The Giving Partner: Taking the Mystery Out of Giving

By Sylvia Whitman

Let me introduce a tremendous local benefactor that has never chowed down at a luncheon or dressed up for a gala. That works behind the scenes but shares its home address without qualms. That puts numbers on a par with people. This good samaritan is on call 24/7 but has no heart, although many, many people praise it as a matchmaker.

The pronouns are probably a tip-off that I’m not talking about a generous neighbor you might run into at Publix. Meet The Giving Partner (TGP), the Community Foundation of Sarasota County’s free online tool for scoping out nonprofits.

TGP (home address: thegivingpartner.guidestar.org) gathers and displays up-to-date profiles on about 600 nonprofits in Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte, and DeSoto counties, according to the Community Foundation. Each profile presents information in the same format—six tabs that cover a summary, background and needs, programs, management and planning, governance, and financials. Bar graphs allow for a quick scan of revenue vs. expenses, and attachments range from upbeat videos to IRS Form 990s.

It’s hard to have a conversation about TGP without hearing words like consistency and transparency.

“When the Community Foundation first introduced The Giving Partner, I didn’t get it,” confesses Sandra Frank, CEO and executive director of All Faiths Food Bank. “But it didn’t take me long to understand its value. With so many nonprofits in our region, it’s hard for a donor to understand capacity. The Giving Partner is a way to showcase what you do and demonstrate your credibility through full disclosure and transparency. For donors, it’s a great way to compare organizations.”

COMPLEMENTARY INITIATIVES

The Giving Partner arrived in Sarasota in the toolbox of Community Foundation of Sarasota County (CFSC) president and CEO Roxie Jerde. The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, where Jerde served as senior vice president for donor relations and education, developed a beta version of the online platform, and other community foundations soon borrowed it. “GuideStar took over managing the product,” says Abigail Oakes, CFSC manager of nonprofit services. “The product itself is called ‘DonorEdge,’ but each community brands theirs differently.”

Jerde arrived in Sarasota in 2011, and in cooperation with other local foundations, CFSC launched The Giving Partner in 2012. According to Murray Devine, CFSC manager of communications and marketing, about 280 users search for nonprofits through TGP every week. “This definitely ramps up around the giving season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, etc.) and especially around the time of the Giving Challenge,” says Devine.

The Giving Challenge, another collaborative Jerde-era initiative, whips up a philanthropic frenzy, with nonprofits competing for prizes in addition to donations over a 24-hour period. To enter the challenge, organizations must post profiles on The Giving Partner. In 2018, the event raised $11.7 million.

Honor Sanctuary, for example, also known as Nate’s Honor Animal Rescue, vaulted to the top of the Giving Challenge leaderboard in number of unique gifts—1,611, totaling $100,243. That’s a striking feat for a medium-sized organization “founded in 2007 as a volunteer-run, foster-based rescue,” according to its TGP profile.

“We’re a young organization, just a baby,” says Rob Oglesby, director of development. “People are just getting to know about us.” Oglesby credits The Giving Partner profile with attesting to the organization’s legitimacy. “Really, every single 501(c)(3) should [make one],” he says.

INFORMATION, NOT EVALUATION

Unlike assessment tools like Charity Navigator, however, The Giving Partner does not rate, rank, or score nonprofits. It simply displays intelligence. The “Reviewed” button in TGP indicates that an organization has volunteered all the information requested by the Community Foundation and updated the profile within the last year. (In addition to the roughly 600 reviewed organizations, almost 200 more with out-of-date information are listed as “not updated by organization.”)

“The Giving Partner interfaces with GuideStar, which is a national tool used to research nonprofit organizations,” says Oakes of the CFSC. “The Giving Partner and GuideStar intentionally do not rate organizations, as we feel that nonprofit organizations are so diverse in their structures and functions, it is incomplete to compare them to one another on a standardized scale.”

The Giving Partner leaves due diligence to donors, encouraging them to approach charitable giving as an investment. “They can see financials, see all of your fundraising plans, and see how that fits into their donation plans,” says MaryAnne Young, executive director of the New College Foundation, which made it onto the leaderboard (#8 in unique gifts) in the 2018 Giving Challenge. “Donors will look us up to have more information at their fingertips, and then they will come to us to ask more questions. Very specific questions.” 

Young says the consistency and transparency (those words again!) of the information can be comforting to donors. “A lot of giving is really emotional. They’re passionate about an issue,” she says. The Giving Partner reassures donors “that this organization is using our gifts prudently.”

Nonprofits appreciate that they can share essential information through a single URL rather than through costly printed documents or repeated emails full of attachments. TGP may also relieve them of the burden of duplicating reports elsewhere. Sue Wetzel, president of United Way Suncoast, says that come spring, her organization is likely “to leverage this asset that the Community Foundation has already provided.” Nonprofits seeking United Way support will need to supply only what’s not already available through The Giving Partner.

KNOW YOUR TOOL

How can you find the charity of your dreams on The Giving Partner? Oakes recommends plunking down a keyword in the search bar. “The broader, the better!”

Oakes explains that the IRS and the National Center for Charitable Statistics categorize organizations based on their applications when they file for tax exempt status. They use the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE). Nonprofits use that same vocabulary when they fill out their Giving Partner profiles. “Sometimes the NTEE codes of an organization may not accurately capture their work,” explains Oakes, “so searching their entire profile with specific words like ‘animal’ or ‘youth’ can be extremely helpful.”

When I clicked on the NTEE category search “International, Foreign Affairs, and National Security,” for instance, five organizations surfaced. But when I typed “international” in the keyword search box, 31 names popped up, ranging from Guitar Sarasota to New Gate School to Shelter Box USA, none of which appeared in the NTEE category yield.

Potential donors can also search by zip code or “geographic area served.” Of course, organization names work, too.

Some benefactors discover organizations through The Giving Partner while others mine its data as they approach a decision. Sarasota lawyer Charlie Ann Syprett has used the tool as she considers how best to support healthcare, animal welfare, and education. “Love the Giving Partner,” she writes in an email. “More people should use it!”

Frank, of All Faiths Food Bank (#3 in gifts during the 2018 Giving Challenge), echoes that sentiment. “I don’t think it’s widely enough known,” she says. Donors are casting about, perhaps asking golf partners for recommendations. “They don’t realize there’s a one-stop shop … a trusted source that manages information.” As Southwest Florida enters the “biggest, most generous season of the year,” Frank hopes more philanthropists befriend The Giving Partner so that they can “give safely, give knowledgeably, and give wisely.”

To learn more about the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, visit cfsarasota.org. For the Giving Partner, visit thegivingpartner.guidestar.org. 

To read more about charitable giving, check out our other philanthropy articles!