#OccupyCharity

Your Working Girl can sympathize with her sisters and brothers in the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  And as a close neighbour of Occupy St. James’ Park in Toronto, she spent the day on Wednesday simultaneously hearing the church bells peal on live radio reports and through her open window.  She understands and has herself, impatiently tapped her Nine Wests declaring “I’m not leaving here until I get some answers” or, alternatively, when her children were younger, “You’re not leaving here until I get some answers.”  The world is going to heck in a hand basket and the protesters are quite right to be pointing this out.  And the woeful paroxysms of world leaders who shake their heads, wring their hands and look grief-stricken when they face down their own greed, bankruptcy and sovereign debt has lost its lustre.    (Where is that fainting couch?)

And the charitable sector is providing no nourishment for Your Working Girl’s soul.  Sadly, she felt no relief when news of the University of Toronto’s $2 billion campaign appeared in the Globe and Mail on Monday.  According to the newspaper, U of T “has a hole of more than $1 billion in its pension plan.”  (Those pesky pension plans.)

But to give the campaign context, the university rolled out the requisite students who’ve received $3000 scholarships and university president, Dr. David Naylor, was on message with his case.  “Many of the things that are troubling this hot and crowded planet are very complex, interconnected, transdisciplinary challenges, from urbanization to global health, from sectarian strife to sustainable energy,” he said.

“All these big themes that have engaged the world’s finest research universities have to be built off a base that has some real heft across disciplines.  Happily we have it.”

Well, if Your Working Girl could make a suggestion about what Dr. Naylor can do with that transdisciplinary heft, she might suggest they put their heads together to see if they might be able to solve that little problem of First Nations children having no clean water to drink. 

Or maybe Sick Children’s Hospital can pause for a second while it’s raising $400 million for The Research and Learning Tower which will “stand as a testament to the past, present and future scientific achievements of SickKids [and] be an architectural landmark joining the list of major projects developed by star architects,” according to the campaign website. 

Perhaps it could consider the potential contribution the hospital can make in the community it serves.  How can we do better for children with mental illness who get sicker while languishing on wait lists for example, or how we can help the tens of thousands of children who are living in poverty or violence.

Or maybe CAMH which is limping through its $100 million campaign for a new development on Queen St West, and is celebrating receiving $20 million for its Research Imaging Centre, can think about the irony of its going to court to argue that mentally ill patients should stay in jail while they wait to be assessed at the hospital. 

Meanwhile back at the ranch, organizations are pulling their hair out to raise money to keep a helpline going for people who are suicidal or open an after school program for children who have no one at home to see to their needs or provide a safe place for troubled street kids, housing for the homeless and shelter for women who are abused. 

Your Working Girl, who admittedly has always had a soft spot for the big idea, believes people in our profession have skills that can be brought to bear on enhancing public health and the common good.  So instead of building towers and fortresses and raising money for medical equipment that may or may not be necessary, we can turn those skills to truly making a difference in people’s lives and their chances for success and happiness, especially the lives of children, a demographic for whom Your Working Girl retains a particular fondness.

It’s a time for talking to friends and colleagues about how to influence what’s going in the sector and about what’s important.  AFP’s and Imagine Canada have their big conferences next week.  It’s time to stand your ground and . . . . well . . . . #OccupyCharity. 

One final reminder:  Your Working Girl’s presentation, Shooting ourselves in the foot, is happening on November 28 at 2:00.  If you’re an AFP delegate, you can register for the session.  If you’re not already a delegate, AFP is offering a great deal on a day-rate which does include lunch (and other speakers too). Click on this link:  AFP Congress.

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The hits just keep on coming

Charity Intelligence has had pretty a good week.  On Tuesday, November 15th, the most widely read newspaper in the country, the Toronto Star (average weekday circulation of 436,694) printed what looked like a verbatim Charity Intelligence press release referring to the launch of its "first-of-its-kind search engine to help Canadians decide where to donate.” (Are the CRA’s ears burning wonders Your Working Girl.)

