The $100,000,000 Gift – Fairytale Versus Reality

It sounds like a philanthropic fairy tale:  Former recipient of $30 scholarship repays alma mater to the tune of $100 million.

On January 26th, UCLA announced a $100 million gift from Meyer and Renee Luskin.  The gift will benefit the UCLA School of Public Affairs and a new residential conference center. Major gifts like this one aren’t magical, and they don’t simply drop from the sky.

The Luskin gift had a humble beginning. Meyer Luskin commuted to UCLA from his neighborhood on the East Side of Los Angeles, Boyle Heights. His studies were interrupted by World War II – he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps (now the Air Force). After the war, a $30 scholarship enabled him to continue his studies at UCLA. Meyer graduated with a degree in economics and went on to earn an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He met and later married Renee, a fellow UCLA student who earned a sociology degree.

What Do Online Giving Numbers Mean?

It’s easy to get caught up in good news.

According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “online donations rose sharply last year.” Convio, Blackbaud and Network for Good, all fundraising system vendors, reported increases in giving to their customers.  Convio reported its clients experienced more than a 40% increase.  Blackbaud reported 5,000 of its customers raised 10% more dollars online in December but didn’t specify what the increase was compared to.  Network for Good reported a 20% increase in online giving during 2010 compared to 2009.

Welcome to the JCA Insights Blog

As part of JCA’s commitment to the nonprofit community, we are proud to announce the launch of the JCA Insights pages on our website.  Inside you will find blogs, white papers and other resources intended to help you, the nonprofit professional, benefit from JCA’s insights into best practices from around the country – and around the world. Since 1988, when I founded Jacobson Consulting Applications, our mission has been to help our clients understand what they are trying to accomplish, and then to make sure that they are equipped with the people, processes and technology needed to work as efficiently and effectively as possible. Whether it is fundraising or ticketing, the tools may change but our approach remains the same: align the right tools with the right people so that an organization can accurately measure progress toward their goals and ultimately achieve them.     

Each year, JCA works with a number of the world’s leading nonprofit and cultural organizations.  In the course of our work, we have learned that achieving best practices is a continual process of improvement.   Through these blogs, we seek to continue the dialogue we’ve established with our clients and to allow others to benefit from our more than 22 years of consulting experience.

I hope that you’ll find useful information here. Most importantly, we encourage your feedback.  Our hope is to create a forum for the people who are at the pinnacle of their profession to connect with one another, share best practices and improve the sector so we can all do more good in this world.

If you think there is a way we can help you work smarter, please feel free to contact us at smarter@jcainc.com or 888-446-4588 and let us know how.

Steve Jacobson is President & CEO of Jacobson Consulting Applications, Inc. (JCA)
JCA provides strategic consulting to the world’s leading nonprofits.

Welcome to JCA Answers

There are now more than 100 organizations around the world using JCA Answers™.  Each week, we welcome new organizations and new users to our simple and powerful data-analysis platform.  Each week, people just like you are gaining new insights and making their businesses better with our application.  We love working with our users.  We love making JCA Answers better and better at helping you solve your problems.  And of course, we love the feedback (“I just can’t say enough great things about your program!”¹, “it saved my weekend!”²).

So how did JCA Answers come about originally?

If you are familiar with Jacobson Consulting Applications, Inc. (JCA), you probably know that we’ve made our name over the past 20 years as a technology consulting company.   Whether it’s helping you choose, migrate, support, implement or learn a system, we are there to help make it successful.  Fundraising, ticketing, admissions or membership – regardless of the application, we work with you to make sure the system you use makes your business better.

Welcome!

Hello, I’m John Jakovich, Chief Information Officer at JCA.  I’m pleased and excited to share our experiences working with non-profit technology with you in this blog under the “JCA Innovation” category.  At JCA we work on an assortment of projects including systems integrations, data migrations, custom applications and internet development. Generally we utilize a Microsoft “stack” including SQL Server, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, ASP.Net and the .Net platform. The JCA Engineering group is composed of 9 talented engineers with a wide variety of experiences.