A New Way to Boost Nonprofits
Marketing and technology professionals looking to donate to nonprofits have a new option starting this month.
The Taproot Foundation is putting together teams of volunteers to do six-month assignments at nonprofits. The projects will require on average five hours of service a week. Valuing a volunteer's time at $100 an hour, the foundation estimates it will donate $3.6 million to 90 New York City nonprofits over the next two years.
Members of the teams are given job titles and a project plan to achieve one of four deliverables: brochures, Web sites, branding identity (a logo and stationery), and donor databases. The volunteers will deliver services to help complete the projects, while the nonprofits are responsible for the cost of printing, Web hosting, etc. Foundations typically don't fund these items because they are considered administrative expenses.
"The model increases the quality of the finished product as well as the volunteer's sense of accomplishment," said the founder of Taproot, Aaron Hurst.
Tom Higby, who has been accepted as a volunteer, found several things appealing about the Taproot opportunity. "They spoke my language," he told The New York Sun. "Also, they offered the chance to create value for an organization, better than I could do myself. I can only contribute so much financially. Here I can leverage my skills working as part of a team," Mr. Higby said.
He also said he liked the way the organization is run. "You can see the influence of management consultants. Meetings are well organized and run well. The mission is clear and the opportunities are clear," he said.
The Taproot Foundation was founded three years ago in San Francisco. It is one of a growing number of foundations that are shifting the focus of philanthropy to capacity building from dollars alone. Social Venture Partners, for example, organizes teams of individuals who pool their money and talent on behalf of a nonprofit over a multiyear period.
Corporations are also increasingly recognizing the value of institutionalizing pro-bono work. It demonstrates the company's social responsibility and helps employees develop professionally. Cisco Systems has recently implemented a service grant program similar to Taproot's. (The time donated by a company is tax deductible, but the individuals volunteering through Taproot will not get a deduction.)
The director of the Boston College Social Welfare Research Institute, Paul Schervish, sees the emphasis on harnessing intellectual capital as a response to growing supply and demand. "There's such a growth both in the ability and the need," he said. "We have a very educated work force eager to contribute in a meaningful way, and at the same time, nonprofits that have not been able to afford a high level of quality in business services."
Taproot is trying to fill that need. To launch the program in New York, it opened an office in Brooklyn Heights and partnered with the United Way of New York City, which hopes to raise the visibility of its capacity building and volunteer engagement programs. Taproot will spend about $125,000 a year overseeing all its programs in New York - its own funds come from grants from the United Way, the Booth Ferris Foundation, the Blue Ridge Foundation, and the Robin Hood Foundation, and corporate support comes from Hewitt Associates and IconNicholson.
Ten nonprofit organizations in New York City have been selected from a pool of 60 applicants for the first round of "service grants."
They are: the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families; Enact, a therapeutic drama program for school children; Global Kids, which educates youth about critical international public policy issues; Groundwork, a neighborhood-based learning and work program for urban youth; the HIV Law Project; the Jamaica Service Program for Older Adults; Per Scholas, which recycles and refurbishes computers; Careers Through Culinary Arts Program; Providence House, and the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville & Bedford-Stuyvesant History.
"I was very impressed with their process of selection. It was stressful. They asked excellent questions," said the founder and executive director of Global Kids, Carole Artigiani.
The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families has been awarded a service grant for a brochure. But its executive deputy director, Joe Semidei, sees further benefits: "They're going to help us think strategically about where we are, where we want to be in the market. This is about how the agency wants to project itself into the community."
In June, Taproot will start accepting applications for an additional 20 service grants. To fully staff its projects, the organization is hosting a New York City launch party on February 26 for people interested in volunteering.
