R&D Lab: New ventures boost giving. (Asset Allocation).

With new wealth flowing, and trillions more expected in the pipeline from children of the Depression to the Boomers, a national grantmakers group is backing local incubators looking for ways to tap those assets.

"We're funding R&D laboratories for philanthropy," said Albert Ruesga, outgoing director of New Ventures in Philanthropy.

Launched in 1998 by the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers in Washington, D.C., which has 28 regional members, New Ventures has handed out more than $6 million to 32 coalitions throughout the United States. Those coalitions have raised another $3 million locally and involved more than 300 groups to promote and support philanthropy.

"It's very important for the sector to invest in itself," said Ruesga, who on Oct. 1 was scheduled to become vice president for programs and communications at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation in Washington, D.C.

The projects that New Ventures backs focus on donors and are not skewed to any particular form of philanthropy. "We want to help donors find the right way to give for them," Ruesga said.

New Ventures targets two big hurdles to giving, a "knowledge gap" among new philanthropists, and the time that newly wealthy people need "to be thoughtful and to explore options and be more deliberate about your giving," he said.

In the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, New Ventures gave $165,000 in 1998 to the Triangle Community Foundation, which aims to triple the region's philanthropic assets to $3 billion by 2017.

The foundation, which has raised $1.9 million to support its Catalyst Project, already counts $229 million in new philanthropic assets -- more than double the increase it had hoped to generate by 2002. That includes $136 million in current or deferred assets committed to 42 new private foundations, plus $93 million in current or deferred assets committed to 243 funds at the foundation.

The foundation officials estimate that $697 in new assets has been raised for every $1 it has spent promoting philanthropy through publications, videos and work with entrepreneurs and professional advisers. "We think we can do it by reaching out to those individuals and entities who control or influence the wealth of the region," said Shannon St. John, the foundation's president.

This past summer, New Ventures gave the foundation another $65,000 to help existing philanthropists do a better job. The focus will range from helping philanthropists define their family values and philanthropic goals to developing their philanthropic strategy and improving effectiveness.

The four-year Baltimore Giving Project, launched in 1999 by the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers, has raised $900,000, including $425,000 from New Ventures, to help close the philanthropy gap in a state that ranks fifth in wealth but 44th in generosity, said Buffy Beaudoin-Schwartz, director of the Baltimore Giving Project.

The initiative targets blacks; entrepreneurs, corporations and high-tech firms; the next generation of wealth inheritors; women; and professional advisers. Teaming up with Associated Black Charities of Maryland, for example, the group has launched the African American Philanthropy Initiative to plug blacks into charity.

The initiative includes a print and online toolkit with information about philanthropy and guides for giving, as well as a national newsletter for black philanthropists that has 800 subscribers throughout the United States.

Baltimore Giving also has helped tech entrepreneurs launch two projects. One, a social venture fund, aims to expand a pilot effort in which employees of five firms mentor middle-school students in the workplace. The other, a partnership with the Greater Baltimore Technology Council, is building a Web site to serve nonprofits in the region.

The initiative also has helped start two women's giving circles, launched a family philanthropy roundtable and developed a Web-based tool for professional advisers.

The Hartford-based Connecticut Council for Philanthropy also aims to narrow the philanthropy gap in a state that ranks first in per-capita income and wealth, but has been one of the less generous. "People became aware of the fact that we were a very wealthy state but weren't pulling our weight compared to other states in the country," said Nancy Roberts, the council's president.

The council in 1998 launched the Connecticut Giving Project, which aims to "change attitudes and behaviors," Roberts said. In 1999, for example, the council launched a statewide chapter of the national Leave A Legacy program that promotes using wills to support charity.

Now in its third year, she said, the Leave A Legacy program has helped boost membership for the Connecticut Planned Giving Council, and has enlisted 700 of the state's roughly 4,000 nonprofits.

Connecticut Giving, which is getting $100,000 a year from New Ventures for three years, plus another $50,000 in 2002 to strengthen ties with professional advisers and business groups, also has held a series of philanthropy seminars and teamed up with professional associations.

The Connecticut Bar Association last summer mailed a letter to its 11,000 members describing its partnership with Connecticut Giving and encouraging them to work with their clients to contribute to charity through wills and estates.

The overall goal, Roberts said, is to get people to begin to think about long-term giving, and then provide the continuing philanthropic assistance they need.

Asset alliances

Community foundations are teaming up with one another and with financial services firms to target wealthy donors.

The Council of California Community Foundations, an 18-month old association of five community foundations in the San Francisco Bay Area that aims to build alliances with financial services firms, has signed its second deal.

After forming a partnership in 2000 with San Francisco-based American Funds, the third-largest U.S. mutual fund, the council now has signed a deal with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, a bank and brokerage subsidiary of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp.

Doing business as California Giving, the council aims to help the five foundations work with financial advisers at the firm, with the foundations offering philanthropic products such as donor-advised funds to the firm's private banking clients, and the firm managing the clients' philanthropic assets.

California Giving also is in talks with Community Foundations of America in Louisville, Ky., to be a pilot project for a similar deal that the nonprofit buyers group is negotiating with San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, said Carla Dearing, CFA's president and CEO.

Under the tentative deal, California Giving's members would offer charitable products to Wells Fargo clients, and Wells Fargo would offer investment management for some of those products, Dearing said. Based on the pilot project, CFA then would offer the service to the 126 community foundations that are its members.

Todd Cohen is editor and publisher of Nonprofitxpress, an online newspaper at www.npxpress.com.