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

Weekend Link Roundup (May 12-13, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz says nonprofit communicators don't always "make it easy for people like me to share their information" via social media. If they really want to get their message out, adds Fritz, organizations should blog frequently, add images to their posts, use video when possible, encourage retweets on Twitter, and add RSS feeds to their online platforms.

Fundraising

On the AFP blog, Reed Stockton shares findings from a recent study which found that nearly $1.5 billion was raised through some 350 crowdfunding platforms globally in 2011.

On the Minnesota Council on Foundations' Philanthropy Potluck blog, Anne Bauers looks at the Nonprofit Finance Fund's recently released State of the Sector survey, which found, among other things, that many nonprofits are "feeling distant from their funders."

Maybe, as the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Sean Dobson notes, that's because the percentage of foundation grant dollars awarded for general operating support remained stuck at 22 percent in 2009 and 2010. It's a shame, writes Dobson, because in an uncertain economy, general operating support is "an endowment-friendly way [for foundations] to build stronger... grantees." 

Philanthropy

Ellen Remmer, president and CEO of the Philanthropic Initiative, explains why a growing number of community foundations are making investments designed to "produce a social (including environmental) and financial return." Writes Remmer:

They believe they can have a deeper and more sustained impact in their communities by adding this tool to the toolbox, particularly for some issue areas such as housing, sustainable economic development, healthy lifestyles (think local food), etc. They are compelled by the opportunity to "recycle" philanthropic dollars and augment the amount of capital committed to social change. And they believe that a broader group of social investors will be attracted to this approach for community improvement than their traditional cadre of donors.

Could community foundations become standard bearers for impact investing? Could they play an educational, brokering or even leadership role for donor investors and the recipient organizations? There are plenty of barriers to realizing the full potential of this evolving form of social investment; but my bet is that community foundations could -- if they choose -- play a key role....

Poverty Alleviation

Over at the Huffington Post's Impact blog, Maurice Lim Miller, founder and CEO of the Family Independence Initiative, reminds us that charity can be a double-edged sword. "The ability to make choices, determine our plan of action, and be in control are essential to achieving mobility and stability in our society," writes Miller. But while

everyone faces problems and needs help at some point, the programs and services for low-income people treat them as unable to make their own choices -- as charity cases. A charity case isn't simply someone who needs resources; the term carries pathos. "Charity case" does not breed confidence, self-respect, or affirm any sense of self-determination. If we really want people who are low-income to have the opportunity to get ahead, we need a new model....

Social Media

Last but not least, Allison Fine suggests in a post on the Harvard Business Review blog that what it means to be "professional" in the workplace has changed. "For most people over forty," writes Fine,

it means wearing a uniform of some kind, talking in a certain language, carrying a briefcase (or more recently a Blackberry or iPhone), and perhaps, most important, keeping one's private life private. Gen Y, or Millennials -- late teens to thirty year-olds -- have a vastly different notion of what it means to present oneself to the world wearing their business hat (so to speak). The huge organizational chasm between Gen Y and Gen X and Boomers is less a technological problem than a psychological one, and it manifests itself in the use of social media....

Is she right? Do older professionals view social media as a threat to professional behavior? Is it changing what it means to be "professional"? Use the comments section to share your thoughts.

And drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org if we missed something. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

-- The Editors

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

If You Say You’re Innovative, You’re Probably Not

(Derrick Feldmann is the CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based consulting firm that works with nonprofits. A version of this post originally appeared on the Achieve blog, and it is reprinted here with permission.)

One of the best parts of my job, beyond working with some great clients, is traveling to speak about the latest trends in fundraising and millennial engagement. After most presentations, individuals will come up to personally ask for advice. I love this one-on-one time with folks willing to wait in line just to get one burning question answered.

Many of these conversations start with an all too familiar opening: "My organization is innovative because..." Usually, the individual will go on to describe why the services offered by his or her organization are unique and unlike other nonprofits'. Indeed, this claim of innovation is becoming more and more common. Unfortunately, while some nonprofits truly do have unique program models and service delivery approaches, most do not.

For example, I just did a quick online search and found three nonprofits with the following statements on their Web sites:

"We are an innovative organization pairing youth with adult mentors throughout the city."

"We are an innovative organization designed to help people achieve self-sufficiency."

"We are an innovative nonprofit working in an economically disadvantaged community to help people come together to solve social problems."

Alas, the more I explored each organization's site, the more I found there that wasn't unique or different. So maybe it's time we had a discussion about what truly makes an organization innovative.

When I look at innovative nonprofits, several traits come to mind:

They find creative solutions. Innovative nonprofits are driven by leaders willing to take risks and be at the forefront of new ideas and change in their communities. Innovation doesn't mean you create a process and come back to it five years later to see how things went. Truly innovative nonprofits constantly evaluate their processes and work to make their service delivery better every single day. They are never satisfied with the answer "it is what it is."

