Nonprofits and Philanthropy

Prior to joining CNE, Ms. Nardi was in private practice in Charlottesville, providing legal counsel to small businesses and nonprofits locally. Ms. Nardi started her career as a Peace Corps volunteer teacher in Botswana, Africa, and went on to manage the Uganda office of Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance, an international nonprofit providing technical expertise to local cooperatives, farmers, and agribusinesses. After returning to the United States, Ms. Nardi worked for a national women’s health advocacy organization, directing policy programs and providing legal and policy expertise to affiliates, legislators, and community organizations across the country. A native of the Shenandoah Valley, Ms. Nardi received a BA in English from UVA and her law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She and her family live on a farm in Nelson County where they grow organic blueberries, raise chickens and try to keep ahead of the weeds.

Ms. Nardi began her career as a Peace Corps volunteer teacher in Botswana, Africa and then later managed the Uganda Office of Volunteers in overseas cooperative assistance, an international nonprofit providing technical expertise to local cooperatives, farmers and agribusinesses. Upon returning to the U.S. she worked for a national woman’s health advocacy organization directing policy programs and providing legal and policy expertise to affiliates, legislators and community organizations across the country. Cristine Nardi, a Shenandoah Valley native received a BA in English from the University of Virginia and a JD from the University of Wisconsin Madison. She and her family reside in Nelson County. Today we’re going to discuss the vital work undertaken by nonprofits and philanthropy looking specifically at the dynamic Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Charlottesville. We will also consider the inevitable evolution of nonprofits in a world of ever increasing budgetary constraints and funding cuts. In a challenged economic environment, we need to find positive solutions so that the nonprofit world may continue to thrive and grow. Cristine will be our knowledgeable and experienced guide as we look at productive ways forward for our communities in the interest of the public good. Welcome again, Cristine.

Cristine Nardi: Thank you for having me.

Jan Paynter: Before we begin our broader discussion of the workings of the CNE and the evolution of nonprofits and philanthropy in general, what brought you to your strong commitment to nonprofits?

Cristine Nardi: Well, I would say that nonprofits and philanthropy really were a family value for my family growing up. My mother was involved in starting the first battered women’s shelter in the early 70s in the town where I lived and I as a young teenager was able to be the first babysitter for the women who were staying in the shelter and involved in group meetings. So starting from that point, volunteerism and philanthropy have always been a strong commitment of mine and then when I moved onto my career, the nonprofit world and a mission driven kind of community oriented environment was one where I felt like best fit my values.

Jan Paynter: When you visualize the face of nonprofits, Cristine, give us some examples of who and what they look like.

Cristine Nardi: Well, the interesting I think and most dynamic thing about the nonprofit sector is that nonprofits—many people think about nonprofits as providing a social safety net for the community. Nonprofits do that but they also enhance our quality of life, they promote civic engagement, they enrich us with arts, education and culture and they also are economic engines in our community. So when I think of nonprofits, the thing that I say when I’m educating people about nonprofits is, ‘Look around you. You’ve either worked for, volunteered with or been served by a nonprofit. If you’ve participated in the arts on the downtown mall, you’ve been involved in a nonprofit. If you’ve volunteered at the food bank, you’ve been involved in a nonprofit. If you volunteered to teach at your kid’s school or to read to a student, to mentor someone through the Boys and Girls Club, you’ve been involved in a nonprofit’. So really it’s the infrastructure of our society.

Jan Paynter: How do you see nonprofits as a spur to economic growth in communities?

Cristine Nardi: Well, oftentimes when there’s conversations about the economics in a community, nonprofits are not seated at the table. Nonprofits, just like their for-profit business counterparts are economic engines in our community. The latest research on nonprofits in our area show that they are responsible for over 6% of employment for our workforce and a large amount of revenue is expended in the economy as a result of nonprofits participating in business affairs day to day. So often when people think about nonprofits, they think about charity and they think about volunteers but they don’t necessarily think that nonprofits are actually helping to not only support our community but also feed and clothe our families.

Jan Paynter: When I was looking at statistics from the Nonprofit Quarterly which is really excellent, I—it was fascinating to see that this sector employs by many estimates as many as 15 million people and this comes from the healthcare research and quarterly and that upwards of 60 million people will volunteer with nonprofit organizations, which is actually more than a quarter of the U.S. population over the age of 16, which is astonishing. The nonprofit sector addresses upwards of 46 million people living on $23,000 or less a year. So obviously, right, very important. One of the things I wanted to ask you, Cristine, because the number that I saw cited said that a third of nonprofit revenues come from federal grants. Is this figure current, is it likely to be revised downward going forward do you think?

