Other stuff

Creative visualization of World War II deaths

Here’s an example of visually presenting complex data:

It is really difficult to grasp 400,000 American battle deaths in WWII, or a million deaths at Stalingrad, or many millions of Chinese slaughtered by the Japanese, or the death from the 2 nukes or daily firebombing of Japan.

The Fallen of World War II does a superb job of putting the tragic cost into visual form. The video is 15 minutes and presents a huge amount of info.

If you are interested in history, especially military history, you will get a lot out of the presentation.

If you want to see a brilliant visualization and draw some ideas on how to present complex information, you will want to check it out.

You can see it on vimeo here.

Jim Ulvog

Protecting a charity’s brand. Also, how do you hold an advocacy group accountable?

Here are two articles for your consideration. The first illustrates the idea that if you have a recognizable brand and you want to keep it for a long time, you probably ought to defend it. The second addresses the issue of how to hold organizations accountable for the context of outcome measures, in other words whether they are actually having any impact in the world.

5/7 – Steve Nardizzi at Huffington Post – Protecting the Nonprofit Brand – The CEO of Wounded Warrior Project gives a very persuasive explanation why WWP pursued litigation against charities that got too close to their name and their logo. If you’re building for the long-term and you want to have an impact for decades into the future you need to do a some things different from if you have an extremely short-term focus.

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Jim Ulvog

More followup on FTC action against 4 cancer charities

There is a lot more to say on the FTC and all AGs going after four charities that were way out of line.

5/19 – William P. Barrett at Forbes – Cancer Charities Agree to Dissolve Amid Fraud Claims – Article summarizes the case by the FTC. Two of the four charities have agreed to close their doors. Three of the named individuals have agreed they will not have future involvement with charity management or even fundraising.

We did nothing wrong and we agree not to break the law again

Article points out the irony we seen these kinds of settlements. Even though the three individuals agreed to not be involved in the charity sector again during their lifetime and two of the charities agreed to be taken over by receivers and then liquidated, the charities and individuals involved denied doing anything wrong.

It is as if it’s a normal and everyday thing that individuals agree to be legally barred from involvement in their economic sector and charities agree to corporate suicide when they have done nothing wrong.

But that’s the legal dance that is necessary. Denying wrongdoing is necessary to prevent the consent degree from becoming proof to anyone who later tried to sue the charities or individuals.  Even though I understand the reason, it seems silly to those looking in from the outside.

Contested claims

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Jim Ulvog

First glance at court filings in the FTC enforcement case

One cool thing I have learned while blogging is that lots of records for federal court proceedings are available in the federal Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. After following the case of Scott London for a while, I’ve learned my way around PACER.

I have taken a quick look at the documents available in PACER for the enforcement action by the FTC and all state AGs against four cancer charities.

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Jim Ulvog

Good stuff for the nonprofit world – 5/8

A few articles on the nonprofit sector.

  • Do huge staffing levels in huge foundations have any impact on outcomes?
  • The widespread attitude towards ‘overhead’ that charities have to deal with.
  • How disaster reporting goes sour and what good outcome questions might look like in disaster relief.
  • Charities can now get dot-NGO and dot-ONG addresses.

Why do I mention the first two articles? They show the entire nonprofit world has a long way to go on outcome measures. I’m not sure there is even a tidbit of agreement on the right questions to ask, let alone measuring answers.

5/7 – David Callahan at Inside Philanthropy – Top Philanthropoids Are Paid Over $600 Million a Year. Is That Too Much? – Mr. Callahan is continuing his discussion I’ve mentioned here and here wondering if the humongous staffing levels at the gargantuan foundations makes any difference in the impact of those foundations.

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Jim Ulvog

Whispers in the wind about the State AG investigation of charity fundraising

There hasn’t been much visible in the news for a long time on a rumored investigation conducted by several state Attorneys General.

William Barrett tells of whispers he has heard that the investigation is ongoing and about to do something.

I have previously referred to a few public comments pointing out that something seems to be happening: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

More good stuff on impact, outcome measures and overheads – 4/27

A couple of articles on measuring outcomes and some discussion on the high cost of using telemarketers.

4/19 – Nonprofit Chronicles – Foundations, Nonprofits and Performance Anxiety – Marc Gunther describes a theater in Houston that sends an email survey to all customers the next day after a show. Their goal is to “enrich” and “stimulate” their audiences. The surveys ask questions to see if patrons get deeply involved. They want to know more than what the ticket count is.

Those are the kinds of outcome measures that nonprofits ought to be looking for, but aren’t.

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Jim Ulvog

Do heavy staffed foundations have better outcomes than lean staffed foundations? Can lean staffed foundations still get the job done?

Writing at Inside Philanthropy, David Callahan follows up on his previous article about the intentionally heavy-staff model used by many legacy foundations.

He asks Can Lean Foundations Do Smart Grantmaking? Here’s a Study That Says “Yes”.

He cites a study by Exponent Philanthropy that surveyed nearly 800 members of the organization. The survey, of people associated with foundations with little or no staff, found that foundations can stay informed, make lots of grants, and produce reasonable returns on the invested funds with very low staffing levels.

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Jim Ulvog

Does the mere size of the infrastructure in large foundations create an issue in itself?

Here is an issue I’ve not seen before: Is the size of the infrastructure at humongous foundations a problematic issue just by itself?

