November 6, 2023 • 14 mins
When we think of contributing to a cause we care about…often, that means writing a check. The generosity of donors keeps non-profits alive. But behind the scenes, what’s the best use of those resources? Our guest is Sam Marks, CEO of FJC, a foundation offering donor advised funds to amplify the work and passion of donors and non-profifts. For more, visit FJC.org.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina delRio, a weekly conversation about fitness,
health and happenings in our community onone oh six point seven light FM.
Good morning, and thanks for listeningto get connected. When we think of
contributing to a cause we care about, often that means writing a check,
small or large, and the generosityof donors is what keeps nonprofits alive.
(00:25):
But behind the scenes, what isthe best use of those resources when facing
complex challenges. Our guest is focusedon helping nonprofits and donors use their financial
resources effectively and strategically. Our guestis Sam Marx, CEO of FJC,
a foundation of philanthropic funds and along time fixture in the New York City
philanthropic landscape. FJC acts as anintermediary between the financial services sector and the
(00:50):
nonprofit sector, enabling nonprofits and theirsupporters to be focused on their mission rather
than be burdened with the details ofoperations and compliance. The website is f
JC dot org. Sam Marks,thank you for being on the show.
Thanks so much for having me.Happy to be here, and there's a
lot packed into that introduction, soI thought we'd start with something a little
simple so your story. You havea background in nonprofit in finance. Can
(01:15):
you talk about your journey to becomethe CEO and as path you've taken.
Yes. So, I've been ina nonprofit sector my entire career, either
as a practitioner or as a supporter. I started out in my twenties as
an educator and youth developer. Iran a youth development program today is called
(01:37):
Breakthrough New York. Back then itwas called Summer Bridge and that was my
first experience starting up a nonprofit.Running a nonprofit, it was work that
I loved doing, and after graduateschool I got more involved in affordable housing,
community economic development, and I foundthat a lot of the drivers for
that part of the nonprofit sector hadto do with money, how projects were
(02:01):
financed, public private partnerships, arrangingthe financing for complex things that happen,
and I started to think a lotabout that intersection between the nonprofit sector and
the money. Following a dint ina nonprofit in the Bronx developing affordable housing,
I worked at a bank for severalyears. I also worked at a
(02:23):
community development financial institution, which isa sort of nonprofit bank that lends to
other non profits. And I'm justpassionate about the nonprofit sector and want to
figure out ways to make nonprofits moreeffective and to really operate well as businesses.
So what is fjc's mission and whatdo you do? Then? FBAC
(02:46):
works with donors and folks that haveresources and helps them arrange those funds.
We sponsored donor advice funds, whichare almost like little mini foundations under our
own love. We bring efficiency andexpertise to our donors and we help them
get their money where they're interested inhaving that money go. Would they be
(03:08):
funds that are combined from multiple donorsfor one source or does everybody have sort
of a portfolio of things they wantto focus on and it's individual donors and
a bunch of smaller packages sort ofspeak. So the basic idea behind a
donor about its fund is anyone canopen an account, and you can open
account with as little as five thousanddollars. We have accounts that are a
(03:30):
few thousand dollars. We have accountsthat are tens of millions and everything in
between. When you donate to afoundation like FJC, it's a tax deductible
donation. You've given your money away. It becomes our asset, but we
hold the money in an account withyour name on it, and you retain
recommendation privileges over two aspects. Oneis how those dollars are invested for growth
(03:57):
so that next year you have moremoney to give away that you had this
year. And then you can alsorecommend a grant to basically any charity in
the United States and even some inother countries. We do some international grant
mating as well. So donors cometo us often when there's a tax reason
why they have to give away abig chunk of money, but they don't
(04:18):
know exactly where they wanted to goall at once, and you know,
they prefer to put it in adonor advice on account, watch it grow
tax free, and then give awaymore money in the future. We're often
solving for a timing difference between whena donor has to give money away when
they want to actually have their favoritenonprofits receive it. So we have as
(04:41):
you know, perhaps on this show, we talk with nonprofits in the city,
and many of them receive large donationsof unrestricted funds, whether that's by
someone's a state, or just directly. The idea being that nonprofit can decide
where those funds go. What isthe opportunity perhaps is being missed by that
simple transaction, and what are youdoing with funds that you are employing with
nonprofits. One of the things thatwe do to invest our funds. Our
(05:06):
donors can choose to invest in stocksor bonds and money market funds and we've
got playing Vanilla Wall Street products.But we also offer an opportunity for our
donors to invest in a loan poolthat makes loans to nonprofits. So a
nonprofit may have a large capital bringsor a large contract with the city or
(05:29):
state, and very often those nonprofitsare out there in the trenches. They're
getting the work done, they're providingthe services, and the city to the
state may be very late in payingnonprofits for the work that they've done.
