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Off the Shelf: 'The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change'

(Emily Keller is an editorial associate in the Corporate Philanthropy department at the Foundation Center. In October, she reviewed Changing Business From the Inside Out: A Treehugger's Guide to Working in Corporations, by Timothy J. Mohin.)

Leonida Wanyama sat at her living room table in her mud-and-sticks house at the base of the Lugulu Hills in western Kenya contemplating her assets. Her fifteen-year-old son Gideon had been sent home from boarding school because she couldn't pay the latest tuition bill. Her four-year-old daughter Dorcas was begging for more food, even though the cupboard was bare. Her husband Peter, weak from malaria, a condition worsened by malnutrition, did what he could to feed his family, but the planting season was just beginning and the maize crop wouldn't be ready to harvest for months. Leonida decided to sell her last goat for a thousand shillings -- enough to convince Gideon's principal to take him back as she struggled to come up with the remaining tuition. Food would have to wait.

Welcome to the wanjala, the word for famine in Leonida's Lutacho Valley farming community and one of the most common surnames for boys in a culture where parents name their children for the season in which they were born. Girls who are born during the long months between the last of the prior harvest's food has been consumed and the new harvest is brought in are named Nanjala. Leonida's village is called Malaria; so is the stream that provides the family with water for drinking and washing -- and serves as a breeding ground for the mosquito-borne illness that always grows worse in the wafula, or rainy season.

As he makes clear in his new book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change, Roger Thurow believes the one to eight months each year that the people of western Kenya live with "chronic, gnawing emptiness in their bellies" is both morally unacceptable and avoidable. And to make the point, he focuses much of his book on the One Acre Fund, a young nongovernmental organization that works with smallholder farmers -- those with less than two acres of arable land -- in East Africa to double and triple their yields. For a forty-five hundred shilling credit (about $50) that is paid back over the course of the year, the organization, which operates out of Bungoma, a town in Kenya's Western Province, provides fertilizer, modern seeds, and weekly trainings to smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi.

The demand for One Acre's services is clearly evident in Thurow's narrative, which depicts the relentless cycle of relative feast and famine in the region and how it dramatically affects the quality of life for the smallholder farmers who comprise the bulk of the food-producing population in Kenya's agriculture-dependent economy. Indeed, the country's Public Health and Sanitation ministry reported that during the wanjala which is the subject of Thurow's book, malnutrition was the underlying cause of more than half the deaths of children under the age of five. In the community of Malaria, unconnected electrical wires hang from the church ceiling because the congregation cannot afford to pay for electricity. Children study at home by the light of kerosene lamps that emit noxious fumes and are a constant fire hazard, and the fee-based high school Gideon attends lacks basic chemistry supplies, audio-visual equipment, even blackboards. The local health practitioner, Janet, has no blood pressure gauge or microscope to help confirm her diagnoses. Villagers get around by foot and bicycle, and families often live for a decade or more in homes that were intended to be temporary structures.

One Acre works to lift these farm families, which are often headed by women, out of the grinding poverty that is their lot and into lives in which they have enough to eat year-round, children are able to attend the area's top schools, and excess profits from agricultural work are reinvested back into the farm or livestock.

As Thurow tells it, Andrew Youn, One Acre's co-founder and executive director, believes East Africa's food insecurity problem is primarily economic rather than agricultural, and he has come up with an innovative business model to address the high rates of malnutrition, depleted soils, lack of access to information, and crop price fluctuations that are characteristic of the region. To start, One Acre arranges the bulk purchase of items for distribution at churches near its clients' modest homes, saving them the effort of having to navigate treacherous roads and lack of quality control at local shops. The organization's field directors then teach local farmers how to rotate and diversify their crops to improve the nutrition and health of the soil, and to measure the distance between seeds while planting, ensuring that each one has access to adequate light and air (methods in use in the United States since the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s). One Acre recently added crop insurance and de-worming medication for children to its portfolio of services. Establishing better storage systems that reduce crop mold and losses caused by weevil depredation, thus enabling farmers to keep their crops off the market until prices are high, is another primary goal.

One beneficiary of the program is Zipporah Biketi, who lives with her husband, Sanet, and four children in a hut with a leaky thatched roof. Her youngest child, David, has a protruding belly and a persistent cough — both symptoms of malnutrition. The older children sleep on unpadded wooden couches. Sanet is a livestock trader who also makes and sells clay bricks. The family's only other source of income is milk sales from two skinny cows.

Rasoa Wasike, a mother of three, leads One Acre's Kabuchai Women Self-Help group. She tells Thurow that farming is like gambling, the difference being that the smallholder Kenyan farmer rolls the dice on whether it will rain or not. Her husband, Cyrus, works at a cell phone store collecting payments from farmers who, ironically, have acquired modern communication devices but don't have access to modern seed technology. Cyrus hopes to one day save enough money to purchase a pair of bulls and start a ploughing business.

Life on a small farm, or shamba, in Kenya is, as Thurow shows, labor intensive throughout the year. The annual cycle begins with the soil being ploughed by oxen or with small hand shovels known as jembes; use of the latter forces farmers to remain stooped for hours on end. Once the ploughing is completed, villagers gather and pray for rain. If it comes, they dig and fertilize hundreds of holes for seed. This is followed by strenuous daily weeding of the plot, even as last year's food supply runs low, reducing their strength. Once the crops have matured, farmers gather with machetes and jembes to chop them down. During harvest season, or wekesa, the farmers face the additional daily task of spreading maize in the sun to dry, keeping an eye out for rain and thieves, and returning the crops to storage at night. This is followed by shelling, which takes over living room floors and involves the whole family. Many farm families also raise goats, hens, chickens, or cows, primarily for milk sales or for trading rather than for food; incomes are too erratic to sacrifice their most valuable asset for a meal or two.

As the harvest nears, the market price of maize per single-serving bag, or goro-goro, increases to five or six times the previous year's post-harvest price. Many farmers, out of desperation, sell their surplus when the price is low and struggle to purchase maize when the price is high. Family finances are further compromised by the academic calendar, which starts in January, meaning tuition fees are due before the harvest.

Thurow, who worked for thirty years as a Wall Street Journal reporter before joining the Chicago Council on Global Affairs as a senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy, vividly portrays the farmers' plight while drawing attention to the region's natural beauty -- the caves, mountains, and lush greenery of the wafala -- and showing the community's generosity and joy as well as suffering. One student earns a government scholarship. The farmers reap more than ever before and celebrate with a Christmas feast. Janet gives malaria medication to Leonida's family on credit, even during the wanjala. There is something to hope for throughout the year.

Yet climbing out of such deep poverty is dependent on several years of good harvests, Youn says. And the gradual nature of that transition is the most difficult part of the story to convey. Thurow, who is also the co-author (with Scott Kilman) of Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, uses the One Acre story to argue that international food aid is fleeting, expensive, and disruptive to market prices, and that increasing crop production through education and agricultural development is the only long-term solution to hunger in developing countries like Kenya. But as Leonida goes without food and Zipporah sells a cow to re-pay the family's loan, the less positive realities of the One Acre approach surface as well.

