A new study by Millennial Branding, of 225 employers usingExperience Inc.’s data pool of over 100,000 US companies, uncovers the student employment gap, skill requirements, and sources of hire for the class of 2012. 91% of employers think that students should have between one and two internships before they graduate, yet 50% haven’t hired any interns in the past six months. Students that have the required internships haven’t received job offers from companies since 79% of employers have hired 30% or fewer interns into full-time positions. Furthermore, 87% of companies think that internships should last at least three months for students to gain enough experience when most internships last around two months long. This employment gap is one of the reasons why half of all recent grads are jobless or underemployed as reported by The Associated Press.

Highlights from the Student Employment Gap study: The entry-level job market. Overall, 87% of employers are going to hire more recent graduates this year. This is great news for the 1.7 millioncollegestudents who are graduating. 86% hired 25 or fewer recent college graduates in the past six months, but 50% haven’t hired a single intern during the same timeframe. 79% of employers hire 30% or fewer interns for full-time positions.The types of students who are landing jobs. 34% of companies are recruiting engineering and computer information systems majors and 30% are recruiting liberal arts majors. Only 18% are recruiting finance and accounting majors combined.

Of the companies that compete for STEM talent(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), 75% said it’s hard or very hard to compete against other big brands.The skills that employers are looking for. Employers view communication skills (98%), having a positive attitude (97%) and teamwork skills (92%) as being important or very important when hiring for entry-level positions.The sources employers use to hire.Only 16% of employers recruit on social networks all of the time or most of the time, while 48% use job boards and 44% use employee referrals. Also,only 35% of employers use social networks to conduct background checks in the online hiring process.

Out of those employers, 42% use LinkedIn, 40% use Facebook, 15% use Google+ and only 2% use Twitter when reviewing candidates profiles.The ways students can stand out in the hiring process. 69% of managers think that relevant courses are either important or very important when reviewing candidates. 65% say a referral from a previous boss or professor, and 50% say leadership positions in on-campus organizations. 29% are looking for entrepreneurial experience.Employer internship expectations. 91% of employers think that students should have between one and two internships before graduating and 87% feel that internships should last at least three months for students to gain enough experience.

Employers entry-level job expectations. 42% of employers are turned off by how unprepared students are in interviews and 26% are turned off by their bad attitude. 92% have an interview process of two months or less for entry-level positions and 62% have two rounds of interviews on average. 62% conduct in-person or phone first round interviews despite new technologies like Skype.Employers talent needs. 65% of employers feel that their talent needs have changed over the past two years, and of those, 26% haven’t communicated those changes to the student marketplace. 100% of employers perceiving that college prepares students for the workplace and 81% having updated their job descriptions to reflect current talent requirements.

Infographic:
Quotes: “The expectation that having an internship can lead to a job no longer exists. Employers should hire their interns into full-time positions to save recruiting and training costs. Students should strive to have as many internships as possible before graduation and not rely on a single employer for a job offer.”
- Dan Schawbel, Founder of Millennial Branding, Gen-Y Expert & Bestselling Author of Me 2.0
“Of all the things employers look for when hiring entry-level talent, it’s the so-called ‘soft skills’ that are valued most: communication, teamwork, flexibility and positive attitude are by far the most sought-after skills. Employers understand that everything else can be taught, so they look for the most promising raw material to work with.”
- JenniferFloren, Founder and CEO, Experience, Inc.

Contacts: Millennial Branding (Spokesperson): Dan Schawbeldan@millennialbranding.com
Experience.com (Survey Data): Veronica L. Clarke vclarke@experience.com
About Millennial Branding: Millennial Brandingis a Gen-Y research and management consulting firm based in Boston, MA. Millennial Branding helps companies understand the emerging Gen-Y employee and consumer by providing constant information through our research, training, and advisory services. As representatives of Gen Y and advisers to management, our goal is to provide research and insights that will make you more profitable, grow your market share, help you understand your Gen-Y employees, and turn you into an industry leader.
About Experience: Experience has been the leading provider of career services for colleges and universities since 1996. Today, 5 million students and recent graduates use the Experience network to find entry-level jobs and internships, and to access information that helps them bridge the gap between school and the professional world. Over 3,800 colleges and universities are in the Experience network, connecting students and graduates with over 100,000 employers and recruiters that use Experience to connect with the best, qualified entry-level talent.

Click to See Full Article

Then participate in our new collaboration with the City of Long Beach's Environmental Services Bureau. Sign up to be part of the LB-Exchange and start getting notified! It is fast and easy and available exclusively to LBNP Member Organizations!

Register at LB-Exchange

On April 12, 2011, the California Supreme Court issued its long awaited opinion inBrinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, a class action lawsuit filed against several related restaurant operating companies on behalf of 60,000 hourly employees which alleged that the employees had been denied rest periods and meal periods, and had been required to work off the clock during meal periods.

In Brinker, the Court addressed a number of key questions for California employers: Is an employer's duty simply to make meal periods available to non-exempt employees? Must an employer ensure that its employees actually take such breaks? When during the workday must meal and rest breaks be taken?How many must be provided?

As to the issue of providing the employee with a meal period, the Court concluded that an employer's duty is satisfied "if it relieves its employees of all duty, relinquishes control over their activities and permits them a reasonable opportunity to take an uninterrupted 30-minute break, and does not impede or discourage them from doing so." (Slip Op. at 36.)

Consequently, employers do not have to "police" meal breaks to ensure that the employees perform no work during the break. The Court warned, however, that an employer may not pressure employees to omit meal breaks without being liable for premium pay, or schedule employees in a way that makes taking meal breaks extremely difficult. It also noted that where an employee voluntarily chooses to perform work during a meal break, the employer still may be liable for straight pay when it knew or reasonably should have known that the employee was working "off the clock" through the authorized meal break:

The employer that refuses to relinquish control over employees during an owed meal period violates the duty to provide the meal period and owes compensation [and premium pay] for hours worked. The employer that relinquishes control but nonetheless knows or has reason to know that the employee is performing work during the meal period, has not violated its meal period obligations [and owes no premium pay], but nonetheless owes regular compensation to its employees for time worked. (Slip Op. at 35, n19.)

