Orange County’s nonprofit groups are starting to grapple with the kind of leadership changes that larger organizations in longer-established commercial centers already have been through.
“We’re a relatively young set of organizations,” said Shelly Hoss, president of the Orange County Community Foundation.
The foundation manages about $207 million in assets and encourages local philanthropy by matching donors and their interests with the appropriate nonprofit groups. It’s granted $330 million since 1989, $252 million of that in the past decade.
Hoss said many of the local nonprofit organizations are 30 to 60 years old, and that the typical leader is 60 to 80.
“So a lot of those founders are still among us, but they are starting to scale back on their activities,” she said. “What we have in Orange County is the first generation of wealth creators.”
Members of succeeding generations often gravitate toward nonprofit work—scions of wealthy families around the U.S. and world can be found running philanthropic groups after being raised with an awareness of the work.
The next generation in Orange County—at this point—includes a lot of adult children who might pursue careers that take them to other locales. They’re likely to eventually return to OC, but such interludes can create gaps in nonprofits’ leadership, interrupting what might otherwise be a transition within an organization’s founding family.
Various organizations are learning to deal with the challenge, Hoss said. Some have more developed succession plans than others, though most are actively asking their boards to introduce managers to new and emerging leaders in Orange County.
“Almost everyone is working double time to find new people that will help their nonprofit,” Hoss said.
New Connections
Nonprofit groups also are finding new ways to engage donors and volunteers as people’s perspective on philanthropy shifts.
Orange County United Way talked a lot with donors over the past year to get a better sense of their philanthropic interests, said Marketing Vice President Katherine Ransom.
The nonprofit organization, which raises about $18 million annually for charitable programs in Orange County, learned that most people want stronger connections to their charitable work, so it decided to have donors actively engage in education, health, housing and financial stability programs.
Education supporters can work directly with children and read to them in schools, Ransom said. “And they’re discovering what it takes to improve” those situations.
The additional activity allows donors to see how high poverty and homelessness, for example, affects the community.
United Way’s local chapter also produces videos with charitable beneficiaries talking about how the support has changed their lives. The organization calls it “digital storytelling,” and sees it as a way to improve the connection between donors and beneficiaries, Ransom said. “It’s a quick way to tell a short story about someone who got a leg up from the programs,” she said. The digital stories can replace a portion of the organization’s printed marketing materials and are part of the organization’s online engagement strategy.
“(They) can be quickly shared via an email blast, on phones, or at an office meeting,” Ransom said. Orange County United Way has produced 64 of the digital stories on its YouTube channel since starting the program a few years ago.
The pace of production has quickened significantly—53 of the videos were made over the past 18 months.
The videos, for example, can more easily show children dealing with obesity or families living doubled or tripled up in Orange County homes.
It can be difficult to find people willing to talk about their challenges on camera, she said, “but we’re fortunate that many people will share a part of their life to shed light on a problem” or help others in the same situation.
Some organizations also are trying to figure out how to best navigate the changing media industry to maximize their marketing efforts.
The OCCF’s Hoss said the shifting media market here (see related story, page 3) makes it difficult for local nonprofits to tell their stories and attract new donors or volunteers.
Many nonprofits are turning to social media to connect with donors, but “it’s difficult to tell a compelling story in 140 characters,” Hoss said in reference to Twitter’s limited message length.
Difficult—but necessary for Hoss and other executives who count social media skills, data analytics, smartphone apps, and mobile-friendly websites as tools of the philanthropic trade these days.
“You have to go where people are,” United Way’s Ransom said.
