Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....
Diversity
BlackGivesBack guest contributor B. Denise Hawkins chats with California Endowment president and CEO Robert K. Ross about the endowment's recent investment in the D5 Coalition, "a five-year [effort] to grow philanthropy’s diversity, equity, and inclusion...."
Fundraising
Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks explains why most donors who stop supporting your organization won't explain why. "What goes wrong?" asks Brooks, "You fail to be a relevant, meaningful part of their lives. Something else takes your place that fits them better...."
Impact/Effectiveness
Guest blogging on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, William Schambra, director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal at the Hudson Institute, explains why metrics don't necessarily tell grantmakers whether a program works by taking a look at the center's efforts in welfare reform.
Innovation
On the Chronicle of Philanthropy's Social Philanthropy blog, Peter Panepento remembers Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
And on their blog, the folks at the Case Foundation share some thoughts and reflections on Jobs' achievements and impact on society on their blog.
Nonprofit Management
In response to two recent investigations into nonprofit executive salary levels (in New Jersey and New York), John Brothers, principal of Cuidiu Consulting and a senior fellow at the Support Center for Nonprofit Management, tells nonprofit organizations to start taking these inquiries seriously. "In previous Stanford Social Innovation Review articles, I've talked about how the sector is left out of major pieces of legislation and how groups like NPR and Planned Parenthood are under attack," writes Brothers. "Now there is a focus on executive pay at the state level. Government has routinely picked battles with the nonprofit sector, and the sector has taken a beating -- mostly without a fight. The sector holds a great deal of power, but right now, it is not mobilized and therefore carries very little weight...."
Social Media
Beth Kanter discusses content curation for the twenty-first century and offers a list of online tools to help nonprofit organizations get started.
In a recent post on his blog, Geoff Livingston, who co-founded the communications consulting firm Zoetica with Kanter, offers a few reasons why Google+ has lost "its perceived mojo so quickly." For one thing, writes Livingston, Facebook "has responded quickly to Google+, and is taking the competition seriously...."
Transparency
And in the second installment of her two-part series on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Diana Scearce, a senior consultant with the Monitor Institute, chats with organizational effectiveness consultant Jeff Jackson about the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s yearlong experiment to embrace the "network mindset."
That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!
-- Regina Mahone
