PhilanTopic

Weekend Link Roundup (May 19-20, 2012)

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

Advocacy

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Lisa Ranghelli gives a shout out to the Alliance for Justice's new site, Bolder Advocacy, noting that the "'A' in advocacy used to be akin to the adultery committed in Hawthorne's novel,...a symbol of failure to adhere to the mores of the community, a sign of risky behavior, even law-breaking."

Communications/Marketing

There's an opportunity for nonprofits to improve their organizational stories with data beyond presenting the information in a simple chart, writes Susan Stehling at the Minnesota Council on Foundations's Philanthropy Potluck blog. Indeed, software like Microsoft Excel has made it too easy for organizations to create bad graphs and charts. To avoid such a fate, Stehling suggests that nonprofits follow in the steps of Cole Nussbaumer, people analytics manager at Google, who advises them to "step back and answer some basic questions" before creating their next chart.

Philanthropy

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders whether "the next ten years [will] see the creation of hybrid foundations -- a capital investing form structured specifically to allow greater flexibility in how funds are used for social good?" Few of today's "institutions...look as much like their forebears as do philanthropic foundations," writes Bernholz. "It's illogical that this century's wealth creators are going to be content with last century's philanthropic forms...." Interesting discussion in the comments section, as well.

Responding to news that a second closed-door meeting of Giving Pledge signatories was held earlier this month in Santa Barbara, Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green ask why the billionaires are being "bashful" about sharing their giving stories, successes and failures, with the general public. "The importance of failure as a way to learn is now well understood in the world of business," write Bishop and Green.

In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs wear their first disastrous start-up or two as a badge of honour. Philanthropy, by contrast, has long missed out on the feedback loop from failure that is so valuable to business, and so often ends up frittering away scarce resources on projects that someone else has already found wanting. Thus it is excellent news that in Santa Barbara the leaders of America's new generation of philanthropists started to take their failed efforts at giving seriously enough to learn from them. Nonetheless, how much better if at next year's gathering they open up and let the rest of us learn those lessons from failure too....

As if anticipating Bishop and Green's concern, James Irvine Foundation president Jim Canales and Kevin Rafter, the foundation's manager of research and evaluation, describe the Irvine Foundation’s approach to performance assessment and discuss three lessons the foundation has learned over the past six years in an article the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

In the first in a series of six blog posts, Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan suggests that "the nonprofit sector may be losing the public battle to define itself" to those who espouse a "business-as-savior perpesctive." Yes, writes Buchanan, we must "push harder to maximize the effectiveness of foundations and other nonprofit organizations....But we need to do our work

in a way that is rooted in a deep understanding of the particular role and context of nonprofit organizations, rather than in a way that assumes that “business thinking” and market approaches represent the secret formula for nonprofit success. We must be clear that the advocacy of those pushing market-based solutions for all of our social problems, which sometimes takes on a cultish feel, is misguided. It won’t work, and it threatens to undermine the public’s understanding and appreciation of the vital role of the nonprofit sector as distinct from business and government....

Social Entrepreneurship

On the Social Velocity site, Nell Edgington reviews Billy Parish and Dev Aujla's Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money and Community in a Changing World, "a career guide for the generation that finds themselves on the precipice of some pretty monumental global challenges."

Social Media

In a guest post on Beth's Blog, Geri Stengel, founder and president of Ventureneer.com, explains the benefits of LinkedIn groups for nonprofit professionals and asks readers to weigh in on a discussion about the ethics of accepting "tainted" money.

Science/Technology

On the Growthology blog, Dane Stangler, shares findings and a great map from a recent study published by the Center for an Urban Future, a Kauffman Foundation grantee, which found that technology startups have boomed in New York City over the past few years.

Although the semantic Web envisioned by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee "might be able to reduce donor 'friction' -- the many steps and processes that interpose themselves between a donor's initial desire to give and her consummation of a gift," it may be years before it becomes a reality, writes Greater New Orleans Foundation president Albert Ruesga on the White Courtesy Telephone blog. In the meantime, there are things nonprofits can do to "maximize their online success," including putting "Give Now" buttons on multiple pages of their Web sites.

Transparency

And in a post on her blog, Allison Fine commends the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for its effort to "go beyond the busy-ness of social media to get to the 'so what' of it for social change."

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

-- The Editors

Movement Building and System Change

The bad old days of the '70s and '80s are a distant memory for many, but New York City in 2012 isn't without problems. The list includes a public education system that fails too many kids, a chronic shortage of affordable housing, immigrant populations that lack basic protections, and rising income inequality.

The city is home, however, to roughly ten thousand nonprofit organizations, some 70 percent of which provide direct services to constituents. A sizable percentage of these groups work at the grassroots level and many have a social justice orientation, working in and with communities and populations that are marginalized and underresourced.

How the good work of these groups can be leveraged more effectively to drive social change was the topic of an interesting panel discussion hosted by Philanthropy New York I was fortunate to attend earlier this spring.

Moderated by the Foundation Center's Lisa Philp and featuring Hugh Hogan, executive director of the North Star Fund, Ana Oliveira, president and CEO of the New York Women's Foundation, and young leaders from four grassroots nonprofit organizations, the discussion focused on strategies that funders and donors can pursue to help community-based nonprofits create a more fair, just, and compassionate New York.

Early in their respective careers, both Hogan and Oliveira realized that social justice -- a concern "for those who are the least well off politically, economically and socially" -- would shape and inform their life's work. Hogan's "a-ha" moment came in Senegal and Namibia, where he spent nearly a decade working to reverse a legacy of colonialism and apartheid. That experience eventually led him to the Open Space Equity Campaign for the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, which he served as director from 1999 to 2003. Back then, Hogan told us, eight out of ten communities affected by environmental problems in NYC were communities of color; today, seven out of ten are immigrant communities.

Oliveira worked in the health and human services field for over twenty years, developing programs for vulnerable populations in New York, and then served as the first woman and Latina director of Gay Men's Health Crisis, one of the oldest and largest AIDS service organizations in the country, before joining NYWF in 2006. The organization, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, was established, Oliveira noted, around what many people at the time thought was "a crazy idea": that women from all walks of life and with different interests could come together to address the root causes of economic injustice. But come together they did, and the organization flourished. Today, NYWF funds women leaders and women-led organizations seeking to create positive change in the lives of women, girls, and communities in the metro New York region and works closely with its grantee partners to incorporate their "front-line" expertise into its grantmaking strategies. Or, as Oliveira put it, the organization is "intentional [about] following its grantee partners and leading its donor partners."

As impressive as Hogan and Oliveira were (and are), the real stars of the afternoon were the four young nonprofit leaders who had been invited to talk about their work: Jaron Benjamin, an organizer at VOCAL-NY, which works to organize low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, drug use, and incarceration; Priscilla Gonzalez, executive director of Domestic Workers United, an organization of nannies, housekeepers, and elder caregivers that led the six-year campaign for the nation's first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights; Daniel Gross, co-founder and executive director of Brandworkers International NY, a nonprofit that works to protect and advance the rights of retail and food employees in the city; and Kris Hayashi, co-director of the Audre Lorde Project, an LGBTQ center for community organizing.

All had compelling personal stories to share and all were poised beyond their years. They also were quick to give at least partial credit for their effectiveness as advocates to the coaching they received through North Star's Movement Leadership Program. Launched in 2010, the program was created in response to requests for technical assistance that the fund was getting from grassroots groups. The goal in creating the program, said Hogan, was to free up the leaders of these groups to think more strategically about how to run their organizations, to give them an opportunity to learn from their peers, and to get them thinking more in terms of a movement-building framework.

In its first year, the program awarded two-year grants of $50,000 (the fund's largest grant previously had been $15,000) to five organizations: New Immigrant Community Empowerment, Brandworkers International, Families for Freedom, VOCAL-NY, and DWU. Each organization also was invited to send a three-member team (the executive director, a leader from the board, and a member leader) to a series of workshops and trainings focused on the building blocks of community organizing: base building, leadership development, campaign strategy, and strategic communications.

