10 • Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina
Opinion
November i996
The long view
Funders can give nmprofits a high-tech boost
Funders today face the huge job of helping to
strengthen and expand the capacity of our
state’s nonprofit sector to meet the challenges
of a world increasin^y dependent on technolo
gy
Sadly, few nonprofits or funders are sure
about how to proceed. Happily, some powerful
tools already exist that could be used in combi
nation with one another to help foundations and
corporate funders find creative solutions to
nonprofits’ technology needs.
First, funders could team up in creating and
contributing to a statewide nonprofit technology
venture fund. Second, funders could work
together to develop a request for proposals from
nonprofit organizations seeking grants from the
fund. Third, the fund could make grants to those
nonprofits or groups of nonprofits with the most
creative proposals for meeting the technology
needs of nonprofits, whether in the areas of
securing hardware and software, training or
technical assistance. Finally, individual funders
could create their own funding programs to
assist nonprofits’ technology needs.
Foundations and corporate funders in recent
years increasingly have turned their attention
to the needs of nonprofits to build their oigani-
zational capacity. Today, as nonprofits struggle
with a host of challenges involving technology
and the Internet, funders have an opportunity to
expand their focus on capacity-building to
include information technol
ogy
Two North Carolina fun-
ders recently have studied how they might
assist nonprofits in the area of technology.
While neither has yet determined precisely how
it might be most effective, both have raised
important questions that other funders should
explore.
After studying nonprofits’ technology needs
for a year, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in
Winston-Salem has concluded the biggest need
was for technical assistance, not for dollars to
pay for technology
Under its new program, the foundation vpill
identify five groups of nonprofits that form “nat
ural networks” and need to conununicate with
one another. The foundation will help each
group develop plans to put into effect communi
cations technology such as email and sites on
the World Wide Web. Each group may receive
up to $5,000 for equipment.
The Triange Community Foundation also
has studied nonprofits’ technology needs - and
concluded that the needs are overwhelming and
need to be studied further. The foundation has
no plans now to initiate any in-house programs.
Its uncertainty about how to proceed may in
part be the result of the fact that in exploring
the issue of technology, it turned to the N.C.
Center for Nonprofits, a membership organiza-
EDITORIAL
tion and resource group for
nonprofits that has little
® hands-on experience in tech
nology issues.
The center, which received $5,000 from the
foundation to perform its study, did make a
handful of suggestions, including development
of a “self-audit tool” to help nonprofits assess
their technology and help the foundation make
funding decisions; creation of a “one-stop” com
puter lab to provide training and technical sup
port to Triange nonprofits; partnerships with
corporations and nonprofits to create a ware
housing and refurbishment program for com
puter hardware; and funding to build nonprof
its’ technologcal capacity, along with consider
ation of technology as a critical component of
general operating support.
But the center did not offer any concrete rec
ommendations about how to turn its sugges
tions into realities. And it concedes it is not
equipped - and does not expect to be in the near
future - to handle nonprofits’ technology needs.
Those needs, however, are huge and growing
every day. By making the effort to study those
needs and looking for practical ways to help
meet them, foundations and corporate funders
can go a long way toward strenghenlng non-
profits’ ability to deliver services. The solution
may he in combining competitive and eollabora-
tive strateges to tap the tensive technologcal
expertise that exists in our state.
A growing number of funders in recent years
have identified specialized needs within defined
subject areas in which they choose to make
grants - and then have invited nonprofits to sub
mit funding proposals to meet those needs.
Such a “request-for-proposals” strategy could
prove highly productive in the area of technolo
gy - particularly in a state in which neither non-
profits’ needs nor the resources available to
meet those needs are In short supply What Is
lacking are practical Ideas for connecting the
resources with the needs in the most efficient
and effective manner.
The nonprofit sector serves as a kind of
research-and-development laboratory for soci
ety Encouraged to develop ideas that will work,
and to compete with those ideas for venture
funding, nonprofit R&D could prove particularly
fruitful in the area of technology - and most
appropriate, gven the role that creativity and
entrepreneurial activity play In the higi-tech
world.
Creating a statewide nonprofit technology
venture fund also would allow funders to prac
tice the type of collaboration - with one another
- that they increasingy are asking nonprofits to
practice in order to receive grant dollars. Such
a fund would be a demonstration project in the
finest sense.
Fundraising mentors
Veterans, novices
link up in Triad
Where do you go for help when you are new
to the field of fund raising or are an executive
director of a small not-for-profit and one of your
duties is to raise money?
Recently, the Triad Chapter of the National
Society of Fund Raising Executives began a
new program as part of its mission to provide
professional development to its members.
Shari Covitz is president of The
Development Office, a fundraising firm in
Winston-Salem, and president of the Triad
chapter of the National Society of Fund
Raising Executives.
The main purpose of the Mentoring
Program, which is chaired by Debra Skeen
Ferret, is to link members with more than five
years experience in fund raising with members
who have less than five years or lead smaller
organizations.
