Corporate Training That’s Really Mickey Mouse
Financial Planning for the Next Century
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Melinda Sherwood was published in U.S. 1
Newspaper on
October 20, 1999. All rights reserved.
Women in Philanthropy: Nancy Kieling
Something is happening in the world of philanthropy:
women are becoming major players. It’s not that they haven’t been
consummate do-gooders in the past, but women, for the first time,
can also be major donors, says Nancy Kieling, director of the
Princeton Area Community Foundation. "The women who are now in
their 40s and 50s are women who have been at the leading edge and
just behind the leading edge of the women’s movements," says
Kieling,
"and that has brought them into the workplace and they’ve been
there long enough that a significant group have reasonable incomes
of their own. As a result, their relationship to their money is
changing."
Kieling is a panelist at "Women: The Force Behind Philanthropy
in the 21st Century," a teleconference sponsored by Merrill Lynch
on Tuesday, October 26, at 6 p.m., which will be broadcast to all
branch offices. Other guest speakers on the panel include Merrill
Lynch’s Donna Bandelloni, of the Nonprofit Financial Services,
Susan Cruz, resident vice president of Merrill Lynch’s Lexington
office, Jennifer McPartlin, vice president of the Private
Portfolio Group/Trust Portfolio Group, and William P. Burks,
also of Princeton Area Community Foundation. Call 609-683-8683.
With their own income, Kieling expects women to show a more
independent streak in giving, which will be a definite break from the
past. "There is some anecdotal evidence of women who had inherited
wealth from a husband or a father and used it in a way that he would
have, by making a gift to her father’s alma mater instead of her own
alma mater, for example," says Kieling.
At Princeton University, in fact, the development department has taken
it upon themselves to learn more about why women open their purses.
The university’s first class to include women — the Class of 1973
— is coming of age, so to speak, for major gift-giving.
Michele Minter, associate director of leadership gifts at Princeton, says
the department has just completed two thirds of its year-long focus
group studies on women in various cities. "Our motivation for
doing this is that Princeton went coed 27 years ago," she says,
"so some of the women are starting to reach a level of seniority
in the alumni community, and we’re trying to figure out what that
means, not just as donors but as volunteers."
The giving patterns of Princeton alumnae, says Minter, are in line
with what national studies seem to indicate about women. Specifically:
women do not respond as positively towards competitive giving as men
do. "We are finding that competition is not an effective a
fundraising motivator for women," says Minter, "like saying
that this is a goal and we have to beat the previous class."
It’s a personal touch that seems to win women over. "It’s who’s
doing the asking," says Minter. "They tend to give more money
to organizations that they feel involved with, where they volunteered,
for example."
Similarly, women also expect a more intimate relationship with their
gift — they tend to want a degree of control over how it is
allocated. This presents a challenge for many universities and
fundraising organization that rely on nonspecific giving. Minter is
not sure how Princeton, which is on the last stretch of a five-year
campaign to raise $900 million (it’s at the $866 million mark), will
incorporate the new knowledge. "We’re going to present this
information to the Board of Trustees and think about what implications
it has long term," she says. "Princeton has a huge annual
giving operation, that’s unspecified gifts, and it’s not that women
don’t support that, but they seem more supportive if they know how the
money will be used, for a specific project. Financial aid was an area
where they all were interested, for example."
The Princeton studies are consistent with what Kieling has seen in
her own organization, which just started the Women and Girls Fund,
a vehicle for projects as varied as a battered women’s shelter or
a summer program in math and science for middle school girls. "If
women can come together around a common cause and get something done
collaboratively, they enjoy that," says Kieling, who holds a BA
in history from the University of Wisconsin, Class of 1971. Although
the professional organization spearheading the new fund, Women in
Development, has incentives in place for women to give cash, Kieling
says she will take whatever they can give, whether it’s their time
or money: "I live by he motto that one makes a gift it’s a good
day in philanthropy."
— Melinda Sherwood
Top Of Page
Network Security
Hackers, disgruntled employees, and industrial spies
pose a challenge for network engineers, and the relatively small
number
of network personnel poses a serious problem for many companies, says
Colin Schreiber, manager of educational services at NextGen
Internet. "There’s a very big shortage of qualified network
personnel,
and a big gap in skills among those who know network security and
its complexities," says Schreiber, an instructor for "Securing
Your Corporate Assets: Risks and Solutions of conducting
E-Business,"
on Friday, October 22, at 8:30 a.m. at NextGen’s office at 311
Enterprise
Drive. Call 609-419-0513. Free.
The risks: unauthorized users in a company’s computer system or the
pirating of E-mails on the Internet. "It happens all the
time,"
says Schreiber, who holds a BS from Rider University, Class of 1985,
and worked in South Africa as an operations manager in a consumer
electronics company before joining NextGen. "Hackers see a gap
in the company’s firewall and for the fun of it go in and cause all
havoc. There’s industrial spies that would go in and gain a
competitive
edge and then there’s disgruntled employees who have access to the
network and they could be a potential risk to the company."
NextGen introduces trainees to a variety of assessment techniques,
whereby they can examine the security of a company’s network, and
to a variety of security solutions that include both policy and
technology.
