Donors Acting Like Investors

Glenn Wood has dutifully written out checks to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County for more than eight years, his modest donations adding to the pool of funds the nonprofit organization uses to help feed about 400,000 people annually.

Last spring, Wood began adding something extra: time.

“You get a little bit more sense of making a personal contribution” explained Wood, 49, who spends his Thursday evenings sorting donated food in an old fruit packinghouse near downtown Orange. “It’s even more rewarding when the people you’re helping are in no position to repay you or even thank you.”

Wood’s evolution reflects what some experts identify as a new wave of volunteerism that has transformed the way many nonprofit organizations go about wooing donors and delivering services.

At the same time, more and more nonprofit organizations are finding themselves answering hard-edged questions by potential supporters who are scouting out charities as they would a mutual fund.

“Donors are increasingly viewing philanthropy like their portfolios, and they’re willing to put more research into where their gifts are going,” said Kathleen Costello, director of the Center for Nonprofit Research at Cal State Fullerton. “Donors are thinking more strategically and understanding their donations as investments in issues.”

That trend, according to one analyst, stems from increased independence and confidence among people who profited during the recent record bull run in the stock market, and from the growing Internet availability of what used to be hard-to-get financial data. For instance, most nonprofits’ IRS filings are now available free through such online services as Guidestar (https://www.guidestar.org).

“We have [investors] that are of the self-reliant generation who keep saying they’ve grown up in a business-oriented environment,” said Cynthia Egan, president of the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, a charitable trust that has handled $4 billion in contributions since its inception in 1992. “They are very savvy about investments and I think that there is more curiosity and more interest in knowing how organizations are run.”

More Volunteers, Tighter Schedules

The more significant shift for nonprofit organizations, though, has come in the growing numbers of people who decide to give time in addition to money.

Nearly 56% of all adults reported volunteering time in 1998, up from 49% in 1995, according to surveys conducted by the Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofits. The value of that labor: about $225 billion a year, the survey estimated.

Yet that same survey found that volunteering is a sporadic activity for four out of 10 volunteers. And both the total hours volunteered and average hours per volunteer have decreased, an anomaly that has led to subtle but significant shifts in how nonprofits operate.

“It’s made nonprofits more realistic about what volunteers want to do,” said Carol Stone, president of the Volunteer Center of Orange County. “The biggest change is in designing [volunteer] jobs that people can feel are theirs--they own it, just like in the workplace.”

Experts are uncertain why volunteers’ habits are changing, but there are theories.

“People are just becoming very, very stretched for their time, balancing between home and family and work and being able to volunteer time and services,” said Keith Hume, a research associate for the Independent Sector.

Also possible, he said, is that people who once volunteered regularly now satisfy that charitable impulse by signing up for single-day events, such as the Volunteer Connection Days sponsored in April by the Volunteer Center of Orange County.

Under that program, thousands of people--many of them organized within local businesses and corporations--spend a day painting houses, clearing debris and helping out at animal shelters, among other projects.

For many, it is the only time they volunteer, forcing some organizations to reconfigure themselves to take advantage of a feast-or-famine supply of volunteer labor.

Agencies Must Make the Adjustment

For example, at the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross, there is relatively little need for single-day volunteers. Instead, the organization relies on a cadre of 4,000 volunteers--many have been with the organization for years--to help staff ongoing programs such as blood drives and disaster-preparedness, augmenting its paid staff of 50.

When approached by groups seeking to get involved for a single day, the Red Cross offers training seminars on first aid or establishing workplace emergency procedures for earthquakes or other natural disasters.

“We have to be more specific with people. . . . We have to be able to identify what is expected of them, the kind of training, what kind of time is demanded of them,” said Patricia Moran-Johnson, Red Cross director of volunteers. “Then they can decide for themselves how involved to get.”

Big-check donors--there have been more of them in recent years too--present their own challenge, and demands, forcing nonprofits to find new ways to involve wealthy patrons in their work.

“Major givers particularly want to see themselves attached to the organizations they support, and not let their involvement end with a simple gift,” said Michael Nilsen, spokesman for the Assn. of Fundraising Professionals in Alexandria, Va. “We want donors to be involved in the programs and make a close connection. At the same time, it can sometimes lead to concerns about what is the appropriate level of involvement.”

The extreme case: the donor who tries to take over.

“Then there’s venture philanthropy, bringing for-profit accountability to the nonprofit sector,” Nilsen said. “That’s good, up to a point, for nonprofits to examine themselves and see how they can improve. At the same time, for-profits and nonprofits do operate under different rules, and different missions. The bottom line is different.”

Down on Second Harvest’s food-sorting line, accountability is simple. One member of the six-volunteer crew empties boxes of donated food onto an aging 75-foot conveyor belt while the rest, including Rogell and Ida Vanwyk, sift out unusable items and sort the remainder by type--soups with soups, cereal with cereals.

There are a lot of other things the Vanwyks could be doing on a Thursday afternoon. Golfing. Traveling. Just sitting around their La Palma home enjoying the life of the retired. Instead, they’re sorting food for the needy, which the couple views as an act of reciprocity.

“We’ve really been blessed in so many ways,” Ida Vanwyk, 67, said beneath the soft glow of fluorescent lights as canned and boxed food trundled past her on the creaky conveyor belt. “Life’s been good, and I feel like we might be able to make life a little easier for someone else.”