Dallas Fort Worth Nonprofit Business Journal

Category: General

  • Giving USA 2021 – Charitable giving is up, arts organizations need support to recover

    The unprecedented times of a global pandemic resulted in unprecedented giving in 2021, with Americans distributing over $471 billion to charity in 2020 according to Giving USA 2021 – a 5.1% increase over 2019. Contributions increased from individuals, foundations, and bequests, but corporate giving went down 6.1% compared to 2019.

    Unsurprisingly, giving to organizations providing human services increased by 9.7% and a decline of 7.5% to arts, culture, and humanities organizations-likely due to the cancellation of events and performance, which is the primary source of giving and revenue for arts organizations.

    Giving is increasing much in part to the charitable giving of billionaires who saw their wealth skyrocket throughout the pandemic. Major gifts from billionaires, including MacKenzie Scott, former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, assisted with the overall increase in giving. Between individual giving (69%) and bequests (9%), individuals account for 78% of total giving, with foundations (9%) and corporations (4%) rounding out total giving. This is the largest amount of bequests recorded by Giving USA; therefore, nonprofits might want to consider how their planned giving programs are structured or work with their local community foundations to learn more about their planned giving process.

    North Texas is home to nearly 700 arts organizations. Whether it is attending a performance, visiting a museum, or purchasing gifts from local artisans, we must support our local arts organizations as part of ongoing recovery efforts if we want them to survive.

    Arts organizations: Be sure to share your news with us at DFW501c.com and submit your upcoming events to the free DFW501C Nonprofit Business Journal Calendar.

    You can purchase a copy of Giving USA online, or download the infographic for free, to learn more about charitable giving within the United States.

  • Fort Worth welcomes a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization

    News outlining the decline of local journalism in this country has been prolific in the last five years (ironic, right?). The traditional for-profit business model for many local news organizations was no longer profitable. Thousands of news organizations went out of business and many Americans now lived in “news deserts.”

    Despite its size, Fort Worth wasn’t immune to this national trend and several years ago a group of local civic and business leaders began discussing the need and looking at other models. This group commissioned audience research and focus groups that ultimately validated the need and desire for more substantial local coverage of government, arts, education, business and health.

    In order to sustain such coverage, a nonprofit news model was launched with seed funding from The Burnett Foundation. The Fort Worth Report is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that relies on a broad base of charitable support from individuals, foundations, and businesses to deliver more substantive local news coverage.

    “By supporting our nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization, donors can help us tell local stories that would otherwise go untold. These are stories that hold government officials accountable, fairly report the facts about issues that affect us all, and connect our splintered communities. Strong local journalism gives our community members the facts they need to become more informed, engaged and empowered, making Tarrant County a better place for all of us, ” says The Fort Worth Report Publisher and CEO, Chris Cobbler.

    The Fort Worth Report’s board of directors includes several local business and civic leaders, including co-chair Wes Turner, former publisher of the Star-Telegram; co-chair Bill Meadows, a longtime civic and business leader; John Lumpkin, former director of the TCU journalism school; entrepreneur Jonathan Morris of Hotel Dryce; and Rachel Navejar Phillips, a marketing executive.

    The Fort Worth Report has a three-year plan to expand their newsroom to 22 staff, including 18 reporters and editors by 2022. To achieve this, the organization will need to raise approximately $2 million each year after its first year of operation.

    Having launched just a few months ago, The Fort Worth Report now joins the philanthropic funding game with all of us.

    Disclosure: Barbara Clark-Galupi is a member of the volunteer Community Advisory Council for the Fort Worth Report.

  • Children at Risk issues preliminary summary on legislative achievements and lost opportunities for Texas children

    Children at Risk issues preliminary summary on legislative achievements and lost opportunities for Texas children

    Children at Risk recently released a child-focused 87th Legislative Session recap outlining missed opportunities and legislative wins. During the recent session, Children at Risk registered support for bills 93 times, provided impactful written testimony 21 times, and provided oral testimony 20 times.

    Early childhood education, human trafficking and child exploitation, children’s health and nutrition and family well-being all saw legislative wins. According to the recap, public education and childhood racial disparities saw minimal, if any gains.

    Children at Risk is expected to release a full legislative report in the coming weeks.

  • Potential for Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) policy reform…Again

    Donor-advised funds have been of debate within state and federal politics for many years, with various attempts to regulate donor-advised funds (DAFs) to increase their transparency, accountability, and spend down policy. A new attempt to change the policy around DAFs is currently being routed through the United States Senate. Under the proposed Accelerating Charitable Investments (ACE) Act, DAFs would either be allowed to be maintained for 15-years or 50-years. Presently, DAFs can be passed from generation to generation with no requirement that they are spent out over a period of time, or even that a percentage of funds be distributed—unlike the requirement for private foundations to distribute 5% annually.