Most Popular PhilanTopic Posts (November 2012)

It's the last day of the month, which means it's time for one last look at the most popular posts on PhilanTopic in November:

• [Infographic] Nonprofits' Impact on the Economy 
• From Open Data to Open Knowledge: Foundations, Nonprofits, and the Production of Ideas (Brad Smith)
• No More Free Rides: Foundations Need to Increase General Operating Support Now (Niki Jagpal)
• On 'Networked Nonprofits' and Measurement: A 'Flip' Chat With Beth Kanter (Regina Mahone)
• Time to Join the Donor Revolution (Derrick Feldmann)

What are you reading/watching/listening to that our readers should know about? Use the comments sections below to share your finds....

'Latin Side of the Docs' in Mexico City

(Kathryn Pyle recently marked her fourth anniversary as a PhilanTopic contributor. In her last post, she wrote about Reportero, a new documentary by Bernardo Ruiz about embattled investigative journalists assigned to cover the drug wars in Mexico.)

Latin Side of the Docs, an annual marketplace and producers forum for documentary filmmakers, came to Mexico City earlier this month, attracting more than two hundred and fifty filmmakers and fifty industry representatives.

Filmmakers, broadcasters, and film distributors, most of them from Latin America, converged on the Spanish Cultural Center in the historic center of the city for the event. The center, which offers a variety of programs in a modern light-filled building, is located just behind the colonial-era Metropolitan Cathedral and ruins of Aztec pyramids bordering the Zócalo, the huge open plaza at the heart of the old city built by the Spaniards.

The three-day event was organized by DocsDF, a documentary film festival founded seven years ago in Mexico City, in collaboration with Sunny Side of the Docs, a longstanding international event/forum that matches documentary filmmakers seeking funds with broadcasters and distributors seeking good films. The organizers of Sunny Side now help stage similar events in Asia and, for the past four years, in Latin America -- the first three in Buenos Aires and now this year in Mexico City. Inti Cordera, a founder and the executive director of DocsDF, and Yves Jeanneau, a French filmmaker who created Sunny Side of the Docs, share a commitment. As Cordera put it, "We believe that documentary film is important and necessary, not just in terms of cinematic quality but also for the messages delivered."

The five-day "rendezvous" included a two-day seminar for producers and three days of opportunities for filmmakers to pitch their films. Pitch sessions included three distinct opportunities: sixteen films were selected for formal presentation involving trailers of the films and a discussion afterward, with broadcasters and distributors gently pressured to at least agree to meet with the filmmakers. In addition, nine films were presented as five-minute videos to a general audience in a "silent" pitch session, while filmmakers representing sixty-two other projects were scheduled for brief private meetings with broadcasters and distributors.

Taken as a whole, the films presented a range of stories and approaches, although the issue of borders and cross-border migration and their impact on culture and families was a recurring theme. Human rights, indigenous peoples' resistance to globalization, and the political history of the region were further proof of Latin American filmmakers' strong interest in social issue documentaries.

Among the filmmakers attending were Kimberly Bautista and Raul Paz Pastrana, who have a unique connection: both had received support from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, a New York City-based fund established to honor Grace Kelly's interest in the arts. The foundation, which is supported by contributions from individuals, private foundations, and corporate gifts and celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year, gives awards annually to emerging artists in film, theater, and dance.

Kimberly Bautista received a grant from the foundation in 2008 to finish Justice for My Sister, a film about a domestic violence victim in Guatemala and the sister who pursues the case against the man who killed her. The project has screened extensively in Guatemala thanks to grassroots women's groups, many of which have included the film in their anti-violence campaigns. Bautista is now fundraising to add transmedia elements to her audience engagement plan as the project gains more exposure in the United States and elsewhere via screenings at various festivals. "I'm very happy with my experience here," she said over a lunch break at the Spanish Cultural Center's terrace restaurant. "Two European distributors are interested in picking up the film, and I’ve had positive meetings with several Latin American broadcasters."

Mexican filmmaker Raúl Paz Pastrana, who selected the School of Visual Arts in New York City for graduate studies because of its Social Documentary Film program, received a Princess Grace grant in 2011 for Ome, his film about an indigenous community in Ecuador fighting to preserve its land in the face of oil industry pollution. Paz Pastrana had been a community organizer working with native groups in the region, and he's now seeking funds to finish editing the film that that work inspired. "This is my first market event," he said during the lunch with Kimberly. "I've had a dozen meetings with broadcasters and distributors, but I'm not sure how it's going. I'm competing with people with much more experience in how to present a project."

For Yves Jeanneau, the director of Sunny Side of the Docs, that's exactly why the event is important. "Through this forum and similar events, I can see that Latin American documentary filmmakers are increasing their understanding of what production is all about. And, consequently, I'm seeing better-quality documentaries being brought to the table."

When I first wrote about Latin Side of the Docs in 2010, I mentioned Night Inside Me, a film about miners in Bolivia that was represented at the event by the film's director, Sergio Estrada. It was the first such event he had attended where he was invited for brief one-on-one meetings with industry representatives, and the experience and contact with other filmmakers convinced him he needed a partner with producing skills. Estrada brought on Valeria Ponce soon after, and I met them both at the Mexico City event. "I worked as a TV producer before, but I've learned that producing an independent film is much more than that," Ponce said over café con leche. Estrada and Ponce have been attending a variety of training sessions and industry meetings since the 2010 Buenos Aires event and were optimistic about the meetings they had scheduled at this one -- not least because their project was one of nine selected for a "video pitch" and online exhibition, promising significant added exposure for the film. "We need two more weeks of filming in the mine," said Estrada. Support so far has included funding from both the Bolivian mining company and a family foundation, and the miners' organization has been a partner in making the film.

These projects all illustrate Inti Cordera's concern about the production side of documentary filmmaking, one he shares with Yves Jeanneau. "DocsDF film festival was founded with the vision of not only creating a festival but also somehow contributing to the professionalization of a new generation of Latin American documentary filmmakers," Cordera told me. "That just isn't happening anywhere else. For instance, in Mexico there are two high-quality film schools -- the CCC (Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografica), which is supported by the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE), a government agency; and CUEC (Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematograficos), the oldest film school in Latin America, which is based at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM); both are in Mexico City. Plus, there are some good communications and filmmaking programs at other schools. But none of these schools provides training in production or industry issues. Latin Side of the Docs allows us to offer that support."

Interspersed in the three-day pitch event, panels such as how to co-produce with broadcasters, featuring representatives from Once TV Mexico (Latin American's oldest public television station), Discovery Networks Latin America, and National Geographic Latin America added to knowledge the filmmakers could take home with them.

The two-day "Ibero-American Producers Forum," part of Latin Side of the Doc and preceding the pitch event, offered even more intensive theoretical and hands-on consulting to about sixty pre-selected filmmakers. Among the presenters was Paola Castillo, from Chile Doc, a networking and support organization for Chilean documentary filmmakers seeking distribution. Castillo spoke about financing and co-production schemes and provided information about the major North American and European media funders, investors, and pitching opportunities. "Doing business is not just about money," she said. "You have to build relationships and confidence." But long before the fundraising begins, she added, filmmakers should ask themselves, "Why am I making this film, and for whom?"

