March 29, 2024

Wealth Matters: Charitable Giving From Head or Heart

Lucy was a retired guide dog who, during her working life, gave birth to 32 puppies, many of whom also became guide dogs. My wife got involved with guide dogs by accident — she saw a striking Labrador walking down Fifth Avenue and asked the person walking it for the breeder’s name. Instead she heard about a program where volunteers take puppies for a year and train them in basic obedience before they’re ready for formal training as guide dogs.

When I came into the picture a few years later, my wife had trained several dogs before becoming a foster parent, as it were, for Lucy, a yellow Labrador who had been selected as breeding stock.

As the years went on, we traveled back and forth to the foundation for Lucy to be bred and to whelp her puppies. We got to see how the school turned energetic puppies into well-trained guides. We also started to make larger donations. In 2007, we paid to sponsor a puppy, Ocho, from Lucy’s last litter and then asked to train it.

When that year was up and we had to give him back, my heart would have been broken had I not seen the good these dogs do for people. Ocho is now guiding a young woman who sends us periodic updates.

A few years ago, a friend asked if I’d like to become involved with anothergroup that helps blind people achieve their full potential in life. I agreed and have been giving time and money since.

Today, probably 90 percent of the money my wife and I give to charity each year goes to groups involved with helping the blind. Before Lucy came into my life, I didn’t have a dog, know any blind people or think much about charity beyond writing a check to my alma mater’s annual fund.

In giving this way, we also unwittingly waded into one of the big debates among donors and their advisers: is it better to give in response to an emotional need or feeling, or are dollars better spent when tied to a metric that measures how effective they are?

“The whole issue of measuring and metrics and trying to have impact data is, I think, a very contemporary part of philanthropy,” said Thomas E. K. Cerruti, former personal lawyer to Sam Skaggs, a billionaire philanthropist who made his fortune in supermarkets and drugstores. “What motivates people to give? For selfish reasons, a name on a building is at the top of the list. But some people want to effectuate something that has some personal interest to them. Other types of motivations are hard to analyze.”

Mr. Cerruti, who founded a Web site to link donors with nonprofits, said he never tried to presume why Mr. Skaggs gave the way he did, and felt it was something too personal to ask. “He really cared about being a catalyst for opportunity primarily for those who would benefit the most from that opportunity,” he said.

We have been emotional givers from the start. It always seemed like a pure good to support groups that helped blind people. We’ve never looked at the ratings from Charity Navigator or GuideStar on either group. But we have followed closely what both organizations have done. We may have gotten lucky.

“The giving with the heart people, they may go wrong in trusting an organization that is not trustworthy,” said Gene Tempel, founding dean of Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “One of the pieces of advice we give to people is get to know the organization. It means walking into the organization and asking questions. It means asking for a copy of an annual report.”

Ani Hurwitz, who retired this week after 24 years of working at the New York Community Trust, said she came from a family of emotional givers.

“My father gave a lot to religious stuff because he was religious,” she said. “He was also a bleeding heart.”

She recalled him crying as he watched the nightly news and then making a donation to a charity aimed at easing whatever troubling situation he had seen.

Even though she has worked in philanthropy for decades and knows how to evaluate nonprofits, she said she was personally moved by stories more than measurements on the impact of her money. She gives money to Doctors Without Borders because she admires their courage in caring for people in poor, war-ravaged places. She recently gave $250 to help buy a telescope for students in the Bronx because she thought it would be great for children who don’t get to travel to gaze at the stars.

“I don’t look at metrics,” she said. “Let’s say we make a $75,000 grant to reduce poverty in Bushwick. Do you really think anyone can evaluate if our $75,000 did that? Or was it someone else’s $75,000 grant? Can you even evaluate that?”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/your-money/charitable-giving-from-head-or-heart.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Sales Rose in Back-to-School Month, and Upscale Retailers Led the Way

September is considered a critical month for retailers because back-to-school shopping can indicate how consumers feel about the future.

Some of the sales increases, though, seemed to be the result of heavy promotions.

“One of the questions as we go into holidays, frankly, is where margins end up,” said Chris Donnelly, an executive in the retail practice at Accenture, a consulting company. “I think you’re going to see more aggressive discounting to make sure they capture as much of the holiday sales as they can. And you’ve seen it in some of the folks that reported today, where they said sales have gone up but margin and average selling prices have gone down a little bit.”

Generally, stores that go after higher-end shoppers fared better than those focusing on middle- and low-end customers.

