PhilanTopic

Weekend Link Roundup (June 8-9, 2013)

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

Collaboration

"The idea behind nonprofit mergers isn't cost savings -- in a high-touch world like ours, there is only so much excess you might be able to trim in a merger," writes Boston Foundation president/CEO Paul Grogan in PhilanTopic. "Rather, it's all about service. Organizations that merge and/or collaborate build capacity to do more of what they do best, and do it even better...."

Communications/Marketing

On the Knight Foundation blog, Elizabeth Miller highlights conversations from the 2013 Grantmakers for Effective Organizations conference about how funders can better communicate what they learn:

Prioritize the audience. Know specifically whom you're trying to reach with your findings so that what you're learning is shared in the right circles.

Market determines method. Understanding who will benefit from these insights may determine the best way to deliver them. Different platforms or social media outlets may be your "friends" in distinct cases.

Enlist the evaluated. Work with grantees to help disseminate the findings.

Reflect and refine. Take time to measure the success of your efforts. Measurement is as important as the planning process in terms of understanding what works. Use specific analytics to determine whether dissemination methods were effective, whether you targeted the right audiences, and how you could improve on the overall strategy next time.

Beth Kanter, co-author of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, shares findings from a recent report on video use among nonprofits by Edelman, See3, and YouTube. Based on a survey of five hundred nonprofits as well as interviews with experts in the field, Into Focus: Benchmarks for Video and a Guide for Creators found that while video is important now and will become even more important for nonprofit groups over the next three years, more than half of respondents said their budgets do not support more video production.

Diversity

In a video on the Bush Foundation blog, Jennifer Ford Reedy, the Minnesota-based foundation's president, talks about the foundation's new Resident Fellows program, which will offer three-year staff positions to a variety of individuals "in order to inject new ideas into the foundation and provide a launch pad for the fellows' subsequent career opportunities."

Grantmaking

In another post on the Knight Foundation blog, Jenna Buehler recaps three tips on learning from failure shared by the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Rafael López, the Henry P. Kendall Foundation's Courtney Bournes, and Knight's own Michael Maness at the GEO conference's opening panel discussion: 1) Confront it; 2) Be a champion for change and ask the hard questions; and 3) Give it time. "[I]t's important to allow time and space for ideas to incubate and grow," said Maness. "Offering context and information on the practice itself can help to warm up leaders prior to the big pitch."

Human/Civil Rights

On the Open Society Foundations blog, Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch and David Holiday look at recent attempts by human rights groups to get governments to adopt drug policy reforms aimed at ending the failed War on Drugs.

Impact/Effectiveness

Philanthropy 411's Kris Putnam-Walkerly urges funders to think about three questions when evaluating a grantmaking program or initiative:

1. What do you want to know?
2. Who needs to know it?
3. How will the evaluation findings be used?

Leadership

In a recent article for her On Leadership column at WashingtonPost.com, Jena McGregor wonders why Nancy Brinker is still listed on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure's Web site as the organization's CEO nearly a year after the cancer charity announced that Brinker intended to step down from the position. The charity, which was widely criticized for its February 2012 decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood affiliates -- a decision which it subsequently reversed -- is in the midst of a "very thorough executive search," Komen spokesperson Andrea Rader told McGregor. Maybe so, but "it may be that much harder to find and attract incoming CEO candidates," writes McGregor, "when they know the founder will be sticking around in a yet-to-be-well-defined role."

Social Media

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is asking for help in naming its new podcast, which is scheduled to launch next month. Hosted by Christine Nieves Rodriguez, program associate of RWJF's Pioneer Initiative, the podcast will "provide listeners with insight about the types of ideas in which the Pioneer team wants to invest,...[and] will include conversations with program officers, grantees, and friends, as well as news about grants and events." Have an idea for a name? Share your suggestions here.

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 23-24, 2013)

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

Black Male Achievement

On the GuideStar blog, Zeina Fayyaz, manager of the Social Innovation Forum and Social Innovation Accelerator at Root Cause, announces a call for applications to the 2013-14 Black Male Achievement Social Innovation Accelerator. Modeled after the Social Innovation Forum, the accelerator program will provide, over twelve months, capacity-building and coaching support totaling more than $150,000 to five BMA Innovators, along with opportunities to network with funders and the chance to become a national leader in the field of black male achievement.