Throughout its decision the Court emphasized the importance of thorough employee time and record keeping policies, and having a written employment policy, as Brinker did, prohibiting employees from performing "off the clock" work.

With respect to the timing of meal breaks, the restaurant workers contended that the governing law obligates an employer to provide a 30-minute meal period at least once every five hours. Brinker countered that no such timing obligation is imposed, and an employer satisfies its meal period obligations by providing one meal period for shifts over five hours and two meal periods for shifts over 10 hours. The Court held that Brinker's practice of scheduling meals near the beginning of an employee's shift, but then having the employee work more than five consecutive hours without another meal break, did not violate the law. The Court, however, did find that employers must provide a meal break prior to the end of the first five hours of any shift of more than six hours. It also held that a second meal period must be provided for shifts of more than ten hours no later than the end of an employee's 10th hour of work.

On the issue of rest breaks, the Court held that an employer must provide a 10-minute rest period for each four hours or "major fraction thereof" that an employee works, except that employees who work less than three and one-half hours in total need not be provided with any rest breaks. It defined "major fraction" as meaning a two-hour period. The Court therefore concluded that "[e]mployees are entitled to 10 minutes' rest for shifts from three and one-half to six hours in length, 20 minutes for shifts of more than six hours up to 10 hours, 30 minutes for shifts of more than 10 hours up to 14 hours, and so on." (Slip Op. at 20.)

The restaurant employees also asserted that employers have a legal duty to permit their employees a rest period before any meal period. The Court rejected that argument and held that employers are simply "subject to a duty to make a good faith effort to authorize and permit rest breaks in the middle of each work period, but may deviate from that preferred course where practical considerations render it infeasible." (Slip Op. at 22.)

In light of the decision in Brinker, employers should review their policies and procedures regarding meal periods and rest breaks to make sure they are consistent with the Court's ruling. For example, an employer may choose to clarify its policy on the breaks by perhaps even quoting the precise language of the opinion. Employers who previously believed they needed to ensure that nonexempt employees take meal breaks through measures such as the threat of disciplinary action may decide to relax that posture. At a minimum, it would be wise to undertake a training for managers and supervisors on the proper administration of meal period and break rules.

Fast Facts

■ 6.2 million clients annually served 

■ 6 percent of all jobs in LongBeach (1 in 17)

■ 13,027 nonprofit jobs in Long Beach (direct)
■ 22,300 jobs (direct and indirect)

■ 50 percent plus of nonprofitworkforce live in Long Beach

■ 90,000 volunteers

■ 4.1 million volunteer hours

■ 84 percent of income is spent on program services

■ $459 million in payroll

■ $536 million in payroll including volunteers attributed value

■ $1.8 billion in expenditures (direct)
■ $3.0 billion in expenditures (direct and indirect)

Many Nonprofits Include Social Security Numbers on Public Documents, Study Finds Enlarge Image By Noelle Barton

Nearly one in five nonprofits publish private Social Security numbers on public tax documents, potentially exposing their supporters and employees to identity theft and other privacy breaches, an examination of federal tax forms has found. Identity Finder, a company that specializes in security and privacy software, reviewed more than three million informational tax returns, known as Form 990s, filed from 2001 to 2006 and found that more than 132,000 charities had published at least one Social Security number on their tax forms.
Most of the Social Security numbers the charities revealed were those of donors, trustees, employees, directors, and scholarship recipients. Slightly more than a third of the Social Security numbers were those of the individuals who prepared the documents, the study found.

“Unlike a credit-card number, Social Security numbers cannot easily be revoked,” Todd Feinman, chief executive of Identity Finder, said in a statement. “Given the seriousness and ubiquity of identity fraud, tax preparers should avoid including [Social Security numbers] on Form 990s.”The disclosures have been made by some of the nation’s largest charities. A Chronicle review of the tax forms of the 12 top groups on its Philanthropy 400 ranking of charities that raise the most from private sources found three organizations that published the Social Security numbers of at least one individual: Food for the Poor, Schwab Charitable Fund, and the Task Force for Global Health.

Schwab Charitable released the Social Security numbers of six people, while Food for the Poor and the Task Force for Global Health each included the number of one person.

For the Task Force for Global Health and Food for the Poor, the published numbers were those of the tax preparers, those organizations told the Chronicle. Schwab Charitable’s tax return is handled by the accounting company Deloitte, and the Social Security numbers revealed on their documents are also those of the tax preparers themselves.

“Schwab Charitable has never disclosed any private information for any of its donors, employees, or board members, and in fact protecting privacy is of course of the utmost importance to them,” said Kerstin Osterberg, a spokeswoman. “They take protecting privacy very, very seriously, and it’s something that they’re focused on at all times.”

Liability for Charities Grayson Barber, an advocate for privacy issues, says charities should exercise extreme care in protecting personal information about employees and supporters, in part because they could be liable if that information gets into the wrong hands.

“Having access to confidential information like Social Security numbers imposes obligations on all corporations, including charitable organizations, to protect sensitive personal information,” Ms. Barber says.
The Internal Revenue Service does not require organizations to include Social Security numbers on the Form 990. Tax preparers are required to provide their personal tax-identification numbers in the form’s signature block, but the instructions state that they should not provide their Social Security numbers in that space.
IRS Urged to Step In Identity Finder says the IRS should inform nonprofits that Social Security numbers are not to be published on Form 990s. It suggests that the tax agency redact any such numbers on the documents before they are released to the public.

The company also advises nonprofits to warn those whose Social Security numbers have been published that they might be at increased risk for identity fraud.

See original article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy

Long Beach Community Action Partnership
3012 Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach CA 90807
Wednesday, May 2nd, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m.

*To Register - Click Here*
The Long Beach Community Action Partnership will host this Healthy City Presentation. Join us to learn and discuss!

How will changing demographics impact my community, our local resources and services? Healthy City will present an analysis of demographic changes in the north Long Beach region using GIS mapping. The presentation will include both an overview of the analysis AND a hands-on training to use the online data and mapping tool, HealthyCity.org.