The top performers among department stores was Nordstrom, where same-store sales rose 10.7 percent, beating estimates by more than 5 percentage points. Shoppers seemed drawn to luxury purchases; Nordstrom said its top categories for the month were designer clothing, dresses and handbags.

Saks Fifth Avenue’s sales increased 9.3 percent, and there, too, people were drawn to nonessential items. Shoes, purses, jewelry and cosmetics were among its top sellers.

Macy’s, Kohl’s and Dillard’s came in a bit lower than the more plush department stores, at 4.9 percent, 4.1 percent and 3 percent respectively.

J. C. Penney had one of the few negative September results, with same-store sales down 0.6 percent. Analysts had expected growth of 0.6 percent. The company said Internet sales also dropped for the month because people were buying fewer expensive home-furnishing items.

J. C. Penney revised its profit outlook for the third quarter on Wednesday because of lower-than-expected sales. It said it now expected profit to be 10 to 15 cents a share, excluding one-time charges, versus the 15 to 20 cents a share it had previously projected.

The best performance over all was turned in by Costco which, despite being a club store, caters to a well-off shopper. Costco’s same-store sales rose 12 percent, and its American sales, excluding gasoline, rose 7 percent.

Other than Costco and Nordstrom, the rest of the top five performers included Limited Brands, up 11 percent, and the Buckle and Zumiez, stores for teenagers, which were up 10.3 and 10.1 percent, respectively.

At the bottom of the 23 stores surveyed by Thomson Reuters, Gap’s chains — Banana Republic, Gap and Old Navy — had a combined 4 percent drop in same-store sales, though analysts had expected about that. The smaller retailers Bon-Ton, Cato, Stein Mart and Stage Stores also reported among the worst results.

Over all, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which tracks all forms of consumer spending, 2011 was the best back-to-school spending season since 2006. SpendingPulse compared spending in July, August and September in school-related categories, like children’s apparel and office supply stores, with earlier years,

“It’s a positive surprise that the American consumer is maintaining some degree of resilience here,” said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis for SpendingPulse.

But Mr. Donnelly of Accenture warned that could soon change.

“There is a limit to how much consumers are going to be able to spend, because folks aren’t making any more — we just saw a couple of weeks ago wages are very low, real wages aren’t growing, employment’s not moving anywhere, the stock market’s got a lot of volatility — so it’s unclear how sustained this uptick in spending will last,” Mr. Donnelly said.

“As much as the consumer can surprise you on the positive side, like they did the last couple of months, they can also catch you on the negative side,” Mr. Donnelly said.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c653b72650b2ae75c96b42d6ac2b73fb

A Block Abuzz With the Business of Gold

“Things I don’t wear anymore,” Mrs. Goldstein said, folding a stick of chewing gum into her mouth and eyeing a daunting array of hawkers on the block of West 47th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas.

Mr. Goldstein, a retired New York City schoolteacher, said they hoped to get about $7,500 for the pieces. “We’ve been holding on to them for years,” he said.

“Years,” Mrs. Goldstein added.

“And now that the gold price is up,” Mr. Goldstein said, “we figured we’d come in and see what we could get.”

The price of gold is indeed up. It soared to an all-time high last week, not adjusted for inflation: over $1,800 an ounce for pure 24-karat gold. The spike has set off a flurry of sales in the diamond district, which has become flooded with people like the Goldsteins looking to sell high.

“This is a gold rush,” said Ernie Velez, 48, a jeweler and an owner of Universal Refinery, a glass-counter booth in one of the many mini-mall exchanges on the block where jewelry is bought and sold. Mr. Velez, an immigrant from Ecuador, said things could get even busier.

“A lot of folks are selling, but also a lot of people think the price will keep going up,” he said as jewelers brought small piles of gold jewelry to his counter for estimates. Mr. Velez’s men rasped the pieces on smooth test stones and then dabbed nitric acid on the rubbed-off gold to determine its purity.

Outside, Ramon Barrenechea, 59, of Staten Island, was capitalizing on the rush in his own way. Mr. Barrenechea, an immigrant from Peru, makes his own flat test stones by hand and was selling them for more than $50.

The diamond district does not particularly need a gold rush to invigorate its sidewalks. The block always percolates with business and energy.

About $24 billion is exchanged each year in sales in and around the district, among roughly 3,000 businesses, said Michael Toback, an executive board member of the 47th Street Business Improvement District and an owner of Myron Toback, a jewelry supply and refinery business on the block.

Amid all this industry, the district can be one of the strangest places in the city. Near Fifth Avenue on Tuesday, a scruffy bear of a man with no shirt on was scooping up rainwater and giving himself a cat bath as passers-by stared.

