As you may know, we decided last year to update our  Community Fund grants program, and I wanted to let you know that we are currently making some final preparations for rolling out the new program. We expect to have news to share by February 24 and will send out another email at that time.

We know how much you’re looking forward to learning more about the new grants program, and we appreciate your patience. In the meantime, we’d like to take the opportunity to remind you of some other great resources we currently have for grantseekers:

• Our Special and Urgent Needs grants provide immediate support for nonprofits that are facing structural or programmatic emergencies, or experiencing an unexpected opportunity that will significantly enhance the ability of the organization to meet its mission.
• Our Special and Urgent Needs – Irene Recovery grants offer support for nonprofits that sustained damage as a result of Tropical Storm Irene or facing significant resource challenges in providing services for those affected by Irene.
• Grantseekers can apply to a number of regional and issue-based funds at the Community Foundation that have their own grant rounds.
• We host the Vermont Directory of Nonprofit Consultants. This online, searchable database helps nonprofit organizations identify prospective consultants.
• Finally, we offer the Vermont Directory of Foundations, a comprehensive, searchable database listing grantmakers that support Vermont-based organizations.

You can also follow us @vermontcf on Twitter or find us on Facebook to keep up-to-date about our work and opportunities for nonprofits. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions; on behalf of Vermont, thank you for all your good work.

Since the early 1990s, when the IRS started tracking migration and income, people moving to Vermont have consistently reported higher average annual incomes than the Vermont residents who were leaving.¹ The most recent data for 2010 shows that trend has continued.²

The numbers of people coming and going over the past 18 years have seesawed. For 10 of those years more came; for eight, more left. But since the peak of inmigration in 2001, when a little more than 17,000 people relocated to the state, the number of newcomers has been declining. And since 2005, the number of Vermont residents moving out each year has exceeded the number of new arrivals.

Those coming to the state still have higher average incomes. So, even in years when out-migration has exceeded in-migration, the total personal income in the state has increased.

In 2010, however, that changed. Vermont saw a net loss of income for the first time since the IRS began to publish this data. According to the latest report, 13,422 people moved into Vermont in 2010. Their total adjusted gross income was $353.9 million. The same year, 14,071 Vermonters moved away. Their income added up to a bit more: $356.3 million.

Download a PDF of the report.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the road in recent months, talking to Vermonters about health reform.  Most Vermonters I’ve met are excited about our vision for the future, but they also have questions and concerns about where we’re headed, particularly about how the federally required health benefit exchange fits into the picture.  I hear you: it’s confusing. We’re committed to bringing you the answers you need and ensuring that your voice is heard in the decision-making process.

That’s why we’re hosting two interactive webinars, one for individuals and one for small businesses, focused on how the health benefit exchange fits into our path to universal, affordable health care access.

• Are you an individual wondering what’s next for health care reform in Vermont? Click here to join us on:
  Tuesday, February 7th at 7 pm
• Are you a small business owner wondering how reform will affect your bottom line? Click here to join us on: Tuesday, February 14th at 11 am Co-sponsored by: Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility and Small Business Majority

When the Vermont State Hospital was abruptly closed on Aug. 28 after Tropical Storm Irene floodwaters inundated Waterbury, workers quickly evacuated the facility and state officials found emergency placements at local hospitals and small private mental health institutions for the 50-plus patients who were suddenly displaced.

Since the storm hit, the scrambling hasn’t stopped. For the last five months, Shumlin administration officials, lawmakers and providers have been weighing options for replacing the hospital. In the short term — until lawmakers and the Shumlin administration can cement an interim plan — Vermonters who need intensive psychiatric care are being treated at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Rutland Regional Medical Center, Brattleboro Retreat and several small residential mental health care facilities.

Long term, the state suddenly has an opportunity to reimagine what the system might look like after nearly a decade of intense debate over what to do with the old facility, which was decertified by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services in 2005 and was no longer eligible for Medicaid funding.

The Shumlin administration is betting on a decentralized system that relies more on community and peer services, and less on institutional care. Under the governor’s plan, about 41 patients would receive care in intensive institutional settings and an additional 40 patients would be treated in community based residential programs. The state would plow new money — about $9 million a year — into local support services.

Making the new system work financially is difficult because much of what the state wants to do is tied to complex rules and formulas for federal funding. It’s possible, for example, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will largely back the construction of a new facility with a 90 percent federal, 10 percent state match, after the state’s insurer pays its share of the cost.

Though federal funding will likely be available for the structure, it’s possible the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare could drop funding for annual operating costs if the state builds a facility with more than 16 patients, according to lawmakers and Shumlin administration officials.

On Friday, legislators in the House Human Services Committee agreed in a 9-1 vote to approve plans for a 25-bed facility in Central Vermont that would take the place of the Vermont State Hospital. The measure includes the outline for a complex system of decentralized care that would include 13 additional programs or facilities proposed by the Shumlin administration.

House Appropriations will examine the budget impacts of the proposal on Monday; House Corrections and Institutions will consider the financial implications of the proposal on the capital bill Tuesday.

Gov. Peter Shumlin wants a plan for a 16-bed facility from lawmakers on his desk by Feb. 17, and he made it clear in his press conference last week that he won’t budge on the number of beds he has specified.

The number 16 has particular financial significance. If a global commitment waiver provision for the state hospital set to expire in 2014 isn’t reauthorized by the federal government, operating costs at “institutions for mental disease,” or standalone psychiatric facilities, won’t be eligible for Medicaid reimbursements unless they have 16 or fewer patients or have an affiliation with a medical hospital.

The difference between operating the 16-bed facility and a 30-bed hospital, which many in the medical community feel is needed, could be as much as $15 million in state money under the worst case scenarios. Privately, some lawmakers have suggested the operating cost figures are a rough ballpark guess at best in any case and don’t factor in economies of scale. Though the new facility would likely to be located near the Central Vermont Medical Center, there is no formal affiliation between the state and the center.

The Shumlin administration has pitched a 16-bed facility because officials say more institutional beds aren’t necessary. According to statistics from the Department of Mental Health, nearly half of the 54 patients at the Vermont State Hospital didn’t need to stay at the hospital because they were ready to be discharged or moved to other facilities.

A 16-bed facility also happens to be the threshold for match rate eligibility (currently 57 percent federal funds, 43 percent state monies) for operating costs — even if the global commitment waiver isn’t approved. Projections from the Joint Fiscal Office show the state’s share would be $3.37 million of the annual estimated operating cost; Medicaid reimbursements would be about $4.7 million.

The Vermont State Hospital wasn’t eligible for federal match money after it was decertified by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare in 2003 for a number of safety problems. (It regained certification in November 2004 for 60 days but lost it again in Februrary 2005.) When the facility in Waterbury was closed because of the flood, the federal government began matching the state’s costs for qualified patients who are placed in hospitals and small psychiatric facilities with 16 or fewer beds.

The total amount the state expects to receive for acute psychiatric patients in fiscal year 2012 is about $11 million.

Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, said the state has been struggling to figure out how to develop a long-term plan for a replacement facility based on the federal criteria.
Read More…

Despite their seemingly endless evangelizing about the need for change, foundations sure seem slow to embrace it.

But if they expect to have even a prayer of making change happen on the causes and issues they care about, grantmakers first need to change the way they themselves do business.

Many foundations are disconnected from the nonprofits they fund and the communities those organizations serve.

Tone deaf to what nonprofits say about the operating and financial problems they face, and the kind of support they need, many foundations prefer to push their own pet ideas or those of consultants and other hangers-on who seduce them with management jargon and philanthropic-correctness.

Foundations drone on about the need for collaboration, evaluation and diversity, but they shun true partnerships, reject criticism, and dismiss ideas that differ from or challenge their own.

To help nonprofits and the people and places they serve cope with unprecedented challenges in the face of social and global crises and change, foundations need to use a lot more common sense about how they work.

The need for foundations to embrace change is the focus of the year-end statement for 2011 by Kathleen Enright, founding president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.

After 10 years of working to help funders work smarter, GEO still sees big gaps between the needs of nonprofits and the way funders operate.

While a new study from GEO will show “pockets of progress,” particularly among its members, Enright says, “broad-scale change remains elusive.”

On the whole, she says, the study finds that “general operating support remained static, evaluation remains predominantly an exercise in accountability rather than learning, and most grantmakers do not seek input on strategy or specific proposals from grantees or recipient communities.”

And instead of getting the operating and program support they need, she says, many nonprofits have been “hollowed out by accepting funds that are too rigidly restricted or do not cover the full costs of programs, operations or overhead.”

So GEO has been working to help make philanthropy “smarter so that nonprofits can grow stronger and deliver better results in communities,” she says.

Change, however, is “coming slower than we’d like,” she says.

A 2008 survey by GEO found a “persistent gap between nonprofit needs and grantmaker practices, with foundations making slow progress on adopting the practices that they and their grantees say are essential to supporting nonprofit health and vitality,” Enright says.

While the lack of progress across the field is disappointing, she says, funders have a critical opportunity “to focus on areas where they do have the power to make changes to better serve grantees and recipient communities and to invest grant dollars more effectively.”

Enright’s recommendations for funders include changing the way they give grants and changing how they relate to others.

On their grantmaking, she says, funders should provide flexible funding, increase multi-year support and streamline their requirements

And in their relationships, she says, funders should “foster deeper connections” and “tap the wisdom of grantees” and representatives from communities they support; learn together with grantees and community members; and collaborate to have greater impact.

“The only way for philanthropy’s response to match the complexity of the issues we hope to address is if we consciously shift the focus away from our individual interests and resources and instead look at how best to solve problems in combination with others,” Enright says.

“By supporting networks, focusing on collective action, being willing to follow as well as lead, and bridging diverse perspectives on the ground,” she says, “grantmakers will start to play a more vital role in creating positive change.”

Chris Donnelly, Director of Community Relations at the Champlain Housing Trust shared this news:

Burlington, Vermont – Approximately 175 members attended the Champlain Housing Trust’s Annual Meeting Saturday, where three local affordable housing leaders were recognized for their many contributions to creating and sustaining affordable housing in communities throughout northwestern Vermont. Also recognized were four staff for reaching milestones in their service to CHT, including CEO Brenda Torpy, who was saluted for leading the organization for twenty years.

Retired Burlington attorney Neil Mickenberg was presented with the Tim McKenzie Award for Outstanding Contributions to Perpetually Affordable Housing. The award, named after the organization’s first director, was awarded for Mickenberg’s long-term commitment to the Housing Trust’s mission, first as an attorney for the two founding organizations that merged to former CHT, then as a leader of a State established commission to examine the effectiveness of the affordable housing delivery system.

Charlotte resident Kathy Luce was presented the Carole Pack Volunteer of the Year Award for her years of service to CHT on the Community Relations and the Property and Asset Management committees. A former Board member (1999-2006), Luce has continued to be engaged in the organization and to share her considerable affordable housing expertise.

Jodi Whalen, of Burlington ,was this year’s Hilton A. Wick “Give Until it Hurts” Award. Whalen– a former CHT homeowner – has advanced the affordable housing mission of the organization by telling her story to others and encouraging their involvement. Her passion for this mission helped secure over $130,000 in gifts and pledges last year.

In addition to Torpy, three other staff were recognized for reaching their 10 year anniversaries: Housing Rehab Coordinator Dennis Williams, Senior Maintenance Technician Skip Trahan and Accounts Payable Coordinator Judy Hines.

Four people were elected to the Board of Directors: Sarah Muyskens, general member from Burlington; Joe Reinert and Sandra Dooley, public members from Burlington and South Burlington respectively; and Adam Piper, resident member from Burlington.

The Champlain Housing Trust’s Board has five members each in three categories: general, public and resident. The Board is elected by the membership to three year terms.

The Champlain Housing Trust stewards over 500 affordable homeownership properties and over 1,500 affordable rental apartments throughout Chittenden, Franklin and Grand Isle counties. In addition to providing affordable housing, CHT offers homebuyer education, credit counseling, foreclosure intervention support, affordable loan products and develops new homes for rent or for sale. More information is available at www.champlainhousingtrust.org

The January 26, 2012 article below is courtesy of The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com

The Vermont Community Foundation and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture announced that the Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund is accepting applications for a new grant round focused on providing funding for emergency feed purchases.

“As we anticipated, feed has now become an urgent need among Vermont farmers affected by Irene. Many farmers who thought they’d have enough feed for their animals are now discovering that their hay and corn was severely damaged by the flooding and are faced with the unexpected cost of having to buy feed,” says Chuck Ross, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.

“Because of the current demand, available feed is more expensive,” says Ryan Torres, philanthropic advisor at the Vermont Community Foundation. “We have reserved funding to help farmers purchase feed to get them through the winter and we encourage those who are unable to buy feed to apply for assistance as soon as possible.”

Applications are now available on www.vtfloodresponse.org and will be due February 17. Checks will be mailed to selected farmers the first week in March. The fund will continue to hold grant rounds for emergency feed assistance as long as funding remains available. Farmers who sustained other losses or damages from the storm and have not received a grant from the fund are encouraged to contact Ryan Torres, philanthropic advisor at the Vermont Community Foundation, at 802-388-3355 ext. 289 or rtorres@vermontcf.org.

Farmers with surplus feed for sale or feed they are willing to donate are encouraged to contact the Agency of Agriculture. The Vermont Community Foundation will post information about available feed donations on its website, www.vtfloodresponse.org.

To date, the Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund has awarded $1,576,300 to 177 farmers affected by Tropical Storm Irene. As of January 25, total contributions received or pledged to the fund exceeded $2.41 million.

Torres noted that the fund’s committee has worked to balance giving out many grants immediately in the aftermath of the storm with holding some funding in reserve to support emerging needs like feed and the purchase of seed in the spring.

The grant committee includes representatives from the Vermont Community Foundation, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, NOFA Vermont, Vermont Farm Bureau, Rutland Area Farm and Food Link, and University of Vermont Extension.

Visit www.vtfloodresponse.org to learn more about the fund, to make a contribution, or to read about farmers who have received grants from the fund. The website was created by the Community Foundation to provide detailed, updated information about the Foundation’s Irene recovery efforts, including grants available and grants awarded. It also has a useful resources section with a comprehensive list of flood resources and information about Irene recovery work being done by other organizations.

###

The Agency of Agriculture works to facilitate, support and encourage the growth and viability of Vermont agriculture while protecting the working landscape, human, animal and plant health and the environment. Visit www.vermontagriculture.com for more information.

The Vermont Community Foundation has been helping donors give to the causes and organizations they care about since 1986. It is Vermont’s largest homegrown grantmaker. Together, its family of over 600 funds and programs invests more than $15 million annually in Vermont through grants and other investments. In addition, it helps keep Vermont’s nonprofit community vital by offering endowment management and planned giving services, and providing leadership in charitable giving of all kinds. Visit www.vermontcf.org or call 802-388-3355 for more information.

Economic issues continue to be the public’s highest priority as the 2012 State of the Union approaches. Fully 86% say that strengthening the economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year, and 82% rate improving the job situation as a top priority.

The annual policy priorities survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 11-16 among 1,502 adults, finds that the federal budget deficit stands out as the fastest growing policy priority for Americans, largely because of increasing Republican concerns about the issue. Fully 69% rate reducing the budget deficit as a top priority — the most in any of the Pew Research Center’s annual policy priority updates going back to 1994.

Defending against terrorism and strengthening the military are given less priority today than over the course of the past decade. Republicans are placing far less emphasis on terrorism, which was their top priority in every year between 2002 and 2008, while opinions among Democrats and independents have shown far less change.

Read the full report for other major findings in these areas:

• Social Security and Medicare
• The environment
• Money and politics
• Illegal immigration
• Tax fairness
• Concerns about Iran
• The federal deficit
• Military spending

The Vermont Balance of State Continuum of Care (CoC) and The Chittenden County Continuum of Care are again joining efforts for the sixth statewide Point in Time Count on January 26, 2012. The Continuums of Care are comprised of homeless & human service organizations as well as housing agencies and other partners that strive to eliminate homelessness  throughout Vermont. These efforts will be supported by the Agency of Human Services, the City of Burlington  the Vermont State Housing Authority, and United Ways of Vermont

The sixth coordinated Point-in-Time Count will collect data to be used by the Balance of State, Chittenden County, and local continuums in their funding applications to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as to provide a statewide baseline for measuring the success of housing and supportive services used to reduce the number of people who are homeless in Vermont.

Local Continuums of Care participating in this years count have participated in prior trainings to ensure an accurate count of the homeless population. For a copy of the Data Collection form or for additional information and instructions on how to administer the survey and where to send it after the count please contact:

Melinda Bussino |  Balance of State CoC Co-Chair |  badicmelinda@together.net

Kim Woolaver |  Balance of State CoC Co-Chair |  kwoolaver@goodsamaritanhaven.org

MaryEllen Mendl | Chittenden County CoC Co-Chair |  maryellen@unitedwaysvt.org

Daniel Blankenship | Vermont State Housing Authority |  daniel@VSHA.ORG

Margaret Bozik | City of Burlington|  mbozik@ci.burlington.vt.us

This recent Johns Hopkins Study  finds nonprofit sector leading in national job growth! The report states “Nonprofits have been playing an unprecedented role during the current recession by responding to increased demands for services and have had to unfairly operate with a lack of access to equity funding, limits on the  ability to lobby for government contract business and other negative policy shortfalls.”

A recent study published by the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University concluded that on the national scale, nonprofit job growth for the last decade has been greater than the for-profit sector. Analyzing national  data from 2000 through 2010, the nonprofit sector increased employment by 2.1% while the for-profit sector decreased employment by .6% on average  during the same time frame. In Vermont, nonprofit sector changes in employment have positively grown since 2000  while for-profit jobs have declined by close to 3%.

While nonprofits have certainly been negatively effected by the economic woes facing the nation, overall nonprofit employment actually grew 2.6%  during the first year of the recession and 1.2% during the second year. This is possible largely in part because many nonprofits work in fields that are less sensitive to the pressures of the business cycle,  demographic shifts that call on more nonprofits services and government support for many of these services.

Nonprofits employed nearly 10.7 million paid workers in 2010, accounting for 10.1 % of the nation’s overall private employment and places the nonprofit sector as the third largest source for jobs behind retail trade (14.7 million workers)  and manufacturing (11.5 million workers).  According to the report, nonprofits have been “holding the fort for much of the rest of the rest of the economy, creating jobs at time when other components of the economy have been shedding jobs at accelerating rates.”

Crucial findings from the report:

• Nonprofit employment grew by 2.6 % during first year of the recession and 1.2% during second year of the recession.
• The nonprofit sector employs twice as many workers as the wholesale trade, finance and insurance, and construction industries.
• Nonprofit sector’s share of private employment is highest in New England reaching more than 16%.
• Overall nonprofit employment has been growing faster than overall for-profit employment because nonprofit employment is much more heavily concentrated in service fields.
• Government funding for many of the services nonprofits are involved with has been essential for maintaining and growing nonprofit sector jobs.
• Demographic trends, such as the aging of the population and female participation in the workforce, are boosting overall demand for many nonprofit services.

The study suggests the significant job creation potential of the nonprofit sector needs to be nurtured in regards to national and regional efforts to boost job growth. Job promotion efforts that are intrinsincly linked t o the income tax mechanism are found to be insufficient because they leave out this vital source of job creation for which income tax incentives have little impact.

Nonprofits have been playing an unprecedented role during the current recession by responding to increased demands for services and have had to unfairly operate with a lack of access to equity funding, limits on the  ability to lobby for government contract business and other negative policy shortfalls.

The future of the nonprofit sector being a leader in job creation is at a critical juncture as public funding policy is being debated in state and the federal government  while nonprofits are experiencing unprecedented   demands for service.

Read the full report – Holding the Fort: Nonprofit Employment During a Decade of Turmoil

In August 2011, Senator Pollina remarked that Gross Domestic Product (most commonly used as a measure of the state’s economy) is ” clearly out of touch with economic reality. It measures production and consumption, it doesn’t tell us who is doing the consuming, where the wealth is or how growth is impacting families or the environment.”

The State of Maryland uses GPI for measuring sustainable prosperity and the GUND Institute at the University of Vermont is a leader in developing GPI methods.

Bill H.542/S/204 asks the state to determine the feasibility of a state bank and bill H.549 would limit the state’s appropriations to only those profit or nonprofit entities that have no greater than a 1:8 ratio between lowest and highest-paid employees. (All Vermont state employees fall within this range.)

You can find the text of all three bills at http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/billtext.cfm.

Additional legislative info

Sign-up now for Vermont Nonprofit Legislative Day 2012

WASHINGTON, DC, (WEDNESDAY, Jan. 18) – Vermont’s congressional delegation – Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) – today announced that Vermont will receive nearly $8.7 million for two flood relief programs integral to helping Vermont farmers and property owners recover from Tropical Storm Irene.

Vermont will receive $6,300,000 for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program (EWP) and $2,325,000 for the Emergency Conservation Program (ECP). Both programs are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

EWP assists property owners whose homes are threatened by flooded rivers, helping to stabilize stream banks and protect foundations and houses from further flood damage. EWP also provides resources for clearing log jams that threaten property and public infrastructure. ECP provides emergency funding and technical assistance for farmers to rehabilitate farmland damaged by natural disasters

Leahy said, “These USDA programs address recovery needs available from no other federal source, and there was a long waiting list after Irene.  I was proud to work with other members of the Appropriations Committee to include funds for these vital programs, and I am pleased that USDA staff in Vermont moved promptly to implement the program after the floods.”

Sanders said, “I am very pleased that Secretary Vilsack has acted quickly to award a significant allocation of these much-needed federal disaster funds to help the hundreds of Vermont farmers whose fields were damaged by Tropical Storm Irene, and to help many other property owners across the state whose properties are threatened by unstable stream banks.”

Welch, who made funding of these programs a top priority in the House, said, “Tropical Storm Irene severely damaged hundreds of farms and permanently altered the landscape for countless property owners. As Vermonters work to get back on their feet, these funds will provide a much-needed boost.”

Contacts: David Carle (Leahy): 202 224-3693 | Michael Briggs (Sanders): 202 224-5141 | Scott Coriell (Welch): 202 225-4115

Two years after the Supreme Court turned unlimited corporate money loose on our elections in the reckless Citizens United decision, Common Cause has launched a national effort to help voters strike back.

The nonpartisan government watchdog today announced a 50-state drive to give voters a voice to push back on corporate political spending, and build toward national referenda calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United.

“A huge majority of Americans reject Citizens United and want a government of, by, and for the people, not of, bought and paid for by the special interests,” Robert Reich, chairman of Common Cause’s National Governing Board, said Tuesday on a telephone press conference. “This campaign will help people make their voices heard at the ballot box, where the elected officials who must pass an amendment ignore them at their own peril.”

The campaign launched with a new website, Amend2012.org, featuring a call-to-action video with Reich using an animated whiteboard to explain the damage being done to our democracy by Citizens United, and urging citizens to get involved with Amend2012.  The video, which will be available Wednesday, was produced by The New Media Firm. The campaign will also rely on social media, using Facebook and Twitter to generate participation and enthusiasm.

Amend2012 provides a creative and ambitious addition to the constitutional amendment movement by giving voters a direct opportunity to make their voices heard NOW, during the 2012 elections, on the need to overturn Citizens United. The campaign aims to give voters the tools to put “voter instruction” measures on the November ballot in as many states as possible, either by voter initiative or action by the state legislature. The measures would instruct Congress to adopt a constitutional amendment to make it clear that corporations are not people and authorize campaign spending limits.

“The Supreme Court misread the Constitution and ignored common sense in Citizens United,” said Bob Edgar, Common Cause’s president and CEO. “Most Americans are appalled by how big corporations and other special interests have hijacked our government and drowned out our voices by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns from the courthouse to the White House. It’s time to restore common sense to our elections and democracy.”

The campaign will provide a roadmap and tools for citizens to push the issue onto the November 2012 ballot. Common Cause is actively exploring potential ballot campaigns in three states – Colorado, Massachusetts and Montana – where initiatives are permitted, and will work with allies and activists on the ground to assess options in an additional six states where it is still feasible to put an Amend2012 initiative on the fall ballot – Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio and Washington. In non-initiative states, Common Cause will work to get bills introduced in state legislatures and major municipalities that would refer an advisory question to the fall ballot.

Common Cause will tap its national network of thousands of volunteer activists to promote the campaign, reach out to allied groups, and use social media to recruit and organize citizens to circulate petitions and lobby legislators.

The Amend2012 strategy has the potential to re-engage disenchanted drop-off voters, including many attracted by the “Occupy” movement, or the Tea Party, to inject issues of corporate control and big money in politics directly into the presidential and key congressional races.

“The Occupy movement, and the Tea Party before it, provides powerful evidence of the frustration Americans of all political stripes feel about our government’s coziness with special interests and unresponsiveness to everyday citizens,” Edgar said. “Amend2012 is a bottom-up grassroots strategy designed to give voters the tools they need to force the issue into the 2012 elections.”

This week marks the second anniversary of Citizens United, which has sparked record spending in national politics, including hundreds of millions of dollars provided by undisclosed and virtually untraceable donors. The presidential race is expected to shatter all fundraising records, while Super PACs, born of the Citizens United decision, pose as independent but operate as subsidiaries of the campaigns and do the candidates’ dirty work.

“We will not, we cannot, solve our nation’s other critical problems until we rein in the power of these special interests,” Edgar said.

Common Cause coordinates its constitutional amendment work with a broad coalition of reform groups, and has been involved in efforts in a number of cities that have already passed resolutions supporting a reversal of Citizens United, including New York, Los Angeles, Portland, OR, Boulder, CO and Missoula, MT.

For more information, also visit www.Amend2012.org.

