PhilanTopic

Dear Fundraisers: The Annual Report Is Yesterday’s News

(Derrick Feldmann is CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based creative fundraising agency. In his last post, he wrote about the importance of differentiating between your "sophisticated" and average donors.)

When I headed off to college for the first time, I had no idea what I wanted to study or what kind of career I would pursue after graduation. Like so many other "undecideds," I took classes from lots of different departments and hoped something would click.

Then, in my junior year, I discovered criminal justice. I had always enjoyed crime novels, detective stories, and hearing about unsolved mysteries, and after I took a few classes in the field, I convinced myself that maybe the law was my calling. Eventually, I marched into my advisor's office and declared my major: pre-law.

Well, as a pre-law major, I needed to take the LSAT in order to be able to apply to law school. But unlike just about everyone else taking the test, I didn't bother to study until the night before. Don't ask me why.

So, I took the test and, thinking I might have done okay (or even a little better than okay), I settled in at home and waited for the results. I checked the mailbox every day for an oversized envelope, and as days turned into weeks, my thoughts ran every which way. Law? What had I been thinking? The second part of the test wasn't so hard, though, and I'm pretty sure I did okay on the third part. Who knows? And, hey, I do love a good mystery.

Then, one morning, it was there, larger than life. I tore open the envelope and scanned the contents for the only thing that mattered, the score that was going to gain me entry to the best law schools in the country and change my life.

Wow. I blinked and stared harder. Could a person really score that low on the LSAT? It was a pivotal moment for me. I returned to school and wasted yet another month, still with no answers about my future career path.

After I graduated with a degree in criminal justice, I bumped around a bit and eventually found work in a university development office. I loved working with students and alumni, and before long I realized that fundraising was my true calling. To advance my career, I decided to go to graduate school, which meant I needed to take the GRE.

This time I studied every night for two months, and by the time I drove to the local test administering site I was as prepared as I could be. Two hours later, having completed the last section, I clicked the submit button and something interesting happened. A message popped up on the screen: "Would you like to see your unofficial score?"

How was that possible? It had taken a month to get my LSAT scores. I hesitated. Had I prepared well enough? Did I really want to know how I had done right then and there? Maybe I should wait?

After a long pause, I took a deep breath, clicked the "yes" button, and up popped my score. Huge relief. A score to be proud of, even. With the click of a button, I had received instant feedback on my performance, and the world was a beautiful place.

What does all this have to do with annual reports? Well, in case you haven't noticed, we live in a world where real-time feedback is fast becoming the norm. Whether posting on Facebook and checking three or four times a day to see how many of your friends and acquaintances "liked" your update, to online polls where your vote is instantly aggregated, to comment threads where your thoughts jostle with the thoughts of others, we are rapidly creating a world in which real-time feedback on virtually everything we think, do, and create is the norm. Why is that significant? Because it enables us to make better decisions based on actual performance and achieve our goals more efficiently and with less guesswork.

Of course, the nonprofit sector has its own feedback mechanisms. The typical nonprofit will create an annual report to provide information to its donors about its financial/operational performance and, quite often, how the gifts it received were used to advance its mission over the course of the previous year. Similarly, experienced fundraisers make a point of providing feedback to donors with respect to the impact of their gifts in face-to-face meetings and when making stewardship calls, usually once or twice a year.

But is that enough? As the pace of communications and feedback accelerates, is your nonprofit moving as quickly as it needs to in terms of reporting results to donors?

Take annual reports. In today's fast-paced world, very few people think the annual report is the answer to providing donors with the kind of timely feedback they want (and increasingly expect). Asking donors to wait a full twelve months to be updated about how their gifts are being used and whether those gifts had an impact is a recipe for losing their interest, if not their support.

Donors want and deserve quicker feedback. They deserve the kind of reporting that helps them understand how the gift they made last week or a month is going to be used to advance the mission or cause. They need to see the impact of their gifts through the eyes and in the words of the people who are benefiting from those gifts.

Nonprofits that whinge about their inability to report impact in a more timely fashion inevitably are the organizations that have chosen not to address the disruptive changes in technology and communications we've seen over the last decade and a half. Which is not to say that direct mail is dead or that we should abandon more traditional methods of communication such as the phone call or the personal note. Think of this, instead, as an urgent reminder that the need to report back to your donors in a more real-time fashion using any method at hand is no longer a luxury; it's a necessity.

Indeed, thanks to the Internet, the ability to communicate with almost anyone, anywhere, in real time demands that we "reframe" our notions of time. And your organization is no exception; it needs to adapt to the changes that are happening all around us and embrace a new feedback and reporting paradigm. The framework below is designed to help you and your colleagues do just that.

Immediate. How can your organization share the impact it had today with respect to its constituents and/or the communities in which it works? Share a photo of a person who was helped by your organization on your social networks and tell your donors, "Thank you. This is [fill in the blank], one of the people you helped today."

Short term. How can your organization share the impact it had this week? Create a page on your Web site that illustrates how your donors' gifts were put to work over the last seven days and let them know through e-mail or by postcard that you've created a page they should bookmark and visit on a regular basis.

Longer term. How can your organization share the impact it had this month? Send a postcard and/or dedicated e-mail at the beginning or end of every month that provides an overview of the impact your organization is creating, making sure to include key statistics and to highlight the impact of your organization's efforts on real people or in the community.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. The key takeaway is this: Reporting at a twenty-first century pace will help your organization maintain its relevance with donors and keep their passion for your mission/cause fresh and vital. It's not easy, and it may require an additional investment of time and money. But then, the world shows no sign of slowing down, does it?

And at your next development/communications planning meeting, don't focus the discussion on whether you should publish your next annual report in print or digital form (or both). Ask instead, "What can we do to report faster?"

-- Derrick Feldmann

Weekend Link Roundup (May 11-12, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Megan Sullivan shares a list of tools for resource-constrained nonprofit communications officers.

Fundraising

Frustrated by your organization's inability to turn its good work into consistent, sustainable donor support? Hop over to the Fired-Up Fundraising blog, where fundraising consultant Gail Perry shares a very good list of the ten things you need to understand about how fundraising really works. Recommended.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Markets for Good blog, Laura Quinn, executive director of Idealware, argues that as much as funders and others value the idea of more and better performance data from nonprofits, most nonprofits do not have the resources to provide high-quality data about their own effectiveness. How do we get them to a point where that’s possible? asks Quinn.

It would take more than just a little training or a second look at their priorities. They'd need sizable investments in a number of areas. They'd need help with technology, and to understand how to best make use of data and metrics on a limited budget. They'd need a rationalized set of metrics and indicators that they're expected to report on, standardized as much as possible per sector with a standard way to provide them to those who need them.

Funders need to understand what is and isn't feasible, and to redirect the focus of their desire for community impact evaluations from small nonprofits to the university and research world so the nonprofits they support can be unencumbered to work toward a better world....

