island⁹⁴

In my last post about nonprofit structure, some interesting and important aspects of tax-exemption weren’t fully explored. Specifically, I glossed over why tax-exemption exists in the first place. Let’s rectify that.

The tax-exemption at the heart of nonprofit organizations—along with “nondistribution constraint” (i.e. one cannot profit from, or own equity in, a nonprofit; it may not inure to someone)—is the the key distinction between a nonprofit organization and any other incorporated entity. The reasons why a nonprofit organization should receive tax-exemption (and the government subsidy it implies) are varied and contested.

Norman Silber’s A Corporate Form of Freedom (p. 167-169) presents the following reason why nonprofit organizations—in aggregate—should receive the special privilege of tax-exemption:

• The difficulty in measuring a nonprofit’s income and assessing an appropriate tax. (Boris Bittker and George Dahdert, 1967)
• It rewards altruistic behavior in support of communities that might otherwise diminish or fail entirely without governmental subsidy. (Prof. William Ginsberg, 1980)

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I’ve recently been collecting examples of whale art. My interest mostly lies around their monotonous use in hipster art; and they’re kind’ve cute. I put up on Flickr a gallery of whale archetypes.

Left-to-right and top-to-bottom, the whales are named: Billy, Gus, Tina, Sal, Sanjay, Perth, Jill, Buddy, and Ann. Some of them may be familiar to you.

My radio program piece I posted last week generated some good discussion in the comments. In this post I would like to follow up by providing some background to the discussion that nonprofit organizations are not fully deserving of the aura they they receive. The following is a synopsis of the Nonprofit Structure training I give for AmeriCorps*VISTA members; you can also watch the 40 minute training.

Most people have heard of what I will, for the rest of this article, call nonprofit organizations, nonprofits, or the nonprofit sector. There are many terms though that people use:

• Non-profit (with a hypehen)
• Not-for-Profit
• Charity (or Charitable Organization)
• Agency
• NGO (Non-Governmental Organization)
• Social Change Agency
• Mission-Based Organization
• Community Benefit Organization
• Philanthropic Agency
• Voluntary Sector
• Third Sector (the first two being the Public and Private Sector)

Regardless of what you call a nonprofit, it’s really only but two elements:

1. A Corporation: an incorporated entity that provides limited liability for its agents and its actions
2. Tax Exemption: generated (program income) and contributed (donations) revenue are not subject to taxation

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I returned to the airwaves this morning with my coworker Jules to talk about nonprofits and society on WUML. My good friend Charlotte, who I know from my Lowell cable access days, hosts Thinking Out Loud every Friday morning. I previously was a guest on her show two years ago plugging my job, the CTC VISTA Project.

This time, Jules and I had a free-ranging discussion on the nonprofit sector and its role in constructing society. As we’re arguing, nonprofits are hamstrung as social innovators because of their structure: barred from advocacy, they concentrate on services which—while individually valuable—provide only symptomatic relief rather than comprehensive reform. We don’t want to discount the valuable and necessary services of nonprofits (not at all!), but believe that a parallel movement of advocacy and reform is key to building a better society. While nonprofits are perhaps a natural place to begin dialogue, vision and action for improving society as a whole, those components must ultimately move beyond the narrow confines of traditional nonprofit organizations in order to be effective.

Listen to the program below

Click to play

Click here to download the mp3.

If you find this type of talk interesting, you would probably enjoy the book The Revolution Will Not be Funded.

I feel like this xkcd comic describes a lot of internet interactions I know. This is my take on it.

Also, a shout-out to my mom, who now subscribes to my blog via Google Reader.

I like taking on the role of facilitator to help people realize their potential, whatever it might be. In a strategic planning class I audited last year, I found myself spending more time (and enjoying myself more) turning other people’s vague concepts into plans, than I did my own. Many of the AmeriCorps*VISTA members I work with have trouble recognizing their abilities, expressing their roles, and most importantly, translating their experiences into a narrative they can parlay into brighter pastures. I’ve learned a lot about how to work with them to do this.

This I’ve learned: no one ever has everything they need, and not even everything they want. Being able to make do with with what you got (”have” for the grammar police), is one of those key lifetime skills.