Cristine Nardi: Well, I think that’s one of the great challenges for the nonprofit sector and frankly for our country is the role of government in our society and I think when you look specifically at nonprofits, nonprofits, if they’re thinking about their sustainability, must be thinking about their relationship with government and specifically those nonprofits that do provide a social safety net, they often are predominately funded by government. And with the budget crisis that we’ve had over the last couple years and likely will continue to have, I think it’s fair to say the government funding is something that can’t be relied on in the way that it has been in the past. And so nonprofits that are engaging with us around funding innovation are thinking very seriously about how to have a strong relationship with government but also how to think through other ways that they might bring resources in to serve their missions.

Jan Paynter: Ah, be creative, hmm?

Cristine Nardi: Absolutely.

Jan Paynter: Tell us if you would now about the history of the CNE. How was it founded, who founded it, what are some things that it does, who does it serve?

Cristine Nardi: So CNE was founded in 2006 and it was founded by a woman by the name of Wendy Brown who is a Darden grad and I consider her to be a real social entrepreneur. She engaged other community minded members of this area to start a nonprofit and the reason for that is they saw a need that wasn’t being met in the nonprofit sector. We talked a little bit earlier about the wide impact that nonprofits have in our community from social safety net to economic support and what this group found was that—they found that individuals came to nonprofits because they had a passion for the mission and nonprofits often have very important and critical missions to the community but often time nonprofits lack time, they lack resources and sometimes they lack business acumen to have the greatest impact. And so CNE was founded in asking the question, what if the nonprofit sector had the tools, training and resources it needed to have the most impact in the community—a simple question. And the answer to that question became the Center for Nonprofit Excellence. And so today what we focus on is helping to support the leadership, management and collaboration of nonprofits both individually and across the community.

Jan Paynter: Ah, that’s great. When you’re starting—when an individual’s starting a nonprofit, what are some of the greatest challenges that people face?

Cristine Nardi: Well, one of the things that I say to individuals and groups that come to the CNE and are thinking about starting a nonprofit, those individuals and those groups of individuals are usually what I would consider entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs. They see a need that’s not being met in the community and they are willing to take risks to satisfy that need. But the interesting thing about becoming a nonprofit is, the moment you become a nonprofit it’s no longer your idea. In order for a nonprofit to be successful, it has to be embraced by the community and so you need to very quickly get support from donors, you need to get support from individuals who are willing to serve on your board, you need to get support from community members who will become your clients and your volunteers. And so nonprofit entrepreneurs don’t often think about the fact that in order to make their idea successful they then need to engage the community and if they become a nonprofit, they need to have an administrative and overhead structure that may not be something that is what is most interesting to them about the process.

Jan Paynter: I know that oftentimes when people come in to start a nonprofit, it’s suggested to them that they consider partnering with an existing nonprofit. Why is that an advantage for people starting out?

Cristine Nardi: Well, for that very reason that it does take real commitment and real business acumen to be able to both pursue your entrepreneurial idea to meet a need in the community and also to create the wrapping around it, the administrative structure and the overhead. And so if you’re able to bring your program into another nonprofit that has a similar mission or if you’re able to become say an affiliate of an existing nonprofit, then what you’re able to do is essentially be adopted administratively and from an overhead standpoint so that you can keep your focus on whatever the need is that you’re trying to address. You can do that by partnering with another nonprofit, you could do that by looking for opportunities for fiscal sponsorship with another nonprofit organization. And fiscal sponsorship as you may know is contracting with another nonprofit organization to provide administrative, tax and legal support. You can also do that, if you have a passion for something and you have funds, you can think about funding the community foundation or a donor advised fund so that you can direct your passion and your funds to a nonprofit that exists that could actually achieve that goal.

Jan Paynter: It’s interesting and I can see how an existing nonprofit with experience would also be a kind of mentoring experience for a fledgling nonprofit.

Cristine Nardi: Exactly.

Jan Paynter: At the larger organizational level, how can and do local businesses increasingly partner with nonprofits and this is an area that’s somewhat tricky because in reading about this I noted that a lot of people worry about for-profit and nonprofit coming not necessarily into conflict but it—but it could challenge the mission of the nonprofit.

Cristine Nardi: Sure. The big talk now in the nonprofit sector is the blurring of the lines…

Jan Paynter: Exactly.