Building out the "information infrastructure" of the social sector, as Markets for Good and its supporters (the Gates and Hewlett foundations prominent among them) propose to do, is an admirable idea, writes Bridgespan's Daniel Stid on the Markets for Good blog. But "if we build it," he asks, "will the putative buyers and sellers in the envisioned marketplace -- the philanthropists and nonprofits spending and soliciting money within it -- use it as planned?... [W]ill better information change their behavior?" What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Leadership

"There are a number of affinity groups that focus on bringing together younger grantmakers," writes Greater New Orleans Foundation president Albert Ruesga on the White Courtesy Telephone blog. "Their challenge, as I see it, is to avoid simply turning younger practitioners in the field into older practitioners in the field...."

Nonprofit Management

In an excellent post on the Nonprofit Quarterly site, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits executive director Jon Pratt argues that financial independence not only is something that nonprofits should strive for, it's something they can achieve -- with good planning, continuous and active attention, and lots of hard work.

Philanthropy

In a world characterized by growing social and environmental challenges, foundations need to think and act more like "catalysts," writes Erik Rasmussen, founder and CEO of Scandinavian think tank Monday Morning, on the Huffington Post's Social Entrepreneurship blog. What's more, says Rasmussen, catalytic philanthropy isn't about how much you give,

but how you give. [C]atalytic foundations have realized that they can make a big difference not by writing checks but by offering their competencies, network[s] and way of thinking as a new form of capital. By doing so, they bring forth innovative capital that opens the door to great changes and improvements in society. Imagine what change we could gain from one hundred philanthropists thinking and working [like] Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or David Rockefeller....

"What does the journey from entrepreneur to philanthropist look like, and how can we chart these experiences to help the cause of more and increasingly effective giving?" asks Charles Harvey, pro-vice-chancellor for humanities and social sciences at Newcastle University. Citing Andrew Carnegie as "perhaps the best example" of an entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, Harvey, who helped lead the research team that looked into the question, writes: We want this research to show there is a logical process at play which many struggle to understand. Entrepreneurs apply the same rigour and disciplines from the world of commerce to the charitable sector, which suggests there is in fact a science to giving at this level that can be replicated and learned from....

What are the hallmarks of "entrepreneurial" philanthropy? Harvey and his team suggest the following:

• It is the pursuit by entrepreneurs on a not-for-profit basis of big social objectives through active involvement of their economic, cultural, social and symbolic resources.
• They apply business-like methods when making social investments: key performance indicators and rates of return.
• Entrepreneurs invest more than simply money [in] their causes: time, connections, the "know-how," branding.
• They like to leverage investments and frequently partner with others, including governments.
• Businessmen and women don't believe in giving handouts. They want to help others to help themselves.

Technology

Joanne Fritz has a good post on crowdfunding site Benevolent, which enables Chicagoans to help ordinary folks who find themselves in a tough spot. As Fritz explains, the site is effective in part because it works with nonprofits that "vouch" for the individuals listed (i.e., verify that their needs are legitimate and reasonable). The site has been a hit, she adds, because it's simple to use and because people understand that giving through Benevolent is less about charity and more about "neighbors helping neighbors."

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Blueprint 2013 author Lucy Bernholz fleshes out her digital civil society concept and explains that the discussion going forward should be focused on governance issues and how such assets work, not about gadgets.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (May 4-5, 2013)

What a gorgeous weekend! Hope yours, wherever you are, was half as nice. Here, a little late, is our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Communications/Marketing

The Catalytic Network, an interesting new initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation, aims to share tools and stories which emerge from the foundation's work with innovators around the globe. In that spirit, Michael Myers, a senior policy officer at the foundation, lays out the 5 Golden Rules of a Great Pitch on the network's site to help nonprofits better tell their story.

The five rules are:

• Keep it under two minutes.
• Know your audience, and know the ask.
• Talk about the problem you are solving -- in one sentence.
• Give two reasons why your approach is unique.
• Leave them one memorable, repeatable story.

Data

On the Harvard Business Review blog network, Mark Bonchek, "chief catalyst" at Orbit & Co, argues that without Little Data -- "what we know about ourselves. What we buy. Who we know. Where we go. How we spend our time" -- Big Data "has a tendency to become Big Brother," and that without Big Data, Little Data "is incomplete."

Fundraising

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen, the host of the April Nonprofit Blog Carnival, shares two dozen posts from nonprofit bloggers and readers on the theme "the best career advice you ever received."

Impact/Effectiveness

Amit Bouri, managing director of the Global Impact Investing Network, flags five themes for impact investors to keep an eye on: the emergence of better tools and improved infrastructure; a growing need for strong fund managers; the importance of supporting the "demand side" of the impact investing equation; the growing interest of "retail" investors in the field; and the growing acceptance of and emphasis on impact measurement.

Philanthropy

On his White Courtesy Telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president and CEO Albert Ruesga takes a long look at philanthropy's "uneasy" relationship with the social sciences. "We make grants because we predict (or at least fervently hope) that our interventions will shift human behavior in certain hoped-for ways," writes Ruesga. And after "we make our grants, we test our predictions and adjust our grantmaking accordingly. Those of you with grantmaking experience know, however,

that our interventions seldom, if ever, unfold as we predict they will. Our inability to predict human actions with a high degree of accuracy has been understood and discussed by philosophers, psychologists, social scientists and others longer than the field of organized philanthropy has been in existence. Yet those of us who work in foundations ignore these fundamental truths about the difficulties of predicting human behavior when, for example, we construct elaborate theories of change, or worse, when we inflict them on our grantees. These truths don't absolve us of the responsibility to change or inspire human behavior, but they do place limits on our attempts to anticipate or direct the many twists and turns of the human heart.

If the idea of philanthropy as an experimental social science unnerves you as much as it does me, how would you re-conceptualize it in a way that the most "results-oriented" among us would find compelling? If the idea appeals to you, how would you suggest that philanthropy capture and teach the lessons learned long ago in allied fields, especially those lessons that might help save our grantees and the communities we serve from unnecessary suffering?...

Like pretty much everything Ruesga writes, the post is worth your time.

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Trista Harris, executive director of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice, shares a list of six tips designed to help you become a (social justice) philanthropy rockstar.

Writing on the GrantCraft blog, the European Foundation Centre's Rosien Herweijer looks at a new study from the Association of German Foundations that explores how German foundations approach their mistakes and failure. Not surprisingly, the study found that larger foundations tend to do more evaluation and documenting of mistakes than smaller foundations, while operating foundations tend to be more self-critical than general grantmaking foundations.

In a post musing on the "changing landscape of philanthropy," Senay Ataselim-Yilmaz says that the annual Global Philanthropy Forum should "pay more attention to the rising impact of diaspora [contributions] in global philanthropy."

Women

In an op-ed on the CNN site, legendary investor Warren Buffett argues that women are the key to America's future prosperity. "No manager operates his or her plants at 80 percent efficiency when steps could be taken that would increase output," writes Buffett. "And no CEO wants male employees to be underutilized when improved training or working conditions would boost productivity. So take it one step further: If obvious benefits flow from helping the male component of the workforce achieve its potential, why in the world wouldn't you want to include its counterpart?"

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (April 27-28, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

Our friends at the Communications Network have a nice Q&A with Lucas Held, director of communications at the Wallace Foundation, who, among other things, calls Diffusion of Innovations, a theory developed by the late Everett Rogers, "the most useful tool I have ever encountered for communications."

