PhilanTopic

Navigating the Digital Flood

Last night, as we were cooking dinner -- refried bean and soy "beef" tacos -- my boyfriend, Ivan, and I got into a lively conversation about the difference between the information published on the Consumer Reports products testing site and the consumer-generated reviews posted on the Gizmodo blog.

Consumer Reports, which used to be a monthly publication before it was "Web-ified," is often criticized for being slow and outdated because Consumers Union, its parent organization, relies on an in-house testing lab to provide vetted product reviews. The process takes time. Here's how it's described on the Consumer Reports site:

Before a product even enters one of the dozens of labs at our Yonkers headquarters, it has been subjected to considerable research. We gather data about products and services, about consumer demand in the marketplace, and about what our subscribers plan to purchase. Editorial, technical, and research staff then scrutinize that material, along with suggestions from our subscribers, to develop our testing schedule.

After additional research to define a project's scope, staff shoppers -- assisted by a network of shoppers in 65 U.S. cities -- buy the products we use as test samples.

To supplement laboratory testing, the survey research department gathers the experiences that hundreds of thousands of our subscribers have had with products and services through an annual questionnaire. Those results are the basis of our well-known auto Frequency-of-Repair index and other product-reliability reports....

Impressive! And useful. But in our fast-paced digital age, consumers want to know as soon as a product comes out how it works and what others think about it -- not a month or two after its release date.

Sites like Gizmodo offer an alternative. On Gizmodo, informed opinions on products are posted much faster -- it often feels like mere moments after a new product has been released.

If you are shopping for a new mp3 player, a positive review from a Gizmodo contributor might be all the information you need to make a decision. But what if you're planning to spend $900 on a new flat-screen TV? Is an informed opinion on Gizmodo enough information for you to make a decision? Or would you want a vetted product review like the ones Consumer Reports produces? (Full disclosure: I was pleased to learn that Ivan checked Consumer Reports before we purchased our new TV last Christmas.)

As with tech product reviews and evaluations, so too with the social sector. Thoughts and opinion about philanthropy -- what it is, what it should do, how it should be measured -- are being shared on blogs and social networking sites by growing numbers of people. But with the stakes that much higher, how do we filter the mounting flood of news items, blog posts, and tweets to get to the stuff that really matters? In other words, is there a Web 2.0 Consumer Union for philanthropy, a place where new ideas and social innovations are being tested and reviewed?

It's a theme that Tactical Philanthropy blogger Sean Stannard Stockton explored in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy column. More and more foundation leaders are engaging in public conversations about philanthropy and social change, Stannard-Stockton noted, and they are to be commended for sharing their "thought processes in regular Internet postings." But, he adds,

As the amount of available information explodes, the wisdom to process it and put it in context becomes exponentially more valuable. In this environment, information becomes a resource that is valuable only when we place it in context. Access to information is no longer a competitive advantage. It is the ability to filter and process the flood of information that sets effective people apart....

As someone new to the sector, I feel compelled to ask: How do others navigate and filter the flood of information that crosses their screens every day to find the information that is truly important? And once you've found it, how do you put it into a context that is useful. Have you found Twitter, Facebook, or any other Web 2.0 platforms to be helpful? Or do you stick to more traditional media like print publications and organizational Web sites? This enquiring mind wants to know....

-- Regina Mahone

Targeting Grant Dollars by Population Group: The Debate Continues

(Larry McGill is the Foundation Center’s senior vice president for research. In a previous post, he wrote about the state of research on diversity in philanthropy.)

Ah, dueling research studies! Each making use of data from the same source -- the Foundation Center -- and each drawing different, yet not incompatible, conclusions. How can that be?

Published earlier this year, the NCRP report Criteria for Philanthropy at its Best analyzed available grants data coded by the Foundation Center as having benefited "marginalized populations" (as defined by NCRP using existing Foundation Center population group categories). The report noted carefully that it only counted grants explicitly targeted to serve such populations.

More recently, the Philanthropic Collaborative's Broad Benefits: Health-Related Giving by Private and Community Foundations analyzed both available grants data coded by the Foundation Center as well as a random sample of two hundred additional grants without population group coding. This allowed Phill Swagel, the report's author, to estimate the total benefit to marginalized populations of foundation giving in the field of health, whether or not these populations were explicitly targeted by grantmakers.

Both analyses make important points. If foundations aren't explicit about the intended beneficiaries of their grantmaking, then we can't know for sure that specific population groups have in fact been strategically targeted. NCRP argues that such strategic targeting is important.

On the other hand, even if foundations don't strategically target specific population groups, such groups may still benefit from their grantmaking. This is what TPC demonstrated in its report.

The third possibility, of course, is that foundations may not be telling us as much as they could about the population groups that benefit from their grantmaking. And that is surely true, as well.

And, by the way, let's remember that not all grantmaking should or even can be targeted to benefit specific population groups. NCRP's report recommends that grantmakers try to allocate at least 50 percent of their grantmaking to benefit marginalized populations, not all of it. That's an implicit acknowledgement that grantmaking cannot be reduced to simplistic equations such as “Grantmaking to Specific Population Groups = Good; “Grantmaking Not to Specific Population Groups = Bad.”

Fortunately, neither NCRP nor the Philanthropic Collaborative reduce the issue to such absurdities. My hat is off to both NCRP's Aaron Dorfman and Phill Swagel for the ways they have so effectively marshaled available data in the service of their respective causes. This is exactly the kind of conversation the Center's data on beneficiary populations should be generating.

-- Larry McGill

Weekend Link Roundup (June 27 - 28, 2009)

This week's roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Climate Change

Mark Tercek, president and CEO of the Nature Conservancy, explains why the American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed earlier this week by the House of Representatives, is an important milestone for conservation and climate change efforts in the U.S.

Communications/Marketing

Nonprofits and foundations are invited to enter the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards competition. Submit your organization's tagline here.

Economy

The mortgage crisis left a large number of homes vacant in cities across the nation. The Weakonomist wonders why Habitat for Humanity -- a nonprofit organization whose mission is to build homes for people in need -- has not adapted its tactics to account for this reality. "The continuation of the program in [its] current form," writes the Weakonomist, "is a bit insensitive to the times." The head of HFH Los Angeles responded via Twitter, ensuring all that the organization has programs in place to address the needs of people who have lost homes in the economic downturn.

So-called innovation prizes like the X Prize were a big trend in 2008. This year, in contrast, writes Lucy Bernholz on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, we're seeing a lot more "charity challenges" that involve some form of matching grant. Surely another sign of these uncertain economic times.

Nonprofit Management

A recent National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy report concludes that many of the foundations which lost money in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme had fewer than five trustees on their boards. "Small [board] size or not," writes Mike Burns on his Nonprofit Board Crisis blog, "this failure by foundations was about systems and policies and due diligence -- none of which appear to have been in place enough to prevent this very ugly and sad outcome for all."

Social Innovation

On IssueLab's new Footnotes blog, Gabriela Fitz asks how social innovation will be funded over the next couple of years if budget-constrained foundations and philanthropists only support their existing grantees, and what sorts of innovative projects will simply disappear because they don't have the necessary funds to continue their work? Excellent questions, Gabriela.

Social Media

On the Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis offers his always sharp take on what the confluence of events in Iran and Michael Jackson's death tells us about media, social media, and the future of journalism.

The Case Foundation has published an assessment of the foundation's first-ever Giving Challenge. Allison Fine, co-author of the report (along with Beth Kanter) offers her take on the fifty-day event, which raised $1.8 million from more than 71,000 donors and benefited thousands of causes.

Volunteerism

Does All for Good, an aggregation platform for volunteer opportunities in the U.S. built with support from the Craigslist Foundation and Google, compete with existing Web sites such as Social Actions? That's a question many people are debating on the Social Edge site, where Social Actions founder Peter Deitz is hosting a discussion about competition and collaboration in the social sector. It's an important conversation, and dozens of people have weighed in with comments.

The Obama administration's enthusiasm for community service has inched the country closer to embracing a culture of service, writes Rachel Chong, social entrepreneur, on the Huffington Post. However, there's more work to be done. Writes Chong:

We are still far from a world where every nonprofit can access pro bono services or where every professional can easily give his or her skills. Through the Web, we've brought volunteers and nonprofits together, but now we must figure how to get them work together in ways that consistently result in positive outcomes. The cultural gap between the nonprofit and for-profit worlds is vast. We need a scalable solution that helps nonprofit managers and for-profit professionals communicate effectively so that both parties get the most out of their volunteer experiences together. When we've accomplished this, not only will service be part of the fabric of American lives, but nonprofit and for-profit professionals will be finally speaking the same language....

Women

In a recent PhilanTopic post, Christine Gumm, president and CEO of the Women's Funding Network, offered her take on a new report issued by the Foundation Center (in partnership with WFN)which spotlights the growing trend of giving by and for women. Gumm points out that women's funds have developed a democratic model of giving, "with donors and grantees sharing grantmaking decisions." On her Nonprofit Leadership 601 blog, Heather Carpenter says that's all well and good, but then asks, "Why is it that only women's philanthropy strives for mutuality?" Adds Carpenter, "If we are truly trying to change the world, wouldn't it be best if all of philanthropy strives for collaboration and mutuality?"

What did we miss? Use the comments section below to submit your favorite recent posts.

-- Regina Mahone

TED on Sunday: Katherine Fulton on the Future of Philanthropy

What comes to mind when you think about philanthropy? Chances are, says Katherine Fulton, president of the San Francisco-based Monitor Institute, you'd end up with a list that includes words like closed, small, slow, fragmented, and short. But it doesn't have to be that way. As Fulton explains in this short, powerful talk, the same disruptive technologies that have upended industry after industry are beginning to transform philanthropy in profound ways. And while we don't yet have a language to adequately describe this transformation, we can recognize some of the innovations that are driving it, including mass collaboration, online marketplaces, aggregated giving, innovation competitions, and social investing. Where is it all leading? We can't be sure, says Fulton -- in part because we are acting our way into a new way of thinking, rather than thinking our way into a new way of acting. But we should take comfort from and be inspired by the fact that each of us has more power to make a difference and create a better, safer, more just world than at any time in human history. Are we are up to the challenge? Time will tell. (Filmed: March 2007; Running time: 12:34)

Liked this talk? Try one of these:

• Seth Godin on Leadership
• Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice
• Alex Tabarrok on the Benefits of Globalization
• Majora Carter on Environmental Justice
• Al Gore on Climate Change
• Sylvia Earle on Saving the 'Blue Heart' of the Planet
• James Howard Kunstler on the Death of Suburbia
• Clay Shirky on Epochal Change
• Mark Bittman on How We Eat
• Hans Rosling on the Dimensions of Development
• Sir Ken Robinson on Education and Creativity

-- Mitch Nauffts

Robert Flaherty Film Seminar

(Kathryn Pyle is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. In her last post, she wrote about Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media's new Media Database.)

Documentary filmmakers, teachers, librarians, students, film critics, and festival programmers from around the globe are participating in the 55th annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, thanks in part to fellowships provided by the New England-based Lef Foundation and the Philadelphia Foundation. The weeklong marathon of documentaries brings the films’ makers (this year from the U.S., Russia, Iraq, India, Israel, Syria, Colombia, Finland, Mali, and Poland) together with other film professionals to see and discuss a range of films. More than forty short or feature-length film or video works will be presented this year.

