FOUNDATION CENTER NETWORK DAYS, PART TWO: RESOURCES FOR CHALLENGING QUESTIONS

The Foundation Center offers an “Ask Us” librarian chat service Monday through Wednesday, 9:30 am - 8:00 pm, Thursday and Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm (Eastern Time). Questions can also be submitted by email. They answered 4,000 chat & email questions in 2010.

A good place to start before asking a question is the Grantspace Knowledge Base, which replaces the old Foundationcenter.org FAQ. It includes tips on how to get started with proposal writing, starting a nonprofit, charitable statistics, and fiscal sponsorship. Fiscal sponsorship is when an individual or organization that does not have 501(c) (3) status partners with one that does. This increases the potential grant pool by a factor of at least 10, although there is usually a 5-10% fee. The new site Fiscalsponsordirectory lets you search for fiscal sponsors by state or area of interest.

In these challenging economic times, the Foundation Center librarians often get questions from people who need help for themselves, rather than getting a grant for their organization. Health and disability needs are the most common. If they need help right away, United Way’s 211 service is a good place to refer them. Benefits.gov offers easy access to government assistance programs. It asks you a series of questions, then gives you a list of assistance you may be eligible for. This makes it a good complement for the Foundation Center databases, since they do not include any government grants or programs. Ed.gov is a good site for adults returning to school or looking for vocational training. For people with disabilities, www.disabilityresources.org has funding information for assistive technology, vocational rehabilitation, and health care.

Although for-profit businesses are generally not eligible for grants from foundations, the Foundation Center offers links on where to get started for business loans and other assistance. Social Enterprise, which combines a social mission with business methods, is a hot trend these days. These are some good links that the librarians recommend to get started.

Nonprofits may need help with legal issues from time to time. The Nonprofit Law Blog is written by attorneys who cover topics like governance, fiscal sponsorship, forms, and intellectual property. If they want to know what to pay their new residence supervisor, the Economic Research Institute has a salary calculator that can be refined by state or zip code. If a nonprofit needs statistics in order to discover giving trends, the Foundation Center has some, as does the Center for Charitable Statistics and the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University.

So, if you have a real foundation-related stumper, the Foundation Center librarians will be happy to help. I have contacted them a few times--once for a scan from a publication in their library, once to find out if they could recommend a title or not, and they were very helpful.


--Andrea @Central

MINITEX REFERENCE REFERRAL

Minitex Reference Referral is a service that helps with questions that can't be answered with your library's resources. The 4 librarians on staff will take questions from public, academic or special libraries.

Reference Referral will do the following things to answer your queries:

• Search all University of Minnesota resources, including databases.


• Make trips to The Minnesota Historical Society and Hennepin County libraries.


• Contact experts and other libraries, either in Minnesota or nation-wide.
  
  

The number of questions they receive has been going down due to the Internet, but the ones they do get are harder. How long it takes to get an answer varies by how difficult the question is. Just like SPPL, they do not give legal, medical, or tax advice or appraisals on collectibles.

Please do the following when submitting queries:

• Let them know what sources you have already consulted.


• If you know a resource is available at the University, please suggest it.


• Specify if it is a rush request, or if it is not needed after a certain date.

Questions may be submitted by phone, email, or through the Mylibrary portal. You need to create a username and password for Mylibrary, but then you can go back and check on the status of the question online. Why not create your account today so you'll be ready when the time comes? You can then browse and see all the questions your SPPL colleagues have submitted.

--Andrea

Researching the Candidates

This webinar was given by Kristen Clark, who works for Minitex and the University of Minnesota libraries. She discussed various websites that can help voters look behind the headlines and political ads currently running on television and radio.

One of the sites profiled was www.congress.org/election. This site looks at elections at various levels and provides key candidate positions. For current Congressional members, it also provides legislative voting history. This site includes a link where you can enter your address and zip code to see which candidates are running for Congressional seats in your district. The link will provide a profile of the candidates, where they stand on various issues, and if they accepted any PAC contributions.

