Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....
Arts and Culture
Back to blogging on a regular basis, the Nonprofiteer explains why "the argument for public funding [for the arts] needs to be focused...on the public benefits of art-making."
Communications/Marketing
On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz urges nonprofit communications staff and leaders to observe and learn from the media stumbles of political candidates, CEOs, and others. Good advice, as usual, from Joanne.
International Development
David Schwartz, donor partnerships director at the International Development Research Centre, reflects on lessons learned at last month's Bellagio Initiative Summit on the future of philanthropy and development. For Schwartz, the overriding takeaway was the need for various stakeholders in both international development and philanthropy to know and understand each other better. Contrary to the consensus view at the summit, however, Schwartz believes genuine collaboration between philanthropy and development exists and points to three examples: ESSENCE (Enhancing Support for Strengthening the Effectiveness of National Capacity Efforts) in the area of health research, the International Forum of Research Donors (IFORD), and the Think Tank Initiative.
Philanthropy
On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz says we need to "open up" philanthropic data to help innovators think differently about how we can change the world.
In a guest post on the Minnesota Council on Foundations' Philanthropy Potluck blog, Tim Penny of the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation explains how, in addition to their grantmaking activities, community foundations add value by identifying "current and emerging issues, channel[ing] resources to address their communities’ needs, and help[ing] their regions prepare for the future...."
Social Media
On the Mashable site, Zoe Fox looks at how activists around the world used social media to challenge the status quo in 2011.
Transparency
Beth Kanter recaps a San Francisco event co-hosted earlier this week by the Foundation Center and the Center for Effective Philanthropy on the topic of transparency and effectiveness. For those unable to attend, Kanter shares some takeaway tweets via Storify here.
That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!
-- The Editors
