Ethics and Nonprofits Podcast Series

Social entrepreneurs. Microfinanciers. Practical Idealists. These are just of the few of the titles given to the new nonprofiteers and venture social capitalists starting up and charging up the world to make it a better place over the last two decades or so. 

Where does all of this social innovation leave the traditional nonprofit? That is, the old nonprofits who named themselves without benefit of the many companies now in the strategic naming and naming rights business. What were they thinking?  Lions?  Rotary? Kiwanis? At least you can call a Lion...a Lion, a Rotary insider, a Rotarian. But what about the possibilities for a card-carrying member of Kiwanis? A Kiwanison? A Kiwanisian? How about a Kiwanian?

As part of our Ethics and Nonprofits series, A2ethics.org wanted to find out how a traditional nonprofit, the Kiwanis Club Morning Edition, a new affiliate group that meets each Wednesday at the Flim Flam Restaurant on Plymouth Rd., is adding to and creating new Kiwanis traditions. For Kiwanians.  And for our community.

Like other new nonprofit start-ups, the Kiwanis Morning Edition's current officers, Bela Sipos and Cindy Morgan, are confronted by the usual issues:  keeping a new group engaged when the mission is being defined; learning and teaching people with good intentions but varied experiences how to fund raise; and getting all members involved when only a few seem committed.

All this and a few others that new start-up nonprofits don't have to deal with: distinguishing the new group from the old in the minds of the public; collaborating with the old group but staking out an independent path;  and finally, balancing the interests and goals of the older groups and newer members. 

Some have suggested for almost two decades that traditional nonprofits face declining membership and a less important role in sustaining our communities. And we know that even more have suggested that newspapers, another community builder, are dead. But not if the Kiwanis Club Morning Edition has any say in what matters.   

Bart and Jeanine discuss ethics in social work and privacy at the Wellness Community, a free program for cancer patients and their families. With Executive Director Barb Hiltz and Program Director Bonnie Dockham.

Charitable gift-giving is complicated. And charities are facing the toughest year in our memory. What should charitable giving be about?

Our interview with Laurie Atwood (Kidz in Need Scholarship Fund), Jane Talcott (Campaigns Director,The Salvation Army), Katie Richards-Schuster (Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation Youth Council Adviser) and Martha Bloom (A2ethics Board of Directors and Vice President, Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation). Listen in.

A few weeks ago, Michael Pollan, author of several works on the food industry and its social and moral impact on our lives, penned a letter to the president-elect, urging the new commander in chief to move to the top of his executive and legislative agenda the issue of food security. The article was entitled: Farmer in Chief. (www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?scp=1&sq=mi)

At a2ethics.org, we asked three accomplished and amazing experts, representing three different local nonprofit organizations, about their own perspectives and ideas about the meanings of food security and justice and how our understanding of the systems and issues surrounding them has consequences for us locally.

We didn't ask them to write their own letters to our policy makers, but some of their ideas are policies and programs that we would be unwise to neglect.

Our questions weren't Wendell Berry eloquent, and our discussion was sometimes meandering and on occasion testy, but this is a podcast that deserves a deliberate going over. And all of the responses and solutions that Ruth Blackburn from Food System Economic Partnership, Amanda Edmonds from Growing Hope and Eileen Spring from Food Gatherers recommended, require careful hearing and consideration.

At a2ethics.org, we like to say we are proponents of what we call the Slow Ethics movement, a play on the original movement favoring slow over fast: the Slow Food movement. Applied to us, it means that ethics and ethical action demand that we slow down and think about what we are doing, and that it is vital for us to relish and savor and linger over ethics issues, just as we should relish and savor and linger over our food in a fast food nation.

We think that in this case, the issues of food security and of justice demand that we take action, and that it may well be that lingering too long could become a dangerous malingering.

We hope that you will listen and learn about what is happening in your own communities, and join these local groups in creating innovative approaches and new opportunities for making our food secure, healthy and equitably accessible to all.

It is a common enough complaint. You generally hear it just before the holidays around the Ann Arbor area. When people are getting annual giving appeals by mail, online or lately, by text message. The complaint? "There are too many nonprofits around here. And don't some of them overlap and aren't they offering similar programs?" Why don't they collaborate and work better together?

Well, many already do. A2ethics.org found ou how and what ways by talking to two Executive Directors of two local health care nonprofits, Gloria Brooks of Arbor Hospice and Barbara Hiltz of The Wellness Community of SE Michigan. We were joined by Martha Bloom, Vice President of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, whose good work often includes helping nonprofits to work together both ethically and effectively.

We asked some challenging questions. You may have your own. A2ethics.org hopes that you will comment on this podcast. It is the first in a new series: Ethics and A2 Area Nonprofits.