JerseySmarts.com

Start the Weekend Right Link Series – Volume #3, Edition #1

Joe — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 12:30:54 +0000

It has been a long time since I posted one of these Start the Weekend Right Link Series entries. But I have too many posts building up behind the scenes on this blog and in my Feedly reader so I need to start clearing them out and getting them out there for you to consume. Before you check out of work and begin whatever celebrations you’ll be involved with this Easter weekend, take a look at some of these links – I think you might enjoy this content.

Before we get to the links this week I again recommend signing up for a free Feedly account. I get absolutely no kickback for promoting Feedly, but I’m so appreciative of their product being the best RSS reader on the internet that I encourage everyone to use it. If you’re using another RSS aggregator, please consider following JerseySmarts.com at http://www.jerseysmarts.com/feed/. If you’re already on Feedly, then you can follow us by clicking here. Thanks!

No, You Are Not “Running Late,” You Are Rude And Selfish, Vitamin T
The message of this article is, as the title alludes to, that all of those times you or a coworker comes to a meeting late are not driven by outside factors, but rather by the fact that you’re a rude person. And on top of that rudeness, you’re a selfish punk who only cares about themselves. Personally, I agree with the message here, but living in New Jersey drops more than a few grains of salt on this article. When I was in college, I knew a kid who showed up to all of his classes late – and always with a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in his hand. He was a rude, selfish idiot. On the other hand, I’ve seen people arrive to work (and even meetings and appointments) over an hour late because of the completely ridiculous nature of the traffic and road construction in most of this state.

Death By Degrees, n+1
The best preview I can give for this article is this quote that is taken from it: “Like the market for skin care products, the market for credentials is inexhaustible: as the bachelor’s degree becomes democratized, the master’s degree becomes mandatory for advancement. Our elaborate, expensive system of higher education is first and foremost a system of stratification, and only secondly — and very dimly — a system for imparting knowledge.”

Manual Labor, All Night Long: The Reality of Paying for College, The Atlantic
Typically, the commentaries that The Atlantic publishes are too buried in far left talking points (and shoddy ones, no less) that I can’t find the usefulness of their content. This article is a little bit different, though I don’t take the same bleeding heart stance as some of the folks quoted in the article. In short, the article talks about how some students opt to work an overnight shift to get tuition reimbursement for their local college. I believe the writer’s stance is along the lines of how we could allow this type of near-torture for someone who wants to get a higher education. As someone with a deep history in student loans, I don’t often feel bad for others who have to go through difficulty to get a degree. My comment on this topic, though, is that we should be looking at the larger educational system and why we push nearly all high school students to pursue a college degree when many of them should be pushed towards vocational and technical schools instead.

An unusual victory for donor intent at Trinity College, The Pope Center
One of the topics that I love following is how a donor’s intent is followed – or completely ignored – by organizations that are the recipients of the donor’s financial contributions. Martin Morse Wooster details a recent victory for donors that took place at Trinity College. This is really fascinating stuff (or at least I think so). And if you’re an active donor to your church, college, or any other cause, then I encourage you to give this article a read.

Google rethinks Google+, spinning off several successful pieces, Christian Science Monitor
Goodbye, Google+! Several years ago I wrote about how I was shutting down several of my social media accounts (MySpace and LinkedIn) because it was just becoming too much to handle and all I really needed was Facebook. As the years went by and Google tried to shove Google+ down our throats, I had to open up one of their silly accounts and – like the majority of their users, apparently – I almost never used it. Now, hopefully, Google will retreat from social media and I can put that silly, useless Google+ profile to rest!

Homeless man of deep faith given funeral, burial in Vatican City, American Catholic
I just thought this was a touching story and a reminder that there are good people out there who will do good things for people of devotion. I’d like to believe that this homeless man’s soul was received into glory with the same reverence that his body was received by the Vatican.

A New Life for Dead Malls, The Atlantic
Alright, so The Atlantic gets two mentions this week because this story is just awesome. I’ve written on here in the past about how I can go nuts trying to use all of my “stuff” before buying new things. For me, it’s not a matter of frugality, but rather a matter of not generating the need to create additional products and/or waste to give me something that I already have possession of in one form or another. That’s the point of this article – that old, dead malls are actively being repurposed for a wide variety of uses – and it’s pretty cool!

