Mando in The Chronicle of Philanthropy

There is no one in Central Texas nonprofitland who does not know Mando Rayo. If you don't know Mando Rayo, you're probably not doing a very good job at fulfilling your mission.

I'm new to this world, I know. But I haven't met anyone who doesn't know this guy. His name is on everyone's Rolodex because he's the director of Hands On Central Texas, a United Way agency whose core responsibility is to find and place volunteers for dozens of nonprofits. You need volunteers? You need in-kind donations? You call Mando.

But it's not just his position that makes him so popular. He also happens to be effective, passionate, charismatic, and smart. And, I think, continually understimated. He's one of the examples used in a story published in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy about the lack of minority nonprofit managers.

Mando's Mexican-American. He's also young (33 years old), has at least one visible tattoo and tends towards jeans and black T-shirts. Not your typical middle-aged white female nonprofit manager, I guess. And once you start talking to him, you realize that's what makes him so great. He's exactly the kind of person you wish would care so much about the needs of Central Texas because he looks so different from the usual bunch of do-gooders. That he also happens to be the same nationality as so many of the neediest people in Austin makes you think he'd have an edge.

Not when it comes to moving up the ladder, according to the article. "Organization leaders didn't understand his background or their own biases, he says, which kept him from moving ahead."

Too bad for them. I've worked in nonprofits a little bit but I've worked at plenty of for-profit organizations as well, and the people like Mando are the ones who should move up, but fast. He seems to be in a position that suits him now, but - if it's at all possible - can someone get him more resources, funding, and staff? This guy can make good things happen for Central Texas, but this MexiCAN is going to need some help.

The missing step in getting Austin to give?

I'm glad Andrea Ball wrote today about Austin's lagging charitable donations. What's the takeaway from a story like that? I hope readers don't just throw up their hands in rhetorical "What's to be done?" defeat. I think I'm going to make this my next task: Finding stories that answer that question.

It's really the main idea behind GoodCause magazine. The magazine's mission assumes there are more Austinites who want to donate money and volunteer than those who don't, but that they need to be inspired and shown the way.

Demonstrating the need is the first step, and if people read closely enough, there are plenty of stories in the newspaper every day that accomplish that. Still, the folks behind the I Live Here, I Give Here campaign for philanthropy conducted a survey in which respondents said they did't really understand the needs in Austin, but if they did understand the needs better, the survey respondents said, they would donate more money.

Telling stories about the needs, then, is certainly important. But I think there's another step between understanding the need and actually sending the check. I think the next step is to make it easy to give.

A few months ago I was at the Inflatable Wonderland in Lakeline Mall (I know this sounds like a non sequitur, but bare with me), and while my son and I were putting our shoes back on, a woman about 30 years old came over and sat down next to us. She was bearing a stack of large postcards and politely explained that she was a child photographer and a mother herself, and that she was offering a special discount on her work for a limited time.

She explained that she was donating a portion of each portait session to the Austin Children's Shelter. She had read a story in the Statesman about the lack of space for Central Texas children taken from their homes due to abuse or neglect. She knew they were raising money to build a new, larger facility, and she wanted to help. She had printed up special cards about her efforts and was passing them out where she thought parents with small children congregated. (And at Inflatable Wonderland, that's like shooting fish in a barrel.)

This was a great idea, right? Here's a young mom who's also a portrait photographer, and she's trying to raise more money than she herself can give for a cause close to her heart.

Well, not to single them out based on one woman's experience, but she did say that it wasn't exactly easy to make this arrangement with the Children's Shelter. She described how it took a few phone calls and a few forms before she could get permission to embark on her project. But she felt strongly enough about it to follow through. I can see the Children's Shelter's point of view: They can't have just anyone claim to be raising money for orphans and using that claim to garner more clients. But it made me wonder if the process could be easier. And whether other charities made it easier or more complicated to conduct a fundraiser in their names?

Earlier I talked about the Food Bank's process, which seems pretty straightforward according to its Web site. Can't every Austin charity make it this easy? Would it increase donations if they did?

The first-person donation request works, at least it does on me

Yesterday I got an email from someone named Bruce. The subject line read, "Hello from Bruce," and remarkably - considering I have made a living in the past by devising spam subject lines (I know... there's a special place in hell for people like me) so I know spam when I see it - I opened it.

Turns out it wasn't spam at all. It was an email from Bruce Brooks, who happens to be the boyfriend of one of the best people I know, Mimi Eckstein. Among all the people I've met since I moved to Austin almost 10 years ago, Mimi is a standout. I met her when she was looking for contributors to AustinWoman magazine, of which she is the founding editor. I spoke with her on the phone quite a lot, even when I wasn't working on a story, because she was just so darn entertaining, supportive, and interesting. She was also one of the few people I knew - and know - who care so passionately about making a good magazine.

Mimi also worked like a dog. I don't mean late nights and weekends, I mean all night and all weekend - all the time. She managed, wrote for, laid out, assigned, edited, proofed... everything for AustinWoman. Her boss ... well, let's just say her boss didn't seem to appreciate it. At times I know Mimi was at the end of her rope, but she was always professional and committed to making AustinWoman the best it could be. I really believe Mimi taught the owners of AustinWoman how to make a magazine. During her time there, the magazine's page numbers more than doubled - and with more pages comes more work, of course.