Castillo seems clear about the answers to those questions for herself. A recent project, 74 Square Meters, is about families living illegally on land in Valparaiso, Chile, who, as part of a social experiment, are moved into apartments in a middle-class neighborhood -- or, as Castillo puts it, is it "really possible to integrate people from different classes?" With funding from ITVS International, a screening on PBS' Global Voices earlier this year, and broad distribution via iTunes and Amazon, the film illustrates a possible future for documentaries that was nicely posited by Jeanneau: "The old production trajectory is over," he said. "It's no longer a sure path from festivals to broadcast or theatrical release. Even for films like Half the Sky, which was released recently on PBS, the real product is on the 'Net."

While the "decision makers" at Latin Side of the Doc included a number of North American and European distributors and broadcasters, Jeanneau noted that television space for documentaries is shrinking in those markets -- a result of the financial crisis and ensuing recession and increased competition from Internet platforms. He also noted that "In Europe right now, broadcasters are focusing mainly on domestic themes. The challenge is to create an audience for international issues."

In a sign of just how much the times have changed, one of the pitched films at Latin Side of the Docs, Pirate Copy, looks at film piracy in Mexico City, London, Dubai, and Senegal. Filmmaker Trisha Ziff reported that, as part of the documentary, she took Doris Dörrie, who is often referred to as "one of the most important cultural voices in Germany," to a popular pirate stand around the corner from the conference to film her encounter with a woman selling pirated copies of recent releases: three hundred a day at eighty cents each. None of Ms. Dörrie's films is available for legitimate purchase in Mexico, yet half of them were for sale on the street. In Senegal, Ziff reported, "There are no cinemas anymore, only pirates." When one of the Senegalese protagonists of her film travels from Paris to his home in Dakar, he discovers that within forty-eight hours the film he brought with him to show is being sold on the street as far away as Capetown, in South Africa. "We need to understand the phenomenon," said Ziff in closing. "What does it say about the future of film?"

What, indeed.

-- Kathryn Pyle

Nonprofits and Disaster Response: 5 Questions for Gary Bagley, Executive Director, New York Cares

(Laura Cronin is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. Recently, she asked Gary Bagley, executive director of New York Cares, the city's largest volunteer organization, about the organization's work with local nonprofit partners in response to Superstorm Sandy.)

Laura Cronin: City workers -- first responders, firefighters, transit workers, sanitation workers -- labored around the clock to restore critical systems in New York City that were overwhelmed by the storm surge created by Sandy. Alongside them were thousands of residents who provided volunteer support to victims of the storm and chipped in to clean up affected areas. Creative responses such as Occupy Sandy's  online registry and local groups like the Red Hook Initiative were part of a rapid, largely decentralized nonprofit response to the storm. Your organization has a long history of rallying volunteers and partnering with the leading nonprofits in the city, in ordinary times as well as in times of crisis. What did your Sandy response look like?

Gary Bagley: New York Cares has a Memorandum of Understanding with the New York City Office of Emergency Management through which we are responsible for mobilizing volunteers in response to disasters. So beyond the eight thousand volunteers who signed up to help, we had three full-time staff members stationed at the OEM as well as other staff fielding calls and e-mails from organizations and individuals that needed assistance. But because many nonprofits, schools, and faith-based organizations were as hard hit as residents of low-lying areas, we had to go beyond our traditional collaborative program delivery model. In the hardest-hit locations in Staten Island and Queens, we had teams of New York Cares staffers assessing -- on foot and by car -- local needs. At the same time, our volunteers canvassed neighborhoods, distributed food, and started on the debris cleanup. Now, a few weeks into the recovery, we see that much of the work will be about providing social services, from reading programs at libraries to adult education programs, in the most heavily impacted areas. Helping neighborhoods thrive again will be about much more than cleanup efforts.

LC: Many nonprofits in the city moved downtown in recent years in pursuit of lower rents and/or to take advantage of various incentives and rebates put in place by the city after 9-11. Indeed, New York Cares has an office near Wall Street. What was the effect of the power, heat, and Internet outages that hit lower Manhattan following the storm on your operations and on the operations of your partners?

GB: We never wanted to test our disaster-response plan, but we sure were glad we had one! The Thursday and Friday before Sandy came ashore, we reviewed our disaster-response procedures, from backup e-mail systems to phone trees to remote meeting locations. So, luckily, we were able to work remotely while we waited for power to be restored to our offices at 65 Broadway. But even after the electricity came back on, we were without phones for another two weeks. Our on-call phone service -- a cell number that our main line was forwarded to -- received a hundred and fifty calls a day in the immediate aftermath of the storm. We also have three staff members responding to e-mails submitted to our general information address (info@newyorkcares.org), and on any given day in the last few weeks they've had a queue of more than two hundred e-mails waiting to be answered.

LC: What do you think New York City nonprofits will need as we move past the immediate relief effort and really get into the hard work of recovery and rebuilding? And what role can volunteers play?

GB: The hard truth is that, post-Sandy, nonprofits will need what they've always needed: resources, both financial and human. And they'll need more of them. The recovery effort will extend far beyond physical rebuilding; the need for social services in the hardest-hit areas is already apparent, and volunteers will be key to helping organizations that were severely compromised by the storm ramp up their efforts. It's also important to note that nonprofits that were fortunate to escape the storm's wrath are feeling the impact. I've heard, to give you an example, that a lot of food banks in Manhattan are running short of supplies because so much food has been redirected to neighborhoods in Queens and on Staten Island.

LC: The storm made landfall early Monday evening. Two days later, I found myself in a church basement responding to a New York Cares/City Meals on Wheels tweet for volunteers. I don't regularly volunteer with either group, but through Twitter I found one of your projects. What role did social media play in mobilizing volunteers?

GB: As a tool for filling projects, social media was a pleasant surprise to me. We had some of our tweets mentioned in real time on a local newscast, filled projects like yours in record time, and even helped get four hundred blankets to a housing development that had lost heat and electricity within four hours of the initial tweet. Social media worked in a situation where there wasn't the type of lead time that day-to-day programming requires, and I'm already asking myself how we might use that kind of rapid response capability in our non-disaster programming.

LC: Governor Cuomo made headlines when, in one of his many press conferences in the days after the storm, he quipped, "We have a hundred-year flood every two years now." What kind of resilience planning are your nonprofit partners doing? And how can funders and volunteers help?

GB: At a recent meeting of nonprofits convened by the Staten Island Foundation, the number-one concern mentioned was "planning for the next disaster." As you know, it's tremendously difficult to raise money for infrastructure improvements and the development of disaster-preparedness plans and backup systems. During this disaster we've seen how critical it is that frontline nonprofits get back on their feet as quickly as possible in order to serve the additional clients created by the disaster as well as those who needed assistance before the event. Beyond the capital needed to develop these plans as well as repair damage to buildings, nonprofits may require skills and expertise that don't exist in-house. In both instances, volunteers can help fill the gap. Our volunteers have provided everything from translation services to IT consulting. Volunteers are not a substitute for full-time staff members, but they are a wonderful means of extending the reach of an organization. And a dedicated volunteer with skills, for example in the HR or IT area, can help build the systems for managing the additional and rapidly changing workload after a disaster.

