June 12, 2008 | Read Time: 4 minutes
The Heifer Foundation, in Little Rock, Ark., is looking to the Internet to extend the reach of its charitable
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endowments — and to make giving to an endowment more accessible.
“Typically when we think of endowments, it’s kind of an intimidating term,” says Greg Spradlin, a vice president at the foundation.
Many people, he says, think, “Well, that’s for the mega-wealthy, and that’s for hospital wings and that sort of thing.”
With its new Web site, Hope Equity, the foundation is trying to make endowment giving easy and accountable to donors. Endowment gifts allow donors to give money that will be invested, with part of the proceeds supporting the projects they select.
$5-Million in Support
The Heifer Foundation grew out of Heifer International, an international-aid organization, also in Little Rock. A legally separate organization, it was founded in 1990 to manage the charity’s endowment and planned gifts, and now has assets worth $111-million.
Visitors to the Hope Equity site can read about the work they can support with their endowment gifts — work in a specific country, such as Cameroon or Nicaragua, or on specific causes, such as disaster recovery or preventing HIV/AIDS.
Gifts can be of any size; the site has no minimum-contribution requirement.
The Heifer Foundation invests the money, and a portion of the proceeds go to support programs, while the rest is reinvested to help increase the original gift. Through the Web site, donors can monitor the size of their gifts, see when funds are allocated, and read about the progress of the projects they are supporting.
A pilot version of the site has been available to the foundation’s donors for the past year. During that time, donors gave more than $5-million to support more than 130 projects.
A ‘Eureka’ Moment
Mr. Spradlin believes that donors’ growing comfort with the Internet and with making larger donations online means the time is right for Hope Equity.
Several trusts and annuities created in the last year to benefit the foundation have been negotiated primarily over e-mail. One donor sent e-mail messages back and forth to the foundation’s chief executive and set up a $1-million charitable remainder trust without once speaking to a foundation employee on the telephone.
“For us that was a ‘eureka’ moment,” says Mr. Spradlin.
Because the foundation grew out of Heifer International, most of the money in the endowments benefit that organization’s international-development work.
But with Hope Equity, the foundation is letting donors set up endowments to benefit other charities, provided their missions are to end hunger and poverty or help the environment.
“We believe that no single organization or no single individual — Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or whomever — is going to solve any of these problems,” says Mr. Spradlin.
Fund-Raising Tools
He hopes that Hope Equity will eventually become a sort of community foundation for international aid and development, providing support to organizations that have yet to set up their own endowments.
The site also gives donors the tools they need to become online fund raisers themselves.
Once an individual has contributed to one or more endowment funds, he or she can use the site to send e-mail messages to friends and relatives, asking them to give as well.
And the foundation has developed fund-raising buttons that donors can use to raise money from their blogs, Web sites, or social-networking pages.
The Heifer Foundation hopes that the new Web site will help donors learn about the causes they care about.
Donors will have the option of receiving updates and in-depth articles about international aid and development.
The information will give people the opportunity to really dig into the factors that led to the Darfur crisis, for example, instead of the sound bites they often hear from the news media, says Mr. Spradlin.
“There’s a real oversimplification a lot of times of the root causes of hunger and poverty and environmental issues, and it’s easy to just make it very black and white,” he says. “But it’s not. It’s complicated.”