Toward the end of her time at AustinWoman (five years, I think), Mimi started to get weak. Her legs would just fall out from underneath her. She eventually quit AustinWoman, exhausted, and was soon thereafter diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She quit smoking and eating dairy for a while. She uses a wheelchair or a cane now, or just holds on to the walls. Some days are better than others. She still freelances her butt off to make money, but she has a hard time generating the income she used to at AustinWoman (which was not even close to what she deserved to make, but it was something). The good news is that she's still highly entertaining, sharp, and more positive about her future every day.

So back to the email.... Her boyfriend, Bruce, is riding in the MS 150, a 150-mile bike ride from San Antonio to Corpus. He had sent this email to all of Mimi's friends asking us to support him on his bike ride by donating to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The email came with a link to the NMSS donation page, and the form to make the donation could not have been more simple. I donated $30.

How else would NMSS have gotten my money? Direct mail? An ad in the paper? A flyer in the breakroom? I don't think any of those strategies has ever worked on me. But here was Bruce, the boyfriend of one of the people I like the most who also happens to have MS, personally asking me to donate money to this cause for which he will undertake this grueling, two-day bike ride. He's been training, bought equipment, taken the time from work, etc... I just need to click twice and type in a number and my address. Mine was the easy part.

It helped that he was helping Mimi. It also helps that the two times I've met him I thought he was amazingly nice. One time, Mimi and Bruce came over to my house for a party. There were a bunch of kids in my backyard, and one of them got a ball stuck in a pear tree. Bruce didn't know anyone at the party much less the kids, but he's the one who climbed up the tree to retreive the ball.

The I Live Here, I Give Here people are on to something with their grassroots approach, I think. It seems they've invested a lot of their effort in training 70 Austinites to go out and spread the word about donating money to local, Austin charities. I don't know how they chose these people, but I'm willing to bet they're a bunch of bike riders and tree climbers.

More interesting findings from Austin's campaign for philanthropy

I attended a lunch meeting today of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Austin chapter, at Green Pastures. The speaker was Patsy Woods Martin, executive director of the I Live Here, I Give Here campaign that aims to increase local donations and gifts to to Austin charities.

Patsy presented the findings of the campaign's initial survey. What made today's information so interesting was not just the survey results themselves, it was also that the results were presented to nonprofit professionals who live in that world every day. I was curious to see how professional fundraisers would react.

I don't think many were surprised by the survey results, but I think many of them felt better armed to go out and do their jobs. These are people who meet with, honor, and plan events for donors on a regular basis - all in an effort to get them to send those checks. They have to have their missions' stats and "elevator pitches" down. They have to be able to tell the stories of their clients and encourage donors that their gifts make a difference.

Three of the major points Patsy made at today's luncheon were the following:

1. While 97% said they thought the quality of life in Austin was good, 64% said they'd move away for a better job.

What the campaign gathers from these numbers is, according to Patsy, "The message that giving money to make our community better doesn't resonate with more than half of Austinites." These are people who don't have roots here, who don't see themselves benefiting from an investment in the community.

2. 82% of respondents said they would donate more if they had a better idea of what nonprofits do and, according to Patsy, 2/3 of them reported that they don't know enough about the needs in the community.

"Austinites don't know enough about the needs," she said, "and if they knew more, they'd give."

Later in the presentation, one of the audience members spoke up and said that Austinites just don't see the need. We look around and we see all these young, healthy people, these beautiful parks, and new construction.... To me, it goes back to the east-west divide of Austin and how so many of us think of the city as two separate communities and populations.

Another person said that he noted that the same cities that ranked so low in charitable giving were the same cities at the top of the Richard Florida's list ranking the cities with the largest "creative class." Is there a correlation between these young creatives and a city's level of philanthropic giving? Musicians, small business owners, artists, writers... Ford labels this group as "well paid," but maybe giving to charity isn't part of their culture. He quotes members of the creative class as valuing things like nightlife, outdoor recreation, and cultural diversity. Good schools, low crime, more opportunities... maybe these don't register with the creative class.

3. Patsy noted that Austin's culture of fundraising is based on events.

I spoke with Carol Thomas, Caritas's development director, and Sarah Michel, Carol's "right-hand man," about their biggest fundraisers. I was surprised that their annual Penick Award Dinner grossed so much for the nonprofit. They credit it to keeping a keen eye on the bottom-line costs of the events, and performing detailed analyses of how much to charge attendees in order to make the even profitable. Very smart.

I remember from my experience at a nonprofit that not all events make sense, in terms of profitability and return on investment. The staff and volunteers can put in a significant amount of time organizing an event that might make some money. But two weeks later, something as simple and straightforward as asking a bunch of volunteers to come in and make phone calls to get pledges can yield so much more.

The question is, does it make sense to focus fundraising efforts around events, even if they don't give you a great ROI?

That's a tough decision for a nonprofit to make. Events like those are typically the baby of an important board member, who can be stubborn about letting go. "Our board is made up of these very smart, business-oriented people," Carol told me, "and when you show them the numbers and that bottom line, they tend to make good decisions."

Not all nonprofit boards are like that, unfortunately. Even if it's obvious to the staff, the staff is in an awkward position selling it to the board. I've seen it happen before - egos can get in the way. Having a fundraising culture based on events is not necessarily a bad thing. But the events (duh) have to actually make money.


There's so much to unravel about why Austinites don't donate more to local charities, and all of it is important to know if we want to change that fact. The I Live Here, I Give Here campaign has already succeeded by helping us put some data to what we think we know.