-- Laura Cronin

Collaborative Relationships Between Nonprofits and Educators

(Erin Palmer, a writer and editor for University Alliance, writes about nonprofit and public sector topics covered by master of public administration degree programs. This is her first post for PhilanTopic.)

Some of the most stunning inhabitants of the natural world -- the sea anemone, the hummingbird, the orchid -- owe their intricate and variegated beauty, at least in part, to a basic biological process: symbiosis. When human beings and the institutions we shape interact in this manner, we call it "collaboration."

Of course, no living creature exists independent of its environment, and nonprofit organizations are no different. Just as the most beautiful orchids will not bloom without pollination from an outside source, nonprofits must also cultivate collaborative relationships with community leaders, including educators, in order to achieve their full potential.

Getting Started

The first step is recognizing that an educational institution, whether a local K-12, a large research university, or a private liberal arts college, is more than just a place of learning for enrolled students; it is also the locus of a wide variety of community resources.

Perhaps the most valuable of these resources is the students themselves. Regardless of the amount of time they spend sitting in a classroom, learners, whether age 6 or 60, function as whole human beings and not as just repositories of information. Each possesses singular talents, abilities, ambitions, and skills -- all of which can benefit a nonprofit, and vice versa, once a collaborative relationship is formed.

Just as the nonprofit should see the educational institution as an assemblage of valuable resources, so should the educator recognize that a nonprofit is an engine for positive change in the community. Whether socioeconomic equity, environmental stewardship, or the pursuit of human dignity and rights, a nonprofit's primary aim almost always will prove beneficial to the educator's (and students') community.

Cultivation

As in all new relationships, communication is key. Successful collaboration between a nonprofit and an educator hinges on each partner's understanding of the other's dreams. Or, more specifically, their DREAMS: Desires, Resources, Experience, Aims, and Motivations. Each party must offer and share the following information:

• The primary aim, including specific goals around mobilizing, strengthening, and/or changing the community
• Prior experience with service/volunteer and educational collaboration, including a clear understanding of the outcomes and impact
• Reason(s) for the current interest in a collaborative relationship
• Resources (time, money, materials, etc.) available for the collaboration
• Past, current, and anticipated methodologies for achieving primary goals
• Past, current, and anticipated challenges and successes in pursuit of primary goals

As communication between the parties flourishes, a relationship is cultivated. Each party should pay particular attention to areas of overlap with the other's dreams, and together they should determine their common need(s) and goals. A clearly defined and shared public purpose, such as instilling a service ethic in elementary school students or educating college students about the nonprofit's cause, informs every collaborative relationship.

Moving Forward

For educators and nonprofits, a shared purpose can facilitate consensus on operational design and management. Strategic planning should therefore anticipate the needs and resources of the community in which both partners operate --specifically, its people, systems of governance, and key institutions and organizations.

All these elements form the context in which a collaborative relationship is most likely to thrive, as do a strong and ongoing understanding of the socioeconomic, governmental, and cultural trends that shape the community on which the partnership is focused. Both the nonprofit and the educator must remain apprised of changes to and developments within the commmunity in question.

Adaptation

Longevity of any kind -- whether in species, relationships, or people -- depends on adaptation. In a collaborative relationship, the best way to adapt is to pair frequent and open communication with an ongoing reevaluation of the partnership's shared goals and performance.

The more flexible and innovative their methodology, the more likely the educator and the nonprofit are to achieve their goals -- and to remain committed to the relationship itself. Neither the orchid nor its pollinator achieved their collaborative beauty overnight. Patience is the orchid-grower's mantra. That said, today’s gardeners have the knowledge, tools, and resources neeeded to cultivate quite easily what were once considered nature's rarest blooms. They've learned, in fact, that orchids are not only surprisingly tough but marvelously adaptable. Your next collaborative relationship can be, as well.

-- Erin Palmer

Stemming the Droput Crisis: A Q&A With AT&T's Beth Adcock Shiroishi

Beth Adcock Shiroishi, vice president for sustainability and philanthropy at AT&T and president of the AT&T Foundation, leads AT&T Aspire, one of the nation's largest corporate commitments focused on helping more students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. The telecommunications giant launched the $100 million initiative in 2008 and expanded it earlier this year with an additional commitment of $250 million over five years, bringing its total investment in the program to $350 million.

After a rigorous and competitive process, AT&T recently selected forty-seven schools and nonprofits from among thousands nationwide to share in nearly $10 million in funding through the Aspire Local Impact request for proposal. Applicants were evaluated based on their alignment with evidence-based approaches, their accomplishments in serving students at risk of dropping out of high school, and their ability to use data to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work.

PND spoke with Shiroishi earlier this month about the initiative.

Philanthropy News Digest: Give us a sense of the scope of the dropout crisis in America?

Beth Adcock Shiroishi: One in four students -- more than one million each year -- fails to graduate with their class. And the picture is even bleaker for minority students, with the graduation rate among Hispanic, African-American, and Native-American students nearly 25 percent lower than the rate for their white and Asian American peers. Obviously, this has huge implications for our future job force, the economy as a whole, and our nation's global competiveness. But while it's a serious and urgent problem, there are signs of progress. Nationally, high school graduation rates are increasing, and we've seen huge gains in certain states and with certain programs that give us hope.

PND: AT&T launched the Aspire program in 2008. What were the goals of the program when it was launched, and have they been met?

BAS: Our original goal was to commit $100 million to fund proven programs aimed at raising the graduation rate, create one hundred thousand job shadow opportunities for students, and support one hundred community dropout summits. Thanks to the tireless work of our employees and nonprofit allies, we achieved these goals. At the same time, we impacted more than one million students in all fifty states and worked with more than one thousand community and national organizations that, like us, understand how important it is to improve graduation rates.

PND: What was behind your decision to focus much of the local impact RFP on data-driven approaches?

BAS: As a company, we understand the power of data to help make good decisions, illuminate impact, and identify and spread best practices. So it was only natural for us to want to use that same powerful tool in our charitable work, especially when the issue at hand is so important to improving lives, positioning America to be more globally competitive, and our success as a company. As you mentioned, with our recent RFP we decided to seek out programs that effectively use data in a way that enables an understanding of how "on track to graduate" students in a funded program are performing and allows us to compare them to a control group of students not in the program. Hopefully, this will help us understand more about what programs work best in certain situations and give us the ability to share learnings and best practices with others working in this space.

PND: Do you consider feedback from parents and teachers and other types of anecdotal information in your metrics?

BAS: Absolutely. As important and powerful a tool as metrics can be, in the education space metrics must be contextualized and brought to life by an understanding of the experiences of the people involved. Said another way, the metrics must be viewed together with the anecdotes to truly understand what works and what impact is being achieved.

PND: What are some of the other challenges involved in measuring student achievement?