7 Basic Life Hacks Men Shouldn’t Ignore, Return of Kings
Simply put – if you’re a guy and you’re reading this, then you should stop and click over to Return of Kings to read this article. It’s excellent, direct, and gives you good advice on what you should be doing to improve yourself. Some of the advice that the writer offers includes reading daily, working out, eating right, and not watching porn. Each of these “life hacks” have intensely positive outcomes for you as a man and when combined they can lead to a dramatically improved life. Take five minutes and give it a read.

Before you go, I want to recommend one more time that you consider opening a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

Sigma Pi’s Chapter Educational Fund Program is an Ideal Donation Option

Joe — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 12:30:41 +0000

While I understand that this entry may only apply to my brothers in Sigma Pi Fraternity, their families, and the friends of our fraternity, I think it also serves as a good discussion of why certain tax-deductible donations are better than others. Below, I’m going to argue that a donation to the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation‘s Chapter Educational Fund program is a great option for fraternity alumni because the dollars are more flexible and they can go further over a longer period of time.

Several years ago, the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation (the Foundation) started a program to create Chapter Educational Funds (CEF). Before we talk about what a CEF is and what it can do for you and your chapter, you should know that the Foundation is a 501c3 tax-exempt organization. This means that donations made to the Foundation are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. In other words, if you write a check to the Foundation for $5, $50, or $5,000, then all of those funds can be list as charitable contributions when you or your accountant prepares your deductions for the tax year.

Sigma Pi Fraternity (the Fraternity) and the Foundation have done a lot of research over the years. For the Foundation, that research was focused on what it could do to entice more of our 50,000+ living alumni to donate for the advancement of the Fraternity. In 2003, the Foundation commissioned a report from a third party group to ascertain – among other goals – whether it could raise significant funds from our alumni base to support national programs. The report gave the Foundation many results, including the fact that most alumni want to find a way to support their local chapter more so than the national organization.

Several years later in 2010, the Foundation again studied what Sigma Pi alumni felt strongly about as it put together its strategic plan. During the focus groups and outreach in 2010 it was clear, again, that our alumni love Sigma Pi and would love for the Foundation to provide an option that allowed them to donate for the benefit of their local chapter. This finding would be one of the many outcomes in late 2011 when another third party group researched the prospects of raising significant funds to support national programs.

The message is clear – Sigma Pi alumni are willing and able to donate to the Foundation. They prefer that those donations help their local chapters succeed.

The Foundation has always welcomed those individual alumni or groups of alumni who seek to set up a scholarship to honor a living mentor or as a memorial to a brother who has passed away. In fact, the Foundation awards several national honorarium and memorial scholarships each year. Yet, the research showed that the Fraternity’s alumni wanted to donate to something more directly aligned with their local chapter. Thus was born the CEF program.

The CEF program allows a group of local alumni – called a Local Advisory Committee (LAC) – to create a specific fund at the Foundation where money donated to that fund is used solely for the benefit of their local chapter. Like a traditional Foundation scholarship, a CEF can allow the LAC to award scholarships to members of their local chapter. Yet, a CEF is a more flexible tool to help the local chapter improve because of the other various uses of donated funds. In addition to scholarships, a CEF may provide fellowships for graduate members of a chapter to pursue advanced degrees or professional development programs.

Any use that is academic or educational in nature is an allowable use of money donated to a CEF.

In the recent past, CEFs have been used to provide full reimbursements of registration fees for undergraduates to attend Sigma Pi University (now called Sigma Pi UIFI). Similarly, CEFs have been used to provide full reimbursement of travel costs for undergraduates to attend the Mid-Year Leadership Conference as well as Sigma Pi University. On a more local level, CEFs have been used to pay for the event reservation fees and food costs for academic and leadership training breakfasts and luncheons hosted on-campus where instruction is provided by highly-qualified local alumni and/or invited guest speakers. In other words, if your chapter’s alumni want to host an annual brunch for your undergraduates where you can instruct the undergraduates on issues related to their academic and/or educational growth, then you can pay for the costs of that event through donations to your local CEF.

A CEF can also be used to purchase academic or educational equipment for the chapter. What does that mean? Well, it means if your chapter owns a chapter house and there is space for a library or study area in the house, then funds donated to a CEF can be used to outfit that space with academic equipment (i.e. computers, software, and networking needs).

The uses stated above are what can be achieved when money that you donate to your local CEF is granted (i.e. given away) to a specific cause. However, if you opt to keep the funds in the CEF (i.e. you’re not granting them away), then the flexibility of your CEF increases.

