Northern California Grantmakers

The Mercury News just reported on how NCG member Silicon Valley Community Foundation may be working with the City of San Jose to address the effects of payday loans, a service that provides short-term bridge loans to individuals, typically with high interest. Three stories in this:

1. SVCF is investing. As Bruce Trachtenberg’s summary at the The Nonprofit Quarterly notes, The City of San Jose is poised to apply for a $200K grant from SVCF to

help research ways to slow, even halt the number and locations of payday shops, most likely through zoning restrictions similar to those that have been used in other cities.

2. The foundation is researching and advocating. A current grantmaking strategy for economic security specifically targets Anti-Payday Lending Policy Advocacy, supported by research and some tracking of media response.
3. And they are using public-private partnership. After working with the community to develop a policy advocacy position, this work with the City of San Jose could be an important next step effecting change at the municipal and State levels.

NCG just published a case study of SVCF’s Anti-Payday work at P4: The Philanthropy Public Policy Portal. Take a look at those and the other case studies we’re posting up there, and  let us know if your foundation is engaged in similar strategies.

The headline for Philanthropy Journal‘s top news story today definitely is a wake up call:

“Grantees Flunk Funders on Communications”

Ouch.

The article highlights the findings from a recent report released by The Center on Effective Philanthropy (CEP).

“Nonprofits believe foundations have failed to communicate clearly, if at all, their responses to the economic downturn, and have offered nonprofits little useful help in their developing their own response.”

The economic downturn forced many foundations into unfamiliar territory when it came to Communications. At the beginning of 2009 NCG hosted an event for members to specifically address this new challenge. Our program “What Economic Trends Mean for Foundation Investment and Communication Strategies” was highly attended and featured Dan Cohen of Full Court Press who spoke specifically on creating a communications plan to inform grantees and other stakeholders.

Recognizing that members wanted more tools and resources on the subject, NCG also created an Economy page on our website to house:

• Program handouts from “What Economic Trends Mean for Foundation Investment and Communication Strategies”
• NCG Member responses, the formal communications and press releases on how they planned to cope with the economic downturn and its effect, if any, on their grantmaking.
• Specific resources for Family Foundations, Community Foundations and Corporate Foundations/Giving Programs
• And much, much more.

I’m not sure how many of our members’ grantees participated in CEP’s survey. But I do know that when the new economic reality began to sink in at the beginning of 2009, many NCG members were sharing their press releases so that other foundations who didn’t have a full Communications staff could have examples of how to draft their own response. And members were discussing with each other how to communicate to grantees and other stakeholders about their foundation’s new giving reality.

So if you’re looking at your communications report card and think you have room for improvement, the good news is there’s always time to try and get your grade up.

Read the Philanthropy Journal article in full online.

Read The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s A Time of Need report online.

Read the NCG Newsletter article on our 2009 economy program Member Login required online.

Check out NCG’s Economy resource page for grantmakers online.

Struggling to Make Ends Meet in the Bay Area, a new report released by NCG member the United Way of the Bay Area, used the California Self-Sufficiency Standard to measure the economic well-being of families in our region.

The report “found that many households require three full-time minimum wage jobs just to pay for basic needs.” [emphasis added]

Even before the global economic crisis, having a job was not a guarantee of adequate income as 86% of Bay Area households with incomes below the Self-Sufficiency Standard had at least one worker.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard measures the actual cost of living for different household types of working age in each county, including costs for housing, food, health care, taxes and child care. These 440,000 households with sub-Standard income are neither a small nor marginal group, and are more than three times the number defined as poor by the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Because many government and social programs use the FPL or variants of FPL to determine eligibility, a large and diverse group of struggling individuals and families is routinely overlooked and undercounted.

These hidden poor subsist in a “policy gap” where they earn too much income to qualify for most supports yet still struggle to meet their most basic needs, especially as the costs of housing, health care and other necessities continue to outpace increases in income.

Read the full report online.