Cristine Nardi: …between for-profit and nonprofit and hybrid types of organizations. Well, I would answer that question in two ways. The first would be partnerships happen in the ways that you would ordinarily expect them to and I put that in the cat—this in the category of corporate social responsibility. So businesses, small or large, are approached or do approach the nonprofit sector to provide volunteers who may be employees, to donate things that may be in kind or financially to a program or an event and even to serve on nonprofit boards. Those sorts of things are typical ways that individuals and companies can engage with the nonprofit sector to improve the community and the advantage of that is that it makes your employees happier if they feel like the passions that they have for the community they’re actually able to exercise through their work. But the partnerships that I think are most dynamic are those that really do have mutual benefit and I think mutual benefit is always possible when you have partnerships and you should always look for it. So I’ll give you two specific examples. The first example is one that I’m aware of of a local inn in the area and what they do is they have their employees each year choose a nonprofit that they want to “adopt” for the year. So the employees are very engaged in looking out into the community and seeing what nonprofit they want to be involved with and then the nonprofit is very engaged in educating those employees about the kinds of work that it’s doing, the services it’s providing in the community and making their knowledge of the community greater. And so over that year the inn commits to providing all kinds of services to the nonprofit from providing food to volunteer work to a wide range of things that really fit within the business of that inn. And so the nonprofit staff and the inn staff can really get to know each other and have developed over time relationships that go beyond that specific business sponsored activity. So that’s one example that I’ll give to you. But the other one is one that I think you probably know about and is a really dynamic one and that’s the Better Business Challenge. Did you—have you heard about that one?

Jan Paynter: Ah, talk about that if you would.

Cristine Nardi: So the Better Business Challenge was started by two nonprofits in the area, Better World Betty and LEAP, and those nonprofits are really engaged in energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. And what they were able to do over the last year is recruit over 100 businesses to participate in this challenge to open up their business structure and look at how they could improve energy efficiency and environmental sustainability in the workplace. So those businesses were guided along the way with a scorecard in doing that and they were able to achieve recognition at the end of the year for the successes that they’d had. And so to me that’s a partnership with mutual benefit because nonprofits are able to pursue their mission by engaging with businesses that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise and the businesses are really able to improve the way they do business.

Jan Paynter: How does one become a member of the CNE?

Cristine Nardi: So when CNE was founded, the idea behind membership was that it was important to grow a network of nonprofits who are committed to best practice. But the tension with that was also never wanting to have a closed door to any organization who was interested in engaging in improving the work that they were doing. And so CNE membership is based on your operating budget and there’s no application that you have to complete, you really just have to commit to being a member of CNE and using our resources and no matter what size you are, the cost of joining CNE is scaled to meet your operating budget. And so I’ll just give you an example. Our cost of membership ranges from $100 to $500 a year. If you’re an organization that has an operating budget in the multi-millions, you need to pay $500 a year to be membership—to have a membership in CNE. But anyone associated with your organization can then use CNE as a member. And so if you’re a board member, if you’re a volunteer, if you’re a staffer, anyone associated with the organization then becomes a CNE member because we grow our network and grow our ability to have a voice for the sector in having all of those people engaging with CNE.

Jan Paynter: Oh, that’s great. Talk about Philanthropy Day. Recently I was privileged to attend that and your guest speaker was Bob Sweeney, Senior Vice President of Development and Public Affairs at UVA. And he talked about new approaches to fundraising, strategic marketing plans that will have to happen in a challenged economy and the state of nonprofits generally. And he also noticed what I thought very interesting which is the changing demographics in philanthropy. That is, in the past, as you know well, older White male, people toward the end of their life were engaged in giving and now that has shifted to a younger demographic, more ethnically diverse and often including women. How is that shift changing and potentially revitalizing philanthropy?

Cristine Nardi: So the interesting question about philanthropy I think—I think is the role of women. Women have really become a—I think a force in philanthropy in a way that they perhaps haven’t been before. A recent study done by the Institute on Philanthropy at the University of Indiana showed that older women and baby boomer women are much more likely, when you control for all other factors, are much more likely to be donors than their male counterparts.

Jan Paynter: Interesting.

Cristine Nardi: So for example, older women—and the study was done looking at women-led households versus male-led households because that’s really the only way to tease out the relationship between age and gender and philanthropy. What I think is most interesting about that is that women in particular as they’re aging often have less retirement, they tend to be more risk averse. If they’re on their own, they’re usually thinking about family needs as well and they may well have less money because they’ve been in the workforce less and yet the study clearly showed that women of all a—all income levels give almost two times as—more than men in the older women and baby boomer categories. And in the top 25% income levels gave almost 1.5% more—more times than men.

Jan Paynter: In the literature about philanthropy, I—one of the things that was noted is that a broad support for nonprofits and community services tends to stem in part from the involvement of people of all ages and nonprofits and that this becomes a sort of transformative personal experience for them so that they have a greater sense of civic awareness and responsibility. And it seems to me this is one of the great ancillary benefits of nonprofits for individuals personally. Have you found that people have spoken about that?

