T A B L E__T A L K Discuss your favorite kinds of stock and what makes them great in Table Talk's Business and Personal Finance area R E C E N T L Y The reluctant capitalist By Heather Chaplin Salon's Reluctant Capitalist looks at the knotty problem of what to do when you've won $195 million on the lottery (05/22/98) The reluctant capitalist By Heather Chaplin From red to green (05/15/98) Baby bulls By Heather Chaplin Young turks ride high on the booming stock market (04/15/98) Greener pastures By Jenn Shreve Out of the growing glut of finance mags, one zine is poised to capture the expanding market of young investors (04/15/98) The Quicken and the deadbeat By Andrew Leonard How Intuit and Microsoft are saving us all from bankruptcy and crushing personal debt. Or not (04/09/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money archives		In the increasingly competitive quest for dollars, charity organizations are looking for ways to find that magic motivational appeal. - - - - - - - - - BY KEVIN KELLEHER Nonprofits hungry for new funds might take a close look at the bouquet of media tributes to Frank Sinatra that continue to pour forth. Ever since Sinatra died, no one seems eager to unfurl the mantle of pampered self-absorption that hung over his image for decades. Gone is Sinatra the Spoiled, who punched journalists, consorted with underworld rogues and -- so the story goes -- ordered a plate of fried eggs in a hotel and ate them off a prostitute's belly. In its place, we have Sinatra the Beneficent, who quietly helped out friends like Judy Garland during their rough spells, left $150 million to help abused children and -- so the story goes -- saved a young girl's life by paying for her cancer treatment after her mother penned a desperate appeal to Ol' Blue Eyes. This is fine with me. It stands above the posthumous rehabilitation of celebrities who did nothing to deserve it. And it is different from the efforts of robber barons like Andrew Carnegie who tried to philanthropize themselves out from under the shameful exploitation that built their fortunes. There's something about the image of the kinder, gentler Sinatra that appeals on the most basic psychological level: a parable of self-redemption through altruism. And as any self-respecting fund-raiser knows, it's this basic psychology, more than any tax law, that drives the economy of philanthropy. "All of us, whether we're Bill Gates or a regular Joe, have a strong tendency to selfishness. We need something to offset that," explains Michael O'Neill, creative director of the University of San Francisco's Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management. "So we try to do something that makes us feel like we're a good person." Every year, Americans give about $100 billion to charities, churches and other philanthropic institutions, about one dollar for every four they put into savings. It's a transfer of money that grows more frequent as our sense of economic well-being improves. In the early 1990s, donations to nonprofits rose about 2 or 3 percent a year. But since 1995, when the middle class began to feel the economic boom, it's been growing by 8 percent a year. But the transfer isn't as selfless as we may think. In exchange for our money and often our time, charities let us help fix something we feel isn't right. It's like buying into a mutual fund of morality -- a very personal finance. "Charity giving is an exchange of values," O'Neill says. "It's all about reaching into our value systems and connecting with our feelings of what's important." All of this is more than idle intellectualization for nonprofits. In a fiercely competitive marketplace, knowing what gets people to give is at the forefront of their business strategy. Increasingly, charities are looking for ways to appeal to the motivations of the American consumer. "We sit them down and ask them who is their target and what they want them to hear just like we do for any client," says Adam Kaufman, an account executive at the San Francisco advertising firm Anderson & Lembke. It's the wanting-to-hear part that's different. Anderson & Lembke ran a successful campaign for Goodwill that asked questions like, "Do you really need that Miata with your new triplets? Or those suits after your sex-change operation?" The ads operated on a kind of conspicuous consumption in reverse. There are other signs that charity is going media: Some of the bigger nonprofits like the Ford Foundation or the W.K. Kellogg Foundation are expanding their public relations offices to tout their accomplishments. Nearly every conference for nonprofits now has seminars geared at finding the words and images that resonate inside the hearts of donors. Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy is devoting its annual symposium this summer to "The Language and Rhetoric of Fundraising." The images being plied by nonprofits aren't terribly surprising: our world at risk -- its children, its culture or its environment -- but with the hope of healing or at least of providing comfort. Charity ads are more likely to be populated with the elderly and the young, frequently smiling and given to much more body contact than the average American. There are no cola wars here, no "Got Milk?"-like unhappy endings. A favorite theme of the major nonprofits these days is how they make a difference. The Red Cross has added a museum of its accomplishments to its Web site. And the United Way launched an ad campaign last year with the slogan "The Power of U" that it says, "lets those associated with the United Way feel good about what they do, and reassures donors that their contributions are spent wisely." The campaign helped the United Way to a record year of $3.25 billion in contributions. Are nonprofits becoming as crass as Madison Avenue? "The for-profit sector doesn't have any monopoly on manipulation," O'Neill says. "But are these ads from nonprofits manipulative or are they providing me an opportunity to meet my needs?" SALON | May 29, 1998 Kevin Kelleher writes for theStreet.com and the Industry Standard.