They are not afraid to fail. Innovative nonprofits are not afraid to test new concepts -- or to see them fail. They approach research and development in the spirit of discovery and are willing to push the envelope in the interest of improvement. Truly innovative fundraisers say, "We will test text-to-give platforms and learn from our mistakes and successes." They never say, "I wish we would've..."

They know when to pivot. Innovative nonprofits don't wait till next month's board meeting to address a project or program that has gone off the rails. Instead, they pivot when change is necessary and are not afraid to make a move in order to achieve a desired result. Innovative nonprofits understand how fluid the current environment is and know that today's complex problems demand maximum efficiency and effectiveness from every organization and sector. They never say, "We need to hold that idea till next month."

At the end of the day, innovation is more about people letting their networks know about an innovative organization they've discovered, rather than about an organization endlessly promoting itself as innovative. If your nonprofit is truly innovative, it doesn't need to tell the world. Its actions speak for themselves, and we'll know it's innovative because we haven't seen anything else like it.

For more on the DNA of innovation, check out this Fast Company article.

What do you think? Is innovation something you "walk" instead of "talk"? Or, in an ever-more crowded media environment, is it better -- indeed, essential -- to tout your organization's innovativeness at every opportunity. Use the comments section below to share your thoughts...

-- Derrick Feldmann

Weekend Link Roundup (April 21-22, 2012)

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

Civil Society

In the Encyclopaedia of Informal Education, writer, activist, and sometime PhilanTopic contributor Michael Edwards bemoans the lack of clarity around the term civil society and attempts to restore some precision to the debate over its meaning. In the process, he reminds us that "Recognizing that civil society does indeed mean different things to different people is one of the keys to moving forward, because it moves us beyond false universals and entrenched thinking."

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares four trends, including the growing popularity of peer networks, likely to shake up nonprofit marketing. "People listen to each other more than us, so we need to stop viewing social media as another form of getting our message out," writes Andresen. "Its primary value is that it allows other people to get the message out, for us."

Entrepreneurship

On the Kauffman Foundation's Growthology log, Dane Stangler looks at the evolution of entrepreneurship and how the very definition of the word entrepreneur has broadened over the years. Writes Stangler: "In its original use by Jean-Baptiste Say, it was someone who undertook economic activities and capitalized on arbitrage opportunities. Joseph Schumpeter ushered in the modern way in which people typically use the term by equating it with newness -- new products, services, combinations, business models, etc. Israel Kirzner saw entrepreneurs as those who targeted and eliminated disequilibria in the economy (for Schumpeter, entrepreneurs created those disequilibria)." Today, however, "the word has come to be so overused as to potentially lose a great deal of meaning...."

Environment

In a guest post on the Knight Blog, Shannon Dosemagen, director of community engagement at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, a 2011 Knight News Challenge winner, explains how the decision by Google to license community-created aerial maps from the lab's archive could lead to better policy and replace commercial and government data as a recognized representation of sites of civic and environmental concern.

Higher Education

The New York Times' Room for Debate series takes up the question of whether wealthy colleges deserve their tax breaks, with contributions from economist Sandy Baum; Michael McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation; the American Entreprise Institute's Frederick Hess; Barbara Gitenstein, president of the College of New Jersey; Andrew Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute; Osamudia James, an associate professor of law at the University of Miami; and Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

International Affairs/Development

About.com's Joanne Fritz reminds readers who are thinking about doing a little "voluntourism" this summer to use common sense and follow these tips from the Center for Responsible Travel.

Philanthropy

On his Inside Philanthropy blog, Todd Cohen offers his take on some of the investment strategies that have emerged in recent years to scale up or expand proven nonprofit programs.

Regulation/Oversight

Idealist researcher/blogger Putnam Barber reminds nonprofit organizations, many of which do not have to file their Form 990s until May 15, to make sure they have answers to three important questions:

• When is our filing deadline?
• What do we need to know to be sure we stay current with all the rules and regulations?
• Who is going to file our Form 990-N?

Social Entrepreneurship

Over at Dowser, J. Gregory Dees, a professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and creator of the first course in social entrepreneurship in the U.S., challenges New York Times' columnist David Brooks' characterization of social entrepreneurship as something young people do to "avoid political participation and...[tackle the] 'corruption, venality, and disorder head-on'." Writes Dees:

Social entrepreneurs do not discourage political participation -- they invent new mechanisms for achieving the public good. Quite often solutions to problems require not just mobilizing political support but actually demonstrating how to solve problems that have confounded others.... Social entrepreneurs serve as society"s "learning laboratory," developing, testing, and refining new approaches to problems in ways that government agencies, with all their budgetary, bureaucratic, legislative, jurisdictional, and political constraints cannot do. These innovators represent the kind of decentralized problem solving that Nobel laureate Douglass North identifies as essential for any society to achieve what he calls "adaptive efficiency," the ability to adjust and thrive in the face of new challenges and shifting problems....

