Helen Brown Group

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Giving Collaboratives – a podcast

Have you been following the emergence and exponential growth of giving collaboratives? Giving collaboratives can be individuals, foundations, NGOs, and others that join forces (and their finances) around a particular cause or toward a shared goal.

Angie Stapleton

Elizabeth Roma

This is an emerging phenomenon in philanthropy that caught the attention of two HBG team members, Elizabeth Roma and Angie Stapleton, who deeply researched and presented on the topic at the 2017 Apra Regional Conference (ARC). Part of their presentation included an 18-page companion guide to Giving Collaboratives, now available in the Learning Media Library here on our website.

I sat down with Elizabeth and Angie yesterday to ask them to tell me more about Giving Collaboratives and the resource they compiled, and recorded our conversation in this podcast so that you can hear as well:

 Whatever it is that you are looking to fund…there is a group of people out there who are looking to fund it” – Elizabeth Roma

Elizabeth and Angie will also lead an Apra Best Practice Webcast on the topic called “Collective Giving: Philanthropy as a Team Sport” on Monday May 15th at 1:00 PM ET. If you can’t make that day and time, look for the recording on the Apra website under Apra University.

For further reading: 

One of the resources Elizabeth and Angie mention in the podcast is The Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers and their report More Giving Together.

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The New Gilded Age

The number of gifts of $10 million-plus at universities are at an all-time high, according to a Marts & Lundy study. Beyond lending just their names or faces to events, an increasing number of celebrities are putting in volunteer time and money for the causes they care about. And new forms of giving vehicles like LLCs are emerging to meet donors’ needs for flexibility. Articles about philanthropy are increasingly in the main stream news, describing how giving is changing our society – in fractal patterns. This week I’m delighted to welcome HBG Assistant Research Director Elizabeth Roma to the blog to help share her thoughts and expertise on our new Gilded Age.

Elizabeth Roma

When I started college in the mid-1990s, I had no idea what I wanted to study, but I knew that I liked to read and think. After taking a variety of core liberal arts classes during my freshman year, I concluded that majoring in English would allow me to spend four years doing just that, and I loved (almost) every minute of it.

I still like to read and think (and I bet you do too if you’re reading this blog), and it turns out that I managed to stumble into a job that allows me to do just that—and even get paid for it! (Side note for those soon-to-be liberal arts graduates—and their parents, siblings, grandparents, spouses, etc.: maybe prospect development is the career for you!) [Read more…]

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The most popular articles of 2016 from The Intelligent Edge

I’m going to get to the top posts of 2016 in just a second, but as we bid goodbye to 2016 – a rollercoaster year if ever there was one – we at The Helen Brown Group wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

To our clients, thank you for making 2016 our best year yet. Your missions – and your personal dedication to them – inspire us to do our best work for you. Our appreciation also goes out to the kind folks who point others in our direction – grateful thanks for your referrals.

To our 1,200+ Intelligent Edge subscribers and to the readers who drop by, thanks for signing up, for reading, and for your comments, both on and offline. Two years ago, our mailing list comprised 65 hearty souls! We couldn’t be prouder of the way our readership has grown or thank our wonderful guest bloggers enough. Thank you.

We also really appreciate our vendor partners, who make the great tools we use and who share our commitment to using quality information to make the world a better place.

And to our colleagues in the prospect development community – thank you so much for your support and for the part you play in building and growing this wonderful profession.

And now, to our top five… [Read more…]

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Foundation Research – a free tutorial

One of the things that makes me so proud of our profession is the way we so eagerly share tips, tools, tactics, and techniques with each other. At APRA International and chapter conferences, you can just feel the excitement in the rooms. Even in webinars and tweetchats, there’s still a vibe somehow.

So in honor of #ResearchPride month, my colleague Elizabeth Roma and I recorded a video podcast for you on researching grant-makers, including foundations and donor-advised funds. Here’s our webinar on “Researching Foundations” – we hope you enjoy it:

Here at HBG, we’re also preparing for more teaching this spring and summer:

  • In April, I’ll be leading a panel on relationship management at the NEDRA conference. Tara McMullen will also be moderating a panel on “Ten Years of Prospect Research, Management and Data at MIT.”
  • In July, there will be two teaching teams from HBG at the APRA conference! Angie Stapleton and I will lead a half-day workshop on “Advanced Web Searching,” and Elizabeth Roma and Rachel Dakarian will be ripping news from the headlines on high net worth individuals in their session “Strategic Vision for Today’s Philanthropic Realities.”

We hope you can join us. We’re excited to be sharing our knowledge and looking forward to learning from you, too.

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How Dodd-Frank Affects Your Top Donors

This week we welcome back HBG Senior Researcher Kenny Tavares to the blog. Earlier this year, Kenny and fellow HBG senior researcher Elizabeth Roma shared their extensive research on family offices in a podcast. In this week’s article, Kenny shares more about the legislation affecting hedge funds and family offices, and how this could impact the philanthropic landscape.

Frankenstein-Poster

With Halloween approaching, the time is right for a scary topic! Pull up a chair and let me tell you about the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, aka Dodd-Frankenstein. Wait, no, sorry. I meant Dodd-Frank. [Read more…]

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Billions of Possibilities

This month, I’m delighted that HBG Senior Researcher Elizabeth Roma shares her insights on Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWI) and their potential to affect transformational change in the world through philanthropy. Elizabeth and Kenny Tavares have been studying the infrastructure and impact of HNW Family Offices, and she will present a session on the topic in June at the Mid-Atlantic Researchers Conference in Baltimore.  I hope you’ll be able to join her there!

Rockefeller

Do you want to hear something that will blow your mind?

In 2010 there were 388 billionaires whose combined wealth was equal to the combined wealth of the poorest 50% of the world’s population.

Amazing, right? But that’s nothing.

In 2014 there were 80 people whose combined wealth equaled that of the poorest 50%. According to a report from Oxfam, the wealth of those 80 people has doubled since 2009. If these trends continue, Oxfam predicts that the richest 1% will have more wealth than the remaining 99% by 2016 (yes, that’s next year).

Things are changing, and not necessarily for the better (at least not for those of us in the 99%). But does this have to be all bad news? [Read more…]

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