Founded in 1954 by Frances Flaherty, the widow of pioneering documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North), the seminar began as a small group of friends discussing Flaherty's works. Now with an office in New York City, the organization's main program remains the seminar, held this year at Colgate University in upstate New York and programmed by independent curator Irina Leimbacher. Ten presenting filmmakers and another 160 participants have been watching six or more hours of film/video each day and engaging in vigorous debate about documentary structure, intent, look, sound, and impact -- all off it somehow related to the theme "Witnesses, Monuments, Ruins."

"Flaherty is unique," said program director Mary Kerr. "It's an opportunity to see incredible work and exchange ideas, but without the marketplace element of film festivals."

In addition to the seminar in June, a monthly screening at Anthology Film Archives in New York City was launched last fall to introduce some of the films previewed at the seminar. "Flaherty on the Road" brings selected films to other institutions around the city, including BAM and the Museum of Modern Art, and plans are on the drawing board for an additional seminar in Spain next year in collaboration with Barcelona-based Pragda.

Newcomers and regulars — including Bill Pence, who attended his first Flaherty in 1962 and went on to found the Telluride Film Festival in 1974 with wife Stella — are extending the dialogue this year with a blog and Twitter.

Of course, one of the pleasures of a good Flaherty "retreat" is that even casual conversations elicit a story, either already told or in the making — from Temple University MFA student Phally Chroy’s planned thesis film on squatters in Cambodia (in the making) to Juan Mandelbaum’s extensive filmography, which includes Our Disappeared, his recent feature film investigating the fate of childhood friends who were "disappeared" by the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

The fellowship program -- thirty-four fellows this year, including several from Russia -- is coordinated by long-time Flaherty supporter Margarita de la Vega-Hurtado. "I had heard about the Flaherty seminar in Colombia, where I was a film critic and involved with the early wave of Latin American documentary. Flaherty had a mystique about it. After moving to the U.S., despite having a family and teaching film at the University of Michigan, my present to myself every year has been to attend the seminar." She first came as a participant in 1985 and went on to be a presenter, curator, and executive director (from 2002 to 2006).

Attending the seminar for the first time, LEF Foundation director Lyda Kuth sees the fellowships as a way to carry out the foundation's priorities for the New England region. Most of LEF's $250,000 in annual grants to documentary filmmakers are awarded through its Moving Image Fund, which provides support from the early risk-taking stage through a film's completion. "Providing continuity and ongoing support is important to us; we're always open to 'If it's good, come back!' We want to help exemplary films get finished," said Kuth. "Support for artists is first, but Flaherty fits nicely into our second priority: raising the visibility and value of New England filmmakers. The seminar accomplishes both, really, as the second priority serves the first."

For Iraqi filmmaker Kasim Abid, the opportunity to attend Flaherty has been a mix of excitement and struggle. "It's quite an experience, to present my work to such an informed audience," says Abid. "At the same time, I cannot completely forget my commitments in Iraq." A cameraman on documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, and other British satellite TV stations (he has lived in London since 1982), Abid has also worked for Arab satellite TV and directed several films about the Middle East. Most recently he produced Life After the Fall, a trilogy about the experiences of his extended family in Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. With support from the Open Society Institute, Kasim co-founded the Independent Film and TV College in Baghdad in 2003, where he teaches media production. In the midst of a besieged city, students have managed to produce eleven short documentary films so far, including several prize-winners at international film festivals.

Mirroring some of the discussion at this year's seminar, media funders are increasingly concerned about how documentary films not only treat social issues but how they contribute to social change -- all while being engaging and well made. In a future post, I'll discuss a few of the films presented at this year's seminar and how they’re encompassing those concerns.

-- Kathryn Pyle

Animating the Newspaper Business, or 'Z-Philanthra', Journalism Superhero!

(Susan Herr is the founder of PhilanthroMedia, a New York City-based new media company working to promote dialogue for discerning donors and advance ideas that matter. Her op-ed piece "It's Time to Reassess Venture Philanthropy 2.0" appeared in PND in February 2007. This is her first post for PhilanTopic.)

Hollywood and Marvel Comics are missing a bet if they don't pick up where the final season of HBO's The Wire left off by tapping the drama inherent in the decimation of America's newspaper industry.

Consider the cast of characters. An Evil Publisher -- like the Los Angeles Times’ David Hiller, who gutted his award-winning newsroom to save the once-enormous profits it generated. A Valiant Chief Editor -- like James O'Shea who got the boot from Hiller for standing up for his scrappy reporters. A Deluded Entrepreneur -- like real estate tycoon Sam Zell, whose leveraged buyout of both the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times proved he thinks he can hold back the ocean. Add to the mix a motley assortment of Nefarious Punks, including DailyKos founder Markos "Kos" Moulitsas and Dastardly Diva Ariana Huffington, who is old enough to know better but is still ruining everything! Bang! Pow! Ratta-tat-tat!

Our blockbuster formula even has sex appeal, with SuperDonors like Herb and Marion Sandler, who are quietly spending millions to advance nonprofit journalistic innovations such as ProPublica. In that spirit, our Heroine could be a bombshell named Z-Philanthra who couples uncanny understanding of philanthropic strategy with deep pockets sewn into a costume that would make the Avengers’ Emma Peel pea-green with envy.

Any big-time producer smart enough to know how HUGE this idea is would have booked the red-eye (or driven a hybrid?) to NYC last month to attend a panel discussion hosted by Philanthropy New York entitled "Internet to Newspapers: Drop Dead." Since I didn't see anyone wearing all black, I'll provide a recap of the philanthropic approaches discussed there that could form the basis for Z-Philanthra's efforts. And, for any producers who might be interested, I’ll provide an assessment (on a scale of one to four "lasers") of how our heroine might view their plausibility:

Option #1 -- Foundations Should Invest Big to Save Journalism! Who can blame Nicholas Lemann, dean of and Henry R. Luce Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, for offering this option to a roomful of funders? Lemann described newsgathering as an expensive, ongoing function, and confirmed the obvious: foundations usually prefer project-based support. But since Lemann is a creative guy, he suggested that "covering the city of Baltimore forever" could be the project.

(1 Laser) Z-Philanthra isn't the only one who has been around long enough to know that massive, multiyear general operating support grants aren't going to happen in this economy -- or any other. (And altering that reality surely is a job for another superhero!)

Option #2 -- Switch the Bottom Line! If owners can't make massive profits from newspapers anymore, how about promoting "savvy restructuring and philanthropic capital that can recreate a different kind of newspaper, one that truly serves the public good"? That was the approach offered by Vince Stehle, program officer at the Surdna Foundation, in a Chronicle of Philanthropy piece, "It's Time for Newspapers to Become Nonprofit Organizations." Stehle pointed to the St. Petersburg Times and the London-based Guardian, both nonprofits, to demonstrate the viability of this approach.

(3 Lasers) As Vince knows, and the Nonprofit Fund's Clara Miller sagely noted, "nonprofit status is not a business plan." That's why Z-Philanthra could wield her dollars and charm (in that order) to pool philanthropic capital and collaboratively advance savvy restructuring. It won't work for every newspaper, but it certainly makes good sense in key markets.

Option #3 -- Government Should Pay! Victor Pickard, senior research fellow at the media reform organization Free Press, described a "national journalism strategy" that endorses the idea of alternative operating structures such as nonprofits and L3Cs. Other short-term components of the strategy include tax incentives for failing newspapers to divest their holdings to owners committed to public service, and a call to fold a journalism jobs program into the AmeriCorps program. Long-term strategies mentioned by Pickard include the establishment of a government-funded R&D pool and support for a substantially expanded public media system.

(3 Lasers) The Free Press report offers a credible menu of "pick and choose" options for even the most project-oriented foundations, but each would also require intensive advocacy -- another tactic foundations are usually reticent to support. That doesn't make several of the solutions Victor provided any less right-on.

Option #4 -- Let the Lab Rats Run Free! While most foundation presidents only attend panel discussions to be on the panel, Alberto Ibargüen, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, actually attended as a participant! In that role, he described the Knight News Challenge, a competition designed to identify technologies and digital platforms that bring news and information to communities in new ways. Also on the panel was the Berks County (PA) Community Foundation's Heidi Williamson, who described how Knight support, coupled with a major bequest, is advancing a Web-based community "hub" in the region that will include in-depth reports on key quality-of-life issues by independent investigative reporters, video uploads from "citizen" journalists, and live community-focused cable tv shows.

(4+ Lasers) Knight is advancing a crowdsourcing (I call it "philanthrosourcing") approach that encourages a thousand innovative flowers to bloom. The approach is supported by an online "garage" Knight has set up to connect fifty "coaches" (past Knight News Challenge jurors and winners) with innovative thinkers developing new ideas and models designed to move journalism into the twenty-first century. In other words, out of the ivory tower and into the nooks and crannies where American ingenuity lives and flourishes. I do believe our heroine is ready for her first kiss!

-- Susan Herr

Women Are Bright Spot Amid Economic Gloom

(Christine Gumm is president and CEO of the Women’s Funding Network, a global movement of 145 women’s foundations on six continents with a shared commitment to creating lasting social change by unleashing the power and potential of women and girls. In her previous post for PhilanTopic, she wrote about some of the women who are changing the face of philanthropy.)

It came as no surprise to learn via the latest report from Giving USA that philanthropic giving in 2008 fell by the largest percentage in five decades. All around, news of philanthropy's retreat after one of the worst market declines in living memory weighs on us. But already there are signs of a re-emergent philanthropy, a "New Philanthropy" that is more democratic, more robust, and right-sized for the new millennium.

And women are leading the way. A growing number of philanthropic institutions are realizing that investing in women and girls serves to lift up entire communities -- something that women's funds have known and practiced for thirty years.

A new report produced by the Foundation Center in partnership with the Women's Funding Network validates this trend. The report, Accelerating Change for Women and Girls: The Role of Women's Funds, found that giving by and for women is growing more rapidly than overall giving. Funders -- including innovators like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Jennifer and Peter Buffett's NoVo Foundation -- are increasingly tuning into the potential for accelerating social change by using a gender lens in making funding decisions. They realize that social investments placed in the hands of women mean that the children of those women will be educated, their families will be more stable, and their communities will be strengthened. We're not talking about making a difference for half the world's population; we're talking about all of it.

The report holds up this new, more democratic model of philanthropy as a beacon for all, re-imagining philanthropy as a horizontal collaboration of trusted equals. Too often over the years, philanthropy was dispensed top-down and vertically, and was not informed by the wisdom of solutions cultivated at the grassroots. Women's funds, like no other area of philanthropy, have for three decades pioneered and developed a democratic model of giving, with donors and grantees sharing grantmaking decisions. Most of those grants, the Foundation Center report finds, are focused on economic justice and sustainability.

But grantmaking is not all this new model entails. As the report makes clear, women's funds assert their leadership beyond funding by promoting the wisdom of collaboration in larger contexts -- whether at the community, national, or international level. They also recognize that their work is further strengthened by advocacy and by thought leadership that inspires ever greater scale in advancing solutions to create social change.

Part of what is energizing funding for women is the growing phenomenon of women's financial independence and financial power. And women's funds are leading the way in fostering and directing that power by developing and imparting deep expertise on the subject of women and money. Donors to women's funds and leaders of those funds realized decades ago the connection between money and solving the critical challenges facing women.

Despite much progress made by women's funds, however, many critical challenges still remain. For example:

• Women comprise 70 percent of the 1.5 billion people living on less than $1 a day.
• Women grow half the world's food, but own just one percent of the world's farm land.
• The gender-wage ratio in the United States has not improved significantly for nearly two decades. Women are still paid only 77.8 cents for every dollar a man makes for full-time work. The disparity is even greater for women of color: African-American women make 63 cents and Latinas make only 52 cents for every dollar that a white male earns.