January 17, 2012 -

According to a newly completed study by The Bridgespan Group, a Boston-based nonprofit advisor to nonprofits, nearly two-thirds of those interviewed said they expect their government funding to shrink over the next two-to-three years, with the harshest cuts anticipated to programs serving the most vulnerable populations such as the elderly and homeless.

The analysis, based on in-depth interviews with 68 nonprofits nationally, did not break down responses by state, but Daniel Sid, the study’s co-author, said findings apply to Massachusetts as much as they do to the nation as a whole.

“Adding to that fear is uncertainty as to how the cuts will be made and what their exact impact will be,” the study concluded, noting that neither government nor government-funded nonprofits have developed coherent strategies to respond to impending cuts.

Survey respondents said there was limited confidence that traditional remedies for navigating fiscal crises—including advocacy to maintain funding, improved contracting, and some consolidation of smaller or weaker organizations—will be enough to address funding system problems as a whole.

While the economy is expected to recover in time, “it is not likely that philanthropy will be able to shoulder the full burden of the decline in public finance,” according to Changing Our World, a philanthropy consulting firm that recently released a report on the outlook on the impact of the economic downturn on philanthropy.

“In past economic downturns, nonprofits could hunker down and wait it out. That is not the case this time. The decline is too steep, and the climb out too long to simply hope that all will be well. Hope is not a strategy,” the report concluded.

Both organizations suggested tactics that nonprofits can adopt to weather the effects of expected continued declines in government funding.

Bridgespan recommended the following for human services nonprofits:

• Focus resources on what works. Instead of making across the board cuts in programs and the funding of the nonprofit providers that deliver them, which is what often happens, government should prioritize funding for the programs and providers in the best position to provide better results for the funding invested – and make the hard choices of defunding those with less impact in order to free up the resources to do so.
• Focus on the link between healthcare and human services. Consider health and human service budgets as a whole, recognizing that government costs on health are continuing to rise. Examine how certain kinds of human services spending, tied to tested strategies in public health, and could help control health care costs by serving society’s most vulnerable in more carefully targeted and effective ways.

Changing Our World suggested the following: 

• Finance internally through efficiency. Increased efficiency enables organizations to achieve roughly the same level of impact while reducing expenses, lessening the need for deep cuts to important programs or layoffs or furloughs of important staff. “Hence, it is incumbent upon every nonprofit to place efficiency as its number one objective for the coming two years. The ability to demonstrate that efficiency will also give donors confidence that every donated dollar is being managed for maximum program allocation.” 
• Collaborate to extend capability and reduce overhead. Merge back offices, jointly purchase property for programs, and combine complimentary nonprofits into single service networks. :Weathering the continued economic storm will make those strategies even more important from a financial viewpoint. Again, in addition to the advantages in terms of service reach and cost containment, the effort will send donors a message about innovation that will be important in maintaining donor loyalty.”
• Focus your message to tell about progress. “It is therefore to be expected that every nonprofit will reach out to its donors and the general public with a plea for resources based on crisis. In turn, it will be difficult for any single nonprofit to be heard in the consequent din. The result is donor confusion and, indeed, bone weariness from all of the stories of suffering. The wise nonprofit will choose alternative messaging. The fundraising overture should not be crisis but progress. Messaging should emphasize the impact that the nonprofit is making, the results of its work, the degree to which it is making a difference for those it touches in the midst of the crisis outside of itself, not emphasize the crisis inside itself. Success on behalf of others, not need on behalf of oneself, will distinguish the message.” 
• Build your financial expertise. While large and diversified nonprofits usually have the financial and credit scope to weather a prolonged financial downturn, many small and medium sized nonprofits may not. “It is important for nonprofits to re-visit the skills on their board and add individuals who are experienced financial managers to board seats. Equally, nonprofit managers and directors must be flexible and willing to listen to, and act on, the financial advice received. Entire systems may need to be re-engineered and associated procedures redesigned.”

Members of the General Assembly, distinguished guests, fellow Vermonters:

Thank you for getting to work so quickly. This is the earliest budget address in a decade, enabling us to accomplish the important work Vermonters sent us to do and adjourn in a timely fashion. Since my budget is being presented before the official revenue forecast is updated, refinements may be required if projections change significantly.

Today, I present a budget that makes the necessary choices to match our
spending with Vermonters’ ability to pay. This is a balanced budget that
protects our most vulnerable, strategically invests new dollars in making
Vermont the education state, and builds on our strong jobs future.

Last year, we made tough choices to close a $176 million gap. Today, I
present a budget that closes a $51 million shortfall without raising broad-
based taxes on hardworking Vermonters who continue to struggle to make
ends meet. This budget also preserves programs for Vermont’s most
vulnerable: our seniors, Vermonters with disabilities, our children, and those
who live in poverty.

***

We face two challenges this year: to rebuild this state better than Irene found
us, and to continue to build our bright jobs future. To those who say we can’t
do both at the same time, I say: we must.

We start by getting credit to entrepreneurs when they need it most. In
partnership with Treasurer Beth Pearce, we are asking the legislature to
increase the state’s moral obligation support for VEDA by up to $30 million.

Next, with over 600 historic buildings in our downtowns flooded by Irene,
many Vermonters who were put out of work are counting on us. I am
proposing an additional $500,000 in downtown tax credits. Each dollar leverages 16 additional dollars in job creation, and every million dollars
creates 110 new jobs.

For the municipalities hit by Irene, I recommend we provide assistance in
two ways: first, my budget increases the state match for town highways
on the federal aid system. Second, for those towns whose storm damage
completely overwhelms their ability to pay, the state will pay your entire
share of the FEMA match. My message to towns is clear: we stand with you
all the way as we rebuild together.

Many individuals and communities are facing tough decisions about whether
to rebuild in flood plains. The FEMA buyout program only covers 75
percent of the pre-disaster property value. The goal is for the state to cover
the remaining 25 percent where needed. Through the Vermont Housing and
Conservation Board we will provide a minimum of $2 million in matching
funds for Vermonters who seek buyouts for destroyed homes and towns who
seek flood mitigation.

Vermont’s transportation infrastructure pre-Irene was crumbling before
our eyes. We will take the lessons from Irene to rebuild our roads, bridges,
and rail stronger, faster, and more affordably. My budget proposes the
largest transportation program in Vermont history by adding $45 million
to desperately needed paving and bridge projects. It also increases town
highway aid by $1.5 million, the first such increase in six years.

We must turn the devastating flooding at our state office complex into
opportunity by building efficient, effective, green state workspace for the
future.

The following principles must inform our decisions as we consider how to
rebuild:

One, when making capital investments of taxpayer dollars of this magnitude
in real estate, facts really matter: weighing the cost of each of our options is
critical.

Two, with more intense storms looming large in our climate change future,
our investments must be protected from getting washed away by future
storms.

Three, we will use this opportunity to co-locate and integrate state agencies
that share a common mission.

I recommend the following actions:

First, it should be clear from the effective collaboration of the past four
months that the Agencies of Transportation, Natural Resources, and
Commerce be co-located and integrated on a permanent basis. It makes
sense to consolidate them in space that we are currently leasing at National
Life in Montpelier.

Second, the Department of Education is currently functioning in
two different locations in central Vermont, inhibiting efficiency and
collaboration. I recommend relocating the Department of Education to the
office building being proposed in the heart of Barre by Mayor Lauzon,
Representative Poirier and others. This action will help revitalize Barre’s
downtown and return it to a vibrant center for commerce and job creation.

Third, the Agency of Human Services is scattered between Washington
and Chittenden Counties. This inhibits our ability to provide seamless and
integrated service to the people who need state government most. I ask you
to support me in reuniting AHS into one location in central Vermont.

My first choice is to unite them in Waterbury. Before we make that decision,
we must first ensure that we can keep it dry and modernize the workspace
affordably.

Rebuilding in Waterbury would be ideal. My administration, working with
the legislature, will move as quickly as we possibly can, as our architects
and engineers develop the multiple scenarios under consideration.

Whatever the outcome, it is unlikely that the significant costs incurred will
be entirely covered by FEMA or insurance. That’s why I am requesting
that the House and Senate Institutions Committees redirect $18 million of
previously approved projects to help cover the investments that lie ahead.

***

Irene has also delivered an opportunity to create an outstanding mental
health system for Vermont.

We will not return to the State Hospital, whose decrepit condition did not
dignify our most vulnerable Vermonters or high quality of care provided
by our state employees. Since that fateful August day when we evacuated
the hospital, we have worked tirelessly with our mental health community –
state employees, community providers, hospitals and designated agencies,
to put in place a plan to address our short-term crisis and design a long-term
solution.

Guided by the simple principle that quality care for the patient is our
top priority, we will expand community services, increase peer services,
enhance hospital care regionally, and build a new state of the art facility.

In our effort to achieve mental health parity, it is inexcusable that we require
patients seeking acute care for mental illness to travel far from home to
receive it. Our plan allows for acute care and community-based care in
multiple locations throughout Vermont to keep patients close to home.

While we should be proud of our collective response since our hospital was
flooded, let us not forget that we remain in a crisis situation. While we have
been fortunate to avert disaster or loss of life thus far, that could change at
any moment.

I appreciate your commitment to address this emergency in an expedited
fashion. Your authorization of the acute care beds at the Brattleboro Retreat,
Rutland Regional, and in Windsor County cannot happen soon enough.
Vermont’s taxpayers will be relieved to learn that most of these costs will
likely be paid for by FEMA. We must also break ground on our new state
16-bed state operated facility in central Vermont this summer. I am counting
on you to put a bill on my desk by February 17 that implements this plan and
moves us from crisis management to quality care.

***

Some critics have argued that this session we must limit any discretionary
spending to only Irene-incurred expenses. I say: we must not pit Vermonters
against Vermonters. We must not say to our low-income seniors in
Springfield that we can’t provide heating assistance to keep them warm
this winter because Irene did not impact them directly. We must not tell
small businesses in the Northeast Kingdom that they don’t deserve support or a struggling dairy farmer in Swanton that we can’t help them stay in
farming because they were not impacted by Irene. Pitting Vermonter against
Vermonter is not the Vermont way, it’s not Vermont Strong, and we must
not do it.

***

Building the best education system in the country will create jobs.

My budget proposal includes a $282 million appropriation to the Education
Fund. For the second year in a row, we are increasing Education Fund
dollars, this year by $6 million, in our effort to hold the line on property
taxes.

Recognizing that in recent years, Vermonters gathering at town meeting
have chosen to spend more per pupil than almost any other state in America,
I commend our local school boards for holding the line on new spending
over the past two years and urge them to do it again. Rising property taxes
continue to be a tremendous burden for Vermonters struggling in this
recovery, and a failure by local boards to hold the line again will result in
unacceptable property tax increases. As student enrollment continues to
decline, we are finally seeing a downward trend in the number of teachers
and staff, which should make level funding our school budgets even more
achievable.

I am a strong supporter of local control. I firmly believe that we in
Montpelier should never live under the illusion that we should decide
which schools stay open and which schools consolidate. However, we can
save money and retain local control by cutting administrative costs and
consolidating supervisory unions. Senator Kevin Mullin has proposed
consolidating our 60 supervisory unions, reducing bureaucracy and saving
taxpayers roughly $9 million each year. This bold proposal deserves your
consideration.

Your recently released school funding study demonstrates that, through Act
68, Vermont has found more success than any other state in converting the
regressive property tax into fair education funding.

Now is our time to move on from the old battles about whether our
financing system works. The opportunity now is to partner with our locally controlled education community to do the more important and difficult job
of enhancing creativity and quality for every student.

Our challenge is two-fold. First, despite our progress in achieving equity,
educational achievement continues to stubbornly track family income.
Second, our delivery system leans too heavily on the rigid model that time
spent together in class with blackboard and pencil will collectively result in
acquisition of skills for our diversity of learners.

From early education to higher education and technical school, we have
among the most innovative offerings in the country. By creating a seamless
system that allows each student to take advantage of these offerings, we
will achieve excellence. However, we have to have the courage to do some
things differently.

We must start by elevating the Commissioner of Education to the Secretary
of Education, appointed by the governor.

We must also continue to partner with our local communities to expand
access to pre-K education. Last year, we lifted the cap that gives every
community equal access to quality pre-K education. Continuing to build
universal pre-K in Vermont will assure a strong start for every student.

Flexibility is critical for all students, and I strongly believe that expanding
our limited school choice to all of our public high schools in Vermont
will enhance innovation. Additionally, allowing high school juniors and
seniors to take college courses for college credit wherever they choose will
make higher education more affordable for low- and middle-income, first-
generation students. This flexibility, with the money following the student,
should be available to all high school juniors and seniors in Vermont.

In my travels to businesses across the state, I hear consistently a similar
story: businesses are hiring, but they can’t find enough Vermonters with
skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

To address this growing problem, I propose an $8 million innovation
investment in the University of Vermont and the Vermont State Colleges.
This one-time investment from the Higher Education Trust Fund will still
leave the fund ten percent higher than last year.

Under my proposal, the University of Vermont will use its one-time
investment of $4 million to undertake the following:

Expand successful university-industry partnerships, giving seniors
the opportunity to get hands-on job experience with businesses and
nonprofits.

Create an international center of excellence in complex systems at
UVM that will enhance economic growth. The new multi-million
dollar Sandia National Laboratory is just one example of the kind of
innovation this investment will stimulate.

Develop a program that facilitates the re-entry of critically needed
science and engineering professionals back into our workforce. By
targeting women who have temporarily left their fields, often to raise
families, we can help retain already skilled workers.

The Vermont State Colleges will use its $4 million to:

Allow more high school students to enroll full-time in college during
their senior year, saving their families money and getting a head start
on finishing a college degree.

Create an applied educational institute supporting the renaissance in
the agricultural and food production sectors.

Improve access to CCV and VTC in southern Vermont by supporting
a consolidated academic center in downtown Brattleboro. Both CCV
and VTC School of Nursing now operate in antiquated leased space;
this investment will be an economic shot in the arm for downtown
Brattleboro, which has been hit hard by fires and floods.

We hear a lot about the need to invest in innovation and the future
workforce; this is an opportunity to back our words with action, and I urge
you to support these initiatives.

***
To build jobs, we know that strong, coordinated marketing of the Green
Mountain State led by the Department of Tourism and Marketing, works.
Leaf peepers poured into Vermont despite Irene. To keep our tourism
industry vibrant, my budget fully funds our marketing efforts.

Manufacturing in Vermont is showing signs of life. I have asked Secretary
Lawrence Miller to lead an Advanced Manufacturing Initiative that will bring together education, industry, labor, and government to make
recommendations about how to advance the manufacturing gains we are
making.

One way to grow jobs is to make sure our permit process is predictable,
transparent and timely. Secretary Markowitz and Natural Resources
Board Chair Shems have been holding public meetings around the state,
hearing from hundreds of Vermonters about what works and what should be
improved in our permit process.

The message is clear: we need more efficiency and transparency. Under Act
250, when an applicant or neighborhood group makes their case before the
local environmental commission, that should count for something. I ask the
legislature to require the environmental court to use the commission’s record
of the hearing to settle an appeal, avoiding the costly and inefficient process
of starting all over again.

***

Stewardship of our natural resources requires us to manage our wildlife and
habitat by promoting hunting and fishing. Hunters and anglers have been
the backbone of Vermont’s fish and wildlife conservation efforts for many
years.

Unfortunately, over the last seven years, General Fund dollars appropriated
to the department have plummeted by almost 60 percent. As a lifelong
hunter, I know firsthand how important hunting and fishing is to Vermont’s
quality of life and economic success. It is clear to me that we can no longer
rely solely on revenue from hunting and fishing licenses to adequately
support our fish and wildlife resources. That is why my budget includes a
150 percent increase to $2.4 million to Fish and Wildlife, an investment that
leverages nearly $8 million in federal dollars to ensure a bright future for
Vermont’s sportsmen and women.

***

One year into our war on recidivism, we are seeing progress. Despite
corrections spending doubling in the past decade, at an average cost of
$48,000 per year per inmate, our incarcerated population is finally declining
and is now at the same level as eight years ago. Our progress represents a $2.5 million savings since last year.

I propose reinvesting half of these savings to deliver on our promise of
providing housing, counseling, job training, drug and alcohol prevention and
treatment to non-violent offenders who have completed their sentences. This
will add 93 community based treatment beds to help us win the war.

Our fight against prescription opiate addiction is directly related to our
war on recidivism. There are three components to addressing this growing
epidemic.

The first, as I outlined last week, is giving law enforcement access to the
Prescription Drug Monitoring System.

Second, our Department of Health is creating a cutting edge system that
will increase substance abuse treatment for the many Vermonters who
desperately need it.

Third, we will work with prescribers to help them implement best practices
to responsibly dispense addictive opiates.

***

A final word about my budget proposal: last year at this podium, I called on
the legislature to raise our reserves to eight percent as soon as we return to
better times. As the first step toward that goal, I am recommending a down
payment of $3.1 million to the stabilization fund. Should revenues exceed
our forecasts in future years, I will insist that we go the rest of the way to
fulfill this commitment.

***

I know I have outlined an ambitious agenda to rebuild our state while we
create a better economic future for all Vermonters. While I believe strongly
in the principles and proposals I have outlined today, I also welcome your
suggestions for improvement. This year, as last, we will work together in a
bipartisan spirit to do our best for the state we love.

Thank you, let’s get to work.

2012 Training Calendar

A crucial task for nonprofits struggling in the broken economy is to do a much better job talking about the essential role they play serving people and places in need.

Through the stories they tell, nonprofits need to raise supporters’ and partners’ awareness of urgent social and global problems, help them see their organization’s impact in helping to fix those problems, and help them understand the difference they can make by investing time, know-how and money in their organizations.

Stories also are essential in helping investors appreciate nonprofits’ own need to build their capacity to learn, lead and grow, as well as the challenges they face in navigating economic stress and social change.

The unraveling economy has pushed many nonprofits to the edge, swamping some and motivating others to find ways to work smarter and serve better.

Demand for nonprofit services has soared while the marketplace for the resources nonprofits count on has tightened and is shifting dramatically.

Powering the expanding social economy is any individual or organization working to put private resources to public good.

In the face of social and global crises, sweeping demographic change, and rapid advances in technology, the once-separate worlds of charity, private capital and public policy are evolving quickly and starting to overlap.

In that rapidly evolving marketplace, underlying challenges for nonprofits are to adapt and improve their organizations, help their investors understand how change is affecting the communities they care about, and show investors how they can make an impact on fixing community problems by getting involved in their organizations.

That requires engaged boards and donors, effective and inspired leaders and managers, partners who are truly collaborative, and an organization with the vision, business model and resources to turn that vision into results.

It requires understanding the values and interests of prospective donors, volunteers and other partners, and finding meaningful and fulfilling ways to engage them in the organization.

And it requires developing a clear, simple and compelling story that helps people see how supporting a particular nonprofit will make a difference in the causes they care about.

A critical part of building organizational capacity is for nonprofits to vastly improve the way they communicate, both internally and externally.

So the story the organization develops about its role and impact in taking on social and global problems should inform and help shape the work it does and the way it works.

The staff, board and volunteers of a nonprofit should be able to tell that story, and should be telling it every chance they get.

And they should be using the broad range of available vehicles to tell it, including talking to donors and other individuals and organizations; using the organization’s website, email and other digital media; and speaking to civic organizations, on public-affairs radio and television, and writing guest opinion columns for news and specialty publications.

Nonprofits have important stories to tell, and they should make it a priority to tell those stories as clearly, as often and as broadly as they can.

Four St Johnsbury nonprofits—Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium, St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, St. Johnsbury Academy and Catamount Arts—will jointly promote the combined arts-and-culture resources that exist within their organizations and develop new opportunities for collaboration to enhance St. Johnsbury’s cultural climate and creative economy. The group is recognizing their proximate area in St Johnsbury as the Arts & Culture Campus.

“Along Main Street from the Fairbanks Museum to the corner of Eastern Avenue at the Athenaeum, down to Catamount Arts and back over to St. Johnsbury Academy, we see a geographic link amid our shared traditions of arts programming and community outreach,” said Jody Fried, executive director of Catamount Arts. “We view this area, which we’re calling the Arts & Culture Campus, as a jumping off point for arts programming in our town, inclusive of all of greater St. Johnsbury. People can come to town and easily circulate through this area to enjoy a concentration of fun happenings.”

The shared histories (largely descending from the vision and beneficence of the Fairbanks family) and strengths in the arts of the four local organizations will place a sharp focus on the rich cultural programs that St. Johnsbury offers to the public.

The alliance has created a logo and theme through which to advance the public’s thinking about what the town as to offer: “Get Inspired—St. Johnsbury’s Arts & Culture Campus.” The logo will be used with advertising and marketing materials to position St. Johnsbury as a dynamic center for the arts, statewide and regionally.

“Our efforts will be on coordinating events to give area residents and visitors a range of arts, culture and educational activities, so once they’re in town they have a range of fun opportunities throughout a day or a weekend,” said Anna Rubin, director of external relations for the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. “With the local non-profits working in collaboration, we see this an exponential promotion of the arts in St. Johnsbury.”

The organizations in the coalition share:

• Rich cultural resources for visual and performing arts
• Full calendars of learning programs for all ages
• Authentic connections to the local heritage of the area
• Support for vibrant, dynamic and evolving new voices and expressions
• Access to artistic inspiration from around the world
• Easy access on Main Street/Eastern Avenue campus.

The group will be co-planning and promoting arts events beginning in 2012, kicking off with First Night St. Johnsbury 2012. They intend to coordinate their efforts with other area arts organizations, businesses, and chambers of commerce.

“The St. Johnsbury Chamber of Commerce looks forward to fully supporting the efforts of this wonderful coalition of creative and cultural institutions here in St J We’re excited by this new opportunity to help bring more attention to the creative economy in and around town,” said Jeff Moore, president, St. Johnsbury Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the General
Assembly, distinguished guests, fellow Vermonters:

Thank you. It’s been such a privilege to serve as Vermont’s governor over
the past year. Our partnership of community, courage, and common purpose
that has empowered us through the unprecedented challenges dumped
upon us by Mother Nature, combined with our willingness to make the
tough choices necessary to grow jobs and economic opportunities for all
Vermonters, has made us stronger.

I want to recognize a few of the thousands of Vermonters who have made us
so proud in the last year, and serve as symbols of Vermont at its best.

We are so grateful to the dedicated women and men of our armed forces,
whose service both overseas and during the Irene recovery has been
exemplary. Please join me in honoring our Vermont troops, led by Gen.
Michael Dubie.

The magnitude of devastation from Tropical Storm Irene astounded General
Dubie and me as we landed in community after community in the days after
the storm. I knew that we needed effective, experienced leaders to help us
cut through bureaucracy and rebuild at breakneck speed as we raced winter
weather. I am so grateful to our Irene Recovery Officer Neale Lunderville,
who took a leave from his job to join our team in Vermont’s time of need.
Neale, all Vermonters join me in thanking you for your selfless service to
the state you love.

This has been an especially tough year for Vermont’s local government
leaders. I want to acknowledge four of our storm-tested, hard-working
mayors: Thom Lauzon, Barre; Marty Manahan, St. Albans; Chris Louras,
Rutland; Mary Hooper, Montpelier: please stand so we can acknowledge
your service to Vermont.

I also want to acknowledge an outstanding legal mind and a pioneer in civil
rights who made history this year by joining the Vermont Supreme Court.
Justice Robinson, thank you for your service to justice in Vermont.

***

Today I report to you on the state of the greatest state in the nation, one that
has demonstrated over the course of the past year what it means to be united
as one community to overcome tragedy. In the wake of a deep recession,
two spring storms, and a tropical storm that devastated our infrastructure and
exacted an unimaginable toll on the lives of thousands of Vermonters, I can
tell you without reservation or exaggeration: the state of our state is strong.
Vermont strong!

From Halifax to Hartford, Wilmington to Waterbury, Roxbury to Richmond,
the hundreds of individual actions of bravery and courage in the days and
months after Irene will be forever etched in my memory. I want to share one
of them.

Rutland Mayor Chris Louras, who like most local leaders was working long
days without sleep after Irene, called me every few hours with progress
updates on the unfolding tragedy – the search for Mike Garofano and
his son, who went missing during the storm. With Route 4 nothing but a
streambed in sections where roadway once ran, I came in by National Guard
helicopter to join Mayor Louras and give son Tommy Garofano a bear hug
from all Vermonters.

Tommy’s dad, Mike Sr., grew up in Rutland and went to work for the city
for over 30 years, rising to become the manager of the water plant, a job to
which he dedicated his life. Mike and his wife Sally had two sons – Mike Jr.,
known also as Little Mike, and Tommy; Mike also had a son Robby. Robby
lost his life in a tragic accident in 2010, and Little Mike and Tommy’s tight
bond with their mom and dad helped them all in the face of such adversity.

On the evening of Irene, with Mendon Brook raging, Mike and Little Mike
braved through the storm to the water plant to check on the inlet valve that
Mike had closed the previous day to make sure polluted water would not
enter the city’s reservoir. It was a risk, but they were determined to protect
Rutland’s water supply. With Mendon Brook carving craters where solid soil

once stood, the banks gave way, sweeping them both away. Mike’s body
was retrieved the next day, but the search for Little Mike went on for weeks.

While Sally was comforted by family and friends, Tommy heroically joined
the search and rescue effort, digging through mountains of Irene’s debris
looking for his brother.

Today on behalf of our state, we honor two Vermont heroes, Michael
Garofano and Michael Garofano, Jr. with a promise that we will never
forget. Joining us in the chamber are Sally and Tommy Garofano.

To Sally and Tommy — and the families of the six other Vermonters who
lost their lives as a result of Tropical Storm Irene — our admiration and
support will never cease. Thank you.