BAS: As anyone working in education knows, this is a challenging field with lots of highly emotional issues embedded in it. So, I'll just speak to some of the challenges we as a funder of programs face. And the first one is a good problem to have! Because there are so many varied approaches to raising graduation rates, it's hard to create an assessment framework in a way that allows for an apples-to-apples comparison. Variations that create measurement obstacles include the fact that states have different requirements for student progression to the next grade level and different timeframes in which they release data. These and other issues eventually led us to realize that we needed an expert to help us. So, we've engaged a third-party evaluator to help us on this journey toward more understanding and more effective use of data.

PND: Along with its emphasis on data-driven approaches, the RFP focused on local, community-driven efforts. How are the two connected?

BAS: AT&T and the AT&T Foundation have always focused on communities where our employees live and work. Local organizations are on the frontlines of education every day, and they know better than we do what approaches work best for students in their communities. Together with our increased focus on data collection and analysis, we hope to work with these local organizations to better track the students served and shine a light on the supports and interventions that are most effective.

PND: What would be the likely consequences of not successfully addressing the dropout crisis in America?

BAS: Dropouts from the class of 2010 alone will cost the country more than $337 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetimes. But for our company, this is about our future workforce and our future customer base. Like all American employers, we need a diverse educated workforce to power our company into the future. And we need an economy that can avail itself of the technology that will keep us a leader in innovation. We know we can make a difference by supporting programs that are having a real impact. A recent study found that every dollar invested in the model pioneered by dropout prevention organization Communities in Schools increased graduation rates and produced an average of $11.60 in economic benefit for the community. We want to support and help scale more programs like that. That's why we have broadened and deepened our commitment to AT&T Aspire with an additional $250 million investment. We know the time is now; we can't wait any longer to address the problem.

-- Emily Robbins

Weekend Link Roundup (November 17-18, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

With the critical holiday fundraising season right around the corner, new reports from Charity Dynamics/NTEN and Blackbaud remind us that "Establishing emotional connections with donors remains paramount," writes Katya Andresen on her Non-Profit Marketing blog.

In a guest post on Beth Kanter's blog, Big Duck's Meghan Teich has some advice for nonprofit communications pros in the aftermath of a crisis or major natural disaster:

• Make sure your staff is kept up to date on your communications plan and that they have a clear understanding of your messaging.
• Strike while the iron's hot, but not so soon that it looks like you're capitalizing on the crisis.
• Don't use the crisis as an opportunity to do general fundraising for your organization (unless you have a particularly relevant mission). Instead, create a specific fund or give donors a tangible item or event to which they can donate.
• Reach out to other nonprofits, even those you view as "competitors," to explore how you might work together.
• Keep your supporters and donors updated on the progress you're making in real time via e-mail and social media.

"I urge you to take the steps necessary to make sure you are engaging the right people in the right ways to reach your marketing goals," writes Nancy Schwartz on her Getting Attention blog. "And to start today." Sounds like good advice to us.

Nonprofit Management

On the Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington argues that for nonprofits looking or needing to change, merely wanting to change is not enough; certain key building blocks need to be in place. They include someone in a leadership position willing to be a champion for change; a clear statement of why change is necessary; a funder or funders willing to support the change process; and a "navigator" who can guide the organization through that process.

Philanthropy

In the first of a series of posts, the Association of Small Foundations' Andy Carroll argues that foundations, small foundations in particular, do not acknowledge the complexity of the problems they are trying to address "openly enough." Indeed, writes Carroll, "Many funders who keep asking how they can have more impact eventually come up against challenges that are too big for them to solve alone."

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Anne Bauers shares findings from a recent NCRP report which found that "foundation giving to support the general operations of nonprofits increased through the recent recession, but the share of foundation dollars classified as providing this vital type of funding remains the same, at about 16 percent." As the report explains, general operating support benefits nonprofits in a number of ways. For that reason, writes Bauers, funders should award more general support grants in addition to or in place of other types of support.

On the new Markets for Good blog, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations' Darin McKeever and Victoria Vrana, Brian Walsh, the executive director of Liquidnet For Good, and the Hewlett Foundation's Kelly Born share the first draft of a vision paper "that signals how and why we think that the sector needs to upgrade its information infrastructure. By that," they add,

we mean the architecture that helps to connect, organize and structure information so that it can be supplied and used more easily. We acknowledge that upgrading the information infrastructure will not change the sector's use of information overnight, and that other elements are needed to support the free flow of quality data in the social sector. But we believe that in order to move towards a more effective sector, powered by information, we need to begin by strengthening the core building blocks of data exchange....

It's buzzword time, which means Lucy Bernholz is collecting the words and terms that were on every philanthropoid's lips in 2012. But she needs three more to complete the list, so hop on over to Lucy's Philanthropy 2173 blog there and leave a suggestion or two.

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Andrew Wolk of Root Cause and Wendy Yallowitz of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation discuss the benefits of collaborative learning, which, as Wolk explains, is "an intentional effort between two organizations to exchange, analyze, and apply knowledge that will lead to better outcomes."

And on NCRP's Keeping A Close Eye blog, Kevin Laskowski commends the Foundation Center for its recently announced Reporting Commitment initiative, which, in an effort to help foundations more effectively address the many complex problems confronting our communities and the world, aims to develop more timely, accurate, and precise reporting on the flow of philanthropic dollars.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great Thanksgiving!

-- The Editors

For Impact’s Sake: The Need for Transparency on Diversity & Equity in Philanthropy

(Kelly Brown is director of the D5 Coalition, a five-year effort to advance philanthropy’s diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. A version of this post originally appeared on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog.)

Philanthropy exists for the common good, and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion helps us live up to that value. In particular, thinking about equity in our grantmaking helps ensure that we are having the greatest impact on the issues identified in our unique missions -- by targeting resources to the people in our constituencies with the greatest need.

But to really maximize our impact and hold ourselves accountable to our values, our constituencies, and each other, we also have to track who benefits from our grantmaking and be transparent about the results. If we can do that successfully, we can: 1) better understand who we are reaching and who we are missing -- and adjust strategies accordingly; 2) leverage public policy and public dollars to fill gaps or create synergy; and 3) connect our work to the work of other foundations that focus on common issues or constituencies.

As a field, we have a dual problem with both collecting and sharing data on diversity and equity.

Realizing that kind of success, though, is a real challenge. As a field, we have a dual problem with both collecting and sharing data on diversity and equity. Foundations measure internal diversity and the impact of their grantmaking in many different ways -- or not at all. And the foundations that do collect this kind of data share it to varying degrees -- or not at all. These challenges make it difficult to assess the year-over-year progress of individual foundations, or to draw comparisons among foundations or between philanthropy and the public sector.

So what do we do about it? We have to establish a uniform data collection and reporting system and encourage the whole field to use it. We're excited by the renewed energy in the field to take on this challenge -- the Reporting Commitment is a great recent example.

A key goal of D5 is to improve data collection and transparency as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Last month, we helped convene fifteen leaders on this topic in philanthropy and academia to discuss a pilot project to pioneer a collection and reporting system. As this promising work continues -- and expands -- we will be able to share more information about how to participate.

In the meantime, the field also has to do the research to figure out what policies and practices are, in fact, the most effective at fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's hard for us to call on foundations to track and be transparent about diversity and equity when we can't say in the same breath, "And if you aren't happy with where you stand, here are the most effective steps you can take to address it."