    Under this proposed Act, community foundations would be exempt from certain provisions which would allow them to continue funding their work in their service regions; however, the Community Foundation Public Awareness Initiative recently issued a statement mentioning “proposals to place restrictions on DAFs – including the latest legislation proposed by Sen. Angus King and Sen. Charles Grassley – are solutions in search of problems.”

    Historically, DAFs were a bread-and-butter service of community foundations, with many donor-advised funds being established by wealthy individuals in lieu of creating a private foundation of their own. Nationally, many community foundations are sustainable because of the investment and management fees they charge to DAFs, meaning that they could sustain operations for other programs such as nonprofit capacity building, community leadership activities, and other community initiatives. A spend-down policy for DAFs could result in more dollars leaving fund sponsors, such as community foundations, but could also create sustainability issues with local philanthropic infrastructure organizations like community foundations.

    Much of the debate around DAFs is the result of wealthy individuals funneling money from location to location. In theory, a business owner can place some of their own company’s stock within a DAF and receive a tax deduction for their generous contribution. In some cases, DAF donors may inflate the price of the stock and receive a significant tax deduction, but when it comes time to distribute funds, the stock value may be significantly less in actual dollars.

    Presently, it appears that many national organizations have been excluded from conversations surrounding DAF reform, with the Community Foundation Public Awareness Initiative urging lawmakers to consider policy changes based on the following criteria: “(1) supported by data, (2) address real problems, (3) do not significantly increase administrative costs for smaller DAF sponsors (e.g., community foundations in small towns and rural areas, many of which manage charitable assets under $20 million), (4) do not artificially restrict our ability to address problems in our communities.”

    The United Philanthropy Forum has issued a letter from many philanthropy service organizations around the country calling for the philanthropic sector to be included in these discussions on policy reform. While many proposals to reform charitable giving have failed in the past, proposed donor-advised fund legislation has increasingly been brought to the forefront of policymaking around the nonprofit sector.

    Unfortunately, there still appears to be a lack of overwhelming evidence to support the reform of DAFs—one way or the other. While regulation around DAFs is necessary, as a result of many nonprofit and for-profit entities now managing them, there is one thing that is certain – these debates around regulation will continue.

  • Trust for Public Land adds equity category for 2021 ParkScore rankings; only 2 North Texas cities make top 50

    The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit organization, recently published a five-part report that examines the park equity gap in America and our evolving relationship to parks and public land during this historic crisis. 

    New data shows major disparities in access to the outdoors. In the 100 most populated cities, neighborhoods where most residents identify as Black, Hispanic and Latinx, American Indian/Alaska Native or Asian American and Pacific Islander have access to an average of 44 percent less park acreage than predominantly white neighborhoods, and similar park space inequities exist in low-income neighborhoods across cities, highlighting the urgent need to center equity in park investment and planning.

    The Trust for Public Lands contends that “parks are essential for public health, climate resilience, and strong connected communities.  And yet, 100 million people in the U.S.—including 28 million kids—don’t have a park within a 10-minute walk of home.”

    The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore index is the national gold-standard comparison of park systems across the 100 most populated cities in the United States. Published annually, the index measures park systems according to five categories: access, investment, amenities, acreage, and—new for
    2021—equity. 

    This year, the cities of Plano and Dallas ranked in the top 50. Plano ranked number 15 with 78% of resident living within a ten minute walk of a park. Plano residents in neighborhoods of color have access to 7% less park space per person than the city median and 2% more than those in white neighborhoods and residents in low-income neighborhoods have access to 31% less park space per person than the city median and 36% less than those in high-income neighborhoods.

    Dallas ranked number 50 with 73% of resident living within a ten minute walk of a park. Unlike Plano, Dallas residents in neighborhoods of color have access to 48% more park space per person than the city median and 25% more than those in white neighborhoods and residents in low-income neighborhoods have access to 12% more park space per person than the city median and 2% more than those in high-income neighborhoods.

    Beyond the ranking of 100 cities, the data behind the ParkScore index also reveals park access levels for nearly every city and town in the United States. This tool provides communities with the information needed to help close the park equity gap.

  • New UTSW study shows Black and Hispanic impoverished people have worse survival rates among many cancers in young people

    Being Black or Hispanic, living in high-poverty neighborhoods, and having Medicaid or no insurance coverage are associated with higher mortality in men and women under 40 with cancer, a review by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found.

    “Survival is not different because of biology. It’s not different because of patient-level factors,” says Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor of population and data sciences and internal medicine at UT Southwestern. “No matter which way we looked at the data, we still saw consistent and alarming differences in survival by race – and these are teens and young adults.” Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D

    Other findings based on an analysis of Texas Cancer Registry data from 1995 to 2016 showed:

    • Black men with non-Hodgkin lymphoma had a 57 percent survival rate compared with 75 percent for white men.
    • The survival rate for Black patients with testicular cancer was 88.7 percent, compared with 96.6 percent for white patients.
    • Survival decreased as poverty increased for these highly treatable cancers among all race and ethnic groups.
    • Men with private insurance had survival rates 20 percent higher for testicular, colorectal, and kidney cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma than for men with no insurance or with Medicaid.