See the Flyer Here

Reprinted from NonprofitMarketingGuide.com

Saying thank you to your donors, and saying it well, is only polite, right? The truth is that good thank yous are much more than good manners: they are a very smart and savvy fundraising strategy.


Donors are Testing Nonprofits, and Nonprofits Are Failing Sixty-five percent of first-time donors don’t make a second gift. That’s what Penelope Burk’s donor-centered research tells us. Donors want something quite simple: a prompt, meaningful thank you letter and additional communication that explains how the donation was used. That’s it. Eighty percent of donors say that would convince them to make the second gift.
And yet the typical thank you note that many nonprofits send is more like a transaction receipt that speaks to a donor’s inner bookkeeper more than a donor’s inner angel. Let’s speak to that angel! Here are nine clever approaches to thank yous.


1. Write a Greeting Card, Not a Business Letter The best nonprofit thank yous feel friendly, warm, and personal. And yet they are still relatively short. Even if your thank you appears on stationery, think of a good Hallmark card as you write (not the ones with four paragraphs of flowery script, but the shorter ones that lay it all out there in under 30 words). They feel personal, even though we know they were written for thousands of others.


2. Share Recent Progress, However Small Your supporters want to know that they matter. So give them little gems of progress that show that with their support — and directly because of that support — you are bringing about some kind of change, or making life easier for someone, or advancing the cause. Maybe it’s a short anecdote, or a telling testimonial, or an impressive statistic.


3. Add an Invitation – But Not to Something that Requires Another Donation! You want your supporters to stay on with you, so invite them to do so, without asking for another financial donation. Invite them to your next free event, a behind-the-scenes tour, or a special conference call with a staff expert. Mention any volunteer opportunities, and ask them to follow you on Facebook or Twitter.


4. Use a More Creative, Personal Opening Forget “On behalf of” or “Thank you for” and start your letters with a more creative and personal opening. Try something like, “You made my day” on one line by itself. Then jump into a story: “Your donation crossed my desk today and . . .” Explain how the money will be used. Or start with, “I have a great story to share with you.” Launch right into a success story and then talk about how the donation will create even more happy stories.


5. Include Results-Oriented Photography Including photos, either in the body of the letter or stuffed in the envelope, will make an instant connection between your donor and your work. A photo of a client or smiling people making a difference out there in the world will light up your donor’s day. Get a group of people who your organization helps together and take a photo of them holding a big banner that says “Thank You.”


6. Record a Video Message One of my favorite thank-you emails came from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), with a link to short video. The video features real TNC scientists around the world — not polished spokespeople — in their own countries, speaking in many different accents, saying “Thank you for helping to save (whatever natural area they work on).” It’s so genuine, and yet so easy to duplicate!


7. Send a Postcard from Behind-the-Scenes Several digital photo apps let you turn your photos into instant postcards (see Postagram or Touchnote, for example). What if your program staff took some photos during the course of their everyday work out of the public eye, and turned those into personalized postcards for your supporters? It’s hard to get more timely and personal than that.


8. Be Specific About How the Gift Is Being Used Very quickly but clearly describe a specific program where the gift will be used. If you are fundraising for specific programs this will be easier than if you are fundraising for general support. But even then, you still need to give supporters a sense for what you’re doing with the money. You can use anecdotes as examples for how the money is being spent, or you can assure donors that their gifts are going to “where the need is greatest.”


9. Change Who’s Saying Thank You If you have clients who benefit from programs funded by individual donations, ask a few clients to explain in their own words how your organization has changed their lives and to thank the donor for making it all possible. They write the letter, but you send it. Or ask board members to send a separate hand-written thank you note or even an email, as a follow-up to your “official” thank you letter.
Get more of our tips on writing thank you letters at NonprofitMarketingGuide.com/thankyou

To ensure that the event is beneficial for your organization, we ask that all attending organizations bring at least two representatives, including Executive Director/CEO and Development Director and/or a board member. If you have any questions, please contact the California Community Foundation at 213.413.4130.

Click Here to Register

with Darian Rodriguez Heyman and Ritu Sharma

March 22nd,  9-3pm

Hosted by the Long Beach Nonprofit Partnership

Don’t miss this chance to hear from the experts and take your social media strategy to the next level. Join us for a day full of practical tips and tools, and learn how social media marketing can catapult your fundraising efforts.
Topics and interactive workshops to include:

An introduction to Social Media Strategies Recruiting Volunteers & Board Members Campaign Measurement & Optimization Challenges and Pitfalls of Social Media Maximizing Your Facebook Presence Fundraising with Social Media Creating Killer Content This conference is perfect for nonprofit professionals with varying degrees of experience and comfort with social media.
For more information and registration please visit:

www.lbnp.org or call 562.290.0018

Continental breakfast & lunch will be provided
Cost: $95 LBNP Member price
$135 Not-Yet-Member price

Summit Agenda

8:30-9am: Registration

9-9:15am: Welcome- Darian Rodriguez Heyman

9:15-10:15am: Social Media Marketing Strategy- Ritu Sharma
Top-level overview of best practices, pitfalls, & the difference between social platforms

10:15-11:15am: Fundraising With Social Media- Darian Rodriguez Heyman

11:15am-12:30pm: Executive Roundtables (AKA “Solution Salons”)- Darian Rodriguez Heyman

12:30-1:15pm: Lunch

1:15-2pm:Breakout I
Big Group (Beginners):Maximizing Your Facebook Presence- Darian Rodriguez Heyman

Small Group (Advanced): Creating Killer Content Across Platforms- Ritu Sharma

2-3pm:Breakout II
Big Group (Beginners):Recruiting Volunteers & Board Members Online (includes LinkedIn)- Darian Rodriguez Heyman

Small Group (Advanced): Evaluating Your Efforts: Campaign Measurement & Optimization- Ritu Sharma

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT

Assistant Director

Position Summary

Long Beach Nonprofit Partnership, a premier provider of services to strengthen nonprofit organizations in the greater Long Beach area, seeks an exceptional individual to serve in the capacity of Assistant Director.  The Assistant Director oversees all of LBNP’s individualized consulting services, responsible for business development, consultant recruitment, and oversees matching LBNP Affiliate Consultants with client requests for management consulting and executive coaching assignments.  S/he serves as LBNP lead professional in the absence of the Executive Director and works closely with the Program Manager.