As Mayor Louras and I gave what comfort we could to Tommy on that day
at Mendon Brook, something else happened that characterizes Vermont
strong. With Route 4 shut down, and community after community isolated
islands where roads and bridges once served, brothers John and Doug
Casella had an idea. Doug said, “Governor, you get the Department of Motor
Vehicles to lift the ban on hauling heavy equipment across what’s left of
our roads and get us permission to retrieve some of the rock and gravel that
Irene washed from our roads into our streams, and we’ll partner with other
private contractors like Belden Company, Markowski Excavating, Mosher
Excavating, Wilk Paving, the Agency of Transportation and the National
Guard. We can have Route 4 open in three weeks.”

As soon as I got high enough in the chopper to actually have cell
service in Vermont, I called Secretary Searles, Secretary Markowitz and
Commissioner Ide, and within hours, our team applied Doug’s request, not
just to Rutland, but to the whole state of Vermont. And guess what? Nine
days later, Route 9 from Brattleboro to Wilmington to Bennington: Open.
18 days later, Route 4 from Woodstock to Rutland: Open. And today, all the
roads destroyed by Irene: Open!

Team Casella, Belden, Wilk, Mosher, Markowski are here today, and
I would ask you to please stand. You represent the many Vermont
construction companies who, along with AOT, the Vermont National Guard
and Guard troops from around the country rebuilt us Vermont Strong, and
Vermont honors you today.

In this public/private partnership, with winter looming, we did it right,
with Vermont ingenuity, fiscal prudence, and common sense. We rebuilt,
for 35 cents on the dollar, bringing total estimated damage down to $250
million for state roads and infrastructure, and $140 million for town roads.
Thanks to the skill of the best Congressional delegation in America, Senator
Leahy, Senator Sanders and Congressman Welch, the Leahy amendment
became law, ensuring that Vermont will get the federal aid we need in our
time of need, reducing our projected cost to the General Fund to under $30
million. Please join me in recognizing the great work of Senator Patrick
Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Congressman Peter Welch as well as
our partners at FEMA.

***

There are two Irene lessons that we must seize from our experience over the
past four months.

The first lesson is clear: if after Irene we can rebuild over 500 miles of
damaged roads and 34 bridges in four months for a fraction of normal
cost, with dwindling federal funds in our future, we must apply those
lessons to maintaining and rebuilding Vermont’s aging transportation
infrastructure from this point forward. We will build faster, smarter, and
more economically.

Instead of having state workers bunkered in their individual agencies,
processing paper, we broke down the silos, forming a partnership between
AOT, ANR, private contractors, and municipalities. Contracting procedures
were modified; access to stone and gravel was expedited; dangerous debris
was removed from brooks and streams as engineers worked together with
environmental experts to get the job done. Projects that pre-Irene would
have taken years got done in months; environmental quality was preserved;
taxpayer dollars were saved; and roads and bridges were built to withstand
the assault of extreme weather that looms even larger in our future.

The second lesson comes from the remarkable tenacity of the hundreds of
small businesses that were drowned in water and mud, putting hard working
Vermonters out of work overnight. A year ago at this podium, I pledged the
following: My jobs agenda will expand the ability of emerging entrepreneurs
and businesses to get access to capital when they need it most.

When Lt. Gov. Phil Scott and I traveled the state together, reaching out to
the hundreds of small businesses shuttered by triple storms, our message
to job creators was: We stand by you, we stand with you, and the state of
Vermont will do its part in helping you get back on your feet.

Partnering with the Vermont Economic Development Authority, we created
an emergency low interest loan program that, with minimal bureaucracy
and maximum effectiveness, got credit of up to $100,000 to crippled job
creators within days. More than 340 businesses and farms were granted
loans, totaling $15.3 million. With liquidity, Vermont ingenuity and hard
work, miracle after miracle happened as business after business reopened.

Bartleby’s Bookstore in Wilmington: Open
Leader Home Center in Brattleboro: Open
Simon Pierce in Windsor: Open
The Red Wagon Toy Company in Woodstock: Open
Winhall Market in Bondville: Open
Sunrise General Store in Bridgewater Corners: Open
Wall-Goldfinger in Northfield: Open
Nelson Hardware in Barre: Open
The Rochester Café: Open
American Flatbread in Waitsfield: Open
Positive Pie in Montpelier: Open

And the list goes on and on. The lesson for Vermont government in helping
to grow jobs in Vermont is simple: Getting credit to entrepreneurs when
they need it most grows prosperity and grows jobs. In fact, there is nothing
standing in the way of Vermont’s job creators that cannot be made right by
a partnership with state government that is built on a foundation of common
sense, trust, and expedited risk credit for businesses when others won’t lend.

Vermont’s response to Irene perfectly illustrates the strong state of our
state. Perhaps the greatest lesson that we can take from the challenge of
the previous four months is that despite Irene’s devastation, despite our
heartbreak and pain, we are bound by common purpose.

We are also bound by tragic loss. To the hundreds of Vermonters who
lost so much – lost their house, lost their belongings, lost the land that
their homes rested on or the land they tilled, we stand with you in the long

recovery that lies ahead, to help you close the gap between your hopes
and dreams that were washed away and the paltry $30,200 maximum
reimbursement afforded you by our federal government. While we know that
we can never make you whole, our resolve as your neighbors and friends to
continue to help you rebuild your lives remains as strong as ever.

We are so grateful to everyone who has stepped up and contributed, from
the students at Moretown Elementary School who passed a jar in class to
the countless church groups, non-profits and private companies who have
contributed millions of dollars. Vermont musicians like Phish and Grace
Potter held concerts that raised well over $1 million, and Tony Pomerleau,
who just recently pledged a very generous $1 million to the Vermont
Disaster Relief Fund. At a youthful 93, Tony is here today. Tony, we thank
you for your generosity.

Vermonters have been so generous, but we have many miles to travel before
we rest and many dollars to raise before we sleep. In that spirit, we are
pleased to introduce our new Vermont Strong license plates, which can be
purchased at vtstrong.vermont.gov. If you purchase this plate for the front
of your vehicle, the proceeds will go to the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund to
help those who need us.

***

I could devote this entire speech to our recovery, because I do believe that
Tropical Storm Irene represents a defining moment in Vermont’s history.
But now is our moment to apply that same courage, strength and ingenuity
to our most pressing need: growing jobs and prosperity for all Vermonters.

Having witnessed what Vermont can do together, I have never been more
optimistic about our ability to keep getting tough things done to help us
grow jobs in 2012.

If we can rebuild destroyed roads and bridges in less than four months,
we can meet my promise of connecting every corner of Vermont to high
speed internet and vastly improved cell service by the end of 2013. In the
past year, we have connected 7,500 locations, and installed 1,600 miles of
fiber in our ongoing effort to connect Vermont. We are going to keep our
promise of closing Vermont’s connectivity gap and we are going to grow
jobs as we connect.

If we can rebuild our transportation infrastructure at 35 cents on the dollar,
we can lead the nation in arresting the skyrocketing cost of health care that
is hurting job growth and picking the pockets of our struggling middle class.
Your Green Mountain Health Board is hard at work building that system
now.

If we can reopen hundreds of flooded businesses in 14 weeks, we can
transform Vermont into the innovative education leader, where from early
childhood to higher education to continuing education, we train employees
for the prosperous jobs of our future. In my budget address next week, in
addition to addressing the challenges and opportunities of replacing our state
hospital and state office complex, I will propose significant state investments
in higher education and dual enrollment, all aimed at making Vermont
students even more competitive and creating opportunities for employers to
recruit the employees they are now seeking.

If we can turn the lights back on in just three days for over 70,000 utility
customers, thanks to the heroic work of our utilities, we can create jobs by
harnessing the sun, wind, water, forests and fields to produce community-
generated renewable power. We have made progress this past year, but we
need to keep building. This session, I will propose requiring an affordable
and achievable Renewable Energy Portfolio standard that sets a goal to
obtain 75 percent renewable electricity in 20 years. I will also recommend
that Vermont build on our Standard Offer program so that we can build
faster.

If we can reconnect hundreds of miles of washed out dirt roads in just days
so that milk trucks can get to our dairy farmers who had to dump milk
during the storm, we can create jobs by fueling the renaissance in locally
grown Vermont food. This year we will continue to focus on farm to plate,
farm to fork, buy local, and farmer’s markets, while addressing the challenge
of producing enough Vermont-grown milk to meet the needs of our value-
added dairy companies.

If we can build partnerships between state and municipal governments to
keep our citizens safe and secure, we can work together to address two of
the most serious problems we face: winning the war on recidivism, and
stemming the epidemic abuse of prescription drugs, particularly opiates, that
is driving crime and destroying the lives of too many of our neighbors.

Next week, I will also propose changes to our Prescription Drug Monitoring
System. Access to the system by law enforcement needs to recognize an
individual’s right to privacy while giving law enforcement the tools they
need to track down abusive access so we can fight our prescription drug
epidemic. This growing problem is so frightening because while FDA-
approved prescription opiates are easy to get, many are just as addicting and
dangerous as street heroin and crack cocaine.

***

Since taking office a year ago, I have visited countless businesses
throughout the state, and met with small business owners, from Bo Muller-
Moore who had a simple idea to put the phrase “Eat More Kale” on t-
shirts and now works 14 hour days to fill orders from across the country, to
Briar and Adam Alpert of BioTek, a global leader in medical applications
technology. I am so optimistic about our jobs future, and every day I see
evidence of Vermont’s entrepreneurial success.

But we have a lot more work to do. Too many Vermonters continue to
struggle to make ends meet for themselves and their families.

But to those who say that Vermont is a bad place to do business, that our
bold policies for job growth aren’t getting results, that our optimism about
Vermont’s jobs future is not matched by progress, I ask you to consider
these facts: our unemployment rate at the peak of the recession was 7.3
percent; today it is among the lowest in America at 5.3 percent. Chittenden
County now enjoys the fourth lowest unemployment rate in America. Over
the past year, new jobs in Vermont grew by 62 percent over the prior year,
more than any other state in the nation. Vermont ranked second in a recent
study of how well states use tax breaks and economic development subsidies
to actually create jobs.

If you don’t believe the data, I invite you to join me on the road, reaching
out to Vermont’s job creators. Here are a few that I have visited this year.

In Newport, Bill Stenger is working on several projects in Orleans County
in addition to building a world class four-season resort at Jay Peak that
employs hundreds of Vermonters. Bill and his partners are bringing Anc/
Bio and four other new projects that represent a $350 million investment

and will produce 3,000 direct and indirect jobs in the heart of the Northeast
Kingdom.

In Rutland, GE continues to expand one of the largest GE manufacturing
plants of jet engines in the nation for both commercial and military aircraft.

In Castleton, Hubbardton Forge is on track to meet its goal of doubling its
sales in five years.

In Barre, SB Electronics is up and running, with capacity to produce parts
for 100,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles within three years.

In Essex, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is building a new plant that will
employ hundreds of additional Vermonters and help fuel the exceptional
growth of one of America’s most successful companies.

Next door in Essex Junction, IBM continues to innovate and create the
jobs of the future. Vermont’s IBM plant is thriving and adding jobs, and
is now one of the world’s largest producers of semiconductor technology,
employing 6,000 people.

In Arlington, Mack Molding continues to hire and expand.

In Vergennes, Goodrich is hiring.

In Essex Junction, Revision Eyewear is thriving and has developed a new
combat helmet that, if adopted by the U.S. military, will allow them to vastly
expand manufacturing in Vermont.

In Newport, Louis Garneau will be building new facilities to expand
manufacturing jobs.

From the Massachusetts line to the Canadian border, companies that
opened this year include Commonwealth Yogurt in Brattleboro, Farmstead
Cheese in Woodstock, Swan Valley Cheese in Swanton, and many other
small value-added agricultural businesses are growing their customer
base, creating jobs, and adding vitality to a dairy industry that is poised for
revitalization.

My administration and I commit ourselves every day to attracting

entrepreneurs and growing jobs, one job at a time, as we slowly but surely
grow our way out of the most painful recession in our nation’s history.

Let me say one more word about staying competitive and creating jobs. Our
tax policy has a direct impact on our jobs future. You may have heard me
say this before: Vermont’s problem is not that our taxes are not high enough;
it is that our taxes are too high.

I am a proud and strong supporter of Vermont’s progressive income tax
structure – the most progressive in the country, where unlike the federal
government, we require our wealthiest citizens to pay their fair share of
income tax. But, we cannot correct the tax failures of Washington from
the State House in Montpelier, and we must be always mindful that every
day, we compete with our neighboring states for jobs. Therefore, I remain
determined not to increase broad-based taxes on Vermonters as we begin to
see signs of modest economic growth.

***

Looking back on the last year, we have so much to be thankful for, and so
many opportunities ahead.

As we enter this new year, partisanship continues to paralyze our democracy
in Washington, DC. At a time when many of America’s cities and
communities beyond Vermont’s borders often seem more divided than
united, our little state has distinguished itself. Indeed, there is nothing wrong
with America that could not be made right by the ingenuity and caring
spirit of the people of the state of Vermont. By continuing to set aside what
divides us and finding common ground to unite us, we will rebuild our state
while making the bold decisions that will lead to continued job growth and a
bright future for Vermont.

Let’s get back to work. Thank you.

Sign-Up Now: February 9th, 2012 is VT Nonprofit Legislative Day!

State Budget Gap & Human Services
Governor Shumlin will be presenting his budget proposal for fiscal year 2013 next Thursday,  January 12 but this much is clear now: as a result of the gap between tax income and the rate of state spending, serious cuts will have to be made to right the General Fund Budget. A likely recipient of the brunt of these cuts will be human services programs.

The current budget gap is about $75 million which only seems worse when coupled with a $25 million budget adjustment for fiscal year 2012. According to the Joint Fiscal Office, the latest budget gap falls in line with four years of consistent shortfall coming to about $1billion in the red.   Human services programs, which have received significant federal stimulus assistance, will be in a trying financial situation as  that funding will essentially be gone leaving programs like the Low Income Heating Assistance Program in jeopardy.

More on the State Budget

Health Care Requirements for Small Employers
Vermont’s health care system is in a state of limbo with the details of state’s efforts at universal health care  and the implications of the federal Affordable Care Act currently being worked out . The federal legislation stipulates that states have to enact a health benefit exchange by 2014 where individuals and small businesses have access to a designated marketplace for health insurance.   Available plans will have be determined adequate by an essential health benefits package which has stirred controversy amongst lawmakers in regards to determining who is allowed into the marketplace and can plans be purchased outside of it.

Also, the exchange system has yet to be determined implications for individuals in state-sponsored health plans like the Vermont Health Access Plan and Catamount Health.  Concerns have been voiced that these state-sponsored plans might go away as plans in the health care exchange will be made available through private insurance thus requiring raising personal costs for Vermonters who make more than 133% of the federal poverty level.

The Obama administration announced that it will allow individual states to determine what they deem to be “essential health benefits” in regards to the health care plan marketplace which comes as a relief to many Vermont lawmakers.  Vermont will have the ability to determine for itself what insurance companies have to cover which will certainly be a discussion to keep tabs on.

More on Health Care

Education Consolidation Bill
Major education issues will be on the docket this year particularly on the re-orginzation of the Education Department. Opposed by the board of education, bill H440 would transition the position of Commissioner of Education(currently filled by Armando Vilaseca ) to a governor-appointed position instead of being determined by the VT Board of Education.

Legislators will also be dealing with  amendments to Act 153 (passed in 2010 to promote and enable school consolidation);  assessing the course set by the No Child Left Behind Act; green cleaning materials used in schools and reviewing a comprehensive report on the state’s education funding law Act 68.

More on Education

 Judiciary Reforms
The House and Senate Judiciary Committees will both be looking at the effectiveness of DUI prevention programs such as the Ignition Interlock Systems, the treatment of Vermonters with opiate addictions, and Governor Shumlin’s proposal for looking into the benefit of  ‘wet shelters’ as a way to treat homeless individuals with substance abuse problems.  Judiciary reforms are also directly linked to budget negotiations as corrections can only shoulder so much additional responsibility as more human services are cut.

More on Judiciary Issues

Vermont’s Tax Code
A surcharge on the state’s richest residents is possible as lawmakers digest the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Tax Commission. A dramatic change in the state’s tax base – from a reliance on the much smaller proceeds from taxable income (after itemized deductions for mortgages, donations and the like) to adjusted gross income (before deductions),   will have a drastic impact on many nonprofits that rely heavily on the support of private donors and foundations.

But, if revenue isn’t generated quickly, funding for many human services will be unavailable. As explained by Representative Chris Pearson of Burlington, raising taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters is “… a way to close some of the loopholes in Vermont tax policy that favors wealthy taxpayers,” “We’ve been cutting programs and budgets for five years and given the economic climate, people rely on state services more and more. We just have to come up with some solutions.”

Additional Resources

The Visiting Nurse Association of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties announced at their Fall Annual Board Retreat the appointment of four new members for the VNA Board of Directors.

Rosemary Dale, EdD, APRN, is an advanced practice registered nurse who served for 25 years as the Chief Nurse at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, now Fletcher Allen Health Care.

Johan (“John”) Maitland is a partner in the labor and employment law group of Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC. Steven Grant, MD, is the assistant director of the hospitalist group at Fletcher Allen Health Care.

Peter Martin, president of WCAX TV, returns to the Board after serving the VNA both on the Honorary Board and as a member of the Agency Integrity and Government Relations committee.

James Madison of Test America was elected as Chair of the VNA Board of Directors.

Other Board officers include; Anne Williams Doremus of Hanson Doremus Investments, Vice Chair; Samuel McDowell of Vermont Information Technology Leaders, Treasurer; and Leslee MacKenzie of Coldwell Banker Hickok and Boardman Realty, Secretary.

The VNA is a 105-year-old nonprofit home health agency caring for people of all ages – from critically ill children to vulnerable families to adults who need rehabilitation, long-term care, adult day services or end-of-life care. The VNA provides medically necessary home and community-based care to individuals and families regardless of their ability to pay. The VNA serves upwards of 5,000 individuals and families each year.

The National Life Charitable foundation will be hosting two luncheons Tuesday, January 10 and Wednesday, January 11 which will be a great opportunity to meet Barbara and network with other nonprofits.

Montpelier, Vermont – Beth Rusnock has been named president and chief executive officer of the National Life Group Charitable Foundation.

“Beth brings passion and compassion to her new assignment,” said Mehran Assadi, president and CEO of National Life Group. “National Life Group has a long and distinguished history of doing well by doing good. But there is much more we can do.”

National Life Group and the National Life Group Charitable Foundation support a wide range of nonprofits that focus on providing homes, heat, health, education, the arts and recreation.

“Our goal is to improve the quality of life wherever we see an opportunity to make a difference,” said Rusnock, who in her new role will also oversee corporate marketing and community relations for National Life Group.

In the past year the company and the foundation have made substantial donations to Vermont flood relief efforts, provided assistance to tornado-damaged schools in Joplin, Missouri, and contributed to an innovative school program in Texas.

The foundation makes grants annually to roughly 100 nonprofits, ranging from the National Life Cancer Treatment Center to the Veteran’s Place, a haven for homeless veterans, and to the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College.

Separate from the activities of the foundation, National Life Group also provides financial support for a wide range of events and organizations, such as the Lake Champlain Dragonboat Festival, the Everybody Wins literacy program, the Vermont Mountaineers, Lost Nation Theater, and the People’s Health and Wellness Center.

In addition National Life Group employees contribute hundreds of hours of volunteer time in their communities. Each employee is allowed 40 hours a year to volunteer in the community on company time.

Rusnock, who joined National Life Group in 2006, has led the company’s corporate branding initiative and overseen both life insurance and annuity marketing. Prior to joining National Life Group she worked for ING in both Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

Rusnock replaces Martha Trombley Oakes, who has been named associate dean of institutional advancement at Vermont Technical College.

Let’s continue to celebrate a happy future now – in 2012!

MONTPELIER—Three years after the start of the Great Recession, the gap between Vermont’s wealthiest and everyone else had widened, and thousands of Vermonters had sunk into poverty, according to a new report released by Public Assets Institute today. The governor’s goal of rebuilding the middle class is an important start, but Montpelier must begin to create a state that works for everybody, the report says.

The State of Working Vermont 2011analyzes the most recent data, from 2010. It shows that Vermont’s 6.2 percent unemployment rate for 2010 was the sixth lowest in the country and the second lowest in New England. The wage gap between male and female workers is the sixth smallest in the nation—but only because women’s wages have fallen less than men’s.

“Vermonters didn’t get hit quite as hard by the recession as people in other states, and that’s good. But we need to be aiming higher,” said Public Assets President Paul Cillo. “A lot of Vermonters have lost ground in the last 10 years. Their real incomes aren’t much better than they were in 1990. Poverty is up and the pace of job creation is down.” The report argues that these losses are the results of public policies that put money considerations ahead of people’s needs—a priority that needs to be reversed.

The report also puts recent trends in historical context, documenting the widening of Vermont’s income gap since the early 1980s, anemic job growth even before the recession hit, and 20 years of income stagnation for the typical Vermont household.

“Governor Shumlin had it right when he described the fears of Vermont’s declining middle class, but the problems go beyond just the middle class,” Cillo said. “We need to make a commitment to build a Vermont that works for everybody.”

The report suggests steps the administration and the Legislature should take to reverse the trends of the last 30 years. The recommendations include:

• Policies explicitly aimed at closing the income gap, rebuilding the middle class, and a broader sharing of the state’s economic growth.
• Development of indicators to measure the state’s progress toward these policy goals.
• A results-based approach to public investment and restoration of the government’s capacity to measure the effectiveness of public programs and services.

Public Assets Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes sound budget and tax policies to benefit all Vermonters. Additional information is available at www.publicassets.org

s

For Immediate Release
Dec. 20, 2011

Contact:
Susan Allen, 802-828-6463
Doug Racine, 802-871-3003

MONTPELIER – Gov. Peter Shumlin today announced that Mental Health Commissioner Christine Oliver and Deputy Secretary Patrick Flood will swap positions, with Oliver assuming the role of Deputy Secretary and Flood becoming Commissioner of Mental Health.

The job swap meets two imperatives. First, the announcement of the Governor’s long-term plan for mental health services in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene and the closing of the Vermont State Hospital has created a legislative and strategic challenge for which Patrick Flood is uniquely qualified to address. Irene gave Vermont an opportunity to build the best integrated mental health delivery system in the nation, where quality care and patient needs come first.

Meanwhile, the Agency of Human Services is facing a host of unanticipated management challenges due to both Irene and federal budget cuts. Christine Oliver’s extensive management and legal experience match well with the Agency’s current needs.

While Oliver dealt with the immediate crisis after the emergency closure of the Vermont State Hospital following severe flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in late August, Flood focused on short-, medium- and long-term options for strengthening Vermont’s mental health system statewide.

“Christine and Patrick have both done an extraordinary job under difficult conditions over the past year,” Governor Shumlin said. “As I have worked closely with them in the wake of Irene, it has become clear to me that at this unique moment, Christine’s background and talents are better suited to managing the Agency’s overall work, while Patrick’s legislative and state government experience make him best suited to helping realize my vision for creating a comprehensive, post-Irene mental health system.”

Gov. Shumlin last week announced the following proposal for mental health delivery in Vermont:

Post Irene: Strengthening Mental Health Services for Vermonters

Pre-Irene: 54 state-operated beds (25-30 used for acute intensive care, the remainder were for patients awaiting discharge)
Cost: $22.5 million operating from General Fund budget annually.

New long term plan:

• 15 bed state managed facility in central Vermont – can be expanded (Fletcher Allen will provide 7 to 10 intensive inpatient beds while this facility is being constructed and staffed)
• 14 beds at Brattleboro Retreat
• 6 at Rutland Regional Medical Center
• Up to 5 beds secure residential on campus of Windsor Correctional Facility

Cost: $26.6 million in capital expenses (insurance policy/FEMA may cover some or all)

Additional community services:

• Step down beds (transitional beds as people move off acute care)
• Improved emergency services
• Improved individualized services
• Housing vouchers and peer services (people who have been patients who now are willing to run services for others – hotline, beds any number of supports)

Cost: $16 million gross; $7 million General Fund; the remainder is federal matching funds
Total number of beds under this Post Irene plan: 70

Dear Friends,

We felt that this holiday season was an appropriate time to stop, to reflect, and to express our gratitude to the many who have stepped forward to help in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

The Community Foundation has created a short video “thank you” card from Vermont to everyone who has helped our state begin to recover from the devastating effects of the storm. Much work remains to be done, but the generosity of families, neighbors, and friends has given this state a leg up.

Our hope is that this video reaches every last person who has given – and who continues to give – in one way or another to the recovery effort. We would love it if you would help us spread this message of thanks by sharing it with your networks through email, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.

www.vtfloodresponse.org/thankyou

Thank you.

Jack Hoffman, of the Public Assets Institute, discusses the importance of using the Census data to rebuild the State of Vermont’s system for measuring improvements in the delivery of vital human services and more. He outlines how recently released Census data are both a wake-up call and a gift for Governor Shumlin’s administration and the Vermont Legislature.

The statistics show that middle-income Vermonters are earning less and more of them are slipping into poverty—evidence that things are moving in the wrong direction for Vermonters. Hoffman suggests ways to manage the budget through outcomes rather than across the board state budget cuts.

MORE VIDEO

A total of 278 grants were awarded throughout the communities that People’s United Community Foundation serves in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Westchester County, New York. The grants were distributed to programs and services within the Foundation’s areas of focus, with 43 percent allocated to community development, 40 percent to youth development, and 17 percent towards affordable housing initiatives.