David Callahan, writing at Inside Philanthropy on April 10, stretches my brain:  Ford Sinks Over $1 Billion a Decade Into Overhead. Is That Money Well Spent? – First, adjust that decade cost figure to annual.  That would be $100M a year.

In 2013, the Ford Foundation spent $146M on G&A out of $685M total expenses, according to the article.  That is 21.3%, which would usually be considered respectable.

The issue, according to the author, is their overall approach of making programmatic grants. That means the foundation chooses this study, that new effort, and another ongoing project. Which in turn means they drive the programs of their grant recipients. That heavy control approach requires a lot of staff.

Therein lies the rub, according to the author. With that approach, foundations gather power and authority unto themselves. At that scale, the agendas of the grant officers are driving the funding of lots of charities.

The author’s perspective: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

More good stuff for charities and board members

Articles on warning signs that a charity’s financial processes aren’t working well, the debate on DAFs, and a way-out-there charity.

4/10 – GuideStar – Ten Signs of Financial Trouble for Board Members – If you are on the board of a larger-sized charity, might be helpful to check out this list of warning signs that something is wrong in the financial function. Applies to any charity in New York.

Just a few tidbits:

1.FINANCIAL INFORMATION IS LATE–

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Jim Ulvog

Jerusalem Daily Reporter, Sunday pre-sunrise edition: “Jesus of Nazareth, Enemy Of The State, Executed For Treason”

Update: In case you missed it, here is my flash news report of about a year ago. Seemed like today might be a good day to run it again.

Jerry Bowyer has the report from Jerusalem. It is in the very early edition of today’s paper. Apparently that seditious rabble-rouser from Nazareth got his just due Friday past when the Sanhedrin and Roman government both agreed to address treason as treason ought be addressed.

The article’s first paragraph,

Jesus of Nazareth was executed today on the orders of the Roman State. Method of execution: Crucifixion. The charge under Roman law was treason, and under Herodian law blasphemy against the Temple. The evidence against this anarchist was so strong that authorities of both the Roman State and the Kingdom of Herod concurred with the arrest and execution, and he was subjected to trial by both governments. And in a rare uprising of spontaneous collective justice, the mass of people who were gathered for Passover called for his execution as well. The mob affirmed their loyalty to the state, chanting, “We have no king but Caesar.”

For the rest of the story, check out the full news report in Forbes: Jesus of Nazareth, Enemy Of The State, Executed For Treason.

After reading the full article, I’m sure you will agree with me that we shall never hear of his name again.

Hold on…

The paperboy is shouting something about an extra edition….Let me go get a copy of the paper to see what happened since sunrise.

Update:  Since a year ago, there have been a number of foolish, unbelievable, preposterously silly rumors floated that something peculiar happened that weekend.

 

I’m confident there are perfectly logical reasons for those grossly exaggerated stories a few months back that followers of this discredited rabble-rouser were understandable in languages they had never studied. That’s crazy talk. Speaking in other languages. Inconceivable! Those fishermen are so unreliable. These stories will die out very soon.

 

I assure you we won’t hear about that dead, returned to the dust, rabbi-wanna-be, overrated carpenter ever again. Beside which, everyone knows that nothing good has ever come out of Nazareth.  His followers will shut up and fade away any day now, never to be heard from again.

P.S. In case you missed the date, this discussion was posted on Easter Sunday.

Jim Ulvog

Sometimes there are people actually trying to destroy your pastor. Also, bullies hang out in churches.

Recognizing dysfunctional people who are trying to disrupt your congregation is the first step in healing the hurt.

Peter Chin describes how insulated members of a small group or close-nit bunch of friends learn How to Destroy Your Pastor.

Sometimes it is necessary for a pastor to move on when the pastor isn’t ready to do so. However, and this is a hugely critical however, such a decision must be a corporate decision, not just the opinion of a small group of people who have decided they don’t like the pastor.

I have experiential knowledge of being part of the resistance standing up to a gaggle of people who decided they wanted to drive off a pastor.

Peter Chin describes the dynamics in which a small group can become insular, which creates an echo chamber. The lack of outside feedback reinforces growing misperceptions or biases.

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Jim Ulvog

In other April 1st news…

You can find my two posts for April 1 at my other blog, Outrun Change:

Pending outbreak of hostility between the Federation and Empire. New intel on prospects for Star Trek and Star Wars battle.

Democracy and innovation will trump totalitarianism and lack of freedom. Of course, it helps to have cloaked starships that fire photon torpedoes at warp speed hitting their targets hundreds of thousands of kilometers away go up against death stars that manually target lasers using visual observation.

News reports you may have missed on history books you may have read – April 1

Some books keep getting filed in the fiction section instead of the history section where they belong. Here are some news reports on a few of those books. Historian J.R.R. Tolkien gets good coverage.

Remember, it is April 1st.

Jim Ulvog

More good stuff for churches and charities – 3/26

More good stuff is my way of pulling together articles that are worth discussing just won’t get a full post by themselves. I’ve done that previously on this blog with the overhead ratio issue.  Will start doing the same thing with general nonprofit articles.

So, here are a few quick reads for background: why churches struggle to grow past certain levels, and some info on filing 990s.

3/25 – Thom Rainer – One Key Reason Most Churches Do Not Exceed 350 in Average Attendance – Here is some info on the size of typical churches in the U.S.: (more…)

Jim Ulvog