Newspapers / Philanthropy Journal of North … / Oct. 1, 1996, edition 1 / Page 13
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October t996 Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 1 3 Technology notebook BySeanBaeey Nonprofit presence grows online The number of nonprofits getting on the Internet jumped dramatically in the last year, according to a survey by Network Wizards, a Silicon Valley- based computer and conununications company. The semi-annual survey, compiled by Network Wizards’ founder, Mark Lottor, showed that nonprofit domain host names - those nonprofits whose email or World Wide Web address ends in “.org” - grew to 327,148, up from 201,905 in July 1995. That’s an increase of 125,243, or more than 2,400 a week. The survey is an inexact estimate of Internet growth and actual num bers are probably higher. For techni cal reasons, Lottor’s survey was unable to reach 27 percent of the potential domains that mi^t host additional nonprofit organizations. The decentralized nature of the Internet makes it difficult to get exact statistics about how many oi^aniza- tions are on the Internet. Fbr exam ple, some nonprofits may have home- pages or email through commercial providers and would not be counted as nonprofits in the domain name survey. Other familiar domains are “.com” (commercial), “.edu” (education), “.mil” (militaiy), “.gov” (government), and “.net.” (networks). Nonprofits could also exist under other domain names that end in the initials of a nation, such as “.us”. A full archive of Network Wizard’s Domain Name Surveys can be found at; http://nw.com/ Internet demographics The Nielsen Media ^search firm produced a survey in August that showed that the number of Americans and Canadians who logged on to the Internet in the last year had Increased by 70 percent. The survey also found that increas ingly, the Internet is becoming a resource used by a large cross-sec tion of the nation and is not a place largely populated by computer pro fessionals. Computer professionals make up only about 11 percent of users, according to the survey, down from 23 percent a year ago. TTie per centage of male users dropped to 60 percent, down from 67 percent. Nonprofit Internet conference An Internet conference designed for nonprofits is scheduled for October 15 in Washington. The con ference will offer a variety of sessions designed both for the beginner and the experienced Internet user. The conference, organized by Access.Point, will feature three tracks of sessions and an awards cer emony for nonprofits using the World Wide Web. For information, contact Robbin Zeff at: (703)-516-9091 (robbin@zeff.com). Web site: http://www.zeff.com/nonprofits online96.htm. Consultants online In a recent online article about nonprofit sites on the Internet, Bob Curley of “Join Together Online,” makes a good point about Web sites of private consultants. Yes, they are try ing to sell you something. But these sites often offer good, free informa tion about fundraising and other mat ters. Such sites often include samples of the work the consultant has com pleted for clients, including case statements, solicitation letters, feasi bility studies and other useful infor mation that can help an organization evaluate its current situation. Curley’s article can be found at: http://wwwjointogether.org. Corporate foundation listserv One listserv mail discussion that discusses issues relating to the cor porate-giving corner of the nonprofit world is CFRNET-L. To join, send an email message to: listserv@gibbs.oit.unc.edu. In the body of the message, put: subscribe CFRNET-L first name last name. Users group eyes video-conferencing In August, the users group held a demonstration meeting with 40 par ticipants in five locations throughout the state. For information, contact Terry Grunwald: (919) 856-2176 (hnl006@handsnet.org). BELLSOUTH Continued from page 12 school year. The remainder of the company’s donation includes a Lucent Technology gift of 560 wiring kits for North Carolina schools. Each kit wires up to six classrooms. BellSouth employees will also volunteer to help classrooms “get wired,” and the BellSouth Foundation will make grants of $50,000 to schools for com puter-based learning and $10,000 to ExpIorNet Inc., the nonprofit entity that organized the state’s NetDay ini tiative. “A business, an entity, a founda tion - any of those could provide money to a school, but that’s like: Give a person a fish, and they’ll eat. Teach them how to fish and they’ll eat forever,” Spicer says. The contribution to the Oct. 26 NetDay closely follows the September introduction of BellSouth’s newest commercial