Women's funds spotlight glaring inequalities like these by funneling money and other resources -- knowledge, best practices, and connections to peers, allies and advocates -- to women-led organizations on the ground that have the ideas and solutions to improve their communities. As women's funds have grown, they have gained reputations as financially savvy innovators that know how to utilize money for the greater social good.

We have only begun to see what is possible as women at all levels of giving come to see themselves as philanthropists in partnership with women's funds. The most dynamic recent example of this is Women Moving Millions, a campaign led by the Women's Funding Network in partnership with Helen LaKelly Hunt and her sister Swanee Hunt that focused on raising gifts of $1 million and more from high-net-worth women for women's funds around the world.

Even amid the current economic crisis, the campaign exceeded its $150 million goal earlier this year, raising a total of $180 million from individual women donors. In Dallas alone, the Dallas Women's Foundation grew its number of million-dollar-and-up gifts from one to an astonishing eighteen. Such an achievement suggests enormous dynamism among high-net-worth women. And yet it is but part of a larger picture in which women at all levels of society and means recognize and embrace the importance and power of funding positive social change.

Women's funds have a rich history of redefining philanthropy and expanding the ranks of those participating in it as well as benefiting from it. Today, they and the larger philanthropic community are poised to translate this leadership into real impact through greater investments in women and girls. In a troubled time for philanthropy, it is women's leadership that is shining a bright light on creative solutions to inequity and a path to justice.

-- Christine Gumm

Social Networks and Getting People to Act

Last week, my pal Bruce Trachtenberg, executive director of the Communications Network, wrote a terrific post about social networking in which he asked, How is it making us better (if it is)? And how is it helping us do a better job of communicating (if it is)? Bruce flattered me by including a few of my thoughts on the subject in his post. My main point: Social media, while labor intensive ("high touch"), is powerful precisely because it fosters extended networks based on one-to-one relationships.

But later, after reading the post, I began to wonder. In what ways are the relationships forged through social media different than the relationships we establish in the offline world? Are the friends and acquaintances I make through social media more likely to be persuaded by something I say or write than members of my extended family or my college buddies? And at what point does the law of diminishing returns kick in? A hundred? A hundred and twenty (the optimal size, according to anthropologists, for primitive social groups throughout human history)? More? Fewer?

I was getting confused, so I decided to check back in with Bruce. It all depends on your reasons for seeking out those connections in the first place, he said. Low levels of network engagement may be perfectly fine for some things; for others -- persuading friends or supporters to sign a petition, to contact their elected representatives, to donate to your cause -- the level of engagement may have to be higher. The most important thing to remember, however, is that it's not about how many people you know; it's about who you know.

That point is underscored by a terrific 2006 report Bruce pointed me to. Written and researched by the Communications Leadership Institute and Spitfire Strategies, the report, Discovering the Activation Point: Smart Strategies to Make People Act, argues that the number of people needed to make a difference is usually smaller than you think and is rarely "as many as possible." The key to creating change, the authors write, is in persuading the right people at the right time to take a specific action.

Who are the "right" people (i.e., your target audience)? They're the folks you actually have a chance of persuading -- either those who already support your cause or those willing to give you a fair hearing. And, for obvious reasons, you're likely to find and connect with more of them through your social networks than through other channels.

The report is full of strategies, tips, and good questions to help you get to the "activation point":

• What do you need to persuade people to do?
• What is the smallest number of people you can activate to get what you want?
• What does your target audience already know (or think it knows) about your issue?
• Does your audience need more information or more reason to care or act?
• How can you phrase your ask so it sounds like a suggestion rather than a command?
• Do your messages show you respect your audience?
• How can you acknowledge that your audience is pressed for time and/or resources?
• What would make your efforts more timely?
• How can you showcase the benefits of your audience taking action?
• When you follow up, how can you make it personal?

You can download a free copy of the report here.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (June 20 - 21, 2009)

This week's roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Communications/Marketing

Joe Waters, director of cause marketing for a Boston-based nonprofit, defends his profession in this thoughtful post. (Be sure to check out the forty-two -- and counting -- comments. Good stuff.)

Fundraising

As he explains in this post, everything Donor Power Blogger Jeff Brooks knows about fundraising he learned from the Beatles.

Nonprofit Management

On the Creation in Common blog, Carlo Cuesta says that telling nonprofits to act more like for-profits merely reinforces negative stereotypes. The statement, writes Cuesta, "furthers the perception that if you do not operate with a profit motive you do not understand business. It says: 'for-profit expertise trumps nonprofit expertise.' It is one of the greatest barriers to deep collaboration among board and staff members, pitting the knowledgeable business leader against the knowledgeable community worker, money vs. mission...." (H/t: Allison Fine)

Guest blogging on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, Eric Kessler, founder of Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors, argues nonprofit mergers and alliances are more likely to work when "forward-thinking organizations put mission first and think strategically about how they can most effectively work together to achieve shared goals."

Philanthropy

On the Nonprofit and Foundation Advocacy blog, Sue Hoechstetter argues that the most interesting news out of a recent Bradley Center discussion about the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy report Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best wasn't the discussion of the benchmarks themselves but the fact that "sector leaders across the political spectrum seem to agree that increasing multiyear, general support and increasing giving to marginalized populations are priority values that should guide grantmaking." Adds Hoechstetter:

For example, with much of the nonprofit sector experiencing economic crises and general support funding on the decrease, the Philanthropy Roundtable and Council on Foundations could together develop a strategic campaign to increase their members' general support grantmaking. If a joint project is not feasible, the groups could initiate separate campaigns encouraging increases and learn from each other's efforts. It would be refreshing and productive if the next round of seminars on Criteria could be devoted to "how" to immediately facilitate increased funding to the marginalized, rather than to whether or not foundations should be directed to do so.....

Social Entrepreneurship

Echoing Green, a New York-based nonprofit that provides seed funding to entrepreneurs with bold ideas for social change, has announced its 2009 class of fellows.

The creators of the Firefox Web browser, in partnership with Idealist, Social Actions, and many other organizations, have announced Mozilla Service Week, September 14-21, an initiative designed to encourage individuals to step up and use the World Wide Web to better their community.

For her innovative work as the co-head of the world's wealthiest foundation, Melinda French Gates has been named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business (#2) by Fast Company magazine. (H/T: Charity Navigator blog)

In conjunction with World Refugee Day, Britt Bravo interviews Kjerstin Erickson, founder of FORGE (Facilitating Opportunities for Refugee Growth and Empowerment), a California-based nonprofit that works to empower refugees in Zambia and Botswana.

Social Media

As Nathaniel Whittemore (and others) have noted, Twitter has played a major role in disseminating news about the contested presidential election and subsequent mass protests in Iran. Indeed, the "Twitter Revolution" in Iran, says Tim Kane on the Kauffman Foundation's Growthology blog, is the first ever "geek-led revolution." Which should surprise no one, adds Kane, given that Iran boasts more bloggers per capita than any country in the world. Cool.

Communications Network executive director Bruce Trachtenberg shares what he has learned about social networks and networking in this post. (Love the accompanying graphic.)

And on the Harvard Business Review blog, Alexandra Samuel says that businesses can learn a lot from nonprofits and NGOs about how to use social media to deepen customer relationships, share knowledge, and strengthen teams.

That's it for now. Happy Father's Day!

-- Regina Mahone

GFEM Launches Media Database

(Kathryn Pyle is producing a documentary film about the post-conflict period in El Salvador. In her last post, she wrote about funding for documentary film and new media. )

Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media rolled out their new Media Database on Monday at the annual SILVERDOCS conference/film festival in Silver Spring, Maryland.

At the event, GFEM executive director Alyce Myatt exhorted the audience of about fifty filmmakers to think beyond "cinema" to how they engage their audiences, the social impact their films can have, and how they can partner with organizations that use their films as part of a broader advocacy or service campaign. At the same time, Myatt lamented the decline in cinematic qualities among U.S. documentary films. "They’ve lost their aesthetic sense," she told those in attendance. "A good story about a critical issue should still be told artfully."

GFEM, which works to advance the field of media arts and public interest media funding, launched its Media Database at the Council on Foundations conference earlier this spring, but the effort is still in its early stages, with about 150 projects in the database at this point and another hundred in development. "As an organization, we serve funders," said project director Pamela Harris. "But the database is a bridge to film and video makers, radio and media advocacy projects." Grantseekers and grantmakers access the database through separate portals on the GFEM Web site, with profiles of the former behind one door and funders (or anyone else) able to search media projects by topic behind the other.

The how-to session at SILVERDOCS walked session attendees through the Media Database interface, starting with tagging. Selecting the right tag from a list that includes civil rights, disability, gender, and so on is essential to piquing funders' interest -- although the site is also being used as a resource by broadcasters and social issue organizations and shows up in Google searches.

Myatt gave an example of how subject terms can draw funders in. At the Council on Foundations meeting, she said, a family foundation member stopped by the GFEM exhibit and, during their conversation, offered the following caveat: "We don’t fund media, we only fund programs that address aging and end-of-life issues." Myatt immediately typed in those keywords and a trailer for a film on just that topic began to play. The man pulled up a chair, watched the trailer and, at the end, said, "They’ll be hearing from me." Another trailer, this one for The Child Is the Canary, about lead paint poisoning in children, has attracted environmental justice organizations seeking to partner with producer/director Robert Richter, the Healthy Homes Collaborative, and the Boston-based Lead Action Collaborative on education and advocacy efforts.

The audience was advised to develop their database profiles with funders' interests in mind. "They don't care about your film," said Myatt. "They care about a communication tool, a film that puts a face on an issue. The film shows the landscape and the personal story within it."

Out in the Silence, a film about homophobia in a small Pennsylvania town, was cited as an example of a well-done profile. The trailer for the film, which starts with a letter from a local woman begging for help for her bullied gay teenage son, is quite moving and the accompanying written description is clear and compelling.

For a media project to be eligible for inclusion in the database, it must have received funding from at least one foundation or government agency. Budget information is an important part of the profile, said Harris. Funders want to see a track record and where they might fit into the larger funding picture.

Has the database resulted in any new grants, the audience wanted to know. Too soon to tell, said Harris. "We're tracking Google and site traffic, but funders can contact the producers of media projects directly, they don't have to go through GFEM, so we might not know what happened. But we're out there pushing it; we want it to work."

"Do funders ever say a project is taking too much time to complete?" asked another participant, before adding, "My film has been going on forever!" The GFEM team tried to reassure him by pointing out that The Betrayal, a documentary about a Laotian family left behind after the CIA ended its "secret war" in Laos (1955-1974), took twenty-three years to complete. "Investigative journalism takes time. International travel is not cheap," said Myatt.

New media, the subtext of the NYWIFT/Women Make Movies fundraising seminar I blogged about over the weekend, was also in the spotlight. Myatt recalled the early 1970s, when new video technology reduced costs and the convergence of content and technology diversified the media community and transformed the medium itself. Today, she added, while radio and print media have adapted to the proliferation of video, truly innovative work is not being generated by the field. The dominance of techies, rather than storytellers, means that many worthwhile stories are not being told well. Myatt urged those in attendance to get up to speed, through conferences or organizations like the Bay Area Video Coalition. "If not, we’ll get content that's flat. We'll get more YouTube."