To help on that front, D5 just commissioned three organizations to conduct research that will help identify the most effective policies and tools philanthropic leaders can draw on to help drive meaningful change and also lay the groundwork for gathering the data needed to help track the field's progress. For more information about the Insights on Diversity research, check out the press release here.

Being transparent about diversity and equity can be intimidating. But I hope the need for it will increasingly be viewed as a pathway to impact -- not as an onerous task that could result in a scolding if a foundation is behind where it would like to be. This is an opportunity to learn from each other, to find ways to better work together to serve common constituencies, and to better meet the needs of an increasingly diverse world.

-- Kelly Brown

Time to Join the Donor Revolution

(Derrick Feldmann is CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based creative fundraising agency. In his last post, he wrote about eight trends that will shape fundraising.)

Every $100 in fundraising revenue gained in 2011 was offset by $100 in losses. Every 100 donors gained in 2011 was offset by the loss of 107 other donors. The donor retention rate for the sector in 2011 was 27 percent.

Why are these statistics from a recent survey conducted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals so, well, disappointing? Before I answer that question, let me tell you about an encounter I had with a chief development officer at a national healthcare organization.

I met Mark two years ago at a conference where I was speaking about trends in fundraising. He sat in on my session and approached me after it was over with a question about whether and how fundraising is evolving in response to generational shifts. We stayed in touch over the years, trading ideas and strategies related to multichannel approaches to raising support.

Several months ago, we had a chance to catch up over breakfast in Washington, D.C. After a brief conversation about fundraising performance and how things were going compared to last year, we started talking about his organization's efforts to acquire new donors. Eventually, he asked me whether I knew of any "tricks" to increase donor headcount. After what seemed like a fruitful forty-five minutes, I changed the topic to donor stewardship. As I started to talk, Mark slumped back in his chair and his facial expression settled into a blank stare. It was clear he wasn't interested.

Eventually, I stopped and said, "I take it your thing is acquiring new donors?"

"Our board is all about raising more money," he replied. "My meetings with board members today will be focused on bringing in more donors and diversifying our base of loyal supporters. I don't have a choice; I need to focus on acquisition. Sure, I could work harder to get our existing donors to give more, but I know the board cares more about me getting new donors to support the organization."

My curiosity piqued, I asked him: "Do you prefer working on campaigns to acquire new donors or ones that focus on donor retention? Your personal preference, not what the board wants."

"Fundraising to me is an uphill challenge," he said. "It's a challenge at times to figure out the best strategy, the right message, and the optimal way to present an appeal in order to get a positive reaction from a donor. It's an incredible feeling, though, to crack the code. I get that feeling when a donor upgrades, but I get more excited when I can find a successful way to get a contact to give."

There it was: the infatuation with donor acquisition, from boards that want an ever-growing donor base to directors of development that love the challenge of coming up with the one message that gets a donor to break out his or her wallet for the first time. And yes, as a former fundraiser, I can tell you that it is exciting when one cracks "the code."

Unfortunately, donor acquisition and retention stats don't lie, and what they tell us is that organizations are losing donors as fast, and sometimes faster, than they acquire them. Given that fact, isn't it time to rethink how we fundraise? Isn't it time we build development departments that value repeat donors as much as new donors? Isn't it time for a donor-focused revolution? If you agree, here's how your organization can be part of it.

Invest in Talent That Understands Donor Stewardship
When hiring development staff, think about asking job candidates a different set of questions. Instead of asking about the largest ask they've ever made, or the approaches they use to solicit potential prospects, ask about the retention rate for donors they've acquired, the strategies they've implemented to enhance those rates, and what they would change in your shop if hired.

Allocate Resources for Donor Retention Programs
Organizations that are serious about donor retention walk the talk, allocating the same amount of resources for donor retention as they do for donor acquisition. Whether it's for technology upgrades or a series of donor-engagement activities, organizations need to spend money to ensure that donors continue to support your organization and increase their gifts over time.

Track Different Data to Understand Donor Retention
Your organization's data on donor retention should focus on engagement. What actions do your donors take when you communicate or seek their input? What causes them to move from communication to action? Conduct focus groups, interviews, and other kinds of surveys to get a better understanding of what works to increase your donors' loyalty to the organization.

Help Your Board See the Light
Donor retention isn't a staff issue; it's an organizational priority that should be driven by the board. It's up to your executive director and development staff to help board members understand the importance of donor retention and why such programs are necessary for long-term success. Ask for a show of hands at your next board meeting to see how many of your board members chose not to support an organization this year that they had supported in the past. Ask those board members why they stopped supporting the organization in question and what it would take to bring them back into the fold. Turn it into a teachable moment that illustrates to other board members why you need their assistance (in the form of leadership, time, and financial support) to improve your organization's donor retention rate.

It's been said before that convincing a donor to give is hard, but convincing a donor to keep giving is twice as hard. Ignoring your existing donors poses a huge threat to the stability of your organization. It's imperative, therefore, that your organization figures out the right balance between its donor acquisition and retention activities. In the words of my friend Mark, "Donors won't necessarily remember why they gave to your organization in the first place, but they'll always remember why they stopped giving to it."

Join me on Twitter to talk about the #donorrevolution.

-- Derrick Feldmann

Old Reports Are New Again

(Lisa Brooks is a co-founder of IssueLab and director of knowledge management systems at the Foundation Center.)

Often when talking with folks who contribute content to IssueLab, we encourage -- indeed, urge -- them to share all their publications regardless of date published. More often than not, we get a response along the lines of "that report is so old we don't want to include it. It's not relevant anymore."

Well, reading the New York Times on a recent weekend, I came across an editorial titled "The Struggle to Cast a Vote: Wrongly Turning Away Ex-Offenders." A timely article, given that the 2012 elections were at that point only two days away. So, I started to read and what did I notice? A 2005 study by the Sentencing Project, an IssueLab contributing organization, was cited. I repeat: the editorial cited a 2005 study. Total word count of the piece? Four hundred and sixty-seven -- and more than a quarter of them were dedicated to a seven-year-old study. How's that for legs?

In that same issue of the Times, another editorial, "How Romney Would Treat Women," also zeroed in on a key issue in the election and mentioned a fact sheet published in August 2011 by the Guttmacher Institute, another IssueLab contributor. While that publication was of more recent vintage than the Sentencing Project report, I couldn't help but wonder whether it would still be available to the public a few years from now. Yes, the Times will archive its editorial in perpetuity. But will the link to the institute's fact sheet still be live in, say, 2019?

We can't know the answer to that, of course. And perhaps the more interesting question is one that focuses on decentralized vs. centralized knowledge sharing and management. You may not know this, but using the IssueLab platform to share your knowledge resources doesn't lock those resources up in a single centralized location; instead, they become part of a constellation of networked services. In fact, everything collected by IssueLab is included in our Open Archives Initiative-compliant data provider service, which, in turn, pushes those resources out to Worldcat, which, in turn, makes them available through catalog searches performed at more than ten thousand brick-and-mortar libraries and online library networks around the world. And here's some more good news: We're working hard to expand this network in an effort to provide IssueLab contributors with a comprehensive distribution solution for their knowledge resources and end-users of that knowledge with multiple ways to learn about and locate such resources. All a knowledge provider has to do to get in on the action is to create a free IssueLab account and start adding resources. We take it from there.