"The top security companies in the world are always trying to
better their own encryption — they want to better themselves and
be ahead of the hacker community," says Schreiber. "They will
always be pushing the envelope." And so too the hackers and spies.
Top Of Page
Corporate Training That’s Really Mickey Mouse
Say the word "Disney" and most people think
fairy dust and enchanted castles, but Disney is not all kids’ stuff.
Orlando’s Disneyland employs over 55,000 "cast members"
(Disney-speak
for employees), who run everything from retail stores to the Magic
Kingdom’s own utility company. As corporations go, it doesn’t get
much larger or more diversified that Disney, and it takes more than
a talking mouse to hold it all together, says Craig Taylor,
director of the company’s business programs. "The wonderful
experience
that you have here doesn’t happen by chance," he says. "It’s
a very well thought out, engineered performance. We are helping people
to have magical memories and a fantastical experience, but at the
same time we are a large, serious, focused business."
During the "quality assessment" era of the 1980s, that
business
gained a reputation for its service, and consequently did what any
gigantic, self-respecting corporation would do — it set up a
professional
training organization, known as the Disney Institute, to promulgate
its values, and to generate a new source of revenue. At the request
of the New Jersey Chamber, a Disney cast member comes to the Forsgate
Country Club in Monroe on Tuesday, October 16, to share the Disney
approach to leadership, service, and customer loyalty. Cost: $395.
Call 732-329-9642.
"We’re going to take a peak behind the curtain and show how we
create the magic," says Taylor. The Disney philosophy: The
frontline
is the bottomline. Even Disney executives occasionally meander up
and down Disneyland’s Main Street — an amicable, helpful,
suit-and-tie
character in this fantasy-come-to-life world. "Everybody is part
of that same positive Disney culture," says Taylor. "It’s
everybody’s job to be true to the vision to make sure we are all
contributing
to that."
Although he holds a BA in psychology from the University of Florida,
Class of 1974, Taylor now practices "guestology:" the art
of knowing what the customer wants. "When we make business
decisions,
we always ask ourself how that would impact the guests," says
Taylor. "We’ve learned that the heart of driving our business
is that a wonderful experience keeps people coming back. But we also
know that what contributes to that is our cast members have a good
experience — they have a great employment experience because of
the kind of leadership they get."
Good leadership, Disney-style, begins with good story-telling
naturally.
It’s part of the culture to pass down the company’s "magic
moments,"
brilliant strokes of customer service genius, like the time when an
employee sent chicken soup up to a honeymooner sick in bed, or enticed
a scared child who was the designated ringbearer at a Disney World
wedding to walk down the aisle in exchange for a private meeting with
Mickey Mouse. "We perpetuate the culture by telling stories,"
says Taylor, who will be spending the holiday this year in search
of more magic moments: "I’ll take a shift in Epcot or MGM studios
because we always want to stay in touch with our guests."
Top Of Page
Financial Planning for the Next Century
A single money card holds all of your assets: checking
and saving accounts, money market, stock portfolio. When it’s time
to apply for a mortgage, your bottomline is only a card swipe away.
A lender grants or denies your application on the spot.
Welcome to the not-so-distant future, where technology makes it
possible
to review a person’s entire financial portfolio online. Some may think
it’s a luxury, others a curse. Either way, now is the time to create
a unified financial plan, says Vince Tarduogno, director of
marketing for financial planning at Merrill Lynch. "Over the next
15 to 20 years you’re going to see the boomers moving into their
retirement
years and it’s conceivable that they’re going to spend as much time
in retirement as they spent working," he says. "It means that
they’re going to have to accumulate assets that will last upwards
of 30 years. People have to take a look at all of their goals, they
have to understand where they are today."
Merrill Lynch is offering "Financial Planning for the Next
Century,"
a free seminar, on Saturday, October 23, at 10 a.m. at the office
on 100 Franklin Corner Road. Call 888-243-1764.
Longer retirement is just one of the trends Merrill Lynch’s
researchers
say will define the next century. Tarduogno, who holds a degree from
Queens College, Class of 1972, and has worked for Merrill Lynch for
24 years, also anticipates less hand-holding from governments and
corporations. "There is going to be more responsibility placed
on the individual for their financial life," he says. "In
the past, most people were covered by a defined benefit plan —
a pension plan; today, most people are covered by 401K plans where
they are responsible for defining how much money they put in. When
they retire, they’re responsible for the management of those
monies."
With greater independence, comes greater responsibility — and
with all the choices, it may be necessary to have a financial planner.
"In the past they had conventional mortgages, but today there’s
a whole slew of different types of mortgages depending on the
individual’s
needs," says Tarduogno.
Finally, says Tarduogno, inflation is going to make it necessary to
start saving earlier. "You really have coming up a new
babyboom,"
he says, "which started in the mid-1980s, and they face growing
demands in terms of meeting education costs, which continue to
accelerate
above the rate of inflation, and having to provide care for their
parents."
New technology gives people an opportunity to put all their assets
under one roof. "Today an individual can get a comprehensive plan
for a reasonable cost and get access to modeling tools, so that they
could go in and see `what if I increased the amount I give to my
401K’,"
says Tarduogno. "Your accounts could all be interrelated and you
have a card that is tied to those accounts, and every time you
purchase
something, you could earn travel rewards. There’s really a chance
to simplify things and get piece of mind."
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