So we take dollars in their DAPaccounts, we pull them together and we
bridge these receivables and help nonprofits keepthe lights on, keep their programs going
(05:53):
while they're waiting for the money tocome in. So we do a lot
of kind of financial intermediation these timinggaps for their own profits. Our guest
is Sam Marks, the CEO ofFGAC. The website is FJC dot org.
FJC, a Foundation of Philanthropic Funds, is a boutique public charity that
offers a diverse menu of philanthropic servicesto a range of stakeholders. You're listening
(06:15):
to get connected on one oh sixpoint seven light FM. I'm na del
rio. So a couple of projectsyou've worked on the Fortune Society. Can
you talk about your partnership with them? Yes. The Fortune Society is a
really amazing nonprofit organization that works exclusivelywith people coming out of incarceration, helping
them get back on their feet,find jobs, get the counseling they need,
(06:40):
and find housing. In fact,they're a major developer and owner of
supportive housing housing with services for peoplecoming out of prison. One of the
bottlenecks that the Fortune Society experiences inbuilding more housing for this population is they
know how to assemble the financing frompublic and private sources to get these projects
(07:01):
built, but often they have toinvest hundreds of thousands of dollars today in
order to get tens of millions ofdollars from the city and state and private
sources in the future. So wecreated a revolving loan fund for the Fortune
Society. Half of the money camefrom our donors who have don't advise fund
accounts here at f JAC, andhalf the money came from Fortune Society itself.
(07:26):
We arranged the six hundred thousand dollarsfund so they can draw down on
it whenever they need to pay someexpenses to jump start project, and when
the project happens and it's capitalized,they can replenish the fund and recycle it
for their next project. So that'sthe use of film profit dollars that people
don't typically think about. They typicallythink, you know, my philanthropy is
(07:47):
to make grants and you know,help an organization hit their goals to operate
in the black for the year.But you could also use film profit dollars
to help organization be more entrepreneurial,take on more exciting projects that will help
them grow and expand their services inthe future. One more example with one
that perhaps many people are familiar withthe Teneme Museum. You worked with them
(08:11):
as well. Yes, the TenementMuseum one of my favorite nonprofits. I've
been there many times as a asa guest and visitor. The Tenement Museum,
like many nonprofits, really struggled inthe early days of COVID because they
couldn't open their doors and accept visitors, and most of their revenues came from
ticket sale and people actually coming tothe organization. So there was a New
(08:37):
York Times article in April of twentytwenty that talked about the organization's financial struggles.
One of our donors saw this articleand called us up and said,
you know what could we do tohelp? Well, it turned out they
had enormous fixed costs, mainly becauseof a mortgage that was costing them fifty
thousand dollars a month. And ourdonor said, well, couldn't I just
(09:00):
refinance their mortgage with dollars on mydata account? So we looked into it
and we were able to refinance thatmortgage. It had been set up as
a sort of typical mortgage where theywere paying principle and interest every month.