Major Responsibilities

Business Development

·         Conducts and manages client development activities for consultation program, including:

o   client recruitment

o   oversees client assessment and determination of match with LBNP services, in particular with an LBNP Affiliate Consultant

o   development of project scope and contract (and proposals/responses to RFPs as required)

o   close coordination with Program Manager, particularly regarding leads/follow-ups

·         Explores and develops new earned income revenue streams for LBNP

·         Assists with grant writing and donor cultivation

Consultant Recruitment & Engagement

·         Manages Affiliate Consultant recruitment activities:

o   Manages/oversees  Affiliate Consultant outreach, assessment, and intake processes

o   Tracks all Affiliate Consultants to ensure our professional reach meets the needs of our clients

·         Develops and maintains an on-going Affiliate Consultant affinity group that is responsive to the needs of this group of professionals.

·         Works with Program Manager to ensure best client and consultant outcomes

Program and Administration

·         Responsible for billings and collections for all individualized consulting projects

·         Tracks payables for Affiliate Consultants to ensure they are paid in a timely fashion

·         Assists in the development of new programs and special projects

·         Staffs Board Committees as appropriate

Qualifications

·         Bachelor’s required, master’s degree in a related field strongly preferred

·         Relevant nonprofit experience required, including at least five years each in program management and staff supervision and a minimum of three years in senior management

·         Significant experience in both volunteer management and nonprofit capacity building (at a minimum internal consulting, though experience in traditional consulting highly desirable)

·         Background or strong interest in sales with an overriding customer service orientation

·         Highly organized with superior attention to detail; administratively self-sufficient

·         Flexible and able to juggle multiple responsibilities while meeting deadlines

·         Strong judgment, problem-solving skills, diplomacy, and commitment to confidentiality

·         Affinity for working both independently and in collaboration with staff and volunteers 

·         Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills, including facility with all common office equipment, software, and modes of communication

·         Experience with database systems

·         Ability to represent LBNP in the community to stakeholders, including donors

·         Deep commitment to the nonprofit sector

Competitive compensation and benefits, excellent work environment.  EOE.

 Send cover letter and resume to:

 LBNP-Personnel

4900 E. Conant Street

Long Beach, CA 90808

Or email to:

jross@lbnp.org

By the principal consultants of WolfBrown,with Joanna Woronkowicz

Historically, sustaining an arts organization meant generating enough earned and contributed revenue to fund current operations. With so much continued change and turmoil in the arts industry, WolfBrown set out to reconsider what sustainability means in 2011.

Why are some arts groups able to persevere – and even thrive – when they are chronically “under-capitalized” and perpetually on the brink of extinction? On the other hand, why are well-established, large institutions with sizable endowments filing for bankruptcy?

What, besides strong finances, does sustainability require? Is it possible that financial securityactually deters sustainability?

Reflecting back on several decades of work with funders and arts organizations, we propose a more nuanced and multi-dimensional view of sustainability – one that encompasses and transcends the current dialogue on capitalization, adaptive capacity and other elements of good management. In our view, sustainability requires a balancing act with three interdependent but sometimes competing priorities:

Together, these elements give organizations the ability to excel in a permanent state of flux, uncertainty and creative tension.

Click Here for the full PDF

In our efforts to provide you with the information and resources you need to be most effective in administering and growing your organizations, The Long Beach Nonprofit Partnership has developed The Learning Network. The Learning Network will be an important step forward toward our goal of being the ‘first stop’ for nonprofit professionals looking for nonprofit educational resources online.

This free resource on the LBNP website will provide access to the most helpful no-cost resources available online. The Learning Network will consist of a compilation of white papers, sample forms, suggested websites and webinars, organized in a clear and efficient manner for ease of use. These resources will accompany an enhanced facebook presence and open forum discussions to support and bring together nonprofit professionals.  In addition, The Learning Network will be fluid and updated on an ongoing basis to provide you with the most current information available.

The learning network will begin by focusing on 7 nonprofit core competencies: Fund Development, Marketing, Volunteer Management, Board Development, General Nonprofit Management, Technology and Human Resources. As a nonprofit professional, you will be able to access resources pertaining to each of these core competencies in one easily navigated menu instead of relying on general internet search engines to find the information you need.

In addition, you can feel confident that our professionals have scoured the internet to compile a reputable, clear and useful library dedicated to your needs.

The Learning Network is Live! Give us your feedback. Thanks!

By Rick Moyers

The more effort nonprofit leaders put into supporting their boards, the happier they are with the board’s performance—but few leaders spend enough hours working with trustees to make a difference.

That insight comes from a report calledThe Board Paradox, byCompassPoint and the Meyer Foundation, where I work. It’sthe last in a series of three briefs that report on a national study of more than 3,000 nonprofit executive directors.

The briefs present survey results that were not included in the recent Daring to Lead 2011 report, which was released last month. (I am a co-author of the main report and the sole author of the brief on executives and boards.)

The online survey for Daring to Lead asked executives a series of questions about their boards. We asked about their relationships with their board chairs, how much time they spent working with and supporting their boards, and whether they were getting help from board members in key management areas.

To supplement this survey data, 70 executive directors participated in focus groups in San Francisco and Washington, DC. In all five focus groups, executives spent much of the time discussing their relationships with—and in many cases their frustration with—their boards.

In analyzing this information and putting together the brief, two things stood out.

First, many executive directors don’t spend all that much time working with their boards. More than half of survey respondents said they spent 10 hours or less per month supporting their boards. Ten hours may sound significant, but that is just 6 percent of a full-time executive director’s time. Maybe even less, since many executives work more than 40 hours a week.