Social Media

On her blog, Allison Fine weighs in on the value of a Facebook "like." Writes Fine:

The notion of creating a direct equation of how much it cost to get one person to like a Facebook page and how much that person bought or gave as a result might satisfy the bean counters, but misses the larger point of why social media are so much more powerful than broadcast media. If you’re just looking for one, or ten, or one hundred thousand stand alone customers or donors, then there is no extra value in using social media. You could have just sent out a direct mail piece for that. The value in using social media is that every person, every like, comes with their own network that can be activated in an instant, and at no additional cost, for the organization. And that value, the value of having an army of your most ardent fans, affects far more than the development department....

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Mark Hager, associate professor of nonprofit studies at Arizona State University's School of Community Resources and Development, explains how students in his Theory and Practice of Philanthropy course are using Glasspockets indicators to evaluate private foundations and "reflect critically on the value of transparency and how well the Glass Pockets assessment captures the concept." In the coming weeks, Hager will share thoughts from the student who "presented the most interesting observations about foundations, transparency, and the 'Who Has Glass Pockets' indicators." Stay tuned.

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 14-15, 2012)

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

Accountability

Thanks in part to the proliferation of social media and a loss of faith in institutions of every kind, foundations and nonprofit organizations must rethink how they communicate and hold themselves accountable, argues Lucy Bernholz on her Philanthropy 2173 blog. "The kind of organizing that led Komen to change its decision and that is now calling for change from Gates is easier than ever," writes Bernolz.

It can be turned on in an instant and reach unprecedented scale at unprecedented pace. Boards of directors of nonprofits and foundations need to know this, they need to expect it, and they need to engage with both critics and supporters. They need, in other words, to govern in a new landscape in which each and every decision they make may be the one that transforms supporters into critics (Komen) or turns educational policy grants into part of national outrage about gun laws and racial justice [i.e., Gates Foundation support for a conservative advocacy organization known as ALEC].

Is this about a social media policy? I don't think so. Is it about governance, engagement, conversation, accountability, structural consistency, clarity of mission, and a willingness to remain civil while participating in difficult areas of work riven with disagreement? Yes. Nonprofits are part of civil society which thrives only when it is filled with multiple points of view and diverse approaches to problem solving. The "public" will not agree with every decision a foundation or nonprofit makes and they have a right to express that disagreement. Foundations and nonprofits have a right (and a responsibility) to make their decisions and expect a public response to them....

Communications/Marketing

On her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz "nonprofitizes" a list of content marketing tips from top chefs originally compiled by MarketingProfs.com. Her list includes:

• Use fresh ingredients. Fresh content retains its natural flavor. Avoid stale or processed content -- your supporters will know it and hate it.
• Keep the menu simple. Don’t overcomplicate content or muddy the dish with too many flavors.
• Experiment in the kitchen. Try new forms of content and solicit feedback so you know what's not working -- and what is.

Visit GettingAttention.org for the complete list.

Journalism/Media

On the HuffPost Media site, Kevin Murphy, president of the Berks (PA) County Community Foundation, suggests that the death of traditional journalism is going to force philanthropy to step up and fund alternatives. "[A]s foundations realize the profound impact of losing the communications vehicles that tie our society together," writes Murphy,

they're going to recognize the imperative of supporting journalism in their field or community. At a global level, funders rely on journalism to help the public understand challenges like world wide poverty, climate change and human rights violations.

Without the ability to hear from, and communicate with the populations they serve, foundations will find their mission nearly impossible to accomplish. So, they'll solve that problem....

Leadership

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares management lessons from Steve Jobs included in a recent Harvard Business Review article by Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson. Her favorite -- "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." -- was something Jobs told Isaacson he had first come across in that icon of '70s counterculture, the Whole Earth Catalogue.

On her blog, Rosetta Thurman offers a few suggestions for organizations interested in supporting the next generation of nonprofit leaders. Among other things, Thurman advises nonprofit executives to increase the number of professional development opportunities availble to young staffers and to require each employee to draft a career development plan.

Philanthropy

In advance of the annual conference of the Global Philanthropy Forum later this week in Washington, D.C., Jane Wales, president and CEO of the World Affairs Council and vice president of philanthropy and society at the Aspen Institute, considers the philanthropic legacy of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller and connects it to some of the tools and approaches championed by a new generation of philanthropists.

On the BlackGivesBack blog, Tracey Webb announces the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Cultures of Giving Donor Challenge, a ten-day online competition designed to boost funding for nonprofits working to address the critical needs of communities of color.

Social Entrepreneurship

Writing on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Jason Saul, the founder/CEO of Mission Measurement, shares five takeaways from the 2012 Skoll World Forum: it's okay to make an economic return from trying to solve a social problem; measurement is no longer optional; it's cool to be corporate; people want to move the needle; and we're entering a new age of social entrepreneurship.

Social Media

In a guest post at Beth's Blog, Frank Barry, Internet strategy manager at software company Blackbaud, shares findings from the 2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report. Writes Barry: "We learned a lot of things, but one prevailing theme stood out -- despite limited budgets and staffing, nonprofits continue to find great value in their fast-growing social networks."

In the latest installment of her Chronicle of Philanthropy Social Good podcast series, Allison Fine chats with Alliance for Youth Movements co-founder Stephanie Rudat about how and why a few recent social action movements, including Kony 2012 and Change.org's Trayvon Martin petition, went viral.

Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield discusses hashtag spamming, which "can do more harm to your nonprofit's brand on Twitter than good." Writes Mansfield: "Too many hashtags in one tweet can look messy or nonsensical, decrease click-through rates, and subtly communicate to your followers than you are a hashtag spammer -- i.e., you're not really monitoring or participating in the conversation around a certain hashtag, just spamming it in hopes of getting more followers, which doesn't work by the way." What do you think? Is less more when it comes to hashtags in tweets? Use the comments section below to share your thoughts.

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 (March 31-April 1, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

"[T]elling a good story is only part of the equation," writes Kim St. John-Stevenson, communications officer at the St. Luke's Foundation of Cleveland, in a recent Getting Attention blog post. If they want to tell a great story -- and what organization doesn't? -- "nonprofits must also look to use data and outcomes....Great stories are a precise blend of outcomes (conveyed in tangible data) together with a healthy dose of good storytelling and visual imagery."

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares a couple of data points, in infographic form, from NTEN and consulting firm M+R's soon-to-be-released annual e-benchmarking study.

Fundraising

Atlantic Wire reporter Jen Doll takes a closer look at how private secondary schools in New York City are boosting their fundraising results by "mining" parents' personal data. "[Y]ucky or not," writes Doll, "good marketing brings results. School donations in New York City have increased jawdroppingly (268 percent) in the last ten years, for a median donation per school of $1.7 million, up from $462,341...."

Impact/Effectiveness

Good interview on the Global Impact Investing Network site with Rockefeller Foundation head Judith Rodin about the foundation's catalytic role in the impact investing space and the next phase of its efforts to build the industry.

International Affairs/Development

On the WSJ's Wealth Report blog, Robert Frank asks readers whether British prime minister David Cameron's budget proposal -- which, among other things, "would cap the tax relief for wealthy givers at 25 percent of their annual income, or £50,000, whichever is higher" –- would reduce overall giving. Proposals floated by the Obama administration to do something similar in this country have been non-starters. What do you think? Is charitable giving by the wealthy largely driven by tax policy? Use the comments section below to share your thoughts.

Heading to Africa last week, Bill Gates shared his itinerary with readers of his Gates Notes blog. In Zambia, one of his stops, he'll be meeting with key partners to discuss malaria-eradication efforts there. "Malaria deaths are way down from their peak in Zambia. Bed nets have been very effective. But we're still looking for answers to some questions about them," writes the ever-curious Gates. "How much do they help long term? How quickly do they wear out?...[D]o malaria deaths eventually rebound, as we've seen somewhat in Zambia (particularly in the north)? Why the increase -- is it because people didn't use the nets, because they’re torn, because mosquitoes adapted, or simply because mosquito numbers vary from year to year?"

Philanthropy

On her blog, the Nonprofiteer makes a case for spending down rather than giving "out amounts insufficient to make any significant change" in tackling the world's most pressing challenges. "No, philanthropy isn't supposed to be society's primary source of support," she writes, "but while people are busy starving government so they can drown it in the bathtub, private wealth can and should step into the breach. Consider," she adds,

the contributions of the Gates Foundations to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Can anyone really argue it would be better to hold back on eradicating those diseases, in case there’s some bigger plague later on? If there is, as AIDS itself demonstrates, we’ll mobilize and raise money for it. Meanwhile, in case of every ailment, time is our enemy: the later we provide resources, the harder it will be for those resources to have impact. Thus wasting money is a less significant risk than failing to spend enough to make a difference....

Earlier this week the Council of Foundations announced Ocean Conservancy CEO Vikki Spruill as its new president and CEO, effective July 1. Spruill's background "is an interesting mix of two intersecting professional streams," ocean conservation and public relations, writes NPQ columnist Rick Cohen, and her new colleagues undoubtedly will be asking how she plans to strengthen the trade association, build membership, and stabilize and improve its finances. But Cohen has a few questions of his own for Spruill:

• What can and should philanthropy do to address environmental justice issues?
• What is the role of the council in addressing the nonprofit sector’s multiyear, recession-induced revenue shortfall?
• What, if anything, does the council plan to do to address the concerns of progressives who increasingly see some big foundations as part of the one percent?
• Will she revive efforts to push foundations to pay more attention to rural needs?
• And will she take a position on whether the foundation community should be monitoring and reporting on aspects of racial equity in its grantmaking, staffing, and leadership?

Tough questions and a tough job. We'll be rooting for her.

Over at Co.Exist, senior editor Ariel Schwartz talks with Global Philanthropy Forum head Jane Wales about Google, Pepsi, and the future of giving.

Social Entrepreneurship

In his Forbes.com column, Tom Watson takes a closer look at online giving platform GlobalGiving, whose co-founder and president, Mari Kuraishi, was in Japan last week to check on the progress of earthquake and tsunami recovery efforts there. While GlobalGiving itself has come a long way since its debut as a kind of "eBay of philanthropy" a decade ago, its success, Watson reminds us,

provides a central lesson for social entrepreneurs who look to for-profit business success stories as pure models that can be transferred to the world causes and development. The path is slower, the route can be even more crooked, and even the goals can shift....

