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merge
Boston Foundation Makes Acquistion
Dec 15th
The Boston Foundation, which has long advocated for mergers in the Massachusetts nonprofit sector, is practicing what it preaches.
The Boston Globe reported today that the organization acquired Philanthropic Initiative, Inc. (TPI), a consulting firm that advises large donors how best to donate their money. The merger will become official beginning Jan. 1, 2012 and TPI will continue to operate under its current name and offer the same services. The firm has been hit hard by the recession and had been looking for a merger since the beginning of the year to help with its finances. Under the terms of the agreement, The Boston Foundation will take on the assets, debts, and operating costs of TPI.
No ideal merger can be completed without a benefit to both parties, and The Boston Foundation stands to gain a lot from this acquisition. They had long been seeking an in-house consulting firm to help identify social, economic, civic, and other issues important to the local community. According to Paul Grogran, the foundation's president, this deal was all about getting a greater return for their philanthropic investments.
Tom McLaughlin (who is a frequent contributor to The NonProfit Times) of McLaughlin & Associates explained to The Globe that this merger represents the "wave of consolidation" that is occurring in the nonprofit sector, as organizations continue to struggle with the aftermaths of the Great Recession. He believes this will be a great deal as long as it can increase the supply of money for charities.
The Boston Foundation is Massachusetts's biggest charity, with $850 million in assets and counting. TPI first approached them with the idea of the merger earlier in the year.
The Boston Globe reported today that the organization acquired Philanthropic Initiative, Inc. (TPI), a consulting firm that advises large donors how best to donate their money. The merger will become official beginning Jan. 1, 2012 and TPI will continue to operate under its current name and offer the same services. The firm has been hit hard by the recession and had been looking for a merger since the beginning of the year to help with its finances. Under the terms of the agreement, The Boston Foundation will take on the assets, debts, and operating costs of TPI.
No ideal merger can be completed without a benefit to both parties, and The Boston Foundation stands to gain a lot from this acquisition. They had long been seeking an in-house consulting firm to help identify social, economic, civic, and other issues important to the local community. According to Paul Grogran, the foundation's president, this deal was all about getting a greater return for their philanthropic investments.
Tom McLaughlin (who is a frequent contributor to The NonProfit Times) of McLaughlin & Associates explained to The Globe that this merger represents the "wave of consolidation" that is occurring in the nonprofit sector, as organizations continue to struggle with the aftermaths of the Great Recession. He believes this will be a great deal as long as it can increase the supply of money for charities.
The Boston Foundation is Massachusetts's biggest charity, with $850 million in assets and counting. TPI first approached them with the idea of the merger earlier in the year.
Contemplating The Outlook For Charities In 2011
Feb 17th
Elizabeth Boris is the director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute located in Washington DC. Nonprofit Times caught up with her and she took some time to share her insights regarding the outlook for the nonprofit sector in 2011, particularly as it relates to planning. Boris feels that 2011 is going to be a difficult year for a large number of charities. This is especially true of nonprofits that have any government grants or contracts because the budgets of many states are in very poor shape.
A sharp decrease in state funding
Human service providers who rely on state funded grants will face some of the toughest times in the year ahead. Boris feels that nonprofits need to have contingency plans in place if they are to survive the times ahead with as little loss as possible. Conserving resources as much as possible is key, as well as learning from these circumstances and building up as many reserves as possible in the future that will enable them to weather similar storms which they may yet have to face. The challenge facing nonprofits is three-fold; contributions are down, demand is on the increase and government grants are in decline.
Nonprofit mergers on the increase
Boris expects that a number of charities will go out of business in 2011, and that there will also be an increase in mergers in the nonprofit sector as charities seek to pool their resources in an attempt to ride out these difficult economic conditions. Nonprofits need to be making an investment in fundraising and grant-writing, and with any luck, they can observe improvements in the economy towards the end of the year.
A sharp decrease in state funding
Human service providers who rely on state funded grants will face some of the toughest times in the year ahead. Boris feels that nonprofits need to have contingency plans in place if they are to survive the times ahead with as little loss as possible. Conserving resources as much as possible is key, as well as learning from these circumstances and building up as many reserves as possible in the future that will enable them to weather similar storms which they may yet have to face. The challenge facing nonprofits is three-fold; contributions are down, demand is on the increase and government grants are in decline.
Nonprofit mergers on the increase
Boris expects that a number of charities will go out of business in 2011, and that there will also be an increase in mergers in the nonprofit sector as charities seek to pool their resources in an attempt to ride out these difficult economic conditions. Nonprofits need to be making an investment in fundraising and grant-writing, and with any luck, they can observe improvements in the economy towards the end of the year.
Menus, the Merge, and a Patch Sprint!
Feb 23rd
A Report from the 3.0 Development Cycle
Menus
There’s been a flurry of blog posts about the integration of the WooThemes Custom Navigation into WordPress core, so I thought it was time we posted the official word. For 3.0, the main user-facing feature we wanted to include was a better site menu management system. Currently, dealing with menus is clunky, using Page IDs or in some cases categories, if a theme uses categories instead of pages for the menu. We wanted a menu system that had the drag and drop ease of the widget management screen, could combine Pages, Categories, and Links, was able to be re-ordered, allowed submenus, and enabled hiding specific Pages or Categories from the menu altogether. We were in the process of building this when WooThemes introduced their Custom Navigation system. Watching their introductory video, it seemed that their system did pretty much everything we wanted to do for core, so we reached out to them about contributing to core.
As you’ve probably heard, it worked out, and the first patch has been submitted. It does require some code modification, which is happening now. The decision to incorporate the Woo menus happened right before our planned feature freeze for the 3.0 development cycle, so we pushed our freeze date back by two weeks to allow the addition. We’re now targeting the 3.0 release for early May, and we think it will be worth the extra two-week wait.
I’m personally really happy that it worked out this way, because I think it will show commercial theme and plugin authors that contributing to core is a win-win proposition. More people can contribute to and improve the basic functional code now, while WooThemes can continue to innovate on top of it for their customers. They get massive bragging rights (which I have no doubt will lead to even more customers), core gets a nice menu system without having to reinvent the wheel, and WordPress users all over the world will benefit. I’m hoping other plugin and theme developers will take a cue from Woo and look at core as a place for collaboration, rather than competition.
The Merge
It was announced at WordCamp San Francisco last year that WordPress and WordPress MU would be merging codebases. This has now happened in 3.0-alpha, and we’re working on smashing bugs and tidying up a few screens. If you’re currently using a single install of WordPress, when you upgrade to 3.0 you won’t see any of the extra screens associated with running a network of sites. If you’re currently running MU, when you upgrade you’ll notice a few labels changing, but upgrading should be as painless as usual. If you’re going to set up a new WordPress installation, you’ll be asked as part of the setup if you want one site or multiple sites, so that’s pretty simple. If you want to turn your single install into one that supports multiple sites, we’ll have a tool for you to use to do that, too. So if you’ve been worried about the merge, have a cup of chamomile tea and relax; it will all be fine. 
Patch Sprint!
Okay, so where are we now? The new feature freeze date is on Monday, March 1, 2010. That means that after that date, no more enhancements or features will be added, and we’ll switch gears to focus solely on crushing bugs and fixing up the features that have already made it in. That means we only have a week to try and finish up the many Trac tickets on the 3.0 milestone that either need a patch or have a patch that needs testing. You can help! From now until noon eastern time on March 1 (that’s 17:00 UTC on March 1), head on over to Trac and pitch in. If you hit a wall, hop into the core development channel at #wordpress-dev on irc.freenode.net and hopefully one of the friendly core contributors can give you a push.
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