Second, executives who spend more time on their boards are more satisfied with their boards’ performance. As an example, among executive directors who said they spent less than five hours a month supporting the board, just 13 percent said they were very satisfied with the board’s performance. Among those who spent five to 10 hours per month on the board, 34 percent were very satisfied.

Taken together, these two findings suggest that many executives may be under-supporting their boards—and suffering the consequences.

And that, in part, is the paradox referenced in the title of the brief. Some executive directors view their work with the board as an unwelcome distraction from their “real” work. For that reason, they spend as little time on the board as possible, at the same time wondering out loud why the board can’t be more self-sufficient and why it doesn’t give them more help.

However, this “neglect and grumble” strategy doesn’t improve board performance. To get more out of their boards, executives need to invest more time.

I recognize that this is a tough sell for overextended executives. But our evidence suggests that it pays off.

Read original article at: http://philanthropy.com/blogs/against-the-grain/executive-directors-should-invest-more-time-on-their-boards/27845

SpaceFinderLA.org: Creative Spaces for Creative People is a new Web site that can help you find the space you need or help others find your space. Whether you are looking for rehearsal space orthat “wow” location foryour meeting or fundraiser, SpaceFinderLAoffers the ability to search by dozens of criteria and an inventory of over 300 venues in LA County and growing!

This service is free for both renters and seekers and currently lists more than 250 film locations, 210 special events spaces, 200 dance studios, 200 theatres, 150 audition spaces, 160 concert halls, 60 sprung floors, 40 screening rooms, and 20 orchestra pits!

· We strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to test drive this new resource!

· If you have a space to rent, list it! It takes only a few minutes and it's free.

· If you know colleagues with spaces to rent and/or space needs, please forward this email to them.

The success of this program relies on you. If you have comments or questions about SpaceFinderLA, please contact our friends at LA STAGE Alliance at info@lastagealliance.com or call 213.614.0556. Your feedback and comments will help to make the site stronger and more useful to the LA County arts community.

SpaceFinderLA is a partnership of the LA County Arts Commission, Fractured Atlas and LA STAGE Alliance.The Arts Commission is leading the partner engagement and marketing effort. Fractured Atlas is providing the back end programming and infrastructure for the database, which is based on the system created for NYC and sibling sites in Austin, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington DC. LA STAGE Alliance is providing the ongoing management, marketing, maintenance and customer service for the project.

SpaceFinderLA is made possible, in part, by support from The Angell Foundation, Arts Council for Long Beach, California Community Foundation, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Division, City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, MusiCares Foundation, and Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

The two previous studies in the series, released in 2001 and 2006, found that three-quarters of executives planned to leave their jobs within the next five years and that finance, fundraising, and weak boards contributed to burnout and turnover. The most recent study, Daring to Lead 2011, was conducted in the aftermath of a deep recession that continues to have a profound impact on nonprofits and their leaders.

More than 3,000 executive directors in 11 regions throughout the U.S. completed the online survey for Daring to Lead 2011, making it the largest study of executive directors conducted to date. The survey asked executives about their career paths, likely tenure, partnership with the board of directors, and the impact of the recession on their organizations. To supplement the survey, 70 executives participated in focus groups in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The percentage of respondents who said they were leaving their job within five years—67%—was somewhat lower than the 75% who said they planned to leave within five years in both previous studies, with executives' responses suggesting that the recession may have temporarily slowed executive departures. Nevertheless, a large majority of respondents continue to anticipate their departure within five years, making executive turnover and transition an ongoing concern for nonprofits, their boards, and other stakeholders.

Other significant findings:

Almost half of respondents (45%) said their boards had not reviewed their performance within the past year, and only 18% said that their performance review was useful.

Most respondents—84%—reported negative organizational impact from the recession, with one in five reporting significant negative impact.

Nearly half of respondents (46%) said their organizations had operating reserves of less than three months of expenses, even though three months is the minimum level of reserves suggested by most experts.

Executive coaching was ranked highest by respondents as a very effective professional development strategy, but just 10% of respondents were working with a coach.

The complete 20-page report can be downloaded at www.daringtolead.org.

Three briefs—Leading Through a Recession, Inside the Executive Director Job, and The Board Paradox—report additional findings. The interactive Daring to Lead website includes information about methodology, executive director demographics, and additional data.

Time:
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Register now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/673315386

This webinar training will demonstrate how to use HealthyCity.org to enhance your grant proposals and reports with visually impactful and relevant data, maps, and charts. Learn how to access data that highlights the needs and opportunities within your communities of interest and how to make the case that your program will make a difference. In this training you will learn how to:
- Gather data for your particular area of interest by creating your own community boundaries.
- Create maps and charts that provide the visual evidence to demonstrate both the need and potential within your community.
- Report your results - make the case that your program or project has had a positive and measurable impact.

Big donors like David H. Koch and George Soros may owe taxes on their millions of dollars in contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups that are playing an increasing role in American politics.

The Internal Revenue Service confirmed on Thursday that it had sent letters to five donors, who were not identified, informing them that their contributions may be subject to gift taxes.

These groups have been drawing more and more criticism, from President Obama as well as others, as they have proliferated and funneled vast sums of money in support of campaigns and causes, without having to publicly disclose their donors. During the midterm cycle, for example, groups like Crossroads GPS, which has ties to the Republican strategist Karl Rove, and Americans for Prosperity, backed by Mr. Koch and his brother Charles, were heavily involved in politicking, spurring campaign finance watchdogs to complain that they were largely unregulated and flouting election and nonprofit laws.

The organizations in question were established as nonprofit corporations under a section of the tax law, 501(c)(4), and the rules governing them say their primary purpose cannot be political. Unlike contributions to charities, however, donations to these groups have always been subject to a gift tax. But tax experts and campaign finance experts say the I.R.S. had not enforced that rule, until now.

The timing of the agency’s moves, as the 2012 election cycle gets under way, is prompting some tax law and campaign finance experts to question whether the I.R.S. could be sending a signal about big campaign donations to these groups in an effort to curtail them.