Since inception in 2007, People’s United Community Foundation has awarded $10,220,700, for a total of 863 grants to nonprofit organizations that serve individuals, families, and businesses within the communities where People’s United Bank operates.

“People’s United Community Foundation is pleased to have such a far-ranging and positive impact on so many remarkable agencies across our footprint, said Vincent Santilli, Executive Director, People’s United Community Foundation. “Our nonprofit partners are providing critical support to those in need through their programs and services, and we are proud to support their efforts.”

Established in 2007, People’s United Community Foundation was formed to help support programs and activities that enhance the quality of life for citizens in the communities that People’s United Bank serves. People’s United Bank, founded in 1842 and serving customers from New York to Maine, is the largest independent bank headquartered in New England.

The Foundation places special emphasis on programs designed to promote economic self-sufficiency, education and improved conditions for low-income families and neighborhoods. The funding priorities of the Foundation include: community development, youth development, and affordable housing. They have three main area of focus:

Community Development
People’s United Community Foundation supports programs and services that enhance the quality of life for residents and promotes economic development in low-income neighborhoods where People’s United Bank does business.

Youth Development
People’s United Community Foundation supports programs and services that serve the educational and developmental needs of children and youth, especially in schools and school districts that serve low-income individuals.

Affordable Housing
People’s United Community Foundation provides grants to programs that support the creation of affordable housing and the creation or sustaining of safe, clean and desirable neighborhoods.

People’s United recently announced donations totaling $225,336 to Vermont nonprofits during the 2011 fiscal year.

Granite United Way, NH Charitable Foundation and The Vermont Community Foundation recently announced that they’ve made a $75,000 commitment to supporting the work of Upper Valley Strong to support the efforts of those who came together in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

The effort to assist Upper Valley residents as they recover from the devastation left by Tropical Storm Irene has received a big boost.  Upper Valley Strong, a collaborative long-term relief effort of approximately 50 local non-profit agencies, churches, schools and governmental bodies that came together to respond to the needs of disaster victims, was recently awarded a combined grant of $75,000 from Granite United Way, the NH Charitable Foundation and The Vermont Community Foundation.

“The decision to support Upper Valley Strong was an easy one for our volunteers.  Granite United Way recognizes the importance of working together, especially when disaster strikes.  This collaboration of community leaders has already proven to be a valuable asset for Upper Valley residents working to rebuild,” said Patrick Tufts, President & CEO, Granite United Way.

Following the disbursement of FEMA funds, groups like the Upper Valley Haven, COVER, SEVCA and the Upper Valley Housing Coalition will assess current needs, combine resources and expertise to meet those needs and mobilize volunteers. Funding will be distributed through local programs working directly to help individuals rebuild.

“At the Charitable Foundation, we want to assist in the long term recovery efforts – not just the immediate disaster relief. That is why, with support from our donors, we are a funding partner in this collaborative effort,” said Kevin Peterson, senior program officer in the Upper Valley Region.  “We need more of this kind of collaboration, particularly in tough economic times.”

“We are proud to join with Granite United Way and the NH Charitable Foundation to collaboratively support the work of Upper Valley Strong and their partner organizations,” said Tom Roberts, senior philanthropic advisor for the Upper Valley at the Vermont Community Foundation. “Their commitment to rebuild and strengthen the Upper Valley community is clear to us and our fundholders, many of whom have also made grants toward this effort.”

The early work of Upper Valley Strong with assistance from Granite United Way staff has focused on needs assessments, crisis intervention, emergency assistance and the coordination of services to ensure that help is given to those in need without duplication of resources.

“We are delighted that these three funders have joined together in providing major support for Upper Valley Strong’s work. This will help us to meet individuals’ immediate needs as well as assist them in getting their lives back to normal over the long term,” said Anne Duncan Cooley of the Upper Valley Housing Coalition and Chairwoman of the Upper Valley Strong Committee.

For more information on Upper Valley Strong, to make a donation or to apply for assistance, please visit www.uvstrong.org.

Contact: Shannon K. Sullivan, Director, Marketing & Communications of the Granite United Way, shannon.sullivan@graniteuw.org
603.625.6939, ext. 119

For information on how IBM can help your organization, contact Marian Lawlor, Manager of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs, (802) 769 – 1970

IBM has awarded more than a half-million dollars in grants to more than 100 not-for-profit organizations and schools throughout the state, in recognition of employee volunteer work during the company’s 100th anniversary in 2011.

Twenty Vermont organizations received $10,000 Community Impact Grants:

– Cathedral Square Corporation
–Child Care Resource
–Chittenden Central Supervisory Union (CCSU)
–ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center
–Essex Firefighers Association
–Fairfax EMS Inc.
–Flynn Center for the Performing Arts
–Friends Of The Fletcher Free Library
–Friends of the Winooski River
–Girl Scouts of the Green & White Mountains
–Grafton Firefighters Association
–Intervale Center
–Linking Learning to Life, Inc.
–Red Cross of Vermont & the New Hampshire Valley
–Spectrum Youth and Family Services
–Starbase Vermont Inc.
–United Way of Chittenden County
–UVM College of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences
–Vermont State Science & Math Fair
–Vermont Works for Women

These grants bring the approximate value of IBM’s corporate and employee community support in Vermont to $2.7 million for 2011. This includes Centennial Celebration of Service grants and other corporate grants, employee pledges to the company’s annual Employee Charitable Contribution Campaign, and the value of more than 45,000 hours of recorded employee volunteer service.

In addition, earlier this year IBM announced a $10,000 grant to the DREAM mentoring program and a $100,000 corporate Centennial Grant – one of only 11 awarded worldwide – for an energy efficiency project for Howard Center and the Vermont State Colleges. IBM is providing nearly $12 million in grants worldwide to schools and not-for-profit organizations this year in recognition of its 100th anniversary.

“Every one of these IBM grants came to Vermont based on the personal commitment and involvement of IBM employees to community organizations, both as individuals and teams,” said Janette Bombardier, senior location executive for IBM in Vermont.  “IBM’s combined community support reached nearly every corner of the state and is representative of the positive impact made by IBM and its employees in Vermont every year, and particularly during this IBM Centennial year.”

The grants support organizations providing services both regionally and statewide. Some examples include funding for:

– A swift water rescue team for GraftonFire and Rescue
– Emergency shelter project of the Northern Vermont Chapter of the American Red Cross
– Installation of e-911 signs by Fairfax EMS.
– The annual Vermont State Science and Math Fair.
– Creation of an environmental curriculum for YMCA’s Camp Hochelega.
– Expansion of Linking Learning to Life’s career awareness program into Lamoille and Addison counties.
– Educational programs of Vermont Works for Women.

The Burlington Free Press promotes the campaign and the good work of the nonprofit agencies at www.facebook.com/bfpnews and through their Twitter  feed (@bfp_news).

For information on how your organization can be apart of the Giving Season campaign, contact Clover Whitham, cwhitham@burlingtonfreepress.com, (802) 660-1849

On December 19th, 2011 Lynn Monty Wrote: Some families already disconcerted about the dragging economy took a debilitating one-two punch to their budgets when floods from Tropical Storm Irene hit their homes and businesses this year. Right now, some folks are just one missed paycheck away from experiencing hunger and homelessness.

Programs such as the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, Project Warmth, Committee on Temporary Shelter and the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund are in place to offer temporary help — enough help for some to gain the traction they need to get back up on their feet again.

The Giving Season campaign raised a total of $43,857 last year. That was more than the previous year’s total of $37,095, but less than the $61,226 donated in 2008.

This campaign began last month and continues through New Year’s Day. This year’s mid-season total is $13,709, less than half of what was collected last year.

Free Press reporter Molly Walsh wrote about Warmth, the heating assistance program, last week. In the story the Kmetz family of Essex Junction said they would have been in trouble this winter if not for Project Warmth. Duane and Heather Kmetz say they are usually able to make ends meet, but as temperatures dropped and heating costs rose, this year’s tab ran higher than their budget would allow. Warmth was there to help.

A total of $4,359 has been collected in donations this year for Project Warmth. Coordinator Vicki Fletcher said people are always in need of heating assistance, but with federal budget cuts to heating assistance programs, more people than ever are in need.

“The warm fall helped, but temperatures are dropping,” Fletcher said. “We all knew it wasn’t going to last.”

New clients have called the Warmth office to ask whether they are still eligible for assistance even though they are employed. Fletcher tells them “Yes.”

“Singles, families, people who work, if you need help, please give us a call,” Fletcher said.

Last year, the Giving Season brought in $15,992 for Project Warmth, that’s more than the previous season’s $11,000. In 2008, donations totaled $13,050.

Another Giving Season story, written by Reporter Matt Sutkoski, “COTS offers more than shelter,” ran Dec. 3. Dave Perry of Burlington told his story about the assistance he received from the Committee on Temporary Shelter that allowed him a new start after a tough divorce.

Stories like these provide awareness on issues affecting the people who live in our communities, and the nonprofits who work to assist them. Along with awareness, the Giving Season campaign has brought in a total of $714,589 since 1994 to help.

“Keep those donations coming,” Committee on Temporary Shelter development director Becky Holt said. “They are adding up, and making a huge difference.”

This year’s Giving Season total for COTS is $8,570.

Last year, readers donated $16,915.50 for COTS. That was up from $11,545 the year before, but not as much as the $17,868 raised in 2008.

This Giving Season campaign’s midway point has brought in only about $670 for The Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. It’s goal is to raise $20,000. Director Rob Meehan said monetary donations and food donations have been down since Tropical Storm Irene hit Vermont.

“The food shelf does not receive federal dollars to run our operation, so we rely on community support to help feed thousands of hungry Vermonters,” he said. “We continue to provide food to seniors, people with disabilities, the homeless, and working families who cannot make ends meet. At the food shelf, we are determined to make sure that no one, especially no child, goes hungry this holiday season or at any time throughout the year.”

The food shelf received $6,520 in donations last Giving Season. That was down from the previous year’s $7,170, far from the $13,903 raised in 2008.

The Vermont Disaster Relief Fund is Disaster Relief Fund County ,a state program for which the United Way of Chittenden County is the fiscal agent. Program coordinator Andrea Houlihan said two Giving Season donation coupons have been received by the agency for a total of $110.

Funds and supplies have reached new lows for people in need, and the agencies who aim to help them. As agencies are challenged to meet their looming operating budgets, a growing number of families are waiting at their door. The Giving Season has been a tradition at The Burlington Free Press for 18 years. Struggling neighbors depend on reader generosity to clip Giving Season coupons out of the daily paper and mail them in with donations. Every dollar helps and stays in the community.

BY THE NUMBERS
Giving season mid-season totals for 2011:

• COTS: $8,570
• Project Warmth: $4,359
• Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf: $
• Vermont Disaster Relief Fund: $110

• TOTAL: $13,709

Giving Season campaign totals by the year:

• 1994: $5,320
• 1995: $26,325
• 1996: $32,000
• 1997: $27,000
• 1998: $23,150
• 1999: $26,925
• 2000: $33,639
• 2001: $37,197
• 2002: $53,371
• 2003: $44,044
• 2004: $53,893
• 2005: $70,233
• 2006: $35,437
• 2007: $103,877
• 2008: $61,226
• 2009: $37,095
• 2010: $43,857

Benchmarks for a Better Vermont is the topic for this year’s statewide Vermont Nonprofit Conference 2012 slated for Tuesday, March 20^th (from 10 – 3:30 p.m.) at ten convenient VIT locations. The nonprofit event of the year is designed to meet help you manage and measure your results so you can run a more effective organization! REGISTER TODAY!

Enriching,  Convenient & Affordable! The full-day event combines skilled presentations with skilled, facilitated regional break out discussions at ten easy to reach Vermont Interactive TV locations. The cost (thanks to a grant from the Corporation for National & Community Service) is $15.

Who’s Invited? Vermont nonprofits with revenues of $1 million or less.   Teams of 2-3 that include staff and board members are strongly encouraged to attend.

REGISTER TODAY! As a result of attending Benchmarks for a Better Vermont, you will:

• Understand the framework for Results Based Accountability, a time-tested approach for managing outcomes in Vermont.
• Learn specific skills that you can apply to managing and measuring your organization’s results
• Connect with  your regional network and as part of a state-wide independent sector
• Learn about the application process for the BBVT Performance Institute
• Qualify for the Core Capacity Assessment ($300+ value)
• Gain access to easy to consume, relevant resources available at www.CommonGoodVT.org

Conference Agenda (10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.):

• Welcome and Regional Networking
• Overview of BBVT Grant and Next Steps for Involvement
• Presentation: Results Based Accountability and How to Use it to Become More Effective
• Regional Break-Out Work Sessions with experienced local facilitators
• Lunch and Networking
• Regional Reports and Feedback
• Criteria and Application Process for BBVT Performance Institute & CCAT
• Wrap Up, Thanks and Final Networking

REGISTER TODAY! for one of ten convenient Vermont Interactive TV sites near you.  Space is limited at each site.  Act Now!

CONFERENCE PARTNERS: Common Good Vermont, Marlboro Graduate School/ Nonprofit Certificate Program, United Ways of Vermont, United Ways of Addison, Chittenden, Lamoille and Windham, SerVermont, Vermont Community Foundation.

CONFERENCE SPONSORS: Corporation for National and Community Service, A.D. Henderson Foundation, Vermont Community Foundation, National Life Foundation, High Meadows Fund,  Key Bank Foundation, SoverNet, Northfield Savings Bank, Fairpoint Communications, Merchants Bank, Green Mountain Power, FoundLine, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, Comcast Corporation, REM Development, Lintilhac Foundation, Evslin Family Foundation.

Register Today

Toolkit_Legislative_Day_2012 (PDF)

What’s Happening? This year marks Common Good Vermont’s third annual Vermont Nonprofit Day, a unique opportunity for nonprofit organizations, activists and community leaders from across the state and to unify across sectors and raise awareness about the crucial role nonprofits play in supporting communities, strengthening our economy and making Vermont a better place to live. Register Today

Why attend? As a follow up to November’s Vermont Lobbying & Communications Bootcamp, this event is a must for any organization that wants to boost their relationship with legislators, raise their profile and promote stronger, unified nonprofit sector in Vermont.

The Vermont Legislature is already heating up. Big issues include the the cost of Irene clean-up, health care, the budget and more! In the face of critical budget discussions and change in the State House, Vermont’s nonprofits can use this opportunity to demonstrate our value and visibility as force for good to our elected officials! Register Today

Toolkit_Legislative_Day_2012(PDF) – Online Version

Participating in Vermont Nonprofit Day 2012 at the State House provides unique opportunities to interact with state government and to network with other nonprofits from across Vermont. Common Good Vermont will host activities from 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m., including:

• Common Good Vermont’s Annual Meeting
• Update on pertinent issues facing Vermont nonprofits
• Opportunities for participants to testify and sit-in on legislative committee meetings
• Networking lunch time in the State House Cafeteria
• Advocacy best practices Q & A with professional organizers and legislators
• Meeting with Governor Peter Shumlin on the challenges facing Vermont nonprofits

Who’s Coming? All nonprofit staff, board members volunteers and friends are invited to attend this yearly event. Come network with colleagues and legislators, learn about important issues that have direct bearing on your work and experience the legislative process under the Golden Dome! Register Today

Your Next Step: Please Register online . If you have questions, please contact Nick Carter, Coordinator@CommonGoodVT.org or at 802.862.1645 x12.

How You Can Help!

• Wanted: Nonprofits to Testify: This year, we are looking for 25 (or more) nonprofit leaders who wish to make their work known by testifying in Legislative Committees on February 9th. We want to work with you to make an effective presentation so that we can raise the profile of your organization and shine a light on the vital importance of Vermont’s nonprofit sector. Testifiers will be coached throughout the whole process and this is a really great oppo rtunity to get your name, organization and cause on legislator’s radar. If interested, please contact Nick Carter of Common Good Vermont, (802) 862 – 1645 ext.21
• Nonprofit Day State House Attendee Toolkit: Make the most of the day! The Toolkit will include tips for scheduling visits with legislators, a Legislative Directory and Committee Schedule, ideas to help you educate legislators about the nonprofit sector and the work of your organizati on, recommendations for using social media, a press kit to notify local media and your constituents of your participation, and more! If you have resources to add, please let us know!Legislative Day Toolkit(PDF) – Online Version
  
  
• Exhibitors Wanted: Space is limited in Room 11, so let us know NOW if your organization wants to display materials that shows off your nonprofit and represent the diversity and value of the sector. Room 11 in the State House will be the jump-off for Vermont Nonprofit Day activity. If you would like to be considered, please contact Nick Carter, (802) 862 – 1645 ext. 21. T he deadline for tabling is Monday, January 31st.

Unify as a Sector: We are all working to meet or goals and mission throughout the year but but Vermont Nonprofit Day is a unique, once-a-year opportunity for nonprofits to collectively raise awareness of the sector, as well as an opportunity to promote our organizations individually. Please take seriously the call to testify at a committee on that day Register Today

Helpful Resources

• Legislative Day Toolkit
• VPR’s Live Coverage of the State House

In the meantime, check out these helpful legislative resources from the 2011 Vermont Nonprofit Lobbying & Communications Bootcamp

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

8:30 – 9:00 a.m. – Registration (Room 10, First Floor)

9:00 – 9:15 a.m. – Common Good Vermont Annual Meeting (Room 11, First Floor)

9:15 – 9:25 a.m. - Opening Remarks with Speaker of the House Shap Smith

9:25 – 10:15 a.m. - Nonprofit Legislative Briefing (Room 11, First Floor) Panelists:  Jessica Oski/ Sirotkin & Necrason , Mark Larson/ Commissioner of VT Dept. of Health Access, Todd Bailey, KSE Partners

10:15 – 10:30 a.m. – Preview of the Days’ Schedule. & How To: Fan Out, Learn, Be Known
Presenting: Liz Schlegel, Central Vermont Community Action Council
Andrew Maclean, Maclean, Meehan & Rice, LLC

10: 30 – 12:00 p.m.- Committee Visits with Standing Committees of the House and
Standing Committees of the Senate

12:00 – 1:00 p.m. – Networking Lunch & Meetings with Legislators (Cafeteria, 2^nd Floor)

1:00 – 1:15 p.m. – Devotional Reading, Peter Gilbert, VT Humanities Council (House Chamber, 2^nd Fl.)

1:20 – 2:30 p.m. Secrets of Successful Advocacy (Room 11, First Floor) Panelists: Sheila Reed/Associate Director of Voices for Vermont’s Children, James Haslam,/Director of VT Worker’s Center, Floyd Nease/ Director of VT Association for Mental Health, Jacqueline Majoros,/State Ombudsman for VT Legal Aid

2:30 – 3:00 p.m. Meeting with Governor Peter Shumlin: Challenges Facing the Nonprofit Sector (Room 11)

View Past Nonprofit Days:

• VT Lobbying & Communications Bootcamp – 11/15/2011
• 2nd Annual Vermont Nonprofit Day at the State House Part I – 02/9/11
• 2nd Annual Vermont Nonprofit Day at the State House Part II – 02/09/09
• 1st Annual Vermont Nonprofit Day at the State House- 02/07/08OUR SPONSORS:
  

  

  
  

The Journal recently released a special bulletin on trends in giving by corporations and foundations, and what they are looking for in forming partnerships with nonprofits. Here’s one of the articles re-posted from that report.

RELATED COMMON GOOD EVENTS:

–RSVP – On April 19th, 2012 Common Good Vermont is hosting Media Maven: Developing Rich & Lasting Sponsorships with Julia Andrews

–Watch it Now — What Results do Funders Want? Indicators of an Effective Nonprofit

On 12/6/11 Ret Boney wrote:

Just like every other sector, foundations in the U.S. were thrown off balance by the market plunge and economic spiral that heralded the beginning of the Great Recession.

There was a collective pause in late 2008 as foundations, donors and nonprofits all tried to make sense of the reversal of fortune and determine how to proceed.

In those early days of the downturn, many funders reached out to grantees, listened and began to formulate a response, says Kathleen Enright, president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.

Three years later, with the economy still convulsing, some of those foundations are turning recession-response strategies into permanent ways of doing business, while continuing to look for promising new strategies.

“That’s part of our hope,” says Enright. “That we recognize this is not a temporary fix, but the new normal.”

Recalibrating

The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, though rattled by the recession, worked hard to keep grantmaking steady for the community.

While the assets of Concord, N.H.-based community foundation fell 24 percent in 2008, assets as of the end of 2010 had rebounded and the overall goal of the organization remained steady throughout.

“We always are looking for how can do the most good for the community with the assets we have,” says Katie Merrow, vice president of programs for the foundation, which reported about $479 million in assets at the end of fiscal 2010 and awarded $28 million in grants.

“We want to put as much benefit to the community today while preserving buying power to impact the community in the future,” she says.

To accomplish that dual goal, the foundation held its spending rate for grants steady in 2009 and 2010, in 2011 lowered the rate to 4.27 percent of assets from 4.5 percent, and is reevaluating its role and activities in light of what Merrow calls a “fundamental realignment of public- and private-sector roles.”

Expecting to be in a constrained fiscal state for a long time, Merrow says the foundation constantly is recalibrating and looking for ways to better support donors and grantees.

“We need to help our nonprofit partners be better positioned to be effective in that new environment,” she says.

It’s that kind of thoughtfulness and flexibility that Enright is encouraging of the grantmaking community.

“The next era of response that some of our members moved into is being engaged in the shape of the work that is being done,” says Enright.

Commitment, flexiblity

To achieve maximum impact with fewer dollars, some of the most progressive funders are focusing on commitment and flexibility, principles actualized through general operating support over multiple years, says Enright.

Those foundations are placing more emphasis on flexible, unrestricted dollars that allow grantees the space and creativity to respond to a financial crisis that hit not only their organizations, but also the people and places those groups serve.

Many foundations also are focusing their grantmaking to achieve greater impact, she says.

“A new strategy is to narrow and really support the institutions most critical to their mission in a deep, long-term way rather than a dabbling way,” says Enright.

The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation is employing both those strategies and is seeing promising results.

For strong, sustainable nonprofits of critical mass, the funder has increased the number of operating grants and the number of multi-year grants it provides, says Merrow.

The foundation increased the number of operating grants awarded in fiscal 2010 to 129, up 59 percent from 81 it awarded in 2009, she says.

And multi-year grants tripled to 21 in 2010 from seven in 2009.

One beneficiary of that new strategy is Media Power Youth, a nonprofit that helps young people better synthesize and react to the influence of popular media.

Having supported the organization with small, program-specific grants, the foundation in 2010 awarded Media Power Youth a one-year, $75,000 unrestricted grant, which the nonprofit has used to review and revise its business plan, with an eye toward financial stability and expansion.

And this year, the foundation awarded the group a two-year, $150,000 unrestricted challenge grant to support the nonprofit while it puts its new business and revenue-generation models into action.

“It’s important to give them the flexibility to manage their funds as they need to in these difficult times,” Merrow says of the foundation’s grantees.

While Enright lauds the activities of funders like the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, she recognizes not all have caught on.

“Some funders haven’t even gotten to the basics,” she says. “They’re not offering operating support and they still have a nine-month lead time for grants. The world is just moving too fast for that.”

And in times like these, when nonprofits must evolve to meet new demands amid new funding constraints, a lack of flexible funding can be fatal.

“Nothing squelches adaptive capacity more than restricted funds,” says Enright.

Funding advocacy, policy

Another, more sophisticated response to the new economic environment is wading into the often-murky waters of public policy and advocacy.

In part because of detailed rules and regulations governing nonprofit and foundation involvement in lobbying and advocacy, many foundations have avoided the public-policy arena altogether.

But now is the time for funders to weigh in and make their voices heard in Washington, D.C., and in state legislatures, says Enright.

“Grantmakers often decry the fact that we can’t fill the gaps left by government,” she says. “But we can’t both decry that fact and sit idly by and leave the needs of our communities unrepresented in the policy debate.”

Grantmakers and donors spend far less on promoting the issues and causes they care about than does private industry, she says.

“Until we’re willing to lift up these voices at the same level as Walmart, then we’re going to end up being the place lawmakers look to make cuts,” she says of the nonprofit sector.

And advocacy, public policy and civic dialog are critical points of leverage for foundations in this environment, says Merrow.

While government cuts may be inevitable, foundations can fund the activities the will help nonprofits and the communities they support evolve and adapt, she says.

“If the state cuts a program by $20 million, we can’t fill that,” she says of her foundation. “But we can help those nonprofits reengineer so they can reduce the harm, or help them serve people in a different way. We can support advocacy to make sure voices are heard. And we can foster informed civic dialogue so all are informed about the decisions our leaders are making.”

While the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation has long supported these activities, it has increased its emphasis recently and is focused on making sure disadvantaged people have a voice in the public-policy debate.

And the foundation is currently conducting an in-depth review of New Hampshire’s capacity for advocacy with the goal of “building field-level capacity for advocacy so there’s sustainable support for everyone having a voice,” says Merrow.

Collaboration

While foundation endowments overall have yet to claw their way back to pre-recession levels, funders are looking for ways to leverage their non-monetary assets.

Those assets include respect, reach and the promise of money in the future, a combination that can bring players to the table to discuss partnerships or new ways of operating.

Foundations increasingly are working with governments to reform rules and regulations governing public-sector grantees, and to streamline the process for their own nonprofit grantees, says Enright.

And while they may not be able to fund large new programs as often as before, foundations are more willing to provide grant support for organizations that want to combine their resources in new ways, and for organizations that want to pursue relationships that could lead to new ways of operating.

The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation has long been involved in public-private partnerships, but that line of activity has become even more important as a way to bring additional resources to the table, says Merrow.

“We look for public-private partnerships to see what business, government and foundations can do together,” she says.