While movement building as a strategy in these distracted times might strike some as quixotic, it was obvious to anyone in the room on this particular afternoon that the program had succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. And indeed, earlier this year North Star decided to fund a second group of grantees through the program that includes the Child Welfare Organizing Project, which works to transform the quality of services provided to New York City families through the city's child welfare system; DAMAYAN, a grassroots group that advocates for the rights of migrant workers; FIERCE, an LGBQT youth organization; VAMOS Unidos, a Bronx-based social justice organization founded by Latina/o and immigrant street vendors; and Picture the Homeless, a grassroots advocacy organization founded and led by homeless people. All are "in the process of expanding their organizations and work to a broader scale," says North Star program officer Walter Barrientos, and that's good news for the poor, the dispossessed, and the disenfranchised in New York City.

But it's a drop in the bucket. As Hogan noted toward the end of the event: "If someone comes into a room with a bad cut on his leg, most people will say, 'We've got to get you to a doctor and get that taken care of'. But if a dozen people, each with a bad cut on his or her leg, walk into the room, sooner or later you have to ask, 'What the hell is causing all those cuts?'"

Social justice work is hard and not for the faint of heart. We've made progress as a country on a lot of fronts in the fifty-plus years I've been around. But there's more to do. It's heartening to know that passionate, talented leaders like Jaron Benjamin, Priscilla Gonzalez, Daniel Gross, and Kris Hayashi are working hard every day to make ours a more just and compassionate society, and that organizations like the North Star Fund and the New York Women's Foundation are willing to try new things and take risks to help leverage their efforts.

To learn more, click here.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (May 5-6, 2012)

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

Advocacy

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Lisa Ranghelli offers a positive review of Learn Foundation Law, a new online training tool for foundation program officers that was developed by the Gates, Packard, Moore, and Hewlett foundations.

Arts and Culture

On the Minnesota Council on Foundation's Philanthropy Potluck blog, Anne Bauers explains why it's critical for arts organizations to focus on audience-building efforts. Writes Bauers, "The [uncertain economy] challenges arts organizations to make smart and cost-effective decisions about strategies to attract and retain audiences, sustaining practices that work, and modifying or dropping those that don't. It also challenges organizations to change themselves in ways that encourage risk-taking, innovation and learning...."

Communications/Marketing

NTEN's Holly Ross discusses how the organization improved its e-mail open rates by sending mobile-friendly versions of its newsletter to subscribers, many of whom manage their e-mail on smartphones.

Fundraising

Something of a skeptic when it comes to social media as a fundraising tool, Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks looks at a recently published Nonprofit Social Network Report which found that the average cost of a Facebook "like" is $3.50, while the average value of a Facebook "like" over the twelve months following acquisition is $214.81. Among other things, writes Brooks, fundraisers should consider the following questions as they examine their organization's data to determine whether a robust social networking presence is worth the time and effort:

• Does giving increase after a current donor becomes a Facebook follower?
• Does donor retention improve among those who "like"?
• Is the increase in value, if any, enough to make the $3.50 cost a good investment?
• What types of Facebook engagement creates the best return?

Hosting April's Nonprofit Blog Carnival, the folks at the Rad Campaign share a selection of posts that explore the ins and outs of social fundraising.

Governance

Writing on the Huffington Post, Alice Korngold says that given the significant strategic and financial challenges and opportunities confronting nonprofits, nonprofit boards need to rethink the way they function. That process should start with a conversation about the organization's goals over the next several years, followed by a discussion about its revenue model. After that, the board should dive deeper into the expectations of individual board members and develop a system of accountability; determine the proper size and structure of the board; develop a plan for board composition based on board members' expertise, experience, background, and networks; and adopt best practices with respect to leadership succession.

International Affairs/Development

In a post on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Impatient Optimists blog, Gerry Power of InterMedia highlights a report that looks at "how we can communicate about aid in a way that people understand and are encouraged to act upon." Key takeways from the report include:

• Instill a deep understanding and appreciation for the objectives of international development when people are young and where values are nurtured;
• Do not underestimate the challenge of leveraging public opinion as a means to influence policy; and
• Facilitate more effective information and data gathering and sharing strategies for government decision makers.

Philanthropy

Writing on the Council on Foundations' blog, Michael Moody, the Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy, suggests that "a theory about philanthropy as essential because of the failure of the other sectors is not so useful. What we need is a theory about philanthropy as essential to the other sectors."

On the Philanthropy 411 blog, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy executive director Rusty Stahl announces the launch of Generating Change, a new initiative that aims to "create deep discussion about the challenges and opportunities for nonprofit talent and leadership development; illuminate new ways funders can address this critical need at all levels; and increase investment in talent and leadership development at the individual, organization, movement, and sector levels."

Social Media

Last but not least, Rosetta Thurman shares a list of things every nonprofit leader should know about social media.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (April 28-29, 2012)

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

Advocacy

Responding to news that "Covering the Night," Invisible Children's offline event in support of its KONY 2012 campaign, was less than a rousing success, Allison Fine writes on her blog that the organization failed to attract widespread support because it "overlooked a fundamental tenant of networked activism: do what you do best and network the rest." Adds Fine:

Invisible Children has spent years honing its expertise in online organizing. And it showed in the initial outburst of support associated with the video and [the fact that] tens of thousands of people signed up to participate [in] Cover the Night....I think [the event] fizzled because on land organizing is simply not what Invisible Children does best. A better approach would have been to partner with an organization with the core competency of on land organizing, a group like Oxfam perhaps...."

In a guest post on the Communication Network's blog, Spitfire Strategies senior vice president Erin Campbell Boltz and former Greenpeace USA executive director John Passacantando offer a checklist for nonprofits that are planning issue campaigns. Their recommendations include: set a clear goal, know the opposition and arm yourselves to face them, play to your strengths, and engage the right coalition partners. Developed by Spitfire and the Communications Leadership Institute with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Just Enough Planning Guide provides an interactive step-by-step framework for mapping out a public advocacy campaign strategy.

Economy

Courtesy of the Browser, MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu, co-author (with James Robinson) of the book Why Nations Fail, discusses four books and one paper that explain how and why the United States and other Western societies have become less equal over the last thirty years and what it means for the future.

Fundraising

"The charitable marketplace is consumed with big talk about the need for transparency, yet many nonprofits, along with their boards and their funders, operate with their heads in the sand," writes Todd Cohen on his Inside Philanthropy blog. "If nonprofits, boards, and funders do not wake up soon, nonprofits will continue to struggle, leaving as victims the clients who count on them to provide the programs and services they need more than ever in our shattered economy...."

Innovation

Guest blogging at Beth's Blog, Laura Quinn and Chris Bernard of Idealware share a case study included in the report Unleashing Innovation: Using Everyday Technology to Improve Nonprofit Services that demonstrates how technology can spur innovation and improve service delivery.

Philanthropy

In a long piece on the National Education Association site, Alison R. Bernstein, director of the Institute for Women's Leadership and a former vice president at the Ford Foundation, looks at the growing corporatization of philanthropy -- and doesn't much like what she sees. Writes Bernstein:

Corporatization is important because it is rapidly becoming the preferred way of doing the "business" of grant making and it is influencing both new and older foundations, large and small, in ways that I believe may undermine the diversity of the philanthropic world. Just to put all of this in context: there are approximately 72,000 foundations in the U.S., half of which have been created in the last 30 years. This explosive growth in philanthropy is proof that numerous individuals got very rich during the Reagan Revolution. In looking for models of how to give away money, more and more corporate givers, family foundations, and community trusts are modeling themselves along the lines of Gates, not Ford or Mellon. The question is why? Why do they think Gates is a more effective model? Why is large-scale grantmaking intrinsically better than carefully scaled efforts to make a difference? Why are leaders and practices from the corporate sector preferable to those of the nonprofit sector? Why are phrases like "strategic grantmaking" dominating the discourse of the day? (Parenthetically, would anyone proudly claim to be an unstrategic donor?) And where is evidence that this is happening?...

On the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president/CEO Albert Ruesga proposes a set of principles that would govern the way progressive funders collaborate so as to strengthen their collective efforts. Inspired by the Sullivan Principles, which were adopted voluntarily by more than a hundred companies with operations in apartheid-era South Africa, Ruesga's principles include: the Do 'With' Rather Than 'To' Principle; the Maximize Coordination Principle; the Drop Everything Else You're Doing Principle; the Get the Money Out of Politics Principle; the Everything Is Connected Principle; and the Empowerment Principle. With the hope that his post sparks an actual conversation, Ruesga writes, "I see the development of these principles as much more than another idle flipchart exercise."

