Well done, Jena!
As for starting your own foundation - it will be a bit different in the US but some principles are universal. Basically, if there are ten foundations each dealing with the same issue, then that is ten infrastructure costs, ten lots of registration costs etc. Or one foundation - and economies of scale can mean that the money is used more efficiently and a lot more can be done with more profile.
I used to do a lot of work for a charity. Another woman who used to be one of our workers left the group and started her own foundation. We found that fundraising was more difficult for us and also for her; the volunteer base halved; media had a more difficult time trying to work out who was who, and who was funding what. It was a real headache. Both foundations still exist, but hers is doing little more than providing information on the internet these days, it's faded back to nothing.
Teamwork is always a better way to go. And charities do not need to be in competition with one another. In fact, we used to have a combined charities event in Sydney, the networking experience was marvellous. Our little charity got to work as a team with the big players, we learned a lot and got to piggyback on some really useful publicity opportunities. The thing is - people will donate to charity anyway. Some will donate to cancer charities, some to MS, some to dyslexia - it all depends mostly on what moves people. The cancer dollar is not stealing from the MS dollar, different people fund these. So the cancer people can be supportive of the MS people and vice versa - it all goes to help people. Being able to lose that sense of competition between charities was marvellously freeing.
Marg