A new generation of philanthropists has brought a fresh perspective to media, said Myatt. They're media savvy, they are targeting films as part of their funding priorities, and they're looking at Miro, Blip.tv, and content created for mobile applications. "The elections in Iran, the mass mobilizations of people, were driven by tech sites, cell video, and Twitter," she added. "New media is moving in to fill the gaps."

Is she right? Is traditional documentary filmmaking an anachronism? Or will it adapt to new social and technological realities? Your thoughts...?

-- Kathryn Pyle

PND Job Board Statistics

A couple of people have asked for a graphical treatment of the trends mentioned in Alice Itty's Friday post, Job Boards vs. 'People Searching,' so here you go:

(The June '09 number is a projection based on actual activity over the first fifteen days of the month.)

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts....

-- Regina Mahone

Why Grantmaking on Media Policy Still Matters

(Becky Lentz, an assistant professor of media and public policy at McGill University in Montreal, was program officer for electronic media policy at the Ford Foundation from 2001-2007. An initial version of this article was commissioned by Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media.)

Noteworthy U.S. journalist and media reform advocate Bill Moyers has said that "speech is the oxygen of democracy." Assuming he's right, then by analogy our communications infrastructure serves as its vital respiratory system. Yet, too few realize the importance of the media policies that govern how speech flows into and out of our democratic body politic in relation to how our democracy functions.

Media policy advocates for the public interest have won many significant victories in the past several years:

• defeating the FCC's media consolidation ruling of 2003;
• opening up new radio-frequency spectrum for wireless devices in 2008; and
• winning $7.2 billion in early 2009 for broadband build-out to underserved communities.

But what do these victories mean to John and Jane Q. Public and the well-being of our democracy?

Like environmental protection laws and regulations, media policy involves safeguarding our broadcasting and telecommunications environment. It guarantees non-discriminatory and affordable access to the means to speak and be heard. In today's increasingly globalized media and communications environment, keeping democracy's respiratory system for speech accessible requires diligent attention to how media policy issues are addressed -- by corporations, the Office of the President, Congress, the FCC and other regulatory agencies, as well as the courts. This is necessary because, increasingly, electronic communication networks form the backbone of many other essential public and private services such as education, health care, trade, economic development, national security, and finance. Yet, despite its significance, the dynamic field of public interest-oriented individuals and organizations involved in media policy work in the United States continues to receive less public and funder attention than its counterparts in these equally important issue sectors.

Media policy is no less important than, say, environmental policy. Unlike environmentalism, however, media policy issues are difficult to describe in ways that instantly engage hearts, minds, and imaginations. Consider asking a friend or family member what environmentalists do and you're likely to get a straightforward answer regardless of whether that person agrees with environmental activists' tactics or priorities: environmentalists work to protect scarce, essential, and therefore valuable public resources; the quality of our air, water, and land depend on it. Pose the same question about media policy advocates, and the question will probably inspire a puzzled response -- if you get one at all.

Unlike environmental and food or drug industry regulation, it is more difficult to "see" the impact of good or bad media policy. We "get," visually and viscerally, how poor regulation results in polluted water or air, contaminated food, and dangerous medicines. However, the impacts of a deregulated media environment can be harder to see, much like it has been difficult to see until recently the effects of lax regulation in the financial services industry.

Due in part to the challenges of communicating about media policy, much of the communication about its issues -- including media diversity, digital TV, electronic privacy, concentrated media ownership, copyright law, Internet governance, and broadband access -- has too often lacked a compelling, cohesive, and engaging narrative that sparks political passions. As a high-level representative from a prominent private foundation once suggested, media policy is a "second bounce" issue: something subordinate to more frontline concerns. Established policy areas such as education, health care, the environment, economic development, and human rights occupy a policy foreground, whereas media policy concerns operate in the background -- except when their effects come to light in controversies around news, public affairs, or entertainment content.

Take for example the January 2002 chemical spill in Minot, North Dakota, that ignited national outrage about radio industry consolidation. According to Eric Klinenberg, author of Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, "a train derailed...leaking thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals into the air. One person died and hundreds were treated for immediate health problems. The city's six non-religious commercial radio stations -- all owned by Clear Channel -- never aired warnings for local residents." (Quoted from Democracy Now’s January 2007 piece "EXCLUSIVE...911 Calls in North Dakota Town Reveal Dangers of Media Consolidation.")

Unfortunately, this type of controversy rouses the public's interest in media regulation only momentarily, in the same way that an episodic salmonella outbreak might stir consumers to take note for a week or so. Add to this the fact that consumer protection in the U.S. focuses primarily on products, not services like broadcasting. Consumer concerns about obscenity or indecency in the media, perceived bias in news coverage, contested children's programming, or the filtering of online content by Internet service providers cannot be addressed by simply recalling a product from vendors' store shelves.

Even so, I would suggest that all these issues are merely symptoms of underlying structural concerns regarding the respiratory system for the oxygen of democracy: speech. Addressing them requires legislating, regulating, or adjudicating the structure of our media and communications system, as opposed to controlling the content flowing through it. This is because media policy in the U.S. is situated within the legal framework of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

To be sure, there is a lively ongoing debate in this country about the role of government in our society, including the benefits and drawbacks of regulation itself. Despite this, I suspect few would dispute that there is a valuable regulatory role for government. The food and drug industries are telling examples.

With the regulation of speech itself prohibited, the focus moves to the structure of the industries that produce, distribute, exhibit, and facilitate the exchange of information using electronic communication resources -- the public airwaves, in the case of radio and television broadcasting, along with cable and telephone networks.

Thus, funders interested in helping to sustain a democratic infrastructure for speech, information, and knowledge exchange should consider supporting that which contributes to keeping industry, elected officials, and media regulators on their toes: a healthy sector of organizations that can advocate for the public's interests on a variety of media policy issues.

By "healthy sector," I mean the following:

• A robust number of enduring, diverse, and collaborating organizations with the collective capacity to move hearts, minds, and imaginations about media policy issues;
• Sustainable forms of financial support for these organizations' activities;
• The ability of these organizations to attract and retain high-quality organizational leaders, skilled staff, board members, and volunteers;
• A diverse number of committed, prominent, and respected spokespersons for the sector; and
• Public recognition of their achievements, which includes press coverage and even scholarly attention.

As already discussed, media policy work includes attention to a variety of interrelated concerns that include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Decision-making about communications via radio and television broadcasting, cable and satellite TV, telephones, and the Internet;
• Laws affecting electronic access to content -- copyright, patents, and trademarks -- known as "intellectual property"; and
• Access to government information laws, and privacy rights.

Some funders have chosen to focus on media content concerns such as media representations of minorities, documentary filmmaking, or protecting children from dangerous online content. Others support efforts that target industry structure and behavior with the aim of reducing media ownership concentration. Still others invest in specific issues such as electronic privacy or focus on improving the professional feeder system for journalists going into industry jobs and their expertise in media policy issues. (One of the largest investors in journalism education is the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2007 it made a $2.5 million grant to Yale Law School to start the Knight Law and Media Policy Program.)

In addition, "sector-oriented" funders have identified dynamics within the policy advocacy sector itself to increase its capacity for collective action over the long term. This has required deliberate attention to strategies such as linking grassroots organizations with national advocacy campaigns, investing in leadership development, communications and fundraising training, and even nonprofit management assistance.

Given the increasingly scarce resources available during these uncertain financial times, funders will be looking for sharper focus for their investments in the coming months and years. There is renewed attention to projects addressing the future of journalism. Should funders also be concentrating their limited resources on building and sustaining a system of "independent" content producers and distributors, with the aim of shoring up what is referred to as "public service media"? (One of the most ambitious efforts in this area is Ford’s $50 million investment to strengthen and promote public media.)

GFEM members should congratulate themselves for the contributions they have already made to this dynamic field of policy work. They are pioneers guiding others toward the crucial intersection of technology, politics, economics, and culture. At stake is the well-being and future of the respiratory system for the oxygen of democracy -- with enormous political and economic implications for U.S. society and our increasingly interconnected world.

-- Becky Lentz

Documentary Film and New Media

(Kathryn Pyle is producing a documentary film about the post-conflict period in El Salvador. In her last post, she wrote about the "green trees" movement in Washington, D.C. )

New media wasn't the only topic on the agenda at the "Fundraising and Financing for Documentaries" event this weekend at Hunter College in New York City. But it was certainly the elephant in the room -- in this case, an auditorium filled to overflowing with aspiring documentary filmmakers seeking advice and an opportunity to pitch their projects to a star roster of funders and broadcasters.

Presented by Women Make Movies and New York Women in Film & Television, the program featured representatives from HBO, the Sundance Channel, A&E, the public TV series POV and Independent Lens, as well as funders such as Cinereach, Chicken & Egg, the National Black Programming Consortium, and Independent Television Service (ITVS). Those in attendance were rewarded with lots of advice on presenting proposals to funders (summary: "read the guidelines") and making award-winning films. Character development, artful storytelling, stunning visuals, and compelling social issues are still what broadcasters and audiences want, and filmmakers were encouraged to share their passion when approaching distributors; passion can tilt the balance and convince a distributor to pick up a film, especially if it happens to be a film by a first-time director -- the astonishing Trouble the Waters being an example.

Later in the day, a panel of independent doc-makers described their use of Twitter, MySpace, and other social networks for fundraising. The examples ranged from simple, self-managed email solicitations sent to friends and acquaintances to the use of commercial online fundraising sites that post worthwhile projects and a time-limited fundraising goal for each project -- sort of a cross between a Jerry Lewis telethon and eBay. The panelists also focused on the ways they use their own Web sites, blogs, and Facebook pages to build an audience and create "buzz" for their films through the posting of actual clips, regular updates on the film's progress, and links to partner organizations.

Of course, new media figured in every discussion. Without abandoning standards, the funders and broadcasters urged members of the audience to experiment with all types of new media and technology -- for making, marketing, and getting their films distributed. Many also mentioned ongoing efforts within their own organizations to adapt, adopt, and sift through the new media noise to identify what might be useful over the long term. PBS's MediaShift, for example, offers thoughtful news and analysis of "the digital media revolution," and PBS staff at the event reported on new initiatives in the pipeline designed to build the capacity of PBS partners and better align the broadcaster's internal policies with the new media options available for film distribution.

The event's organizers also highlighted Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media's new Media Database, which aims to marry the interests of philanthropists and electronic media projects in need of support. I'll be attending a roll-out of the database at the SILVERDOCS conference next week in Silver Spring, Maryland. Look for a followup post from there.

-- Kathryn Pyle

Job Boards vs. 'People Searching'

(Alice Itty manages the PND job board. This is her first post for PhilanTopic.)

I came across a blog post by Dan Schawbel recently that resonated with me. Schwabel, a Gen Y marketing professional and author of the Brazen Careerist blog, takes a dim view of the usefulness of online job boards. Instead, he favors an unplugged approach he calls "people searching." A "people searcher" methodically identifies the top companies or organizations she wants to work for, finds people who are employed at those companies, and networks like crazy until she gets a job offer. Schawbel's post spells out the ten steps a jobseeker should take to get the process rolling.

Okay, I'll admit it, after reading the post I was a little nervous. I've spent the last eight years of my professional life posting jobs (among other responsibilities) to the PND job board, and from where I sit there's still a place for a service like ours.

Sure, if you want to stand out from the crowd -- especially in these recessionary times -- you have to schmooze and network and, like Blanche DuBois, rely on the kindness of friends and acquaintances, if not strangers. But for the newly unemployed, many of whom are overwhelmed by the prospect of having to find another job, online boards are a convenient and comfortable place to start their search.