Manwhile, over on NCRP's Keeing a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal commends Ruesga for his post and adds two principles to his list:

• The provision of unencumbered long-term support -- i.e., core support of sufficient duration to address pressing social needs.
• Bolstering the capacity of our (limited) think tanks because conservative funders have succeeded at moving a policy agenda by funding similar institutions that feed policy to the Hill.

In a recent Forbes article, Rahim Kanani interviews Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin about the foundation's centennial celebrations and how the foundation views its anniversary as a critical opportunity to raise the effectiveness of its work and advance solutions to pressing global challenges.

On Health Affairs' GrantWatch Blog, Tom David challenges foundations to take the information shared at their annual conferences and networking events -- many of which are held in the spring -- and "actually go out and make them happen." Writes David:

Whether it's collective impact or impact investing or whatever the big idea of the moment is, considerable buzz is generated [at these events], blog posts are published, tweets are tweeted, and then we return to our respective corners of the country. What's waiting when we arrive home is often a pile of grant applications and files awaiting action. The pressure to meet the deadline for the next board meeting too often trumps our best intentions to apply those new ideas from the conferences to the way we do business.

Meanwhile, the context in which we operate is...chronic crisis mode. The economy may be slowly recovering, but the human toll of unemployment and foreclosure and lack of health insurance and underperforming schools continues to mount. Governments are stretched to the limit in their ability to maintain even basic services. To someone observing the situation in the United States from afar, it would be clear that this is not a time for business as usual....

Social Media

On her Nonprofit Marketing blog, Network for Good's Katya Andresen shares an infographic that highlights the most popular social networking sites and how best to use them.

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

-- The Editors

Curtailing Democracy

(The following post was written by Mark Rosenman, a Washington-based scholar-activist and director of Caring to Change, a D.C.-based effort to promote foundation grantmaking for the common good, and Gary D. Bass, executive director of the Bauman Foundation and affiliated professor at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute. In his previous post, Rosenman wrote about widening inequality in the philanthropic sector.)

Nonprofit organizations have fewer rights today than they did last year. Thanks to language pushed by Republicans in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, charities face yet another coordinated campaign by conservatives to quash popular democracy. And unlike past "defund the left" efforts, this legislation wasn't caught in time by charity leaders to prevent its passage.

Those efforts began in 1981 with a proposal from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, were pushed by the Reagan White House throughout the early and mid-'80s, morphed into major Republican congressional legislative activity in the mid-'90s, and have come back around in various forms since then. Some have tried to limit what charities can do with private contributions; others have tried to expand the types of activities that are prohibited by charities that receive federal funding. Most of these prior attempts were stopped by watchdog organizations -- sometimes working as part of a broad-based coalition -- but only at considerable expense.

And yet conservatives continue to try to chip away at the right of nonprofit groups to engage in advocacy. For example, there is now a law on the books that prohibits nonprofit social welfare (503[c][4]) organizations that lobby from receiving federal grants. Similarly, grantees of the Legal Services Corporation face greater restrictions on advocacy than do other federal grantees.

Over the years, many grantmaking foundations have been alarmed by these attacks. Like much of society, they recognize that a strong, vibrant nonprofit sector helps to build a strong, vibrant democracy. A key element in that equation is the ability of nonprofits to speak out on public policy issues, to challenge institutional power, and to encourage people to get more involved in democratic decision-making. One legacy of earlier attacks on nonprofit advocacy was that a small number of foundations provided support for nonprofit sector watchdogs to monitor these attacks and to help build nonprofits' capacity to engage in advocacy. Alas, while laudatory, that funding was limited and episodic.

Strikingly, over the past few years even the modest amount of foundation funding available for watchdogs and advocacy capacity-building efforts has been scaled back. Key organizations no longer have staff dedicated to monitoring these issues and some organizations that devoted all their work to this cause no longer can. As these trends continue, we should expect that nonprofits will be even less prepared for future assaults on nonprofit advocacy.

The newly enacted appropriations law expands the long-standing and widely accepted prohibition on using federal grant funds for nonprofit lobbying to include "any activity to advocate or promote" any "proposed, pending or future" tax increase (at any level of government) or any "future requirement or restriction" on a "legal consumer product" (e.g., tobacco and alcohol products, junk foods and beverages) -- even when such efforts reflect the very purpose of public funding. None of these key terms is defined, and the scope is disturbingly vague and broad.

The new law also restricts the use of federal funds for many types of regulatory and administrative actions. This means that many groups that comment on state regulations, for example, will no longer be able to under their federal grant. Combined, these changes significantly restrict the advocacy rights of the nonprofit sector as well as the core functions of the public sector to promote and protect people's and communities' interests.

The law is limited at this point to programs funded through the appropriations bill that covers the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Education, as well as several independent agencies. But it is easy to see that conservatives will likely want to extend these restrictions to other spending bills that affect the arts, the environment, and many other issues across the nonprofit world.

Consider a few illustrations: a charity might receive federal funding to address the scourge of cancer by reducing tobacco use. To that end, it might launch a public service campaign about the health dangers of cigarettes, especially for minors. Or a charity might get a federal grant to combat the epidemic of obesity in the U.S. They might promote ideas for raising funds for obesity-prevention campaigns or to help reimburse government for the costs of treating obesity-related diseases, including a surcharge on sodas and other sugary foods.

Under the new law, charities would likely no longer be able to undertake these types of activities. Charities are already not permitted to use federal funds to lobby, but they certainly should be able to use federal funds to educate and suggest ideas to the public and policy makers on social issues when consistent with the purposes of a grant. It strengthens our communities when policy makers receive information from independent nonpartisan parties such as government grantees. And their research and policy ideas often are vital to improving the quality of life in our communities. All of this has been made more difficult and in many cases prohibited under the new law.

Let's be clear about this: The new legislation really is a case of the public interest losing out to private ones. Charities tend to advocate on and for issues and in debates where the voices of average people aren't really heard; they work to promote the common good. Additional restrictions on charities' free speech rights are a pointed example of how moneyed interests impose their will on ordinary people and the groups that try to serve them -- and of the need for nonprofit advocacy.

The new law was developed by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) and is supported by a number of powerful industries, including the American Beverage Association. Why would a trade association want new restrictions on nonprofit advocacy? Maybe it's because it wants to kill federal funding of programs that address anti-obesity and other public health campaigns that could affect the public's attitude and behavior with respect to sweetened drinks. Knowing how hard that is, they go after the speech rights of public health charities that get federal funding -- all part of a continuing conservative attack on nonprofit speech.

Participating in the broader assault on nonprofit advocacy rights is Cause of Action, an organization established a few months before the restrictions were enacted that's directed by a former staffer to Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-CA) Oversight and Government Reform Committee (and before that a legal associate at one of the militantly free-market/limited government Koch Family Foundations).

Cause of Action has written to at least twenty grant recipients of a federal program that funds anti-obesity and -tobacco activities warning that they may have engaged in illegal lobbying activities. It was writing, it said, only "as a convenience" and to let the organizations know that they may be subject to civil penalties and private lawsuits.

Both are tactics reminiscent of right-wing efforts dating to 1980s to stifle charitable advocacy work. Back then, the threat or actual filing of SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) had a chilling effect on nonprofits' efforts to build democratic participation and otherwise affect public policy for the common good. Often filed by corporations and deep-pocket conservatives, the practice became so frequent that it earned its own acronym. You can be certain that the threat of lawsuits implied by Cause of Action will have a similar effect.

Democracy depends on ordinary people having a voice in policy decisions that affect them, and ordinary people depend on charities to advocate for and promote initiatives that improve their lives and the well-being of their communities. Efforts by conservatives and big business to deny charities some of their power to increase democratic participation limits charities’ ability to address critical problems and issues, and, ultimately, is corrosive of society and representative government itself.

Foundations must understand -- and embrace -- the absolutely critical role they play in providing support for charity watchdogs working to protect the advocacy voice of the nonprofit sector. At a time when the wealthiest people and corporations in this country are hell-bent on rigging the political system for their own gain, it is essential that private philanthropy step up and fund the people and organizations who are working to build a stronger voice for the common good.

