Who can even with $45 billion?
I was going to write about this being a busy season for giving and reflecting on Giving Tuesday, and a number of other thanking/holiday ideas connected to fundraising, but this current week has me in a state of not being able to even.
First, there’s continuing violence against people of color and the lack of justice they are served with the civic and public trials of the killers of Freddie Gray and Laquan McDonald. Then there’s yet another “loner” who shoots up a Planned Parenthood. Then. Yet. Another. Mass. Shooting. All of this on top of climate change deniers trying to run the table at the Paris climate talks. I can’t even. Who can?
When the world gets to a place like it has been in this past week, I am reminded why I work in the nonprofit sector. We are the problem solvers. We provide solutions: hungry? Here’s some food. Have a need not being met? Here’s some services. Need some knowledge? Here’s some education.
And that’s why fundraising, and smart fundraising is so important. Fundraising = $$$ for food, services, and education.
Nonprofit funding was also in the news this week, and not just for GivingTuesday (which I can never decide is banal or annoying or great or all three). Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, moved the majority of his stock into an LLC and announced it on his social media platform with his wife in a letter to their daughter.
Will this make a difference in charitable funding? Will rich people no longer be vilified ala Mr. Burns on The Simpsons?
Let’s put it this way - if you are rich, and want to keep that wealth in perpetuity, stick it in a private foundation and invest your bazillions for ever and ever (see: every Ivy League’s endowment). If you want to keep your wealth but also maintain more freedom to do whatever you want with it, stash it in a little LLC like Mr. Zuckerberg.
Smart nonprofiteers (is this a word? Is now.) probably read the very flattering articles in Bloomberg or the Wall Street Journal and thought, “We’ll see.”
It’s possible this Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will cure diseases and lift whole nations out of poverty. I mean, one assumes that with $45 billion dollars you could cure at least ONE disease. I don’t know what that kind of scratch gets you these days, but Malaria seems to be circling the drain, right?
If this Initiative were an actual public charity or even a private foundation, it would be legally required to at least attempt to cure a disease. Or it would at minimum have a governing body designed to make sure it’s fulfilling its promise to try to cure a disease.
As an LLC, Zuckerberg isn’t required to do anything. Or achieve anything. Which is probably what you want after you so famously fail in your first few rounds of charitable exercise.
I for one wish LOADS of success on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. But I won’t hold my breath. For now, me and the other 45 million people in this line of work that could really get some mileage out of $45 billion have to get down to the real business of distributing food and services and knowledge.