Data

In a long, fascinating piece in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer Schoenberger look at the emergence of "big data" and how it's changing the world. "Using great volumes of information," they write,

requires three profound changes in how we approach data. The first is to collect and use a lot of data rather than settle for small amounts or samples, as statisticians have done for well over a century. The second is to shed our preference for highly curated and pristine data and instead accept messiness: in an increasing number of situations, a bit of inaccuracy can be tolerated, because the benefits of using vastly more data of variable quality outweigh the costs of using smaller amounts of very exact data. Third, in many instances, we will need to give up our quest to discover the cause of things, in return for accepting correlations. With big data, instead of trying to understand precisely why an engine breaks down or why a drug’s side effect disappears, researchers can instead collect and analyze massive quantities of information about such events and everything that is associated with them, looking for patterns that might help predict future occurrences. Big data helps answer what, not why, and often that's good enough....

Philanthropy

Kevin Bolduc, vice president of assessment tools at the Center for Effective Philanthropy, shares some lessons from the organization's efforts to scale up a data visualization tool called "Strategy Landscape" and the reasoning behind its decision, announced earlier this week, to pull the plug on the tool. "A few...in particular stand out," writes Bolduc:

The incredible motivation and interest of a few early groups of funders that really craved this kind of information led us to overestimate the demand and believe that examples of use would snowball and generate further enthusiasm. We were wrong. (We should have realized that earlier, and avoided turning a little bet into a somewhat bigger one.) We also didn’t accurately anticipate the level of technological flexibility the tool would need when, inevitably, groups wanted to use the tool differently than we had anticipated. We fell down on both of those counts....

We still believe that visualizing customized information about how grants across foundations roll up into common categories of strategy, geographic targeting, and tactics (policy, direct service, etc.) could be very useful as funders work to address common issues. But this just wasn’t the right tool at the right time....

On the GrantCraft blog, the European Foundation Centre's Rosien Herweijer chats with Luc Tayart de Borms, managing director of the Belgium-based King Baudouin Foundation, about Lucy Bernholz' annual industry forecast, Blueprint 2013, and how it relates to European foundations.

Writing on her own Philanthropy 2173 blog, Bernholz highlights a new Sunlight Foundation article in which the government watchdog argues that e-filing of 990 forms is important because "990 data helps to ensure that the system isn't being abused." Bernholz says there is another reason the data should be made readily available in machine-readable form: American patriotism and pride. "[T]he Canadians do it," she writes, so "shouldn't we?" Indeed, adds Bernholz, the Canadian company Ajah.ca offers both "both federal AND provincial open data on charities, government contracts, and foundation funding."

Social Media

Beth Kanter, co-author of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, discusses a recent Twitter chat on social media measurement hosted by Zoetica Media and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In her post, Kanter focuses on mapping your network to measure the engagement of network members. As Kanter explains, "Social network analysis maps are useful for helping you understand your network, developing a baseline visual, and identifying strategies for making your network stronger."

Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield has some advice for organizations looking to make their press releases shareable. "I have no proof these tips will help your nonprofit get more media coverage," writes Mansfield, "but at the very least they will help your nonprofit’s press release get more exposure on the social Web." Among other things, Mansfield suggests organizations include their Twitter handle, a photo, and add social networking icons on press releases.

Transparency

Over at Transparency Talk blog, our Foundation Center colleagues share a number of videos from this year's Global Philanthropy Forum that relate to philanthropic transparency in a digital age.

Last but not least, Pablo Eisenberg, in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy remember Bob Edgar, president and CEO of Common Cause, who passed away unexpectedly last week at the age of 69. "We are truly grateful that Bob Edgar served on NCRP's board," writes NCRP board chair Diane Feeney. "He was relentless in his work to clean up money in politics, but also to ensure that philanthropy benefited the underserved and marginalized. We will miss him sorely."

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

-- The Editors

How RWJF Tackles the 'Social Media, So What?' Question

(Debra Joy Perez [@djoyperez] currently is serving as interim vice president of research and evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest healthcare philanthropy in the country. The following Q&A was conducted by our colleagues in the Foundation Center's San Francisco office and originally appeared on Transparency Talk, the Glasspockets blog.)

Last year, after Steve Downs, chief technology and information office at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shared a post on Transparency Talk detailing the foundation's social media strategy, we conducted a series of interviews (here, here, and here) with RWJF staff members that explored how social media and, more broadly, the transparency and participation they offer was adding a new, critical dimension to their work.

The latest Q&A in the series, featuring Debra Joy Perez, the foundation's interim vice president of research and evaluation, explores how RWJF's use of social media, which has become essential to its communication efforts, can be measured to reflect the impact of that work in the context of achieving the foundation's larger social change goals.

TT: Give us a quick overview of your work at the foundation in light of these new technologies. Why are social media metrics important to RWJF?

DJP: RWJF has a forty-year history of developing evidence-based programming. We're known for our research and evaluation work nationally and internationally. But as efforts to advance our goals in health and health care have become more reliant on technology, we've struggled with measuring success and accountability.

Since 2009, RWJF has been incorporating Web 2.0 technology into our everyday work, and with the September launch of our redesigned Web site, we now have more social sharing facilitation tools on the site. We're also doing more on on Twitter and Facebook to invite conversation about how to advance health and health care and are producing content to serve the needs of various online communities.

All that activity allows us to clearly see the present and future value of social media, which we believe can help us create social change and build movements around the causes we care deeply about. And, guided by the principles of openness, participation, and decentralization, we have learned a number of important lessons from that work. They include:

• Personal outreach matters;
• Responsiveness to requests for engagement is important;
• Criticism can lead to healthy dialogue;
• Engagement needs to be easy and simple; and
• Real engagement requires work and dedicated resources.

These takeaways underscore the importance of ongoing conversation about the policies and processes needed to achieve our goals. For instance, with each social media campaign, we have to be explicit about our expectations. Metrics are an essential part of that effort. Measurement allows us to see how we're doing against those expectations and to improve our use of social media to achieve our broader goals.

TT: What does an effective social media campaign look like?

DJP: Where to start? Well, you might start by acknowledging what you are already doing with social media and celebrating that. Do you have a Facebook page, an organizational presence on Twitter, a Tumblr? Conduct an inventory of what you are doing as an organization, as well as the level of engagement with your intended audiences. Are staff using social media to leverage their activities? Have they been able to extend the organization's reach? Do they regularly appear on relevant blogs?

As you conduct your inventory, you're likely to begin to realize how much you don't know. That's okay. It's important not to let the "not-knowing" paralyze you. Here are a few tips for doing that:

• Have an explicit dialogue with staff about your organizational goals, what you are trying to accomplish with your social media efforts, the purpose of tweeting something, the specific action or actions you want audience members to take, and so on. And remember, although click-throughs are not themselves an outcome, they are a process measure.
• Identify your networks. You probably already have more of a network than you realize. If you haven't already, read Measuring the Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and KD Paine.
• Schedule a more formal discussion with staff about value proposition. Find out who on staff is adding value and who isn't. Don't expect everyone to tweet. Some people are natural long-form writers and might be better suited for blogging.
• Establish data points for measuring the impact of your efforts.
• Create unique URLs for product releases and then use AB testing to test them against each other to see which is more effective.

