OCTOBER1994
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 19
SOFTWARE/
GRANT GIVING
MicroEdge, Inc.
1114 1 St. Avenue
New York, NY 10021
1-800-889-0890
DOS, Windows and Mac versions available.
Riverside Software, Inc.
417 W. 120th St.
New York, NY 10027
(212) 678-7077
The Grants Manager • Matching Gifts ■
Riverside Grants
SOFTWARE/
PLANNED GIVING
Blackbaud, Inc.
4401 Belle Oaks Drive
Charleston, SC 29405
(800) 443-9441, FAX (803) 740-5410
Software for fundraising, fund accounting,
planned giving, academic administration
PG Calc Incorporated
129 Mount Auburn Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
(617) 497-4970, FAX (617) 497-4974
Planned giving calculations, marketing and
gift administration; IBM-PC and Macintosh
PhilanthroTec, Inc.
10800 independence Pointe, Suite F
Matthews, NC 28105
1-800-332-7832, FAX (704) 845-5528
SOFTWARE/VOLUNTEER
MANAGEMENT
Myers & Associates, Inc.
P.O. Box 560
Dover-Foxcroft, ME 04426-0560
1-800-332-1933, Fax: (207) 564-7956
M&A-ISIS-VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT.
Tracks Tim^Fair Value Schedules, Skills
Assignments. Wordprocessor/Mailmerge.
Full reporting capabilities, User-Modifiable
800 helpline, first yr. support included.
SURVEY
RESEARCH
Lewis & Clark Research
6040-A Six Forks Rd, Suite 112
Raleigh, NC 27609
(919) 676-2036, FAX (919) 846-4021
Specializing in Mail Surveys Since 1982
TRUST
DeBerry Assoc./Renaissance Adv.
P.O. Box 4020
Chapel Hill, NC27515
(919)489-6500
Charitable Trust Administration
New Context Video Productions
924 Chapel Hill Road
Pittsboro, NC 27312
PHONE/FAX (919) 929-3058
Also radio spots and photos
WRITING/
EDITING
Vernon Apperson
Post Office Box 61056
Durham, NC 27715-1056
PHONE/FAX (919) 286-3504
Writing services "on call".
Babcock
Continued from page 1
areas it has concentrated on in the
past, such as early cluldhood develop
ment, the environment and govern
ment accountabiUty.
Instead, it will fund three broad
program areas that cut across social
issues, including those it has funded
in the past. They are: ensuring the
well-being of children, youth and fami-
hes; bridging racial and class differ
ences; and strengthening communi
ties’ human and natural resources
over the long-term.
“We have a particular interest in
seeing impact in areas where poverty
prevails and race divides,” says Gayle
Williams Dorman, who became the
foundation’s executive director last
year.
In handing out grants in each of
the three new program areas, the
foundation wiU look for strategies that
pull together people and organiza
tions in communities in the South.
Specifically, funds will be directed
to “strengthen the capacity” of organi
zations working in the three program
areas. Funds also will be targeted at
communities in which organizations
are working together to solve social
problems in ways that involve commu
nity residents and develop community
leaders.
The changes in funding strategy,
which will be fine-tuned in focus-
group discussions this fall, are not
likely to affect how much the founda
tion awards in grants each year. Last
year, the Babcock foundation made
grants totaling roughly $3 million.
The foundation, which suspended
its grantmaking this year while it
examined its priorities, has not yet
decided on the grantmaking process
and schedule it will use when it
resumes its funding in the spring.
Grant guideUnes will be spelled out in
the foundation’s 1994 annual report,
to be distributed early next year.
While the foundation hopes to bet
ter channel its resources, Dorman
says the new program areas are true
to its history.
“What we did was take a broad
look at how social change takes place,
the role of philanthropy and the pre
sent and emerging pressing issues in
the Southeast,” she says. “And then
we also looked at the finest traditions
of the Babcock Foundation.”
hat we did was take
a broad look at how social
change takes place, the role of
philanthropy and the present
and emerging pressing issues in
the Southeast. And then we also
looked at the finest traditions of
the Babcock Foundation.
GAYLE WILLIAMS DORMAN
Executive Director
Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation
The new strategy was based on a
number of factors, Dorman says, in
cluding “the foundation’s traditions of
being willing to take risks with people
who were trying to improve their own
Mves and their communities, and the
foundation’s bedrock commitment to
democracy and justice and compas
sion.”
The strategy of funding collabora
tive, community-based efforts to tack
le interconnected social problems
stems from the twin realizations that
the problems facing the South are
complex and can best be solved by
strengthening local resources, Dor
man says.
“The pressing issues of the time
are not categorical Issues. They are
issues that are cross-cutting. They
just require a broader and more inclu
sive way of understanding what the
dynamics of the issues are and there
fore what the possible solutions are.”
In addition to holding focus
groups, the foundation also will be
talking to other major funders about
how to support more collaborative
efforts in the region.
The foundation’s goal, Dorman
says, is to “support and spur the
development of greater capacity in
the South for building just and caring
communities.”
Accomplishing that goal will mean
facing some tough hurdles. The
biggest, she says, are poverty and
racism.
But the nonprofit sector also poses
barriers, she says, including “the diffi
cult and entrenched nature of so
many of the problems” facing conunu-
nities and “turfism among all of us in
the sector... and the barrier of being
caught in ways of doing business that
perpetuate themselves.”
Scrap
Continued from page 3
what this stuff costs when you
want to go buy it in the store. We
could get much more money for
this.’ Then you stop yourself, and
say, Wait a minute. We could, but
then we’re not serving our commu
nity.’ And it’s a constant balanc
ing act.”
Hoffman says that as
executive director, she is
caught between the
board’s desire to maintain
the nonprofit mission of
the Scrap Exchange and
the day-to-day reality of
making sure the organiza
tion is running smoothly.
The board “would like
us to function and meet
the need in the communi
ty,” she says. “They
would like us to be self-
sufficient and/or have
support, but how we do that is up
to me.
“We really are faced with two
strings pulling at us. Because if
you go too far in either direction,
you’re not serving your mission or
the organization. You’re not serv
ing the organization if you go
under.”
Nearly one-third of operating
revenues for the Scrap Exchange
come from store receipts. The
remainder comes from fundraising.
With only two full-time staff
members, Hoffman does most of
the grantwriting, marketing and
soliciting of contributions.
The staff is “schizophrenically
pursuing grants and contributions
in our spare time, which we don’t
have, and marketing our services
and goods as though we were a
bottom line business,” she says.
Joe Appleton, co-founder of the
Scrap Exchange and its board
president, says continuing to pro
vide programming and arts materi
als at a low cost will require the
board to become more involved in
raising money.
“It’s been a conscious decision
from the beginning not to do a lot
of that, but grantmaking will peak
at some point and we will have to
do active fundraising,” he says.
In reaching the point at which
good intentions run head on into
economic realities, the Scrap
Exchange is not alone, says
Marilyn Hartman, head of Duke
University’s Continuing Education
Program in Nonprofit Manage
ment.
Many nonprofits find it difficult
to keep financially afloat, she says,
because many people who start
nonprofits don’t have the training
Pat Hoffman
in business that is necessary to
run organizations successfully.
“These are people who have
Masters in Doing Good,” she says.
“They avoid courses in business
like the plague, because they’re
anathema to them. But now they
realize that they need to know
business.”
Maggie McGlynn, who heads
nonprofit management consultant
McGlynn Associates in Carrboro,
says that business
training and financial
know-how won’t neces
sarily bring success on
their own. The real ten
sion, she says, often is
between a board and
staff of a nonprofit that
should have distinct
responsibilities to the
organization.
“A good executive
director is going to do
whatever is within rea
son to meet the bud
get,” she says. “That’s a responsi
bility they have. The board, in
turn, should be aware of the fact if
the executive director is going
afield. That’s what their role is: To
make sure that the whole plan is
being met.”
McGlynn advises nonprofits to
devise a long-range plan. That
plan should spell out how to
ensure financial stability without
losing sight of the organization’s
mission. It also should define the
respective roles and responsibili
ties of the board and staff.
What’s more, she says, a key
task for the organization will be to
maintain open communication
between the executive director and
the board.
A plan helps to set a direction
for the organization, and helps
focus people on specific goals, she
says, while communication is cen
tral to keeping the goals of the
organization in sight.
“If an organization hasn’t gone
through a period of planning, they
can get overwhelmed. The issue of
fundraising is so big and scary
that it’s easier to avoid it.”
While the Scrap Exchange is
well aware of the challenges it
faces, Hoffman and the board still
are wrestling with how to strike
that elusive balance between ful
filling and financing its mission.
And as with most nonprofits,
mission remains the ultimate con
cern.
Says Appleton, the board presi
dent: “If we cannot continue to do
teacher and children workshops,
and the other things we do, for
cost, and to make it affordable and
accessible to the public, we should
not exist.”
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