Jones said that after touring 162 Broadway, he came to a certain conclusion: If there was no redevelopment there, the city still would have condemned the building and demolished it, as an unsafe structure.

A portion of the ground floor, which had been home to a commercial tenant until late in 2007, was in the best shape, but the rest of the building was suffering from a lack of maintenance, he said. There were holes in the walls, ceiling, roof and windows, which had allowed rain to enter, deteriorating the structure further, and the items and materials that had been stored there were literally moldering where they sat.

Yeah…that’s not “blight” at all! Ha! What was most disturbing about this situation was the way that Brown tried to piggyback on the the MTOTSA folks – people who had a real gripe with eminent domain abuse. But (dare I say this), the legal system actually worked in this process! The MTOTSA organization won their battle against Long Branch (as they should have) and Brown lost his battle (as he should have). There is justice in this system!

For more background on this situation and some interesting comments from guests to this blog, feel free to visit a previous post on the subject.

It costs more to acquire new donors than to retain them, experts say. But churning through donors also makes it harder to woo benefactors. “Donors don’t want to be funding fundraising,” says Sargeant. “They want to be funding the work you’re trying to do.”

And they’re demanding much more accountability from the nonprofits they bankroll. If they don’t get it, they walk, says Penelope Burk, president of the fundraising consultancy Cygnus and Associates.

This is it – this is what the nonprofit industry comes down to. First, are you asking for someone to make a donation that goes to a cause or goes towards paying for salaries? Second, are you willing to explain your expenses and why money is put in certain places as opposed to others? Third, are you doing what you actually said you would be doing?

The answers to these three questions are why I donate to the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation. When I donate to the SPEF, I am giving a tax-deductible donation to two specific funds (both of my choosing) that are managed by people I know on a first-name basis and can e-mail at 1:00pm and receive a personal response by 2:00pm. These funds are under the oversight of a Board where I know many of the members on a first-name basis and have many of the cell phone numbers in my phone.

That level of trust is hard to come by in the nonprofit sector.

I helped put these two funds together and I know where each dollar is spent. I know how much of the fund’s earnings are spent on administrative expenses and I know how much goes back to the overall end-user and it what forms (scholarships for the undergraduate fraternity brothers). At any time I can pick up the phone and call the President of the SPEF and have a discussion with him.

There’s a level of trust and reliability there that you cannot build very easily. Hell, my own company is a nonprofit and I’ve yet to donate or invest any money with them! I’ll be changing that in the New Year, but it has taken me the better part of 16 months as an employee to even reach that level of comfort.

So be sure that you know the places that you’re donating to and be sure that you know where the money is being spent. And hey, if you feel like you can’t make an impact with any organization, then donate to the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation! It’s a good group with a good cause which I’d be more than happy to talk to any of you about!