Most importantly, remember that social media is a tool, a tool to achieve larger goals. While it can be a very powerful tool, it shouldn't be mistaken for the end in itself.

TT: Do you have an expected ROI for social media?

DJP: As more and more people build trusted networks of individuals and organizations and engage with each other online, we believe social media can really help us extend our reach. It also makes it easier for us to provide our health and health care advocates -- also known as message evangelists -- with the information they need, when they need it. And by making data more accessible through interactives, data visualizations and infographics, we're able to illustrate and promote key messages in compelling ways and do a better job of building awareness.

All of that is worth measuring. But while there are a plethora of ready-to-use analytical tools on the market, the challenge is to avoid the "low-hanging fruit" trap of measuring activity instead of impact. If we do our job correctly, eventually we expect to be able to say what works and what doesn't, and to be able to distinguish our impact online from off.

TT: What's the state of play in terms of social media measurement? And where do you go from here?

DJP: The potential of social is undeniable, and we continue to look for ways to test our assumptions about what we are doing in the space. As the unit responsible for measuring the impact of our work, we regularly ask ourselves questions such as: What are we using social for? Who are our target audiences? (By the way, developing metrics that include audience demographics is an important part of that measurement effort.) What is the action/behavior we want to see? How do we measure behavior change? How can we go beyond measuring online activity -- page views, unique visitors, tweets, retweets -- to measure the impact of that activity on off-line action and policy change?

That is one of the key challenges for philanthropy today. As a foundation accountable to our board and the public, we have to establish goals and benchmarks for our investment in social media just as we do for our programmatic investments. We have to be able to answer the "so-what" question in terms of the investment of staff time and talent in social media. As a sector, we are becoming much more sophisticated in our use of strategic communications to advance our work. Figuring out how to measure social media activity should fit within that broader framework. Fortunately, social media, because it is digital and quantifiable, lends itself to measurement.

As I said, we really believe in this stuff and are working to produce a set of social media indicators in five foundation-focused areas:

• that we are viewed as a valuable information source;
• that we are viewed as transparent;
• that the lessons we learn are disseminated effectively, multiplying our impact beyond our traditional reach;
• that our social media efforts help to increase knowledge, advocacy, and action in key strategic areas; and
• that our social media efforts serve to strengthen and diversify our networks.

There are already some foundations doing great work in this space, and we hope others will join them and us in advancing the field of social media measurement. It's an exciting time.

Weekend Link Roundup (April 20-21, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

On her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz has some recommendations for nonprofit communications officers (here and here) on how to communicate during a time of crisis.

Current Affairs

In the wake of the horrific bombing at this year's Boston Marathon, Philanthropy 411's Kris Putnam-Walkerly has curated a list of resources for anyone interested in learning more about philanthropy's response to the tragedy. As of Friday, the One Fund Boston, which was created by Boston mayor Thomas Menino, had raised more than $10 million to help victims of the attack.

As if the marathon tragedy wasn't enough to rattle Americans, on Wednesday a fertilizer plant in the Texas town of West caught fire and exploded, killing at least fourteen people and injuring hundreds of others. According to ThinkProgress economic policy editor Bryce Covert, the plant hadn't been inspected in five years. Covert goes on to explain that the main federal agency charged with the enforcement of safety and health legislation, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "is chronically understaffed, which means that a given plant like West Fertilizer can only expect to get a state inspection once every 67 years on average." And what's more, OSHA is "slated to take a huge cut under the sequester...."

Data

On the O'Reilly Strata site, Mike Loukides, vice president of content strategy for O'Reilly Media, reminds us that data science, like science itself, needs to be built on a foundation of skepticism. "Skepticism about data is normal," writes Loukides,

and [that's] a good thing. If I had to give a one line definition of science, it might be something like "organized and methodical skepticism based on evidence." So, if we really want to do data science, it has to be done by incorporating skepticism. And here's the key: data scientists have to own that skepticism. Data scientists have to be the biggest skeptics. Data scientists have to be skeptical about models, they have to be skeptical about overfitting, and they have to be skeptical about whether we're asking the right questions. They have to be skeptical about how data is collected, whether that data is unbiased, and whether that data -- even if there's an inconceivably large amount of it -- is sufficient to give you a meaningful result.

Because the bottom line is: if we're not skeptical about how we use and analyze data, who will be?

New York Times columnist David Brooks has some interesting thoughts of his own about the uses, and misuse of, big data. "One of my take-aways," writes Brooks,

is that big data is really good at telling you what to pay attention to. It can tell you what sort of student is likely to fall behind. But then to actually intervene to help that student, you have to get back in the world of causality, back into the world of responsibility, back in the world of advising someone to do x because it will cause y.

Big data is like the offensive coordinator up in the booth at a football game who, with altitude, can see patterns others miss. But the head coach and players still need to be on the field of subjectivity.

Environment

In the first of a series of "dialogues" on the Nature Conservancy's Talk blog, TNC president Mark Tercek chats with environmental activist Bill McKibben about climate change and the state of the environmental movement.

Impact/Effectiveness

Still a little confused about social impact/pay for success bonds? Not to worry. The experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco devote the most recent issue of Community Development Investment Review to the topic, with contributions from George Overholser and Caroline Whistler, Daniel Stidt, Jonathan Greenblatt, Kristina Costa and Sonal Shah, and many others.

International Affairs/Development

Writing on PhilanTopic, Jeff Falkenstein, vice president of data architecture at the Foundation Center, recaps the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's annual Global Forum on Development, which this year was held in Paris. Among other things, Falkenstein highlights some of the gains achieved through the Millennium Development Goals process, which is slated to end in 2015, and asks what role, if any, private foundations should play in a post-MDG world. What do you think? Share your thoughts here.

Philanthropy

Beth Kanter was in San Francisco earlier in the week for the 2013 Global Philanthropy Forum and, on her blog, recaps a session from the event on the topic of "building an information infrastructure" for philanthropy. Among other things, the session highlighted the need for more current data; the challenge of making the data we do have more meaningful; the benefits of data mining; and building organizational capacity to take advantage of open data. For more information on the session, check out this curated list of blog posts and other resources from Kanter.

On the other side of the pond, our friends at Alliance magazine are pleased to announce the winners of the first Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize: Jane Weru and Kingsley Mucheke of the Akiba Mashinani Trust, in Kenya.

Professional Development

Network for Good's Katya Andresen has some advice for social sector professionals who are "stuck on replay." "'Replay' can be somewhat effective if you're sticking to what works well," writes Andresen. "The problem is it can also create an autopilot state of mind that dulls your senses to changes around you -- like shifts in the political landscape, your donor base or constituencies -- that require a new approach."

Social Media

And on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation interim vice president of research and evaluation Debra Joy Perez shares insights into the foundation’s use of social media as well as some of the metrics it uses to understand the value of that work.

