November 2007 Archives
By Aaron Hurst on
November 21, 2007 11:35 AM
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While perhaps not as well known as his northern counterpart Johnny
Appleseed, Terrence Turnip is considered a greater American icon by
many in the South. Born a slave in Arkansas in 1793, Terrence Deacon
ran away from his plantation at the age of 17 with only a bag of turnip
seeds.
For five years he evaded capture, making his way up and down the
Mississippi River. At every stop on his route, he planted acres of
turnips leaving notes encouraging other runaways to partake in his
crops. Sadly, they were never eaten. As one fellow runaway put it--"I
was starving, but who the hell wants to eat turnips!? They're nasty,
especially without a good wine sauce."
It was in the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville began his famous
journey across America in search of the essence of American democracy,
that the turnip became a universal American symbol of freedom and civic
responsibility. It was on this quest that de Tocqueville witnessed a
poor farmer in Michigan risk his own survival to share the last of his
turnip harvest with a member of his community whose wife and daughter
had been abducted by a band of misguided Quakers. De Tocqueville was
deeply touched by this "uniquely American act of civic responsibility"
and submitted his treatise to his publisher with the title The
Star-Spangled Turnip. The title was quickly rejected, but Democracy in
America quickly became an American classic.
Democracy in America made Oprah's Book Club in 1843 and became the best
selling book of all time about French people touring America to figure
out why it is such a better place to live than France. It became so
popular that in separate press conferences on March 13th 1847, the then
mascot-less Democratic and Republican parties, both unveiled the turnip
as their new icon. This inevitably created a constitutional crises and
required the intervention of the United States Supreme Court. Chief
Justice Taney, in the majority opinion, wrote "I didn't join the
Supreme Court to deal with this crap. For god's sake, just pick another
stupid icon--and preferable not a winter vegetable." Later that year
the now famous elephant and donkey made their débuts.
The turnip remained an icon for freedom through the twentieth century.
In fact, the image of buxom and scantly clad woman hurdling a bomb was
the only more commonly used symbol painted on fighter planes by
servicemen in World War II. Air Force legend has it that as Hitler
watched the P-51 Mustang Fighting Turnip release its arsenal on his
bunker, he yelled his last words--"nicht eine andere verfluchte Rübe!
(Not another damn turnip!)"
By Aaron Hurst on
November 9, 2007 9:15 AM
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We consistently get requests from foundations to figure out how to engage business professionals in financial management work for nonprofits. They clearly see a need, but I am struggling to figure out how to make it work in a reliable and scalable way.
Nonprofit accounting is pretty different from corporate accounting. It is more than just the fact that "P&L" and "Balance Sheet" are not terms used by nonprofits. The whole process of placing and releasing restrictions on dollars adds a lot of complexity to the process. Then there is the fun of government grants. It took me about 2 years to get my head around it -- and I am sure I am still missing a few pieces.
There is also a tendency for corporate folks to make recommendations that align with their experience (make the books more like a company's books) which is not always the right answer. For example, business professionals often want to push nonprofits to adopt earned income (e.g., fee for service or goods) programs. More often than not, this is not a good idea.
Where do you think the nonprofit sector could effectively use financial management resources? Do you have any stories of successful projects?
Let me know at PBJ@taprootfoundation.org.
By Aaron Hurst on
November 2, 2007 2:30 PM
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The Points of Light Foundation created a calculator on their site that estimates the value of skills-based volunteering to a nonprofit organization. As they state on the site, "a volunteer performing a professional task such as accounting is worth more in the market place than that same volunteer doing gardening." True indeed.
While it is great that POL has made the point to differentiate the value of different skills, it does not provide an effective model for providing a good valuation for skills-based volunteering efforts. It simply assumes that the value of an hour of a volunteer's time is the salary quoted by the Department of Labor of Statistics divided by the number of hours worked in a year. A software developer, for example, is valued at $37.78 per hour because the likely average annual salary according to the DLS is around $75,000.
Assuming that you don't include the costs of hiring and benefits or supporting and managing a software developer, this might be a reasonable rate for a full time volunteer. If you start talking about project-based efforts (consulting), the numbers change radically as the economics for the software developer change. They likely jump from $37.78 to closer to $100 an hour. If the services are supported by the infrastructure and IP of a consulting firm (e.g., Deloitte, IBM, etc.) you probably see the value double again to closer to $200 an hour.
The calculator gets even more out of whack when you calculate more senior roles. According to the Points of Light, an executive's time is worth only $67.73 an hour -- about 50% less than I paid a plumber to fix my sink last week when it was flooding the kitchen.
Want to feel undervalued? Check out the calculator online and see what they think your time is worth:
http://www.pointsoflight.org/resources/research/calculator.cfm