In the article, Audit of charities encounters resistance  Charity Intelligence offers up the names of 19 out of 100 organizations they looked at who “refused to make their financial statements public”, the 14 charities with the highest cost of fundraising and the 25 organizations with the biggest reserve funds.  Now please understand Your Working Girl.  She is as ticked off as anyone that the Hospital for Sick Children Foundation sits on more than half a billion dollars in assets while children with autism go untreated in this city or that thousands of children sit on never ending waiting lists for mental health services.  And she believes the Foundation needs to answer the question is it an investment fund or a charity? 

But the increasing prominence of a small, unaccountable group, the space they’re taking up as the go-to guys for a response on a charity story (made possible because charities refuse to pick up the phone) and their increasing ability to set the agenda on the charity debate is a pebble in Your Working Girl’s shoe.

Charity Intelligence was launched in 2006 by equity analyst Kate Behan.   And we’ve been hearing intermittent bleats from them for the past 18 months.  The bleats have now graduated into a dull roar and their website hints at their approach, “Just as a financial analyst researches potential stocks to find the best investment opportunities, [Charity Intelligence] uses similar research methods to find exceptional charities for donors.”

Most of their small board is made up investment advisors and CFAs .  Brookfield Asset Management is represented as is Thornmark Asset Management and gold-mining company, Rainy River Resources. One of their directors, Peter Crowley is the Senior VP, Operations & Director of School Performance Studies at the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank that has been described as “conservative” and “right-wing libertarian”.  The Institute is opposed to gun control legislation and has seen its share of controversy.  They were criticized by health professionals in 1999 because of their affiliation with organizations trying to de-bunk the link between smoking and cancer.  They have also been accused of undercutting public schooling through its school ranking program.  They criticize climate change science and offer educational material that encourages children to be skeptical of mainstream science.

Armed with a brand new website and a whole lot of attitude, Charity Intelligence’s recent ascent as the media darling of charitable sector commentary seemed to be cemented when the Globe and Mail (circulation 374,000 on Saturdays) featured a half page article as part of its series on philanthropy referring to Charity Intelligence as “an organization [that] attempts to help charitable donors by researching and report on which charities use their donations most effectively” and included a large picture of their director of research Greg Thomson.  

Michael  Enright’s national radio show, Sunday Edition also featured Charity Intelligence prominently this week in a feature called Faith, Hope and Charities, “a special examination of the economics of cancer – how the money is collected and how it is spent.”

The 45-minute segment featured Karen Greve-Young whose day job is Director of Strategic Initiatives at MaRS Discovery Centre.  But she wasn’t there on behalf of MaRS.  She was representing Charity Intelligence as an author of a report called on Cancer in Canada Phase One.   And, according to Ms Greve-Young, the best cancer charity to receive your donation is the one with the lowest administration costs.  Phase Two of the report will be naming those charities.

Three cancer charities were interviewed after Ms Greve-Young’s introduction.  The B.C./Yukon branch of the Canadian Cancer Society (which incidentally was named by Charity Intelligence as one of 14 groups with the highest cost of fundraising) was represented by CEO, Barbara Kaminsky, and Colorectal Cancer of Canada by President, Barry Stein; CEO Elizabeth Ross sat in for Ovarian Cancer of Canada.  

They did okay.  Barry Stein was particularly clear when he said, “this is a business of marketing.”  But, to put it bluntly, and with all due respect to Ms Kaminsky, Mr. Stein and Ms Ross, these three organizations are not the leaders of the organizations who are collecting and spending the hundreds of millions dollars going through the medical-industrial cancer care complex every year.  Where were those people? 

Charities will cry foul over Charity Intelligence.  But it’s precisely because charities have consistently erred on the side of arrogance and have stubbornly refused to – and continue to refuse to – answer for their activities that have given people like those inside Charity Intelligence the opening they need to advocate for re-making the charitable sector.  (And not in a nice way.)  

Nature abhors a vacuum.  So does leadership and communications.  If you’re not filling it, someone else will.   (And not in a nice way.)

In her lecture, Shooting ourselves in the foot, at AFP’s upcoming congress, Your Working Girl will be speaking more on this issue on November 28^th at 2:00.  If you are attending the conference, pop by.  She would love to see you. 

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