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

-- The Editors

Digital Tools and Apps: A 'Flip' Chat With Harish Bhandari, Robin Hood Foundation

(The video below was recorded as part of our "Flip" chat series of conversations with thought leaders in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. You can check out other videos in the series here, including our previous chat with Anika Rahman, president and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women.) 

If your organization thinks it doesn't have the time or money to invest in online tools like Twitter, it is "missing the boat," says Harish Bhandari, director of digital engagement and innovation at the Robin Hood Foundation. Robin Hood and Bhandari saw the benefits of digital media firsthand after Superstorm Sandy smashed into the Jersey shore in late October. After the storm, the New York City-based charity organized a benefit concert to raise funds for relief and recovery efforts in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut -- a concert that, thanks in part to the organization's use of social media to promote it, turned out to be the most successful benefit concert ever.

Indeed, says Bhandari, by not engaging with donors and other audiences online, nonprofits are missing out on connecting with a demographic that is passionate about social change and in a position to be "really loyal" over a long period of time. 

During a sit-down with PND, Bhandari, who spoke at a recent 501 Tech NYC event dedicated to "visual storytelling" (check out Noland Hoshino's recap here), discussed Robin Hood's efforts to engage potential supporters after Sandy, explained Robin Hood's approach to social networking, and shared some thoughts about newer mobile apps like Instagram and Vine.

(If you're reading this in an e-mail, click here.)

 (Running time: 5 minutes, 13 seconds)

What do you think? Is your organization spending money and time on social networks it can engage on behalf of its mission? Is it using newer mobile apps like Instagram and Vine? And what has it learned in the process? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (April 6-7, 2013)

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

Advocacy

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Rosenberg Foundation president Tim Silard discusses the foundation's recent decision to increase its payout this year to 6.1 percent to help advance immigration reform. "Our hope," writes Silard, "is that this major step by a mid-sized foundation can go a long way toward encouraging more of us in philanthropy to stretch our funding even further...to respond to this unique window of opportunity."

Communications

In a post on the Council on Foundation's Re: Philanthropy blog, Rita Soronen, president and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, reminds us why storytelling matters. Indeed, it is "at the heart of all emotions," writes Soronen. "And nonprofits simply must use communications -- storytelling -- as a very important tactic to steward current donors and secure new funders."

Fundraising

Jeff Brooks, author of the Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications, explains that fundraising is "a two-way conversation" and if you don't know that, you're missing an opportunity to engage your donors in a real way.

Impact/Effectiveness

Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan considers the role of foundations in the emerging impact investing space. Writes Buchanan:

In many of the accounts heralding impact investing as the potential solution to the world's ills, foundations, with their more than $300 billion in assets, are featured prominently. They are portrayed as leaders, or likely leaders, in this new realm....

Clearly, there are some major foundations that have taken significant and important steps into impact investing, such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (see CEO Sterling Speirn's excellent post on Kellogg’s experience for the CEP Blog) and the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. But, beyond a handful of much discussed examples, it is unclear how much of the talk about impact investing is just that -- talk -- and how much is reflected in actual practice....

Buchanan goes on to explain that he has heard "many foundation CEOs and board members eschew the idea that they'd ever seek anything other than maximum returns for their foundations' endowments." To that end, Buchanan writes, more research needs to be done "to bring the prevalence of this practice into focus."

Can't get enough of the impact/metrics debate? The Nonprofit Quarterly kicks it up a notch with a great point/counterpoint debate featuring an entertaining post ("Charity Navigator 3.0: The Empirical Empire’s Death Star?") by William Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, and an equally sharp rebuttal ("Debating the Realities of Ranking Charities") from CN's own Ken Berger.

International Development

Ariel Schwartz, a senior editor at Fast Company's Co.Exist operation, looks at four ideas that Melinda Gates believes will drive the next wave of advances for people in the developing world: M-Pesa, a mobile money system; Digital Green, an organization that helps farmers in India and South Asia create educational videos for other farmers; contraception education and access; and local development.

Nonprofit Management

On the Valcourt Group blog, Jim Jewell looks at seven reasons why nonprofits often fail or flounder.

Regulation/Oversight

The Charitable Giving Coalition (CGC), a group of sixty nonprofits that includes the Association of Fundraising Professionals and Independent Sector, has launched a new Web site, ProtectGiving.org, to help preserve and protect the charitable tax deduction in its current form. Visitors to the site will find a variety of resources (reports, fact sheet, FAQ) designed to raise awareness about the importance of charitable giving in America, examples of the impact nonprofits make in our communities, and a "Take Action" section that includes talking points, a message and media guide, and op-ed and elected official letter templates.

Social Entrepreneurship

Writing on the Gates Foundation's Impatient Optimists blog, GOOD magazine's Mary Slosson announces the launch of the Global Citizenship Project, which will offer five global innovators each a "pop-up fellowship to elevate and expand their work in order to create more equitable and successful neighborhoods."

Social Media

Beth Kanter urges nonprofit leaders to embrace social media -- and "the benefits of effective social media integration that personalizes your organization’s brand with the voice of its leader" -- by making time for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other tools on a regular basis. As a start, Kanter suggests that execs and senior managers start by asking their communications teams:

• What do you spend time doing now that you could do better via social?
• What other executive directors that you respect, follow, or feel inspired by are using social creatively?
• What are your strengths and preferences and what is the best match in terms of social channels?
• How will social improve things you already KNOW and value

Citing the experience of Udi Ofer, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Kanter points out that Twitter not only enables Ofer to comment "on his organization's most important cases and issues," but also to display his human side and inject "warmth into the organization."

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (March 30-31, 2013)

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

Black Male Achievement

Here on PhilanTopic, the Open Society Foundation's Shawn Dove, whom we spoke with back in December, announces the launch of BMAfunders.org, a Web portal designed to "facilitate engagement, collaboration, and strategic decision making among funders, nonprofits, and policy makers working to promote positive outcomes for black men and boys in America."

Communications

In a guest post on Kivi Leroux Miller's Nonprofit Communications Blog, Jen Charney, communication manager at the Save the Redwoods League, explains how the organization redesigned its Web site to attract more "uniques" and increase online donations and e-mail subscribers.

Environment

Environmental "cause days" such as Earth Day are great, but what about the other 360+ days of the year, asks Geoff Livingston, author of Welcome to the Fifth Estate, in a recent post on his blog.  "If our culture intends to adapt to climate change," writes Livingston, "our efforts need to increase. First of all, let's not poo-poo the small acts taken. Instead, let's build upon them...."

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Skoll World Forum Up for Debate blog, Darin McKeever, deputy director of the Charitable Sector, Global Policy & Advocacy program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, asks the important question: "How might we accelerate [the] conversation about Big Data into one about Big Information, Big Knowledge, and Big Wisdom?"

Philanthropy

The excellent "forum" feature in the March/April issue of the Boston Review looks at the pros and cons of private philanthropy in America. With a lead essay by Stanford University professor Rob Reich, who argues that private foundations are plutocratic by nature, the package includes essays in response from Paul Brest, Rick Cohen, Pablo Eisenberg, Stanley N. Katz, Larry Kramer, Gara LaMarche, and Robert K. Ross, among others. Highly recommended.