They're also a handy, if completely unscientific, barometer of what's going on in the economy. I've been tracking the number of submissions to the PND job board for almost eight years and while I hesitate to call our board a proxy for the nonprofit economy, I do think the numbers have an interesting story to tell. Submissions had grown steadily over the last few years, with 2007 being a banner year for the board, with just over 6,200 jobs jobs submitted. But submissions started to tail off in December of 2007, just as the mainstream media was suggesting the economy had slipped into recession. The number of submissions continued to decline in the first half of 2008, and then, coincident with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, things fell off the table, with the number of jobs submitted during the last three months of the year down 25 percent, 50 percent, and 44 percent, respectively, compared to the previous year.

I'm not going to say the worst is behind us, but the number of jobs submitted to the board has been trending slightly higher since March and suggests that the "green shoots" everyone is talking about may not be a mirage. Who knows, maybe the nonprofit sector -- which, as a recent report suggests, has become the largest private employer in New York City, adding more than 50,000 jobs to the local economy between 2000 and 2007 while the rest of the city’s private economy lost jobs -- may lead us out of the funk we've been in. Not likely, but given massive spending by the government, the growing needs of so many people, and the generosity of Americans, I wouldn't say it's impossible.

In the meantime, if you work at a nonprofit with a job to fill, the PND job board is a great place to start. Postings, which stay on the site for two months (unless you instruct us otherwise), are free for all domestic nonprofit and educational organizations, and will even feature your logo if you ask.

-- Alice Itty

Strategies for Hard Times: The Case for Sustainable Funding

(Michael Seltzer is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. In his last post, he answered some frequently asked questions about how nonprofits stand to gain from the economic stimulus package.)

The news from the nonprofit sector is not good. Despite a year-to-date return of more than 5 percent in the S&P 500 that may have brightened the mood for some on Wall Street, there has been little to cheer on Nonprofit Street, where funding and donations are down, demand for services is up, and the future is uncertain. Indeed, a recent article in Crain's New York Business ("Nonprofits Gird for Long Battle," Miriam Souccar, June 7) underscores just how deep and long-lasting the impact of this economic downturn on nonprofits is likely to be.

The release earlier this week of the Giving USA Foundation’s annual survey of charitable giving further confirmed what nonprofit leaders already knew. Overall charitable giving in 2008 dropped 5.7 percent (in inflation-adjusted terms) -- the first decline in overall giving since 1987 and only the second since Giving USA began publishing annual reports in 1956. Given current giving trends and the real prospect they could persist into 2010 and beyond, what steps can and should grantmakers take to help their grantees -- past, present, and prospective -- survive and thrive in these very tough times?

One idea that has begun to gain traction among donors is to think beyond the historic constructs -- project/program, general support, unrestricted, capital, etc. -- that we, as a field, have used to conceptualize our grants.

Instead, a growing number of foundations are beginning to think of themselves as "builders" rather than "buyers." At the risk of oversimplifying the distinction, buyers award grants with an eye to achieving specific programmatic outcomes, while builders, always mindful of outcomes, seek to help grantees strengthen their organizational capacity so as to achieve greater impact in the future. To the extent that "buying" is limited to a relatively short-term transaction rather than a longer-term interest in the organizational well-being of the grantee, it is not an especially productive activity. Which leads me to ask: What foundation would want to be a buyer rather than a builder in today's environment?

The good news is that, regardless of the type of support it provides, any foundation can be a builder as long as it seeks to bolster the sustainability of the organizations it supports. With that in mind, a growing number of leaders in the sector have made the case for general operating support as integral to a nonprofit's ability to survive and thrive -- in any kind of economic environment. Unfortunately, unrestricted grants comprise less than 20 percent of all grantmaking dollars, compared to the more than 50 percent of grantmaking dollars awarded for specific programs or projects or campaigns (Foundation Giving Trends, 2009 edition, Foundation Center).

While calls for more general operating support should not be ignored, there are steps that foundations interested in funding specific projects can take to beef up the "builder" side of their activities:

1. Revisit your program descriptions to make sure your priorities and strategies are described as clearly as possible; doing so will make it easier for prospective grantees to submit stronger proposals.
2. Make sure your grantees have the latitude to adequately account for their indirect costs.
3. Expedite your grant approval process to reduce the lag time between submission of a proposal and action on that proposal.
4. Expand the period of your grants to more than a year.
5. If you are providing partial support for a project, be sure to share the responsibility with your grantee of securing the remaining dollars from other funders.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Today, as much as at any time in recent memory, it is vitally important for foundations and corporate grantmakers to do everything they can to build the capacity of their grantees and the nonprofit sector for the long haul. The suggestions listed above are a starting point. Have other ideas? We'd love to hear them....

-- Michael Seltzer

A Victory for Justice

The announcement that Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed against it by the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa (pictured right), a Nigerian environmental activist who, along with eight others, was executed in 1995 by the military regime that ruled Nigeria at the time, should be applauded by anyone who cares about justice, the environment, and the right of nonprofits to advocate on behalf of the disenfranchised and dispossessed.

The bare outlines of the story are as follows (h/t LA Times).

Shell began operating in the Niger Delta, home to more than thirty million people from dozens of ethnic groups, in the late 1950s. As demand for oil, particularly the low-sulfur light crude found in the delta basin, grew over the next thirty years, the company came under attack from local activists for its low-cost production practices and disregard for the environment. The New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and whose attorneys helped initiate the lawsuit, takes it from there:

In the early 1990s, the Ogoni, led by Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, began organized, non-violent protests against Shell's practices. Shell grew increasingly concerned with the heightened international prominence of the Ogoni movement and made payments to security forces that they knew to be engaging in human rights violations against the local communities. The military government violently repressed the demonstrations, arrested Ogoni activists, and falsely accused nine Ogoni activists of murder and bribed witnessess to give fake testimony. The nine, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, were denied a fair trial and then hanged on November 10, 1995....

While the human rights and environmental justice communities have applauded the settlement, they note that it only applies to the ten individual plaintiffs and "does not resolve outstanding issues between Shell and the Ogoni people." According to the London-based Independent, at least one other trial featuring Shell as a defendent is pending in New York courts. Stay tuned.

For documentation of the legal briefs involved in the case and additional background information, check out the Web sites of CCR and EarthRights International.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Quote of the Day (June 9, 2009)

"The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

"You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush's policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

"The first category -- the business cycle -- accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It's a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists' assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.

"About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.

"Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies -- together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama -- account for 20 percent of the swing.

"About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas...."

-- Dave Leonhardt, "Sea of Red Ink: How It Spread From a Puddle" (New York Times, June 9, 2009)

Weekend Link Roundup (June 6 - 7, 2009)

Our latest roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Arts and Culture

On the Philanthromedia blog, Dana Variano reviews The Philanthropist, a new play starring Matthew Broderick, and concludes that the moral of the drama is that we have to "listen to the parties to whom we are giving." Adds Variano: "Really listen, rather than just hear. And then, we have to give without any strings attached. Only then, I think, can the world begin to view philanthropy in a less skeptical manner, and give the act the credit which it deserves...."

Impact/Effectiveness

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz asks readers to imagine a world in which data -- "high quality, informed, diverse, and meaningful data on nonprofits and change organizations, the work they do, and the impact they have" -- is available for free. What would you do with it? What value would you add to this type of information? Inquiring minds want to know.

With news of mergers and cutbacks in the nonprofit sector dominating headlines, everyone is speculating about the future of the sector. But before we bring in the bulldozers and dumpsters, writes Rosetta Thurman, we should take a deep breath and look at things that can be changed right now. Good advice, as always.

International Affairs/Development

On the Business of Giving blog, Kristi Heim asks whether "offshore farming," the practice of foreign countries buying or leasing land in Africa to produce food for the folks at home, is good for Africa. Citing a report in The Economist which found that nearly fifty billion acres of African farmland has been acquired by China, Saudia Arabia, and other countries in recent years, Heim writes: "Critics call it the newest form of colonialism and say the deals are destabilizing land grabs that push out local farmers, [while others] say that after decades of neglect and failure by international aid organizations to improve the situation, commercial investment might actually help." Regardless of your view, this is an issue that is not going away.

Journalism

A new report from J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, found that nearly $128 million in grants were awarded to at least 115 new media projects in 17 states and the District of Columbia from 2005 to mid-2009. On her blog, Allison Fine explains that the finding is significant for a couple of reasons:

1. Although the Knight Foundation is the largest funder on the list, they are not the only funder of new journalism projects in the U.S.
2. The projects funded are not only large and national in scope, but small and local as well
3. The list of funders is a mix of household names -- like Gates and Hewlett -- and smaller, local foundations, proving that funders don't have to come from journalism or be born to new media to appreciate the need to invest in new ways of collecting, curating, and distributing news and information

Philanthropy

The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had received $10.4 million in unsolicited donations over the last year or so, prompting Tactical Philanthropy's Sean Stannard-Stockton to comment: "I think this is direct evidence of individual donors’ increasing interest in impact. Why did Buffett give money to the Gates Foundation? He thought they were better donors." But is Gates the only effective foundation out there? "If you were going to donate to a well known foundation," asks Stannard-Stockton, "which one would it be?"

Speaking of the Gates Foundation, Jeff Raikes, the foundation's CEO, reflects on his transition from a career in business (he was a longtime Microsoft exec) to one in philanthropy in his first annual letter as CEO. Writes Raikes:

As I was making the transition, I asked many people for advice. Over and over again, I heard a similar refrain: that the biggest difference between business and philanthropy is that in business, the market tells you exactly how you’re doing. In philanthropy, most people said, there is no market.

Gradually, I started to take some issue with this idea. Without a doubt, businesses do get pure market feedback in many cases. Costco generates a detailed sales report every single day....

[But] in a business like software, sometimes you have to invest in innovations that don’t reach the market for a decade or more. In those instances, you rely on the other tools at your disposal to determine if the potential reward is worth the risk. You do your homework before you take on a project. You gather feedback from others with experience and good judgment. You use whatever interim data are available to measure progress as rigorously as you can.

Foundations are in a similar position. Often, finding the best ways to help people improve their lives takes many years of research and experimentation....

Click here for the full text.

Social Media

With more nonprofit organizations using social networking sites to connect with donors and a wider audience, Social Citizens blogger Kristin Ivie wonders whether the young nonprofit staffers using these tools on behalf of organizations should create separate personae to avoid "letting the personal bleed into the professional"? Writes Ivie: "I agree that social media can be extremely valuable for organizations, and they help breathe new life into causes and missions. But does that mean pieces of our personal online personas need to die?" What do you think?

On the Mashable blog, Sharlyn Lauby, president of Internal Talent Management -- an organization that specializes in employee training and human resources consulting -- offers 10 things every organization should add to their social media policy. Her list of tips include:

1. Introduce the purpose of social media
2. Be responsible for what you write
3. Be authentic
4. Consider your audience
5. Exercise good judgment
6. Understand the concept of community
7. Respect copyrights and fair use
8. Remember to protect confidential & proprietary info
9. Bring value
10. Productivity matters

Last but not least, the Global Partnership Center earlier this month hosted TED@State, the first government-sponsored TED event, as a way to encourage more public-private partnerships. Speakers at the event included social-media expert Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everyone; Acumen Fund CEO Jacqueline Novogratz; futurist Stewart Brand, author of the Whole Earth Catalog; and "bottom billion" economist Paul Collier. The plan is to make video of the individual talks available free of charge on the TED Web site in the near future. We'll let you know.

