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In The News …

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3 Key Elements of Capitalist Philanthropy (Forbes): “Capitalist philanthropy begins with a profitable organization and then moves quickly to incorporate social impact [...] The term is not brand new, but is being discussed more often as the millennial generation has developed a strong desire for meaningful work.” Forbes offers three keys to incorporating “capitalist philanthropy” into an organization: “Determine your cause,” “cast the vision,” and “maintain momentum.” What are your suggestions for launching social impact projects? Thoughts on the terminology?

How Small Nonprofits Can Improve Their Fiscal Health (Chronicle of Philanthropy): “Three-quarters of American nonprofits have annual budgets under $1 million, and most are even smaller. What these organizations lack in size, however, they make up for in impact.” Many such nonprofits also “struggle with financial challenges that are unique to their size and structure [...] resources generally go directly into program delivery, so they can’t invest in infrastructure”. The Chronicle offers five suggestions for small nonprofits to address and improve financial health, plus five ways that grantmakers can help.

UnderDeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising (CompassPoint Nonprofit Services): “A joint project of CompassPoint and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the report found high levels of turnover and lengthy vacancies in development director positions throughout the sector [...] Beyond creating a development director position and hiring someone who is qualified for the job, organizations and their leaders need to build the capacity, the systems, and the culture to support fundraising success.” Does the report reflect your experience? What do you think might “break the cycle?”

Further Mapping

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Last week, the City Paper “mapped out” the income of Washington DC’s “neighborhood incomes by census tract.” Earlier on, the Washington Post mapped the “percentage of homes in each ZIP code that have negative equity:”

Over the past year, DC-area housing prices experienced “solid gains” (4.4%); however, progress was not even across the metropolitan area. In particular, “many of the homeowners with mortgages higher than their home’s value were clustered in the eastern parts of the District and in Prince George’s County,” where prices have been slower to rise since the housing bust.

Says Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “I have no doubt that we have turned the corner [...] What we can expect is to see modest price appreciation, something in the neighborhood of 4 percent for the next several years.”

Yesterday on Greater Greater Washington, David Alpert also points out that, as the map above reveals, “the economic recovery is not hitting all areas or all people equally. We need more jobs east of the river and in Prince George’s County.”

Share your thoughts on the housing market’s recovery — and its markedly uneven pace. What would provide the greatest catalyst for growth in the areas that need it?

Coming Up: January 11-17

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At your local Catalogue nonprofit …

Dance Place (3225 8th Street NE, Washington, DC)

Deep Vision Dance Company & withhart.dance.projects come together for an evening of modern dance ranging from the weighted to the humorous on Saturday at 8:00 PM and Sunday at 4:00 PM. Tickets right this way!

Literacy Council of Montgomery County (Rockville Library, 21 Maryland Avenue, Rockville, MD)

Attend an Adult Literacy Tutor Orientation for volunteers interested in helping adults learn to read, write, or speak English on Monday from 10:30 AM to noon. Learn more right here.

Audubon Naturalist Society (Woodend Sanctuary, 8940 Jones Mill Road, Chevy Chase, MD)

Washington Post environmental writer Juliet Eilperin will speak on “The Outlook for the Environment in the Second Obama Administration” at a members’ meeting on Tuesday from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM. RSVP here.

Constellation Theatre Company (Source, 1835 14th Street NW, Washington, DC)

On Thursday at 8:30 PM, catch a Pay-What-You-Can Preview of Zorro — the masked avenger, who is born when quiet, bookish Diego must find a way to fight corruption and injustice. More info over here.

Micro-Entrepreneurs

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by Marie LeBlanc, Community Partnerships Coordinator

For the past decade or so, microlending and microfinance have been a hot topic in international aid and development — and through microlending organizations like Kiva, an easy way for concerned global citizens from higher income countries to offer a helping hand to their brethren in lower income countries. Kiva is one of many crowd-sourcing organizations that lets donors lend amounts as small as $25 to collectively support micro-entrepreneurs around the world, who pay back those funds (through Kiva) to the original lenders. Nowadays, small business creation and entrepreneurship are very much at the heart of the conversation about kick-starting the United States economy, and Kiva has responded with an interesting solution: bring the international microfinance model to American cities.

This week, Kiva City launched its DC program, in partnership with Capital One Bank and Catalogue-nonprofit Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC). Kiva City DC is a new online portal connecting small business owners in our nation’s capital with Kiva’s global network of over 870,000 lenders. By providing loans to these entrepreneurs, lenders can help them start, sustain and grow their businesses — and even create new jobs. Kiva City DC is the fourth Kiva City site across the country — along with Detroit, New Orleans, and Los Angeles.