“There are a whole heck of a lot of people misusing (c)(4) groups as a means of getting around campaign finance regulations, and we lack a coherent system of laws to deal with that,” said Donald B. Tobin, a legal expert on the intersection of campaign finance and tax laws at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. “Now here’s a stick, frankly, that says there are consequences for doing that.”

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Michelle L. Eldridge, a spokeswoman for the I.R.S., said that the inquiries were initiated by agency employees, not Obama administration officials, “as part of their increased efforts in the area of nonfiling of gift and estate tax returns.”

And while tax lawyers who learned of the investigations have been issuing warnings to clients of potential trouble on a broader scale, the I.R.S. statement denied casting a wider net: “These examinations are not part of a broader effort looking at donations to 501(c)4s.”

The White House would not comment.

If the I.R.S. were to enforce the tax rule broadly, experts are sensing that it could act as a counterweight to tamp down donations on one side, as another anticipated set of big corporate, union and like-minded political contributions flood campaigns through the barriers lifted by last year’s Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case.
Both major political parties and candidates have benefited from these types of organizations, but the Republican groups grew in force and size after the 2008 election, partly in recognition of Mr. Obama’s proficiency at fund-raising.

For example, Mr. Rove’s group, one of the best known from the 2010 midterm cycle, raised $70 million. Americans for Prosperity, a libertarian group that provides a training ground for Tea Party activists and is opposed to many of President Obama’s policies, has been generously financed by David Koch, a billionaire.
But Democrats have embraced the model, too. Bill Burton, Mr. Obama’s former deputy press secretary, has been skewered by critics of these groups for announcing last month the creation of Priorities USA Action to help Democrats. In 2009 and 2010, Mr. Soros, the billionaire investor, donated more than $12 million to advocacy groups working on a variety of issues.

Whether Mr. Soros and other prominent donors have paid taxes on their contributions to such groups is unknown. A spokesman for Mr. Soros declined to comment. Representatives of the Kochs did not respond.
In general, individuals incur gift taxes of 35 percent on any amount exceeding $13,000 in a single year, while couples have to pay taxes after donating $26,000. Currently, there is a lifetime exemption that covers $5 million in gifts — which is scheduled to be reduced to $1 million in 2013 — but tax experts say many wealthy donors are likely to have already used that benefit in their estate plans.

The I.R.S. definitively declared these gifts taxable in 1982, but that rule has rarely been enforced, tax lawyers said. “That was their last word on it, so these letters just look like a sort of trap for the unwary, which is not fair,” said Ofer Lion, a lawyer who has written about the issue.

Last December, after the 2010 midterm elections, the I.R.S. division that oversees tax-exempt organizations did say that this year it would pay closer attention to them and to labor unions and business associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also were more politically active than in the past.

But officials of that division who attended a meeting of the American Bar Association’s subcommittee on political and lobbying organizations last Friday were surprised to find out that their colleagues in the estate and gift tax unit, typically regarded as a backwater at the agency, also had an increased interest, according to lawyers who were there.

“I don’t know how extensive this effort is, but I have one such client and I’ve spoken with others with clients who have received similar letters,” said Gregory L. Colvin, a lawyer specializing in nonprofit law. Ellen P. Aprill, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, noted that the gift tax division also had been asking states to provide records of property transfers between family members. “It could just be part of a general enforcement of the gift tax that is catching some of these donors,” Ms. Aprill said.

Other groups rarely entice gifts big enough to subject their donors to the gift tax, which is why many of them have established affiliated charities. Charities, unlike almost all other tax-exempt organizations, offer their donors a tax deduction and so attract the largest gifts.

Big donations to a previously popular category, the largely unregulated 527 groups that were influential in the 2004 election cycle, are not subject to the gift tax. “Congress specifically exempted donors to 527 organizations from the gift tax in 2000, but it didn’t exempt contributions to (c)(4) groups because there wasn’t an issue at the time,” said Alan P.

Dye, a lawyer who represents a number of conservative advocacy groups. “Citizens United has now made it an issue, and I think it’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out in Congress or the courts.”
In the meantime, Marcus S. Owens, a lawyer who represents nonprofits and who formerly headed the I.R.S. division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, predicted that the tax agency’s moves would be watched warily by contributors. “The lack of clarity and the potential for not-insignificant taxation on these gifts will cause many of the biggest donors to think twice,” he warned.

Read the original posting at the New York Times website
 

More than 11,000 nonprofit professionals filled out this year'sNonprofit Social Network Benchmark Survey, sponsored by NTEN, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud, generating a veritable cornucopia of data.

One of our favorite stats: more than half of nonprofits have no formal budget for commercial social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, making it all the more impressive that 30% of the organizations that have raised more than $100,000 on Facebook have budgets under $5 million.

Other highlights:
Nine out of 10 respondents(89%) report having a presence on Facebook in 2011.

Nonprofit industry sentiment toward social networks remains very positive with 4 out of 5 (82%) nonprofits indicating that they find their commercial social networking efforts valuable.

The community size of nonprofit house social networks (HSNs) is on the rise with an average of 5,967 members in 2011, a 70% increase year-over-year.

Over half (55%) of nonprofits who have a house social network report that the role of their community is for Program and Service delivery, eclipsing Marketing (49%) for the first time as the primary purpose for charity house network.

Click Here to go to N-Ten website to download the report

LBNP Membership Directory

View all LBNP Member Organizations with live links to their websites and more!

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In response to state government cuts to public services and efforts to shift the balance of power in employment relations, organized efforts around the country have emerged to oppose such actions, including ballot measures and recall elections. AFJ has a new factsheet to help nonprofits better understand whether and to what extent 501(c)(3) public charities, 501(c)(4)s, and unions can participate in ballot measures andrecall elections.

Click on the link to find our new fact sheet: Ballot Measures and Recalls: Basic Rules for 501(c)(3) Public Charities, 501(c)(4)s, and Unions

© 2011 Alliance for Justice

When Too Much Rigor Leads to Rigor Mortis: Valuing Experience, Judgment and Intuition in Nonprofit Management

February 17, 2011
Steven Lawry

This article was originally published on July 12, 2010 on the website of The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.