Writing on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders whether proposals submitted to foundation-funded open challenges could serve a larger purpose. "For example, if you were trying to understand the 'state' of community information efforts, would the applications to the Knight News Challenge be a useful source of data in terms of understanding what people out in the world think is important," asks Bernholz. "Do you know anyone who has looked at them as such?"

GiveWell's Holden Karnofsky explains why his organization recommends so few charities, and the concept behind the GiveWell approach. "We recommend few charities by design, because we see ourselves as a 'finder of great giving opportunities’ rather than a 'charity evaluator,'" writes Karnofsky. "In other words, we're not seeking to classify large numbers of charities as 'good' or 'bad'; our mission is solely to identify, and thoroughly investigate, the best."

Social Justice

On the Huffington Post, Janell Ross discusses findings from The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism, a new book written by Rutgers University professor Nancy DiTomaso and published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Based on DiTomaso's research, writes Ross, the book argues that

most white Americans engage, at least a few times per year, in...activities that foster inequality. While they may not deliberately discriminate against black and other non-white job seekers, they take actions that make it more likely that white people will be employed -- without thinking that what they're doing amounts to discrimination....

Social Media

Nonprofits using video to engage their supporters should focus on telling stories about people, not programs, ListenIn Pictures co-founder Annie Escobar argues in a guest post on the Getting Attention blog. "The best use of video is not to inform and educate," writes Escobar. "It's to make your audience feel something and through that emotional response, create a connection to your work."

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (March 16-17, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

Over at Katya Andresen's Non-Profit Marketing blog, Kari Saratovsky and Derrick Feldmann, co-authors of the recently published Cause for Change: The Why and How of Nonprofit Millennial Engagement, explain how developing a platform to engage Millennials can better position an organization for success.

Impact/Effectiveness

"[M]ost social good organizations...[are] focus[ed] on reproducing the institution, not reusing...data," writes self-described data wonk Lucy Bernholz on her Philanthropy 2173 blog. "This needs to change in two ways," adds Bernholz. "First, nonprofits should be using their data for social purposes only....[And, second] when it comes to enterprise level data, the default should be to share all the data you can."

On Arabella Advisor's Greater Good blog, Katrina Briddell and Lauren Marra share five keys to effective donor collaboration.

The Inter-American Development Bank's Lina Salazar Ortegón shares five things investors need to know about impact investing metrics:

1. Reporting requirements should be simple and in line with the client companies’ operations.
2. It's necessary to involve both investment officers and investee companies in the measuring and tracking process, training them on the importance of metrics and reporting.
3. To the extent it contributes to everyone speaking the same language and using the same type of indicators, tracking performance contributes to better communications with stakeholders.
4. Investments aren't the only thing that need to be tracked. Grant-funded projects with potential to become profitable and sustainable business models also need to be monitored from the start.
5. Metrics must be negotiated during the due diligence process and be formally included in the loan agreements.

Ortegón invites readers to learn more about the challenges the bank faced, the improvements it made, and the lessons it learned by reading the OMJ IRIS User Case, which was published earlier this year by the Global Impact Investing Network.

On the PBS Newshour site, Newshour economics correspondent Paul Solman talks with Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin about social impact bonds and how one such instrument is being used to address (and hopefully break) the cycle of recidivism in New York City.

Innovation

To help you and your organization circumvent the "idea-killing apparatus" that exists in almost every nonprofit, ace consultant David LaPiana shares half a dozen "lifesaving suggestions" designed to keep new ideas alive.

Journalism/Media

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Elizabeth Miller shares some advice from a South by Southwest panel discussion for new journalists looking to establish themselves in the rapidly changing field:

1. Don't be a jack of all trades. Go deep with one tech skill.
2. Be passionate.
3. Use academic opportunities to experiment.
4. Never underestimate the value of being able to construct a sentence.
5. Learn to code. (And even if you aren't willing to learn how, get up to speed with the possibilities of what good code can do.)
6. Don't be afraid to measure success (or failure).

Philanthropy

Based on the findings of a paper titled the Dynamics of Crowdfunding: Determinants of Success and Failure, the Kauffman Foundation's Mindee Forman highlights some of the factors that contribute to a successful crowdfunding campaign, including the size of an organization's network, whether the campaign has a strong geographic tie-in, and duration of the campaign. (Shorter is better.)

Social Justice

"How can grantmakers boost the impact of their contributions to a more just society?" Niki Jagpal asks on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog. "The answer might well lie in fusing strategy and justice in the ecosystem of the nonprofit sector. Consider the interconnectedness of the issues that funders are addressing and it becomes clear that our sector functions much like any system such as the human body: if one part of it changes, the entire system is affected...."

Social Media

In the last post in a series about her experience at this year's South by Southwest conference, Beth Kanter offers some metrics and measurement advice to nonprofits, including "don’t be a zombie repeating the mistakes of the past" and analyze your data using various methods.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (March 9-10, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

In a two-part series on her Non-Profit Marketing blog (here and here), Katya Andresen shares highlights of a discussion she had with Allyson Kapin and Amy Sample Ward about the key themes in their recently published book Social Change Anytime Everywhere, including how nonprofits can use online tools to advance their work.

On the Communications Network blog, Courtney Williamson, the network's community manager, shares slides and video from Avoiding the Blind Spot: Telling Your Story With Pictures, a recent network webinar featuring Resource Media's Liz Banse and Scott Miller. Among other things, Banse and Miller outline three principles of good communication: 1) people are visual first, verbal second; 2) people's decisions and actions are based on emotional reaction more than rational thought; and 3) visuals are the most effective communications vehicles for evoking emotion and getting people to take action.

Disaster Relief

On the techPresident blog, Julia Wetherell looks at findings from a new Internews report on the effectiveness of crisis mapping following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. Among other things, the report found that the crisis map created on the Ushahidi platform was "not as critical to [the humanitarian] response" as previously thought, in part because many victims of the disaster weren't aware of it. "The accessibility of crisis mapping was also dependent on the availability of Internet service," says Wetherell. To address that shortcoming, the report recommends strengthening IT infrastructure, particularly in less connected rural areas, before the next disaster hits.

NPR has a good interview with reporter Jonathan Katz, author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster.

Women

Daily Beast contributor Caroline Linton announces the launch of the Half the Sky game on Facebook -- a clever use of social media that seeks to turn virtual donations made by players into real-world donations to organizations that support women and girls around the world, including the Fistula and United Nations foundations, Girls & Education Mentoring Services, Heifer International, ONE, Room to Read, and World Vision. As Linton explains, the game "helps educate the players to some of the challenges women face around the globe, especially as [the Indian woman narrator] Radhika travels to far-off lands such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Kenya."

Writing on the For Women blog on Friday, Ms. Foundation for Women senior strategist reminded us that "we still have miles to go in [the United States]" in terms of advancing women's rights. As the organization's most recent report notes:

• The U.S. economy marginalizes women and consistently relegates women of color to the lowest-paying jobs;
• Quality, flexible and affordable child care is inaccessible to working families, particularly those headed by women;
• Control over women's bodies is legislated by people who often prioritize political posturing over women's health;
• Gender-based violence remains a prevalent and complex problem, despite important policy victories like the recent renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.

