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Autumn is critical time for charities

Monday, October 29, 2007  

Fall is a hectic time for Mark Zenobia, whose On Your Mark Productions manages 5-K charity runs and similar events for non-profits during their busiest fund-raising season. Such events are key to attracting corporate sponsorship.

Jodi Scherl estimates she has received about a dozen invitations to charitable events in recent weeks.

"Of those, maybe 30 to 50 percent are for something I even pause to consider because I recognize the name of someone with the organization," said Scherl, a Tenafly lawyer who specializes in estate planning.

It's not that the others are unworthy causes, mind you.

"There's just a limited amount of time and number of events you can go to," said Scherl, a director with the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly and several other non-profits. Unless she has a personal connection to a charitable event -- knowing someone being honored at a fund-raising dinner, for instance -- Scherl passes.

Fall is the most critical season for charities. Non-profit executives explain that they don't cram annual dinner galas, golf outings, and 5-K runs and walks into the fall months just to make life difficult for donors.

Rather, they know that this is when their financial survival is at stake. Most will take in between a third and half of all their annual donations between Oct. 1 and the end of the year. Though some of that is a result of the generosity many people feel as the holidays approach, the rush of contributions has a lot more to do with Uncle Sam than Santa Claus.
 
"Yes, you're getting to the donor when he's most likely to give, when he's in a holiday mood and seeing all the lights, going to church or synagogue." said Ira J. Kaltman, a tax attorney in Montvale. "But this is also when donors are talking to their own financial advisers, who are telling them, you've made X amount of income this year and you want to offset it as much as you can with tax deductions."

The donors' desire for deductions dovetails with the charities' need to meet their end-of-the-year budget goals. They know that once the New Year comes, contributions will plummet.

"I have to meet our payroll, and it's a long haul from the fall to the spring," said Lisa Futterman, director of development for the MS Center at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck.

Any budget gap a charity faces now has to be filled by private donations, because other sources of funds have been exhausted.

"By this time of year, charities pretty much have a handle on how much they're going to get in government grants and foundation grants," added Janet Sharma, executive director of the Volunteer Center of Bergen County in Hackensack. "Now the burden is on the donor-prospecting side."

The pressure felt by non-profits is exacerbated by a veritable explosion in the number of non-profits in general. In the past 10 years the number of non-profits in North Jersey registered with the Internal Revenue Service has nearly doubled.

Additionally, many charity officials say the amount of government funding they receive has failed to keep pace with inflation, forcing them to solicit private donors ever more aggressively through various special events.

All to the benefit of people like Mark Zenobia. Zenobia is the president of On Your Mark Productions, a consulting firm in Clark Township, Union County, that manages fund-raising events for a number of North Jersey charities, including Bergen County's United Way. The company specializes in helping groups organize 5-K and other types of races.

"I've been doing this for 11 years," Zenobia said. "The competition for runners to take part in events is intense, and obviously the pie is only so large. I'd say there are 20 [percent] to 25 percent more road races now than there were five years ago."

Staging a road race is no simple task. "You don't make money on the athletes," Zenobia said. "You might sign up 500 runners at $20 a pop, so that brings in $10,000. But it might cost you $15,000 in T-shirts to give away, insurance, advertising brochures, paying for extra police, computers to track the runners and so on."

The charities make their money on corporate sponsors.

On Your Mark rarely gets involved in walkathons and golf outings, which charities usually organize on their own, but Zenobia said the market for those is even more saturated.

With the proliferation of events, charities find that they have to network with each other to avoid scheduling conflicts. Dan Silna, president of the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey in River Edge, said he keeps a calendar listing the events for every Jewish organization in the region, just to make sure no two groups schedule a fund-raiser on the same day.

Liz Mason, executive vice president of Children's Aid and Family Services in Paramus, said her group already has rescheduled a major fund-raising event in 2009 because another organization is planning a gala on the same date. "We're all phoning each other up all the time and asking, when are your events?" she said.

Groups are even starting to run out of days of the week, said Gina Plotino, director of communications for Bergen County's United Way.

"It used to be that most fund-raisers were on weekend evenings," said Plotino, who also runs her own consulting firm that helps non-profits organize events. "Several years ago, Thursday evening started to become the next social evening of the week. Now we're seeing fund-raisers on Wednesday as well."

Not long ago, she added, fund-raising galas were limited to dinners. Now charities invite donors to bring their checkbooks to lunches and even breakfast events. "It all has to do with competing for donors' attention," Plotino said.

Many donors, however, find the competition a bit too daunting.

"Our firm must get invitations to 15 galas a year, and I can't even tell you how many gold outings," said tax lawyer Kaltman, who also works with a number of charities. "There's one organization I'm on the board of, and I can't go to their dinner because another charity I work with has its dinner the same day."

E-mail: lipman@northjersey.com