- Total assets during that period ballooned from $3.2 billion to $14 billion, according to the Florida Philanthropic Network.
- In south Florida alone -- where much of the state's wealth is centered -- 668 foundations have formed since 1996.
- Even the weak economy of the past two years hasn't slowed the trend. Assets dipped only slightly in 2001 and 2002 but are expected to grow modestly this year.
- While Florida ranks fifth nationally in foundation startups, it lags embarrassingly in overall giving. The state ranks 19th in gross income but only 27th in charitable giving per household. (By comparison, Georgia is 20th in income and eighth in giving.Precision Response Corp. founder Mark Gordon made his fortune young and then turned to giving it away. His 4-year-old Mark J. Gordon Foundation supports a number of childhood education causes.
Now just 55, Gordon is also the founder of Students Helping Achieve Philanthropic Excellence, or SHAPE, a program that teaches fund-raising skills to high school students. Gordon's sister, Nancy Gordon Platt, is SHAPE's director. "Doing business and making money is great," she says. "But giving it away is even better."
Families like the Gordons are becoming more common in Florida as wealthy donors create personal foundations to dole out their millions ("Philanthropy Trends," right).
"Foundations became catchy in the late '90s," says Jo Anne Chester Bander, president of the Donors Forum of South Florida, a group devoted to philanthropic research and education. Estate planners began touting the benefits of foundations, Bander says, during the dot-com gold rush, which fueled much of the growth.
"Some people want to leave their children comfortable but not so well off that the money is a burden," Bander explains. "For them, the foundation is a vehicle that can bring a family together with a common cause, transferring both personal values as well as money."
Overall, charitable giving across Florida (and the U.S.) is expected to increase dramatically over the next few decades as the so-called World War II generation fades into demographic history and passes along its wealth. According to a study by Boston College's Social Welfare Research Institute, about $41 trillion in estate transfers will occur by 2052. Philanthropy consultants are predicting a boom in foundation creation and in giving.
The challenge now, many experts say, is to develop a coordinated strategy for giving those trillions away. "The glaring question for me is how are we going to spend it all?" says Deborah Bussel of Bussel Philanthropy Associates, a Miami firm that advises foundations. "Are we going to squander it? Or will we put it to use in a way that maximizes our resources, using it to make a real difference in our communities?"
Venture Philanthropists
Fund raising is no longer a matter of just asking. More and more, donors are bringing both expectations and expertise to the causes they support, applying venture capital strategies to charitable giving. So-called venture philanthropists or social venture partners provide technical and managerial support to a non-profit organization to help achieve a measurable philanthropic goal. In short, such donors are looking for a return on their money.
Matching Funds
By one state estimate, Florida misses out on $900 million in federal matching funds for social service programs by failing to ante up its share at the local level. A controversial provision, signed into law by Gov. Bush last summer, will allow donations from private charities to count toward the local match.
Florida United Way President Ted Granger says the provision is a good idea but worries that the state may withdraw or reduce its own funding once private charities commit to funding a program.
"It's just like the lottery," he says. "The state is not allowed to use lottery proceeds to supplant normal funding, but it takes an awful lot of public oversight to see that the Legislature obeys its own rules."
Targeting their Dollars
Rather than spread their dollars across a community, foundations are beginning to target specific neighborhoods for support over a long period. The hope is that economic and social change will spread to adjacent neighborhoods.
Through its Knight Community Partners Program, Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation supplied grants totaling $33 million last year to neighborhoods within 26 U.S. cities -- including Bradenton, Tallahassee, Miami and parts of Palm Beach County.
Charitable Misgiving?
Non-profits across Florida are assuming a greater role in the delivery of social services.
This spring, Florida's Department of Children and Families will transfer many of its child welfare functions in Orange County to Family Services of Metro Orlando, a non-profit agency affiliated with Illinois-based Central Baptist Children's Home. The state will pay Family Services between $40 million and $45 million its first year, roughly what it costs DCF to handle things on its own.
"The benefit will be in the quality we provide," says Family Services Executive Vice President Gregory Kurth. "A non-profit like us can be more flexible, more creative than a state bureaucracy. In the end, the kids and the families we serve will be the winners."
Plenty of folks in Tallahassee agree, including Gov. Jeb Bush, who often preaches privatization. Bush, like his brother George W., also has aggressively pushed the concept of "faith- and community-based initiatives" in which non-profits assume a larger role in the delivery of social services. In October, more than 850 non-profit groups attended the second annual Governor's Faith and Community-based Summit in Fort Lauderdale.
Among the concept's strongest disciples is Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, who advocates increased public funding for local non-profits engaged in social service work. Four times a year, Diaz holds a "pastoral roundtable" to connect local clergy and civic leaders with state and federal funding sources.
Statewide, there are 51,000 non-profit groups accounting for 430,000 jobs and generating $61 billion in economic activity, reports the Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Center at Rollins College in Winter Park.
Not everyone is happy that some of those groups are being leaned on for social service delivery. While some critics cite church-state separation issues, others point to growing evidence that private firms are not always as efficient or effective as government. A recent study by the New York-based child-advocacy group Children's Rights Inc. found that privatization contracts, including ones in Florida, routinelyunderestimated the costs of doing business.
"The expectation that private firms, particularly non-profits, can do things more cheaply is often a false one," says Madelyn Freundlich, policy director for Children's Rights.
Still others are worried that the fundamental role of non-profits may be undermined when government relies too heavily on them for basic needs.
Sherry Magill, president of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund in Jacksonville, argues that the shifting of public dollars to local non-profits for the delivery of welfare and other services will shrink the available pool of funds for non-profit startups, community groups and other non-traditional organizations that think outside the box.
"Non-profits are very good at incubating new ideas," says Magill. "A lot of our best programs began in someone's garage. We need to be certain we maintain an environment where that can still happen."