Well, we were able to convertthat mortgage to a one percent interest only
mortgage for five years, saving themuseum about two and a half million dollars
(09:24):
in debt service payments and helping themstabilize and get back on it. Do
you find that, even though youhave a history with working in nonprofits and
finance, there's sort of your learningor discovering novel ways to help people over
time. Well, the nonprofits thatwe work with, they understand the challenges
that their businesses faced, whether it'stat issue because of late payments or a
(09:50):
dearth of capital for them to takeon new exciting projects. The nonprofits really
know where their gaps are. Ithink the challenge for us is donors with
the imagination to put their philanthropic dollarsto work in a way that fills those
gaps. Still, many of ourdonors think about their donor advice fund accounts
as a sort of capital to makesmall grants with. Well, if we
(10:13):
could get more of our donors tothink about, while the dollars are with
us, how it could be investedfor the benefit of nonprofits, we could
really help nonprofit worry less about wheretheir next dollars are coming from. We
could go to the heart of whatmakes these nonprofit businesses challenging and solve some
of their critical problems. So partof your challenge is actually just helping people
(10:37):
your donors reimagine how their philanthropy couldwork, reimagine their philanthropy, and then
making the connection between where the dollarsare sitting with us and these dat accounts
and where the needs are of theseentrepreneurial nonprofits that have a bold, exciting
things they want to do. FJCbegan in nineteen ninety five. How has
(10:58):
do you know how the work hasevolved over that time and how is this
sector growing? The sector is growinga lot. Most of the growth and
donor advised funds are coming from largefinancial service companies that have open dafts in
order to kind of provide that asa product to their clients. So there's
(11:20):
been a huge increase in donor avisedfunds among these large kind of industrial size
financial service companies. But increasingly you'refinding, you know, we and FJC
and others like us that are smallerand a little bit more nimble and more
creative are coming up with these moreinteresting kind of transactional ways to put film
(11:41):
profit dolarge to work that go beyondsimple grant making. And most of the
larger financial service focused organizations they're reallykind of a little bit more cookie cutter
and they're not as created as someof the smaller outfits. And do you
have a specific area of focus orprimary area of focus for the nonprofits you're
(12:03):
working with. We can work withany nonprofit in the US and even some
internationally, So we don't have aparticular programmatic focus. We like to be
responsive to our donors and inspire ourdonors to think more creatively. So you
mentioned the Fortune Society and the TenementMuseum. Are there any other projects coming
up that are really exciting right now? Yeah. We're working with the Ron
(12:28):
and Kerry Molis Foundation on a specialaward program for veteran entrepreneurs. And we're
working with the New York City SmallBusiness Services and New York City Veteran Services
to create a kind of business plancompetition for veteran entrepreneurs that have small businesses
that they're launching. We're really excitedabout that. You also mentioned the project
(12:52):
with the Tenement Museum. The ideain that sense perhaps came from the donor.
Where do the most of the ideascome from. They come from imaginative
donors. Sometimes they come from us. The Veterans Entrepreneurship program came from a
donor who read a report by theCenter for an Urban Future Terrific policy think
(13:13):
tank. So you know, theideas can come from anywhere. It's just
a question of connecting the idea tothe resource and making the transaction happen to
execute it. And what would youlike someone listening to this conversation to take
away from it in regards to theirown charitable giving or investing. I'd like
them to think about, you know, so much philanthropy is reactive. You
(13:37):
get a solicitation in the mail,you know, giving Tuesday happens, and
you're inundated with requests. And Iwould just encourage folks to think a little
bit more long term strategically about theirphilanthropy, to think about their philanthropy almost
like they think about their retirements accountor their other investments. That with a
longer term view and more imagination andcreativity, there's just more empathic than you
(14:03):
can pass. You can find outmore about FJC at FJC dot org.
Sam Mark's the CEO of FJC,a foundation of philanthropic Funds. Thank you
for being on to get connected.Thank you so much. This has been
Get connected with Nina del Rio onone oh six point seven Light FM.