The foundation helped develop the Green Launching Pad, an effort that supports innovative new business ventures that boost the green economy and green jobs.

And earlier this year it provided $100,000 in seed money to support a partnership between the statewide center for nonprofits and a New Hampshire-based business to develop a shared computer platform for local nonprofits.

Now fully operational, the platform provides access to an “operations toolkit” containing resources like fundraising templates, board-training videos and opportunities to join with other nonprofits for bulk-purchasing opportunities.

“That’s an innovation that will help nonprofits share resources during tough times,” says Merrow. “It is a partnership that brings the value of the private sector to the nonprofit sector.”

Easing the burden on grantees

Finally, grantmakers are doing a better job of understanding and reacting to the Herculean tasks most nonprofits face.

“When I hear some foundation folks talk about these financially vulnerable nonprofits, it feels a little paternalistic,” says Enright. “I would encourage any grantmaker to find a way to walk in the shoes of these cash-strapped nonprofits.”

Many of those nonprofits are highly sophisticated organizations that are piecing together ways to keep going “even though the chips are stacked against them,” she says.

Understanding and empathizing with that fact is critical, says Enright.

So that its grantees can “spend more time on mission,” the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation has been working to streamline the process for both applying for and reporting on grants from its organization, says Merrow.

The foundation recently worked with a group of local entrepreneurs to develop and pilot a process that involves a one-page application and a five-minute in-person pitch from would-be grantees, an experiment that “went incredibly well,” Merrow says.

“We’re trying some innovation ourselves,” she says.

That’s just what will help foundations, and the organizations they support, survive the extended economic downturn and acclimate themselves to the new and different future that awaits, says Enright.

“The organizations that are going to survive and potentially thrive in this changed environment,” she says, “are those that are adaptable and that won’t get stuck in the way things have always been done.”

Mandated by the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development branch, the Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program (DLT) is designed specifically to meet the educational and health care needs of rural America. Through loans, grants and loan/grant combinations, advanced telecommunications technologies provide enhanced learning and health care opportunities for rural residents.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced on December 8th, 2011 that 100 recipients in 34 states and one territory will receive $30,172,507 to improve access to health care and educational services in rural areas. Funding is provided through the USDA Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) Program. The announcement included a $499,870 grant to North Country Supervisory Union in Newport, VT and an $84,141 grant to Orleans-Essex VNA & Hospice also in Newport.

“This program delivers educational and medical opportunities that are urgently needed in remote, rural areas,” Vilsack said. “President Obama has said that no matter where you live in America, you should have access to quality educational opportunities.  Rural Americans deserve the same opportunities for education and medical care as metropolitan-area residents, and these funds will make that happen.”

Orleans-Essex VNA & Hospice, which provides home health care to a 1,000 square mile area in Orleans and northern Essex counties, will use the grant to continue implementation of in-home telemonitoring which was initiated in 2009.   An upgrade to the system will also expand the use of in-home videocams to monitor wound care.

North Country Supervisory Union will support the Northeast Kingdom Education Project that will link Lyndon State College (LSC) to 14 rural school districts primarily located in Orleans, Essex Counties.  Expanded videoconferencing technology at LSC will enhance their ability to offer dual enrollment courses in which high school students take college courses for both college and high school credit; provide information for students on the range of career opportunities available within key industries in the Northeast Kingdom and provide Masters in Education degree programs to the region’s teachers.

“Through this grant program, USDA Rural Development is working to level the playing field between rural and more urban areas.  Vermonters in the most remote locations will have access to advanced medical care and top notch educational opportunities because of these funds,” according to Molly Lambert, State Director for USDA Rural Development.

Further details on the DLT program can be obtained at www.rurdev.usda.gov/UTP_DLT.html

or by contacting Rhonda Shippee, Community Programs Director for VT/NH at

802-828-6033. For a complete list of awardees that will receive funding,  please click here

Awards are contingent upon the recipients meeting the terms of the agreement with USDA.

how US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack

The Vermont Community Foundation’s Vermont Arts Endowment Fund was established in 1990 through a generous gift from an anonymous Vermonter and a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Fund was created for the specific purpose of supporting small and emerging arts groups and artists in Vermont and to support and encourage them in sharing their work with their communities.

VCF recently announced that more than $85,000 was recently awarded to projects around the state.

The Vermont Arts Endowment Fund and the Concert Artists Fund, two component funds of the Vermont Community Foundation, announced that together they have awarded a total of $85,028 to 26 organizations and individuals across the state.

The Vermont Arts Endowment Fund awarded grants totaling $38,528 to support the creation and production of new work by Vermont artists and arts organizations, and provide technical assistance for arts organizations. The Concert Artists Fund awarded $46,500 to support performances of classical music in Chittenden County.

Grants funded the Concert Artists Fund include:

Bella Voce Women’s Chorus of Vermont, Essex Junction
$1,000 to support the production and performance of “A Christmas Flourish.”

Burlington Chamber Orchestra, Burlington
$2,000 to support 2011-2012 performances in the McCarthy Arts Center Recital Hall at St. Michael’s College.

Burlington Choral Society, Burlington
$1,500 to support 2011-2012 season performances in celebration of the 35th anniversary.

Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington
$3,000 to support a co-presentation with the Flynn and Vermont Symphony Orchestra of ”Carnival of the Animals” for grades K-4 as part of the Flynn’s Student Matinee Series.

Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Burlington
$2,000 to support faculty concerts at the UVM Recital Hall and the outreach series of students performances.

Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Winooski
$10,000 to support artist fees for the 2011 Summer Festival Concert Series.

UVM Lane Series, Burlington
$1,500 to support chamber/solo concert presentations with world-class performers that highlight masterworks of the Western Classical Music genre.

Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, Fairfax
$10,000 to support the production of a tenth anniversary Remembrance of 9/11/01 concert.

Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Burlington
$7,500 to support the 2011/2012 Masterworks Series at the Flynn Center.

Vermont Youth Orchestra, Colchester
$8,000 to support the season-opening concert at the Flynn Center.

Grants funded by the Vermont Arts Endowment Fund include:

David Cooper, Burlington
$2,500 to support a collaborative musical project with three former African refugees living in Vermont.

Jay Craven, Barnet
$2,000 to support the development and production of the narrative feature film, ”Northern Borders,” based on Howard Frank Mosher’s award-winning novel.

Hannah Dennison, Chelsea
$1,000 to support “Dear Pina,” a dance/theatre piece to be performed June 2012 at Shelburne Farms.

Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington
$4,000 to support the Vermont Artist Series, including performances of new works, workshops, and discussions with Vermont performing artists.

Focus on Film, Montpelier
$3,000 to support the screening of Vermont films and work by Vermont filmmakers at the15th Green Mountain Film Festival.

Kate Gridley, Middlebury
$3,000 to support the multi-media project “Twelve: Oil Portraits of Emerging Adults.”

Carolyn Enz Hack, Thetford
$1,500 to support the creation of a large multiple paneled mixed media painting based on the fictional mathematical equation of “Evil Divided by Good.”

PEW Charitable Trusts
$4,264 for the first installment of a three-year grant to support the Vermont Cultural Data Project.

Stephen Procter, Brattleboro
$3,000 to support the creation and presentation of a series of ceramic abstract sculptures.

Bronwyn Sims, Brattleboro
$1,000 to support the artist’s solo show, involving multiple characters that all find themselves trapped on the same train that just hit a pedestrian.

Sumru Tekin, Charlotte
$2,000 to support the creation of an artist book exploring the effects of language and image through translation and reproduction.

Town of Jericho, Vermont
$1,500 to support public exhibitions of art celebrating the Jericho arts community.

Vermont Stage Company, Burlington
$2,900 to support the development of specialized scientific equipment and effects for a production of “Photograph 51.”

Vermont Studio Center, Johnson
$4,000 to provide opportunities for Vermont artists and writers to participate in a week-long studio retreat.

Weston Playhouse Theater Company, Weston
$3,364 to support the 75th anniversary season world premiere production of the musical “Saint-Ex.”

John Willis, Dummerston
$2,000 to support the creation of new photographs.

Contact:

Carolyn Fox

The Vermont Community Foundation

802-388-3355 ext. 285

cfox@vermontcf.org

a. Introduction: The purpose of Common Good Vermont is to increase the effectiveness of Vermont’s nonprofit organizations so they can have a larger impact on the well-being of our state.

Common Good Vermont connects Vermont’s nonprofit leaders to new skills, shared knowledge, jobs, funding,  partnerships and resources that help them to solve problems and achieve social and environmental impact.  Common Good Vermont improves nonprofit performance through strategic partnerships, signature learning events (e.g., VT Nonprofit Legislative Day, Annual NPO Conference, Lobbying & Communications Bootcamp), multi-media resources and a vibrant, active web commons that provides news, know-how and peer support on matters of concern to people working in the independent sector: http://CommonGoodVT.org

b. Organizational Background: Common Good Vermont is managed by CCTV Center for Media & Democracy (www.cctv.org), based in Burlington Vermont.  Celebrating 27 years as a nationally recognized hub of free speech advocacy, public access and nonprofit communications strategy, CCTV serves as a reliable source of media, technology and capacity building for Vermont’s independent sector. CCTV operates Channel 17/Town Meeting Television (www.channel17.org) – a regional government affairs channel serving Chittenden County and CCTV Productions (www.cctv.org) – a media production unit that provides services, training and technical assistance to nonprofit, public organizations and activists that want to expand their reach and impact. CCTV’s FY11 organizational budget is estimated to be $726,000. The upcoming budget for Common Good Vermont, which grows directly out of CCTV’s work, is estimated to be $139,000.

c. Need Being Addressed/Population Served: In Vermont’s Nonprofit Sector: A Vital Community in a Time of Change (2010), The Vermont Community Foundation reports that the majority of Vermont’s 4000+ nonprofit organizations (65%) operate with revenues of less than $250,000.  These small organizations are nimble, dedicated and adept at “doing more with less” as the economy struggles, disasters strike and state government pushes responsibilities to the local level. Vermont nonprofit leaders want to do what it takes to improve their organizational performance. Yet only one-third of those surveyed think that their organizations are “very able” to sustain themselves over the long-term and little more than one-third consider their organizations to be financially healthy and “not currently vulnerable”.

While more than half of Vermonters surveyed trust the nonprofit sector to deliver quality services, only 23% have a “great deal” of confidence that nonprofits spend money wisely. The Vermont Nonprofit Sector report identifies a high correlation between public awareness of the sector and perception of effectiveness, pointing to the need for nonprofits to do a better job of describing the difference they make (i.e. measuring impact) and expanding the reach of their message (i.e., communications and marketing) to funders and the public. This requires training and support that enables nonprofit organizations to strike out in new directions, remain effective and sustainable.

d. Accomplishments: To this end, Common Good Vermont activities prepare organizations  to make the most of existing and potential changes both inside and outside their organization in order to provide excellent service and create a sustainable future. Over the past three years, Common Good Vermont has succeeded in its initial objectives to a/ Strengthen the state’s network of Vermont nonprofits, b/ Improve the delivery system for capacity building know-how, and c/ Raise the profile of Vermont’s independent sector.

Well regarded events: During this time, 2000 nonprofit leaders have attended 50 highly rated networking and training events on a variety of topics (e.g., advocacy, leadership, management, performance measures, marketing and fund development) presented by leaders in the field. The goal for event registration was 500 participants and 775 people attended.

These events range from Media Maven Lunches and Webcasts (on multi-media marketing), Nonprofit Maven events (fundraising, leadership development), Nonprofit Legislative Day and the Legislative & Communications Bootcamp (legislative advocacy) and Vermont Nonprofit Conference (managing outcomes for maximum impact). Most recently, Common Good Vermont co-hosted a well attended and well received Chittenden County NPO Legislative Breakfast with the United Way of Chittenden County (70 attendees, 12 legislators).

In addition, Common Good Vermont works with corporate partners, (example: IBM and Google) to advance the collaborative and business skills of the sector through special events  such as Google’s Vermont Get Your Business Online and IBM Trailblazers Leadership & Collaboration and Project Management.

Thank you for an outstanding event yesterday. I entered the state house with little or no knowledge of lobbying on behalf of Vermont non-profit organizations. I left feeling energized, enriched and very proud of our unique legislative process in Vermont. The slate of speakers and presenters was outstanding! The caliber of each speaker, their knowledge and experience was incredible. I learned so much about the basics of creating a well-researched communications plan. – Board Member, VT Council on World Affairs

Online Content: Packaged as video programs, all of these events and special interviews with sector leaders are viewed at www.CommonGoodVT.org . In the past twelve months (2011), these programs were viewed more than 8223 times (v. 2264 views in 2010). In the past year, the innovative web hub www.CommonGoodVT.or attracted 15,000 “unique” visitors to the blog and 6,500 to the website, interested in the Learning Center, News, legislative updates, statewide nonprofit calendar, job and funding posts.  Common Good Vermont’s weekly Vermont Nonprofit E-News is now circulated to 1,900 nonprofit allies with open rates between 21-40%.

I really appreciate you posting such complete info on my grant-writing course, as well as all of the other great resources you’re sharing with the Vermont non-profit world. This is a great service you’re providing, and I’m glad to be part of the “CommonGood VT” family. – Anne Lezak, Consultant

Impact: In 2011, the Vermont Nonprofit Legislative Day and Vermont Nonprofit Conference engaged more than 250 individuals from 160 organizations. As a result of the Vermont Nonprofit Conference 2011, 15% of respondents anticipate that the event will make a “big difference” to their work and 73% anticipate it will make “some difference.” 100% of those surveyed following the Legislative & Communications Bootcamp report that the presentations will help them in their legislative work this session. A typical testimonial sums up the value of the project:

As a new Executive Director of a growing Vermont non-profit organization I have found Common Good VT to be immensely helpful.  I look forward to every newsletter from Common Good VT as the topics regularly apply to the concerns of our organization and I have registered for several classes as a result of their listing in the newsletter.  Common Good VT is a fabulous asset to the Vermont non-profit community.  I sing its praises to everyone I know at other non-profits in our area. – Elizabeth Malone, Northwest Access TV

Strategic Partnerships: In September 2011, Common Good Vermont secured a major federal grant to improve the sector’s ability to raise awareness about performance measurement and track and manage outcomes. Working with its strategic partners, Marlboro College, United Ways of Vermont, SerVermont and The Vermont Community Foundation, Benchmarks for a Better Vermont (BBVT) will make significant, sustained improvements in the way nonprofits help Vermonters achieve healthy futures, excellent education and economic opportunities. More information is available here: http://blog.commongoodvt.org/2011/10/12benchmarks-for-a-better-vt-announcement/

e. Project Strategies: In the year ahead, Common Good Vermont continues to develop the state’s nonprofit network, convene the sector with signature events and manage the on-line clearinghouse for sharing relevant news, events, training, funding opportunities and best practices. Common Good Vermont aims to broaden its audience through targeted activities designed to raise awareness of the project and increase its base of users from 2000 to 3000 people for whom the project “makes a difference” by helping to improve the performance of their organization and the well-being of the state.

i. News and Information Service Provider – The past three years demonstrates a strong interest in the sector for a “clearinghouse” of relevant news, knowledge and multi-media resources related to fundraising, marketing, leadership development and advocacy. With a stable online platform, www.CommonGoodVt.org, the project will continue to employ networking and training events and weekly Vermont Nonprofit E-News to transfer know-how from a talented pool of nonprofit leaders and consultants, showcase nonprofit best practices, promote peer exchange and point to a steady stream of relevant events, training, employment and funding opportunities. (Metric: Increase circulation of E-News from 1900 – 3000 subscribers, increase unique visits from 1000 to 2000/ month, increase sense of connection to the network, increased frequency of sharing of events, posts, resources, news, best practices).

ii. Training Partner – Common Good Vermont events are highly regarded and emphasize partnerships with existing capacity builders. The project continues to build ties with the state’s key training entities (Marlboro College, University of Vermont, Springfield College, UVM Extension Service, consultants) and uses its Nonprofit Maven interviews (15-20/ year) to showcase and point to existing training programs with measurable outcomes. Common Good Vermont continues to deliver the popular (and now webcast to a statewide audiences) Media Maven Lunches (5-7 year). (Metric: attendance increase, evidence of relevance from surveys, sharing of resources via social media, testimonials and findings.)

iii. Convener – Common Good Vermont convenes events with clear benefits to the state’s independent sector.

> The Annual Nonprofit Legislative Day (2/9/12) helps smaller organizations to make contact with decision makers and improve their advocacy prowess (Metric: 100 participants, application of skills, connection to sector, indications of relevance).

> The 2012 Statewide Nonprofit Conference will focus on Benchmarks for a Better Vermont and be delivered via 10 Vermont Interactive TV sites in order to build regional strength, state level awareness and focus nonprofit attention on adaptive and leadership skill building (Metric: 150 participants, indications of relevance and continued engagement).

> Common Good Vermont will reprise the Lobbying & Communications Bootcamp in partnership with KSE Partners after the elections (12/12). (Metric: 100+ participants, indication of relevance).

> Common Good Vermont will also experiment with peer support starting in January with two Executive Director Leadership Development Circles (in Burlington and Montpelier), let by experienced executive coaches Mark Furnari and Susan Palmer. (Metric: Attendance 10 ED’s/site, measures of relevance and impact.)

Common Good Vermont continues its work with Vermont capacity builders and funders to develop a “networked solution” to the gaps in adaptive and leadership capacity, resulting in stronger partnerships and better outcomes for the sector. Other opportunities, such as working with funders or policy makers will arise and prove to be important opportunities for Common Good Vermont and its capacity building allies. (Metric: Expand core of users/ supporters from 2000 to 3000, engage statewide capacity providers in networked service delivery via Benchmarks for a Better Vermont.)

e. Outcome Measures: Common Good Vermont can be most effective as part of a broad-based initiative that focuses on building of adaptive and leadership capacity of the state’s independent sector.

Working with its partners and as a lead agency in Benchmarks for a Better Vermont, the project aims to improve effectiveness of Vermont’s nonprofit organizations to anticipate and respond to changes within their organizations and in the external environment, such as demographic shifts, economic scarcity, rural economies of scale, major technological disruption; Increase public confidence in effectiveness of Vermont’s independent sector; and, Increase giving by state and national donors in the work of Vermont’s nonprofit organizations.

While we maintain project impact indicators (noted above), Common Good Vermont now works with its partners and a growing “Collaborators Circle” (of philanthropists, business leaders and state agency heads) to develop a structure for measuring the impact of this vital capacity building work on the well-being of the state. When the Vermont Nonprofit Sector report is republished in the next few years, we expect to see an increase in the number of Vermonter’s who have confidence in the efficiency of our state’s nonprofit sector.

f. Revenue and Expenses Summary 2011: Common Good Vermont’s fiscal year starts in October. Between October 2010 and September 2011, the project earned $89,139 and spent $119,647. The FY12 budget is estimated to generate funds sufficient to cover half of the “loss” a/k/a costs associated with project start up ($30,500).

Revenue (FY1011) was generated as follows: In Kind – $8114, Contributions – $33,500, Grants (tracked as deferred revenue) – $33,904, Program Fees – $595, Registration Fees – $9437 and Sponsor Fees – $3590.

For the first two months of FY1112 (October – November 11) the project generated $19,408 as follows: In Kind (Design Services) – $519.37, Contributions $3000, Grants – $11,013 (including deferred revenue), Program Fees – $600, Registration Fees – $3372, Sponsor Fees – $1500.

g. Project Budget 2012: In order to meet its financial obligations ($139,000), Common Good Vermont keeps its expenses low and works to attract broad-based support from Vermont’s funding community and nonprofit organizations.

i. Revenue: The project is positioned to develop sources of revenue that enable many organizations to make modest contributions or sponsorships that ensure the availability of capacity building resources. Revenue is estimated to be $138,825:

- Foundation & Contributions includes “anchor” funding from The Vermont Community Foundation and A.D. Henderson Foundation. Support ($3000-5000 range) is sought from 20-30 smaller contributors operating in Vermont. (Potential revenue: $125K+)

- Sponsorships: Underwriting support for Common Good Vermont’s “electronic real estate” and events from educational facilities and core capacity builders (e.g., Marlboro College, Champlain College, University of Vermont). ($1500K)

- Registration Fees: Modest fees for access to regular events and workshops. ($10K)

- In-Kind support from FoundLine for web development ($3600).

New avenues of funding to explore for 2013 include: web subscriptions, tax credits and nonprofit corporation registration fee ($25K-75K).

ii. Expenses: The cost for doing this work is estimated to be $122,912. Expenses include:

Wage Expenses: 4732 hours (2.2FTEs) valued including payroll expenses/ benefits at $81,989. Positions include Project Director, (20 hours/week), Network Coordinator (32 hours/ week), Development and Sales (20 hours/ week), Business Manager (8 hours/ week), Production Staff (6 hours/ week), Technical Support (2 hours/ week) to accomplish:

Non-Wage Expenses: Operating Costs & Project Costs are estimated to be $32,345 and include site costs ($9610) communication ($692), office/computer expenses ($163), repair and maintenance ($128), professional development ($3850), professional services ($9351) (includes Insurance/Audit/Accounting/ Legal), Administrative Allocation ($4944).

Contact: Lauren-Glenn Davitian, davitian@ctv.org 802.862-1645 x12

Thu Dec 1, 2011

The People’s United Community Foundation, the philanthropic arm of People’s United Bank, announced today that it has awarded $76,500 to nonprofit organizations in Vermont during the 4th quarter of 2011.

The organizations include:
Vermont FoodBank,
Committee on Temporary Shelter,
Intervale Center Inc.,
Linking Learning to Life,
Spectrum Inc.,
Habitat for Humanity International – Bennington Habitat,
Samaritan House Inc.,
John W. Graham Emergency Shelter Services Inc.,
Lake Champlain Maritime Museum at Basin Harbor Inc.,
Southeastern Vermont Community Action Inc., and
Dream Program Inc

The People’s United Community Foundation has three areas of focus: community development, youth development, and affordable housing. “The goal of the Foundation’s support is to improve the lives of people living or working in the communities served by People’s United Bank,” said Michael Seaver, Officer People’s United Community Foundation and President People’s United Bank Vermont. “Many agencies throughout our footprint are experiencing an increase in demand for their programs and services due to the economy, which means the need for program funding is increasing. People’s United Community Foundation continues to try to do its part to help these important programs during a difficult economic period.”

Established in 2007, People’s United Community Foundation was formed to help support programs and activities that enhance the quality of life for citizens in the communities that People’s United Bank serves. With special emphasis on programs designed to promote economic self-sufficiency, education and improved conditions for low-income families and neighborhoods, the funding priorities of the Foundation include: community development, youth development, and affordable housing.

The report provides key child data showing alarming numbers of children at risk: children are the poorest age group with 15.5 million children—one in every five children in America—living in poverty, and more than 60 percent of fourth, eighth and 12th grade public school students are reading or doing math below grade level.

Download State of America’s Children® 2011 Report

Alan Panebaker,
November 30, 2011

At the federal and state level, businesses have lobbied to ensure new health care laws don’t force them to bear more than their fair share of the burden for expanded insurance coverage to more Americans.

But as new federal rules are implemented for the Affordable Care Act, and the state embarks on plans for a single-payer health care system that would provide universal coverage for all Vermonters, businesses worry about restrictions that could drive up their costs for medical benefits for workers.

In the second of five briefings on health care reform, Susan Gretkowski, an attorney with the government and public relations firm MacLean, Meehan & Rice, provided an overview of health care reform in Vermont and what it means for employers in Montpelier on Wednesday. The Associated Industries of Vermont is sponsoring similar events at locations around the state.

Several prominent business people who attended were apprehensive about the changes. George Malek, executive vice president of the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce, said companies would like to be able to reasonably predict what their costs will be for the next five years. Uncertainty about health care expenditures make that impossible, he said.

“Expense and predictability, those are the two huge components out there,” Malek said. “What’s it going to cost, and when will I know what it’s going to cost? And then out in the longer term is how much is it going to cost me over time?”

At the federal level, the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in 2010, includes an individual mandate that nearly all Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court decided this month to take up a constitutional challenge on the issue.

The mandate, according to proponents, brings both sick and healthy people into the insurance system and premiums paid by the healthy offset the cost of covering the sick. Otherwise, healthy people wait until they are ill to buy insurance, which leads to what policy analysts call a “death spiral” — premiums skyrocketing out of control. The exchange also serves as a vehicle for consumers and businesses purchasing qualifying health insurance. States must have an exchange in place by the beginning of 2014.

Vermont plans to use the exchange as a platform for a single-payer system by 2017. The logic goes like this: the fewer the number of insurers and the larger the number of patients in the pool, the more administrative costs the state can save, and the more the exchange will mimic the “single-pipe” payment system.

Vermont’s health care reform law, Act 48, requires the state to make an effort to include at least two insurers in the exchange. The implicit goal of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s single-payer initiative, however, is to narrow the field to one “single-pipe” payment system for medical reimbursements. The state currently has three main health insurers — MVP, BlueCross BlueShield of Vermont and Cigna. The federally mandated health benefit exchange will likely limit the number of insurers and plans employers can choose from, and it’s this squeeze on the variety of available options and associated costs that Vermont companies are worried about.

In 2016, the “small employer” qualification for the exchange includes employers with 100 employees or fewer. Before that time, states can choose to qualify small employers as those with 50 employees or fewer. Large employers will be included in state exchanges in 2017.

David Sichel, deputy director of risk management services for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said the vast majority of towns in the state fall under the 50 employees or fewer group and will be impacted by the exchange.

“Our primary concerns are to minimize any disruption that might happen,” Sichel said.