Transparency

On the Transparency Talk blog, Janet Camarena, director of the Foundation Center's San Francisco library, commends the Omidyar Network's David Sasaki for committing to be the "most transparent grant-maker in philanthropy" by publishing grants data on his blog within fifteen days of the signing of a grant agreement. At the same time, notes Camarena, even with Sasaki's and ON's commitment to greater transparency, ON only meets fourteen of the twenty-three transparency and accountability criteria listed on the Foundation Center's Glasspockets site. Like other grantmakers, she adds, ON is

is lacking what many in the field have found the most challenging: sharing details about things like an assessment of [its] overall performance, a centralized knowledge base of lessons learned from previous program evaluations, details about its investment policies, and information about its diversity practices...."

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

-- The Editors

Emotion and the Search for Meaning at SXSW

(Thaler Pekar is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. In her last post, she wrote about your "T-shape" and how paying attention to it can help you collaborate.)

I just returned from the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW), where I participated in a panel on applying story and narrative in organizations. I went to SXSW looking to explore my contention that, in an increasingly loud, complex, and data-saturated world, a smart leader's role is not to add more information but to communicate meaning. That certainly was the subtext of a fascinating discussion I sat in on titled "Maps of Time: Data as Narrative."

During the discussion, Burt Herman, co-founder of Storify, the popular social media curation tool, argued that because "every story is not perfectly understood in the moment," the use of algorithms to mine user data is a perfectly legitimate way to help people decide what's important. Pushing back a bit on Herman's point, Jenn Thom, a research scientist at IBM's Visual Communication Lab, noted that "the algorithms we create to sift through data are not apolitical." And Drew Harry, Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab, presented a program he is developing that helps people decide in real time what is and isn't important.

But it was panelist Nicola Hughes, a Knight-Mozilla Fellow, who said something that really electrified me, perfectly capturing what in my opinion was the real theme of this year's SXSW Interactive conference: that true social and technological innovation requires the marriage of offline and online activities, the combination of the digital and the human. Hughes noted that when people are trying to make sense of news in the moment -- think of trending stories on Twitter -- "untruths can travel far." Is sense-making then, true to what actually happened or why it happened? And, she added by way of warning, because all of us are producing and being exposed to a lot more of "It" (data, news, and information in narrative form), "we're going to be getting 'It' wrong more often."

In a conversation after the panel discussion, Hughes told me that "journalists will be the archeologists of the future. They will have to sift through big data to try to make sense of it all." I then shared with her my belief that there are always four stories: the story you tell; the story you hear; the story that is the truth; and the story you are not hearing. Nicola explained that, in the technological realm, the fourth story is referred to as "unknown knowledge."

The exchange was indicative of the undercurrent of "meaning-making" that ran through this year's conference. In addition to many panels on the use of technology for social good, there was a focus on what "Buddhist Geek" Vincent Horn calls the "collectivization of intent." Indeed, during a panel discussion titled "Closer to One: Buddhism and the Internet of Things," Matt Rolandson, of the design company Ammunition Group, asked the important question: "Now that anything is possible, what is worth making possible? What is meaningful?"

David Womack, creative director of interactive design at R/GA and a professor at the School of Visual and Performing Arts, led an equally compelling session titled "Does Your Product Have a Plot?" During the session, Womack stressed the importance of adding emotional complexity to product design so as to foster deeper customer engagement. I understood him in part to be saying that we all must demonstrate a deep regard for our customers and partners, that people are highly complex and emotional, and that it is a sign of respect to offer them content that emphathetically reflects this complexity.

The goal, said Womack, is emotional rather than product complexity, and he provided several examples to illustrate his point:

• Amazon adding product reviews and, more recently, social sharing. According to Womack, Amazon is okay with a certain level of customer confusion because it keeps people coming back to the site, improving the odds they'll eventually buy something. As for negative product reviews, don't sweat 'em. Even if people are sharing negative stories about your product, said Womack, they are contributing complexity to the system, which serves to keep others interested.
• The Tiffany Love Stories campaign, which Womack designed. Prior to the campaign, Tiffany didn't know whether people would be willing to share highly emotional stories of falling in love. But today, there are more than forty thousand such stories on the site. Why? Because, said Womack, by adding photos and then video, Tiffany ratcheted up the emotional complexity of the campaign, which kept people more engaged.
• And, finally, Apple -- because, said Womack, they infuse technologically complex products with emotion (think of the blinking, "breathing" on/off light on a Mac), which helps to make them seem less complex.

In closing, Womack delivered two statements with relevance for the nonprofit sector: "Products that provide a platform for stories will be the ones that stick around." And, "We are lucky enough to live in complicated and interesting times for storytelling."