That's it for now. Have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone

TED on Sunday: Seth Godin on Leadership

We are at an inflection point with respect to the way ideas are created and spread, argues marketing guru Seth Godin in this fast-paced talk. Thanks to the Internet and "personalized" mass media, society has benefited from an explosion of "tribes" -- communities of like-minded, geographically separated people -- and the emergence of such tribes has in turn changed the nature of leadership. People "join" tribes not because they need to (the mass industrialization model) or are persuaded to (the advertising model), but because they want to. In such an environment, leadership is not about commanding others; it's about finding a group that has a yearning and motivating the group to follow. The days of the "sheepwalker" are over, says Godin. Today, every individual can lead and do his or her bit to change the world. So what are you waiting for? (Filmed: February 2009; Running time: 17:23)

Liked this talk? Try one of these:

• Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice
• Alex Tabarrok on the Benefits of Globalization
• Majora Carter on Environmental Justice
• Al Gore on Climate Change
• Sylvia Earle on Saving the 'Blue Heart' of the Planet
• James Howard Kunstler on the Death of Suburbia
• Clay Shirky on Epochal Change
• Mark Bittman on How We Eat
• Hans Rosling on the Dimensions of Development
• Sir Ken Robinson on Education and Creativity

-- Mitch Nauffts

Giving While Living

To be or not to be? That seems to be the question for a growing number of family foundations, a new report from the Foundation Center and the Council on Foundations finds. Based on survey responses from more than a thousand foundations, the report, Perpetuity or Limited Lifespan: How Do Family Foundations Decide? (46 pages, PDF), found that while perpetuity is the norm for most family foundations, a relatively small number plan to have a limited lifespan (12 percent), while a larger segment (25 percent) are undecided -- either because they haven't discussed the issue or due to uncertainty about the family's future involvement in the foundation.

(Image courtesy of Northern California Grantmakers)

"Uncertain" isn't a word one would use to describe John Hunting, the Steelcase Furniture heir who created the Beldon Fund in 1982. In 1998, Hunting, a committed environmentalist, endowed the foundation with $100 million from the sale of his stock in Steelcase, which had gone public the year before, and made the decision to spend out its assets over the next ten years. In his late 60s at the time, Hunting gave four reasons for spending out: foundations should have a limited lifespan; mounting environmental problems couldn't wait; the so-called intergenerational transfer of wealth would replenish the philanthropic "well"; and he wanted to enjoy the results of his philanthropy in his lifetime.

Hunting hired Bill Roberts, a former executive with the Environmental Defense Fund, to be the fund's executive director (Roberts was succeeded in that position by Anita Nager in 2001), and over the next decade they used the fund's resources to build public and policy support for environmental protection, spending between $10 million and $15 million a year.

As a still-vital Hunting explained when he and Nager dropped by the offices of PND last week, the goal from the outset was to focus the fund's relatively modest resources over a short period of time so as to maximize the fund's impact. When asked whether he and his colleagues had succeeded in that goal, Hunting didn't hesitate: "Absolutely." (We'll be posting a transcript of our conversation with John and Anita in a week or so.)

The Beldon Fund made its last grants in June 2008 and officially closed its doors at the end of May. Over the last month or so, Hunting and Nager have been making the rounds to talk about what they learned from their spend-out experience. They're also promoting a new Web site and publication, Giving While Living: The Beldon Fund Spend-Out Story (28 pages, PDF), that provide comprehensive information on Beldon's program/investment strategies, operations, and outcomes. Both are excellent.

As the Foundation Center report mentioned above makes clear, most philanthropists are still uncomfortable with the idea of a limited lifespan foundation. On the other hand, more and more donors are looking to achieve significant impact with their philanthropic resources -- and if they can do so in a limited time frame, all the better. Hunting and his colleagues have some thoughts on that score:

1. Learn quickly. Having a sunset date means that there's limited time to learn from mistakes and adjust course.

2. Use evaluation to refine strategy. Develop programmatic benchmarks of success and use external evaluations with anonymous feedback to assess progress. An evaluation that looks at the overall impact of the program strategies, rather than just individual grants, will indicate if you're on the right track or need to make changes.

3. Keep a tight focus. It's better to start with a few areas where you are likely to make a difference than to take on too many issues and then have to pare down.

4. Be bold. Develop or adopt innovative strategies geared to being change within a limited time frame.

5. Manage risk. Taking chances can lead to breakthrough solutions, but not all bets pay off. Learn from those that don't work and move on.

6. Look for synergy across program areas. Develop a strategy early on to connect, where possible, the work of major programs in order to achieve greater scale and deeper impact.

7. Ensure budget flexibility. Allocate assets to allow flexibility to respond to unanticipated funding opportunities or critical needs in the field.

8. Build the field. Hire staff members who can bring other funders to the work.

9. Use all the foundation's resources -- not just money. Capitalize on staff's issue expertise, funder connections, and ability to serve as a sounding board for problems and ideas.

You'll find more of the same -- including specific tips about spending out, promoting collaboration among grantees, building a field of practice, engaging other funders, and responsible exiting practices -- on the new Beldon Fund site.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Free Foundation Center Widgets

Now this is cool...

Foundation Finder offers basic information on grantmakers in the U.S. including private foundations, community foundations, grantmaking public charities, and corporate giving programs.

With 990 Finder, you can search quickly for an organization's IRS return, just enter a name, state code (e.g. NY), ZIP code, employer identification number (EIN), or fiscal year.

Grab one or both widgets and put 'em on your personal or organization's Web site. For more information, click here or here.

Dan Pallotta Defends His Thesis

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the third installment of Jayme Koszyn Consulting's Give Five Speaking Series, featuring Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential, and moderator Leonard Lopate, host of the highest-rated public radio talk show in New York City.

By 7:10 P.M., the audience had not quite filled the orchestra section of Columbia University's Miller Theater. But Lopate was eager to get started and immediately asked Pallotta to set the record straight about Pallotta TeamWorks, the controversial for-profit special events company founded by Pallotta in the early 1990s. Controversial because, in addition to coming up with the idea for AIDSRides and Breast Cancer 3-Days to raise money for AIDS and breast cancer research and services, the company was known for taking a hefty chunk of the gross to cover its overhead costs. Eventually, a number of the company's most important clients, including the Avon Products Foundation, got tired of sharing the proceeds with Pallotta and his colleagues and cancelled their contracts. The company collapsed shortly thereafter.

As you'd expect, Pallotta defended the fees charged by the company. The money spent on overhead, including items such as "extravagant" advertising, was integral to the success of its fundraising efforts, he said. And, as he was quick to point out, successful they were: over the course of nine years, Pallotta TeamWorks raised over half a billion dollars and netted $305 million in direct charitable contributions for AIDS and breast cancer organizations.

"We went a long time walking around in the airport without wheels on our suitcases," he said, before adding that his company was ahead of its time.

Uncharitable, Pallotta's first book, has stirred considerable discussion (here, here, and here, for example), not least because it argues there are five flaws in the nonprofit sector's value and belief system: constraints on compensation; prohibition on risk; discouragement of long-term vision; discouragement of paid advertising; and prohibition on investment return. (You can learn more about Pallotta's views on his blog, Free the Nonprofits.)

Pallotta's book argues that adopting a for-profit approach to fundraising would help nonprofit organizations inspire more people to give, which in turn would mean more money available for making real change. The sector struggles to make an impact, he argues, because the percentage of GDP allocated to philanthropy has remained the same for years. In other words, charity is not growing its market share and therefore is limited in how much it can do to reduce suffering around the world.

How does the argument that charity should behave more like business hold up against the backdrop of a prolonged economic crisis caused by deregulation, lax oversight, and an every-man-for-himself mentality, Lopate wanted to know. "The method for fixing a leaky boat does not change in the rain," Pallotta replied. Charity has been broken for a long time, he added, and our current economic straits do not absolve of us of the responsibility for fixing it.

Toward the end of the event, after Pallotta and Lopate had begun taking questions from the audience, someone asked why young people should commit to the nonprofit sector rather than take their talents to the for-profit sector, where they might actually be rewarded for their efforts and ideas. "It's up to young people to take a stand and say they will not sacrifice their lifestyle to work for lower salaries," Pallotta answered.

Easier said than done. After reading Uncharitable and hearing Pallotta speak, I can't help but wonder how my generation of nonprofit professionals is expected to react to the news that "the system is broken." Should we throw in the towel, go for the big corporate paycheck, and hope that we can revive our passion to make a difference ten, twenty, thirty years down the road when, presumably, we have "feathered our nests"? Or should we bite the bullet, accept the low salaries, marginal benefits, and diminished lifestyle expectations that come with a nonprofit job and be grateful we have a job, any job?

Pallotta would reject that choice as a false dichotomy. In fact, he would say that we need more people in the trenches, not fewer, to fight for a more effective charitable system. As he writes in Uncharitable:

I am not saying we don't need charity. I am saying we don't need a separate set of rules for its conduct. We need to help the poor. We need all the good people and organizations that are presently trying to help them. We just don't need a different ideology for doing it. We need to cure the disease. We don't need a different set of rules for doing it. Indeed, to the extent we are curing the disease, it is largely on the basis of for-profit ideology....

What do you think? What advice would you give a young nonprofit professional who wants to make a difference, who wants to tackle some of the big social and environmental challenges that confront us, but who is worried that she might not be able to afford a decent home, send her kids to a decent high school or college, or be able to afford retirement? We'd love to hear your thoughts....

-- Regina Mahone

On Mentors

I finally made time over the weekend to finish The Blue Sweater, Jacqueline Novogratz's account of her efforts over twenty-plus years to develop entrepreneurial solutions to poverty in Africa and South Asia. The book is an interesting mix of the personal and reportorial, and includes an extended section on Novogratz's experiences in pre- and post-genocide Rwanda.

Novogratz, who, with seed capital from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cisco Foundation, and three individual philanthropists, founded the Acumen Fund in 2001, owes her brilliant career to years of hard work, a profound commitment to social justice, and an abiding faith in the idea of human progress. She's also had some wonderful mentors.

One of those mentors was John W. Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation (1955-1965), Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (1965-1968) under Lyndon Johnson, author, founder of Common Cause and Independent Sector, and, to coin a phrase, citizen-philosopher par excellence. After almost a decade as a development consultant in Africa and a short stint at the World Bank, Novogratz became a student and friend of Gardner's, then in his seventies, at Stanford's Graduate School of Business in the late 1980s. Nearing the completion of her MBA studies and wondering what to do next, she found herself with a decision to make: accept a fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation or move to Czechoslovakia to help start a small-enterprise fund in that newly liberated country. Naturally, as she writes in The Blue Sweater, she turned to her friend for advice:

John felt I should...accept the fellowship with the Rockefeller Foundation. "It will give you an important vantage point on what philanthropy is, both domestically and internationally," he said. "And you already have worked in a developing country building enterprises. Life at your age should be about putting new and different tools in your toolbox. You already understand that communities today transcend geography and that you belong to multiple ones -- Stanford, women, the community that cares for Africa. But to be truly effective, especially internationally, you must root yourself more strongly in your home's own soil. It is time for you to know this country, as well. Only by knowing ourselves can we truly understand others -- and knowing from where you come is an important part of knowing who you are."

"Surely there are enough people interested in this country," I told him. "My contribution will come from focusing globally."

He shook his head. "You should focus on being more interested than interesting" -- something I'd heard him say countless times. "What happens overseas is profoundly influenced by what happens here, especially now. And the reverse is true, as well...."

