La Plaza Central

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.  My man, Jeffrey Toobin, will have to update his book, The Nine.  Cindy Gonzalez from the Omaha World-Herald had some local reaction in today’s newspaper.  As you would expect many local Latinos are very proud of Sotomayor’s nomination, and her story from humble beginnings in the housing projects in the Bronx to Yale Law School is inspiring to many.  More national reaction here and here’s a video with a little background on Sotomayor…

I came across a book about nonprofits recently that I wanted to talk about here on the blog.  I first heard about the book from Nicholas Kristof’s NY Times column.  It wasn’t in the Lincoln City Libraries, so I suggested via their online suggestion form that they add it, and lo and behold they added it right away.  I read the book a few weeks ago, and it presents some really interesting ideas.

So the basic premise of the book is that nonprofits are heavily constrained by various rules and regulations that prevent them from making a profit.  The book’s author, Dan Pallotta, argues that profit is the greatest motivating factor known to man, and nonprofits by their very definition don’t consider it as an option.  Additionally, the nonprofit world generally frowns on spending money on things like advertising and executive salaries or taking risks on projects, all things that are taken for granted in the profit sector.

Pallotta’s former company, Pallotta TeamWorks was a for-profit company that worked with non-profits to create charity events that raised exorbitant sums of money for AIDS research before criticism about overheads slightly above the industry standard and high advertising spending caused the company to lose contracts and eventually implode.

His solutions for the non-profit sector amount to changing the rules to allow for internal competition amongst non-profits and to allow non-profits to compete with businesses.  He says if Coca-Cola can use advertising to sell sugar water, then why can’t an organization use advertising to publicize their projects and request donations?  Pallotta also emphasizes doing away with the emphasis on overhead, the money spent on salaries, buildings, utilities, advertising, etc. that doesn’t go directly towards meeting an organizational objective,  in non-profits.

Pallotta most contentious point for me is his notion that investors should be able to invest in non-profits and then turn a profit on their investment if the non-profit is successful.  In Pallotta’s system, an investor could loan money to an organization for a fundraising event, and then a percentage of the donations taken in at the event would be returned to the investor.  So what’s to stop people with the means to give from wanting to be investors instead of donors?  And would donations go down if donors knew that part of their donation would never even make it to the organization?

On the whole, I like a lot of what this book has to say.  Non-profits could certainly stand to borrow some tools from the business sector, and for well-run organizations at least, a little freedom in spending their money as they see fit would probably be a good thing.  But the devil is in the details, as they say.  Someone far smarter than me and with a lot more time would have to go through the law, statutes, etc. and see where non-profits could be made better while still maintaining their essence, which is why most of us got into this business in the first place.

Cambio de Colores 2009

I’m sorry for the dearth of blog posts last week.  I was on an extended absence to attend the Cambio de Colores conference in St. Louis, Missouri, mentioned in this post.  Incidentally, I did buy that suit, but not until the day before the conference.  Colores was my first conference that I participated in, so I don’t have much for reference.  It seemed like a rather small conference, but that’s probably to be expected since it was more regional.  The vast majority of the participants were from Missouri, though there were a few people from states like Nebraska, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa.  Most people were from the education and non-profit sectors with a few university professors and VERY few grad students mixed in.  My presentation of our Everett Family Literacy Program with Dr. Boren went well, though 10 minutes goes really fast.  It’s odd to think I spent more time waiting for the train at the airport than presenting at the conference.  Oh well.  Now St. Louis knows El Centro.

UPDATE: Our abstract and paper are already up on the conference website, if you’re interested.

The ever-reliable Pew Hispanic Center released a report a few weeks ago about the state of minority and immigrant home ownership in the United States.  The report states that starting in 1995 the booms and busts of the housing market have reduced the gap in home ownership between whites and different minority groups.  Though reduced, the gap persists, as the report states, “As of 2008, 74.9% of whites owned homes, compared with 59.1% of Asians, 48.9% of Hispanics and 47.5% of blacks.”

Also noteworthy is that African Americans and Latinos are more likely than whites to have the now infamous subprime mortgage loans.  Much more likely… “In 2007, 27.6% of home purchase loans to Hispanics and 33.5% to blacks were higher-priced [subprime] loans, compared with just 10.5% of home purchase loans to whites that year.”

Here is something else from the report that seems counterintuitive to what we hear every day on the news… “Among other things, the typical immigrant in 2008 had spent more years in the U.S. and was more likely to be a U.S. citizen than was the typical immigrant in 1995.”

Hispanic Business released their list of the top 25 Latino non-profit organizations in the United States in this month’s issue.  The first thing that stood out to me was the size of the organizations on the list.  Their number one Latino non-profit in America was Altamed Health Services Corp. which had a budget last year of $94 million.  Many others on the list were similarly as large.  The Aspira Association in D.C. had a budget of about $65 million.  The Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in Montebello, California spent $63 million last year.  Incidentally, the rankings went pretty much from largest budget to smallest, so I’d be interested in hearing a little more about Hispanic Business’ criteria.

The other thing I noticed was that as you’d expect the organizations were concentrated in California, the Southwest states like Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and larger cities like New York, Chicago and Washington D.C.  Since those are the areas in the States with the highest Latino populations, it makes sense they would have some of the largest Latino non-profits.

HB says they conducted their research of non-profits from online databases.  The best I could find was that about 1.6 million non-profits exist in the United States today.  But I could find no breakdown into categories (health, education, economic growth, etc.) or populations served (Latino, African American, Native American, etc.)  That would afford someone some interesting research.

On the way to an interpretation in Crete this morning I was cranking NPR ‘Morning Edition’ to distract from having forgone breakfast and, more critically, coffee. Guatemala and Colombia had the top stories for world news, and not exactly news you’d expect. In the former, the president has been accused of murder. A few minutes later I was with the client, a Guatemalan himself, who told me it was yesterday’s papers, con tanta corrupción allá. Still, it was a good listen and a nice coincidence to have him in the car with me. I brought up the Colombia bit, which was actually good news for once. This opened up some more conversation on travel, family and the like. Then the doctor saw him, ran a few electro-conductivity tests and we were off. On the way back to Crete I spotted a school chair—the kind with the writing surface bolted on—at the edge of someone’s parkway next to the trash bin. We nabbed it since he said it was perfect for his daughter, soon to enter first grade.  It was a morning quite agradable—it’s not every interp appt you get that some advocacy and familiar conversation come into play.

I learn something new almost every day about organizations in the area that serve the Latino community.  And today thanks to a blurb in the Journal Star, I learned of the Midlands Latino Community Development Corporation.  They are, according to their website,

“…a non-profit organization dedicated to providing Latinos with opportunities to stimulate economic growth and to develop a healthy and sustainable future for themselves within the Greater Omaha community.”

As far as I gathered from their website, they are dedicated to economic growth in the Latino community in and around Omaha.  Small business development and access to credit were my primary focus in Peace Corps, and I particularly like their first goal/objective, again from their website…

“Goal 1: Supporting the creation of new Latino businesses, maintaining stability of the established Latino businesses, and, increasing by 20% the number of small businesses in the Greater Omaha area.

1.1 Objective: By 2012, the MLCDC will add $1 million in capital available for small business in the Greater Omaha area.
1.2 Objective: By 2012, 250 business owners will be transitioned into traditional lending sources.”

MLCDC is in the news because they recently debuted a database of bilingual service providers in the area.   I love the idea, and I think it could be very useful for the non-profit community.  My only qualm would be that there are only five institutions from Lincoln in the database, and El Centro is missing.  I wish either that Lincoln had something similar to this or that information from both cities could be included in the database..

Yesterday I saw a socio of mine from 2007, when the Everett Family Literacy Project was a fledgling endeavor handled by UNL and I was on Kid Watch. He had an excellent success story, but first allow me to break down the project’s purpose: A bilingual educator gives Spanish reading lessons to parents of Everett students, boosting their own literacy, in turn enabling them to support their children with both academic and recreational reading. Well, my socio said this past school year a few of the kids from the project’s first semester were labeled Gifted Students by LPS.

Here’s to further success…

I somehow forgot to mention that El Centro celebrated El Día de las Madres last Friday with music and food and gift baskets for our Latina mothers.  All photos from the event can be found in the gallery.

Here are a few good ones…

Thanks to Marissa Torio for the photos!  Suerte en México, Marissa.

We usually highlight something positive on Friday’s but I read this article this morning and wanted to comment.  I don’t think the recession has hit the Lincoln area, and Nebraska in general, as much as other areas of the country.  This article from Charlotte, North Carolina highlights the effects that the economic downturn have had on the Latino population there.

The article discusses a Latino entrepreneur, Celestino Hernandez, who just one year ago owned four grocery stores and three bakeries, and today is left with one grocery store.  He says that people who used spend considerable money on groceries and meat now buy rice and beans and instant soup.  There is also a Mexican/Honduran restaurant that has lost nearly all of its customers.

Considering that more than half of North Carolina’s Latino population works in construction and manufacturing, it’s easy to see why economic downturns like this one can affect them disproportionately.  According to the article, the Pew Hispanic Center reported that median annual income for non-citizen immigrant households fell 7.3% from 2006-2007, while it was simultaneously growing 1.3% for all U.S. households.  This affects not only Latino-owned businesses, but all businesses where they would be spending money.

Sad story.  Hopefully it turns around soon.