I also caught a terrifically funny and compassionate workshop by veteran character actor Jeffrey Tambor (The Larry Sanders Show, Arrested Development). In it, Tambor, while coaching a young acting student, managed to perfectly capture the importance of fully embracing emotional complexity and offering meaning to one's audience:

Tambor: "Have you ever been so mad that you jumped up and down?"

Student: "Probably."

Tambor: "What the f*ck?! Don't think. Just say, 'Yes!'"

Exactly! We are all more effective as communicators when we honestly embrace emotion and offer meaning to our audiences.

-- Thaler Pekar

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

Weekend Link Roundup (March 3-4, 2012)

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

African Americans

In a followup to her post last week on NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal reminds of us how Black History Month came to be and, with an eye to this year's theme, asks others to share their stories "about the innumerable contributions that our African American sisters have made to our culture and society and the role that they play today in philanthropy in the continuing struggle for equity and justice."

Communications/Marketing

On her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz makes the case for marketing as the key driver of "how your organization builds and strengthens [its] relationships with the people whose help you need to move your mission forward." If your organization isn't paying attention to how it markets itself, adds Schwartz, it's "losing out on the potential to develop more and stronger relationships."

Microfinance

On his Open Book blog, David Roodman shares a couple of charts illustrating the rise and decline of Indian microfinance.

Nonprofit Management

Over at the Nonprofit Quarterly, Kate Barr and Ruth McCambridge take issue with the findings of a recent report from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University which surveyed 526 nonprofit financial managers at midsize charities -- those with revenues between $1 million and $5 million -- and concluded that many of those professionals have gaps in their financial knowledge. Write Barr and McCambridge:

The report is heralded by a press release entitled "Gaps in Financial Knowledge Challenge Mid-Size Nonprofits" but there is no information in the survey results or even in the report that supports the claim that the nonprofits represented have any particular or acute challenges that could not be explained by a bad economy. In fact, about half have more than four months of operating funds in the bank and about a quarter have more than seven months' worth....

In the Spring issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Peter Kim and Jeffrey Bradach look at a few themes that provide insight into what has shaped, and will continue to shape, the growth of a new class of super-sized, $50 million-plus nonprofits.

Social Good

Using examples from the recent Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington, Geoff Livingston, vice president of strategic partnerships at Razoo, offers sixteen tips on the Case Foundation blog for nonprofit organizations and funders looking to participate in a giving day or other online social good contest.

Elsewhere, the Acumen Fund's Sasha Dichter shares an interview at Say100 Media in which he explains why Generosity Day, a day-long event in February that sought to inspire generous acts nationwide, was a success.

Social Media

Facebook is now making its Timeline format available to organizations with a brand page. To help nonprofits get started, social media guru Beth Kanter offers a list of tips in a post on her blog.

Transparency

In a guest post on the Communications Network blog, Philanthomedia's Susan Herr shares a video in which Foundation Center president Brad Smith explains why foundations have a responsibility to communicate their role in driving 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

[Video] The Importance of Messaging: An Interview With Foundation Center President Brad Smith

Foundation Center President Brad Smith recently was interviewed by PhilanthroMedia's Susan Herr for the Communications Network about the responsibility of foundations to communicate what they do and why they do it. In an ever-more crowded media environment, Smith says, it is vital for foundations to repeat their messages -- and to do so not out of fear, but out of a desire to share their aspirations to build a better world.

(Running time: 5:40)

What do you think? Have foundations learned how to communicate effectively in the digital age? What do they need to do differently or better? In a noisy, always-on world, do we need to rethink the idea of humility?

-- Daniel Matz

Weekend Link Roundup (February 25-26, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks explains why it might be time to think about retiring your nonprofit CEO as organizational spokesperson. According to the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, for-profit chief executives were trusted by only 50 percent of survey respondents in 2011, and that figure declined by 12 points to 38 percent in 2012. "I don't think nonprofit CEOs have done as much to squander their collective reputation as corporate CEOs have," writes Brooks. "But maybe some of the dirt has rubbed off on our leaders...."

Environment

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy blog, NCRP executive director Aaron Dorfman announces the release of a new report, Cultivating the Grassroots: A Winning Approach for Environment and Climate Funders (52 pages, PDF), which suggests that foundations "can be more effective and secure more environmental wins by investing heavily in grassroots communities that are disproportionately impacted by environment and climate harms...."

Health

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has a nice Q&A with veteran Major League Baseball pitcher Jamie Moyer and his wife, Karin, whose Moyer Foundation works to help children and teens struggling with the death of someone close or who live with an addicted or co-dependent family member.

Nonprofit Management

In a piece for the Washington Post, Nonprofit Finance Fund CEO Antony Bugg-Levine argues that many nonprofits, particularly frontline agencies such as homeless service providers, health clinics, and domestic violence shelters that provide essential services to the most vulnerable communities, are facing an "existential crisis." And it's not a short-term crisis resulting from cyclical cuts. "Even if the economy recovers," writes Bugg-Levine,

structural demands on public coffers driven by inexorable demographic trends and the inevitable diversion of public resources to pay off deficits will reduce governments’ capacity to fund essential social services for the next few decades at least....

