North Texas philanthropy is fighting for its communal life.
Shelter-in-place restrictions and fears of the pandemic have quashed major fundraising events and drastically reduced the area’s usually robust volunteer troops.
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
That’s why the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, Communities Foundation of Texas, the Dallas Foundation and nearly two dozen North Texas philanthropic funding organizations have formed an unprecedented alliance to keep the region’s most critically needed nonprofits on life support.
Just over a week ago, the philanthropic community held a mass conference call that included about 60 funders and nonprofits discussing the disaster. People on that call said it was like watching second-graders play soccer — no one knew who was going to do what.
It has gotten its act together.
Since then, a solid, growing legion of foundations and community chests — led by the two powerhouses and the Dallas Foundation — have launched North Texas Cares, which allows area nonprofits to ask for emergency financial help from all of the participating organizations by filling out a single online form.
“The magnitude and ferocity of the virus and the effect on fundraising events hit so fast that it caught everybody by surprise,” said Dave Scullin, president and CEO of Communities Foundation. “It hit us like a train.
“The good news is that the philanthropic community has been building collaborative relationships. We quickly realized that this was bigger than any one of us and that time is of the essence.”
Jennifer Sampson, president and CEO of United Way, agrees. “Times like these require innovation, new ideas and doing things that we never imagined doing together. We are best able to respond when we collaborate. North Texas Cares is a great example of that.”
The social shutdown couldn’t come at a worse time for fundraising. Spring is the season for golf tournaments, banquets and other major events that are the lifeblood for nonprofits.
“We’re going to have to dig deep and really work together in order to emerge out of this,” Sampson said. “I believe that we will.”
The list of participating funders is growing by the hour. It includes marquee corporations and notable private foundations — names like Toyota, Celanese, Meadows, Hoblitzelle, Rainwater, Lyda Hill, the Rees-Jones Foundation, Sid Richardson, the Hersh Foundation, and the Gene and Jerry Jones Family Foundation. Four additional United Way groups in North Texas counties, the North Texas Community Foundation and the Catholic Foundations are also on the bandwagon.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be part of this?” said Scullin.
One form does all
Essential to the success of North Texas Cares is its streamlined process that gets emergency money immediately into the hands of nonprofits dealing with the ravages of the pandemic.
Dallas’ United Way came up with the idea of a collaborative common application for grant seekers that would be housed on its platform. “We’re in that business 365 days a year, 24 hours a day,” Sampson said. “So we offered to be the backbone.”
United Way is using the simple-stupid SurveyMonkey platform to assess its grants.
The money has to go toward providing food for the disadvantaged, helping with shortages of critical supplies, helping displaced workers, providing basic health and safety needs, or running child care and after-school programs.
So far, nearly 750 applications are in the database. Of those, more than 150 have completed the process. Nonprofits can apply by going to the northtexascares.org website.
“Our team is reviewing those applications and providing funding recommendations based on what we see as immediate, urgent and critical needs — as well as longer-term needs that we know are going to exist in the weeks and months to come as we move through this thing,” Sampson said,
Each organization will decide how much money it wants to allocate to any cause.
United Way, Communities Foundation and the Dallas Foundation have created designated relief funds.
Leading the pack
With lightning speed, United Way’s Coronavirus Response and Recovery Fund has brought in more than $2.5 million as major corporations including Texas Instruments, AT&T, USAA, TXU Energy and Bank of America rushed in to help.
“But there are also all these private donors — Capa and Troy Aikman, Mary and Rich Templeton, and the Perot Foundation,” Sampson said. “It’s really cool.
“We’ve pivoted our fundraising to this fund because these are the most urgent and immediate needs of our community."
United Way held a conference call Friday morning where it presented its recommendations to the donors for the first of what will become a weekly vote.
Anurag Jain, chairman of the North Texas Food Bank, and Patrick Brandt, president of Shiftsmart, have launched an innovative startup that hires unemployed hospitality workers to fill in for volunteers at 14 school districts, food banks and food pantries. The Get Shift Done for North Texas Fund, which used the common application, was among the first recipients of United Way’s $750,000 round of relief funds.
Sampson said it was an easy sell because it hits both food insecurity and the massive number of displaced workers in the restaurant industry.
First-round grants also included ones for 42 other causes, including CitySquare, Catholic Charities, Family Place, Austin Street Shelter, Frisco Student Fastpacs and West Dallas Community School.
Sampson says that several humble grassroots efforts tugged at the committee’s heart that provide “critical support to our most vulnerable and isolated community members.” One will feed 165 low-income elderly people one meal each day and buy hospital-grade sanitizers for the facility. Another offers food assistance for LGBTQ homeless youth, while first responders will get cleaning supplies and child care support.
Jain hopes to get money for the food bank in the next round, as well as from others in the coalition. The food bank serves pantries in 13 North Texas counties.
“We think we have a great case,” said Jain, managing partner of Perot Jain LP. “We served about 78 million meals last year, and we did not fill the hunger gap. About 1 in 6 people in this region are food insecure.
“Our costs have gone up because we’re adding locations and changing the kind of food that we have to do.”
Sharing secrets
The coalition funders are sharing information that they would have kept from each other in the past. There’s been a spirit of camaraderie in recent years, but the most specific information is still kept proprietary.
“To have common data about what the need is, is something we haven’t done before,” Scullin said. “But I promise it’s a template we will be using more. It’s a way of maximizing the effectiveness of our philanthropy.”
Sampson studied what the philanthropic communities in Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York are doing and found that they are pooling funds but don’t have a common application like the one created by North Texas Cares.
She’s getting texts from cities around the country asking her to tell them more.
“It’s incredibly innovative, very collaborative and it’s going to enable us to make decisions very quickly, which is what our sector needs right now,” she said. “But just as important, we have to be strong and healthy when we come out on the other side because the nonprofit sector is going to play a significant leadership role in rebuilding once this pandemic is in the rearview mirror.”