This fall, a survey was sent to the chapter
membership to find members who were inter
ested in serving as mentors and to identify their
areas of expertise. At the same time, beginning-
level members and smaller organizations in the
chapter were asked if they wanted to use a
mentor.
Areas of expertise in which mentors provide
assistance include:
• Office management - setting up an office,
job descriptions, budgeting, policies and proce-
Look for COVITZ, page 11
A different lens
Nonprofits should
focus on values
Rushworth Kidder, author and former
columnist for The Christian Science Monitor,
founded the Institute for Global Ethics in
1990. Kidder has been a trustee of the Charles
Stewart Mott Foundation and serves on the
Advisory Council of the national Character
Education Partnership. He has served on the
Values and Ethics Committee for
Independent Sector in Washington, D.C. The
Journal spoke with Kidder in September
while he was in Raleigh to lead character
education workshops in Wake County
schools.
Q&A
JOURNAL: What do you see as the major
ethical issues facing the nonprofit sector?
KIDDER: There are really two ways to con
ceptualize the problem of ethics within the non
profit sector. One is a code of ethics that is sim
ilar to journalism or the legal profession - how
the sector operates. Then there is an entirely
different set of concerns that for me are more
interesting and powerful; How the nonprofit
sector addresses itself to ethics. Is ethics only
scandal? Or is it something more profound?
If you look in the Foundation Directory, you
will not find any listings under ethics, values or
morals. Similarly, you don’t find many nonprof-
Look for KIDDER, page 11
Philantliropy Journal
Of North Carolina
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EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
TODD COHEN — (919) 899-3744
MiRKETING AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
M.4RGUERITE LEBLANC — (919) 899-3741
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR
LAURA SYLVESTER — (919) 899-3742
' ASSISTANT EDITOR
BARBARA SILOW — (919) ^-3745
Z. SMITH REYNOLOhEWS FELLOW I
STEPHANIE GREER — (919) 8993746 *
Z. SMITH REYNOLDS NEWS FELLOW
AND PAGE DESIGNER
ASHLEY PEAY—(919) 8993743
OmECTOR OF NEW MEDIA
SEAN BAILEY (919) 8993747
Civic journalism
Media shift creates new opportunities
News organizations are going through an
identity crisis, trying to figure out what their
readers, viewers and listeners want them to be.
The self-searching has generated a host of
changes and innovations - some of them cos
metic, others substantive. In particular, a grow
ing number of news outlets have adopted a
strategy known as “civic journalism” that aims
to better connect them with their communities
and better connect citizens with one another.
Regardless of the strategies that individual
news oiganizatlons pursue, however, the simple
process of change has created opportunities.
And the nonprofit sector, which occupies the
heart and soul of our communities, should take
the opportunity offered by the news media’s
renewed attention to civic life - whether genuine
or superficial - to make sure the nonprofit story
gets told. That will require a concerted effort by
nonprofits to better educate the media about the
difference that philanthropy makes in buOding
community.
In the process, nonprofits can help focus the
media, which have been in tbe news a lot recent
ly for changing the way they cover the news.
According to reports in The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and The
New Yorker, for example, leading news maga-
ABOUT CHANGE
zines are devoting less space to foreign news;
local television stations are ignoring heated con
gressional races in favor of shallow coverage of
a lackluster presidential race; in-depth inves
tigative journalism suffers from sloppy econom
ic analysis; TV networks have converted news
events such as the Olympics and political con
ventions into mere backdrops against which to
tell human interest stories; and, in North
Carolina, a handful of newspapers and TV and
radio stations have teamed up to collectively
cover and help set the agenda for this year’s
elections.
In the face of stiff competition for the time
and attention of readers and viewers, news
organizations are using market studies and
focus groups to find out what their customers
want - and then are delivering it with a
vengeance.
As a result, news organizations have cooked
up a new recipe for the type of news they offer.
Standard fare still consists of a full plate of news
about crime, violence, war and ^saster that
feeds public fears, and news about entertain
ment, celebrity, gossip and scandal that feeds
public curiosity - but in even heavier doses than
in the past.
The growing dominance of such coverage,
moreover, has come at the expense of a third
staple that has been part of America’s news diet
since before the founding of the Republic - cov
erage of government, politics and community
issues.
In place of day-to-day coverage of public
matters and the life of the community many
news organizations have embraced “civic jour
nalism,” which takes a variety of forms.
Newspapers, for example, hold community
forums and commission public surveys to iden
tify citizen concerns and civic priorities. The
newspapers then tailor their coverage to focus
on the issues they have found are important to
the conununity. Often, newspapers - sometimes
in collaboration with local television or radio
stations, sometimes even in partnership with
other newspapers - undertake long-term investi
gations of issues raised throng their forums
and surveys.
Advocates of this trend credit the media with
taking long-overdue steps to get closer to their
Look for CHANGE, page 11