Higher Education

Is student debt the new subprime? Writing on the Demos blog, Thomas Hedges thinks it may be. "Education itself, which many considered a right thirty years ago, has become a market product," writes Hedges. "University presidents are, in the end, fundraisers, soliciting large donations and encouraging students to take out loans that will take decades to pay back. The costs of tuition, which are cleverly obscured for low-income students, slam students years after they graduate, once they realize what paying off, say, $30,000 in student debt means." As one 30-year-old woman with $120,000 in student loans tells Hedges: "The grim truth is that universities and student loans are no longer creating the American dream, they are destroying it, one wide-eyed dreamer at a time.”

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Arabella Advisors blog, Cynthia Muller, director of the firm's impact investing practice, is encouraged by signs that the strategy is gaining traction.

On his Gift Hub blog, Phil Cubeta shares an "open" letter addressed to venture philanthropy pioneer and Leap of Reason author Mario Marino. Writes Cubeta:

I work with financial people. When they learn they can keep clients from giving money out from under management by selling them a feel good story about a “social venture portfolio,” the social economy will shift from nonprofits to for-profits. What will be lost are the local, small, inept organizations that formed you. Like the parish. That is, unless we show respect for these informal orgs and love them back as they loved us, when we were weak

And Mario responds.

"Debates in the private sector have devolved into an existential struggle between two camps: one which believes that privacy is dead and profit is king, and one which fears that any reuse of data beyond the original purpose for which it was collected is a potential threat to privacy and civil liberties," writes Robert Kirkpatrick, director of the UN's Global Pulse initiative, on the Harvard Business Review blog. "[Our] goal is to insert a third pole into this discussion: Big Data is a raw public good, and we must work together to find ways to harness it for massive social impact, both safely and responsibly. For this to happen, data philanthropy has to become a private sector priority."

Nonprofit Management

Nonprofits need to lose their fear of failure, writes Ashley Good, founder and CEO of Engineers Without Borders Canada's Fail Forward project, on the Idealist.org blog, "because almost everything we do has elements of both success and failure." To get beyond that fear, Good suggests six strategies designed to "encourage communication about failures, support collaborative learning, and break down much of the fear associated with taking action."

Charity Navigator's Sandra Miniutti defends the charity evaluator's recent decision to factor out joint cost allocations from program expenses and allocate them to fundraising costs. As a result of the change, sixty-six charities in the CN database now have lower ratings, leading one of the nonprofits to compare CN to the hall monitor from the animated South Park series. Writes Miniutti:

[A]re we offended to be called the "mean-looking hall monitor from South Park?" No, we can take it. This type of response is in the nature of what happens when you make judgments and rate organizations....But what really concerns us is that wasting time calling us names doesn't change anything. Where is the outrage in the sector with regards to excessive joint cost allocations? Where are the charities that refrain from this practice? They should be standing up and demanding that other charities change their ways....

Philanthropy

To mark the centennial of the Rockefeller Foundation, the the Rockefeller Archive Center has created a Web site to tell the story of the foundation’s first hundred years. The site includes an overview of the foundation's work by subject area; a sampling of internal reports and memoranda, correspondence about Rockefeller Foundation projects, excerpts from board meeting dockets and entries from the diaries of foundation staff members; and an interactive map to help visitors to the site navigate the material. Nicely done!

Social Media

Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield shares five types of tweets nonprofits should avoid sending. The list includes: 1) truncated automated tweets from Facebook; 2) automated tweets announcing new photos posted on Facebook; 3) tweets with too many hashtags; 4) poorly formatted tweets; and 5) tweets with semicolons (who knew?).

Best-selling author Seth Godin suggests that we create a standard for online communicating that encourages fairness and generosity. "Online communities are quick to form, but they're just as quick to fade, to become less open and to become less trusting because sometimes we have a cultural orientation toward taking, not giving," writes Godin. "We forget to feed the network first, to take care of those we care about."

Women & Girls

On the Huffington Post, veteran journalist Evelyn Leopold recaps the UN's recent Commission on the Status of Women conference, which concluded with all UN member states agreeing to a code that condemns violence against women and girls.

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

On 'Race, History, and Obama's Second Term'

On January 25, Washington Monthly, in partnership with the New America Foundation, marked the publication of its January/February issue by hosting a two-hour panel discussion on "Race, History, and Obama's Second Term." Led by WM editor-in-chief Paul Glastris, the panel sought to do something "that doesn't much happen in Washington...[that is,] talk frankly about questions of race."

First, though, a factoid, courtesy of political scientist Daniel Q. Gillion: President Obama -- who was sworn in to office for a second four-year term on January 21, a hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War -- mentioned race fewer times in his first two years in office than any other Democratic president since 1961.