In this option, money donated to a CEF can be used to provide a loan to the local chapter, alumni club, or housing corporation to make improvements to a chapter house. The breadth and scope of those improvements do not have the same academic and educational limitations as when money is granted from the CEF because in this instance, the money in the CEF isn’t being given away. Instead, an LAC may request a loan from its CEF for any housing-related reason including making immediate quality-of-life repairs to a chapter house, building an addition on to an existing chapter house, or even helping a chapter purchase a new house. In those scenarios where a loan is provided by your CEF, the LAC should expect a full underwriting and approval process – just like getting a loan from a local bank. Typically, interest will accrue on the loan at a rate agreed upon by the LAC and the Foundation and the CEF will have to pay an origination fee (which can be negotiated). Unlike a bank, however, it is typical for half of the interest that is paid by the borrower to be placed back into the chapter’s CEF and for the other half of the interest to be paid to the Foundation, which helps it operate (once the interest funds are put back into the CEF, they can be used for the same purposes noted above). Several Sigma Pi chapters around the country currently have loans outstanding from their CEFs with similar repayment terms.

There are some other ins and outs that an alumnus or group of alumni need to know before opening a CEF, but those issues can be better discussed directly with the Foundation. What is important to understand is that if you want your chapter to have an annual scholarship or some academic fellowships, if you would like to see your chapter’s registration fees and travel costs to attend most national conferences fully reimbursed, or if you’d like to see your chapter receive a loan (where they’re actually getting a portion of the interest back!) to address housing issues, then you really should consider the Foundation’s CEF program.

A Big Book Donation to End the Week and Start the Holiday

Joe — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:37:44 +0000

Hey everyone. After I posted a series of book reviews (Made to Stick, Lords of the North, Sword Song) I thought I should celebrate by purging a little bit. So with that in mind, I spent a lot of time last night cleaning off each of my bookshelves and dividing my books into those that I’m keeping and those that could be donated.

When all was said and done, I had 32 books ready to donate to the local Monmouth County SPCA. Here is a list of the books that I drove over the SPCA today so they could be resold to someone who wants to read them and the proceeds can be used to help the animals:

• Arguing with Idiots by Glenn Beck
• Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
• Winning the Future by Newt Gingrich
• Real Change by Newt Gingrich
• Culture Warrior by Bill O’Reilly
• Who’s Looking Out For You by Bill O’Reilly
• The No Spin Zone by Bill O’Reilly
• American Soldier by General Tommy Franks
• How to Talk to a Liberal by Ann Coulter
• Slander by Ann Coulter
• Jersey Devil Press 2010
• Writing for Dollars by McAllister
• The FairTax Book by Neal Boortz & Congressman John Linder
• The Matrix and Philosophy by William Irwin
• The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy by Gregory Bassham
• Why We Want You to be Rich by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki
• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
• I Had the Right to Remain Silent…But I Didn’t Have the Ability by Ron White
• Where the Right Went Wrong by Patrick J. Buchanan
• Old British Literature Textbook from College
• The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump
• How to Get Rich by Donald Trump
• State of Emergency by Patrick J. Buchanan
• The Appeasers by Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott
• The Good, The Bad, and the Mad by Floyd
• Paradigm Shift by Harry S. Franklin
• To Be The Man by Ric Flair
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling
• Seabiscuit by Laura Hildebrand
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
• A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens

I feel kind of good about donating so many books to the SPCA. And I feel great about starting off the Fourth of July weekend right by doing something good for the less fortunate and decluttering my bookshelf in the process!

Nonprofits – More Efficient, More Cost Effective

Joe — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:24:31 +0000

Long Branch has a few weekly newspapers, one of which is the Atlanticville. Generally, the Atlanticville doesn’t have many interesting guest opinion editorials (unless, of course, I’m writing one). This week, though, they printed one written by James Abruzzo of DHR International’s Newark office. Some snooping over at DHR International’s website shows that Mr. Abruzzo heads up the firm’s nonprofit searches. Sounds like an interesting job.

Anyway, in his op-ed, Mr. Abruzzo makes a statement that I think bears repeating on this blog:

Contrary to its name and to what many believe, the nonprofit sector is not non businesslike; in fact, compared to government and the commercial sector, nonprofits are better managed and more efficient. Yet, by providing services that would otherwise be unaffordable in the marketplace, the sector relies on contributions and grants and it is this that makes the sector vulnerable during the financial crisis.