Several powerful donors have concluded that nonprofits make inadequate use of impact assessment tools. They are backing up their arguments with an implicit threat: measure in particular ways or you don’t get the money. Wise nonprofit leaders know that the problems they work on are not susceptible to simple measurement. They know that the kind of formal impact measures some donors expect and management consulting firms prescribe are hard to come by honestly. They collect various data all the time to inform their judgment and decision-making and to spur learning.

Now, data collection (to donor-specified standards) is increasingly used for accountability purposes.

This may have the effect of reducing the degrees of freedom nonprofit leaders have to innovate and to pursue promising but risky ideas (without the fear that failure to prove one idea will poison their chances to learn from that failure and try something else another day). As former Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford argues, insisting that grantees demonstrate measurable, short-term impact can have the effect of “miniaturizing ambition” for doing risky but potentially break-through work.

People who impose these restrictions confuse use of prescribed tools or achievement of certain outcomes as evidence of good management. Sometimes they are. But, in and of themselves, they hardly constitute an impressive tool kit of good management practice.

The good judgment of experienced managers, deeply immersed in the complex social dynamics of the communities in which they work, is a formidable and essential resource in assessing impacts. Experience and tested judgment also come into play in shaping a picture of the complex variety of social factors that might explain, for instance, why some poor children and not others attend school, or what mix of interventions are most likely to keep kids out of trouble with the police.

Effective nonprofit managers get information from a variety of sources: formal studies, observation of trends in behavior, feedback from partners and clients. They also draw on deep reserves of knowledge of the local social context, of cultural norms and values, and on the ability to empathize, to look at the world through the eyes of others.

These sources of knowledge are particularly important in shaping untested but potentially innovative, breakthrough approaches to social change. Effective leaders first and foremost seek to explain how a given problem is responding to a given set of interventions. Data help describe what is happening, but the interpretative powers of managers are essential to meaningful explanation.

One of my favorite examples (see working paper here ) of the kinds of insights that arise from observation, judgment and experience is the particular knowledge that Muhammad Yunus gained from walking through poor communities around Chittagong University in Bangladesh on his daily walk to work. His knowledge of rural Bangladeshi society, combined with his advanced training and powers of intuition, spawned his ideas on social lending, or what became known as micro-finance.

The invention of micro-finance demonstrates that breakthrough innovations, and even simple adjustments to well-established programs, are spawned by a variety of sources and intellectual attributes: data, data intelligently interpreted, knowledge of the local and comparative contexts, and good judgment. All four of these factors are essential to shaping development breakthroughs. Donors should give greater weight to the latter three over the first in considering funding proposals.

A recently published book on the use of applied mathematics to help understand messy, hard-to-measure problems speaks to the importance of experience and judgment in making sense of limited data. The book is “Street-Fighting Mathematics: the Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving,” by Dr. Sanjoy Mahajan. Dr. Mahajan is associate director of MIT’s Teaching and Learning Laboratory and the book grew out of a course by the same name that Dr. Mahajan taught for several years at MIT.

The basic premise of his approach, set out in the books first sentence, is that “Too much rigor teaches rigor mortis: the fear of making an unjustified leap even when it lands on the correct result.” Many real-world problems are not easily described with the kind of precision that professional mathematicians insist upon. This is due to the limitations of data, the costs of collecting and analyzing data, and the inherent difficulties of giving mathematical expression to the complexity of human behavior. In the face of these obstacles, mathematicians tend to do one of two things: insist on finding the true proof, even in the face of huge methodological constraints (rigor mortis) or give up.

Mahajan counsels a third-way: using mathematical reasoning to find a good-enough, approximate and usually valid and useful answer; or as Dr. Mahajan so adeptly puts it, “When the going gets tough, the tough lower their standards.” His book describes six tools for better understanding complex problems with limited data, including picture proofs, lumping, and reasoning by analogy.

There is wisdom in Dr. Mahajan’s core argument that is relevant to current debates about the place of impact assessment in program management. Many problems, especially problems of social analysis, present huge problems of description and accurate measurement. We can learn much of what we need to know by tracking a few data points, but knowledge of the underlying social forces and personal motivations that frame the decisions people make is essential to specifying what should be measured and interpreting findings wisely.

My concerns about the emphasis some donors give to evaluation and impact assessment lie not in their lack of value, but in a skewing of perspective. I want to sum up with a few thoughts on getting the perspective in better balance.

* Knowledge of the local context and the insights spawned by that knowledge are hard won and accumulated over many years. External donors and many of their staff too often don’t possess such knowledge. For large Western donors, reliance on data and impact measures can be a crutch, a substitute for the knowledge of local context they don’t have.

* Lack of knowledge of context contributes to an overreliance on one-size-fits-all interventions based on experience from elsewhere, resulting in poorly-adapted local project design. An obvious remedy is to place greater trust in the leadership and judgment of people who live and work close to the problems; local educators, entrepreneurs, civil society leaders.

* Evaluation is first and foremost a learning tool, of greatest value as an aid to the judgment of program leaders and managers. The work of donors also stands to benefit from the knowledge that grantees gain in assessing changes within the communities they work and progress in pursuing particular goals.

* Of greatest relevance to predicting the merits and eventual success of a proposed grantee initiative are the wisdom, experience, judgment and reputation of the grantee organization and its leadership and staff. These are the important qualities that should be considered when contemplating a grant. (William Duggan’s book, “Strategic Intuition,” examines the qualities of leadership and management that spawn systemic impacts.)

* Donors who insist on short-term measurable impact should stay away from funding work that seeks breakthroughs on complex, long-intractable problems.

Steven Lawry is the Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.

Starting January 1, 2011, California requires tax-exempt organizations that normally have annual gross receipts of $25,000 or less to e-file an annual informational notice, Form 199-N (also known as the "California e-Postcard"), with the Franchise Tax Board (FTB).

