Newsbits

Court says donor is entitled to return of restricted gift

A New Jersey court of appeals held that a charity that solicited and accepted a gift from a donor — knowing the donor’s expressed purpose for the gift was to fund a particular aspect of the charity’s mission — must return the gift, after it had unilaterally decided not to honor the purpose.

From 2002 to 2004, Bernard and Jeanne Adler donated $50,000 to SAVE, a New Jersey no-kill animal shelter, for a planned expansion. In 2006, the shelter informed the donors that it was merging with another organization and would instead use their contributions to build a smaller facility in another location. The Adlers sued after the charity refused to return their donation, and they won.

The court of appeals ruled that, absent the donor’s consent, a nonprofit can’t ignore or significantly modify the expressed purpose for a gift — even if the conditions that existed at the time of the gift changed significantly, making fulfillment of the donor’s purpose either impossible or highly impractical.

The case is a reminder of the importance of clearly establishing donor stipulations at the outset and adhering to them. If you’re unwilling to accept those terms, the wise choice is to decline the gift.

Kaizen aids food bank

Japanese automaker Toyota has put a different twist on its philanthropic efforts with the Food Bank for New York City, which helps provide 400,000 free meals each day through its network of community-based programs. Toyota was already a financial supporter, but in 2011 the company offered to help the organization apply the Japanese concept of kaizen , or continuous improvement.

Since then, small changes inspired by the concept have had a major impact on the food bank’s efficiency. For example, the New York Times reported that Toyota engineers reduced the wait time for dinner from 90 minutes to as little as 18 minutes.

Community foundation wealth recovers

Since the recession, asset, gift and grant amounts for community foundations have reached new heights, according to a study conducted by the Council on Foundations, a nonprofit association of grant-making foundations and corporations, and CF Insights, a division of the nonprofit consulting firm FSG. The community foundation field represents $58 billion in assets, $6.9 billion in gifts and $4.5 billion in grants.

Average growth rates for those categories ranged from 6% to 15% between 2011 and 2012. Almost 80% of community foundations had 2012 asset levels that exceeded their 2007 levels. The data was collected from 276 community foundations, including those representing more than 90% of total estimated community foundation assets.

© 2013