The Central Park Conservancy fundraiser this summer.

Last month, more than 700 tuxedoed and ball-gowned revelers gathered in the Museum of Natural History’s Milstein Hall of Ocean Life for the annual S.L.E. Lupus Foundation gala. As the attendees feasted on black American caviar, Margaret Dowd, the foundation’s executive director, was marveling at something else: the size of the crowd.

The foundation had not seen so many people at its annual gala since 2007. “It’s been very tough the last few years, and we had to cut expenses drastically,” she said. “In 2009, many of our donors said, ‘Our portfolios were really harmed and we have to cut our donations, but we’ll be back.’ And they did come back. This year has been much, much better.”

The benefit raised $2.5 million—a significant jump from the $2.2 million raised at last year’s. Things have not returned to the 2007 level, when the gala’s $3.2 million haul set a national record, which has yet to be topped, for lupus research funds collected at a single event, but the foundation is on track to raise 10 to 12 percent more this year than the previous one. Ms. Dowd added that the nonprofit’s spring luncheon saw such a dramatic spike in attendance this year—a 30 percent increase—that next year they plan to hold it in the Plaza.

In the months after Lehman Brothers collapsed, when it looked like the country’s financial system might fall along with it, the city’s nonprofits, long buoyed by Wall Street successes, learned that they would also share in its misfortunes. Staffs were sheared, budgets slashed, plans delayed, visions clouded. Charitable giving fell by 15.2 percent in 2008 and 2009, according to Giving USA, the annual tally of American philanthropy.

During the depths of the recession, flashy parties, even if they were for a good cause, could seem a little déclassé. Making a show of how much money one had to give away called attention to one’s ridiculously good fortune, even though the recession left nonprofits more in need than they ever had been before.

“We have donors who, like many others in New York, are so wealthy that if they never saw another nickel of earned income it wouldn’t matter. They have more than they could ever spend,” said the head of a nonprofit who asked not to be identified. “For the people who really have the means, what you really want is for those people to give more and not less in tough economic times. And yet they were cutting back.”

From 2007 to 2009, giving by people with incomes of $200,000 or more dropped by $31 billion. Now, for the first time since the recession struck, a number of New York nonprofits say that 2012 looks like the year when the tide has finally turned. Gifts are more generous, long-dormant donors are reappearing and philanthropists are once again crowding cheek-by-jowl at charity galas, dining and dancing with checkbooks in hand.

On Monday afternoon, New York real estate billionaire Mort Zuckerman announced a $200 million gift to Columbia University to study brain behavior. The gift is twice the size of the $100 million donation that hedge fund billionaire John A. Paulson made to the Central Park Conservancy this October—the largest ever to a New York City park. The previous record had been set just a few months before, in April, when amateur track cyclist Joshua P. Rechnitz pledged $40 million to Brooklyn Bridge Park to fund a field house and a velodrome with seating for 1,200 spectators. But even in April, $40 million paled in comparison to the $60 million gift David Koch made in February to redo the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue plaza.

The Central Park Conservancy was already on the path to one of its best years in a long time. Not only have smaller donations grown in 2012, but so has the pool of people making them; like many agencies, the conservancy has been recruiting younger philanthropists via social media and special events.

Conservancy spokesperson Dena Libner called 2012 a “strong year,” but, like virtually all the other nonprofits we spoke with for this story, she warned that the official tally would have to wait until 2013. Typically, the last few weeks of the year are among the busiest in the fund-raising world, with many racking up 25 to 30 percent of all annual funding during the holidays.

The ACRIA fundraiser.

At its annual dinner this November, the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America hosted the largest crowd it’s had in years—275 guests, up by about 70 from the previous year. The low point for the nonprofit’s major fund-raiser came in 2008, when the dinner drew only 170 people.
“We certainly have donors who make a good living by general American standards, but they’re upper middle class by New York standards,” said executive director Dan Tietz. “For them, in bad economic conditions, they think twice about whether they should buy a ticket or not.”
Mr. Tietz explained that this year, he and several other colleagues have noticed that the hesitation is gone—charity event attendance seems to be up across the board. “Now, we’re definitely seeing a willingness to give.”