There is no fee to file the return and it is very easy to complete. The online form requests basic information such as: Organization's name,mailing and website address California Corporation number and EIN Tax year begin and end dates Name and address of a principal officer Amount of total gross receipts for the year Contact person's name and telephone number While there is no penalty for failure to file the notice, an organization that fails to file for three consecutive years will automatically lose its California tax-exempt status and be subject to the $800 minimum franchise tax. An organization that loses its California tax-exempt status must file FTB Form 3500, pay a $25 application fee and obtain approval to regain its tax-exempt status. However, any income received between the revocation date and the renewed exemption date may be taxable. Furthermore, the organization may also lose and need to reapply for other exemptions that depend on California tax-exempt status, such as exemptions from local and/or property taxes.

By Lucy Bernholz

Buzzwords are fleeting things. They come in and go out, are first hot and then not. However, looked at over time, buzzwords also provide a useful rear-view roadmap of how we got here.

Taken together, the 10 phrases I have chosen to show the long steady rise in market-based solutions for social problem solving, technology’s infiltration of all things fund raising, and a shift in attention from local to global.

Following, in descending order of importance, are the 10 philanthropy buzzwords that define the decade.

Number 10: Donate-now buttons

Remember writing checks, stamping envelopes, and mailing off your donations? Way back in the 1990s that’s how we gave money. Filling in credit card numbers on a direct-mail appeal reply card was high-tech, just a notch above throwing your coins into the swinging red kettle.

Donate-now buttons on Web sites got their start in 1999 and really took off in 2001 when AOL, Cisco, and Yahoo started Network for Good.

Number 9: Prize philanthropy

It used to be the biggest philanthropic honors were those you couldn’t apply for - like the Nobel Prize or the MacArthur “genius” award. That all changed in 2004 when SpaceShipOne, a privately built and piloted craft, completed its second orbit of the earth and won the $10-million X Prize. Since then foundations and corporations have fallen over themselves offering cash prizes for social change. There are challenges for wireless news tools, clean-water carriers, digital learning games, and much more. Philanthropists love prizes because they don’t pay out until you solve the problem.

Number 8: Celebvocates

Nonprofits have always loved celebrity backers. Nowadays, star status requires that every movie actor, utility infielder, and aspiring politician find a charitable cause to love. Ceaseless, blatant self- promotion in the name of hungry children, sad diseases, and cute animals is ceaseless, blatant self-promotion we can all stand behind.

In fact, here-let me wear your T-shirt, carry your tote bag, and tweet a gift to your organization so you can take credit for my generosity.

Number 7: Microvolunteering

Mom used to bake cookies for the PTA and serve on committees for the church. Now she edits marketing copy for the local animal shelter while waiting for the bus and helps NASA identify craters on the moon during boring department meetings. Microvolunteering, the art of donating time in 20-minute increments, comes to us via our smart phones-which we also rely on to organize protests and tweet our bikeathon fund-raising totals.

Number 6: Philanthrocapitalism

Nonprofits should be more like businesses. Giving should be more like investing. And capitalism should be more creative just so long as it continues to let some people get crazy wealthy so they can give some of it back to others.

Philanthrocapitalism, a term coined by Mathew Bishop and Michael Green and used as the name of their 2008 book, celebrates the coming together of business skills and structures with a focus on solving the world’s shared social problems.

Number 5: B Corporation

For entrepreneurs trying to run businesses with a social purpose, corporate structure has been one of the persistent challenges.

Organize as a nonprofit and you’ll be forever capital constrained, organize as a commercial enterprise and you risk losing your mission to investors. Since 2006, a group called B Lab has enabled B corporations (the B stands for benefit) to gain traction around the country and lead a revolution in corporate operations. Corporate code may not be sexy, but these new efforts stand to attract billions of dollars in new investments in social businesses.

Number 4: Impact investing

Impact investing is the active form of socially responsible investing- seeking out commercial investments that return social good and profits. First named in 2008, this marketplace is estimated to grow to $1-trillion in opportunities by 2020. In the midst of global financial collapse the impact-investing realm did more than keep its head above water; it grew in both name recognition and assets.

Number 3: Embedded giving

A pejorative term for cause-related marketing, a term of art coined in 1983 to promote a campaign to repair the Statue of Liberty, embedded giving describes this decade’s approach to adding charitable donations to sales transactions. Choose one iPod over another to give to AIDS?

That’s embedded giving. During the holiday season that just wrapped up, there was no escaping the pressure to add a dollar to your checkout total or buy Aunt Martha the sweater that will help save the seals. Embedded giving is great for retailers, even if the jury’s still out on how well it serves good causes. And the seals? Well, they don’t care what sweater you wear as long as you stop eating all their fish.

Number 2: Microfinance

Thirty years ago, Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi banker, started lending money to groups of women with no collateral. In 2006 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, helping to make microfinance a household world.

After hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, several companies that specialize in microfinance going public, and some scandal, and you have the field of microfinance. Once the realm of nonprofits with large philanthropic supporters, microfinance is now a mix of commercial bankers and small donors. Sites like Kiva make it possible for anyone with a credit card to be a global lender.

Despite its enormous growth and cachet, we still don’t know how well microfinance helps the poor.

Number 1: Social entrepreneurs

In 2000 few people had ever heard of social entrepreneurs. Many would have defined a social entrepreneur as a very friendly business leader.

A decade later, Kiva’s founders are on Oprah, PBS, and NPR, universities offer degrees in social entrepreneurship, and U.S. presidents both present and past laud social entrepreneurs.

The universal reach of the term results from the legitimate accomplishments of leaders like Jacqueline Novogratz (founder of the Acumen Fund) and Muhammad Yunus and massive investments from philanthropists like Jeff Skoll and Pierre Omidyar.

Forget the fact that no one can agree on a common definition, social entrepreneurs are still the hottest game in town and the buzzword of the decade.

What does the decade ahead hold? Look for the nonprofit world to become the “impact economy,” for the Securities and Exchange Commission to get involved in regulating investments in social enterprises, and for interactive data visualization to become the standout feature of effective nonprofit fund-raising pitches.

Lucy Bernholz is founder of Blueprint Research & Design, in San Francisco, a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

Originally published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy