A Former Debt Collector Finds Many Ways to Give Back

The path that Herman Art Taylor has taken to the top spot at the Better Business Bureau’s nonprofit watchdog group, the Wise Giving Alliance, has been winding and marked with the occasional curiosity.

A South Philadelphia native, Mr. Taylor, who prefers to be called Art, started his professional life as an accountant and has run a debt-collection agency. He passed the bar after graduating from the Temple University School of Law and has served as head of Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, in Philadelphia, which oversees a national network of 70 nonprofit employment and training organizations.

He says the one thing that holds his résumé together is “a need to give of myself,” something he learned as a child in South Philly, where people routinely gathered money to pay for neighbors’ funerals and handed down clothes to worse-off families. “I’ve been very active in the nonprofit sector and I’ve learned how these organizations run,” he says.

In addition to being chief executive officer of the Wise Giving Alliance, Mr. Taylor, 42, is vice chair of Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofit organizations, and has also served on the boards of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and Franklin & Marshall College, his undergraduate alma mater.

In an interview a few days after his appointment was announced, Mr. Taylor discussed his vision for the alliance, which was created by the merger of the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ Foundation, which includes its Philanthropic Advisory Service, and the National Charities Information Bureau. The merger was completed in March, and the consolidated organization now has information on about 300 charities that have been reviewed for compliance with its fund-raising, management, and governance standards.

The Wise Giving Alliance currently has 15,000 members, an annual budget of $1.5-million, and a staff of 14. The group’s goal, Mr. Taylor says, is to preserve the public’s trust in nonprofit groups. “To the extent that people trust, they give,” he says. “A group like ours is very important to the public’s trust. Without it, you don’t have much of a nonprofit sector.”

Following are excerpts from the interview:

How would you characterize your management style?

I tend to see the big picture. I paint with a broad brush. I’m very interested in outcomes and how we’re going to achieve them. But I’m not a taskmaster. I work best with people who have plenty of talents and ideas.

Is there a management “bible” that you turn to when you’re challenged by a problem?

No. What I rely on most — and you might find this funny — are my experiences in athletics. I played baseball and basketball at Franklin & Marshall. What I learned is it’s not so important what play you run as it is to get everybody to run the same play. That’s what determines how much success you’ll have.

What management lessons did you learn running a collection agency?

No matter what your industry is, you have to be able to measure progress. The organization I ran was so new that it hadn’t subjected itself to any kind of analysis as to how much income generation was possible. Even with nonprofit groups that are trying to achieve a mission, mechanisms need to be in place to measure what’s being achieved and what isn’t.

Have there been growing pains since the merger?

Things have been remarkably smooth. The staff is being integrated with few problems and we’ve begun working on new standards for charities. We have some research coming in on donor preferences — what kind of information they want to see when they’re about to give. That’ll be out very soon.

What standards does the Wise Giving Alliance hold charities to?

Right now, we’re conducting a thorough review of the standards [employed by the former Philanthropic Advisory Service and the National Charities Information Bureau]. The results of the review will be out in a draft in the fall. We want to give the public an opportunity to comment on the review’s findings before we finalize them. Currently, we concentrate on four areas when we look at a charity. We look at whether they’re filing their public documents — their form 990s — and whether they’re providing audit statements to us on request. Secondly, we look at how they use their funds. We want to make sure they’re using at least 50 percent of the money they raise on programs directly tied into the organization’s stated purpose. Third, we look at solicitation materials to see if they’re misleading or not. And fourth, we look at their overall fund-raising practices to make sure they’re on the up and up.

What part of your job appeals to you the most?

What I’ll enjoy most is getting out to the public and sharing with them what we do. I want to develop an army of supporters.

One concern voiced during the merger negotiations was the fund-raising troubles both charity-watchdog groups faced. How are you tackling that now that the two groups are one?

Well, fund raising is going very well now. We’ve already exceeded so far what we thought we’d get. In the fall, we’ll expand our direct-mail appeal to individual organizations. We’ll also be reaching out to the foundations. We’ll tell them that our group is very important to this sector. If we’re not going to do what we do, who is? We receive support from foundations, individuals, and the Council of Better Business Bureaus, but I think we can do more. Part of it is how we look to potential donors. Are we doing such a good job of informing the public that we should be given more to do more? That’s how I want them to see us.

How do you avoid conflicts when you raise funds from foundations?

I can say with complete confidence that there’s no way a group is going to slide through our review process just because a foundation that gives us support gives them support. It’s also important to us to keep the review-writing and fund-raising portions of our staff very separate.

What charities receive money from you personally?

The Y.M.C.A., Franklin & Marshall, WYBE [a public television station in Philadelphia], Opportunities Industrialization Centers, and several organizations in Philadelphia that cater to youth sports.

Some people have worried that the merger would cause a reduction in the diversity of information available to the public. How have you tried to make up for that?

Much of the work was nothing more than duplication. What you’re going to see in the future is an organization that is better viewed by the foundation community because of its uniqueness, one that can do many more reports than were done before [by both groups]. We’ll also be undergoing an evaluation process so we can get more done with what we have. Eventually, we’d like to take our approach to the local level.

How can prospective donors get information from the alliance?

It costs $45 per year to become a member. That gets a member four copies annually of our Wise Giving Guide, which contains listings of who is in compliance with our standards and who isn’t. [To enroll as a member, write Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, 4200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 800, Arlington, Va., 22203. More information is available at http://www.give.org.]

What’s the one new thing you hope the alliance achieves under your leadership?

We need to figure out a way to take this work we do, let more people know about it, then expand it so more people benefit by it.