The panelists -- Douglas Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II and a contributing editor at the Washington Post; Elijah Anderson, author of the Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life and William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University; Taylor Branch, an award-winning author and historian; and Dr. Gail Christopher, vice president for program strategy at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation -- engaged in a conversation on race in America while answering a series of questions posed by Glastris: What is the state of race relations in America a century and a half after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation? Have we progressed as much as we like to think we have? Why are people of color in America still subject to disparities in health, wealth, education, and incarceration? What might President Obama do in his second term to narrow these disparities? And, at a time of reduced social and economic mobility, what policies that help minorities can also benefit the majority?

Blackmon discussed his book Slavery By Another Name, now a PBS documentary, which argues that contrary to popular belief, forms of slavery persisted in America for another hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. Under the Thirteenth Amendment, involuntary servitude was legal as punishment for a crime and continued to impact millions of African Americans in the rural South, thanks to the efforts of white supremacists and others who, with the connivance of local and state courts, "reconfigured the criminal justice system...to force huge numbers of African Americans into hard labor." While the amendment paved the way for the short-term reconstruction of the South, said Blackmon, it also helped revitalize the cotton-based economy of the region and made possible a system that was harsher and, in many instances, more brutal than the "peculiar institution" that preceded it. The repercussions are still with us. "We can see it in the persistent disparity between whites and blacks," said Blackmon -- and that is why, he added, we must acknowledge and confront the enormity of what was done to African Americans, before and after the Civil War, if we are to fully heal and move beyond our dark past.

Next up, Elijah Anderson discussed his most recent piece for Washington Monthly, which looks at how racial prejudice in America has changed over the past sixty years by comparing the murder in Mississippi of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 and the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida last February. Beyond the fact that both were killed after purchasing candy from a local corner store, Till and Martin were both victims of what Anderson called "different strains of racial tension in America." The racism that led to Till's death, said Martin,

was embedded in a virulent ideology of white racial superiority born out of slavery and the Jim Crow codes, particularly in the Deep South. That sort of racism hinges on the idea that blacks are an inherently inferior race, a morally null group that deserves both the subjugation and poverty it gets.

The racial prejudice that led to Trayvon Martin's death is different. While it, too, was born of America's painful legacy of slavery and segregation, and informed by those old concepts of racial order -- that blacks have their "place" in society -- it in addition reflects the urban iconography of today's racial inequality, namely the black ghetto, a uniquely urban American creation....

Anderson went on to explain the concept of the "iconic ghetto," an idea rooted in older forms of racism that identified African Americans with a specific physical context -- such as the field or maid's quarters -- and which often punished them when they were encountered out of that context. Today, said Anderson, African-Americans are identified, in the minds of many Americans, with the ghetto, and when an African-American individual is encountered in, say, a wealthy neighborhood,  he or she is often "treated with suspicion, avoided, pulled over, frisked, arrested -- or worse." It is this strain of racially based tension that led to Martin's death, Anderson said, and it is one of the things that continues to hold America back from making progress on the racial front.

Taylor Branch followed Anderson at the lectern. Best known as the author of America in the King Years, his magisterial three-volume chronicle of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, Branch explained how King was unable to get President John F. Kennedy to issue a second Emancipation Proclamation outlawing segregation on the one-hundred-year anniversary of the original proclamation. Kennedy's failure to act was a turning point for King and the movement, said Branch, because it was then that King realized he had to "go to Birmingham and essentially recreate those conditions -- not a full-fledged Civil War, but something that dramatized the moral imperative of the segregation issue in America."

Branch also noted that over the next five years the nation will celebrate a series of fiftieth anniversaries linked to crucial moments in the civil rights movement -- from the assassination of NAACP field director Medgar Evers in Mississippi in June 1963, to the March on Washington and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech later that summer, to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like many in the audience, Branch seemed to be looking forward to celebrating how far we've come since those violent, traumatic days, but he also noted that recent events like the shooting of Trayvon Martin serve as a reminder that too many people are "still imprisoned by a Reconstruction, post-Civil War blindness that shapes the whole landscape such that we're not even aware of it. Until we get as comfortable talking about race as we are about sports," Branch added, "we are just not there."

Last to the podium, Dr. Christopher discussed the work of the Kellogg Foundation in addressing "the legacy, not of race, but of racism -- an important distinction -- and the belief system that undergirds the history we speak of that somehow there is a [racial] hierarchy which has been embedded in every system we have and is not conscious in most of us." Christopher reminded the audience that issues of race are not simply black or white but are something that affect all of us. She explained that Kellogg partnered with Washington Monthly because media "shapes our consciousness and...project[s] a lot of the confusion [about race in America]." Moreover, the foundation believes it can play a role in helping the country heal its racial wounds by supporting media efforts to give voice to those that "have courage to tell the stories that make us who we are as a country."

