Charity Spring Patch Digest: Is it possible for the Red Cross or any of us to be perfect?

A word about Charity Winter

Charity Winter is meant to offer some relief that only humor can provide. It is also is meant to shine some light on what leads to Charity Burnout. More than 100 studies have affirmed the connection between employee engagement and performance, but the Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study - 32,000 employees across 30 countries - makes the most powerful, bottom line case yet for the connection between how we feel at work and how we perform.

Tanushree’s Reflections:

While the American Red Cross has been receiving much criticism lately, it remains the oldest and biggest charitable brand in disaster relief, a brand that it stands in for all the others. Is the criticism fair or is it impossible for a charity to please everyone amid such a fast moving and growing crisis? Here is a review of this pressing issue at Gawker.

Can something good like this happen for say Stamford or Norwalk -- new non-profit attraction, or one that already exists only receiving colossal new support, drawing tourists for the benefit of the entire community? The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum opens this weekend at Mr. Broad’s alma mater, Michigan State University. The billionaire arts patron tells The Wall Street Journal he hopes the futuristic, Zaha Hadid-designed institution will have a “mini-Bilbao effect,” drawing cultural tourists to the campus and the surrounding city of Lansing, as Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum did for its Spanish host city.

Funding Opportunities

Xerox Free Color Printers Program: This program has been around for 10+ years and has helped 50,000+ charities. If your organization is printing at least 4 reams of paper per month, you could qualify for the Xerox FreeColorPrinters Program and receive a Xerox® ColorQube® 8570 solid ink color printer with a three year on-site service agreement – for free.

NOZA is the world’s largest searchable database of charitable donors. You can quickly acquire information about charitable gift donations, donors, and recipients. After you search for giving information, you can save the results and gift information as a list for later prospect research. NOZA's award-winning premium web service (not cheap) has more than 75 million searchable records of individual, foundation and corporate giving – and they add about one million records a month. You can register for a free account to search foundation grant records. They have a fast and easy to follow video here.

General Mills grant making Champions for Healthy Kids program will award 50 grants of $10,000 to nonprofits working to improve nutrition and physical fitness behavior for youth. Deadline is 12/3/12.

The Kresge Foundation’s Community Health Partnerships initiative  seeks to encourage cross-sector collaboration and the integration of community health strategies into health care, especially the primary care safety-net. The focus of the “Innovative Approaches to Improve Community Health” category is on promising new practices that serve vulnerable populations by advancing prevention, improving access, and integrating primary community and clinical care. The Foundation looks for efforts that foster connections between clinical health care and community health by integrating patient care with activity to recognize and “treat” the social and environmental factors that contribute to poor health. Preliminary applications may be submitted at any time.

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation Community Action Grants provides funds to both individuals and local community-based nonprofit organizations for innovative programs that promote education and equity for women and girls. Special consideration is given to projects focused on K-12 achievements in science, technology, engineering, or math. One-year grants of $2,000 to $7,000 provide funds for community-based projects that include a clearly defined activity that promotes education and equality for women and girls. Two-year grants of $5,000 to $10,000 provide start-up funds for new projects. Deadline for both types of grants is 1/15/13.

Patch Tips!

• Be in the Patch Directory
• Free Patch Advertising
• Make an Announcement
• Patch "Give 5" Volunteering
• Patch Internships
• Post Your Event
• Send News to The Patch
• Send News to this Digest

Charity Spring

See what more than 5,700 people around the world are reading at Charity Spring (live since October 4th). For many additional links to help you build financial support and awareness for your Fairfield County cause see the Charity Spring Patch Digest homepage. Please comment here to let us know what news and opportunities you want us to find for you or to simply let us know what you think.