Donate Art Supplies to Silicon Valley Boys and Girls Club

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For more than than a century, the Boys & Girls Club of America has had a pretty unproblematic mission: providing somewhere for kids to go after school and so they stay out of trouble. A 1982 PSA put it simply: "It'southward a place to go too the streets," a man sings, as a video plays of (mostly black) boys running into a club.

But in 2018, that message isn't enough to concenter local money to the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, which serves Silicon Valley, where the biggest donors tend to favor causes that use novel solutions to "disrupt" poverty, or that can employ data to show just how many problems their money solves. Many are fans of effective altruism, a philanthropy philosophy that espouses "testify and careful analysis to detect the very best causes to piece of work on" rather than "just doing what feels right."

And then Peter Fortenbaugh, the executive managing director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula (BGCP), started thinking about what his system could do to win local support. "Traditionally, we were a safe identify to hang out, merely in 2018, that's just every bit important, but no longer sufficient," he told me. He started adding on educational and vocational grooming programs to set kids to work in Silicon Valley. He launched a summertime camp that emphasizes STEM learning and works with kids falling backside in reading. He started sending donors an almanac "Report to Stakeholders" with detailed information about bear upon and how what the club does now compares to previous years.

And to really bring the money rolling in, he launched a "Shark Tank" consequence, in which "entrepreneurs"—employees and students—pitch wealthy Silicon Valley donors on certain programs, outlining just how much money they demand and what "equity" the donors will receive on those programs. One presentation pitched the "sharks" a "unique and innovative cross-sector partnership"—a summer learning programme—and talked about the program's "marginal costs," assuring potential donors that BGCP'southward cost per pupil was lower than that of competing programs. The approach has been remarkably effective in bringing in money: Last year, the organization raised $2.seven million in 45 minutes from donors including George Roberts, the billionaire founder of investment business firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., who lives in nearby Atherton.

Fortenbaugh's broader strategy has paid off as well. The Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula has seen revenues double in the past four years, to $14 1000000. Revenues for the national Boys & Girls Order, by contrast, have steadily decreased in recent years, according to the group's financial documents. Fortenbaugh attributes his success to the mode he approaches donors. "We say, 'We tin maximize your return on investment,'" Fortenbaugh told me. "It's non near looking for a handout, it'due south about helping [donors] achieve their goals." Recently, Golden State Warriors player Kevin Durant built a new basketball court in the BGCP Redwood City branch; Durant later said that he would pay for the first year of higher for four BGCP students. Scott Forstall, an engineer who is known for leading the original development team for the iPhone and iPad, has said that he joined BGCP's board after reading the Report to Stakeholders, sending 36 detailed questions to Fortenbaugh, and learning that, rather than just focusing on keeping kids busy subsequently school, BGCP was "setting up kids for success in school and across."

Silicon Valley companies transformed the mode we shop, search for information, connect with friends, and consume amusement. The people who made millions or billions from these companies are now changing even so some other sector of the American economy: philanthropy. They're forcing nonprofits to become incubators and disruptors, rather than just service providers, and to recall about how they sell themselves, how they measure what they practise, and what programs will concenter money. For the organizations that know how to speak their language, it's a tremendous opportunity.

The 'Black Hole' That Sucks Up Silicon Valley's Coin

Notwithstanding many local nonprofits take non figured out how to pitch themselves effectively to the millionaires in their backyards. About 90 percent of philanthropic dollars from Silicon Valley get to national and international causes, co-ordinate to The Giving Lawmaking, a 2016 study virtually Silicon Valley philanthropy written past two women who run a consulting house that works with nonprofits and donors. Of the ten percentage that stays local, much goes to big universities or hospitals, and less than five percentage goes to local community-based organizations. Donors oftentimes give to causes they have a personal connection to—someone who has lost a parent to cancer may give to a nonprofit that tries to find a cure for cancer—or to groups that try to gear up problems in the tech industry, similar a lack of diversity in science and math programs. Many Silicon Valley founders are as well from elsewhere, or have homes around the world, and don't take the community ties business concern owners may take had in the past. "There'south a lot of philanthropic dollars coming out of Silicon Valley, but not a lot of them are staying here," Cat Cvengros, the vice president of evolution and marketing at 2nd Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, told me.

At the same fourth dimension, ascension housing prices in Silicon Valley hateful increased demand for local services, and more expensive operations for nonprofits, which have to pay staff more so they can beget to alive in the area. Second Harvest, for example, has seen demand double in recent years. Near 80 pct of customs-based nonprofits in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties said they'd seen increased demand in the last five years, co-ordinate to The Giving Lawmaking, and more than than half said they were falling short of meeting that demand. With tech donors, "there's a lot of focus on calibration and disruption, and big systemic problems like educational activity and healthcare," Heather McLeod Grant, ane of the co-authors of The Giving Code, told me. "Simply the problem is, by focusing on scale and larger institutions, they're missing the grassroots customs organizations that are serving low-income families."