Sichel said a lot of towns offer high-deductible plans where the employer and the employee share the costs of premiums and deductibles. Certain plans that are offered now he said could be a better option for workers, but may not qualify as part of the exchange. For example, a plan with a high deductible where the employer foots the bill for the entire premium and contributes to a health savings account, which is not subject to federal income tax, could be a better deal than a plan offered through the exchange.

Sichel said keeping the 51-100 employee group out of the exchange would give employers more flexibility to choose from a wider array of plans and insurers and take advantage of benefits like the health savings account tax incentive.

Malek agreed with that assessment. “Choice is critical, and right now the people from 50 to 100 have a lot more choices than they will if they are in the exchange,” he said.

William Driscoll, vice president of Associated Industries of Vermont, summed up employer worries: “There’s been concern about how many choices are there going to be in the exchange and will plan designs increase cost?”

A report by Harvard economist William Hsiao recommended a payroll-tax funding mechanism that could result in employers paying about 11 percent of total payroll in 2019. Driscoll says most employers who offer insurance are paying about 4 percent to 7 percent of payroll now for health care. The governor has not endorsed a payroll tax to pay for a single-payer plan; the Shumlin administration, charged with developing financing for the universal medical system, will make recommendations to the Legislature in 2012, after Election Day.

Driscoll said multi-state corporations could be required to offer different benefits in Vermont than in other states. Furthermore, providing universal care would increase utilization of health care services, by severing the connection between individual choices to utilize health care services and costs.

Another potential cost issue for businesses, he said, is that they may have to offer supplemental insurance if, for example, a union contract offers better benefits than that offered in an exchange. In this case, businesses could be subject not only to the payroll tax, but they would also have to buy supplemental insurance to make up the difference between what employers receive under reform and what they received under the contract.

Robin Lunge, director of health care reform for the State of Vermont, said the governor’s office and the Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration are working on actuarial models to develop a recommendation for the legislature regarding the 50 or 100-employee level in the exchange.

As for buying insurance on or off the exchange, Lunge said there will probably not be much difference as far as flexibility in plans.

“One common misconception is that folks think buying insurance outside the exchange is more flexible and a different risk pool,” Lunge said. This is not necessarily true, she said, since the exchange is a mechanism for buying insurance rather than a completely separate market.

The amount of flexibility in a benefit package will depend on how the feds design different levels (i.e. gold, silver or platinum). That flexibility will be the same inside and outside the exchange, Lunge said. There are also five criteria that apply for plans within the exchange, Lunge said. Aside from the restriction on advertising designed to eliminate fraud, the other criteria are similar to current Vermont law.

If the Affordable Care Act was determined to be unconstitutional, she said, Vermont could still enact its own individual mandate or provide coverage without a mandate as it has done for children with the Dr. Dynasaur program.

For now, the fate of the individual mandate is in the hands of the Supreme Court. Vermont received an $18 million federal grant to fund the exchange, and it should be up and running by 2014. A plan for which employers will be in the exchange will reach the legislature in January. For more details, individuals and businesses will have to wait and see.

The recently released What are We Doing to Girls? The Early Sexualization Phenomenon and How Communities Are Responding features several youth programs in Vermont and takes a look at the situation and challenges of sexualition amongst girls.

This project arose from the child welfare field itself,and the concerns expressed by social workers and caseworkers about the sexualized behavior of the girls coming to their programs – behavior that was not typical of girls even 15 years ago but was common now.

The full report is available here http://www.nenetwork.org/publications/What_Are_We_Doing_to_Girls.pdf

IRENE RECOVERY FUND FOR NONPROFITS AWARDS $185K, EXPANDS GRANT ELIGIBILITY
Dec. 1, 2011

MIDDLEBURY, VT – The Vermont Community Foundation announced that its Special and Urgent Needs – Irene Recovery Fund has awarded a total of $185,000 to 40 Vermont nonprofit organizations impacted by Tropical Storm Irene since its creation in early September. As of November 30, total contributions received or pledged to the fund exceeded $369,000.

Grants awarded to date have been available to nonprofits, schools, and municipal entities that sustained damage from Irene or face significant resource challenges in providing services for those affected by Irene. The fund will continue to make grants to these organizations and has announced that it will expand its grantmaking to include community relief funds and programs that provide financial assistance to individuals and families impacted by Irene.

“Thanks to the generous outpouring of support for the fund, we are able to grant more money to help those programs most in need, including local relief funds and programs that support individuals and families,” said Stuart Comstock-Gay, president & CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation. “We’re aware that many affected organizations are still lining up sources of funding and we continue to encourage them to apply.”

In order to receive a grant, community relief funds and programs must be administered by a town, church, or registered 501c3 organization, or have one of those entities serving as a fiscal sponsor.

The Community Foundation continues to accept applications from nonprofits, schools, municipal entities, and relief programs and funds. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and grant decisions awarding up to $5,000 are made within 14 business days of application submissions. The Special and Urgent Needs-Irene Recovery Fund does not provide grants directly to individuals or businesses.

To Apply for Funding

Visit www.vtfloodresponse.org to apply for a grant, to make a contribution, or to read stories about grant recipients. The website was established by the Community Foundation to provide detailed, updated information about the Foundation’s Irene recovery efforts, including grants available and grants awarded. It also has a comprehensive list of flood resources and other useful information about Irene recovery work being done by other organizations.

Contact:

Jen Peterson

Vermont Community Foundation

802-388-3355 x288

jpeterson@vermontcf.org

###

The Vermont Community Foundation has been helping donors give to the causes and organizations they care about since 1986. It is Vermont’s largest homegrown grantmaker. Together, its family of over 600 funds provides more than $10 million in grants per year. In addition, it helps keep Vermont’s nonprofit community vital by offering endowment management and planned giving services, and providing leadership in charitable giving of all kinds. Visit www.vermontcf.org or call 802-388-3355 for more information.

November 18, 2011
Mark Rossenman

Calling All Boomers: Don’t Start More Nonprofits

Many people probably rejoiced when they heard about a study released last week showing that 12 million baby boomers want to start their own nonprofit or socially oriented business over the next decade.

But it’s hard to imagine those findings cheered many people who understand the nonprofit world. More than a million nonprofit groups already exist, and plenty of for-profit ventures are dedicated in part to providing some social benefit. Adding millions more of such entities is not good for this nation.

Such a multiplicity of organizations would move America further away from developing coherent analyses of public problems. And it would lead the country to define and treat social concerns as fragmented individual or local matters. That would make it profoundly more difficult to mount any significant effort to advance the broad-based change needed in our social, political, and economic institutions.

While certainly the commitment and spirit of these baby boomers—and of the millions of others who contribute to improving conditions in the United States and around the globe—are to be lauded, the idea that everybody needs to start a nonprofit is incongruous with the joint action necessary today.

Just as disturbing are the numbers of entrepreneurs who want to do well while doing good and who think that starting their own operation is the way to achieve that goal. That individualistic approach is exactly what has caused so many of the problems we face and inhibited real progress toward the common good.

To be sure, the number of Americans in need has grown rapidly, and that is one reason so many baby boomers are moved to social entrepreneurship.

The middle class is in trouble. The median annual income for a male full-time worker, adjusted for inflation, is virtually the same as it was in 1973. For households, median income fell last year to levels not seen since the mid-1990s. It is the first time since the Great Depression that median income has failed to rise over such a long time. We are in the first recovery on record in which the median income of working-age people is lower than it was before the recession started.

Yet not all Americans are suffering. The share of after-tax income going to the top 1 percent hit its highest levels in the past 30 years while the portion going to the very middle of the income spectrum fell to its lowest level in that period. And with growing economic inequality, the top 5 percent now hold over 60 percent of all private wealth.

More Americans now are falling into poverty than at any other time in the past half century, and those already there are getting even poorer.

The declining income, increasing disparity in wealth, and growing financial, housing, and health insecurity of today’s families—and of future generations—have not come about because those suffering are doing the wrong thing. While existing organizations need to provide expanded services and economic opportunities, they have the capability to care for people in need, if given adequate money and creative support.

At a time when nonprofit organizations are being pushed to greater program efficiencies, mergers, and other administrative economies, why do boomer entrepreneurs seem to think that starting millions of brand-new entities is the most effective way to make a societal contribution? Why can’t they work through existing organizations to start their creative new programs, improve existing ones, or concentrate resources instead of multiplying administrative and overhead costs?

More important, instead of simply trying to relieve the suffering of the ever-growing number of Americans hurt by the failures of our economic, social, and political systems, we need to deal with the continuing causes of our problems—those systems themselves and the people who inappropriately profit from their undemocratic malfunctioning.

It was the failure of structural systems that precipitated the crisis we are in. The egregious and deregulated abuses of Wall Street and other financial institutions brought us to the brink of a second Great Depression, where we continue to teeter today. More than 75 percent of Americans recognize that the country’s economic structure is out of balance in favor of the wealthy.

Yet the situation still hasn’t been corrected. Through their political influence, financial institutions hold off fundamental change and significant reregulation. The greed and excesses of Wall Street are returning to—or even topping—previous record levels without effective public control.

Other kinds of corporations are holding over $2-trillion in cash (the highest level since 1963) while refusing to invest in jobs for Americans—a situation that remains beyond public influence. This is occurring while corporations also try to reverse years of hard-won public protections with false assertions that it is regulation, rather than their greedy, retrograde, and environmentally destructive business practices, that are killing off jobs.

It is these dynamics that must be changed if the decline of the middle class and the growth of poverty are to be reversed. And multiples of new nonprofits or socially oriented businesses would not begin to challenge that reality or stave off growing human need.

As the philanthropy consultant Christopher Harris observed, our society again needs activists, not entrepreneurs. We need nonprofit organizations and foundations willing to challenge the fact that right now America’s celebrated social mobility is only downward. That won’t change unless millions of baby boomers shift their social commitment from an ill-advised and self-centered ambition to start a plethora of new enterprises and instead work together, and with others, to build the social, political, and economic movement required today.

Mark Rosenman is director of Caring to Change, a project in Washington that seeks to improve how grant making serves the public.

Governor Peter Shumlin helps unveil the new name of the Women’s Rape Crisis Center. Established in 1973 as the first rape crisis center in the State of Vermont, the WRCC has grown significantly over the years. Cathleen Wilson, the center’s Executive Director sites this growth as the impetus for changing the organization’s name. “Simply put, we outgrew our name. We serve women, men and teens; we serve people who have experienced all forms of sexual violence; and we provide long term services as well as prevention education in our schools. We needed a name that could encompass all that we do and hope to do.”

November 28, 2011

November 28, 2011 — With the nation facing constrained economic growth for a third straight holiday season, 68% of Americans believe it’s important to give something to charity, according to a new American Red Cross poll.

A telephone survey of 1,020 adults conducted earlier this fall found that more than seven out of 10 expect to donate more or about the same this holiday season as they did last year.

“Despite the difficult economy Americans want to give to help others in need,” said Red Cross President and CEO Gail J. McGovern. “With so many people out of work, they want to give something that means something.”

Other key findings include:

• Four in five (80%) of respondents felt their finances are either the same or worse than they were last year.
• Sixty-eight percent of Americans believe that because of the economy, it’s important to give something to charity, up 10 percentage points over the way they felt last year.
• More than half (55%) of Americans say they feel bad about spending money on gifts people might not use.
• Four in five (79%) agreed that they would rather have a charitable donation in their honor than get a gift they wouldn’t use.
• About one in five (19%) of respondents plan on giving blood this holiday season.

Despite the tough economy, the survey shows that Americans still feel very charitable during the holidays. Nearly six in 10 (57%) plan to give to charity between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In addition, four in five Americans agreeing that helping someone less fortunate is an important part of their holiday tradition.

However, of those who would not be donating to charity, most say they either can’t afford do it or they have already given their charitable gifts for the year. More than a third (36%) of people say they are not planning to make a financial donation this holiday season, and nearly half of them (49%) say it’s because they can’t spare the money right now.

Paul Carroccio, Vice-Chair
- Mark Snelling, Treasurer
- Steve Webster, Assistant Treasurer
- Rob Roper, Secretary
- Senator Randy Brock, At-Large Delegate to the Executive Committee
- Mary Daly, At-Large Delegate to the Executive Committee

The executive director is Mike Bertrand.

In Vermont, Donor Fatigue Sets in After Irene
John Dillon

Full audio recording  available

(Host) Leaders of Vermont non-profits are concerned that Vermonters who gave generously in response to Tropical Storm Irene may not be able to dig as deeply for traditional end-of-the year donations.

In response, nonprofits hope to get out the message that help is still needed for arts and environmental groups, and for people affected by the recession.

VPR’s John Dillon reports.

(Dillon) It’s known as donor fatigue – the financial or even psychological sense of being tapped out for charitable giving.

And the issue of donor fatigue is being discussed in non-profit circles in the wake of an outpouring of support that has raised $7 million so far for Irene flood victims. Stuart Comstock-Gay is president of the Vermont Community Foundation, which oversees funds for non-profits.

(Comstock-Gay) “That’s exactly the concern we’re having. And we’re hearing it from non-profit organizations and I’m not hearing so many stories, yet, about the specifics of what they’re not getting. But we’re hearing concern about it. That is, as they talk to donors, donors are saying, ‘Boy, I’m really stretched.’ And that is true. I guess I would just say that for all of us, dig a little deeper this year, and not consider the Irene relief as a replacement for what we do, but as an addition.”

(Dillon) The United Way of Chittenden County has heard similar concerns. Executive Director Martha Maksym says that even prior to Irene, demand for social services was high because of the economic recession. Maksym says that point was driven home as she helped answer the state’s 211 information phone line following the storm.

(Maksym) “Every once in a while a call would come through from someone who was not calling because they had a need that was not related to the disaster, but they still had a need. And it reminded me that really we can’t forget that there were many needs in our local communities.”

(Dillon) Many Windham County communities were hit hard by Irene. But the region also saw an earlier disaster last spring when the Brooks House fire displaced 60 households in Brattleboro.

The Windham County United Way raised about $28,000 in response to the Brooks House fire. Executive Director Carmen Derby says the local United Way also acts as fiscal agent for a special fund to help Irene victims in southeastern Vermont. That Irene fund is expected to reach around $245,000.

But Derby worries that because people may have written a check to United Way earlier, they may think the money goes to the general year-end fundraising goal. In fact, she says, the various funds have very different purposes.

(Derby) “Maybe there is some confusion amongst our donors, you know, ‘I wrote a check to United Way,’ in reference to Irene that they are confused and they think both of these are coming to United Way, where that is not the case. We are the fiscal agent, and we are managing those funds at zero percent cost.”

(Dillon) Derby worries that people are exhausted with disasters – and disaster giving. Her organization has scaled back its general fundraising goal for the year, from about $560,000 to $500,000.

(Derby) “If we could be at 50 or 60 percent of that by the end of the year it would be a wonderful thing, but I don’t believe we’re going to be there.”

(Dillon) Derby also says she gets the sense that people feel vulnerable because the recent past has shown that they could be just one step from disaster.

That fear, she says, may be making people reluctant to give as they try to protect themselves financially.

For VPR News, I’m John Dillon in Montpelier.

The Agency of Administration is hosting four listening sessions across Vermont to help inform the design of future health care reform financing plans. These sessions will include presentations on the challenges facing Vermont’s health care system, possible principles for a health care financing system, and an overview of potential funding sources.

Participants will use these informational presentations and their own experiences to offer input on the potential principles and funding sources for health care reform financing.=

Attending the sessions will be Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding, Tax Commissioner Mary Peterson, and Director of Health Care Reform Robin Lunge, as well as Commerce Secretary Lawrence Miller, BISHCA Commissioner Steve Kimbell and DVHA Commissioner Mark Larson.  The sessions are designed for the general public, as well as stakeholder groups specifically identified by the Legislature — health care professionals and employers.

The sessions are:

• November 29 at Marlboro College Tech Center, 28 Vernon Street, Brattleboro, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
• December 13 in the Fox Room at the Rutland Free Library, Rutland, 10 Court Street, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
• December 14 in the large conference room at the  Department of Vermont Health Access, 312 Hurricane Lane, Williston 6:00pm – 8:00pm
• TBA in the Northeast Kingdom, location to be determined, 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Parking will be available at each site or on the street adjacent to the site.  All sites will be ADA accessible.

Contact: (802) 828-0141 or Michael.Costa@state.vt.us.
Information will be available and updated here: http://www.state.vt.us/tax/pdf.word.excel/misc/Health%20Care%20Reform%20.pdf

Through the national media lens, the Occupy movement looks like a directionless, combustible assemblage of young idealists and jaded anarchists, with a smattering of criminals and homeless people seeking shelter and food—all taking place primarily in urban areas. A few rural examples, such as the “Occupy the Tundra” one-woman crusade in Alaska, the “Occupy the Pasture” campaign in the Great Plains and the tiny Oregon town of Mosier’s one week encampment have received national media coverage, primarily as human interest stories.

Local, generally supportive media has covered many other rural Occupy efforts in such diverse places as Ashtabula, Ohio; West Plains, Missouri; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Tahlequah, Oklahoma; Fort Bragg, California; and Rutland, Vermont; the movement is even “playing in (iconic but not very rural) Peoria,” Illinois. But there’s more to the contrasting images of urban and rural Occupy movements than uneven media coverage. There are different tactics at work that are in part related to the different natures of large and small communities, and these differences offer relevant lessons for any social movement.

While both rural and urban demonstrators have tied income inequality, unemployment, corporate influence on politics, and banking practices together in their emerging messages, they’ve taken on some differences in approach. The urban messages have often included a strong “anti-capitalism” and sometimes even anarchic bent, whereas the rural messages have been more explicitly populist, with an emphasis on fairness. Many rural efforts have included a “buy local” component to bring small businesses into their fold. The role of “occupation” vs. time-limited demonstration has been different between urban and rural areas: with limited population, most rural areas have not emphasized ongoing encampment but rather community outreach and conversations at specific events. Perhaps as a result of this strategy, rural demonstrations have drawn a wider range of ages, and, in particular, older participants who would not otherwise feel able to engage. Finally, social media is not the major driver of rural organizing efforts: according to “This ain’t Twitter country,” organizers in Kalispell, Montana, for example, relied primarily on fliers and word of mouth to bring people together.

Why the difference in overall tactics, and is one approach more likely to succeed than another? These are not easy questions to answer. However, one’s understanding of grass-roots organizing, even of “leaderless” movements, as Occupy organizers describe their work, can be informed by the field of leadership development and in particular by the dynamics of collective leadership roles aimed at system change. Fifteen years ago, the late Jeff Luke of the University of Oregon developed a framework for analyzing and building effective shared leadership that he called catalytic leadership, which has since been used to train public, private, and nonprofit leaders throughout the Pacific Northwest. Luke described four different and essential roles for leaders seeking to act in the public good around complex issues, and noted that different people are better equipped for some roles than others. In the case of the Occupy movement, it appears that urban and rural efforts are focused on different aspects of the collective/shared leadership spectrum as framed by the author. These differences at least in part reflect the differences between large and small community dynamics, and they can be complementary in terms of building momentum for change.

The four essential catalytic leadership roles are:

• Advocating: Raising an issue and getting it on the broader public agenda. The first, largely urban voices of Occupy Wall Street were a collective outcry of frustration with “the system,” not a specific cohesive message or action agenda. These voices have sometimes pushed the envelope of politeness and made others uncomfortable and anxious, but that’s part of an advocate’s role—to raise an alarm that something needs to be addressed. This “forcing the conversation” may be easier for people in large communities to do first, particularly when the message is complex, because there’s less pressure to conform and get along with everyone.
• Convening: Bringing people and their diverse voices together to build a sense of common purpose. The rural Occupy demonstrations seem to focus more on this outreach role than on physical occupation of a site, perhaps because “getting along” is an essential survival skill in small communities. For example, in Ashtabula, Ohio, a participant described his purpose as being to “raise awareness and discuss why everyone around here is so broke.” In Mosier, Oregon, organizers went door-to-door to have conversations with their neighbors, and limited their overnight camp to one week because “people are a lot more receptive to what we’re staying when they don’t think we’re going to move in.”
• Negotiating: Building agreement about goals and action steps, and addressing stakeholder interests as thoroughly as possible. The Occupy movement has been most sharply criticized for lacking this “catalytic leadership” capacity and focus, at least to date.
• Taking Action: Moving beyond talk to specific actions that inspire many people beyond the demonstrators to act differently. This can happen even before all goals are clear. For example, the consumer revolt against increased fees at large national banks serendipitously fed into the “anti-corporate” message of the Occupy demonstrations, and created momentum for a wave of bank account transfers to community based financial institutions.

At different points in time, different people, organizations, and communities are better equipped to take a lead role than others. Knowing this matters, because, as winter sets in, the act of occupation becomes more physically challenging for even the most committed participants. Furthermore, there are signs of media fatigue with regard to anything about the Occupy Movement but sensational headlines. If the Occupy Movement is to effectively articulate and inspire action to reduce income inequality, reduce corporate influence on government, increase economic opportunities, and strengthen community connections, its organizers may want to revisit their ideal of having a “leaderless” movement and frame their challenge instead as one of how to build effective, collective “catalytic leadership” that can evolve over time. This “collective leadership” frame clarifies how different types of people and communities can contribute, and it suggests a future course of action for sustaining leadership that truly engages with all its

Common Good Vermont’s Lauren-Glenn Davitian speaks with Vermont Community Foundation President Stuart Comstock-Gay  on the progress of Tropical Storm Irene recovery efforts in Vermont. In his role as VCF President, Mr. Comstock-Gay oversees a number of recovery funds including the Vermont Farm Relief Fund which recently announced a call for fourth-round applications. This program sheds light into the decision making process of funders and the complexity of funding recovery efforts in the wake of a major natural disaster in Vermont.

Additional #VTIrene recovery resources

In the November 21, 2011 announcement below, The Fund’s organizers, the Vermont Community Foundation and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, explain that the fund is now accepting applications for its fourth grant round.

VERMONT FARM DISASTER RELIEF FUND ANNOUNCES FOURTH GRANT ROUND, PLANS TO REVISIT APPLICATIONS

MIDDLEBURY, VT – The Vermont Community Foundation and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture announced that the Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund is accepting applications for its fourth grant round. In its first three rounds, the fund awarded 122 farmers affected by Tropical Storm Irene grants in excess of $600,000. As of November 21, total contributions received or pledged to the fund exceeded $2.0 million.

The grant committee announced that applications will be accepted for the fund’s fourth grant round until December 2, 2011. Grant checks will be distributed to selected farmers by the end of the year. Applications are available online at www.vtfloodresponse.org.

“We’re aware that many farmers are still in the process of putting their lives back together and are just now tallying their losses – we continue to encourage them to apply as soon as they are able to do so,” says Chuck Ross, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. “We will be working closely with the Community Foundation and with all our partners to ensure that grants reach as many of the farmers impacted by the storm as possible.”

The grant committee will also revisit applications from farmers who have already received funding, in order to assess remaining need and consider awarding additional grant money. Each farmer who has received a grant from the fund will be mailed a letter and form requesting an update on total losses from the storm and the support they have received to help address those losses.

“Many farmers have a more complete picture of overall losses now than they did two months ago – in fact, many of the needs that farmers will be facing over the coming months have not yet surfaced,” says Ryan Torres, philanthropic advisor at the Vermont Community Foundation. “That’s why part of our grantmaking strategy is to assess the needs of farmers in stages, to help maximize the availability of funds and ensure that farmers have the resources they need to be successful well into the future.”

“We are incredibly grateful for the enormous outpouring of support to the fund, both locally and from outside Vermont,” says Stuart Comstock-Gay, president & CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation. “Because of the generosity of everyone who has donated to the fund, we are able to give out more grants in this fourth round and to potentially increase the awards to those farmers who have been hit the hardest.”

The grant committee includes representatives from the Vermont Community Foundation, Vermont Agency of Agriculture, NOFA Vermont, Vermont Farm Bureau, Rural Vermont, Rutland Area Farm and Food Link, and University of Vermont Extension. Grant decisions are based on a number of factors, including total losses and overall need.

The grants will help farmers replace infrastructure, seed, feed, livestock, supplies, and equipment lost as a result of the storm, to the extent the losses were not covered by insurance or other sources of income. The grants can also be used to help pay outstanding bills such as farm mortgage costs, land lease payments, or animal feed bills.

According to the Agency of Agriculture, a rough estimate of farmland impacted by Irene exceeds 20,000 acres; a conservative estimate of crop losses and crop land damage needing repair exceeds $10 million dollars. A total of 463 Vermont farms have reported damage to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Those interested in learning more about the fund or making a contribution can visit www.vtfloodresponse.org.

Reposted from Vermont Businesses Magazine, www.vermontbiz.com
Wed Nov 18, 2011

The day after Tropical Storm Irene struck Vermont and severely damaged more than 500 miles of state road and some 200 bridges, the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) quickly learned that its usual method of conveying information about road and bridge closures via the Internet was not going to be adequate. A new tool was needed, and it was needed fast.

Early the next day, the phone rang.

Former Vermont State Senator Matt Dunne, who heads up Community Affairs for Google, was on the line. A resident of Windsor County, which was hit particularly hard by the storm, Dunne was reaching out to all states that were impacted by Irene to offer Google’s services – free of charge.

VTrans quickly accepted.

Within hours of Dunne’s call, VTrans formed an in-house team of IT technicians and GIS mapping gurus to meet – virtually, of course – with Google staff in California. Working through the night, the joint high-tech team coordinated with VTrans’ scouts who were working in the field to identify the specific locations where highway damage had occurred.

In the wee hours of the morning, the team developed and then created a GIS database of Vermont bridge closures and roadway damage. By the end of the next day – just the third day following Irene’s devastating blow – Google published the first of what would be many easy-to-use maps depicting real-time road and bridge damage throughout the entire State of Vermont.