The views and opinions of our guestsdo not necessarily reflect the views of the
(14:26):
station. If you missed any partof our show or want to share it,
visit our website for downloads and podcastsat one O six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina delRio, a weekly conversation about fitness,
health and happenings in our community onone oh six point seven light FM.
Good morning, and thanks for listeningto get connected. When we think of
contributing to a cause we care about, often that means writing a check,
small or large, and the generosityof donors is what keeps nonprofits alive.
(00:25):
But behind the scenes, what isthe best use of those resources when facing
complex challenges. Our guest is focusedon helping nonprofits and donors use their financial
resources effectively and strategically. Our guestis Sam Marx, CEO of FJC,
a foundation of philanthropic funds and along time fixture in the New York City
philanthropic landscape. FJC acts as anintermediary between the financial services sector and the
(00:50):
nonprofit sector, enabling nonprofits and theirsupporters to be focused on their mission rather
than be burdened with the details ofoperations and compliance. The website is f
JC dot org. Sam Marks,thank you for being on the show.
Thanks so much for having me.Happy to be here, and there's a
lot packed into that introduction, soI thought we'd start with something a little
simple so your story. You havea background in nonprofit in finance. Can
(01:15):
you talk about your journey to becomethe CEO and as path you've taken.
Yes. So, I've been ina nonprofit sector my entire career, either
as a practitioner or as a supporter. I started out in my twenties as
an educator and youth developer. Iran a youth development program today is called
(01:37):
Breakthrough New York. Back then itwas called Summer Bridge and that was my
first experience starting up a nonprofit.Running a nonprofit, it was work that
I loved doing, and after graduateschool I got more involved in affordable housing,
community economic development, and I foundthat a lot of the drivers for
that part of the nonprofit sector hadto do with money, how projects were
(02:01):
financed, public private partnerships, arrangingthe financing for complex things that happen,
and I started to think a lotabout that intersection between the nonprofit sector and
the money. Following a dint ina nonprofit in the Bronx developing affordable housing,
I worked at a bank for severalyears. I also worked at a
(02:23):
community development financial institution, which isa sort of nonprofit bank that lends to
other non profits. And I'm justpassionate about the nonprofit sector and want to
figure out ways to make nonprofits moreeffective and to really operate well as businesses.
So what is fjc's mission and whatdo you do? Then? FBAC
(02:46):
works with donors and folks that haveresources and helps them arrange those funds.
We sponsored donor advice funds, whichare almost like little mini foundations under our
own love. We bring efficiency andexpertise to our donors and we help them
get their money where they're interested inhaving that money go. Would they be
(03:08):
funds that are combined from multiple donorsfor one source or does everybody have sort
of a portfolio of things they wantto focus on and it's individual donors and
a bunch of smaller packages sort ofspeak. So the basic idea behind a
donor about its fund is anyone canopen an account, and you can open
account with as little as five thousanddollars. We have accounts that are a
(03:30):
few thousand dollars. We have accountsthat are tens of millions and everything in
between. When you donate to afoundation like FJC, it's a tax deductible
donation. You've given your money away. It becomes our asset, but we
hold the money in an account withyour name on it, and you retain
recommendation privileges over two aspects. Oneis how those dollars are invested for growth
(03:57):
so that next year you have moremoney to give away that you had this
year. And then you can alsorecommend a grant to basically any charity in
the United States and even some inother countries. We do some international grant
mating as well. So donors cometo us often when there's a tax reason
why they have to give away abig chunk of money, but they don't
(04:18):
know exactly where they wanted to goall at once, and you know,
they prefer to put it in adonor advice on account, watch it grow
tax free, and then give awaymore money in the future. We're often
solving for a timing difference between whena donor has to give money away when
they want to actually have their favoritenonprofits receive it. So we have as
(04:41):
you know, perhaps on this show, we talk with nonprofits in the city,
and many of them receive large donationsof unrestricted funds, whether that's by
someone's a state, or just directly. The idea being that nonprofit can decide
where those funds go. What isthe opportunity perhaps is being missed by that
simple transaction, and what are youdoing with funds that you are employing with
nonprofits. One of the things thatwe do to invest our funds. Our
(05:06):
donors can choose to invest in stocksor bonds and money market funds and we've
got playing Vanilla Wall Street products.But we also offer an opportunity for our
donors to invest in a loan poolthat makes loans to nonprofits. So a
nonprofit may have a large capital bringsor a large contract with the city or
(05:29):
state, and very often those nonprofitsare out there in the trenches. They're
getting the work done, they're providingthe services, and the city to the
state may be very late in payingnonprofits for the work that they've done.
