Giving Compass' Take:

• Alana Semuels explores the way that Silicon Valley has changed philanthropy and the debate over the benefits and consequences of its influence. 

• Should funders require nonprofits to change their ways? What is lost when funders dictate programs? 

• Find out why funders should spend more time getting involved in communities they hope to impact. 

For more than a century, the Boys & Girls Club of America has had a pretty simple mission: providing somewhere for kids to go after school so they stay out of trouble.

But in 2018, that message isn’t enough to attract local money to the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, which serves Silicon Valley, where the biggest donors tend to favor causes that use novel solutions to “disrupt” poverty, or that can employ data to show just how many problems their money solves.

So Peter Fortenbaugh, the executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula (BGCP), started thinking about what his organization could do to win local support. He started adding on educational and vocational training programs to prepare kids to work in Silicon Valley. He launched a summer camp that emphasizes STEM learning and works with kids falling behind in reading. He started sending donors an annual “Report to Stakeholders” with detailed data about impact and how what the club does now compares to previous years.

And to really bring the money rolling in, he launched a “Shark Tank” event, in which “entrepreneurs”—employees and students—pitch wealthy Silicon Valley donors on certain programs, outlining just how much money they need and what “equity” the donors will receive on those programs.

These efforts are not usually within the budget of a typical nonprofit.

As nonprofits work to rethink how they pitch donors at the same time they’re serving greater need, some leaders told me that they sometimes wondered whether this was “fair,” whether nonprofits should have to change how they work to get money from the millionaires and billionaires in their backyards. A few leaders suggested that perhaps it’s the donors who should be changing their priorities, rather than expecting that cash-strapped nonprofits know how to both serve low-income customers and market themselves as an entrepreneur would—though they did not want to be quoted saying that, because they need more money. And anyway, it’s a moot question; in the end, nonprofits must do whatever the people with the money want.

Read the full article about Silicon Valley philanthropy by Alana Semuels at The Atlantic.