It's a great anecdote (and wonderful advice), and it got me thinking about the handful of people -- many of them teachers and most of them men -- who have, whether they knew it at the time, mentored me at various stages of my life. What, I wondered after re-reading the anecdote in Novogratz's book, is the difference between a mentor and a friend or colleague with a knack for offering valuable advice? Is it the quality of advice given? The quantity? Is a mentor, properly speaking, always older than the person he or she mentors? And how, if at all, do gender and race factor into the equation?

In these uncertain economic times, with unemployment and basic needs rising and nonprofits scrambling to stay afloat, the sector needs effective mentors more than ever. Do you have a story you'd like to share about an individual who mentored you at an important juncture in your professional career? What was the advice he or she gave you? And what, if anything, did they expect in return? 

-- Mitch Nauffts

ANNOUNCEMENT: Target Awards $3 Million Through Facebook Giving Campaign

Bullseye Gives, which kicked-off May 10, invited Facebook users to help Target decide how it would divvy up $3 million among ten national charities. During the two-week campaign, Target's Facebook page added 97,000 new fans, received more than 3,000 wall posts, and created a forum for Target's online fans to share their experiences.

With 77,427 votes (26.6 percent) out of the 291,039 votes tallied, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital garnered the most votes and will receive the largest donation ($797,123). Funds raised for St. Jude through the campaign will support the hospital's school program.

Here's how the other nine charities fared:

• American Red Cross – 77,118 votes (26.5%) = $793,942
• Salvation Army – 38,004 votes (13%) = $391,258
• Operation Gratitude – 22,627 votes (7.8%) = $232,948
• Breast Cancer Research Foundation – 19,264 votes (6.6%) = $198,326
• Feeding America – 15,574 votes (5.3%) = $160,336
• HandsOn Network/Points of Light Institute – 11,378 votes (4.0%) = $120,845
• Parent Teacher Association – 10,904 votes (3.7%) = $112,259
• National Park Foundation – 9,553 votes (3.3%) = $98,350
• Kids In Need Foundation – 9,190 votes (3.2%) = $94,613

Congratulations to all ten organizations; each one is a winner in our book. To learn more about the Facebook contest and Target's other community outreach activities, follow the links.

-- Regina Mahone

U.S. Philanthropy and the Global Economic Crisis

(Amina Evangelista Swanepoel, a project consultant at Anthony Knerr & Associates, has significant experience in the nonprofit sector, especially within the fields of human rights and public health. This is her first post for PhilanTopic.)

In the last few months countless articles, papers, studies, and surveys have been published about the adverse effects the economic crisis is having and will continue to have on nonprofit organizations in the United States. A growing number of nonprofits have declared bankruptcy and many more are expected to shut their doors due to significant endowment losses and steep declines in grants and donations. Studies and anecdotal evidence confirm that bankruptcies are on the rise within the sector and that many organizations, particularly social service agencies, are struggling to stay afloat while providing assistance and support to an ever-growing population of poor and needy people.

And the United States is still the richest country on earth. What about the rest of the world, where needs, especially those related to health and social services, often are greater than those that exist in the U.S., but where many of the existing nonprofit organizations and programs are supported mostly or entirely by American philanthropy? With basic needs in the United States increasing, how will international programs supported by U.S. philanthropy fare?

Situations vary. For larger, more established nonprofits, the picture may not be so bleak. But smaller grassroots organizations more dependent on individual donations are facing tough times.

Groups such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute continue to provide billions of dollars to nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations around the world. Unfortunately, obtaining a grant from foundations like these is extremely competitive; the process is rigorous and requires applications and reports to be submitted in English, which prevents many smaller organizations without strong administrative support from applying for and winning grants. Typically, these types of organizations rely more heavily on individual giving. But with the unemployment rate in the U.S. approaching double digits and trillions in household net worth having been vaporized, individual donations are expected to decline dramatically. The result: hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller nonprofits in developing countries will be forced to close their doors.

The Obama administration’s 2010 budget doubles total foreign aid, and a small portion of USAID funding is usually available to nonprofits abroad. It's a step in the right direction, but as a percentage of the country's total income (or GNI), American foreign aid isn't even 0.05 percent of the federal budget. Indeed, among developed nations, only Greece gives less than the U.S. as a percentage of GNI. And while the Obama administration's plans to increase foreign aid are commendable, the majority of American foreign assistance will come, as it has for decades, from foundations and individual donations.

At the same time, U.S.-based organizations with both domestic and international programs are likely to cut back on their international activities in the months to come. Given increasing needs here in the U.S., groups such as Heifer International, Habitat for Humanity, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children may soon be forced to allocate more of their resoruces to their domestic work. In fact, a December 2008 article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy suggested that donations to international aid organizations on a per annum basis could fall by as much as $1 billion going forward. Charlie MacCormack, president of Save the Children, even told the Chronicle that a prolonged global economic crisis (i.e., longer than sixteen months) could be disastrous for many international aid groups. "If jobs are still going away," MacCormack said, "and equity is still going away, and people say 'I don't have a lifeline myself any longer', then it will be tough."

In a recent blog post, Foundation Center president Bradford Smith wrote about the Dalit Foundation, which grew out of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights and which received critical endowment support from the Ford Foundation. Dalits, or "untouchables," are a marginalized group of people in India who despite recent political gains still face discrimination on the basis of caste at the hands of the larger Indian population. NCDHR recognized the positive impact it could have by providing small grants to Dalits through support provided by Ford.

The point is, even as we focus on issues and problems here at home, we must not forget the nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations struggling to provide invaluable (and often life-saving) services and assistance in other countries. Given the financial and economic threats confronting many international NGOs, it is imperative that foundations fortunate enough to have large endowments broaden their funding criteria and extend grants to smaller nonprofits and NGOs that have been excluded from their consideration in the past. The Dalit Foundation is just one example of how much good a nonprofit can do with what, in America, would be considered a relatively small amount of money.

Just as the economic crisis has been global in nature and demands international solutions and coordination if it is to be fixed, the approach to social problems should also be global and requires worldwide cooperation and input. To succeed, the new face of philanthropy will have to be global as well. As it did in the years immediately following the end of World War II, U.S. philanthropy has an opportunity to provide visionary leadership that will make a difference in the lives of millions around the globe. Will it hear the call? 

-- Amina Evangelista Swanepoel

Don't touch that dial...

Taking a few days off. We'll be back on Sunday with the weekend link roundup and more.

Enjoy the long weekend!

MacArthur Island Launches in Second Life

On Monday, the MacArthur Foundation opened MacArthur Island to the public in the virtual world Second Life. Part of the foundation's $50 million digital media and learning initiative, the island is "an alternative space to educate grantees and others about the potential for philanthropy in virtual worlds and allow grantees and Foundation partners to showcase their work and connect with new audiences." As the press release notes:

Visitors to MacArthur Island can interact with installations created about the work of MacArthur and its grantees. They include a giant pair of 3D headphones that visitors can use to listen to stories by independent radio producers as part of Public Radio Exchange, and a map about Chicago neighborhoods through which visitors can learn about a comprehensive community development effort being carried out in Chicago....

Developed by Linden Research, Inc., and inspired by the fictional virtual world "Metaverse" in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world whose "residents" can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and trade goods and services. In a PhilanTopic post back in November 2007, Rich Polt noted that

Enterprising folk can become rich on Second Life (see this story from BusinessWeek), and charitable folk can generate some serious dollars for causes (the American Cancer Society recently raised over $128,000 through its annual Second Life Relay for Life)....

To commemorate the opening of MacArthur Island, MacArthur Foundation president Jonathan Fanton and the former co-creator of Second Life, Cory Ondrejka, held a public conversation about virtual worlds and philanthropy. The discussion offered thoughtful criticisms of Second Life, as well as Fanton and Ondrejka's thoughts about the challenges and opportunities for nonprofits presented by cost-effective communication tools like Second Life.

Much of the discussion centered on the topic of convergence. Ondrejka spoke briefly about the success of the music sector in Second Life, where hundreds of concerts and music events involving participants from around the world happen every day. Visitors can experience being in an audience (via their avatar) and listen to a performance, just as they would in the real world.

The $64,000 question is, Can things work the other way? Can the kind of civic engagement happening in Second Life be transferred to the real world? Yes, says Connie Yowell, education director at the MacArthur Foundation and the moderator of the Q&A portion of Monday's discussion. Yowell notes that virtual worlds enable young people to participate, produce, join, and engage in group activity. Instead of "pushing skills" on kids, educators can encourage students to actively participate in their learning experience. I Dig Tanzania, for example, enabled kids to participate in a virtual archaeological dig with real archaeologists in Tanzania.

The MacArthur Foundation believes Second Life has the potential to "open up" foundations and make them transparent in ways previously unimaginable. And Fanton said we will see more involvement by foundations and nonprofit organizations in virtual worlds moving forward. In fact, more than a hundred nonprofits already interact on the Nonprofit Commons island, a project managed by TechSoup Global.

After Fanton opened up the discussion to audience members, the presenters received a question that got my attention.

Question from audience member: "I encounter a deep fear of virtual environments within my circle of friends (i.e., the matrix will kill us all). Where I live in rural California many nonprofits I talk to have no clue, and seem to have no interest either in changing their models. What needs to happen to engage people who can really benefit from these platforms?"

Cory Ondrejka: I think there are parallel challenges here. The first one, as I think everybody sitting in this audience is probably painfully aware, is that Second Life has significant technological requirements. And so there certainly is still a disparity of broadband access, a disparity of high-end computer access. If you are thinking about how to apply Second Life to some of those challenges, it would behoove you to understand who you are trying to engage with so that you aren't in a position of trying to [bridge] a technological gulf.

You also have a [perceptual] challenge: Are virtual worlds serious places? Are they worth using? etc., etc. What MacArthur has done allows you to [say], "MacArthur is doing it." I think there are tens, hundreds, thousands of examples of fantastic public engagement, civic engagement that have happened in Second Life that you can point to... ranging from Katrina to NASA....

I think it's [important] when you're trying to bring people into something new...to be able to demonstrate paths [to success] -- especially for somebody who may be worried that if they bring it to their superiors they're going to get yelled at or fired -- it's important to be able to provide a safe path that says, "No, this is serious stuff, and you can really [use it to] change things for the better...."

You can watch a video of the hour-long discussion here.

Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of Second Life, but I have to say that that Cory Ondrejka is one cool cat. What do you think? Does Second Life have potential as a learning environment for a new generation of digitally savvy kids? Is it a preview of the future, or just a dead end on the road there, whatever "there" might be? Love to hear your thoughts....

-- Regina Mahone

Grants That Make a Difference: World Savvy

June is Funding for Education Month at the Foundation Center, and to celebrate we'll be offering a full slate of special events and programs designed to help grantseekers find education-related funding resources. In the following story, Dana Curran Mortenson at World Savvy describes how a grant and a collaborative relationship with the funder that made the grant have advanced the organization’s mission to educate students about global issues. (For stories about other grants that made a difference, click here and here.)

Grant Recipient
World Savvy
San Francisco, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and New York

World Savvy’s mission is to educate and engage youth in community and world affairs to prepare them to learn, work, and live as responsible citizens in the global community.

Grantmaker
Walter & Elise Haas Fund
San Francisco, California

About the Grant
Two-year, $80,000 grant to support Global Educators Program.