-- Mark Rosenman and Gary Bass

Justice Matters | Filmfest DC

(Kathryn Pyle is a frequent contributor to PhilanTopic. In January, she blogged about the lessons a new generation of activists can learn from the civil rights documentary Freedom Riders.)

How do you tell a new story about the Palestinian conflict, one that touches audiences in a different way, goes beyond the nightly news images, and sparks new ideas and discussion?

For filmmaker Emad Burnat, co-director of 5 Broken Cameras, which is being shown as part of the Justice Matters series at Filmfest DC in Washington this week, the answer was personal. "There have been many films made about Palestine, but the filmmakers didn't live the situation, didn't know the reality. I live there; and I was always filming. My cameras were part of the non-violent resistance that my village, Bil'in, mounted against the Israeli occupation of our lands. I used my camera to protect myself and my friends and the other villagers. And when it came to shaping a story out of the seven hundred hours I'd filmed over seven years, I realized that it had to be my story; the story of my own experience."

That personal connection has struck a chord: 5 Broken Cameras premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) last fall; showed at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won the World Cinema Directing Award for documentaries; and has gone on to screen at numerous festivals and win many more prizes. This summer it will be featured in several Israeli festivals and on Israeli television and will open in the U.S. as well.

Burnat, who had been a farmer, got a camera to film his new baby in 2005 and then turned it on the conflict in his village, sharing his extraordinary footage with international news agencies. He met his co-director, Guy Davidi, an Israeli there to film a documentary, and together, with support from the Global Perspectives Project of the International Television Service (ITVS) and IDFA's Jan Vrijman Fund, they created 5 Broken Cameras.

About fifty D.C.-area filmmakers gathered on Saturday morning at Busboys & Poets, a restaurant-cum-progressive cultural/community center at 5th & K Streets for a "salon" event with several directors and producers in town for Filmfest DC, which opened April 2 and runs through April 22. Two films that are part of the 2012 Justice Matters program -- Burnat's and Ravida Din's Pink Ribbons, Inc. -- were featured.

"This is the third year for Justice Matters," said Filmfest DC director Tony Gittens, who founded the festival in 1987. "Justice Matters has proven to be very successful and has given us a way to offer something special to the metropolitan Washington audience. Every festival tries to take advantage of its locale, to reach out to the people who live there. D.C. is unique because so many people here are interested in policy issues: it's in the newspapers, in the workplace, and around the dinner table. Justice Matters is a natural for us."

Conceived and programmed by Linda Blackaby and supported by the CrossCurrents Foundation, this year's Justice Matters series is showing Big Boys Gone Bananas!*, Blood in the Mobile, Brothers on the Line, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, The Island President, and Pink Ribbons, Inc., in addition to 5 Broken Cameras.

Funding from the Wyncote Foundation makes possible the other component of the program: the Impact Project, which concentrates on community partners -- organizations that, according to Blackaby, "have some kind of stake in the issue the film addresses. We identify the community partners, often in collaboration with the filmmaker, and they range from grassroots groups to large NGOs."

For instance, the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank that works on the Middle East as well as other issues, is paired with 5 Broken Cameras. At the screening of Pink Ribbons, Inc., an expose of corporate appropriation of the breast cancer cause, representatives of Breast Cancer Action were there to respond to the film. Another Pink Ribbons, Inc. partner is the National Breast Cancer Awareness Coalition, which shared information about its Breast Cancer Deadline 2020 petition drive to improve research results.

"This model, of linking social issue films with local organizations working on the issues presented in the films, is not new," said Blackaby. "The San Francisco Green Fest, an environmental film festival, strongly promotes these action-partnerships, but they're an activist festival by definition. What's unusual is a more generalist film festival that shows a variety of good new films on various topics, especially international films, supporting those community partnerships. A few festivals do it and do it well, like the Cleveland International Film Festival, and more festivals express an interest. But even festivals that have a real commitment to this approach find it requires a lot of staff time to make meaningful connections."

As the series has grown, the festival has learned how to do it more effectively.

"This is the first year we've had partners for every film, more than twenty in all," notes Blackaby. "They're listed on the Web site as links that take visitors directly to their own sites. Their participation depends on the issues, and activities vary. Some partners send staff to the screenings to engage in the post-screening discussions and distribute literature. This year, the Guatemalan Human Rights Committee/USA has an intern dedicated to bringing a Guatemalan audience -- there is a large population here in the metropolitan region -- to see Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, about the international criminal case against a former Guatemalan military leader."

In addition to IPS, 5 Broken Cameras partners include Docs in Progress, Peace Café, and Reporters Without Borders. Busboys and Poets' owner and festival supporter Andy Shallal moderated the film's post-screening discussion and asked Burnat what his goals for the film were. Simple, said Burnat: educate people about the experience of his village, which includes the arrest of children and other violations of international law. "I don't trust the politicians. My hope is in ordinary people; they can bring about change."

Individual voices and community-based activism is also the solution presented by Pink Ribbons, Inc., which remembers the women who protested the excessive use of mastectomies and takes a highly critical view of "race for the cure" programs. Speaking at the post-screening discussion, the National Breast Cancer Awareness Coalition's Vernal Branch said that "Twenty years of fundraising for research on treatment has resulted in only incremental improvements -- a few weeks or months more of life. What we need is research on the environmental causes of breast cancer and prevention."

In addition to the post-screening discussions, the Impact Project "takes the films off campus," adds festival director Gittens. "The filmmakers talk with students in the schools and connect with associations that are working on the issues raised in the film. And this year, we're going to Capitol Hill with Brothers on the Line, which is about the United Auto Workers and the history of the labor movement. Representative John Conyers has arranged a screening with members of Congress: you can only do that in D.C.!"

-- Kathryn Pyle

Weekend Link Roundup (April 7-8, 2012)

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

Advocacy

On Wednesday, the Case Foundation announced the winners in the "Fearless" category of this year's DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards." The winning organizations, which "used their videos to experiment and...take risks," are Invisible People, the Global Health Media Project, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation for the Benefit of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, and Partnership at Drugfree.org.

On her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz says that while the second Kony 2012 video from nonprofit Invisible Children addresses a number of the criticisms voiced after the organization's first video became a global YouTube sensation in March, the video ultimately falls short. "[CEO and narrator Ben] Keesey is spot on in recognizing the necessity of building the organization's credibility," writes Schwartz. "But this video just doesn't do the job for me: it's beautifully produced emptiness...."

Fundraising

About.com's Joanne Fritz shares findings from a new Convio report which found that online giving is "growing just about as fast as retail e-commerce, and sometimes more," including 16 percent in 2011, compared to 15 percent for e-commerce.

International Affairs/Development

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch received two Peabody Awards -- a rare honor for a nongovernmental organization -- for two multimedia features it produced in 2011: one on civil society activists in Russia and the second about abuses against people living near the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea. Congrats to HRW on its excellent work.

On her Good Intentions Are Not Enough blog, Saundra Schimmelpfennig is curating blog posts in support of A Day Without Dignity on April 26, a 24-hour event conceived as a "counter-campaign" to the TOMS One Day Without Shoes, which aims to raise awareness of "the impact a pair of shoes can have on a child's life."

Leadership

Rosetta Thurman, who recently celebrated her five-year blogging anniversary, takes a closer look at The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today, a new book by Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd which notes, among other things, that "by the year 2020, there will be [five] generations working side by side in the workplace, with Millennials (professionals born roughly between 1980-2000) representing 50% of the workforce."

Philanthropy

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Yna Moore shares a list of ten questions she believes broadcast journalist Charlie Rose, who has a reputation for asking hard-hitting questions, would ask an executive at a private foundation. Her list includes:

• Have you ever regretted providing a particular grant to a nonprofit? And conversely, is there a nonprofit whose grant request you turned down previously but now wish you approved?
• You give out about 5-6 percent of your foundation's assets in grants each year. How are you using the other 95 percent of your assets to achieve your mission?
• Some critics say there's a double standard when it comes to what people view as appropriate pay for executives at a large foundation compared to acceptable compensation for executives of nonprofit grantees. Where do you stand on this issue? Should there be a cap when it comes to executive compensation for leaders of foundations?