service - Internet access. The telecommunications company began offering Internet services Sept. 1 in selected marketing regions, including the Charlotte and Raleigh areas. Spicer says that by Oct. 26, BellSouth will be offering Internet service in 10 major U.S. markets. BellSouth, Spicer says, is the largest corporate contributor to NetDay ‘96. The corporation already was planning a computer education initiative when it bwame aware of preliminary NetDay plans. Had the state mounted an initia tive of NetDay’s scope, the cost to tax payers would have been $2,800 per classroom, according to a BellSouth news release. Glaxo Continued from page 12 • Tiniki White, 20, of Ralei^. Grew up in an abusive home in a city housing project, assuming the role of parent for her foim siblings while in high school. She is now working toward a degree in physical therapy at Winston-Salem State University • Sheila Williams, 40, of Raleigh. A single mother of five, she overcame the burden of substance abuse and incarceration to receive her graduate equivalency degree and regain cus tody of her children. She is a student at Wake Technical Community College and plans to transfer to NCSU to complete a degree in psychology. Her goal is to work with teenage drug abusers. Corporations Continued from page 12 merge your company, everybody wants to keep their job. You run into that when you merge nonprofits, too.” Charitable gving practices of cor porations and foundations have not always encouraged efficient manage ment practices in the nonprofit sector. Young says. “There’s so much focus now on programmatic funding,” she says. “That’s all well and good but some how, you’ve also got to keep the lights on and the heat and air conditioning running. “I serve on enough boards of non profits to watch them do dumb things like write a proposal for a new pro gram even thou^ it’s not in their mis sion area but because they have to get more money I think sometimes our funding patterns create situa tions like that.” What would Young like to see non profits doing to attract more corpo rate dollars? “What they need to do is look at their own oiganizations and be more Trends in company giving Here are higiligits of Lnforma- lion on U.S. corporate gving pat terns contained in the newest “Nonprofit Almanac” published by Independent Sector. • In 1993, U.S. corporate contri butions to charity totaled $5.2 billion, or 1.14 percent of pre-tax company income. • The distribution of corporate dollars has remained consistent over time. In 1993, the largest portion went to education (38 percent) and health and human services (27 per cent). • The rate of company gving fell to 107 percent in the 1980s from 187 percent in the 1970s. • In 1993, there were 1,051 U.S. company-sponsored foundations that gave $1.5 billion in grants - a 1.4 percent increase from the previous year. Contributions made by compa ny foundations have not kept pace with inflation for several years since creative in how they are run,” she says. “They need to understand that most corporations have been, are and will be going througi their own restructuring - and that means down sizing.” Because of those changes, corpo rate giving officials are not going to have much sympathy for hard-luck stories from nonprofits. Young says. “When I’m sitting here working 16-hour days, that’s not what’s going to sell me. What we’re looking for are creative projects that make a differ ence in the community and maximize the available resources.” Young will be speaking about trends in corporate gving to mem bers of the Triad chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives on Oct. 29. Fbr informa tion, call (910) 722-2371. For copies of the “Nonprofit Almanac,” call Jossey-Bass publish ers at (415) 433-1740. CULBRETH Continued from page 12 $10,000 and above..Anything above $50,000 goes to a charitable gving committee of the board of directors. JOURNAL: Has that structure always been in place or is it new for the company? CULBRETH: We changed man agement in March of 1993 and, in the latter part of 1993 we basically went in a new direction. Previously, [chari table giving] had been done by a con tributions committee of about three people. Prior to my taking responsi bility for charitable gving, it was done by the legal department. So without any training or background, all of a sudden, all the records moved down from legal to my office. My sec retary and I just did a crash course [in corporate gving] and it’s worked out very well. JOURNAL: How much does the company gve away each year? CULBRETH: This year it’s $1.7 million. Going into each year, we would like to have at least 50 