Bravo, Mr. Abruzzo! This is the truth, people. Nonprofts are created to fill a gap. That gap can range from a social services gap to a gap in opportunity to access certain resources or even a personal gap left in one’s family after a person passes away from a specific cause. The point is that nonprofits fill a gap that otherwise would not be filled by the government or private sector. As Mr. Abruzzo suggests, many of the services provided by nonprofits are unaffordable in the marketplace and thus the sector must rely on generosity to succeed.

Which brings me to my first point of this entry – please try to continue to send your weekly, monthly, or annual donations to your favorite charities! I’m not asking you to go out and find a new charity and start making donations to it (though if you’re in the business of donating money to new charities, let me know and I can hook you up with some good ones in Morris, Monmouth, and Mercer Counties). What I am saying, though, is that if you can afford to continue your existing donations to your favorite nonprofit organizations, please do so.

My second point in writing this entry is to reiterate a point that Mr. Abruzzo makes in his op-ed, namely that the nonprofit sector is not non businesslike. In other words, nonprofit does not mean “no profit!” In fact, nonprofit organizations have begun using the term not-for-profit instead of nonprofit to describe their business activities. The basic difference between a for-profit organization and a not-for-profit organization is that for-profit generate profits which can be distributed back to its shareholders, not-for-profits are not allowed to do this as per IRS regulations. That’s the difference in a nutshell.

Do not expect a not-for-profit company to expect not to make money on its activities. In fact, you should expect the opposite. The best not-for-profit organizations are financially healthy despite the current economy since they are built on a fiscally responsible framework made for success. I’m glad that Mr. Abruzzo kept that point in his op-ed. The world needs to know that a good not-for-profit organization should generate profits and even bank some of those profits. A good not-for-profit organization will not, however, break the law and redistribute those profits to their shareholders.

Remember this if you ever deal with a not-for-profit company!

No Longer the Province Archon for New Jersey

Joe — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:41:37 +0000

Last month I made the decision to step down from my biggest volunteer role with Sigma Pi Fraternity. Since August 2006 I’ve served as the Province Archon (Regional Director) for New Jersey for Sigma Pi Fraternity. It is a huge job that has so many details and points of interest that to list them all here would take forever. Briefly, a Province Archon has to visit his chapters once per semester (there are 8 groups in New Jersey), hold a workshop for the entire state each year, organize regional alumni events, attend nationwide events, and (of course) help to mentor the young leaders around the state.

It was a very rewarding job, but a very time consuming one. I really liked giving presentations at the workshops and making the visits to my chapters, but with increased responsibility at my job and the local college assigning me more courses to teach as an Adjunct Professor, I was no longer able to give this volunteer position the attention that I feel it deserves.

There is a great new Province Archon in New Jersey and he’s going to do an amazing job. I’m still involved with my fraternity as a Trustee on our national Educational Foundation. The goal, as always, is to rise to the top of the Foundation and serve as its Chairman at some point in the near future. It is in this position that I believe I can affect the greatest change on the fraternity as I work to increase donations and build our national endowment to a level where we can begin to reverse the recent trend in national fraternities of raising their membership fees. I want my fraternity to stay affordable for all of the current undergraduates and all of the potential new members who have yet to enter college. It’s going to be fun!

The NJ Province Scholarship Established

Joe — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 04:29:00 +0000

A few weeks back (early December), I wrote a post talking about a scholarship fund that I helped establish for brothers of Sigma Pi Fraternity at Monmouth University. Well, I’m at it again, but this time on a bit of a bigger scale.

I’m proud and excited to announce the creation of The NJ Province Scholarship Fund with the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation. This fund will award an annual scholarship to a deserving brother of Sigma Pi Fraternity who attends school in New Jersey. The exact criteria for the award is listed below:

The NJ Province Scholarship will be awarded to an active, full-time member of any of the active chapters located in the state of New Jersey. This award will recognize the initiated member who most exemplifies the ideals of Sigma Pi through academic excellence, chapter leadership, philanthropic service, and community involvement.

I’m very excited to be working on this fund for many reasons, not the least of which is my own history with student loan debt. If one of my legacies in life can be that I helped start a fund that helped one more kid afford going to college in America’s most expensive state, then I’ll be happy with that legacy.

At this time, we are in the process of raise funds for the scholarship. We’re grateful and happy to take donations in any amount from alumni, friends, family, and local businesses who believe in making college more affordable for New Jersey students. If you’re interested in making a tax-deductible donation to this fund, please contact me and I’ll be more than happy to assist you.