Once we accept this fact, the typical responses -- blaming the government for its stinginess or blaming service providers for their inefficiency -- will be revealed as increasingly inadequate explanations.

Instead of these default responses, we need to consider a fundamental question: "How will we secure a just and vibrant society now that our old models of sustaining essential organizations are disintegrating?"...

In the wake of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure/Planned Parenthood debacle, Albert Ruesga offers some advice to charities on his White Courtesy Telephone blog. The "time for charities to do their soul-searching is now," writes Ruesga. "Once a campaign against your organization goes viral, it's time for you to step up to the microphones and tell the world who you are and where you stand. Faced with the question, What are you about?, in the wake of an unpopular decision, do you have a clear idea what you would say?"

To help nonprofits still waiting for economic recovery to knock on their door, Social Velocity president Nell Edgington offers a list of things nonprofit leaders can do to create a sustainable financial model.

Philanthropy Journal's Todd Cohen looks at how community foundations are adapting their business model to keep pace with the evolving needs of donors. For example, the recent merger of the Boston Foundation and the Philanthropic Initiative, writes Cohen, has created a hybrid model for community foundations that focuses on generating new funds and providing training and resources for donors. TPI president and CEO Ellen Remmer told Cohen that this type of structure "can help ease a natural tension [TPI] identified in the old model in a study ten years ago...."

Philanthropy

After sharing findings from a recent Blackbaud report on online giving which found that "when large International Affairs organizations are removed from the analysis," online giving increased 13 percent in 2011, Allison Fine says the data confirms what many have known for years: "[O]nline giving is here to stay, most online giving happens when speed is important (year end and natural disasters), building relationships online (e.g. alumni) is a [key] to increasing giving."

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Jacob Harold, philanthropy program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, says that transparency, measurement of multiple bottom lines, proactive engagement with stakeholders, and collaboration "offer a framework for foundations to be more effective while avoiding unproductive government intervention. They are not simple boxes to be checked," adds Harold, "each is an attitude that must be embedded across foundation activities and constantly refreshed...."

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

-- The Editors

Not All New Media Is ‘New’ Any More

(Bruce Trachtenberg is executive director of the Communications Network, an organization of people who work for or on behalf of the nation's grantmakers. A version of this post appears on the Commnetwork blog.)

I'm pretty sure we didn't pop any champagne corks, do fist bumps, or high five each other, but I recall a feeling of exhilaration the first time -- probably in the 1990s -- I pressed the send button on e-mail with an attached PDF version of a report detailing findings from an initiative underwritten by a foundation where I worked. My colleagues and I -- freed from the labor and time-intensive process of distributing print publications -- thought we'd truly entered the digital age. In a blink of an eye, reports of any length could be on their way to key audiences in seconds.

Fast forward almost twenty years, and even though the PDF is still very much with us, that habit of turning reports, white papers, books, policy briefs, and the like into digital facsimiles and e-mailing and posting them online is on its way to being labeled an OLD new media practice.

In fact, just last week, the Center for Digital Information held a roundtable discussion with the title "Beyond the PDF" that showed off some impressive examples of how think tanks, foundations, and policy institutions are taking advantage of the best the new technology has to offer -- interactive graphics and visualizations, mapping tools, online databases, multimedia, and touch-interface smartphone and tablet applications -- to do what Jeff Stanger, the group's executive director, describes as more effectively "injecting” information into public policy debates and other social change discussions.

For anyone who cut his or her teeth in a world where print and print-like products were the gold standards of information dissemination, it takes a moment (sometimes longer) before you realize that a game can actually do a pretty good job of informing people about the challenges of trying to come up with a manageable federal budget or that a cartoon-like presentation can answer the question "How will the affordable health care act affect me?" at least as well, if not better, than traditional text presentations.

Those examples -- and others that detail the differing political beliefs Americans hold, the potential threat to developing countries from climate change, and how Americans cope with high energy costs -- demonstrate that by embracing the power of new digital technologies, we can turn static, often dry data into useful online engagements that hold great promise for thoughtfully informing and advancing public dialogue on topics such as health, education, the environment, the economy, national security, international affairs, and global development.

Another advantage that true digital publications offer is the ability to comprehensively measure the depth of user engagement -- from number of visitors to page views to which information garnered the most attention and interest. It’s far better knowing that people are paying attention to your materials than wondering if they're getting read at all. Still, that level of measurement is no substitute for the higher bar that any material disseminated to influence thinking or behavior must ultimately meet to be judged a success: Did anyone do any thing different as a result? Did they take action?

Ironically, whereas the now (in some quarters) scorned but still ubiquitous PDF offers great efficiency and obvious cost savings over its traditional print counterparts, these newer digitally native products come with both a higher price tag and greater time demands, not to mention the requirement for people with new skills to do the work. It's a fact that shouldn't dissuade us from turning more information products into digitally native forms.

Gabriella Fitz, co-director of IssueLab, a nonprofit that archives, distributes, and promotes the extensive and diverse body of research being produced by the nonprofit sector -- and someone who probably sees more traditional research reports than most people -- agrees that "more and more social cause research should be presented in interactive formats. The fact is that people don't have the time to read forty-page white papers."