“Part of Google’s mission is to help communities in crisis with information tools,” Dunne said. “We were happy to partner with the Vermont Agency of Transportation in the aftermath of the flooding. We hope this map was helpful to Vermonters in the months following Irene.”

Helpful is an understatement. The new map not only identified which roads – such as Route 9 or Route 100 – that were impacted, but the map was so detailed that it identified the specific locations along each road that were damaged. Each location was then color coded to help the traveling public understand whether that location was closed, or just limited in some capacity.

As road conditions changed and once impassible sections were repaired, VTrans staff continually worked with Google to update the map, a new version of which was published twice daily to ensure travelers had virtually up-to-the-minute information on how to navigate the state.

“The Vermont Google Map has been a tremendous help to Vermonters and visitors in the aftermath of Irene,” said Vermont Tourism and Marketing Commissioner Megan Smith. “Roads and bridges around the state were repaired in a remarkably short period of time, and the map’s seamless and real-time updates greatly supported our message that Vermont is open for business and that you can get here from there. The updated map was especially helpful to staff at Vermont’s information centers, as well as to our 1-800-Vermont call center in Newport, whose staff counseled hundreds of travelers.”

The tool was so powerful and easy to use that VTrans quickly reworked its Internet homepage to prominently display the color-coded, traveler information tool.

“The map was the tool we used to tell our story both to Vermonters and to those looking to visit Vermont,” said VTrans Secretary Brian Searles. “Thousands of people used the map to help plan their travels during a time when it was not intuitive on how to get around. Considering the economic constraints that face all state agencies, we are most grateful to Google for providing us such a valuable service.”

The need for such a service, however, has ended. With all but two bridges and nine miles of state roadway open to public travel, VTrans today will cease publishing its Irene-related Google map. The agency beginning Friday, November 18, 2011 also will return the look and feel of its website’s homepage to the way it functioned before the tropical storm struck on August 28, 2011.

Information regarding the remaining Irene-related road and bridge closures will be rolled into VTrans’ long-standing 511 travel information website, which also documents all other closures to the Vermont State Highway System.

VTrans will continue to publish information related to Irene, including its popular Facebook page that provides timely information regarding Irene-related events. But beginning November 18, the agency will house Irene information in a designated place within its overall website at www.aot.state.vt.us rather than presenting storm-related information as the centerpiece to the agency’s homepage.

Tropical Storm Irene severely damaged more than 500 miles of state highway, including some 200 state bridges. Today, only 2 bridge locations remains closed, and all but nine miles of state roadway are open to public travel. Road closures remain on Route 12A in Roxbury, Route 106 in Weathersfield and Route 107 between Bethel and Stockbridge.

Questions regarding storm-damaged roads and bridges related to Tropical Storm Irene can be answered by calling VTrans’ Irene Storm Center at 1-800-Vermont. People can also visit VTrans’ website at www.aot.state.vt.us where they can follow the agency’s progress on both Facebook and Twitter

Deadline: The deadline for submission of applications is Monday, December 19, 2011 at 4 p.m. Funding is expected to be available on July 1, 2012.

The City of Burlington is soliciting applications for funding through its Community Development Block Grant program.  Funding will be targeted to the priorities identified in the City’s 2008 Consolidated Plan for Housing & Community Development, available online at www.cedoburlington.org.

Please note: The federal appropriation for the next program year has not yet been announced.  The number of applications funded, and the amounts, may be restricted depending on the city’s allocation and the available administrative funding.

Application packets for funding are available at the Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO).  You can request a packet by e-mail.

Two informational workshops for applicants are scheduled: one from noon to 1:00 on Wednesday, December 7 and one from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 8.  For further information, please contact Margaret Bozik at 865-7171.

Residents who are interested in improving their neighborhoods through the Neighborhood Development Grants portion of the Community Development Block Grant program should contact Jenny Davis at 865-7172 for more information.

Wilmington, VT –
11/11/2011
A group of Vermont businesses and homeowners has raised nearly $160,000 for a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping victims of Irene.

The money has been donated to the Deerfield River Valley Human Web. Spokeswoman Julie Lineberger tells the Brattleboro Reformer (http://bit.ly/tHgKHu) second homeowners and local businesses in the Deerfield Valley, including GS Precision, Mount Snow and the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, contributed to the fund.

She said there have also been individual community members, such as a business person who set up a separate fund specifically for single mothers.

Spokeswoman Julie Lineberger tells the Brattleboro Reformer (http://bit.ly/tHgKHu) second homeowners and local businesses in the Deerfield Valley, including GS Precision, Mount Snow and the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, contributed to the fund.

To date, the Human Web has granted more than $100,000 to help keep people in the Deerfield Valley, whether it was with rent or mortgage, heating costs, utilities, repairs and medical costs.

The fund is scheduled to close Dec. 31.
11/11/2011

Now is a great time to finance the capital project you have been planning! We have very low interest rates for loans. Currently, our rate is 3.75%. In some cases, the loan term can be as long as 30 years; making your payments affordable. Apply now, don’t miss out!

WHAT CAN COMMUNITY FACILITIES DO FOR YOUR NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION OR PUBLIC BODY?

Community Facilities serves non-profits and public bodies. Use our loans and grants to renovate, repair, purchase or construct buildings which house community services. Also, use the money to purchase or repair equipment for the facilities.

Past projects include, but are not limited to:

• Build a health care center, community center and firehouse.
• Renovate a library, a town hall, opera house, museum, a homeless shelter and a food pantry.
• Purchase public safety vehicles like fire pumper trucks and ambulances. Purchase needed rescue and safety equipment.
• Purchase equipment and office furnishings for child care centers, theaters, museums, healthcare, food pantries, town halls, almost any community facility that serves the public.
• We have additional funding for child care and pre-schools grants!

Projects that will receive priority this year are:

• Library or educational construction projects
• Public safety equipment required by the Narrowbanding deadline
• Projects related to disaster recovery
• Child care and pre-school projects (Additional grant money is available from Washington, DC office.)
• Project supports local food systems or food security such as farmer’s markets or food pantries
• Healthcare related projects

COMMUNITY FACILITIES GRANTS UPDATE

• Applications are accepted throughout the year.
• Applications submitted by January 20, 2012 will compete for the 2012 grant funding.
• We anticipate that grant funding will be very limited.
• We are encouraging all projects with defined budgets and matching funds to apply as soon as possible.
• Community Facilities Loans can be the grant match and we strongly encourage loan/grant
• Not all communities are grant eligible. See link below.

COMMUNITY FACILITIES LOANS UPDATE: At this time, we anticipate that there will be sufficient loan money available this year. Interest rates have dropped to 3.75%. This rate is effective through December 31, 2011.

AREA OFFICE CONTACTS

In New Hampshire

• Belknap, Sullivan, Cheshire, Hillsborough, Rockingham Strafford, Merrimack Counties: Mark Koprowski at 603-223-6057 or Mark.Koprowski@nh.usda.gov
• Carroll, Coos, Grafton Counties: Anne Getchell at 603-447-3318 Ext. 5 or Anne.Getchell@nh.usda.gov

In Vermont

• Bennington, Rutland, Windham and Windsor Counties: Andrea Ansevin-Allen at 802-257-7878 Ext. 113 or  Andrea.Ansevin-Allen@vt.usda.gov
• Caledonia, Essex and Orleans Counties: Suzanne Smith at 802-748-8746 Ext. 112 or Suzanne.M.Smith@vt.usda.gov
• Addison, Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Isle, Lamoille, Orange and Washington Counties: Karen Lynch at 802-828-6044 or Karen.Lynch@vt.usda.gov

DETAILED PROGRAM INFORMATION http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/HCF_CF.html

LIST OF GRANT ELIGIBLE NH TOWNS

http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/vt/Community%20Programs/NH%20Census%20List%20for%20Web.pdf

LIST OF GRANT ELIGIBLE VT TOWNS

http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/vt/Community%20Programs/VT%20Census%20List%20for%20Web.pdf

The money will be used for several purposes, including development of a website that provides veterans specific information about their eligibility for a host of transit services. Those include on-demand rides, the purchase and instillation of software that will allow the Disabled American Veterans’ and the Veterans Administration’s independent transportation system be incorporated into the same dispatch system used by all public transit providers in Vermont, and installing GPS location devices in various public transit vehicles – such as vans operated by Disabled American Veterans – so that more efficient dispatch decisions can be made.

“This grant will make life a little easier for our soldiers and their families by improving access to transportation services that they need to travel to work, health care appointments and other places,” Gov. Shumlin said.

In a joint statement, Vermont’s congressional delegation – Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, and Congressman Peter Welch — said, “This is great news for veterans in Vermont, who often cite finding a ride to and from their medical visits as a major barrier in getting the care they need in the VA health care system.  With this investment, veterans throughout Vermont will be able to go online to learn about transportation options and to request rides.  For many it will save long commutes, overnight stays, or headaches worrying about how they will get the medical health they need and deserve.”

VTrans Secretary Brian Searles agreed, adding, “These funds enable us to create a technology-based infrastructure that will allow not only us but all Vermont-based transit providers to better link veterans and their families up with transit services. The goal is to make it easier for them to access the many services that they need.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said this grant is part of $34.6 million for 55 projects in 32 states and Guam to enhance access to local, affordable transportation services for military families and spouses, and wounded warriors.

“Military families and veterans must be able to take full advantage of the transportation resources in their communities,” said Peter Rogoff, Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), which manages the grants through its discretionary Bus and Bus Facilities Program, in a statement. “Every service member who returns home or a spouse who relocates to a new community deserves the best possible chance to earn a reliable paycheck and that means having access to reliable transportation choices.”

The new website will allow the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) to educate vets about their eligibility for rides, make requests electronically and direct them to other resources when they do not qualify for DAV rides. The website also will provide links that connects the viewer to the appropriate service, as well as allow DAV to coordinate rides on a statewide basis using updated technology which will allow DAV to better utilize its scarce resources.

The grant also provides funds to develop software that will enable both the DAV and Veteran Administration to incorporate information about their transportation systems into the same dispatch and tracking system used by all public transit providers in Vermont. The grant includes money for both software installation and training.

Grant funds will also be used to install GPS tracking devises in public transit vehicles and DAV vans so dispatchers can monitor bus and van locations to make more efficient dispatch decisions.

Once up and running, the State of Vermont plans to study use of the new transit systems and learn from the experiences of  Vermont veterans and their families to create a similar transit model that can be used to aid other groups like seniors, disaster victims and the disabled with transportation needs.

One of the goals is to develop a step-by-step manual for transportation providers, groups needing rides, and volunteer groups to engage each other on the path to enhancing available rides through coordination and education.

Contact: Susan Allen 802-279-8493

Register Now
Lobbying & Communications Bootcamp is
Tuesday, November 15!

Deadline: January 18th
The purpose of planning grants is to support the development of AmeriCorps programs that will engage AmeriCorps members in evidence-based interventions to solve community problems. Planning grant recipients are expected to be better prepared to compete for an AmeriCorps program grant in the following grant cycle. Planning grants may not be used to support AmeriCorps members.

The Corporation for National and Community Service expects to invest the available funding to applicants proposing programming in the Focus Area of Veterans and Military Families.

Applicants are encouraged to send an e-mail by December 15, 2011 to americorpsgrants@cns.gov, stating intent to apply, including the name of the Notice of Federal Funding Opportunity. Commission sub-applicants should not provide this information.

More Info

County or Brandon, or that have a statewide reach and make a unique contribution to Vermont. Priority interests are the arts, education, historic preservation, and social services, reflecting the pattern of giving established by Walter Cerf during his lifetime.

Cerf, a native of Germany who made Leicester, Vermont his home in his later years, gave more than $10 million to organizations and projects in Vermont before passing away in 2001. Cerf focused much of his giving within his community of Addison County and Brandon; grants from the Walter Cerf Community Fund reflect that focus, with two-thirds of the grants reserved for Addison County/Brandon projects and one-third reserved for statewide projects. Each grant awards up to $5,000.

Each year, the fund awards one grant up to $25,000. This year, the Preservation Trust of Vermont received $20,000 to help repair and rebuild Vermont’s historic covered bridges and other critically damaged historic buildings throughout the state that sustained damage from Tropical Storm Irene. The grant aligns with Cerf’s love and appreciation of historic buildings in Vermont.

Statewide Grants

American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Vermont
$1,500 for operating support, including legal and education programs.

American Precision Museum
$2,500 to support exhibits marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
Central Vermont Community Action Council
$2,000 to support the Vermont Women’s Business Center and their “Painting with Numbers” classes to provide hands-on learning to help artists build their business through strong financial management.

Chandler Center for the Arts
$2,500 to support a statewide contest to encourage Vermonters’ writing plays on current social issues and promote public dialogue.

Curtains Without Borders

$1,000 to support preservation of historic theater curtains in Vermont.
Goddard College

$2,000 to support planning for preservation and renovation of three early examples of Vermont’s design-build movement into a multi-use arts center.

Preservation Trust of Vermont

$20,000 to help repair and rebuild Vermont’s historic covered bridges and other critically damaged historic buildings throughout the state that have sustained damage from Tropical Storm Irene.
St. Albans Historical Museum
$2,500 to help the Board and community develop resources to sustain, improve, and grow the services provided by the museum.
Upright Steeple Society
$2,500 to replace the roof as part of a structural restoration project on an 1829 Greek Revival building in Lyndon, Vermont.

Vermont Arts Council
$2,000 to support “Breaking into Business”, a business training and support program for Vermont artists.

Vermont Community Loan Fund
$5,000 to support Project SUCCESS, providing technical assistance to home and center-based child care providers who want to start, grow, or improve their business.

Vermont Historical Society
$1,500 to support Vermont History Day.+

Vermont Humanities Council
$2,500 to support the Never Too Early program, which provides early literacy training for needy childcare providers and parents.

Vermont Land Trust
$2,000 to support historic preservation of the George Washington Reed House.

Vermont Public Television
$2,000 to support a documentary and associated programs about Burlington’s ultra-traditional Jewish community in the late 1800s.

Addison County and the Town of Brandon Grants

Addison Central Teens & Friends
$3,000 to develop and implement an ongoing and sustainable leadership training program for teens.

Addison County Readers
$2,000 to expand Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to more infants across Addison County through collaboration with Porter Birthing Center.

Community Health Services of Addison County (d.b.a. Open Door Clinic)
$4,000 to support diabetes clinics for uninsured Addison County adults.

Everybody Wins! Vermont
$3,000 to support the Everybody Wins! Vermont Power Lunch children’s literacy and mentoring program at Neshobe Elementary School in Brandon.

Flynn Center for the Performing Arts
$3,000 to subsidize tickets for low-income students from Addison County to attend the 2011-12 Flynn Student Matinee Series.

Foxcroft Farm Harvest Program
$3,000 to support the expansion of the Growing To Know Project to provide after-school educational enrichment and service-learning opportunities for Leicester School students.

Leicester Central School
$5,000 to support a school improvement project to continue student arts experiences, upgrade Guided Reading leveled readers, and upgrade and improve the safety of the school and community playground.

Living Well Community Care Home
$2,000 to create outreach materials documenting a pilot project other care homes can replicate to improve nutrition and their local farm economies.

Mary Johnson Children’s Center
$5,000 to support the installation of an AllSun Solar Tracker.

Middlebury Area Summer Lunch & Recreation Support Group
$1,000 for general support.

Middlebury Cooperative Nursery School
$1,000 to support energy efficiency at the Middlebury Cooperative Nursery School.

Middlebury Transitional Care Coalition
$3,000 to support facilities improvement for emergency and transitional housing.

Otter Creek Child Center
$2,000 to support the purchase of new cribs.

Planned Parenthood of Northern New England
$3,000 to support the Middlebury health center.

Porter Medical Center
$2,000 to support the establishment of an “End of Life Room” in Middlebury.

Robinson Elementary School
$2,000 to support second year of implementation for the Words Come Alive Program.

RSVP & The Volunteer Center
$2,000 to support and expand the RSVP Bone Builders exercise program.

The Hub Teen Center & Skatepark
$2,000 to support teen center programming with staff, materials, transportation, workshops and presentations, music, and food.

Town of Middlebury
$5,000 to support the roundabout centerpiece public art/monument design process.

Vermont Adult Learning
$2,323 to establish a music program at Vermont Adult Learning Childcare.

Vermont Folklife Center
$2,000 to support Invisible Odysseys, autobiographical dioramas by Mexican migrant workers in Vermont.

Vermont Symphony Orchestra
$1,000 to support the Vergennes concert of the 2011 Made in Vermont Music Festival statewide tour.

Vermont Youth Conservation Corps
$2,000 to support trail restoration work in the Moosalamoo National Recreation Area.

Vermont Youth Orchestra Association
$2,000 to support the Middlebury concert of the VYO Chorus and Concert Chorale.

WomenSafe

$2,000 to support volunteer training.

Recently released Census data are both a wake-up call and a gift for the Shumlin administration and the Legislature.

A wake-up call because the statistics show that middle-income Vermonters are earning less and more of them are slipping into poverty—evidence that things are moving in the wrong direction for Vermonters. Our political leaders need to turn this around through the priorities they set—starting with tax and budget policies—that will shape Vermont’s future.

A gift because the Census data provide the beginnings of a performance measurement system that Vermont desperately needs to rebuild.

Challenges for Change, last year’s efficiency improvement program, held out the promise of better, more effective government at less cost. The effort unraveled, however, when people realized the plan was simply a way to cut the budget. Another problem emerged, though, in the course of trying institute Challenges for Change: the budget cuts in recent years had diminished the state’s capacity to evaluate its own performance. In the effort to reduce the size of government, the state lost many of the data collection and analysis staff and, consequently, its capability to look at how well it serves Vermonters.

Until five years ago, we were assessing government effectiveness by measuring—and publicizing—how Vermonters were faring. In the early 1990s, then-Human Services Secretary Con Hogan came up with the novel idea of gauging the performance of the agency not by the size of its caseloads, but by the well-being of Vermont’s citizens. The agency starting tracking indicators like graduation rates and school drop-out rates, college and early education enrollments, teen pregnancies, drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, health care coverage, and much more.

The last Vermont Well-Being report was published in 2006. We need to resurrect that report and develop similar indicators for other agencies and departments of state government. The mission of the Department of Economic Development is “to enhance Vermonters’ quality of life through expanded economic opportunity.” So we all can see how well it’s fulfilling it mission, that department ought to develop quality-of-life measures that it can post on its website. One indicator might be real (inflation-adjusted) median household income, which is readily available from the U.S. Census Bureau.[1] Unfortunately, that would show less than a 4 percent increase over the entire 20 years from 1990 to 2010—hardly enough to enhance the typical Vermonter’s quality of life.

Governor Shumlin has vowed to rebuild Vermont’s middle class. Society’s are healthier when economic prosperity is broadly shared, so the governor is focused on the right goal. And he has a big task ahead. Income inequality has been growing here. Vermont’s top 1 percent received about 6 percent of the state’s total income in the mid-1970s. By 2005, its share had tripled, to more than 19 percent, which left less for everybody else. Vermonters deserve to know how the governor plans to reverse this trend, and the governor’s website should provide data people can look at to judge his progress.

No one wants to waste tax dollars, so we shouldn’t be afraid to eliminate public programs or services that are ineffective. By the same token, we need to provide adequate resources—both money and personnel—for those efforts that make Vermont the state we want to live in.

Let’s define that Vermont, design a plan to get there, and start measuring our progress.

[1] Careful readers will note that median household income shown in this link to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey is higher for 2010 than the figure at the American Community Survey link in the first paragraph. The American Community Survey is generally considered more accurate for small states like Vermont because it is based an a larger sample size than the Current Population Survey. However, the American Community Survey wasn’t started until 2005, so it’s necessary to use Current Population Survey data to assess longer term trends.

If you’re a nonprofit news junkie, you know it’s nearly impossible to go a day without reading or hearing the words “innovation” and “impact.” Just check out the feeds of the nonprofit Twitteratti, where those complex concepts are distilled to 140 characters or less every day.

But for those of us who care about linking rigor to innovation and impact (especially impact assessment), making them more operational, and integrating them more systematically into nonprofit/philanthropic practice, it’s hard to find serious discussion that is more about practice and less about how savvy some of the folks who opine about these concepts want to appear.

Is innovation really innovative?

Innovation, for example, is hardly a new construct; but it would be easy to forget that, given the level of ink that’s been spilled about the need for it in the nonprofit sector. In fact, there have been a number of people in the nonprofit world who, for some time now, have advocated for the sector to embrace new approaches and shake things up periodically. And that’s exactly what’s happened in recent years—due, in some part, to the influx of people from other sectors who’ve brought a much-needed emphasis on results, management, and measurement to nonprofit/philanthropic institutions that, as recently as a decade ago, were somewhat skittish about these processes.

This group has also brought a new, decidedly businesslike vocabulary, at the center of which is “innovation.” Once primarily a buzzword in the private sector, innovation has now become the term du jour in the social sector.

So what’s wrong with that? Nothing, if innovation is used to connote something new. Lately, though, the concept has been bandied about with nary a thought as to whether what’s being described is indeed unique or whether it’s just old wine in new bottles. Of particular concern is the assumption among some who are new to nonprofits that any idea or approach they advance is a radical departure from what’s gone before.

In fact, a review of the steady stream of studies and reports issued under the guise of innovation reveals much that is merely a restatement or repackaging of ideas and concepts that have already been acknowledged or are being used by people who’ve been working in the nonprofit sector for awhile. As a colleague who works for a philanthropic evaluation company dryly noted, “They take what we already know and put a framework around it.” It’s akin to a bakeoff that allows a competitor to tweak a chocolate cake recipe and give it a new name. When all is said and done, it’s still essentially a chocolate cake.

Thus, the need for more collaboration and partnerships among the private, public, and nonprofit sectors—something that has been trumpeted for more than a decade—is now touted as “shared” or “collective impact.” Advocacy, long-practiced by smart nonprofits and funders, is now “key” to “leveraging impact.” Years of beseeching funders to understand the importance of investments in capacity building and growth/replication is now being echoed by a new crop of players calling for “growth capital” and “scaling.” Program-related investments (PRIs) and mission-related investments (MRIs), which have been around for a while, are now promoted as “essential” components to “impact investing.” The importance of marketing and communications—once seen as anathema to nonprofits but increasingly accepted as standard practice—is now reflected in admonitions to nonprofits to “brand” themselves. The need for nonprofits and foundations to measure results has been a mantra among strategic and serious field leaders for a decade, but today foundation executives new to philanthropy, who reiterate the desire for evaluation and metrics, are lauded as “transformative.”

But there’s more. Some of the same foundation folks who talk about innovation have also been proponents of “assessing impact”—a phrase that has become almost de facto in speeches or articles by philanthropy pundits calling for “more rigor” than has generally been demonstrated in traditional philanthropic circles. Foundations, for example, need to “leverage impact” through better strategy. Businesses can “achieve more impact” by incorporating social responsibility and moving toward a “double [triple] bottom line.” Nonprofit boards need to be more focused on making organizations more accountable so they can “have impact.” Advocacy “leverages impact.” Collaboration “enhances impact.” Cross-sector partnerships “lead to greater impact.”

Few would argue that all of the above aren’t important concepts, no matter how they’re phrased, and that there’s still a need for them to be more deeply embedded in nonprofit and philanthropic practice than they are. There’s also little doubt that reiterating them in different ways helps to reach broader and more diverse audiences about what works and what doesn’t.

What’s of concern to some, though, is the increasing number of reports or studies on so-called innovative ideas or models—or ways to assess impact—that have been generated by individuals who seem to have little or no concern about whether or not what they’re claiming as “the next best thing” is really just “been there, done that.” Of equal concern is that generous support for these kinds of efforts is sometimes being underwritten with foundation dollars—money that might be better used to help organizations implement purportedly innovative ideas rather than present them, again, albeit in snappier packages. (A particularly salient example of the trend of misapplying the notion of innovation is the Social Innovation Fund. Established to serve as an important new funding source for the sector, the Fund later came under criticism for supporting a number of well-established safe bets rather than what most thought of as true innovation.)

But what’s most disturbing to some nonprofit leaders are investments that have been made in so-called innovative initiatives that duplicate existing efforts with a proven track record of success documented through metrics, data, and analysis—all of which investors championing businesslike practices say that they want.

Recently, for example, a senior program officer from a national foundation met with a “social entrepreneur” whose pitch consisted of little more than paper napkin drawing—no business plan, no objectives, no market analysis, and no pilot. Despite knowledge of another highly successful organization with an almost identical mission and structure (and that was preparing to “scale” its substantive and effective infrastructure), the program officer decided to make a multi-million dollar investment in a wholly new endeavor that reinvented another wheel, based on the assumption that the new entrepreneur’s star credentials from another field would be enough to ensure its success. Nine months later, the entire project not only barely got off the ground, it imploded, leaving the investor scrambling to find a home for the remaining shell of the originally lauded “innovative” concept. Meanwhile, the “older” organization has continued to quietly prepare for an international launch that is expected to triple its reach—and with little foundation funding.

This is not to say there isn’t room for more competition in the nonprofit sector; there is, and there is nothing wrong with organizations having to prove their mettle in order to justify serious investments. What there isn’t room for in these times of ever-dwindling resources is getting caught up in the folly of believing that just because something is described as innovative, it is.

Where’s the “do”?

It’s little surprise, then, that collective eyes are beginning to roll when the terms innovation and impact are tossed around with little explication as to what they look like on the ground and within a more systematic framework. So, maybe it’s time to start putting our money where our mouths are and get serious about assessing what, exactly, is true innovation; and, most important, what are the kinds of innovation that lead to real impact—especially those that can be rigorously assessed and measured.