Also tracking about 25 percent ahead of last year is the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, according to foundation president Myra Biblowit. She noted that the November 2011 ovarian cancer death of Evelyn Lauder, the businesswoman and socialite, may have encouraged people to give. “People also adored and revered Evelyn Lauder. Her passing was a huge loss to the world. I think people want to pay tribute to a remarkable person.”

Among performing arts groups, BAM, Lincoln Center and the Atlantic Theater Company are all reporting 2012 increases in fund-raising, an impressive feat, given that both Lincoln Center and the Atlantic Theater Company are also in the midst of capital campaigns.

BAM president Karen Brooks Hopkins noted that the academy has seen some major gifts this year, largely in conjunction with its 150th anniversary. Chase sponsored the anniversary with a gift of $1.95 million over two years, the Irene Diamond Fund contributed $5 million, McGarryBowen gave an in-kind contribution for the “BAM and Then It Hits You” campaign and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation coughed up another $1 million.

The Atlantic Theater Company has seen a 40 percent increase in gifts from individuals this year over the same period last year. As new donations have increased only 5 percent, the 40 percent increase is coming predominantly from larger gifts from renewing supporters.
Walter Sweet, the vice president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, told The Observer that while he has seen a bump in charitable giving among his clients, they’re not necessarily giving in the same way they once did.

Donors are no longer content to blithely hand out signed checks and continue on their way. Now they want to see results, to know how their money is being used, to feel actively involved. “They want impact,” Mr. Sweet said.

It’s worth noting that not all groups have been so lucky—the Metropolitan Opera is preparing to sell bonds for the first time since its 1883 founding to cover operating losses.

What’s more, outside of the New York area, nonprofits have had a more mixed record of success. Although the 400 most successful charities nationwide saw 7.5 percent growth in 2011, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, they expect flat growth this year, along with donations from some of the 166 largest companies in the United States, the majority of which said that they expect to keep their philanthropy budgets flat this year (although some, like Starbucks, increased their giving by 197 percent).

Kathleen McCarthy, the founding director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at The CUNY Graduate Center, said that the disparate performance between nonprofits either based in New York or with strong New York connections and the rest of the country boils down to the wealth gap.

“I think what you’re seeing may be a phenomenon of the social gulf,” said Ms. McCarthy. “The rich are giving more, and they’re giving more now because now is when they can get the tax break.”
The end of the year is generally a time when wealthy individuals take account of their tax situations, but this year in particular the looming fiscal cliff and less favorable tax breaks for the wealthy have encouraged potential donors to give now rather than later. One of President Obama’s proposals would drop the tax break that households earning more than $250,000 can get for their charitable gifts from 35 to 28 percent.

Lauren Katzowitz Shenfield, who leads Philanthropy Advisors, an organization that advises individual, corporate and foundation philanthropists, including heavy-hitters like Exxon Corporation and the Ford Foundation, told The Observer that the likelihood of a smaller tax exemption is fueling a flurry of year-end donations.

Hurricane Sandy, of course, is the wild card of 2012. David Saltzman, the executive director of the Robin Hood Foundation, said that the antipoverty group will be holding its breath these next few weeks to see if holiday giving is as strong as it usually is.

“Our fear is that people who have been so generous giving to Sandy relief might not be able to donate to poverty relief. Our hope is that they can dig a little deeper,” said Mr. Saltzman. “I think that people are remarkably generous when they know they can make a difference, and this is a year where people can make a difference.”

The HOPE Program, another antipoverty initiative, also admitted that Sandy had left it a little bit nervous about holiday giving, but at the moment, the nonprofit is about 20 percent ahead of schedule.

Sandy proved a more direct challenge for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a nonprofit that provides services to LGBT youth. Its annual gala was scheduled for October 29, the day the hurricane hit. It had to be canceled and replaced later with a more modest cocktail reception. But despite the setback, Hetrick-Martin is still on schedule to meet its fund-raising goal this year.