But Fitz also worries that the research smaller foundations and nonprofits produce might get ignored "just because they don't have the budget to produce these kind of interactive pieces." And she acknowledges that "a lot of folks default to PDFs because they simply don't have the skills or creative encouragement to do it differently and don't have the money to hire those who do." Still, she's optimistic that "we can work on the skills and the creative encouragement." The money, on the other hand, will probably remain a hurdle too high for some.

On that point, Stanger says organizations doing the research need to take the lead in making the case that the cost of not embracing the new "threatens the vital informational role" of foundations, think tanks, and policy institutions. "In a society increasingly accustomed to information in digital form," he adds, "credibility, authority, and relevance are attributes that will be reserved for research organizations that successfully adopt new interactive forms that are native to digital media."

-- Bruce Trachtenberg

Weekend Link Roundup (February 18-19, 2012)

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

African Americans

NCRP's Lisa Ranghelli points out that only 0.58 percent of grantmakers list "African Americans/Blacks" as a field of interest, even though African Americans comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population and have a 27 percent poverty rate (compared to the overall rate of 15 percent). Many foundations give to benefit African Americans, of course, but too often one has to read between the lines to learn who they are. And when "we have to read between the lines," writes Ranghelli, do we risk perpetuating "the funding of solutions that are poorly targeted and not explicitly designed to serve those we seek to help most?"

BlackGiveBack’s Tracey Webb chats with Association of Black Foundation Executives president/CEO Susan Taylor Batten about the state of black philanthropy and what the ABFE is doing to boost the visibility of black giving circles.

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Network for Good's Katya Andresen explains why nonprofit communications and marketing staff should pay close attention to the colors they use when putting together promotional materials.

Impact/Effectiveness

In a guest post on Joanne Fritz's About.com blog, Social Velocity president Nell Edgington discusses how philanthropic equity, "a one-time infusion of significant money that can be used to strengthen or grow a nonprofit organization," can be used to dramatically increase an organization's effectiveness.

Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan argues that if "we want to...inspire nonprofit leaders to use data more effectively to improve the impact of their work, we should look within the sector for examples."

In a new post on his Harvard Business Review blog, Uncharitable author Dan Pallotta argues that fundraising is the "smart investment" of the twenty-first century. "If you want to maximize the social effects of your donation," writes Pallotta, "why would you buy...$100,000 worth of great educational programming for inner city kids when the same $100,000 directed toward fundraising could generate enough money to buy $1 million worth of it?..."

Philanthropy

In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Paul Brest, who will be stepping down as president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation this summer, reflects on the growing importance of strategic philanthropy and its prospects for the future.

On the Transparency Talk blog, Foundation Center vice president for research Larry McGill discusses the rather painful process of analyzing imperfect data. "[D]espite the limitations of [the center's] data," writes McGill, "we fully intend to keep publishing reports documenting and explaining the work of U.S. foundations. Even if what we produce sometimes comes back to bite us...."

Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz shares the first two buzzwords of 2012: data and flash mob philanthropy.

Social Media

In a post on the Communications Network blog, PhilanthroMedia's Susan Herr chats with Nonprofit Technology Network executive director Holly Ross about the importance of strategy in social media use. In the video, Ross describes the evolution of NTEN's use of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn over the past three years and notes that having a good strategy isn't enough: an organization also needs a culture that supports and is comfortable with the give-and-take that comes with engaging people online.

Nonprofit Tech 2.0's Heather Mansfield, author of Social Media for Social Good, offers a list of ten "must-follow" nonprofit organizations on Pinterest, a social networking site that allows users to create virtual "pinboards."

And Beth Kanter has some advice for organizations looking to engage more effectively with their fans on Facebook.

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

-- The Editors

A 'Flip' Chat With...Sarah Durham, Principal and Founder, Big Duck

(This video 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 Annie E. Casey Foundation president and CEO Patrick McCarthy.)

At a recent Foundation Center event, Big Duck founder Sarah Durham explained that her book Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications was written for small nonprofits that do not have the budget to hire an outside consulting group like her New York City-based communications firm.

Yes, the principles behind effective communications are pretty basic. But because most nonprofit leaders aren't well versed in marketing/communications strategy, they often have trouble following through on them, says Durham. For that reason, Brandraising seeks to show executive directors how to raise funds and increase the visibility of their organizations using approaches developed by some of the most successful fundraisers in the country.

Before the event got under way, I had a chance to chat with Durham about the different levels of "brandraising," the role young staff members can play in the strategic planning process, and how Big Duck measures its impact. On that last point, Durham said her colleagues set measurable goals at the start of each project and then, after implementation, sit down with the client to compare notes and see whether they were on target.

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

 

(Running time: 4 minutes, 1 second)

What do you think? Do you agree with Durham that mobile is "the next big thing"? Has your organization started collecting cell phone numbers? Feel free to share you brandraising success stories in the comments section below.

-- Regina Mahone