"[So on this] International Women's Day," writes Kay, "let's set high goals for the U.S. and challenge ourselves to make this a place in which a woman may obtain justice and equality regardless of her race, socioeconomic status, age or immigration status," writes Kay. "The U.S. should be a beacon of rights, rather than a place that offers privilege to some while turning a blind eye to others' inequality."

And while Congress did recently vote to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, extending protections to homosexual and Native American victims of violence, more needs to be done, writes Niki Jagpal on NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, especially since "many of these community members do not report the crimes committed against them." To help address the problem, Jagpal urges grantmakers to prioritize "underserved communities intentionally and [fund] social justice work heavily, including funds for advocacy and community organizing by or on behalf of these communit[ies]."

Last but not least, Beth Kanter marked International Women's Day with a nice discussion of the Global Mom Relay on her blog. "Every time you share a relay post on Facebook, Twitter, or email or donate $5 or more as part of the relay," writes Kanter, "a $5 donation (up to $8,000 per day) will be donated by Johnson & Johnson and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to one of four initiatives [-- Girl Up, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, and Shot@Life --] that are helping women and children lead healthy and happy lives."

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (March 2-3, 2013)

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

African Americans

Washington Post reporter Vanessa Small recaps a recent networking and panel discussion devoted to "young black philanthropy" hosted by boutique marketing firm Friends of Ebonie at National Council of Negro Women headquarters in Washington, D.C. "At one point, the conversation turned to whether wealthy African Americans are doing enough to give back," writes Small, "and by the end of the night, a consensus developed that all African Americans need to do more to hold one another accountable for how they give their time and money."

On one of the last days of Black History Month, a post on the Case Foundation blog celebrated the charity of African Americans:

Giving back and helping others is the fundamental premise of philanthropy and this premise has been a central tenet of African American culture. The distinguished researcher Mary Winters notes in her study on Endowment Building in the African American Community that perhaps out of survival, "Black Americans have been compelled to share and give back from the moment they arrived on the shores of this country. When they have money to give, they give; when there was no money to give, a generous heart, a strong back or a keen mind. As a value, 'giving back' is firmly rooted in black history." Research funded by the Kellogg Foundation supports this belief. The report, Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Color, shows that African Americans give 25 percent more of their income [annually] than white Americans. These findings go to show just how deep the spirit of giving runs within the black community....

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares some highlights from a post by Steve Daigneault at M+R Research Labs about what the Obama reelection campaign got right -- and not so right -- in terms of its digital outreach efforts.

Impact/Effectiveness

In a guest post on the GuideStar blog, Social Solutions co-founder and vice president Adrian Bordone discusses the importance of measuring outcomes, as opposed to outputs, when it comes to social change work.

Meanwhile, over at Social Fish, Jamie Nutter, vice president of organizational effectiveness at Management Solutions, argues that actionable data is better than big data -- and learning trumps both.

Looking for some inexpensive (as in free) productivity apps? Google apps -- Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and others -- are now available free of charge to any nonprofit that has joined the Google for Nonprofits program. Not a member? To learn more, click here.

Leadership

On the Harvard Business Review blog, John McKinley writes that when it comes to identifying leaders who can effect lasting social change, what matters most is resilience. According to McKinley, who manages the Acumen Fund's Global Fellows Program, the three key characteristics of resilient leaders are:

1. Grit: Short-term focus on tasks at hand, a willingness to slog through broken systems with limited resources, and pragmatic problem-solving skills.
2. Courage: Action in the face of fear and embracing the unknown.
3. Commitment: Long-term optimism and focus on big-picture goals.

What's more, says McKinley, "resilience can be trained." At Acumen, he writes, "we focus on building not only the fellows' financial and operational skills, but also what we call "moral imagination," which requires balancing opposing values -- humility and audacity -- to see the world as it is and to imagine the world for what it could be.

Philanthropy

In the latest installment of her Making Change podcast, Hildy Gottlieb, author of The Pollyanna Principles, chats with Foundation Center president Brad Smith about why foundations should pay attention to radical thinkers and six factors that are driving social change globally.

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s Keeping a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal and Kevin Laskowski remind us that foundations have been supporting social justice movements for decades. "The Ford Foundation, for example, was a critical source of funding for groups such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)," they write. And as the social justice movement presses on, "philanthropy has a special opportunity to strengthen American democracy. All of us in the third sector, especially leaders and supporters of nonprofits on the frontlines of fighting injustice, can keep this momentum going by being effective advocates for social justice giving."

The first issue of Philanthropy Impact magazine, a UK-based quarterly that aims "to make sense of and inspire philanthropy in a domestic and international context," is available has a free download (8 pages, PDF). The issue, which was guest edited by Philanthrocapitalism co-author Michael Green, includes articles on the urgent need for better data to understand and strengthen giving, why narratives matter in philanthropy, and why impact assessment tells us little about whether charities are effective and deserve our support.

Social Change

And on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Kristen Grimm, president of Spitfire Strategies, a PR firm that works exclusively with foundations and nonprofits, identifies seven common blind spots that sneak into change strategies and a four-step process for identifying and eliminating them -- before they sabotage even the most worthy campaigns.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (February 23-24, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, NTEN's Katya Andresen looks at new data from eMarketer.com that confirms what a lot of us already know: Nonprofits have been quick to adopt social media.

Diversity

"It is imperative that women of color invest in young girls through volunteering and mentoring to ensure the success of our younger generation," writes Shae Harris on the Washington Area Women's Foundation blog. "Use this Black History Month to begin or continue 'paying it forward.' Our girls are counting on you."

Impact/Effectiveness

In a post on her blog, Beth Kanter, co-author most recently of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, considers the difference between being data informed and data driven. "The term 'data-driven' has been used to describe organizations that rely solely on cold hard data to make decisions. Being data-driven sounds great -- in theory. But, because it doesn't acknowledge the importance of basing decisions on multiple information sources, it can doom an organization to epic failures," Kanter writes. Data informed, on the other hand, "describes agile, responsive, and intelligent businesses that are better able to succeed in a rapidly changing environment....Data-informed cultures are not slaves to their data."

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Sterling Speirn, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, describes the foundation's efforts over the last five years to boost its impact by allocating $100 million to a program called Mission Driven Investing, giving, as Speirn writes, "equal weight to both social impact and financial returns." The results have been encouraging:

Insisting that financial success and mission impact are not mutually exclusive has enabled our organization to accomplish a great deal -- with more on the horizon. In these first five years, the foundation's investments have yielded high-impact social and financial returns -- ushering in new mobile technologies and innovative tools for educators; providing healthy, affordable school lunches for vulnerable children in New Orleans and other priority places; and expanding access to capital to underserved communities through community banking, to name several.

Yet successful investments such as those above have not only resulted in significant social impact and market returns, they’ve provided a learning return for our entire organization. Much as our grantmaking legacy provided us with guidance for our entrée into impact investing, now we’re using the lessons learned from our investments to inform our ongoing grantmaking efforts....

