LA Philanthropy Watch

“The Building Movement Project and Idealist.org are conducting a survey to identify organizational practices in nonprofits that create a positive workplace, build leadership, and respect the skills and contributions of employees. We’re interested in hearing what allows you to do your best work both in your current job and for your career.”

The link at Idealist.org advises that the survey takes about 20 minutes to complete and promises that results will be widely distributed. Here’s your chance to have your voice heard.

“The Building Movement Project works to strengthen the role of US nonprofit organizations as sites of democratic practice and to advance ways nonprofits can significantly contribute to building movement for progressive social change.”  Now that’s a concept!

Most of my readers are probably familiar with idealist.org, though they may not be familiar with the organization behind it: Action Without Borders, which describes its mission in these words:

“Action Without Borders connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives.

AWB is independent of any government, political ideology, or religious creed. Our work is guided by the common desire of our members and supporters to find practical solutions to social and environmental problems, in a spirit of generosity and mutual respect.”

Do we have any reason to suppose that nonprofit work environments are more, or less, democratic than for-profit work places?  In my experience, the CEO’s personality and approach is likely to reverberate throughout the organization (though other executives and supervisors may dominate within their their divisions or departments).  But the organization’s mission, no matter how idealistic or progressive, may have no apparent influence on what it’s like to work there.  Even when the CEO is committed (on some level) to inclusiveness and collaboration, we may not see those values evidenced in practice.

Many years ago – before I landed in Los Angeles to pursue a career in development and philanthropy – I had a supervisor whose politics was of the Jesse Jackson/Dennis Kucinich persuasion, but whose management philosophy and style was decidedly Royalist/Autocratic.  At the time this was an unfathomable anomaly to me (sort of like the marriage of James Carville and Mary Matalin).  Since then, not so much.

I’ll be interested in seeing the survey results.

(Photo of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent at Wikimedia Commons.)

Here are a bunch of links from the web:

1. Critical attention to the compensation package ($1 million+) given Michael Govan (featured in a recent post about his decision to end weekend films) at LACMA from page one of the Times‘ Calendar section and linked to by the Chronicle’s Philanthropy Today.

2. Teaching your children about giving – a link from yesterday’s Charity Navigator to a 2006 feature.

3. Five ways we can support kids who want to create change from last Friday’s Have Fun Do Good.

4. An August 13 item from Give & Take on evaluating the success of nonprofit efforts to solve social and environmental problems; it includes links to Ken Berger of Charity Navigator and Sean Stannard-Stockton at Tactical Philanthropy, among others.

5. An August 13 link from Philanthropy Today to a story about arts groups supporting health care reform.  At least 2 of the 23 groups are from California (San Francisco): the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design, and the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture.  The group’s statement is here.

6. The transcript of an August 11 live discussion from the Chronicle of Philanthropy on How to Reconnect with Donors Who Stopped Giving.  I usually ignore the email alerts for these discussions, but last week I took time to read the transcript.  Although there is not much new here for an experienced major gifts officer, the discussion was quite good.  A development officer who lacks experience in this area might gain a number of insights from this discussion.

7. A link from Charity Navigator (on August 6) to a USA Today story on a report by the Corporation for National and Community Service on Volunteering In America – which shows the number of Americans volunteering increased from 2007 to 2008.

8. A link on the state of the economy from today’s Huffington Post to a  survey by Indeed.com on how tough it is to find a job in the 50 most populous cities – based on the ratio of posted jobs to unemployed persons. First place on the best city for a job search: Washington, D.C. with 6 posted jobs for every unemployed job seeker.  Second place: Jacksonville, FL with a 3 to 1 ratio; third place: Baltimore, where the ratio is 1:1.

Things look less good everywhere else, where unemployed folks outnumber job listings.  Los Angeles comes in a discouraging #46 on the list – with a posted job to job seeker ratio of 1:8.

Update: Editor’s note – I changed the headline slightly since posting this.  I am experimenting with multiple items in a single post – for stories that may interest readers enough to click on a link, though there is no need to add more than a comment.

The Getty will lay off 97 of its 1,500 employees by July 1. More than 100 additional jobs will be eliminated – including current vacancies and positions expected to turnover normally in the coming months. Adolfo Guzman-Lopez of KPCC reports that this news came in an all-staff email message from President James Wood, who has led the Getty for the past two+ years. Mike Boehm broke the story yesterday afternoon on the LA Times Culture Monster blog and has more details.

In addition to the Museum, the J. Paul Getty Trust funds the Getty Research Institute, Conservation Institute, and Foundation. “One of the largest supporters of arts in the world” (notes the Getty website), the Trust may be the wealthiest 501(c)(3) organization in Los Angeles. The Foundation Center reports that, the J. Paul Getty Trust had total assets of $11,187,006,719 as of the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007. The LA Times reported in March – in a story presaging the layoffs announced yesterday – that the Trust’s investment portfolio had dropped from $6 billion to $4.5 billion in the last half of 2008 alone.

This has been a long time coming for a demoralized Getty staff. In May 2008, 114 jobs were eliminated. “The frustration and fear created by these cuts was palpable, and on December 17, 2008, that frustration and fear was reignited by the distribution of a pre-holiday e-mail by Mr. Wood once again announcing future layoffs,” according to the first post on the Silence Dogetty blog, where employees could “make their voices heard.” Anonymous comments from staffers reflect anxiety, anger, and solidarity as they wait to see who will get pink slips.

“Fifteen hundred people have jammed this ballroom on the campus of UCLA for a nonprofit career fair,”  began the story (which I heard on KPCC at 5:50 this morning) by Lisa Napoli on Marketplace Morning Report, which featured a job-search strategy in the nonprofit sector that is apparently becoming increasingly popular: volunteering.  The job fair was one of a series organized by Idealist.org.