GIA News's Blog

(5-18-10) Further to our April 28 post, "Nonprofit 'Doomsday'", based on a New York Times story on the 2006 Pension Protection Act, the new filing requirements for charitable organizations, and the impending loss of nonprofit status to the thousands of charities who are not in compliance:

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that it will help small charities keep their tax-exempt status even if they missed the May 17 deadline for filing a new online form...

(5-18-10) The Cincinnati Museum Center is suing A Good Neighbor Foundation over a dispute that amounts to a he-said-she-said of good nonprofit-granting protocol. The Center alleges receipt of both verbal and written gift confirmations, while the Foundation argues that the funds in question—a $1 million grant to restore the dining room of Union Terminal, the historic building that is home to the Museum Center—were not subject to the requisite application and board approval process and are therefore not committed.

(5-17-10) Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his proposed 2011 fiscal year budget on May 6, and on May 14, Robin Pogrebin reported in The New York Times that "arts institutions insist they will be ruined by the cuts to their allocations."

(5-12-10) Still around, and still making people nervous.

(5-12-10) The San Francisco Foundation has announced that Moy Eng is joining the Foundation as the interim program officer for Arts and Culture. Moy has a national and local reputation for her leadership in arts and culture. She served previously as director of the performing arts program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Read More.

(5-12-10) From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Most of the last year’s business headlines have featured financial bailouts, ethical lapses, Ponzi schemes, executive bonuses and a general erosion of confidence in corporate America. Yet at the same time, corporations have shown extraordinary innovation in how they are leveraging their unique assets to generate positive change in communities...

(5-11-10) The Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund has announced ten gifts, ranging in size from $12,500 to $75,000, to Atlanta area arts troupes and organizations. The gifts are part of a three-year, $3 million initiative to help small and midsized nonprofits weather the recession. Howard Pousner, writing for The Atlanta Journal Constitution explains: "The Atlanta Arts Recovery initiative can also be seen as one response to the gap in relatively weak public arts funding in Georgia and Atlanta.

(5-5-10) In "Philanthropy, Evaluation, Accountability, and Social Change," from the latest issue of The Foundation Review, John Bare, Vice President for the Arthur Blank Family Foundation, argues that many foundations have substituted process accountability for accountability for contributing to social change. Accountability in terms of required reporting is important, but it sets a floor, not an aspirational ceiling.

(5-5-10) The organization formally known as National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts has changed its name to National Guild for Community Arts Education. From their website:

By retaining "National Guild" we reaffirm our identity as an association of arts education providers committed to the values of quality, accessibility and accountability. The change to "for" further signals our commitment to advocating for increased access to lifelong learning opportunities in the arts.

(5-5-10) The Center for Effective Philanthropy has just released a report titled Working With Grantees: The Keys to Success and Five Program Officers Who Exemplify Them. The report concludes an eight-year analysis of several thousand grantee surveys. Its authors have distilled this information into a list of five qualities that nonprofits value in their foundation funders, briefly: fairness, comfort, responsiveness, clarity, and consistency.