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| Best Practices: Philanthropy |
Measuring Up
Matthew Schuerman
10/01/2005
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9. Will You Get The Job Done? The project you fund
may be postponed or abandoned for innocent enough reasons. The Larsen Foundation
provided a grant to a wildlife group to relocate wild turkeys to less populated
areas one year. “But it turned out there wasn’t enough snowfall that winter, and
they couldn’t set the traps,” recalls Larsen. “They held on to the money and did
it the following year, but we would have liked to have given that money away to
an organization that really needed it then.” Now the Larsens ask grant
recipients to sign contracts that require them to return the money if they will
not use it immediately.
10. Who Will Succeed The Executive Director? A United
Way of New York survey two years ago found that just one-quarter to one-third of
its grant recipients had succession plans in place. Considering that the same
survey found that 45 percent of executive directors planned to step down in the
next five years, many nonprofit organizations risk faltering during rocky
transitions. A board should have an idea of how to appoint a successor and have
an assistant director in place who is competent to serve as interim director.
“If all they said was, ‘We’ll do a national search,’ we’ll tell them, ‘It’s
important to fix on this with a little bit more certainty,’ ” the Clark
Foundation’s Bailin explains. The succession plan should be a document that
designates the open position’s job description and which committee will conduct
a search.
Matthew Schuerman, a Brooklyn resident, writes on philanthropy and
teaches at New York University.
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