Glenn Yabu and George Pushelberg of international design firm Yabu Pushelberg were two of the donors who stepped up to help make up the difference, sponsoring an emergency initiative that raised more than $70,000.

“While our personal donations reflect increasing support as the agency’s needs have increased this year, we also looked to other ways to reach even further,” they wrote in a joint e-mail to The Observer. “Sometimes it’s making a donation directly to your charity of choice, and sometimes it’s working with the development staff on creative ways to boost donations.”

kvelsey@observer.com

Piling up.

One mans trash is another mans treasure. A nice idiom, one my grandmother, a child of the Great Depression, liked to repeat.  She also liked, “waste not, want not.” Keeping both in mind, she strove to throw out nothing, expecting, that it would one day become treasure again. Thus the stack of Life magazines from 1957 to 1960 currently propping up our dining room table.

In the modern data driven world, the idiom has changed. Now, it seems, one mans trash is another mans consumer trend index. At least for the Independent Budget Office (IBO), who released a report yesterday, compiling numbers from the Mayors Management Report showing that the amount of waste produced by New Yorkers has dropped progressively from it’s high in 2004 of about 4 pounds a day per person to just under 3 pounds now.

But, why?

“We don’t know for sure why,” Doug Turetsky, told The Observer over the phone. “There are a number of different factors that people think. People are buying less, consuming less. Newspaper circulations are down. It wouldn’t account for all of it.  But some piece of it. Newspapers have cut their size both literally and figuratively. Some products have changed, lighter plastic bottles for instance. There’s just less trash in the waste stream.”

So blame it on a perfect trash reducing storm, of a downed economy, new greener manufacturing methods and the death of the daily broadsheet. (For once, the declining fortunes of the publication you are now reading is doing the world some good.)

Still, 24,734,730 pounds a day is some serious weight. A mountain of a problem without a real solution yet. You could see if Jeremy Irons and Candida Brady, have found an answer in the new upcoming documentary Trashed. There's also the city, which has budgeted a study for next year to explore the actual composition of our collective waste. Or maybe, better yet, I can interest you in a pile of Life magazines that have, nearly 50 years later, really become treasure again.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn passed that crucial test recently when she refused to back down on an ill-advised bill despite intense public pressure from high-profile supporters, especially feminist Gloria Steinem.

We’ve been critical of Ms. Quinn in the past because she seemed to take positions based not on principle but on political calculation. She is, of course, one of the leading candidates to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor next year. As Speaker of the Council, Ms. Quinn is the second most-powerful elected official in municipal politics, so her performance in the role should offer some insight into the kind of mayor she would be.

Ms. Quinn has the power to bring to the Council floor an ill-advised bill that would force most businesses to provide five days of paid sick leave per year. If the bill were brought to the floor, Ms. Quinn’s colleagues would trip over each other to vote in favor. The Speaker knows that. She also knows that this is not the time to slap the private sector with a job-killing mandate from government. Unemployment in the city increased from 9.7 percent in May to 10 percent in June, a startling and frustrating development.

Clearly, then, it is incumbent on elected officials to find ways to make hiring easier, not harder. In an ideal world, the Council would take Mr. Bloomberg’s lead in trying to ease burdens and regulations that appear to be holding the city back from the roaring recovery we so desperately need.

It goes with saying, however, that city politics is hardly an ideal world, especially with elections looming next year. That’s why Ms. Quinn has used her considerable power as Speaker to prevent the bill from making its way out of committee. She shares the mayor’s belief that however altruistic the motives behind the bill, the end result would be even slower job creation.

Ms. Quinn’s position has earned the ire of some supporters, most notably Ms. Steinem, who has framed the bill as a women’s issue. She says women disproportionately stay home and miss work to look after a sick child, leading to personal catastrophes like the loss of a job or an apartment.

It would be nice if the bill’s supporters had data rather than anecdotes to bolster their argument, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. The mandate could not be more poorly timed. Women (and men) are losing their jobs already; women (and men) are losing their apartments because the city’s private sector is simply not creating jobs. The most recent unemployment figures offer sad testimony as to the health of the city’s economy.