A great start. What would you add to Moore's list?

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz offers a great set of links related to data and stories, data and philanthropic transparency, and data and change.

Back from the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green explain why philanthrocapitalists "have a crucial role to play in the new model for global problem-solving."

And Tactical Philanthropy blogger Sean Stannard-Stockton makes it official: After five years as one of the most thoughtful and widely followed bloggers in the philanthropy space, he's calling it quits. Writes Stannard-Stockton, "It [has been] a magnificent five years for me and the most intensively intellectually stimulating experience I've ever had....But that time is done for me. Having put off officially ending this blog by declaring myself on sabbatical for the past five months, it is now time for me to face the fact that I'm not coming back to philanthropy blogging any time soon."

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

-- The Editors

World Water Day: A PubHub Reading List

(Kyoko Uchida manages PubHub, the Foundation Center's online catalog of foundation-sponsored publications. In her previous post, she looked at four reports that examine racial/ethnic disparities in higher education.)

To help mark World Water Day, we searched PubHub for reports that discuss efforts to improve access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in the developing world -- efforts that in turn are linked to progress in the areas of health, education, and economic growth.

While the 2015 Millennium Development Goal target for halving the proportion of people who do not have access to safe drinking water has been met, according to a recent report from UNICEF and the World Health Organization, the target for halving the proportion of those without access to basic sanitation has not. Moreover, the aggregate figures mask significant regional variations in the progress achieved to date. The two reports highlighted below explore the complex challenges of implementing and sustaining effective WASH-related interventions.

Off-Track, Off-Target: Why Investment in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Is Not Reaching Those Who Need It Most (68 pages, PDF), a report from WaterAid, notes that in sub-Saharan Africa the target for access to sanitation is so off-track that at current rates it will not be met for two centuries: "In developing countries, spending on water, sanitation and hygiene services is minimal compared to health and education, and the share of aid flows going to water and sanitation has fallen over the last 15 years." Not only does inadequate investment in WASH initiatives undermine progress in the areas of health and education, it also exacerbates already stark inequities in access to services between rich and poor, rural and urban areas, and for women-led households and other marginalized groups.

What are the reasons behind the slow progress toward WASH-related goals in the region? The report's authors lay the blame at the feet of multiple actors and causes:

Political priorities lead governments to favour other sectors, improve places already served, or exclude poor and marginalised groups. Inadequate information hampers policy-making and planning, and lack of transparency is an obstacle to good monitoring and scrutiny. Aid is not well coordinated, is only loosely targeted according to need, and its effectiveness is constrained by red tape and lack of alignment with government systems. The sustainability of services rarely receives the attention it requires. These factors in turn undermine weak capability to capture, absorb and spend funds effectively, and lead to a vicious cycle of low investment and poor performance....

The report calls on national governments, donors, and civil society to break the WASH-related "cycle of low investment and poor performance" by:

• strengthening sector leadership;
• making equity and sustainability the focus of service delivery;
• substantially increasing funding, including government spending of at least 1 percent of GDP on sanitation programs and donor investments of $10 billion per year in the form of targeted grants (not loans);
• targeting resources better on the basis of need;
• using resources more effectively through increased flexibility on the terms of funding as well as coordination and alignment; and
• improving transparency and financial reporting.

And what can we in the United States do to help improve access to clean water and basic sanitation in the developing world?  U.S. WASH Advocacy: Landscape Report (18 pages, PDF), a report from FSG, notes that while the U.S. government contributed more than $800 million to WASH-related initiatives in 2009, many past interventions have fallen short of their promise. In order to promote efficient, targeted use of funds, more effective advocacy efforts, and improved practice in the field, the authors recommend focusing on five interdependent goals:

• increase the sustainability and effectiveness of WASH programs and services;
• direct U.S. government and multilateral aid to populations most in need (sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia);
• maintain current U.S. government funding for WASH-related initiatives;
• push for greater funding from non-U.S. government donors (i.e., corporations, foundations, multilaterals, the general public), and highlight sanitation as a sub-strategy of broader WASH-related efforts; and
• boost the quality of, demand for, and access to data across the WASH field.

According to the report's authors, a successful advocacy campaign targeting USAID, the State Department, Congress, the executive branch, multilateral agencies, foundations, and corporations would require a robust evidence base and experienced high-profile leadership. The report also recommends different approaches for each donor group:

Foundations -- Many foundations that fund in related areas (e.g., global health, environment, women's rights) do not prioritize WASH issues. There may be opportunities for high-level conversations and awareness-raising to increase the number of U.S. foundations that see WASH funding as a priority investment.

Corporations -- As more corporations come to see the alignment between WASH issues and their core business, WASH advocates should be proactive in engaging corporations as partners in WASH-related advocacy and interventions. The Global Water Challenge has done some work in this area, but with deeper cross-sector collaboration, corporations can become exponentially larger contributors to WASH issues in terms of their financial resources, as well as their products, services, and global reach.

Multilaterals -- While multilaterals likewise face funding constraints in today's slow-growth environment, even modest increases in development bank aid have the potential to create large impacts in the WASH field and should be pursued as a critical element of an overall WASH strategy.

The Public -- While awareness of WASH issues among the public is low and the infrastructure for raising funds inadequate, "clean water" is a highly resonant message when paired with effective marketing. The field should encourage and build on the efforts of organizations like charity: water and water.org to build public awareness of and support for WASH issues.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates, Conrad N. Hilton, and Howard G. Buffett foundations, the report's recommendations include strengthening leadership in the field, building and engaging broad coalitions, greater support for advocacy efforts, and improving data collection and dissemination.

If we are to meet the MDG target for access to basic sanitation and continue making progress on other WASH-related issues, governments, NGOs, donors, and local communities need to work together to target resources to regions with the highest need. This won’t happen overnight, but the steady increase in WASH-related support by U.S. foundations would suggest that we are moving in the right direction.

If you're interested in WASH-related issues and would like to learn more, take a look at these reports:

• Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Strategy Overview (6 pages, PDF)
  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Promoting Good Hygiene Practices: Key Elements and Practical Lessons (12 pages, PDF)
  WaterAid Australia; International WaterCentre; IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre
• Mapping a Healthier Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Guide Pro-Poor Water and Sanitation Planning in Uganda (52 pages, PDF)
  World Resources Institute; Uganda Ministry of Health; Uganda Ministry of Water and Environment
• Assessing Microfinance for Water and Sanitation: Exploring Opportunities for Sustainable Scaling Up (66 pages, PDF)
  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Improving Water and Sanitation Governance Through Citizens' Action (12 pages, PDF)
  WaterAid
• West Africa Water Initiative: A Preliminary Assessment (17 pages, PDF)
  Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

And don't forget to visit PubHub, where you can browse more than 170 reports related to water, sanitation, hygiene, and other global health issues.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Weekend Link Roundup (March 17-18, 2012)

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

Advocacy

See3 Communications chief executive Michael Hoffman offers three reasons why the Kony 2012 video went viral in a post on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's Social Philanthropy blog: the organization behind the video, Invisible Children, got its story out first; it simplified a complex set of issues by making the story about a single individual; and it made you, the person watching the video, the hero of the story.

On her blog, social media expert Allison Fine has a few suggestions for Invisible Children on what it could have done better.

And Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks, while generally complimentary about the video, says there's one thing wrong with it: "The noise it creates in our industry." Adds Brooks: "Whenever a nonprofit pulls off something freakishly successful like this, there's a groundswell: Development directors everywhere are saying 'Get me some o' that Kony 2012'. Before jumping on that bandwagon, Brooks suggests that fundraisers take a few things into consideration -- including the fact that the success of the Kony video will be hard, if not impossible, to replicate.

Communications/Marketing

Last week, the marketing folks at BBH Labs were roundly criticized for their decision to help homeless people in Austin earn a few dollars during the South by Southwest conference by having them serving as mobile "hotspots" for conference-goers on a pay-as-you-wish basis. Not everyone piled on the company for its tone-deafness, however. InvisiblePeople.tv creator Mark Horvath, for one, applauded the company for its innovative approach. Said Horvath:

What BBH Labs did with Homeless Hotspots is a harmless and fun idea that provides a positive interaction between homeless people and the rest of you. Plus, our homeless friends made a few bucks. And even more important -- they were given self-worth. Unless you [have been] on the streets, you have no idea how low one's self-esteem gets. The number-one thing you can give another person is your attention, and the Homeless Hotspot vendors at SXSW got lots of that. Every one I met was smiling ear to ear....