Hawkers from kosher delis handed out menus. One could hear New York accents, as well as Russian and also Yiddish, spoken by the many Hasidic men who work here, in black hats and coats.

Some of the most colorful characters were the hawkers: street-savvy men hired by jewelry dealers to spot potential customers on the block and coax them into their shops. The surging price of gold has cranked up the metabolism of these figures: the swaggering, smooth-talking sidewalk representatives for the many businesses.

“We’ve had a lot more action the past couple weeks,” said a 51-year-old hawker named Al, who wore a “We Buy Gold” sign around his neck and courted customers by showing a piece of paper listing the latest prices for 24-karat and lesser gold. “Business has been good.”

Al would not give his last name (“I got grandkids — I don’t want them to know I do this”) but said he tells customers that gold prices were so high that he was selling rings off his fingers.

“I tell people, ‘I had a ring I bought for $40 back in the day, and I just sold it for $200,’ ” he said.

Not all hawkers were as cheerful, complaining that sales were not brisk enough, even as they still quoted prices as high as $1,790 an ounce on Wednesday morning.

“A lot of people know what they have, and they’re waiting to see if they can sit on it longer, for a better offer,” said Denis Garasimov, who said he was hawking for Diamond District Gold Buyers. “It’s a straight-out gamble right now.”

Victor Velez, 38, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who held a laminated “We Buy Gold” sign, nodded as he handed out cards for the Royal Gems Corporation.

“A lot of people are holding on to it because they are seeing how high it can go,” Mr. Velez said.

When the Goldsteins first set foot on the block, they were approached by a hawker named Anthony Palmer, 47, of Springfield Gardens, Queens. Mr. Palmer, who works a small patch of sidewalk near Avenue of the Americas, said he earns $100 a day from the company he works for, and sometimes receives tips from customers happy with the price they get for their gold.

“You see there’s no other hawkers in this spot but me — this is my fiefdom,” he said. “That’s how it works. We respect each other’s space. When you get rogue hawkers cutting in, sometimes you got to be forceful.”

The surge in gold prices is attracting more traffic, he said, but when it comes to selling gold, personal needs often trump market price.

“It really ebbs and flows on people’s own economics,” he said. “You get desperate people at the beginning and the end of the month, when they’re facing their bills.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=fe7fc69b345cfd477e253b022df45189

Square Feet | The 30-Minute Interview: Andrew Heiberger

Q Did your noncompete clause with NRT expire just before you started this new company?

A Yes there was a noncompete when I sold the company, but I’m not allowed to legally disclose the terms of my contract with NRT.

Q So now you and Gary L. Malin, the current C.E.O. of Citi Habits and your former roommate at the University of Michigan, are competitors.

A We are competitors in some instances, yes. But I don’t necessarily look at it as competing. I look at it as providing additional services that are necessary for this market. It’s a huge marketplace — in Manhattan, there are 29,000 buildings.

Q Are the two of you friendly?

A I consider Gary to be a very good friend.

Q Town Residential seems to have grown a lot in a short time.

A We have about 40 employees, fully staffed; and we have, I believe, about 140 representatives licensed and working here. We have four offices, including two locations that just opened in the last few weeks. The first location was 110 Fifth Avenue; the second was 88 Greenwich; the third was 730 Fifth Avenue; and the fourth, 26 Astor Place. My headquarters will be 730 Fifth.

Q How is business?

A I think we’re off to a remarkable start. You can visit our Web site to see for yourself. We’ve listed over $250 million of real estate for sale and we’ve gone to contract and closed on a very significant dollar value. I’m not going to release the exact dollar volume.

We’re doing very significant rentals. We have secured, for example, the Moinian account as an exclusive marketing and leasing agent for 1,400 units. We recently secured a building called the Constable in SoHo.

Q Was it hard getting started without an official multiple listing service?

A Rebny began its virtual office Web site, or VOW, and through VOW all the listings in Manhattan are available as long as you abide by certain rules. Town has a very well-executed virtual office Web site — you can see every single exclusive by going to our site. It gives us full level playing field and access to all listings.

We’re not in the business of selling information anymore. We’re in the business of servicing clients — showing them property and educating them on what neighborhoods are right for them or whether the property fundamentals are right, whether condo or co-op financials are accurate, and advising on the negotiation process.

Q What percentage of your business is rental versus sales?

A It’s too early to tell at this particular point in time. My business model says that 85 percent will be sales and 15 percent rental.