And so Silicon Valley nonprofits are pivoting, to use a local term of art, similar the Boys & Girls Guild did. They're taking their cues from The Giving Code, which recommends not talking well-nigh "charity" and meeting firsthand customs needs, simply instead focusing on "impact" and getting at root causes of problems. It suggests using the language and mindsets of business organization, and focusing on metrics, data, and effectiveness, rather than the language of altruism and ideals. It says that Silicon Valley donors are interested in approaches to solving problems that use applied science, and in causes to which they accept a personal connection.

"If we want people to donate to u.s.a., nosotros need to be in the current century and the current environment," Karen Scussel, the executive managing director of Child Advocates of Silicon Valley, told me. The group, which provides services for foster youth, is launching a virtual-reality experience to help potential donors sympathize what it'due south similar to be a foster kid. Kid Advocates is as well starting to come up with metrics to testify its impact, and talk virtually how information technology is serving more children each year. Scussel at present tells potential donors that money invested in Child Advocates tin can help save public money in the long run, because the organization can foreclose kids from dropping out of school. "Rather than say, 'I need money,' you have show yourself as an investment and render of investment," she said.

The Silicon Valley Children'south Fund, which also works with foster youth, has contracted with a marketing firm that volition help it "speak in the linguistic communication of business organization and metrics," Melissa Johns, the organization's executive vice president, told me. The group wants to be able to tell donors how much coin they'll save "in the back end of society" by investing in foster youth, she said.

These efforts are non usually within the budget of a typical nonprofit. Sacred Middle Community Service, which works with low-income people in Santa Clara County, doesn't even have a full-time marketing specialist, for case. Simply earlier this year, two local foundations announced they were giving out 20 grants to local nonprofits to aid them use some of the findings of The Giving Code to attract more donors. Sacred Middle is using its grant coin to rent a consultant.

JobTrain Inc., which helps low-income adults find career pathways, received a grant to update its data about hidden poverty in the Bay Area. JobTrain has seen flat donations in contempo years, even equally philanthropic giving from Silicon Valley has grown, CEO Barrie Hathaway told me."We're surrounded by a tremendous corporeality of wealth, simply finding a way to capture the imaginations of the people who live here is challenging," he said. The group is trying to figure out how to reach immature donors, launching a treasure hunt that culminates in a BBQ, and working with outside groups to effigy out how to target potential donors. Just Hathaway says JobTrain has not however "cracked The Giving Code."

Many other organizations are even so puzzling over how they can show to donors that their work is worth the investment. Groups like food banks, for instance, which provide an essential emergency service to low-income people, aren't exactly disrupting poverty. (Second Harvest, the food bank, is nonetheless trying to collect more data virtually how many people it serves in order to measure impact.) In 2016, after years of stagnant donations, the United Style of Silicon Valley folded into San Francisco's United Mode, a sign that organizations that provide the most basic—simply important—services have struggled to raise cash. Even showing donors the need can exist difficult in the sprawling Bay Surface area, where wealthy people may commute from habitation to piece of work on busy freeways all the same never see the poverty a few miles away.

The Problem With Modern Philanthropy

And not every organisation has the luxury of an executive director like Peter Fortenbaugh, who has an MBA from Harvard and who worked in tech and consulting before inbound the notoriously depression-paying globe of nonprofits. (His vice president of development, Sean Mendy, also has an Ivy League pedigree and an MBA.) Fortenbaugh has been able to stack his board with people who have made millions from tech, and who know others who have likewise. Those connections can make a big departure. Kevin Durant, for example, became connected after coming together a board member at a mutual friend'southward altogether party. He's since given tens of thousands of dollars to the clubs and their students; a drib in the bucket for a basketball star who has signed multi-million dollar contracts, merely a huge sum for any nonprofit looking for greenbacks.

As nonprofits piece of work to rethink how they pitch donors at the aforementioned time they're serving greater need, some leaders told me that they sometimes wondered whether this was "fair," whether nonprofits should have to change how they work to get money from the millionaires and billionaires in their backyards. A few leaders suggested that possibly it'southward the donors who should be changing their priorities, rather than expecting that cash-strapped nonprofits know how to both serve low-income customers and market place themselves as an entrepreneur would—though they did not desire to be quoted saying that, because they need more than coin. And anyhow, it's a moot question; in the end, nonprofits must practise whatever the people with the money want.

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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/07/how-silicon-valley-has-disrupted-philanthropy/565997/

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