Diversity

When it comes to diversity training, writes consultant and author (18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done) Peter Bregman, organizations should "stop training people to be more accepting of diversity. It's too conceptual, and it doesn't work." Instead, says Bregman, organizations should "train [employees] to do their work with a diverse set of individuals. Not categories of people. People."

Impact/Effectiveness

In a guest post on Beth's Blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president and CEO Albert Ruesga, who was in Seattle last week attending the 2012 Grantmakers for Effective Organizations conference, takes a closer look at a report, Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter? (20 pages, PDF), based on a recent GEO survey. According to the report, not much has changed in the field of grantmaking since the last time GEO conducted the survey, in 2008. Indeed, "while the survey holds some interest as a mirror held up to the nature of US grantmaking," writes Ruesga, "foundation staff might use it most effectively to reflect on their own practices." For example, "The survey

can help convince trustees who...still object to the idea of making grants for general operating support. When so many grantmakers have adopted the practice, and for so many good reasons, there's strong motivation for their reexamining the basis of their resistance....

And speaking of Beth's Blog, Beth rounded up more than forty guest bloggers for the GEO conference, including David Colby, vice president for research and evluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Annie Hernandez, program officer at the Lumpkin family Foundation; David Greco, vice president at the Nonprofit Finance Fund; and Gail Berkowitz, director of evaluation at the Mastercard Foundation. Beth will be sharing more guest posts in the next few days, so be sure to check back.

Social Media

In a post on her Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog, Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield explains why every nonprofit organization needs a mobile Web site.

Wealth

And on the New York Times' DealBook blog, Kevin Roose compares the latest "rich list" -- the new Bloomberg Billionaires Index -- to Forbes magazine's own long-running list of the world's billionaires. While some have criticized the lists, writes Roose, "on the grounds that they glamorize the ultra-rich, treating them like show horses in an era when income disparity has come into the political cross hairs," he believes there's a different question that warrants our attention: "namely, are [the lists] accurate?..."

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

-- The Editors

Kony 2012: The Great Product Debate

(Paul Shoemaker is executive director of Social Venture Partners Seattle and recently was named one of the "Top 50 Most Influential People in the Non-Profit Sector" by The NonProfit Times. In his last post, he wrote about non-financial capital as a driver of social change.)

Most of us have heard or seen the name "Joseph Kony" over the last week. Indeed, as of Monday morning, 74 million people had watched the Kony 2012 video on YouTube. Most of us also are aware that the video has generated a wide range of reactions. I'm not here to argue for or against the video, the Kony 2012 campaign, or Invisible Children, the nonprofit organization behind the campaign. What makes me kinda nuts, however, is the criticism that Invisible Children doesn't spend enough money on "programs." An article in the Seattle Times on Friday, for example, noted that "The burst of attention [for Invisible Children]...has brought other criticism, including the ratio of the group's spending on direct aid and its Charity Navigator rating." (Charity Navigator, the country's best-known charity evaluator, is changing, but it was one of the worst things to ever happen to the sector, in my opinion.)

I've addressed this issue hundreds of times in my job over the last fourteen years, and I've come to realize I'll probably have to do it hundreds more. So I'll keep it simple: Invisible Children is an advocacy organization; that's what they do. They spend money on media (i.e., "non-direct aid") because that's their strategy. The criticism that they spend too much on "overhead" is like telling Heinz it spends too much on tomatoes. If you want to buy Heinz ketchup, buy it. If you don't, don't. But don't tell Heinz it doesn't know how to make ketchup.

Invisible Children's core "product" is advocacy and heightened awareness. And that requires a fundamentally different financial model than, for example, delivering food to starving people. Heinz and Intel have different business models because they make different products. The same is true in the social sector. Unfortunately, too many of us treat all nonprofits as if they operate in the same product category and use a one-size-fits-all set of metrics to measure their effectiveness -- including often-misleading metrics like percentage of spending on program vs. overhead. Doesn't work, never will, and it often leads to real distortions in charitable giving.

The Kony 2012 video may be incredibly effective advocacy or soft bigotry -- I don't know. But now that it has been released to the public, we should be arguing about the merits of the product, not about whether Invisible Children spent too much to create it.

-- Paul Shoemaker

This Week in PubHub: Funding for Social Justice

(Kyoko Uchida manages PubHub, the Foundation Center's online catalog of foundation-sponsored publications. In her previous post, she looked at four reports that examined specific grantmaking strategies and practices designed to maximize fundamental long-term social impact.)

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday, this week in PubHub we're featuring four reports that examine trends in funding for social justice and advocacy efforts in support of the rights of marginalized populations.

Foundation support is essential if advocacy and community organizing efforts to improve the lives of marginalized populations are to succeed, a report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy argues. Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing, and Civic Engagement in the Gulf/Midsouth Region (88 pages, PDF) found that between 2005 and 2009 twenty organizations in the Gulf/Midsouth region secured more than $4.7 billion -- $114 for every dollar invested -- in benefits for marginalized communities, trained more than 31,000 local residents in civic engagement techniques, and achieved significant policy changes in the areas of environmental justice and LGBTQ and immigrant rights, with foundations providing 78 percent of the funding for said activities. Funded by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the report urges grantmakers to invest more in building the region's advocacy and community organizing infrastructure, make flexible investments in groups working in rural areas, and support organizations with people of color in leadership positions.

Of course, foundations that fund social justice activities saw their endowments take a hit during the post-Lehman financial crisis, as described in the Foundation Center report Diminishing Dollars: The Impact of the 2008 Financial Crisis on the Field of Social Justice Philanthropy (35 pages, PDF). While the report found that giving for social justice as a percentage of total giving by foundations in the sample varied only slightly between 2005 and 2009, in 2009 it fell below 2007 levels, with small foundations experiencing the sharpest declines in the value of their assets. Funded by the Cricket Island, Edward W. Hazen, and Ford foundations in partnership with NCRP, the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, and the Social Justice Philanthropy Collaborative, the report projects that unless the field sees five years of above-average investment returns, social justice grantmaking in 2015 will remain below 2008 levels.

The good news, according to Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Color (112 pages, PDF), is that giving within and on behalf of communities of color is increasing. Commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, with support from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the report found that, given the disproportionate need in communities of color, those communities typically have received a too-small percentage of mainstream philanthropic dollars -- a gap that was exacerbated by the Great Recession and cuts in public-sector funding. In response, the report argues, donors of color and others have begun to direct more resources to communities of color, with an eye to building advocacy skills in those communities and empowering local leaders and residents to lead short- and long-term change efforts. The report calls on mainstream funders to advance this kind of identity-based philanthropy by providing seed funding for grassroots efforts and forging stronger connections with local philanthropic leaders and other change agents.

What about trends in social justice work abroad? Mobilising for Social Justice: Migrant Rights Centre Ireland's Community Work Model (50 pages, PDF), a report from the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland that was funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies, offers case studies of MRCI's "community work practice" model on behalf of migrant workers' rights -- work that, among other things, encourages marginalized migrant groups to take part in decision-making structures through participation in discussion/action groups, empowers them through consciousness-raising and skills-building activities, and promotes advocacy and collective action.

What are your thoughts about the future of funding for social justice philanthropy? Are you aware of any new trends or developments that could energize the field or take it to the next level? Feel free to share your ideas in the comments section below.

And don't forget to check out PubHub, where you can browse more than a hundred and fifty reports on the topic of civil and human rights.

-- Kyoko Uchida

'Freedom Riders': Lessons for a New Generation

(Kathryn Pyle is a frequent contributor to PhilanTopic. In October, she spoke with Orlando Bagwell, director of the Ford Foundation's recently launched JustFilms initiative. She first blogged about Freedom Riders in February of 2010.)

Writing from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival about the civil rights movement as captured in documentary films, I highlighted Freedom Riders, a documentary directed by Stanley Nelson that premiered at the festival. The film tells the story of the hundreds of courageous people, most of them young, who participated in the 1961 "freedom rides" that helped end segregation in the South.

