December 11, 1997 | Read Time: 3 minutes
A new publication being distributed to a quarter-million Massachusetts residents may help spur charitable giving in a state that lags badly in that area.
“The Catalogue for Philanthropy” is a collaborative effort by some of the state’s leading grant makers and philanthropists to stimulate giving by educating affluent residents about the importance of giving to charity.
The 80-page booklet showcases the state’s 10 community foundations plus 90 of its small and mid-sized charities in fields spanning arts and culture, human services, and environmental research and conservation. Grant makers picked the groups from among 415 applicants — all with annual operating budgets of less than $2-million — on the basis of their excellence and diversity.
Brief descriptions of each charity are followed by an invitation to respond to their specific needs. Readers may use a toll-free telephone number or an enclosed form to donate to one or more of the charities through a gift to the Catalogue Fund, which is administered by the Boston Foundation.
The project’s long-term goal is to stimulate new charitable donors and dollars in a region that is among the least philanthropic in the United States. Although Massachusetts is the third-wealthiest state in the country as measured by average personal income, it ranks 44th in average itemized charitable tax deductions, according to 1995 data from the Inter- nal Revenue Service. It therefore ranks 49th on a “generosity index” that compares charitable gifts with available resources.
The poor standing of the state prompted the Ellis L. Phillips Foundation in Boston to develop the idea of using a catalogue to stimulate year-end giving among wealthy Massachusetts residents, particularly those who had little previous experience with philanthropy. Its goal was to distribute the catalogue to the state’s 250,000 or so households with income of at least $100,000.
“The question as we framed it was, How can the non-profits of Massachusetts market themselves much more broadly than ever before?” said George McCully, a trustee of the Phillips Foundation, which is coordinating the project. Part of the answer, he believes, involves getting information into the hands of relatively young and newly affluent residents. Organizers hope that families will browse through the catalogue together, selecting charities to support while also discussing their own values.
Officials of charities that are listed in the catalogue are pleased with the publicity it has gained them in the week or two since it has appeared, and hopeful that it will generate new support.
“We’re a small, hard-working organization that is one of Massachusetts’ best-kept secrets,” said Sheila O’Brien, executive director of National Education for Assistance Dog Services, which trains dogs to assist people who are deaf or disabled. “We don’t have the luxury of a P.R. department or a development department.”
The charity has already received inquiries from two companies and a family foundation that had not heard of it before, Ms. O’Brien said.
The New England Wild Flower Society, in Framingham, has also fielded calls from people seeking more information about its plant-conservation programs. “I believe we have to find different ways to engage my generation — the baby boomers — who will form the philanthropic base of the next 30 or 40 years,” said its executive director, David L. DeKing.
Some grant makers are using the catalogue as a guide to finding potential grantees, while others see it as a potential tool for broadening the pool of donors to charity.
“We are watching the project closely and hope that it succeeds in providing donors with a new instrument for their charitable giving,” said Anna Faith Jones, president of the Boston Foundation, which is financing an evaluation of the project’s effectiveness.
Project organizers — who are still trying to cover the estimated $600,000 cost — hope to produce similar catalogues in future years, each of which would feature a different collection of charities.
A limited number of catalogues are available from the Ellis L. Phillips Foundation, 29 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston 02116. For more information, contact George McCully at (508) 785-1935; his e-mail address is gem@world.std.com. The project also has a World-Wide Web site at http://www.agmconnect.org/catalog1.
