GuideStar Blog

The GuideStar Blog welcomes Vu Le as a monthly contributor for his column, Point of Vu. The preceding is a cross-post of a May 9th article from his blog, Nonprofit with Balls. 

Hi everyone. Last week I was in Minneapolis for the GEO (Grantmakers for Effective Organizations) conference. I was there primarily to give a short talk called “Want to Help Communities of Color? Stop "Trickle-Down Community Engagement” and avoid work. But I stuck around for most of the conference, mainly because funder conferences always have way better food and booze. I was trying to hoard appetizers, having developed this unconscious fear of being in places traditionally reserved for funders. If I was going to get found out as an unwashed nonprofit Wildling and asked to leave, by golly I was going to take as many grilled artichoke hearts with me as I could.

By now, most in the nonprofit world are familiar with the Cloud, although many are still not taking full advantage of its numerous benefits.

Clarity is the first step to nonprofit excellence.

Social change is hard. It is no small matter to shift the systemic patterns of society that have left people struggling with poverty and inequality. But we in the nonprofit sector have devoted ourselves to just that work. And we want to know how we’re doing.

Institutional funding for social solutions is going through an exciting evolution. 

Available capital has soared over the past few years.

Between 2001 and 2011, some 20,000 new foundations were created in the United States, representing a 32 percent growth in the industry. In that same time period, giving grew by 61 percent, and assets grew by nearly 39 percent. Impact investors have ushered in new pools of cash, with more than $300 billion in capital invested in 2014, a 40 percent increase since 2012. In addition, creative new approaches like venture philanthropy and pay for success models are diversifying ways funding can be allocated to social solutions. 

Flickr Photo by AstridWestvang

I’ve been busy interviewing people who work for nonprofits for my next book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout, with Aliza Sherman.   The book looks at how individuals can avoid burnout through self-care and how nonprofits can support it – through activities that promote well-being, cultural cues, or an overall strategy.

"Out with the old, in with the new" is GuideStar's guiding motto lately, as you can tell from our just-released redesigned Nonprofit Profiles. Profiles aren't the only thing to undergo major renovation around here, however. You may have noticed The GuideStar Blog's fresh, new design as well! 

Every year, both the Council on Foundations and GuideStar publish compensation studies for the philanthropic and broader nonprofit sectors, respectively.  The Council’s Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Survey and GuideStar’s Nonprofit Compensation Report serve multiple important purposes for both the individual organizations that use the data as well as the field as a whole.  The objectives we find most interesting and relevant are related to having tools that promote effective organizational management and improve our understanding of the state of diversity in our field.

Over the years, GuideStar Newsletter readers have been remarkably consistent in what they read most: articles about fundraising and about getting boards involved in fundraising. Last year was no exception, as 7 of the 10 most-read Newsletter articles addressed these topics.

In honor of Veterans Day, we looked at nonprofits dedicated to veterans and veterans issues. We’ve published the results in a new report, “U.S. Veterans Organizations by the Numbers,” which you can download for free from our website.