percent of the monies allocated for that year available for allocation. Fbr example, we might make a gant for $30,000 - which would be $10,000 a year over a three-year period. If we had a $1.7 million budget for 1997, we probably would not have $1.7 million to allo cate because of commitments from previous years. We also have about a $30,000 matching gift progam for employees, retirees and our agents. We gve a maximum of $2,500 annual ly [to nonprofits supported by employees]. JOURNAL: Do you also support time off for employees to volunteer? CULBRETH: We tried to institute a time matching progam, where if a goup of employees band together to do some charitable work, we migit make a contribution. That has not been formalized. It hasn’t worked very well. We’ve got to do a lot of rak ing of the chaff to make it work. JOURNAL: Do you expect Jefferson-Pilot’s gving budget to increase? CULBRETH: I can only comment on what the company has done in the past. I know that three years ago, our gving was $1.5 million. Now that’s up to $1.7 million. I see no reason why that shouldn’t continue - but you never know. JOURNAL: What have you learned in your work with corporate philanthropy? CULBRETH: I didn’t realize going in that there were so many non profits out there. It’s been really interesting. One of my concerns is that quite often, we gt more than one request from a nonprofit. Fbr exam ple, they want to start a capital fund campaign and maybe the chairman of the campaign would send us a request for a gant and maybe the executive director would, too. It some times looked like the rigit hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. There are a lot of thing we haven’t been able to do because the money is just not there. There surely is a defi nite need out there [for corporate contributions to nonprofits]. JOURNAL: What advice will you gve your successor? CULBRETH: Allocate as much time as you can to this. It could almost be a full-time situation. There were some thing I wish I could have done better. But time just didn’t per mit. JOURNAL: What are your plans for your retirement? Will you still be involved in philanthropy? ' CULBRETH: My wife retired three years ago from the school sys- tem...rm looking forward to a time when we can volunteer togther. One thing I’d love to do - we’re not too far from the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. I like animals and children. And I would love, maybe one or two days a week, to volunteer as a docent at the zoo... I’ve always felt that in handling charitable gving for a com pany, I was making life better for peo ple - even thoug the money is not mine, the final decision [on gants] is not mine. The 31 years I’ve been with Jefferson-Pilot has been a time when the community has been gving to me. It’s time for me to start gving back. Jordan gives $1 million to UNC-CH Basketball superstar Michael Jordan has pledgd $1 million to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for an Institute for Fkmilies at the School of Social Work. Jordan’s donation is the largst gift by an athlete alunmus to UNC- CH. Ifls family will attend a ceremony next month at the school for the insti tute bearing their name. The gal of the new institute is to study the problems facing families, touching on issues rangng from poverty to teen pregancy. “We really see the institute as an umbrella under which experts from different campuses can come togth er and bring togther their brainpow er to shed ligt on how we can strenghen families,” said School of Social Work Dean Richard Edwards. The General Assembly recently appropriated $150,000 for start-up costs for the new institute, which plans to rely mainly on private funds for its operations. The ORTH CAROLINA PUNNED GIVING COUNCIL announces "The Art of Planned Giving: Understanding Donors and the Culture of Giving" presented by Douglas E. White Mr. White is Chair of the National Committee on Planned Giving's Philanthropic Awareness Committee and a member of NCPG board of directors. He will dis cuss philosophy and practice, donor relations and management. Friday, November 8 The Women’s Club of Raleigh 10:45 a.m. -12:00 Presentation by Douglas White 12:00 - 2:00 Luncheon and Presentation of Philanthropic Recognition Award Cost; $20 NC Planned Giving Council Members $50 Non-members Reservations required. Please telephone Sandra Shell, Wachovia Bank, (910) 732-5289 or mail to PO Box 3099, Winston-Salem, NC 27150.
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina (Raleigh, N.C.)
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Oct. 1, 1996, edition 1
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