CAVEATS AND CONFLICTING PREDICTIONS

The inestimable Chronicle of Philanthropy has recently offered some conflicting messages: (1) that non-profit fund-raising will increase this year by close to 5%; and (2) the real subject of today's Post -- that non-profits in the main fail to prepare for recession.

With the stock markets at best exhibiting schizophrenia -- huge losses followed by gains day-after-day -- and with the coronavirus, at this moment, metastasizing in America's cities one-by-one, it certainly appears as if the Chronicle prediction of an annualized 5% increase was, at best, premature. (The underlying study was clearly completed at a time †hat no one was predicting a global pandemic.)

On the darker horizon, the possibility of recession has reared its ugly head. Recession has always been the dreaded, not to be mentioned "R" word in †he non-profit communities wi†hin which I have worked. Many leaders over the decades have either warned me or chastised me for any, what they described as "negative talk," somehoe thinking that by ignoring even the possibility of an economic downturn, one would be forestalled. 

Thus, I was surprised that the Chronicle study found that even 33% of non-profits were engaged in "recession planning." And, when one couples the possibility of a recession with the reality that the 2019 Tax "Reform" limited the charitable deduction, one can see the possibility of a perfect albeit terrible storm.

Maybe those who were "old school" who most believed in denial of the realities of the potential impacts on annual campaigns of a negative economy -- so not even a mention of the possibility was to be permitted and, certainly, no planning for it. There was the apparent belief that using the word itself could exacerbate what might (and did and will) come. And, maybe, our leaders believed that using our political clout to oppose the limitation on the charitable deduction would be used against the Jewish community in some way (or that the forces demanding the significant reduction of the deduction were somehow irresistible).

So, once again we find ourselves citing Santayana's maxim and worrying that history will again repeat itself. 

Don't let it happen.

Rwexler4