The following substitutional characteristics are how I try to make do with what I’ve got. These are for use in situations where I have to persuade someone of my abilities or those of something I represent or anything that requires more than a broad smile (though that goes far as well)

I get really frustrated when going to grant-writing workshops. The workshops are usually laid out structurally rather than purposefully; emphasis is placed upon each individual section of the grant in isolation (the mission and history section, the budget section) instead of concentrating on how to effectively interpret your goals and objectives for a funder. The latter obviously has a structural component, but structure is how you organize your explanation, not how you turn your thoughts into a logical argument for funding. Grant writing is persuasive writing, not just expository.

For any burgeoning grant-writer, I think there are a few, mostly simple pieces for crafting an effective grant: some structural, some logical, and some reality-checking. I call it the APPPPPLE model—the L is actually the most important (and often overlooked) part, but putting it first makes a lousy mnemonic.

The APPPPLE Model

Ask: Every grant requires an explicit request for money. “Door is requesting $20,000 from the Window Foundation to expand our lock program into two new communities serving 20,000 homes.” There is an explicit dollar amount and purpose. In my personal style, I believe that the Ask should be the only part of the grant that is written in the passive voice (everything else should be active voice, e.g. no passive verbs: am is are was were be being been). …read more

This is more notes from last weekend’s Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Bootcamp.

Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx, gave the afternoon keynote (I think the afternoon speech of a conference should be called a plenary). She spoke from experience in designing socially and ecologically sustainable projects. I think she covered some good points in her speech, but overall I felt like she was pitching to investors more than having an intimate discussion with peers—the latter being a tone I think Nancy Lublin nailed at last year’s Bootcamp (audio; my notes). Also, I felt that her points were somewhat antagonistic (though perhaps reasonably so) but left out a sense of reality-check: yeah, you’re pissing off The Man, but does that mean that you’re changing society, or just being a nuisance?

1. Take neither a vow of poverty nor stupidity
2. Fight for something, not against something.
3. Help can come in man forms
4. Groundbreaking solutions abhor orthodoxy
5. If nobody knows what you are doing, how are people going to care?
6. Build on sucess and momentum. Why reinvent the wheel?
7. If you feel like you have a target on your head, you are probably doing something right
8. Be part of alliances that make sense for your organization
9. When the time is right, don’t be afraid to move on

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Last weekend I was in NYC for the Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Bootcamp. As a one-day conference, I’ve really enjoyed it as having a wide variety of informative sessions. This is my second time going and for 2 out of 3 of the sessions, I attended the Board Governance track. The following are my combined notes from 2 sessions: Board Governance 101 by Michael Davidson (Governance Matters), and Managing a Board by John Brothers (Cuidui Consulting) and David LaGreca (Volunteer Consulting Group).

7 Board Roles (from Michael Davidson)

1. Setting Strategic Direction
2. Providing Financial oversight and management
3. Protecting assets and ensuring legal and ethical integrity
4. Ensuring adequate resources
5. Serve as advocates and ambassadors for the organization
6. Developing and maintaining a cohesive and committed Board of Directors
7. Select, support, partner with and evaluate the executive Director

4 Board Roles (from John Brothers and Dvid LaGreca)

1. Know why the organization exists… and annually review why it should
2. Interpret the organization’s work to the public in words of 2 syllables
3. Combine a sense of obligation with a sense of humor
4. Give money, or get it, or both

Board Structure: structure should be determined by what you are doing, not bylaws or god. …read more

I made a custom override for Drupal 6.x’s Upload.module’s attachments table that is displayed at the bottom of a node when you create file attachments. That table is, in my opinion, one of the ugliest common and default presentations in Drupal core. Below is an example of the before and after:

To use it, unzip and drop the included folder into your active theme’s directory (e.g. /sites/default/all/garland), it should take effect without any other modifications—though you may have to reset the theme cache (goto admin/build/themes and click save without making any other changes).

Click Here to Download (shiny_upload.zip)

Also, I don’t know what the name is for these types of theme overrides: it’s not a module, and it’s not a whole theme. I posted this to a Drupal Group that, I think, calls them “Themer Packs“.

The icon code is based on the CCK filefield module—but the current 6.0 version is kind’ve clunky and I wanted to port it to the core Upload module. The namespace is “shiny_upload”.

Also, as an aside, the reason island94.org doesn’t currently have this enabled is because it’s still running on Drupal 5.x branch