Auspiciously, some foundation and nonprofit leaders seem to be getting the message. According to a recent report by the Center on Effective Philanthropy, assessment has become a high priority for some foundation leaders, who see “progress as having been made on this topic during the past decade.” At the same time, though, most still think that too few foundations are able to measure their overall performance and, especially, impact in ways that would indicate “effectiveness.”

So, what can we do to tamp down the blather and ramp up the “do”?

We can start asking harder questions and pushing for more truthful answers from those preaching about the need for impact and innovation. One suggestion is asking these folks what exactly they are doing in this area, how they are doing it, and what they have discovered—good and bad. At a recent conference, for example, the president of one of the world’s largest foundations was asked what philanthropy needed to do to have more impact. His response: “Do more evaluation . . . develop feedback loops . . .have more staff meetings . . . work with private sector partners.” None of these are new concepts, but it’s as if linking them to impact makes them so. Yet some audience members acted as if they were hearing these bromides for the first time, judging by their eagerness to praise the speaker for his brilliance. No one asked him what his institution was actually doing to “assess impact,” nor, more importantly, what he’d learned as far as what worked and what did not.

We can start questioning evaluation results that were not generated by independent third-party evaluators charged with conducting stringent analyses and given carte blanche to publicly reveal the results—warts and all. As long as firms or organizations with ties to the investors funding evaluation studies receive contracts to conduct these assessments, the results will always be tainted with the perception of bias, no matter how hard the contractors try to maintain objectivity. And as long as investors place caveats on what is reported, we will never gain true understanding of what works and what doesn’t, and what impedes progress and, ironically, future innovation.

We can stop applauding articles that merely restate what we already know. Instead, we must push for more thoughtful, analytical, and serious treatments of how we can better measure impact and make decisions as to what is true innovation and what is not.

We must stop decoupling innovation and impact. Some have made the argument that truly innovative efforts start with big ideas, not small metrics, and, thus, shun attempts to track what they are doing. Without any sense of where innovation starts, how it progresses, and where it ends up, however, there will be little learning as to what was effective, what wasn’t, and why—leading to more uninformed investments and wasted time. A balance is required: funders who invest in innovation must recognize that asking for a full-blown evaluation will probably quell experimentation, but innovators should, at the very least, be able to provide evidence that their efforts are making a difference.

We can call it out when people confuse impact with outcomes or outputs. A well-known funder recently announced that s/he would no longer be supporting organizations that couldn’t demonstrate impact as a function of how many people receive a particular service they offer. Despite this funder’s confusion over the difference between impact and outputs, the announcement not only went unchallenged, it was trumpeted in articles as a “new approach to funding”—largely due to the donor’s reputation as a successful business mogul.

We must begin asking investors whether and to what extent they are incorporating more rigorous impact assessments more systematically and comprehensively into their own efforts. Specifically, we should be asking for at least one concrete example of how they (or others) have methodically assessed not only what grantees have done but also what the impact of both that investment and the grantees’ actions have been beyond the organizations themselves.

Indeed what better measure of impact is there than whether and to what extent an investment has had traction beyond a list of stipulated outputs or outcomes that the organization and/or investor wanted to see? That list could be expanded to include looking at whether and to what extent organizations supported by charitable donations are enhancing the ability of the communities they serve to address issues beyond what they were primarily funded for or within narrow programmatic outcomes. The measure becomes a community’s ability to resolve not just the issue at hand but also problems that may arise in the future—i.e., the program’s social efficacy.

Among funders interested in homelessness, for example, rather than just assessing how many homes have been built or how many loans have been provided or even how many homeless people are now off the street, assessment could include whether the organization was a factor in engaging the larger community around the issue and then addressing it. That would be a powerful measure of impact. Another would be assessing the passage of public policies affecting a broader population than that targeted by the initiative. Yet funders shy away from these activities as being “too complex” or “difficult to measure,” and/or view them as long-term processes whose results few will have the patience to wait around for.

We must begin questioning investors who claim to be “funding innovation” but who, on closer inspection, are really funding newer and splashier versions of projects or models that either have been tried previously (and failed) or already exist but quietly, without fanfare.

In short, those of us who say we care about rigorous impact evaluation as well as true innovation must stop shying away from digging deeper into claims that someone has discovered “the next big thing” or is “assessing impact” but that fail to elaborate on exactly how or what has been learned.

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Unlike other domains, the nonprofit sector continues to be skittish when it comes to honest public debate, as well as critical thinking, about ideas and approaches on which we may disagree. Critical thinking, however, is not the enemy of innovation; it’s often what spurs it. And impact assessment is far too important a practice to be given short shrift, given the serious challenges we face as a nation and globally. With that in mind, let’s look forward to less talk and more “do” around innovation and impact assessment.

Cynthia Gibson, Senior Fellow at TPI, has more than 26 years of experience in the nonprofit sector where she has held leadership roles for several national foundations and nonprofits and has become a highly regarded strategist, thought leader, writer, and practitioner on issues ranging from civic engagement and nonprofit management to health care and education.  At TPI, Gibson leads client engagements, carries TPI’s voice into the conversations shaping philanthropy and uses her skills as a master connector to bring people together to collaborate and get results.

Prior to TPI, she was principal of Cynthesis Consulting, where she specialized in public policy research and analysis, program development, strategic planning, evaluation, and marketing and communications for clients including , Carnegie Corporation of New York,  Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Kettering Foundation,. The Case Foundation where she authored Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement.

Previously, Gibson served as a program officer at Carnegie Corporation of New York where she authored From Inspiration to Participation:  Strategies for Youth Civic Engagement and The Civic Mission of Schools (co-authored with Peter Levine.) Prior to Carnegie, Gibson was a consultant for numerous organizations and served in senior staff positions at the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Partnership for Democracy (formerly The Youth Project).

Two reports released Monday show a disconnect between what nonprofits provide to their workers and what employees say is essential to their job satisfaction.

Seventy percent of workers in two surveys said their jobs were either disappointing or only somewhat fulfilling. That might be a reason 25 percent of workers said they were considering looking for a job outside the nonprofit world.

The surveys gathered data from about 3,500 nonprofit workers in the New York and Washington metropolitan areas and were conducted by the staffing firm Professionals for NonProfits.

Among the other findings:

• Four out of 10 workers in both cities said that the factors they ranked as most essential are not on display at their nonprofits:—“respect, trust, and support by management” as well as a sense that their organization has “a compelling mission.”
• About half of all workers said they felt recognition and reward for their hard work and outstanding performance were essential. And yet 60 percent of workers in Washington and 65 percent in New York said hard work was not valued at their organization.
• The pay cuts that many nonprofit workers have taken during the economic downturn may be exacting a cost in employee satisfaction: About half of workers in both surveys said a salary reduction would be a reason to leave and a more important motivation for departure than a change in work expectations or job description.

Gayle Brandel, president of Professionals for NonProfits, said employers should be concerned about the financial challenge posed by worker unhappiness.

“The cost of employee disengagement and poor performance is very high, as is the cost of turnover,” she says. “Given the increased competition for talent in the sector and the limited resources of nonprofits, these costs hit the bottom line and so the price an organization pays for disengaged staff can be staggering.”

Non-Essential Perks

The survey pointed to some deep dysfunction at many nonprofits. For instance, just under half of workers said they felt it was essential that office politics not get in the way of their work. Yet three out of four employees said internal politics hampered their abilities to function in their jobs.

In other cases, the survey suggested that no matter how much employees may appreciate some of the perks of nonprofit life, they do not rate them as essential as issues like pay and trust.

For example, only 12 percent of workers cited child care or parental leave as essential, while 17 percent of workers said they valued flexible work schedules.

Even so, many employers offer those perks; 30 percent offer leaves and 49 percent offer flexible schedules.

“I was most surprised by the fact that many of the usual benefits that are offered to nonprofit employees are not considered essential by employees,” says Ms. Brandel.

Even though the survey showed some disturbing issues for nonprofits managers, the majority of employees were optimistic about the future: Nearly 60 percent think that the next five years will be challenging but “will get much better” for the nonprofit world. But a similar share believe that “bold leadership for dramatic change is needed.”

The “Good Nonprofit Job Reports” for New York and Washington are available free on the Professionals for Nonprofits Web site.

Myth #1: Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand.

This myth is based on the assumption that human beings are capable of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time. We’re not. Instead, we learn to move rapidly between tasks. When we’re doing one, we’re actually not even aware of the other.

If you’re on a conference call, for example, and you turn your attention to an incoming email, you’re missing what’s happening on the call as long as you’re checking your email. Equally important, you’re incurring something called “switching time.” That’s the time it takes to shift from one cognitive activity to another.

On average, according to researcher David Meyer, switching time increases the amount of time it takes to finish the primary task you were working on by an average of 25 percent. In short, juggling activities is incredibly inefficient.

Difficult as it is to focus in the face of the endless distractions we all now face, it’s far and away the most effective way to get work done. The worst thing you can do as a boss is to insist that your people constantly check their email.

Myth #2: A little bit of anxiety helps us perform better.

Think for a moment about how you feel when you’re performing at your best. What adjectives come to mind? Almost invariably they’re positive ones. Anxiety may be a source of energy, and even motivation, but it comes with significant costs.

The more anxious we feel, the less clearly and imaginatively we think, and the more reactive and impulsive we become. That’s not good for you, and it also has huge implications if you’re in a supervisory role.

As a boss, your energy has a disproportionate impact on those you lead, by virtue of your authority. Put bluntly, any time your behavior increases someone’s anxiety — or prompts any negative emotions, for that matter — they’re less likely to perform effectively.

The more positive your energy is, the more positive their energy is likely to be, and the better the likely outcome.

Myth #3: Creativity is genetically inherited, and it’s impossible to teach.

In a global economy characterized by unprecedented competitiveness and constant change, nearly every CEO hungers for ways to drive more innovation. Unfortunately, most CEOs don’t think of themselves as creative, and they share with the rest of us a deeply ingrained belief that creativity is mostly inborn and magical.

Ironically, researchers have developed a surprising degree of consensus about the stages of creativity and how to approach them. Our educational system and most company cultures favor reward the rational, analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking. We pay scant attention to intentionally cultivating the more visual, intuitive, big picture capacities of the right hemisphere.

As it turns out, the creative process moves back and forth between left and right hemisphere dominance. Creativity is actually about using the whole brain more flexibly. This process unfolds in a far more systematic — and teachable — way than we ordinarily imagine. People can quickly learn to access the hemisphere of the brain that serves them best at each stage of the creative process — and to generate truly original ideas.

Myth #4: The best way to get more work done is to work longer hours.

No single myth is more destructive to employers and employees than this one. The reason is that we’re not designed to operate like computers — at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time.

Instead, human beings are designed to pulse intermittently between spending and renewing energy. Great performers — and enlightened leaders — recognize that it’s not the number of hours people work that determines the value they create, but rather the energy they bring to whatever hours they work.

Rather than systematically burning down our reservoir of energy as the day wears on, as most of us do, intermittent renewal makes it possible to keep our energy steady all day long. Strategically alternating periods of intense focus with intermittent renewal, at least every 90 minutes, makes it possible to get more done, in less time, more sustainably.

Want to test the assumption? Choose the most challenging task on your agenda before you go to sleep each night over the next week. Set aside 60 to 90 minutes at the start of the following day to focus on the activity you’ve chosen.

Choose a designated start and stop time, and do your best to allow no interruptions. (It helps to turn off your email.) Succeed and it will almost surely be your most productive period of the day. When you’re done, reward yourself by taking a true renewal break.

1.    The philanthropic dollar will become the entrepreneurial dollar of society.

• Philanthropy will involve more risk taking.
• There will be more tolerance for an occasional failure.

2.    Philanthropy will focus more on outstanding individuals and organizations.

• There will be less reliance on extensive paper and electronic applications as due diligence.
• Philanthropy will refine ways of finding people and nonprofits of potential.

3.    Philanthropy will embrace the concept of trust in all its dimensions.

• Trust between applicant and foundation staff.
• Trust between foundation staff and foundation board.
• Trust between the executive and foundation staff.
• As a result, there will be more discretionary grantmaking.
• The Board will allow the executive to make grants.
• The Executive will allow program staff to make grants.
• Consequently, the grantmaking process will speed up.

4.    More grants to programs will be for discretionary use on the grassroots level.

5.    Interactions between applicants and foundation staff will move in the direction of a collegial relationship.

6.    More young people will be in philanthropic work.

• Many are members of donor families.
• Some are recent graduates who were introduced to philanthropy in college.

Why these predictions? The present course of philanthropy is such that change is inevitable. For example, paperwork in professional philanthropy is becoming such a burden on the applicant and foundation staff that it will hit a critical point where evaluation will bring reform.

What do you think of these predictions? Do you anticipate other changes in the way philanthropy operates?

Not since 1972 has generation played such a significant role in voter preferences as it has in recent elections. Younger people have voted substantially more Democratic in each election since 2004, while older voters have cast more ballots for Republican candidates in each election since 2006.

A new Pew Research Center study suggests this pattern may well continue in 2012. Millennial voters are inclined to back President Barack Obama by a wide margin in a potential matchup against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, while Silent generation voters are solidly behind Romney. Baby Boomers and Generation X voters, who are the most anxious about the uncertain economic times, are on the fence about a second term for Obama.

At the same time, the polling identifies potential fissures at both ends of the age spectrum that may affect these patterns. Read the full report.

The report goes on to say:

While the political divides between young and old are deep, there are potential fissures at both ends of the age spectrum. Millennials continue to support Obama at much higher levels than older generations. But Obama’s job ratings have fallen steeply among this group, as well as among older generations, since early 2009. Perhaps more ominously for Obama, Millennials are much less engaged in politics than they were at this stage in the 2008 campaign.

In contrast, Silents – particularly those who affiliate with or lean to the Republican Party – are far more engaged in the presidential campaign than they were at this point in the contest four years ago. While Silents support Romney over Obama by a wide margin, they express highly unfavorable views of both the GOP and the Democratic Party. Read the full report.

These are result of two recent polls byPew Research Center for the People & the Press (Sept. 22-Oct. 4) and the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project (Sept. 1-15). Together, these surveys interviewed 4,413 adults. They have been supplemented with data from other polling over the course of the year and analyses of census data by Pew Social & Demographic Trends.

The study provides a detailed look at the current generational dynamics of American politics. Why are Silent generation voters so angry? How have the political leanings of Baby Boomers evolved? Is the Reagan-era Generation X moving closer to the Democratic column? Will Millennials be as engaged and enthused about Obama as they were in 2008? The answers lie in understanding the broad political, social and economic changes of the past decades and how they have shaped the political leanings of these generations over time. Read the full report.

Our friends at Vermont Interfaith Action share news of this activist training on 12/4 in Burlington:

Are you outraged about our economy and not going to take it anymore? Then join us to learn “How to Organize to Correct the Injustice of Economic Disparity in our Society,” an informative and inspirational training on Sunday, Dec. 4 at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington from 2:00 to 5:00 pm.

This event will serve as the foundation for some exciting organizing work with the Governor and legislators in January to influence the Vermont state budget — which will also lead into effecting change at the national level as well.

Please join us for information and motivation on this crucial topic. Economic disparity in the United States has never been greater – and with it, differences in the quality of life for rich and poor have never been more pronounced. The policies that have been pursued since the late seventies have created a situation which is systematically eradicating the middle class, making it harder than ever for working families and individuals to make ends meet.

The Executive Director of United for a Fair Economy in Boston will present hard facts about the reality of the economy in America today, so that we better understand the policy decisions that have brought us to this point. The workshop will also emphasize strategizing to introduce new policies that will turn these disturbing trends around, as well as acquiring the tools needed to get these policies implemented.

The cost is $15 per person, to pay for an honorarium and travel for our featured speaker. Please email Debbie at Debbie@viavt.org to sign up and plan to pay at the door.

Our families are hurting — let us join together to restore economic justice!

*This is a rescheduling of the event that had been previously slated for Nov. 6 in Boston.

Emma Schumann of the Agency of Natural Resources let us know about the following series of meetings on the Lake Champlain Phosphorus Clean Up Plan:

The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (VTDEC) and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets (VAAFM) are jointly holding a series of four meetings to discuss progress on the Lake Champlain Phosphorus cleanup plan, technically referred to as the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). This second round of meetings will be from November 14-17, 2011 and follows the first round of meetings that occurred earlier in October.

These meetings are the next step in gathering stakeholder input on practices, policies and funding commitments necessary to achieve phosphorus pollution load reductions required by the TMDL. They will also explore additional actions that should be taken if certain nonpoint source actions are not implemented according to the established timeline. The meetings will build on progress described in the Revised Implementation Plan for the Lake Champlain Phosphorus TMDL, dated January 15, 2010.

The VTDEC conducted a public process during 2009 which led to a Revised Implementation Plan for the Lake Champlain TMDL. The January 2010 revised plan presented approximately 200 strategies for improving water quality in Lake Champlain. The 2010 implementation plan will be used as a starting point for the upcoming discussions, and is available at: http://www.anr.state.vt.us/cleanandclear/news/TMDL%20impl%20plan%20final%20-%20011510.pdf

Each of the meetings will focus on an interest sector or geographical area, giving USEPA, VTDEC and VAAFM the opportunity to hear in depth how agencies, organizations and individuals should help implement the TMDL, factors that hinder compliance with the TMDL, and recommendations for next steps.

The second series of meetings will focus principally on the southern half of the Lake Champlain Basin. Interest sectors represented at this second series of meetings include: southern lake committees, municipalities, agricultural interests, wastewater treatment facility operators, and water supply managers. If you are unable to attend any of these meetings, USEPA, VTDEC and VAAFM would still like to hear from you. Please view the contact information below to arrange other options to participate:

1.Monday November 14—1-3:30pm
Municipal, Wastewater Treatment Facility & Water Supply Sectors
-Hosted by Vermont League of Cities and Towns
Middlesex Town Hall
5 Church St. (corner of Route 2 and Church St.)
Middlesex, Vermont
(802)229-9111

2. Tuesday November 15—9-11:30am
Mid-lake Watershed Groups & Municipal Sectors
-Hosted by Addison County Regional Planning Commission
Addison County RPC Offices
14 Seminary Street
Middlebury, Vermont
(802) 388-3141

3. Thursday November 17—1-3:30pm
Agricultural Sector
-Hosted by Poultney-Mettowee NRCD
Kehoe Conservation Education Center
636 Point of Pines Road
Castleton, Vermont
(802)287-8339 @ Poultney Mettowee NRCD

4. Thursday November 17—5-7:30pm
South Lake Community Geographic Sector
-Hosted by the South Lake Group
Green Mountain College, Gorge Room
1 Brennan Circle
Poultney, Vermont
(800) 776-6675

Your participation is vital to this process and we welcome your input. Meetings are open to the public, and space may be limited, so please RSVP to ensure that space is arranged accordingly.

To RSVP for a particular meeting of interest, please email Michaela Stickney, VTDEC Lake Champlain Basin Coordinator, at michaela.stickney@state.vt.us

If you have any questions about the meetings, please call Michaela Stickney at (802)338-4806.

If you are unable to attend a meeting, please e-mail or call to arrange other options to participate.

A new statewide survey released Wednesday finds Vermont teens have modestly decreased their use of alcohol, are smoking less, and fewer are abusing prescription drugs.

The Vermont Youth Risk Behavior survey, based on a random sample of 8,654 students grades 9-12, also found no substantial change in the number of high school teens who reported having sex, driving while drinking or taking drugs, and experiencing incidences of bullying and physical abuse.

The student survey has been conducted every two years around the state since 1993. It creates a snapshot of teens’ risky behaviors and helps state and school officials develop strategies for altering patterns of substance abuse.

Health Commissioner Harry Chen said the 2011 results encouraging because they show a “significant shift” in young people’s views about avoiding risky behavior.

“They are making the right choices,” he said, and that is encouraging for the teens and for the future of Vermont, he added.

Comparing results with 2009, the survey indicates there is a downtick in substance use for high schoolers:

• 60 percent of students reported they have ever tried alcohol, a decline from 66 percent;
• 13 percent of students smoked in the past 30 days, a decline from 18 percent;
• 14 percent of students had tried prescription drugs without a prescription, down from 17 percent;
• 15 percent of students reported drinking before age 13, down from 18 percent

While officials said the trend lines were encouraging, statistics for other risky behaviors remained stubbornly high:

• 35 percent of students reported drinking alcohol and 21 percent reported binge drinking in the last 30 days (five or more drinks in a few hours)
• 41 percent of students reported having had sex, and 45 percent oral sex, and only 63 percent of sexually active students reported using a condom during their most recent experience
• 24 percent reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, the same as in 2009.

Some of the figures in the survey may surprise, such as 53 percent of students saying they rarely or never wore a helmet while riding a bike, a decline in safety from 64 percent in 2009.

Also, only 63 percent said they always wore a seat belt while in the car.

Fully 9 percent of 6-8 graders reported drinking before age 11, and 4 percent reported binge drinking.

Some 15 percent of high school students reported being bullied through use of electronic devices in the past 12 months, and 23 percent reported being in a fight. While the fighting figure is unchanged from 2009, the trend line has declined from nearly 50 percent in 1993.

In grades 6-8, 50 percent of students reported having been in a fight, and 48 percent reported being bullied.

The survey showed that teens are well aware of risks and parental disapproval if their behaviors are discovered. For example, fully 91 percent think their parents would disapprove of their smoking, and 74 percent cite their likely disapproval in the case of drinking alcohol.

Chen vouched for the survey’s accuracy, noting it was conducted anonymously and taken seriously by schools.

Students were also polled on diet and exercise. Twenty-three percent of students were overweight or obese, and, startlingly, that only 38 percent had physical education classes at least once a week.

As for sedentary pursuits such as watching TV and doing video games, more than a third — 36 percent — of students said they spend three or more hours per day participating in such activities.

Commissioner Vilaseca highlighted two subtle but important trends that he said were encouraging. One was that 55 percent of teens said they felt they mattered in their communities, up from 47 percent two years ago.

He said teens also are showing a growing penchant for volunteering in their communities, with 55 percent saying they spent an hour or more per week volunteering, up significantly from 43 percent in 2009.

The survey found general agreement that teachers care about their education and 52 percent of high school teens said they felt schools listen to their concerns.

Senior Connor Hunt, 17, and Jordan LaBonte, 16, a junior, offered some front-line perspective to the numbers behind the survey. The two students from Twin Valley High School in Wilmington, which only has around 150 students, told how five students started an underground campaign to counter the impression drinking is cool and everyone does it to have fun.

Hunt said the “Audacious” program began after a survey found students guessed that 72 percent of kids in their school drank, on average. A followup survey indicated that only 30 percent in actuality used alcohol.

“Our slogan is two out of three kids do not drink,” said Hunt.

The survey found 73 percent of teens said it was easy to get alcohol.

Chen noted that while there were declines in some of the risky behaviors, there is still plenty of work to be done when 60 percent of surveyed students report they have tried alcohol.

“Are we satisfied with that? Of course not,” he said, adding that there is “no magic answer” to bring the number to zero.

Vilaseca emphasized that adoption of risky behaviors by teens is a societal issue, not a school issue, and it will require a broad effort from parents, teachers, friends and relatives, the community and the media. He cited ads and TV shows that glorify sex and drinking behavior as a particular target of reform.

He also noted that many teens in high school are entering the workforce and coming into contact with adult behaviors that may influence them.

“This is not a school-alone issue,” he said. “This is a community issue,” he said.

To download the full survey results at www.healthvermont.gov.

Based on an analysis of four years of federal government data on tens of thousands of nonprofit, for-profit, and government employers, there are some important and startling findings about employment trends in the nonprofit sector that should interest most nonprofit agency leaders and staff. These findings are drawn from annual studies conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a little-known agency associated with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Read the complete article.

• Overall, the nonprofit sector is generating jobs at a faster rate than the private sector. The resilience of the nonprofit sector—and of charitable donors—during a recession is noteworthy, especially as nonprofits perform critical functions in providing a safety net for the poor and disadvantaged during a recession.
• Nonprofit-sector job creation, however, has been largely concentrated in large nonprofit employers with 1,000 employees or more. We would guess that these nonprofits are likely to be hospitals and universities.
• There is a reasonably logical correlation of the growth in nonprofit sector employment with the arrival of federal stimulus dollars starting in 2009 and extending through 2010. We know that a significant portion of the stimulus funds were directed to programs run by nonprofit organizations. It is possible, however, that with the end of stimulus spending, the employment gains of the nonprofit sector in recent years could be reversed.
• Despite the increase in overall nonprofit employment and an increase in the number of establishments associated with large nonprofit employers, there appears to have been a contraction in the number of small nonprofit employers. Perhaps small nonprofits have adjusted to the recession by shifting from paid personnel to volunteer staffing. If the recession ends up double-dipping, more small nonprofits are likely to disappear or be taken over by larger organizations.

The AHRQ’s MEPS studies should help nonprofits and policy-makers recognize the economic importance of the nonprofit sector writ large. It’s more than what the sector absorbs and spends in the form of charitable giving and governmental grants and contracts—which is a significant though not huge portion of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product. It’s also that the nonprofit sector provides employment to millions of people. When debates occur within the Washington beltway over whether employers can afford to provide health insurance or the best methods of generating jobs in the American economy, policy-makers might benefit from looking at the AHRQ data to better appreciate the nonprofit sector as a significant and resilient provider of jobs and incomes. Read the complete article.

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov 01, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) – Convio, Inc. announced yesterday Common Ground Social. Common Ground Social is a complete, fully-integrated social fundraising solution for nonprofits and their supporters. Common Ground Social allows organizations and individuals to leverage the power of peer-to-peer networks by empowering users to create and share personalized fundraising pages through different soc