Christine Quinn gets it. She understands that the bill may have good intentions, but she is also aware that good intentions are not enough. The city needs to create jobs, and the sick-leave bill would hinder, rather than help, that process.

Her position shows genuine leadership and political toughness. That’s a good sign.

More aisles than Walmart, Target, and Best Buy combined! (Courtesy of Electron Plumber)

Big isn't always better!

Best Buy did a monstrous belly flop in the pool of big retailers last Thursday, reporting a $2.6 billion quarter loss and sending tidal waves to similar retailers. Best Buy, along with many of its retailing rivals, is shifting their focus to opening smaller locations. We are facing down the end of the big box story, according to Bloomberg.

Target, Walmart, all are opening smaller stores, a recognition of changing demographics, a shift online and competition from one another as markets become saturated.

Lady Walmart, who is perhaps queen of the belly flop in local communities, has plans to build about 100 petite stores, Neighborhood Market, as well as 150 supercenters, about thirty more than they added in 2011, despite eight consecutive quarters of profit loss. The Neighborhood Markets have been seen as a strategy to break into dense markets like New York, going up against the Duane Reades of the world.

Still, the news of shrinking interest and sales can't help but cause wonderment at the fact that Walmart is somehow America's favorite retailer.

mewing@observer.com

Unfortunate. (Bossip)

Sloan deposited $130,000 dollars on a $1.4 million dollar two-bedroom apartment in the Strand building on West 43rd Street. Failing to obtain a mortgage, Sloan cited declining income and the loss of her largest client (Scarlett!) as grounds for financial distress, the Journal reports. The claims dispute escalated to the Manhattan Supreme Court in which ruled that the parties were to split the deposit.

The exact amount was not disclosed, but Sloan's lawyer, Morrell I. Berkowitz, told the Journal that the dispute was "amicably settled."

mewing@observer.com

Shadowy!

Shadow inventory. It was supposed to be the boogeyman of the real estate bust, thousands upon thousands of unsold properties scattered across the city. Bought or built for more than they were worth, people would hang onto these homes until the market improved, giving a better appearance to the housing supply than actually existed. It's like the difference between the standard and broad rates of unemployment.

No matter. To real estate doyenne and new Brooklynite Elizabeth Stribling, there is no shadow inventory, or so she tells The Times in one of its patented 30-Minute Interviews.

I never quite understood this idea of a shadow inventory — supposedly the apartments that hadn’t been leased in developments. I thought, well, when the market turned down, they will be rented and they’ll come on slowly — which is exactly what’s happening now. The demand for new product and the latest is really out there.

Hurray! Disaster averted. Not quite. The Observer checked in with shadow spook Jonathan Miller and he agreed that indeed shadow inventory was down from what he presumed was about 6,000 units at the peak to about 3,000 units of unsold wanting units today. But he still insists this is a tough trend that could take a few more years to fix.

"This should not signal to people that it is time to go out and start building again," Mr. Miller said. "It's like losing 100 pounds and still being 50 pounds overweight, and then saying it's time to start eating again."

Mr. Miller said we should actually thank the banks for helping out on this count. Because they continued to deny just how much the value of their assets had declined, because it threatened the financial firms own survival. As a result, many properties that would have been foreclosed on and sold off were held onto, converted into rentals and hotels or sold off. There is still plenty out there to worry about, though.

"This is a problem that has been managed by attrition, and we've ended up in a better place than we were, but we're still not out of the woods yet," Mr. Miller said.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Starting at $3,340—below average!

One of the confounding things about the past three years is that while the economy has slumped and housing has been an absolute mess nationwide, in New York, we are almost back to the same levels as during the boom, especially as far as rentals are concerned. Crain's sees some softening ahead, however.

With the approach of winter and increasing jitters on Wall Street, rents are expected to be stable at best, according to Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats, the city's largest residential rental firm.

“There are a lot of question marks in the market with Wall Street layoffs,” said Mr. Malin. “Rents won't fall off a cliff, but they will be more flexible and vacancy will creep up if negative news intensifies.” [snip]

“Little by little I am seeing concessions creep back, especially in the fringe neighborhoods,” said Gus Waite of brokerage A.C. Lawrence & Co., referring to areas like the Far West Side and the Financial District.