That's because we believe there is no expiration date on social change or attempts to understand, analyze, and explain it. Indeed, everything we collect through IssueLab contributes to a more accurate picture of the efforts of the social sector -- where we've been, where we are, and where we might be heading. Older publications are a vital part of that picture.

If you are a knowledge provider and have older works you believe are no longer relevant, please reconsider. And know that at IssueLab, we value these works and want to preserve and share them with others.

(Image: Design Inspiration)

-- Lisa Brooks

Weekend Link Roundup (November 10-11, 2012)

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

Communications

In a guest post on the Communications Network blog, Philanthropy New York's Michael Hamill Remaley shares five lessons he learned from Superstorm Sandy about communications during and after a disaster:

1. A little bit of forethought and planning can make a big difference to your organization's ability to keep communicating during a disaster, and once your team has been through a disaster like Sandy, it'll have a much better idea of what to expect next time.
2. After disaster hits, be prepared to improvise. After the power grid for lower Manhattan went down, Remaley just started walking north from his apartment on the Lower East Side and kept walking until he was able to get a cell phone signal thirty-five blocks later.
3. Make sure you have personal e-mail addresses for all staff and that they are cloud-based like Gmail addresses.
4. To be an effective communicator during a crisis, you have to already have a loyal audience that follows you on a number of channels -- blogs, Web sites, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
5. When you have a great team of people who are determined to stay connected, you can find mechanisms to make it work. There are so many channels for communicating now that, unless there is absolutely no cell service at all, you can find ways of establishing two-way communication with your key audiences even amidst significant system disruptions.

Disaster Relief

On Blackbaud's new NPEngage blog, Steve MacLaughlin looks at how fundraising in support of Superstorm Sandy relief efforts compares to that of other recent natural disasters, from the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011. MacLaughlin says there are at least two aspects of Sandy giving to watch, including a rise in multi-screen fundraising and the long tail. "Giving to this and other disasters is going to continue for some time," writes MacLaughlin. "And very soon it will be important for organizations to start showing the impact these donations have had on those hit hardest by the storm."

Governance

On the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit co-author Beth Kanter discusses how online social networking tools such as LinkedIn Board Connect make it easier for nonprofits to find the right people for their boards. "On LinkedIn, you can see past first connections, and check out a potential candidate's knowledge and their network," writes Kanter. "If all board members add their networks, this produces a richer set of potential candidates. And, remember, you are not just adding a board member to your team -- you are also adding their network."

Human Services

In time for Veterans Day, Matt Cifaldi, a community engagement associate at Idealist, gives a shoutout to a handful of nonprofits working to address the needs of veterans, from providing retirees with counseling and arts programs to matching them with a companion dog or cat.

Leadership

In a post on her blog, Rosetta Thurman reminds us that regardless of who was elected president, it's up to each of us to address the collective challenges we face by being engaged members of society. "No president can or will dramatically change our communities," writes Thurman. "We have to do that ourselves. It is important to stay rooted in the reality that WE have to work for the change we want to see...."

Nonprofit Management

On the Duck Call blog, Big Duck's Sarah Durham has some advice for underresourced nonprofits based on this year's presidential campaigns.

Philanthropy

And on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders who will be the Nate Silver of philanthropy and "put predictive analysis to the test in the social sector." Silver, of course, is the New York Times-employed "data scientist" whose election predictions based on an analysis of aggregated polling data turned out out to be uncannily accurate. Writes Bernholz:

Silver's analytic model relies on calculating the probability that each candidate will win based on the results of numerous state and national polls. The model is inherently dependent on the quality of each of those polls but it also benefits from the sheer number of polls done during a presidential election.

As individual foundations share more of their information in more userful ways, IssueLab catalogues and organizes the research that foundations and nonprofits do, independent analysts like GiveWell or users of the Nonprofit Finance Fund's FinancialSCAN tool, and local, state and federal agencies make more data available publicly we may be reaching the point where meta-analysis of others' research -- whether program evaluations, strategy plans, or needs assessments -- is possible and worth considering. We are slowly building the repository of raw material -- data that can be shared, compiled, compared and considered in the aggregate -- that makes such research feasible....

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- The Editors

[Infographic] Women's Wealth and the Future of the Nonprofit Sector

After Tuesday, it's pretty clear that American women are not interested in giving up the reproductive rights they won in the 1970s and 1980s. Which is one reason why, as in 2008, a solid majority of them (55 percent) cast their votes for Barack Obama.

Tuesday also saw a historic number of women, twenty, elected or re-elected to the U.S. Senate. We may not have had a female president yet, but from higher ed to the economy to philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, women in growing numbers are exercising power and making their voices heard.

This week's infographic comes courtesy of the folks at ChangingOurWorld.com, an international consulting firm with expertise in fundraising, corporate social engagement, digital, and research and analytics. Enjoy.

The Stars Come Out for Sandy Relief and Recovery

Superstorm Sandy's devastating impact on the East Coast resulted in the loss of more than a hundred lives, thousands being displaced from their homes, power outages that affected millions, and crippling disruptions of the region’s mass transit systems. The estimated financial cost of the storm may exceed $50 billion, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

In the aftermath of a disaster like Sandy, it's not unusual to see celebrities donating their time and money to relief and recovery efforts, and this disaster is no different. According to the most recent edition of the Foundation Center's Celebrity Foundation Directory, total giving by celebrity foundations exceeds $15 billion. As the center continues to track the response to Sandy, we're again seeing celebrities step up to donate their money and talents to help those affected by the storm. Here are a few examples:

New Jersey natives Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen joined Jon Stewart, Christine Aguilera, Sting, and Jimmy Fallon on Friday, November 2, for "Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together," a live one-hour telethon that raised $23 million for relief and recovery efforts.

In addition to the NFL's New York Giants donating $500,000 to Sandy relief and recovery efforts, a number of Giants players helped out by distributing food in the hard-hit community of Seaside Heights, while others spent an afternoon making sandwiches at the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. Star quarterback Eli Manning traveled to Staten Island to help out with Red Cross relief efforts there.

The cast of MTV's popular series Jersey Shore will reunite for a "Restore the Shore" fundraiser, to be aired on the cable network later this month.

Celebrities who have announced cash donations to relief and recovery efforts include pop megastar Lady Gaga ($1 million); Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban ($1 million); Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade ($210,000) and Green Bay Packers star Charles Woodson ($100,000); television personalities Barbara Walters ($250,000), Chelsea Handler ($100,000), Bettheny Frankel ($50,000), and Simon Cowell ($25,000); network news anchor George Stephanopoulos ($50,000); Craigslist founder Craig Newmark ($25,000); and Virginia governor Bob McDonnell ($50,000).

It will take months, if not years, for some neighborhoods and communities to fully recover. In the meantime, we'll continue to track celebrities who are donating their time and resources to help those affected by Sandy. If you come across newsworthy celebrity relief efforts please share them with us in the comment section below.