The grant provides comprehensive professional development for middle and high school teachers (grades 6-12) in the Bay Area, building educators' content knowledge, skills, and capacity to consistently integrate contemporary world affairs into their teaching in all subject areas. School partners of the program are provided access to the following services:

1. Professional Development, including one-on-one consulting; provision of relevant global issues curricula resources and materials for classroom use; one-day Global Education Institutes in August 2008 and 2009 and two on-site workshops annually.

2. Online Global Educators Network: A range of online services that provide timely and high-quality global education resources to teachers.

3. Community Connections: Partnerships with individuals, organizations, and associations in the local community and beyond.

Impact of the Grant
The program integrates relevant, current, age-appropriate global issues curricula into the classroom. By leveraging this work to reach more teachers and schools across California and the entire country, World Savvy seeks to promote systemic change in education so as to prepare youth for success and engagement in the global community in the 21st century. An example is World Savvy's Global Youth Media and Arts Festival at Zeum, which featured an exhibition of student’s original artwork on "immigration and identity," including that of students from Phillip & Sala Burton Academic High School (pictured). Through support from the grant by the Haas Fund, teachers from Burton High School received comprehensive professional development and resource support from World Savvy on integrating global issues in their teaching.

How did the funder and grantee work together effectively during the course of the grant project?

The program officer at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund shared knowledge and best practices observed from the field with World Savvy and took a genuine interest in learning about World Savvy's model and approach. The conversations did not revolve exclusively around grant guidelines or geographic areas of service and evaluation tools, but rather the larger issues that the mission and vision of World Savvy sought to remedy. Since our program officer has extensive knowledge and experience in education and reform efforts and is deeply committed to those efforts, the partnership was mutually beneficial in that it offered opportunities for World Savvy to share challenges openly and explore solutions with the Haas Fund during the course of the program's implementation.

What makes this particular grant a good example of the effective use of philanthropic funds?

So often in funder-grantee relationships, the candor in approaching the challenges of difficult work is compromised by a need to demonstrate that the grantee has met strictly defined reporting guidelines and/or to showcase only those aspects of the work that exceeded expectations. It is a missed opportunity for the grantee to learn from the breadth of knowledge of the funder and for the funder to understand the challenges in the field from the grantee’s perspective. The best relationships grow from deep faith in the work and a commitment to institutional learning for both funder and grantee. World Savvy is fortunate to have benefited from such a relationship in this work. Our program officer is in every way an advocate, for us and for the work we do.

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Do you have a story about a grant that made a difference? Submit your story, and we'll continue to feature them on a regular basis here on PhilanTopic, at one or more of our regional Philanthropy Front and Center blogs, and at other areas of our Web site. We also encourage you to submit stories of grants that are addressing needs associated with the economic crisis.

Philanthropy, Morality, and Politics

(Bradford Smith is president of the Foundation Center. In his last post, he wrote about his fears and hopes for philanthropy.)

Consider two propositions: "philanthropy is the moral voice of society" and "philanthropy should hold government accountable." Both propositions arose during a recent meeting on global philanthropy co-sponsored by the European Foundation Centre (EFC), the Council on Foundations (COF), and the Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support (WINGS). Though the goal of the meeting was relatively straightforward -- to initiate a process that could lead to reducing the legal and fiscal barriers to global philanthropy -- this being an encounter of forty-two professionals from twenty countries, it wasn't long before morality and politics forced their way into the discussion.

At dinner afterward, a group of us, all Americans, were reflecting on these two propositions. "Morality" is a word seldom heard in American philanthropic discourse. We can talk for hours about initiatives, lines of work, strategy, effectiveness, assessment, and impact, with nary a mention of morality. Yet virtually all of philanthropy is driven by a moral sense of what is right, fair, or just; indeed the very act of philanthropy is a moral expression of solidarity and a desire to help others. The more we talked, the more it became apparent that it was the notion that philanthropy should somehow be the moral voice of society that was troubling. A foundation that supports access to safe abortion does so out of a profound moral conviction that a woman should have the right to decide while one that opposes abortion on moral grounds will back right-to-life groups. Philanthropy may be a moral voice, but it is not a single moral voice which dictates that there is only one kind of philanthropy and one set of causes that are "right" while all others are "wrong."

The notion that philanthropy should hold government accountable was only slightly less troubling. American philanthropy spends a fair amount time (though arguably not enough) trying to figure out how it can be more accountable so as to avoid overly zealous regulation by Congress. Indeed, the desire today in much of philanthropy is to collaborate with the Obama administration, many of whose officials have foundation experience and are actively courting foundations to join the "all hands on deck" effort to confront the economic crisis. Nevertheless, there are foundations that invest heavily in organizations that track campaign contributions, monitor federal and state budgets, and do community organizing -- all for the purpose of reminding elected officials that their role is to serve the public good and that the public is watching. Again, the real discomfort at the table seemed to be with the idea that this was being posited as the only legitimate role for philanthropy as opposed to one of many.

At the meeting, both propositions were put forth -- not by Americans, but by those whose countries had only recently emerged from long periods of totalitarian rule, armed conflict, or what political scientists call "weak states." Where human life often seems to have little value, avenues to political participation are blocked, and "leaders" sometimes behave more like predators, philanthropy can become an outlet for activists seeking deep and lasting change. In such cases, they are challenged with the Herculean task of righting past wrongs, creating a culture of philanthropy, and building accountable, democratic governments, all at once. Their mission is both moral and political. We can afford to make the finer distinctions because our task, though not easy, is far less daunting, living as we do in a (still) prosperous America with strong democratic institutions and guided by the rule of law.

But something else happened in that (still) prosperous Europe that surprised. Meeting in Italy, a country that had narrowly defeated legislation calling for civil servants to be fired if they failed to report individuals suspected of being undocumented and where a local politician had proposed segregating buses, the EFC passed a resolution. It reads, in part:

it is with great regret that we witness the emergence of a climate in Italy, which is symptomatic of a general trend throughout Europe, which leads to measures relating to undocumented migrants that undermine people’s basic human rights….As members of Foundations, we are committed to a Europe which is inclusive and tolerant; we work for this alongside citizens and civil society organisations, as well as with governmental bodies. We strongly encourage the governments of all member states to work individually, together and with the institutions of the European Union to build a framework for addressing migration in ways that truly respect the dignity of all human beings as defined in the European Convention on Human Rights....

The EFC hardly qualifies as a fringe group. Its 236 members manage more than €140 billion in assets and range from liberal, Quaker-inspired, UK foundations in the north to wealthy, sometimes conservative Italian banking foundations in the south. Alarmed by growing xenophobia in Europe, they chose to take a stand that was both moral and political, rather than be voiceless spectators to a march toward the past.

Philanthropy everywhere gets its energy and drive from moral values. And there are places and moments where those values impel us to tread the risky and challenging terrain of politics.

-- Brad Smith

Weekend Link Roundup (May 16 - 17, 2009)

Here's our latest roundup of noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector. Enjoy....

Communications/Marketing

Do you wish your board members were better communicators of your organization's mission? On her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz offers the following tips:

1. Make sure they know your organizations's talking points and elevator pitch cold.
2. Share your marketing strategy with them and tell them what they can do to advance it.
3. Teach, don't tell. Have a real, sit-down training session with new board members to give them some practice and increase their comfort level with their role

AdWeek recently reported that the more than 60 percent of the people that try Twitter, the popular microblogging platform, do not return after the first month. On his Donor Power Blog, Jeff Brooks argues that while nonprofit organizations should take some time to learn what Twitter is about, they shouldn't get their hopes up when it comes to using it to motivate action and raise funds. "If I had to place a bet on which will go away first -- Twitter or postal mail," writes Brooks, "I'd bet that the post will outlast."

Economy

Rick Cohen takes a closer look at the Obama administration's proposed FY2010 budget, which includes several programs of importance to nonprofits.

Education

The margin for failure in the education sector is virtually nonexistent, writes Chris Murakami Noonan on the Philanthropy Potluck blog. Noonan agrees with a finding from Lessons in Education Philanthropy: Proceedings from BHEF’s Inaugural Institute for Strategic Investment in Education that "strategically targeted philanthropic resources can serve as a vital catalyst for positive, lasting and high-impact change in public education." But without transparency, says Noonan, the successes achieved by private philanthropic dollars -- which, after all, are small compared to overall support for education -- are easy to miss. The question, then, is what can private philanthropy do to enhance its commitment to transparency so that others can learn and build on that work?

On the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Albert Ruesga asks readers to consider: Which sector has had the bigger say "in framing the purpose of K-12 education," business (Homo economicus) or government (homo democraticus)?

Leadership

Seth Godin's talk at this year’s TED conference has been posted online. On the Social Citizens blog, Kari Dunn Saratovsky says the seventeen-minute talk is "a good introduction to [Godin's] book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us." In both, adds Saratovsky, "Godin argues that lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a group of people connected to each other, to a leader, and to an idea."

Nonprofit Management

Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential, has started blogging for the Harvard Business Review. And in his first post, he urges the nonprofit sector to -- surprise! -- re-visit its "fundamental canons." "It's time," writes Pallotta, "to give charity the big-league freedoms we really give to business. The fight for these freedoms must be our new cause, because without them, all of our causes are ultimately lost." Or not. Jump over to the HBR site to join the conversation.

On the Social Venture Partners blog, Lynn Coriano offers a nice summary of the recent Money Matters conference in New York City, including discussions of whether grantmakers are "buyers" of services and programs or "builders" of nonprofit enterprises.

Social Entrepreneurship

In response to a recent post by Allison Fine, Root Causes' Andrew Wolk argues that the government's recently announced Social Innovation Fund could be helpful in breaking down some of the existing "silos" in the social impact arena and is a good first step toward realizing more sustained and collaborative public-private partnerships.

Tony Wang, a researcher at Blueprint Research & Design (Lucy Bernholz's shop), argues that for-profit businesses are better at creating social impact than aid and nonprofits/NGOs -- and is thoughtfully engaged in debate by Tony Pipa (in the comments) and Nell Edgington, among others.

Social Media

Social Actions, in partnership with the Skoll Foundation, PopTech, ideablob, and Civic Ventures, has launched the Social Entrepreneur API, a new resource that will make it easier, says Sean Stannard-Stockton, for people interested in social entrepreneurs to “follow the smart money.”

Retailer Target has launched Bullseye Gives, its first giving campaign on Facebook, and from May 10 through May 25 is inviting everyone to help it decide how to allocate $3 million among ten large institutional charities. On her blog, Beth Kanter wonders whether these types of contests are moving philanthropy forward via the use of new technologies, or further exhausting an already cause-fatigued crowd. Writes Kanter:

On the one hand, I think competition is healthy and pushes us to take a few risks, innovate and explore these new tools, particularly if the potential reward $ is big. On the other hand, online contests remind of an experience I had in Hawaii feeding fish and makes [me think] about the drawbacks like cause fatigue, transactional vs relational, and promoting scarcity thinking....

Katya Andresen shares some key findings from the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, a new study by M+R Strategic Services and NTEN that examined the effectiveness of online nonprofit fundraising in 2008. Here are a few of her takeaways:

• Online fundraising was up 26 percent in 2008
• E-mail fundraising and advocacy response rates held steady, compared to declines in previous years
• The average online gift size was $71, down $15 from the previous year. The decline was most pronounced in the fourth quarter of the year (as the economy fell off a cliff)
• Fundraising e-mails sent to previous donors generated response rates more than three times as high as those sent to non-donors
• For most organizations, almost one-third of all online actions are taken by the most active subscribers, who comprise just seven percent of all donors
• E-mail click-through rates fell in all issue sectors

That's it for now. Have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone