as the new president and CEO of Dallas-based American Heart Association, replacing M. Cass Wheeler. Brown has been with the AHA since 1986, the last seven years as chief operating officer. There were also changes at smaller organizations, including Tim Delaney as executive director of the National Council of Nonprofits (formerly the National Council of Nonprofit Associations) succeeding Audrey Alvarado. And while there has been no successor named as yet, Eugene Tempel announced his resignation after more than a decade as executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. He became president of the IU Foundation in September. On top of those nonprofit appointments, the agency that oversees nonprofits got a new man at the top. Doug Shulman was appointed in March, becoming the 47th commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). No year would be complete without some kind of scandal or wrongdoing in the nonprofit sector. The Points of Light Institute, barely a year after it was created from a merger between Points of Light Foundation and HandsOn Network, stumbled upon financial irregularities related to its eStore. An independent contractor apparently sold millions of dollars worth of unauthorized travel certificates. In the end, the nonprofit refunded nearly $7 million to almost 4,500 customers and an investigation by the U.S District Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., is continuing. SOFTWARE CONSOLIDATION Consolidation and acquisition within the nonprofit software space continued into 2008 but not at the break neck pace of 2007.After spending $60 million on Target Analytics and $24 million on eTaptestry in 2007, Blackbaud acquired online software as a service vendor Kintera.The Charleston, S.C.-based Blackbaud announced in May that it had bought Kintera for $46 million, with the deal finalized in July. Blackbaud paid $1.12 a share, a 65-percent premium over Kintera’s $0.68 per share. San Diego-based Kintera, which had been trading below a $1 a share and in danger of getting de-listed by NASDAQ, had initiated another round of layoffs in March, for the third time in as many years. Austin,Texas-based Convio, which saw its plans for a $86-million Initial Public Offering (IPO) abandoned in August with signs of a weakening economy, released Common Ground in September.The Webbased open source constituent relationship management (CRM) system is built on salesforce.com’s platform. Whether the 2009 will be anything like 2008 is anybody’s guess.Will the market finally bottom out? Will the economy get worse before it gets better? Will donors stay with our organization? If you can bet on anything for 2009 it’s that there will be no shortage of challenges, particularly for the nonprofit sector. Sometimes the worse the economy gets,“the more Americans respond to the needs of their fellow citizens so that the nonprofits that deal with the homeless, the shelters, the hungry, those kinds of programs, I suspect will continue to do well even during the economic downturn,” said Rodney Jackson, president and CEO of the National Center on Black Philanthropy. Still, he expects organizations that rely heavily on corporate donations will take a hit as a result of the economic downturn. “It’s hard to say what’s going to happen next year,” Jackson said. “I’m optimistic that people will respond.” NPT Writing an anonymous blog about the fundraising world, particularly “stories you might not want to tell the donor”…only to have your boss find out your identity. This is just in case you’re wondering why there hasn’t been a post on Don’t Tell the Donor in two months. 2 Total Nonstop Action (TNA -- not likely a coincidence, is it?) Wrestling invited former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to become an honorary member of its elite group, “The Beautiful People.” A “Sarah Palin Ceremony” is planned at TWA’s “Final Resolution”pay-per view event on Dec.7 in Orlando, Fla., where officials would present the Alaska governor with a $50,000 check to the charity of her choice, or to the youth hockey association in her native Wasilla, Alaska. 3 DECEMBER 1, 2008 THE NONPROFIT TIMES www.nptimes.com 19 http://www.salesforce.com http://www.nptimes.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The NonProfit Times - December 1, 2008

The NonProfit Times - December 1, 2008 Contents A Nation of Volunteers Nonprofits Start Franchising Page 4 Tidings Of Good Cheer Donor-Restricted Endowments Membership Revenue Isn’t Free Divining A Skills Set Special Report: 2008 The Year in Review The Revised 990 Giving And The Economy Annual Buyers Guide Advertiser Index NPT Jobs Resource Directory

The NonProfit Times - December 1, 2008

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