Cristine Nardi: Well, I personally believe from my own experience that being involved as a volunteer of a nonprofit really engages you in a community like no other perhaps activity that you can be involved in. And I personally know that others have that same kind of experience. But what we know from the research aside from my own anecdotal experience is that when people, particularly women, are actually involved in the charities and the nonprofits that they give to, then they become more committed to that work. In other words, it’s not just about writing the check but it’s also about actually being able to be involved in the activities of the organization. And really one of the unique benefits of the nonprofit sector is it allows people, men, women, kids, anyone to engage in a civil society, to engage in civic life and doing that I think really strengthens our democracy in a way that the public sector and the private sector don’t have those same kind of opportunities.

Jan Paynter: One thing that your speaker Bob Sweeney from UVA noted was the increased level of competition in funding, that there is—the same people in essence are gone back to over and over again to give. What kind of strategies going forward is CNE looking at and nonprofits generally to increase the donor pool?

Cristine Nardi: Hmm mm. Well, part of increasing the donor pool really goes back to the engagement piece because if you—if you get people who are passionate about your mission but also involved in some way, then engagement comes over time. And what Bob Sweeney said as I know you heard, that it’s really back to the basics, it’s really about relationship building, thinking about people who are involved in your organization as the opportunity to build relationships with them in the same way that you might do if you were building relationships in your neighborhood or in your own community. And so—so for CNE, when we’re talking about the concept of resource development with our members, what we’re really talking about is making sure to look up from your desks and be as innovative as possible, give yourself the opportunity to be creative and entrepreneurial because that’s really what nonprofits do when they’re executing programs. So nonprofits can and should be doing that when they’re thinking about their relationship building side of what they do and also trying to give them the tools to build those relationships because really at the end of the day it’s often not the fact that nonprofit leaders and staff don’t want to engage the community or don’t want to build strong relationships. It often goes back to capacity, human and financial capacity to get the job done.

Jan Paynter: I see. In closing today, Cristine, what are some new CNE initiatives that you would like us to be aware of going forward that you’re in development now?

Cristine Nardi: Sure. Well, CNE just—the Board just recently approved our new strategic plan and I’m very excited about that because I think of it as CNE 2.0 in the sense that what we’ve done in our first six years is really develop a platform of thought leadership for what is good practice in the nonprofit sector and we’ve developed some key tools, trainings and resources that anybody can access if they want to figure out how to be better involved and better engaged in their nonprofit. What we’re looking to do over the next couple years is take that to another level because we too are a nonprofit committed to really having an impact in achieving our mission. And so taking that to another level means for us that you may be familiar for example with our work on the governance front. We have a Board Development Academy, we have a Board Orientation Workshop, we really work hard to equip individuals who are volunteers in our community and serving on boards with the information they need to really be effective on day one and we’ve been able to reach a lot of people with that but we want to do more. And so we’re looking at structuring governance trainings in different ways, perhaps taking them to corporations or businesses who want to train their employees and give them professional development and taking them to nonprofit boards…

Jan Paynter: That’s fantastic.

Cristine Nardi: …so that we can reach more individuals and also reach them together because what we found is that when there’s one board member that comes to a training, that board member gets excited but often goes back into a board room with 12 to 15 other people that may not have had the same opportunity so taking it directly to nonprofit boards so that they together can think about their own governance.

Jan Paynter: So the key word seems to be partnering.

Cristine Nardi: Yes.

Jan Paynter: Very, very critical.

Cristine Nardi: Yes, absolutely.

Jan Paynter: Cristine, I want to thank you very much for coming on to talk to us today about the vital work of the CNE.

Cristine Nardi: Thank you so much for having me.

Jan Paynter: Thank you at home for joining our discussion. If you would like more information concerning the topic under discussion today, we invite you to take a look at our website at politicsmatters.org. We will be posting there a number of books, articles and relevant links on nonprofits and philanthropy. There will also be a comprehensive archive of all prior Politics Matters programs which you may watch in their entirety at any time. We’re now in the process of revamping our website which will be completed soon and we’ll be including extended versions of recent interviews in the archive as well. We will also have on the new website an email list which you can sign up for in order to find out about new programs coming up and topics for discussion. As always, we’re keenly interested in hearing from you with any questions, concerns and ideas for future programs. We encourage you to email us at info@politicsmatters.org. We air on PBS WVPT on the last Sunday of every month at 11:30 AM. Thank you again and until next we meet, I’m Jan Paynter and this is Politics Matters.