So we take dollars in their DAPaccounts, we pull them together and we
bridge these receivables and help nonprofits keepthe lights on, keep their programs going
(05:53):
while they're waiting for the money tocome in. So we do a lot
of kind of financial intermediation these timinggaps for their own profits. Our guest
is Sam Marks, the CEO ofFGAC. The website is FJC dot org.
FJC, a Foundation of Philanthropic Funds, is a boutique public charity that
offers a diverse menu of philanthropic servicesto a range of stakeholders. You're listening
(06:15):
to get connected on one oh sixpoint seven light FM. I'm na del
rio. So a couple of projectsyou've worked on the Fortune Society. Can
you talk about your partnership with them? Yes. The Fortune Society is a
really amazing nonprofit organization that works exclusivelywith people coming out of incarceration, helping
them get back on their feet,find jobs, get the counseling they need,
(06:40):
and find housing. In fact,they're a major developer and owner of
supportive housing housing with services for peoplecoming out of prison. One of the
bottlenecks that the Fortune Society experiences inbuilding more housing for this population is they
know how to assemble the financing frompublic and private sources to get these projects
(07:01):
built, but often they have toinvest hundreds of thousands of dollars today in
order to get tens of millions ofdollars from the city and state and private
sources in the future. So wecreated a revolving loan fund for the Fortune
Society. Half of the money camefrom our donors who have don't advise fund
accounts here at f JAC, andhalf the money came from Fortune Society itself.
(07:26):
We arranged the six hundred thousand dollarsfund so they can draw down on
it whenever they need to pay someexpenses to jump start project, and when
the project happens and it's capitalized,they can replenish the fund and recycle it
for their next project. So that'sthe use of film profit dollars that people
don't typically think about. They typicallythink, you know, my philanthropy is
(07:47):
to make grants and you know,help an organization hit their goals to operate
in the black for the year.But you could also use film profit dollars
to help organization be more entrepreneurial,take on more exciting projects that will help
them grow and expand their services inthe future. One more example with one
that perhaps many people are familiar withthe Teneme Museum. You worked with them
(08:11):
as well. Yes, the TenementMuseum one of my favorite nonprofits. I've
been there many times as a asa guest and visitor. The Tenement Museum,
like many nonprofits, really struggled inthe early days of COVID because they
couldn't open their doors and accept visitors, and most of their revenues came from
ticket sale and people actually coming tothe organization. So there was a New
(08:37):
York Times article in April of twentytwenty that talked about the organization's financial struggles.
One of our donors saw this articleand called us up and said,
you know what could we do tohelp? Well, it turned out they
had enormous fixed costs, mainly becauseof a mortgage that was costing them fifty
thousand dollars a month. And ourdonor said, well, couldn't I just
(09:00):
refinance their mortgage with dollars on mydata account? So we looked into it
and we were able to refinance thatmortgage. It had been set up as
a sort of typical mortgage where theywere paying principle and interest every month.