Freedom Riders aired on PBS this past May; the film went on to earn three Emmy Awards and the New York Times, calling it "beautifully constructed," selected it as one of the ten best programs of the year. The broadcast was preceded by a ten-day reenactment of the original 1961 campaign that was organized by American Experience, the PBS program which had commissioned and broadcast the film. "Get on the Bus" brought together forty college students from around the country to reenact the rides -- from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans -- and interact along the way with some of the original freedom riders, various historians of the period, and community activists. As they made their way south, the kids shared their experience via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools.

"The re-creation campaign had high visibility and great partnerships with state humanities councils, colleges and universities, and museums around the country," says Sonya Childress, community engagement specialist at Firelight Media, the nonprofit partner of Firelight Films, Nelson's for-profit production company. The former organizes audience outreach programs -- a letter-writing campaign for Nelson's film The Murder of Emmett Till helped reopen a criminal investigation into that 1955 case -- and supports emerging documentarians through a producers' lab.

" 'Get on the Bus' was very successful," Childress adds, "but we at Firelight wanted to do something different. We saw our job as bringing the film to a different audience -- particularly youth, and including African-Americans, but people who weren't necessarily connected to the civil rights movement. In targeting youth groups, we immediately thought of the Dream Act, because the story of Freedom Riders is a story about multi-ethnic organizing. We wanted to reach people working on immigration reform who do not see the civil rights movement as part of their history or as relevant to their activism. And we wanted to help them use the film in their own campaigns."

Atlantic Philanthropies, the Open Society Foundations (through its Campaign for Black Male Achievement), and the National Black Programming Consortium were approached and ultimately funded the Firelight Media project.

"Many funders could have said the freedom ride reenactment was sufficient as an audience engagement component," notes Childress. "But these three organizations saw value in bringing the history to a new community. They understood that Firelight Films makes historical documentaries, but that we want to show that the lessons of the past can be dissected and discussed and applied to today. Also, the funders recognized that, being an independent entity, Firelight Media had the latitude to work with a wider variety of community groups than had been involved in 'Get on the Bus', and that was seen as a complement to the American Experience project."

Engaging foundations that are not "media" funders is a new strategy for many documentary filmmakers; the challenge is in helping private and corporate foundations see that film can further their grantmaking priorities, and that there are many points of entry for support beyond a film's production phase.

At the same time, as foundations become more engaged in distribution there is more concern around evaluation of the project's goals. In Social Justice Documentary: Designing for Impact, a new Ford Foundation-supported publication from the Center for Social Media, Jessica Clark and Barbara Abrash put it this way:

In an environment of information overload and polarized sparring, social issue documentaries provide quality content that can be used to engage members of the public as citizens rather than merely media consumers. As a result, they have gained in visibility, influence and number over the past decade.

But despite the box-office and critical success of high-profile examples such as An Inconvenient Truth or Supersize Me, the social impacts of such expensive, long- range projects have been hit-or-miss. As a result, investors and filmmakers are asking tough questions about how best to plan for and assess the impact of such films and related engagement strategies, and to create models and standards for a dynamic field....

The report proposes a systemic approach based on early and continuous community participation that combines quantitative and qualitative indicators and continuous feedback into the evaluation design. The best indicators measure "evidence of [the film's] quality, increased public awareness, meaningful partnerships, increased public engagement, and collective action."

Firelight Media's plan for Freedom Riders incorporated many of those elements, though as noted by the Center for Social Media report, each documentary project is distinct.

Firelight began by convening a small group of civic organizations to help develop ideas for a year-long project; by the time Freedom Riders was broadcast, the project was ready to go. (An agreement with American Experience required that the Firelight project not overlap with "Get on the Bus," which took place immediately before the film aired.)

Sixteen community-based organizations and student groups -- some national and some local -- were selected as formal partners. Seven of the smallest groups received stipends to carry out their activities. All agreed to screen the film and use an online guide, United in Courage (available on the Firelight Media site), to help plan events and facilitate discussions. Their experiences are being disseminated via an e-news broadcast to other partners, funders and filmmakers, and through Firelight Media’s newsletter; in effect, the partners provide ongoing feedback as a way to strengthen the project.

The groups include established organizations like the NAACP, which is bringing some of the original freedom riders to college campuses in the South for screenings and conversations. Puente Arizona has invited some of the freedom riders to discuss immigration reform strategies with members of the migrant communities with which it works. At a workshop on audience engagement earlier this fall in San Francisco, another partner, Bay Area-based Youth Speaks, described using the film at its annual Brave New Voices event, which brings young poets and youth development organizations together: five hundred spoken-word artists attended the screening and a subsequent conversation, later broadcast on Pacifica Radio, with two freedom riders. And New York City-based Brotherhood/Sister Sol showed the film in New York and Ghana and trained youth facilitators to lead post-screening talks. (A complete list of partners and their plans can be found on the "United in Courage" site.)

Recognizing that short films can be useful for community organizing and in educational settings, especially those involving children, Firelight Media produced a twenty-minute version of the film (available only to project partners) and also commissioned three ten-minute films on key issues in the current immigration policy debate. Immigration: Beyond the Headlines was supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and can be viewed on the Firelight Media site. Though apprehensive at first that the films would be seen as standalone media, Firelight staff now consider them to be useful vehicles for driving interested viewers to the longer and more comprehensive film.

Today, halfway through the year-long audience engagement effort, Firelight's independent evaluator is tracking how the full-length documentary is being used and the kind of impact it is having through pre- and post-screening interviews with various partners. The partners also submit formal reports on how they are using the film to enhance their work, in the process creating a repository of "best practices."

"Community organizations have varying levels of comfort with documentary films that are not 'advocacy' films, that are not prescriptive in terms of what to do about a particular issue," says Childress. "Freedom Riders is not a 'call to action'; it's an occasion for reflection. We're interested in knowing how community groups navigate that, how they challenge themselves and how they incorporate films into their programs. We want to know how this particular story resonates, especially within the immigrant rights movement that's looking for stories and trying to build relationships with other movements. The big question for us is: Can historical documentaries move the meter; can this content help people understand the current world?"

The anecdotal evidence is encouraging. Last month, as reported by the Montgomery Advertiser, "Two Freedom Riders who risked their lives to integrate Montgomery's bus station 50 years ago are back in the Capital City with a new cause: repealing Alabama's immigration law. The Rev. C.T. Vivian and Catherine Burks-Brooks joined a rally on the Capitol steps and a children’s march to the governor's mansion."

Some of the Firelight project's results to date are posted on its Web site in the form of testimony from the partners. We'll check back at the end of the year to see what lessons were learned and how they can inform the marriage between documentary film and community activism.

-- Kathryn Pyle

Talking Philanthropy: Swanee Hunt, Founder and Chairman, Hunt Alternatives Fund

In the latest installment of their Talking Philanthropy podcast series, hosts Larry Blumenthal and Bill Silberg talk to Swanee Hunt, founder and chairman of the Hunt Alternatives Fund, about the fund's focus on advocacy and transparency. A former ambassador to Austria during the Clinton administration, Hunt also chairs the Institute for Inclusive Security, which works to integrate women into peace processes around the globe, and is the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She is, in addition, the founder of the Women and Public Policy Program at KSG, on the faculty at the school's Center for Public Leadership, and a senior advisor to the working group on modern-day slavery at the Carr Center for Human Rights.

 

Running time: 00:23:33

(Right-click to download mp3)

Should foundations be doing more to address social issues through advocacy and community organizing? What else can or should they do to "move beyond just writing checks"? And do you agree with Hunt that the "process of social change can be as important as the product"?

Have a topic you'd like to hear Larry and Bill address? Let us know in the comments section below, or drop us a line at mfn@foundationcenter.org.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Funder-Only Event With Rebecca MacKinnon, Author, 'Consent of the Networked'

Back in March, we chatted with Helen Brunner, director of the Media Democracy Fund, about social media and the Arab Spring uprisings, net neutrality, and the role of nonprofit advocacy groups in ensuring that every American continues to benefit from an open Internet.