Philanthropy

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders whether "3D printing" and/or "privacy" will end up on her list of philanthropy buzzwords for 2013. In a departure from past practice, Bernholz asks readers to offer their take on which of the two "we'll all be talking about, experimenting with, reading about, possibly funding, possibly failing to comprehend in 2013." What do you think? Share your thoughts on Lucy's blog here.

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Yna Moore shares a video featuring YouTube sensation Kid President to help illustrate how philanthropy can up its "awesomeness" quotient. "It's not enough to set clear goals, utilize evidence-based strategies and solicit feedback," writes Moore. "To be truly effective, strategic philanthropy must turn to practices familiar to social justice philanthropy: understanding who will benefit from your foundation's programs and how, recognizing the need to influence public policy by funding nonprofit advocacy and community organizing, and seeking input from nonprofit grantees and the communities they serve."

In a post on the Huffington Post's Impact blog, Sonal Shah, senior fellow at the Case Foundation, suggests that in order to solve the world's most pressing problems, both the public and private sectors need to put more money into things like the administration's Social Innovation Fund (which she ran for a while) and the Department of Education's i3 Fund, social impact bonds, prize and challenge philanthropy, and interactive technologies.

Social Good

We noted above that Lucy Bernholz is taking steps to crowdsource her next philanthropy buzzword list. She also wrote a really interesting post during the week that pushed back a bit against a Mark Rosenman post that appeared here on PhilanTopic (as well as at the Chronicle of Philanthropy) about the growing movement to quantify the value of higher education (and other traditionally nonprofit goods) through things like "college scorecard" mechanisms. Writes Bernholz:

[T]he most interesting thing about the scorecard -- in my opinion -- is that it puts for-profits on the same footing as nonprofits and allows them to be compared on equivalent data. What could be a clearer acknowledgement that we are in fact operating in a social economy -- in which every type of social good from education to healthcare to eldercare to cultural expression to volunteer mobilization -- is available from either a nonprofit or a commercial enterprise or a hybrid of the two? This is the key "reality check" for nonprofits -- in most cases they no longer are the sole purveyors of the "good" they provide. Rosenman argues that comparing nonprofits to each other on the basis of their individual outcomes is bad for colleges and bad for nonprofits -- but his article misses the bigger picture -- college education is not just a nonprofit "good" anymore (if it ever really was)....

Is she right? Have the lines between the two sectors blurred to such an extent that the differences between them are, if not yet meaningless, less important than their similarities? Or, as Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan argues in a comment on Lucy's blog, is the role that nonprofits play in this country "unique and vital" and not easily replicated by for-profit and hybrid organizations? What do you think? Leave a comment below or hop on over to Lucy's blog and join the conversation already under way there.

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

-- The Editors

Rules to Communicate By

As former foundation CEO Martin Teitel reminds us in The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Winning Foundation Grants, success in grantseeking boils down to two things: great organizations doing great work; and effective communications.

What does the latter entail? Teitel offers these three easy-to-follow rules:

Be Clear

• Eliminate jargon
• Write for your real (as opposed to imagined) audience -- i.e., funders who don't know your organization that well
• Leave out the math and formulas

Be Concise

• Not one word more than the length specified in the funder's guidelines
• Use a spear, not a club -- i.e., make your point and move on
• Revise, revise, revise

Be Compelling

• Share your enthusiasm for the work you and your colleagues are doing
• Base your request for funding on facts, not hopes or wishes
• Put your organization's story at the center of your appeal

Sound advice. What would you add to the list? Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (January 19-20, 2013)

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

Advocacy

Writing on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's Government and Politics Watch blog, Cody Switzer shares a video in which the NAACP's Benjamin Jealous explains how his century-old organization engages young activists: "Listen to them first, find out what they are really angry about, and then say, 'This is how we turn it outward, and we actually overcome that issue.'"

Communications/Marketing

On the Huffington Post's Impact blog, Katya Andresen shares an infographic from the Georgetown Center for Social Impact Communication that illustrates four different categories of potential cause influencers: Mainstreeter, Minimalist, Moderate, and Maximizer.

Nonprofits

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, CEP president Phil Buchanan suggests that nonprofits have a "dependency" problem -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Philanthropy

Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green discuss a recent Wall Street Journal review of Robert Dalzell's The Good Rich. In the review, Journal contributor Amity Shlaes argues that "Charity is a sideshow: What matters about the rich, if we are considering the public good, isn't their charity but their investments -- their ideas about what to do with 'slimey petroleum' and microchips -- and the jobs and activity they create." Bishop and Green disagree:

We are, on the whole, enthusiastic champions of the role that business plays as a creator of value in the world. (With the caveats that not all profit is socially valuable -- think of the profits that Lehman Brothers earned before it crashed, which at the time seemed to indicate that the investment bank was well managed, rather than the reality that it was gambling recklessly -- and that not all billionaires are equal, as how they have earned their money and whether they have paid their fair whack of taxes are important questions in judging whether someone is a 'good billionaire' or, perhaps, a tax dodging monopolist.) Indeed, we would even accept that, in some or even many cases, a dynamic entrepreneur may have more to add to the world through business than through philanthropy. But the judgement on whether any particular billionaire's philanthropy is worthwhile or a waste must be based on an analysis both of what he contributes through business and what he contributes through philanthropy. It cannot be assumed a priori, as the Journal seems to do, that business is always, necessarily better....

Social Good

Writing for the Harvard Business Review blog network, Charity Case author Dan Pallotta argues that nonprofits need to embrace a capitalistic mindset and methods if they truly want to solve the world's problems. "Our social problems are gigantic in scale," writes Pallotta. "We need gigantic responses to them. And if we freed the humanitarian sector to use the tools of capitalism, we could bring private ingenuity to bear on those problems, and we wouldn't have to depend on the government to fill the gaps."

Social Media

In a post on his LinkedIn blog, Likeable Local chief executive Dave Kerpen offers five tips for social media success:

• listen first and never stop listening;
• don't tell your customers to like you and follow you, tell them why and how they should;
• ask questions;
• share pictures and videos; and
• spend at least thirty minutes a day on social media.

Kerpen adds, "if you stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like a customer, you'll understand that the secret to social media is in the 'social' more than in the 'media' -- it's in being human -- being the sort of person at a cocktail party who listens attentively, tells great stories, shows interest in others, and is authentic and honest."

Technology

Philanthropy 2173's Lucy Bernholz reflects on the death of 26-year-old technologist Aaron Swartz, an "Internet folk hero" who, faced with the possibility of thirty-five years in prison for illegally downloading nearly five million documents from JSTOR, a subscription-based online service that scans and distributes articles from scholarly journals, committed suicide on January 11. "[Our] rules about information are clearly, clearly broken," writes Bernholz. "For acts done to further a cause, we have now seen overzealous prosecution result in death." She continues:

Our rules about information have been rules about ownership. How we use information, give it, charge for it, share it. These rules are changing, due to the efforts of people such as Aaron. They must change more. How that happens will not be easy or simple. Big institutions will lose lots of power when we make the changes we need, but we can all hope it doesn't involve any more death....

Elsewhere, Holden Karnofsky shares some additional thoughts about his friend Aaron in a post on the GiveWell blog.

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

-- The Editors