In researching the market again, I learned that very few rental-only agents make a living, and I didn’t want Town to be a churn-and-burn business. I wanted it to be a place where somebody could hang their hat and begin their career, continue their career, graduate their career and end their career after successfully making a lot of money.

Q What have you learned from past experiences?

A Well, one thing I learned in my development business is that Manhattan is a luxury market and people here will pay for luxury and want to be serviced all the way through. I learned that amenities are in demand.

Q Are you focusing on luxury?

A We’re focusing on Manhattan for now, and in order to service Manhattan you have to be able to sell the $14 million house or condo and rent the $3,000 apartment to that person’s offspring.

Q You’ve taken in an equity partner, Thor Equities.

A Thor Equities is a capital partner. I’ve been partners with Joe Sitt before; this is my third time around. He and I see eye to eye on the business plan for Town.

Q Moving on to Buttonwood. That company successfully developed the condo conversion at 88 Greenwich Street. Will there be any more projects anytime soon?

A I have my hands full and am focused 110 percent on Town Residential. We’re not looking to develop right now, no.

Q Where do you expect to be a year from now?

A Sitting right in the same chair. I intend to be much further along than I am now and be considered a top-five-or-less player.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5faf792bfd8c6f6eff8b3b0394cf9e5b

Citizen Kushner

A seraphic figure with neatly sculptured chestnut brown hair and fair skin, the young publisher worked his way through a stream of approaching guests with business-like efficiency. In a corner stood a white backdrop covered in company logos. A velvet rope sat unused nearby.

“Isn’t this fun and glamorous,” Mr. Kushner said, his wry tone and boyish grin suggesting that he found the scene around him neither.

If you knew anything about Jared Kushner five years ago, it was probably that he was the oldest son of Charles Kushner, a New Jersey real estate developer who had spent time in prison for orchestrating one of the more memorable get-even schemes perpetrated in the name of sibling rivalry. He had hired a prostitute to entrap his brother-in-law and captured their encounter on hidden camera to show his sister.

After watching his father’s case play out in the media, with articles full of unflattering, anonymous leaks, Mr. Kushner did the one thing he could do to gain a modicum of control over the press: he bought his way in, paying about $10 million for The Observer, a newspaper read obsessively by New York’s business, political and cultural elite.

He was 25 at the time.

Since then Mr. Kushner has managed The Observer through a recession that left the newspaper business in tatters. He has turned over virtually the entire staff — including three editors in chief in two years — while trying to shift to a business model centered on real estate and digital advertising dollars.

If it was a bad time to buy a newspaper, it was arguably a worse time to be doubling down on real estate. He added to his family’s holdings, helping Kushner Companies acquire one of the city’s better known properties, the 666 Fifth Avenue office towers, at the height of the market.

While these moves have elevated his profile in the city, he has warily embraced his place in the spotlight. He is far from the brash, publicity seeking dynamo one might expect to see in someone who managed to buy a New York newspaper at a tender age. He seems uninterested in using the paper to further political ambitions. Unlike Mort Zuckerman, another real estate mogul who moved into the media business by acquiring The Atlantic, U.S. News World Report and The Daily News in New York and aggressively embraced the platform it afforded, you won’t see Mr. Kushner on “Meet the Press.”

In other ways he has made the most of his new visibility. He married one of the most famous young women in New York, Ivanka Trump. The couple vacations on Rupert Murdoch’s 184-foot sailboat and have appeared as themselves on the CW series “Gossip Girl.”

Yet every Friday night, you’ll find Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump at home in their Park Avenue apartment marking the Sabbath with dishes like Moroccan meat pie and sweet pea soup that Ivanka, a novice cook, prepares herself. (“I think he humors me,” Ms. Trump, 29, said of her husband’s enthusiastic reviews.)

Mr. Kushner, who saw at a young age how the media glare can scald, maintains he wants to stay out of it. “I quickly learned that there really wasn’t much benefit to being out there,” he said in a recent interview.

But friends of Mr. Kushner say it was more than just seeing potential in an undervalued media property that drew him to the salmon-colored weekly.

“He was definitely looking to make a reputation for himself quickly, and the newspaper was the opportunity that was there to be had,” said Bob Sommer, who worked as one of The Observer’s top business executives from 2007 to 2009.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have an impact,” Mr. Kushner said of his purchase. “When I bought the paper I had no idea the level of power and influence it had. I really bought the paper because I saw it as a great brand.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 24, 2011

An earlier version of this article described incompletely the circumstances surrounding Mr. Pope’s exit from the New York Observer.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d1831adbb63fd4771e199660f7cca670