And to learn more about the response by companies, nonprofit organizations, and grantmakers, visit the our RSS feed of Hurricane Sandy Grants, which to date has shared information on 181 grants totaling more than $110 million.

(Photo: Julio Cortez/AP)

-- Elia S. Glenn and Joey W. Guastella, co-editors, The Celebrity Foundation Directory

 

From Open Data to Open Knowledge: Foundations, Nonprofits, and the Production of Ideas

(Bradford K. Smith is president of the Foundation Center. In his last post, he looked at what philanthropy can do to help underresourced communities in tough economic times.)

If you think foundations are only ATM machines and nonprofits just service providers, think again. With the launch of IssueLab, there is one place you can go to find more than eleven thousand knowledge products published, funded, produced, and/or generated by foundations and nonprofits in the U.S. and around the globe.

Last month, the Foundation Center announced the Reporting Commitment, an effort by fifteen of America's largest philanthropic foundations to make their grants data -- who they give money to, how much, where, and for what purpose -- available in an open, machine-readable format. Starting today, through IssueLab, the social sector can also access what it knows as a result of that funding. A service of the Foundation Center, IssueLab gathers, indexes, and shares the sector's collective intelligence on a free, open, and searchable platform, and encourages users to share, copy, distribute, and even adapt the work. It's a big step for philanthropy and "open knowledge."

What's in it for you? Read on.

Issues -- IssueLab is about issues. Been hearing about employment this election season? There are more than twelve hundred reports in the IssueLab collection with titles like The Problem with Structural Employment in the U.S. Interested in energy and the environment? You can choose from nearly eight hundred and fifty titles, including Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race?

Authors -- Some of the world's best minds are busy analyzing the challenges, successes, failures, and lessons learned by the social sector. From Melinda Abrams to Stephen Zuckerman, you can browse the IssueLab collection by author, identifying issue experts in dozens of fields.

Geography -- IssueLab lets you search the globe for reports related to the continent, country, region, or city that interests you most. China? Read about the growth of foundations and public charities there or the impact of returning entrepreneurs on the Chinese economy.

Organizations -- Maybe you work at a foundation that wants to know more about the "thought leadership" of a prospective grantee. Or you're a consultant working with a donor who wants to learn more about charter schools before she starts making grants. IssueLab allows you to search by a particular organization, assess the breadth of its knowledge output, and dive into individual reports.

Special Collections -- Within hours of Hurricane Sandy making landfall, IssueLab posted a special collection of reports from foundations, nonprofits, and think tanks that reflect on and distill lessons learned from the response to past disasters. The title of the first resource listed says it all: Creating Order from Chaos: Roles for Philanthropy in Disaster Planning and Response.

Free -- IssueLab is a free online service; it belongs to the social sector for which the Foundation Center already serves as a central knowledge source. Anyone can explore the IssueLab collection to find (and share) the knowledge they need. You can also register to have issue alerts and e-newsletters delivered directly to your e-mail account.

Open -- Free is good, but IssueLab promotes openness in a number of other ways. First, the metadata -- the abstracts and "tags" developed for all reports in the collection -- is available under a Creative Commons license and can be grabbed and/or remixed by anyone as long as they use it for non-commercial purposes. Second, only work that is available for free is included in the IssueLab collection. These are public "assets," in that the organizations which produced them already have tax-exempt status and/or have received government funding, and they should be easy for the public to find. Sorry but Kardashian Konfidential will not be found on IssueLab. Third, IssueLab itself is an open-source platform whose underlying codebase/framework is continually being improved by a community of developers. And fourth, our own developers embrace the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), which develops and promotes interoperability standards to facilitate the efficient dissemination of online content.

Distributed -- IssueLab also builds third-party Knowledge Centers. Beyond helping to make your own research and reports more accessible on your Web site, Knowledge Centers link you and your knowledge output to a broader universe of users and potential collaborators. For example, a report on advocacy around water access issues posted to the WASHfunders Knowledge Center immediately becomes part of the underlying IssueLab collection and from there is shared with Wiser Earth, an online community of 72,852 users committed to sustainability, as well as the online WorldCat network of ten thousand libraries.

As more and more of it becomes open and free, data are becoming both ubiquitous and commoditized. In a world awash in petabytes of information, managing -- and sharing -- knowledge effectively will be the crucial distinction between those organizations that produce lasting change and those that merely do good. From open data to open knowledge, ideas matter. Now you can find them on IssueLab, a service of the Foundation Center.

-- Brad Smith

Weekend Link Roundup (November 3-4, 2012)

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

Civil Society

On the NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal discusses a recent article from the Poverty & Race Research Action Council about the "unsettling statistics on the status of voting rights in our country." According to PRRAC, voter identification laws, early voting restrictions, purging of "legitimate registered voters because of baseless suspicion of their citizenship status," and felon disenfranchisement continue to marginalize low-income individuals, communities of color, younger voters, and the elderly.

Disaster Relief

In the days following the devastating landfall of Superstorm Sandy near Cape May, New Jersey, nonprofit bloggers were busy sharing resources for those interested in contributing to relief and recovery efforts. On her Have Fun, Do Good blog, Britt Bravo has compiled a list of articles and Web sites that suggest ways to donate and volunteer; Idealist's Allison Jones has a few additional suggestions for New Yorkers looking to get involved in relief and recovery efforts; and longtime New Jersey resident Nancy Schwartz suggests three organizations on the ground in that state -- the NYC Rescue Mission, the Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless, and the Community FoodBank of New Jersey -- that are "providing services right now and need your help to keep it up."

Looking at the response to the storm through a tech/data lens, Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz tracks, in a series of posts, the many ways in which organizations and individuals used information communication technologies during and after the storm, while the Weakonomist looks at how Sandy might affect the economy.

Professional Development

After another season of conferences and events, you're probably wondering what to do with all the business cards you collected. New York Foundation for the Arts program officer Eleanor Whitney has some advice about how to deepen your connection to individuals with whom you swapped cards, including how to prepare for the initial communication and what you can do to move the conversation offline.

In a post on her blog, How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar author Rosetta Thurman reminds us to invite young professionals to the table when discussing the future of the sector.

Social Media

On her blog, the tireless Beth Kanter, reflects on her experience to date as a "social media ambassador" for the #GivingTuesday campaign, an effort to make the Tuesday after Thanksgiving a national day of giving.

Urbanism

And on the Huffington Post, Charles A. Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, explores the significance of hedge fund manager John Paulson's recent $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy. "The gift is important in two ways," writes Birnbaum, "it directly benefits the park and the [conservancy]...and it impacts public perception. This gift places the park and designed landscapes on the same plane with other philanthropic beneficiaries -- cultural institutions including museums, libraries and performing arts centers, medical facilities, universities, etc. This helps elevate the understanding of landscape's fundamental role and value, and it could also spur similar acts of philanthropy for other parks in New York and around the country."

That's it for now. Our best wishes for a speedy recovery to all those who experienced the wrath of Sandy. Drop us a line if we missed anything at rnm@foundationcenter.org.

-- The Editors