Capital One is helping to provide financial heft for the project — matching all loans made to businesses posted by LEDC online through Kiva through 2013. LEDC provides the borrower base, bringing its expertise in financial and small business skill building to the table, as well as its connections to the Latino community in Washington, DC. LEDC’s Community Asset Fund for Entrepreneurs works to identify qualifying borrowers in the D.C. area, administers the loans and posts profiles of each small business owner online at kiva.org. According to the Kiva City DC website, “Kiva lenders’ funds are used to ease the loan requirements for borrowers, including decreasing collateral requirements, interest rates and fees associated with loan disbursement. With Kiva capital, LEDC will reach out to borrowers that may not have met all of LEDC’s existing criteria, allowing the organization to grow its lending program.”

For more information on borrowers currently seeking loans through Kiva and LEDC, check out borrower profiles online here, and for information on recommending the lending process to potential borrowers, check out LEDC’s online application .

In The News …

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DC area unemployment rate is unchanged at 5.3 percent (Washington Post: Local): “The Washington area jobless rate hovered at 5.3% in November, according to a Labor Department report released Tuesday that revealed little change in the local employment picture [...] the Washington economy has been steadily adding jobs, but not at a fast enough clip for the recovery to shift into higher gear.” Education and health services posted the largest job gains, with the latter alone adding 11,300 between November 2011 and 2012. Local leisure and hospitality continued to add jobs as well, while manufacturing and construction both subtracted. Overall, the area remains well below the national rate of 7.8%.

The Fiscal Cliff Legislation: A Primer for Nonprofits on Its Provisions (Nonprofit Quarterly): “The short message that should be taken away from the so-called “fiscal cliff” legislation passed last night is that it is no time to relax [...] Here is our scorecard on the fiscal cliff mini-bargain.” At the NPQ website, you can read an overview of the final legislation on charitable deductions, marginal tax rates, and other taxes (such as the payroll tax); that said, “good news for nonprofits and the communities they serve is that a variety of programs that benefit working class and lower income people have been saved — for the time being.”

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Dividing Lines

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This past weekend, on the City Paper’s Housing Complex blog, Aaron Wiener questioned: “A City Divided — But More Than Most?”

I spent some time this morning playing around with a nifty tool that breaks down American neighborhood incomes by census tract. It’s a great way to see how divided a city is along income lines. So is DC more income-segregated than other major American cities? Let’s take a look. Green = rich, red = poor, yellow/white = somewhere in the middle.

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The More Possibilities

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The more you write, the more possibilities you see for stories in things that happen to you, that people tell you, that you read about in the paper, or just imagine. In one way, all of these ideas are a blessing. I never have to go searching for something to write about.

[...] The absolutely most favorite thing is the moment a character comes alive for me on paper, or where a place I am writing about suddenly seems real. There are no bands playing, no audience applauding. It’s a very solitary moment, but something akin to giving birth. “I’ve got it!” I say to myself, and from then on, the writing’s a joy.

– Newbery Medal-winner Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, born today in 1933

Fiscal Cliff — Averted?

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by Marie LeBlanc, Community Partnerships Coordinator

While many Americans across the county rang in New Year’s Day 2013 with pomp, circumstance, and auld lang syne, the United States Congress was (for once) hard at work — barely scraping through the passage of legislation that averted the dreaded “fiscal cliff.” However, is the danger really past? Various news outlets and media sources have been reporting on the “wins and losses”of the fiscal cliff bill, trying to help citizens make sense of it — and understand the real-world implications on their wallets this month and tax bills come April. Yesterday, the Nonprofit Quarterly’s Rick Cohen offered his take on the implications for nonprofits.

According to Cohen, changes made to charitable deductions and marginal tax rates (increasing only on households with annual incomes above $450,000) “constitutes an absolutely minimal touch on charitable contributions.” Due to various tax provisions, on everything from the expiration of the payroll tax “holiday,” to changes in capital gains and dividend income tax rates, the “fiscal cliff bill not only raises less revenues than the President’s proposal, but even less than Speaker Boehner’s Plan B.” However, many programs serving working class and lower income populations have been saved for now, including unemployment benefits and various tax credits on earned income, children, and renewable energy.

The specter of the cliff itself impacted municipal and county-level spending, even before emergency legislation was passed. According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, “the impact of the federal budget impasse on the District was felt 10 days before the New Year’s Eve fiscal cliff deal.” Despite signs of growth in the DC economy, instability in the federal budget prevents these signs from being fully recognized and providing the foundation needed for expanding, and even maintaining, levels of social spending. Programs for domestic violence, mental health, and educational enrichment have fallen victim to the budget gridlock.

Ultimately, Cohen offers this perspective on the budget solution, and its potential future impact:

The fiscal cliff isn’t just a matter of “saving” the maximum deductibility of charitable donations or avoiding the reinstatement of the arcane and minimal Pease amendment, but recognizing how dysfunctional the nation has become and how the communities’ nonprofits serve are the primary victims. If the focus of nonprofit advocates leaving shoe leather in the halls of the Capitol is simply on maximizing the value of the charitable deduction or, perhaps more accurately, maximizing the value of the deduction for ultra-wealthy tax itemizers, then the result, reflected in the fiscal cliff legislation and future bills to be addressed in the next couple of months, will be a truly pyrrhic victory for the communities nonprofits serve.