    “By far the strongest predictor or association was race. In particular, the Black race was consistently associated with lower survival, even if patients are not poor and have insurance,” Murphy says.

    The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, included 55,000 female and more than 32,000 male cancer patients ages 15 to 39, a population in which few studies have been conducted as the average age of most cancer patients is 66. The Texas Cancer Registry, established in 1995 by the Texas Department of State Health Services, is one of the largest cancer registries in the United States. Sandi Pruitt, Ph.D.

    Senior author Sandi Pruitt, Ph.D., associate professor of population and data sciences, says the numbers show a need for greater investments in health care coverage and neighborhood revitalization.

    “Where Black teens and young adults are with cancer survival today is worse than it was for white kids about 10 years ago. It’s unreal,” Pruitt says. “I think it is underappreciated how much the conditions in which we are born and live impact our health, and, in this case, the health of a very special and underserved population – teens and young adults with cancer. Persistent poverty and racism, combined with the low rate of health insurance which is common in Texas, are part of the context that leads to the worse survival for certain population groups we’ve observed in this study.”

    The authors call for future research and interventions to address the disparities, including better health insurance coverage, greater inclusion of teens and young adults in clinical trials, more collection of biospecimens from underserved teens and young adults, programs and policies designed to be anti-racist, and additional studies comparing risk factors, treatment, and outcomes.

  • Charitable Giving Programs Can Help Companies Connect with Remote Employees

    By Dan Berner, Dallas News

    The COVID-19 pandemic may be one of the most consequential events in our lifetimes, profoundly affecting societies, businesses and economies around the world. And, in North Texas and across the U.S., calls for social justice and racial equity add another layer of urgency for lawmakers, civic and business leaders to reshape society.

    Meanwhile, the pandemic is forcing droves of employees to work remotely, causing or perhaps exacerbating feelings of disconnect from management and colleagues.

    I spy two needs here. One is increased generosity to fellow citizens in need. The other is for a more meaningful connection between employees and employers. There might just be a magic ingredient that meets both: workplace giving programs.

    Consider the data. Last year, more than 80% of surveyed North Texas professionals donated at least the same amount of money or more to charities than in previous years because of COVID-19. Much of the increased giving went to organizations focused on hunger, homelessness, education and equipment for first responders and medical personnel, according to Deloitte’s recent workplace giving survey. Responding to the calls for justice and equity, North Texas respondents donated 10% more to social and racial equity causes last year than they did in 2019.

    Most, however, did not use workplace giving programs to exercise their philanthropy. Fewer than 1 in 5 (18%) North Texans donated through workplace programs. Asked why they didn’t use these vehicles, just under half (47%) said they already contribute to a cause or organization on their own.

    The survey uncovered an important key for companies wanting to boost workplace donations: cause matters.

    The two biggest motivators for workplace giving cited by North Texas professionals are the opportunity through workplace giving to donate to specific causes or organizations they care about (43%) and donation matching by employer (23%). Generosity to those in need is admirable, whether it’s done with or outside of workplace programs. That so few employees use workplace programs indicates a great opportunity for business to grow them. As they do, that could make the generous even more so, possibly encouraging others to discover the joy of philanthropy, and boost workplace camaraderie.

    With that vision in mind, here are a few ideas to help North Texas companies burnish their charitable efforts.

    Add a workplace giving program if you don’t have one. If you do, advertise it often via regular communications from management. (Employees can’t engage in a program if they don’t know it exists.)

    Ask your employees what causes they’d like to support. Ask early, and ask often, as it’s likely that their answers will change year over year. And consider establishing or beefing up a donation-matching program. When employees realize that their $50 contribution can become $100 simply by using an office-based giving program, chances are they may get on board with workplace-based giving.

    It might sound insignificant, but I am convinced that a well-advertised, well-supported workplace giving program designed with plenty of employee input can help support the community and build company camaraderie, one donated (and matched) dollar at a time. Make your employees proud to say, “I gave at the office.”

  • Fort Worth Film Gets Picked Up By Sony

    Fort Worth Business Press reports, Twelve Mighty Orphans that was set and filmed here in Fort Worth will be distributed by Sony Classics.

  • Report and Action Plan to Reduce Economic Disparities in Fort Worth

    Fort Worth Weekly sat down with the Center for Transforming Lives Director of Economic Mobility Charletra Sharp and discussed systemic racism, economic injustice, and their plan to address these issues.

  • North Texas Renters Can’t Get the Aid They Need

    North Texas has millions in unspent aid for renters during the pandemic, yet 75% of applications are denied, according to Dallas News.