The League of Women Voters website, also provides a custom voting guide which uses your address and zip code, but this site includes candidate information for local elections in addition to Presidential and Congressional candidate information. The local information includes judicial races, Soil and Water Conservation district races and any Minnesota Constitutional Amendments which may appear on your ballot.

Factcheck monitors the accuracy of the candidates’ television ads, news release and speeches. It also provides sources and relevant articles supporting a particular point of view as well as an archive of stories Factcheck has already done.

For a fun look at the Presidential candidates’ statements, see PolitiFact. This site, from the St Petersburg Times, also monitors the accuracy of the candidates’ claims, but with interesting graphics. Was Obama’s last statement “mostly true” or was it rated “liar, lair, pants on fire?” Find out with the Truth-O-Meter. Was McCain’s latest statement a half flip or a full flop? Find out with the Flip-O-Meter.

Want to know who is providing funding to particular candidate’s campaign? Try FEC or Opensecrets. The FEC (Federal Elections Commission) site focuses on campaign contributions from individuals and committees while the Open Secrets site includes information on campaign contributions from PACs and Lobbyists.

If you are more concerned about issues than finances, try Ontheissues. This site ranks the Presidential candidates on a variety if issues from the economy to education, foreign trade, immigration, and more. This site (along with Minnesota Public Radio) also has “select-a-candidate” quiz. Simply click “support” or “oppose” for each of the issues listed, and the site will tell you which candidate most closely matches your views or opinions. The On the Issues site focuses on the Presidential candidates while the MPR site includes the Presidential, Senate and House candidates for Minnesota.

Finally, if you would like suggestions for other voting related web sites to visit, or would like to view the Powerpoint presentation for this webinar, check here. The University of Minnesota created this site to help their students become more informed, better educated voters. It includes all the web sites previously mentioned as well as many others. There are also links to the webs sites of some of the Presidential candidates and their various political parties.

--Karen H.

TAX TIME INVESTMENT REFRESHER

At this time of year, people often need information on stock and other investment prices on a certain day for their tax returns. This is just a refresher on some sources that we don't use very often, but when you need them, you really need them.

Bigcharts and Yahoo! Finance. These free Internet sources have historical stock prices, but you won't find anything if the company has changed its name, merged with another company, or dissolved.
Daily Stock Price Record. This print reference source has daily stock prices going back to 1962 (New York Stock Exchange), 1967 (American Stock Exchange), and 1968 (NASDAQ). If you don't know the exchange it was traded on, you have to check all three. The NASDAQ book also has mutual funds in the front part, industrial stocks (what we call just "stocks") are in the back. The DSPR is located in the front of Nicholson by the park.
Capital Changes Reports. Sometimes patrons will ask for information on "stock splits". This resource lists these and any other history that effects a company's stock, such as mergers, name changes, and dissolution. It goes as far back as the beginning of the company's existence. This history can be helpful background information when you're having trouble finding a stock price. Capital Changes Reports is located on the Financials shelf in Nicholson. For fun, check out the extremely long entries on Enron and Worldcom.
Directory of Obsolete Securities. What if you are having a lot of trouble finding a stock price and you think the company might no longer exist? You can't prove a negative, right? Well, with this resource, sometimes you can. We recently had someone ask for a stock price for a company a month after the company has ceased to exist. You don't need this book often, but when you do, it's a lifesaver. It's kept in the Phone Room.
Investment Statistics Locator. What if you are asked for a more unusual type of financial statistic, such as bonds, silver, pork bellies futures, or foreign currency? Well, this handy book tells you where to to go for all these and more. Each entry has abbreviations that indicate where to look and if the information is daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. The abbreviations are explained in the front of the book. The Investment Statistics Locator is shelved in call number order in Nicholson.


--Andrea

PS. If stocks are worthless as securities, they still can be worth something to collectors if they are interesting or beautiful. This is called scripophily.