Landlords with empty units entering Thanksgiving and Christmas will likely reintroduce concessions to rent out apartments, according to Mr. Malin.

Layoffs would certainly have an impact, but the irony is that as long as the economy is down and mortgages are still impossible to come by, no one will be buying, and so demand for rentals will stay up, and so rents might not fall, at least not that much.

Meanwhile, nothing has been built—why do you think everyone is scrambling to get projects in the ground on the Brooklyn waterfront? So this only constrains the supply further. Will that rent tab be a Christmas present? Maybe, but there are still plenty of Scrooges out there.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Lily, the Muppet with "food insecurity" issues.

As the new CEO on The Office, James Spader has been killing it. The season premiere saw the 80s star return as the enigmatic and semi-threatening Robert California taking Dunder-Mifflin's "winners" out to a special lunch. After asking Jim an innocuous question about Sesame Street, he went off on a diatribe about the significance of one of its major characters.

"Elmo. God save us... the Elmo era. Sesame Street was created to reflect the environment of the children watching it. The complete self-absorption of Elmo is brilliantly reflective of our time. Our's is a cultural ghetto. Wouldn't you agree?"

Yes. We agree! Don't stare at us with your cold, reptilian gaze, Mr. Spader! Not only do we agree with you, but we'll raise you one better: That Sesame Street's introduction last night of "Lily," a Muppet whose family lives below the poverty level, is proof that the show is not even trying to be subtle anymore about reflecting America's current economic crisis.

In a special episode called "Growing Against Hunger," Elmo comes face to face with a character who represents the 99% demographic that Occupy Wall Street is always using for their slogans. Lily is "food insecure" because her family can't afford three meals a day since the recession hit. Welcome to the real world, kids.

The producers of the PBS show have said that they have no plans to integrate Lily into the cast following the special. Right, because we don't want to make Sesame Street into an actual ghetto, right?

The index had been declining for the past five months, but it just posted a reading of 51.4 up from a dismal 45.1 in July. (Any reading above 50 means billings, or payments made to architects, are rising, anything below means they are falling.) If this keeps up, it could point to a recovery, albeit a modest one, in about a year for the construction economy, as that is how long it takes for projects to make their way from the drawing board into the ground.

Locally, though, the news is less good, as billings in the Northeastern regional continue to languish, scoring a 46.5, about the same point they have been at for the past three months. Meanwhile, a panel of 100 economists sees the housing market languishing for the next five years, so it looks like the long slog is far from over.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

It looks like major commercial development in Manhattan is still sluggish, which is no surprise considering the recent recession. In fact, the report blames the downturn in significant new office construction on the "dramatic decline in employment along with a sharp rise in office vacancies."

Still, ever-positive as the Building Congress is, the trade group sees a silver lining to this slowdown. "The ingredients exist for a major mid-decade surge in new office construction," according to the report. All the while, 2011 marks the first year since 2000 that Manhattan will not see a major new office tower open. But 2012 and 2013 look more hopeful: the Gem Tower should be completed by next year, with 1 and 4 World Trade Center following in 2013.

The report also shows that development is lagging by historical standards. In the 1970s and 1980s, Manhattan saw about 4 million square feet of new office space crop up annually, and 6 million square feet of new office space in the 1960s.

So will office construction rebound to where it once was? After all, the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the Great Recession to be officially over last September. And there is some major construction in the works for the coming years, including 2 and 3 World Trade Center (which still need actual tenants, but could have a few on the hook).

Still, even with the boom last decade, when nearly 20 million square feet was built, the 13.5 million lost on 9/11 is a major factor in the city's supply, and New York only realized new offices at about half the rate of previous decades.

“It is remarkable how little office space was actually added in Manhattan during the recent building boom,” Building Congress President Richard Anderson said in a release. “In fact, New York City has gone two full decades without a significant expansion of its office stock.”

pengel@observer.com