Well, we were able to convertthat mortgage to a one percent interest only
mortgage for five years, saving themuseum about two and a half million dollars
(09:24):
in debt service payments and helping themstabilize and get back on it. Do
you find that, even though youhave a history with working in nonprofits and
finance, there's sort of your learningor discovering novel ways to help people over
time. Well, the nonprofits thatwe work with, they understand the challenges
that their businesses faced, whether it'stat issue because of late payments or a
(09:50):
dearth of capital for them to takeon new exciting projects. The nonprofits really
know where their gaps are. Ithink the challenge for us is donors with
the imagination to put their philanthropic dollarsto work in a way that fills those
gaps. Still, many of ourdonors think about their donor advice fund accounts
as a sort of capital to makesmall grants with. Well, if we
(10:13):
could get more of our donors tothink about, while the dollars are with
us, how it could be investedfor the benefit of nonprofits, we could
really help nonprofit worry less about wheretheir next dollars are coming from. We
could go to the heart of whatmakes these nonprofit businesses challenging and solve some
of their critical problems. So partof your challenge is actually just helping people
(10:37):
your donors reimagine how their philanthropy couldwork, reimagine their philanthropy, and then
making the connection between where the dollarsare sitting with us and these dat accounts
and where the needs are of theseentrepreneurial nonprofits that have a bold, exciting
things they want to do. FJCbegan in nineteen ninety five. How has
(10:58):
do you know how the work hasevolved over that time and how is this
sector growing? The sector is growinga lot. Most of the growth and
donor advised funds are coming from largefinancial service companies that have open dafts in
order to kind of provide that asa product to their clients. So there's
(11:20):
been a huge increase in donor avisedfunds among these large kind of industrial size
financial service companies. But increasingly you'refinding, you know, we and FJC
and others like us that are smallerand a little bit more nimble and more
creative are coming up with these moreinteresting kind of transactional ways to put film
(11:41):
profit dolarge to work that go beyondsimple grant making. And most of the
larger financial service focused organizations they're reallykind of a little bit more cookie cutter
and they're not as created as someof the smaller outfits. And do you
have a specific area of focus orprimary area of focus for the nonprofits you're
(12:03):
working with. We can work withany nonprofit in the US and even some
internationally, So we don't have aparticular programmatic focus. We like to be
responsive to our donors and inspire ourdonors to think more creatively. So you
mentioned the Fortune Society and the TenementMuseum. Are there any other projects coming
up that are really exciting right now? Yeah. We're working with the Ron
(12:28):
and Kerry Molis Foundation on a specialaward program for veteran entrepreneurs. And we're
working with the New York City SmallBusiness Services and New York City Veteran Services
to create a kind of business plancompetition for veteran entrepreneurs that have small businesses
that they're launching. We're really excitedabout that. You also mentioned the project
(12:52):
with the Tenement Museum. The ideain that sense perhaps came from the donor.
Where do the most of the ideascome from. They come from imaginative
donors. Sometimes they come from us. The Veterans Entrepreneurship program came from a
donor who read a report by theCenter for an Urban Future Terrific policy think
(13:13):
tank. So you know, theideas can come from anywhere. It's just
a question of connecting the idea tothe resource and making the transaction happen to
execute it. And what would youlike someone listening to this conversation to take
away from it in regards to theirown charitable giving or investing. I'd like
them to think about, you know, so much philanthropy is reactive. You
(13:37):
get a solicitation in the mail,you know, giving Tuesday happens, and
you're inundated with requests. And Iwould just encourage folks to think a little
bit more long term strategically about theirphilanthropy, to think about their philanthropy almost
like they think about their retirements accountor their other investments. That with a
longer term view and more imagination andcreativity, there's just more empathic than you
(14:03):
can pass. You can find outmore about FJC at FJC dot org.
Sam Mark's the CEO of FJC,a foundation of philanthropic Funds. Thank you
for being on to get connected.Thank you so much. This has been
Get connected with Nina del Rio onone oh six point seven Light FM.
The views and opinions of our guestsdo not necessarily reflect the views of the
(14:26):
station. If you missed any partof our show or want to share it,
visit our website for downloads and podcastsat one O six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
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