This Wednesday, October 19, at 11:00 a.m., MDF is hosting a funders-only talk featuring Rebecca MacKinnon, author of the soon-to-be-published Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. In the book, MacKinnon argues that freedom in the Internet age depends on whether we defend our rights on digital platforms and networks in the same way that people fight for their rights and accountable governance in their actual communities and nations. It's time, in other words, to stop thinking of ourselves as passive "users" of technology and instead act like citizens of the Internet -- as netizens -- and take ownership and responsibility for our digital future.

Interested funders can sign up for the event here.

A Q&A With Orlando Bagwell, Director, JustFilms Initiative (Part 2)

This week, the Ford Foundation officially launches JustFilms, a new initiative designed to expand support for social issue documentary films. Announced last winter at the Sundance Film Festival, JustFilms will provide $50 million over the next five years to fund the creation of social issue docs and help build effective audience engagement programs around them.

In August, frequent PhilanTopic contributor Kathryn Pyle spoke with the initiative's director, Orlando Bagwell, about the new effort and how it relates to Ford's broader agenda, as well as his twenty-five-year career as a documentary filmmaker.

In part two of the interview, below, Pyle talks with Bagwell about key features of the initiative, including its partnerships with the Sundance Institute, ITVS, and the Tribeca Film Institute, as well as the audience engagement strategies it hopes to pursue. To read part one, click here.

Kathryn Pyle: JustFilms will be carrying out its program in a number of interesting ways. One is working with external partners, including the Sundance Institute, Independent Television Service, and the Tribeca Film Institute. Why those three organizations?

Orlando Bagwell: Those three organizations are our signature partners, and about a third of our funds will go to them. The Sundance Institute is a major influence in the documentary field, and not only because of the Sundance Film Festival. We really believe in their workshops, and that's a part of what JustFilms is supporting: the various labs they offer to grantees in script writing, producing, directing, editing, and composing. The workshops really improve the skills of filmmakers and improve the films they bring to the workshop. It's a model we want to replicate in other places.

Another part of that partnership, and a feature of our partnership with ITVS as well, is the ability of these organizations to reach out to filmmakers we wouldn't normally have access to. As a foundation, we're interested in how we can bring more voices to the conversation around issues that are important to us. And I mean the global conversation. We're well aware that most of the filmmakers who are making films about issues that are important to us are from Europe and the United States. But if we're talking about global issues that affect all of us, that conversation has to be broader.

Our strength as a foundation is that we have deep relationships in other parts of the world, and we want to take advantage of those relationships. We want to be in places where we can have those conversations with people and something is triggered and they say, "Well, I can make a story about that." Yes, it's a filmmaker's story, but if it's done well it can engage the public and bring all sorts of people to the issue. Especially this year, the first year of the initiative, we want to design a way to raise up the voices of storytellers in the global South to comment on the rest of the world, not just their own countries or regions. That's going to take time, but we're committed to building that kind of expertise and that kind of storytelling.

However, we don't feel that all the best ideas come through our office, so with Sundance and ITVS we can fund films that we might otherwise miss and see projects that we wouldn't otherwise see. For instance, although the majority of Sundance Institute's funds go to U.S. filmmakers, maybe 40 percent goes to filmmakers overseas. With ITVS, we were actually the initial funder for the International Media Development Fund, which supports filmmakers in other parts of the world and brings their content to the United States. It's a way to encourage more stories from the rest of the world. We supported both Sundance and ITVS prior to JustFilms, so we're continuing those relationships, but we're looking to help them expand programs that are important to us.

The Tribeca Film Institute is a new partner of ours, and our support for them is for a transmedia fund. The fund is a way to think about how documentary film finds its way into the much larger digital storytelling space. How do you begin to think about the many different ways in which documentary film gets translated into new products? The majority of products will come out of the films themselves, but there might be new ones that are related to the film but are not necessarily part of the film, for example, a game based on the film. But, again, all this is tied to a clear sense of what the outcomes are that you're looking for. Whatever we're creating as a transmedia strategy is really aligned to certain outcomes that are part of an earlier filmmaking strategy.

KP: So the partnership with Tribeca will be exclusively transmedia work, in contrast to your support for ITVS and Sundance?

OB: Yes, it's a transmedia fund that will be managed by Tribeca. It really comes out of our early work with the Bay Area Video Coalition and their Producers Institute for New Media Technologies. In our conversations with Tribeca, we learned that this kind of capacity-building is something they wanted to do as well. It will create a space that's as much impact-focused as it is focused on thinking through the implications of new media and technology for filmmakers.

KP: Will you be expanding the partners beyond Sundance, Tribeca, and ITVS?

OB: We're in negotiations with other groups that can complement those three signature partners. Groups that can provide emergency grants, smaller grants, grants that seed ideas, that help engage filmmakers with audiences. We’ll be looking for organizations that can do some of that work with us. We're also creating partnerships to support shorter films and different film genres. And because we realize that when you validate a young filmmaker as a filmmaker, you're often launching them into a career, we're thinking about at a small kind of award to acknowledge the work of next-generation filmmakers as a way of saying, "Yeah, we're looking at you, and we think you're the real deal. Keep it up." So we're considering re-granting through other organizations, on a modest scale, that are doing that kind of work.

KP: In addition to working through partner organizations, JustFilms will provide direct support for films. What's the process for identifying those films?

OB: JustFilms includes a fund that's intended to complement the Ford Foundation's ongoing work in different areas and enables program officers here to think about the potential of films and media with respect to the issues they are dealing with. For instance, I was talking with a colleague in the criminal justice area about the alarming incarceration statistics in the United States. So we began looking at projects we could work on together that would fit with the multi-level approach she's taking in her work. This year we'll launch this new component with three films currently in production. One, by Eugene Jarecki, is about the growth of the prison industry and how it evolved from a correctional system into an industry. The second film came about because we were looking for a film that could humanize an incarcerated person, and we found an interesting film about an artist and her project with an inmate who's been in solitary confinement for a long time; it's called Herman's House, by Angad Bhalla. And the third film, Gideon's Army, by Dawn Porter, is about public defenders. What does it mean to be a public defender in an environment characterized by high incarceration rates? What kinds of impediments keep them from being effective? Do we believe that public defenders could be like a new Peace Corps? The biggest obstacle for young lawyers who want to be public defenders are their student loans! How do you begin to address that? You don't want to lose people who are committed to this work, so we need to bring those issues to light.

These three films are part of a cluster and represent the first piece in our collaboration. Now we're thinking about the public engagement piece; what are some of the outcomes we're looking for and how do they fit into my colleague's broader strategy?

KP: Are you funding an organization that will work with all three filmmakers on audience engagement strategies? Or do you expect each filmmaker to develop that on his or her own?

OB: No, we’ll work with an organization, Active Voice, to think about the strategic plan that's going to drive the public engagement work. Each film might have a very specific kind of group working with them -- aligning it around a very clear strategy for intervening in prisons, for instance. The issue of prisons as job creators in small towns and communities around the country is a complicated one, and how you engage people with different things at stake in the prison-as-industry debate requires a lot of sensitivity and expertise.

KP: So one of the key features of the JustFilms initiative will be the focus on partner organizations, and a second will be the work done inside Ford to integrate a documentary film strategy into specific program areas, with an underlying theme of expanding support for filmmakers outside the U.S.?

OB: Yes. But we realize that certain projects don't fit into existing foundation initiatives, so the last piece is an open fund to support documentary films that have a social justice theme. In fact, a third of our resources will be dedicated to that fund. The announcement that Ford was making this level of commitment in the documentary field is significant, and it's not just significant because of the money, but because it acknowledges the importance of nonfiction storytelling/films in the larger public discourse and the arena of ideas.

There were two headlines that came out of Sundance last winter when we announced JustFilms. One was Ford's five-year commitment to the initiative. And the other was Oprah saying that she was going to do for documentaries what she did for books. I think the two statements say something about the public's desire for real stories, independently told stories, as well as the generally sorry state of public discourse at this particular moment. They also say something about trust, or the lack thereof. It's not that people trust everything they see or hear in a documentary film. But I think they understand that most documentaries are a reflection of an independent voice and sensibility. And that makes them an important part of the larger conversation that is happening at any given moment. In an increasingly complicated world, we need those voices and that sensibility.

-- Kathryn Pyle