Following up on a couple of subjects discussed here recently:

Author Tom DeFrank's appearance at the Ford Library this past week was one in a series of lectures aimed at beefing up the schedule of public events at the 30-year old institution.

The library has hosted Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage, former U.S. ambassador to Britain Henry Catto, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and others, notes David Horrocks, supervisory archivist at the library. (This Thursday, historian Barry Landau talks about his book on presidential dining.)

Elaine Didier, who heads the library in Ann Arbor and the Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, is responsible for the more robust schedule. And it coincides with an increase in other activity.

Reference requests are up 70 to 100 percent since President Gerald Ford's death in late December. The additional queries aren't all from journalists and academics.

"A lot of them are personal," Horrocks says. "Someone will say, 'President Ford spoke at my alma mater,' and ask whether we have the text. We see more (K-12) students who are assigned papers on presidents, choosing Ford."

Long-term, steady growth is a normal trajectory for a presidential library, says Harrocks, who started his career at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas and worked at the National Archives before coming to Ann Arbor to help create the Ford Library after the 1976 election. "Once-stale material becomes history. ... And we continue to acquire material and are always opening something new."

Green for the greenway

Word that The Allen Creek Greenway Conservancy had gotten its government OK as a private nonprofit organization met with an almost immediate response.

Several thousand dollars "dropped from the sky," says Joe O'Neal, the builder who in 2004 became a champion for a greenway.

The larger of the gifts that followed the news came with the missive to "do the job right."

With its tax-exempt status in place, the group is accepting donations of money - and land - for a proposed linear park along the Allen Creek corridor. That low-lying area runs south to north from South State Street near the University of Michigan golf course, through the western edge of downtown, to the Huron River.

Praise for Food Gatherers

If good publicity was a cash crop, Food Gatherers would have an extra warehouse full of supplies to send out to local food pantries.

The Ann Arbor-based nonprofit is Charity Navigator's pick as the top-rated food bank in the nation.

That's the single best among all the anti-hunger organizations evaluated by the rating group.

"We want to show the highest, and lowest, rated organization in each charitable-giving category," says Sandra Miniutti, spokeswoman for the 5-year-old Charity Navigator.

Released in advance of holiday charitable appeals, the new list ranks the first and worst in more than 30 areas from children's and family services to animal welfare, botanical gardens, parks and nature centers, civil rights, environmental protection, medical research, higher ed, and, of course, food banks.

"Food Gatherers is outstanding," says Miniutti. "Ninety-six percent of the organization's spending is on core services and very little on overhead or fundraising."

The norm, she says, is 75 percent.

Based on IRS information, the ratings also attempt to measure nonprofits' sustainability, and factors as diverse as executive directors' salaries and donor privacy policies.

"That's an area where there's a big disconnect between givers and charities," says Miniutti. "Many don't see a problem sharing or selling donor lists, but it annoys donors like nothing else."

Suffice it to say, Food Gatherers does not share your name with other nonprofits.

Charity Navigator's database now includes more than 5,000 American nonprofits, some international, some national, and some - like Food Gatherers - regional.

Like other rating systems - whether for top hospitals, universities or best places to retire - it's only as good as its methodology. (You can see how it makes its judgments on the Web site CharityNavigator.org.) And Charity Navigator has its critics.

Certainly measures of growth in revenue and spending favor a young, still-growing organizations like Food Gatherers. But there's not much dispute about mission, effectiveness or need.

Since Food Gatherers emptied its storerooms, in a first, earlier this year, food banks elsewhere have reported shortages and increasing demand.

"We see the need for the services food banks provide is increasing," says Miniutti. "Historically, they tend to get less than universities, houses of worship, health causes, but trends like the mortgage crisis make us think demand will keep increasing."

Published 11/10/2007. Judy McGovern can be reached at 734-994-6863 or jmcgovern@annarbornews.com.