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Headline News
Autumn
is critical time for charities
By Harvy Lipman
STAFF WRITER 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
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