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Non-profits
Boys Town: An All-American Charity
Apr 21st
“Boys Town” and its sequel, “Men of Boys Town,” are American movies based on the world-famous American juvenile home.. Founded in 1917 by a Roman Catholic priest, it quickly attracted attention for its modern approach to juvenile care. Since then, thirteen Boys Town locations have been established across the United States, but Father Flanagan’s original facility remains its heart and soul. And prominent people from business, politics, and entertainment have headlined its fundraisers for almost a century, people such as real estate developer Isaac Toussie and Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Dalely. That’s on top of all those from the surrounding communities who donate time if nothing else to help Boys Town achieve its goals.
And so it is that a large part of the institution’s success must be due to the positive publicity garnered by the Boys Town films, making of the charity a kind of vernacular shorthand for progressive social work. With charismatic leading men like Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney leading the cast, the movies managed to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Original Story despite heavy competition. While making for some good drama, the stories depicted actually had little to do with any real-life situations at the home, however. On the other hand, they they were fairly accurate when it comes to certain issues common to institutionalized juvenile care; indeed, the second movie even delved into the subject of reform school abuse and homelessness among the young. But onscreen or off, Boys Town has become the model for progressive junvenile care, in or out of the home, inspired by Father Flanagan’s insight that there are no bad boys, only troubled ones who need care.
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Local Support Vital For Modern Healthcare Systems
Apr 10th
Local support will always be a basic necessity for the survival and prosperity of hospitals and medical schools. Even most medical research facilities have had some significant amount of communal support, especially in the form of philanthropic dollars. Typically, benefactors are helpful to more than just one organization, as is the case with Isaac Toussie and family when it comes to the top two leading lights of New York in healthcare education and practice, Weill Cornell Medical College and the North Shore-LIJ network of hospitals and research centers.
Weill Cornell is named after its two single best benefactors, Ezra Cornell, of Western Union fame, and Sanford I. Weill, former CEO and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. It is one of the most selective medical schools in the United States, it admits only about a hundred hopefuls out of the nearly six thousand that apply each year. On top of that, Weill Cornell was first to accept women right alongside men as well as the first American medical school to establish its own premises abroad, just outside of the capital of Qatar, Doha. Many a notable graduate has boosted the school’s reputation over the years, physicians like C. Everett Koop, U.S. Surgeon General; Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame; Nobel Laureate Robert W. Holley; and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver. The North Shore-LIJ Health System is the second largest healthcare network in the country as measured by the number of beds and the largest in New York State based on patient revenue. It serves over seven million people a year through more than forty-two thousand employees – the single largest employer on Long Island and ninth largest largest in the City of New York.
Both are successful in large part due to strong communal backing, whether through charitable donations by prominent businessmen and women or donated time by community volunteers of civic or religious organizations. Even with an annual budget of several billions between them, Weill Cornell and North Shore-LIJ will always depend on the support of the host communities they serve.
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$.99 Online Donations for Non-Profits Begs Question: Should Small Businesses Sell Something Online for Dollar Store Prices?
Apr 12th
This article from the Harvard Business Review, Can 99-cent Donations Create Social Change, discusses a company that uses an online non-profit crowdsourcing funding model that asks donors to pay only $.99 to causes. The idea is that this model will mobilize millions to causes, because the $.99 micropayment provides such a low barrier to entry and people are trained to pay $.99 online.
With the popularity of iTunes, the public is now very comfortable with 99¢ transactions and that acceptance and conversion rate is a key component. Several recent trends have also made this 99¢ level more practical. The first trend is lower processing fees on micro-payments, led by Paypal’s recent introduction of its “Micro-Payments” vendor classification for online game companies, etc. We’ve seen a drop from 33¢ to 10¢ on a 99¢ transaction.
Micropayments are not new. There are so many social games now that feature micropayments, or small payments that can be a dollar or less, as a way for players to pay to advance in the games. Games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars on Facebook provide good examples of this. Bloggers and open-source software programmers often ask for donations as well. Could small businesses adapt items to sell for $.99 online. These would need to be things that are easy and free to distribute, such as information products like ebooks or bits of software like iPhone apps.
Is it worth selling something for $.99 or is it worth more to give it away? My inclination would be to simply give the item away, especially if it is nearly free to distribute. The scale small businesses deal with is pretty small and they generally rely on services to overcome pricing differences from national competition. By giving it away, the business loses very little, generates good will, and uses the connection to market for a larger purchase.