Christopher added that a lot of work needs to be done to "put legs on" the unconscious bias concept and to help change the minds of people who are unaware that they are biased against a particular race or ethnic group. To that end, she briefly discussed the work of Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, whose 2004 book Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds argues that people underestimate how difficult it is to persuade people to adopt a different attitude or perspectice. As hard as it may be, said Christopher, "This is the unfinished business of our time, and we must rise to the challenge [if we are] to become one America."

What do you think? Do you agree with the panelists that America still has a long way to go to realize Dr. King's dream of equality for all? If so, how might social justice funders and activists go about addressing the many barriers to change? Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

And don't forget to check out the webcast of the event.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (February 2-3, 2013)

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

Diversity

Writing on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Owen Dunn shares highlights from remarks made by Karen Kelley-Ariwoola at a meeting of the Association of Black Foundation Executives in April 2012. In her remarks, Kelley-Ariwoola, a former vice president of community philanthropy at the Minneapolis Foundaton, describes her work with community groups to address racial equity issues in a region where many white people thrive while "low-income people of color suffer from disparities on every indicator."

In celebration of Black History Month, Center for High Impact Philanthropy program manager Autumn Walden chats with Sherrie Deans, executive director of the Admiral Center, about philanthropy in the African-American community, which, argues Deans, is an "important yet overlooked part of black history."

Gun Violence

Getting Attention's Nancy Schwartz suggests that nonprofit communicators can learn a thing or two from former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Giffords, who was critically wounded by a deranged gunmen at a public event two years ago and has been fighting to recover from her injuries, slowly but clearly articulated her message that the time has come to address gun violence in America. "We must do something," Giffords told committee members. "It will be hard, but...[y]ou must act. Be bold. Be courageous, Americans are counting on you."

Nonprofits

In a post republished on Beth Kanter's blog, Beth Noveck, former U.S. deputy chief technology officer for open government, discusses findings from Information for Impact: Liberating Nonprofit Sector Data, a recently published report she co-authored with Daniel Goroff, program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In the report, Noveck and Goroff argue that Form 990 data should be made available to the general public at no charge and in a format that lends itself to "doing aggregate analytics, creating visualizations and building analytic tools." In turn, writes Noveck, that "will enable more innovators, researchers, and entrepreneurs to use the data to benefit the sector."

To learn more about open data, the report, and the Aspen Institute's Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation, which commissioned the report, check out this video of a recent panel discussion featuring the authors; Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the White House's Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation; and Aspen's Jane Wales and Cinthia Schuman Ottinger. (Running time: 1:46:04)

Philanthropy

On her Nonprofit Marketing Blog, Katya Andresen shares findings from a recent report on "nex-gen" donors issued by the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University and 21/64, a nonprofit consulting firm. Among other things, the report, Next Gen Donors: Respecting Legacy, Revolutionizing Philanthropy (80 pages, PDF), found that high-net-worth Gen X and Geny Y (Millennial) individuals "care about impact and want to feel personally tied to the causes they support. Family heavily influences their choices of causes....[And they are serious]...about making real change and how heavily they use technology to engage with causes."

On the Council on Foundation's What Matters Now blog, Michael Bzdak, director of corporate contributions for Johnson & Johnson, applauds Bill Gates' call for a more thoughtful and holistic approach to measurement. "Implicit in Gates' essay," writes Bzdak,

is the fact that funders and grantees require the capacity and proficiency to set clear goals and design the means to measure progress. This shared responsibility creates an opportunity for meaningful dialogue and collaboration and could deliver the innovations in measurement that Gates suggests. Although measurement can be very complex and difficult, grantmakers have a responsibility to make it one of their core competencies....

For more on the emerging field of data-driven philanthropy, check out the remarks by self-described data wonk Lucy Bernholz at a recent Girl Geek Dinner. (Running time: 19:10)

Social Entrepreneurship/Innovation

Jane Chen, the CEO and co-founder of Embrace Innovations, a social enterprise that has developed a low-cost infant warmer that regulates the temperature of vulnerable newborns without the need for constant electricity, explains on the Harvard Business Review blog network why she decided to split the enterprise into two organizations: a nonprofit arm that would own the intellectual property for the technology, take philanthropic contributions, and build an ecosystem around which Chen and her colleagues could help promote newborn health; and a for-profit arm that would raise money from venture capitalists.

In her monthly "10 Great Social Innovation Reads" post, Social Velocity's Nell Edgington shares links to four different sets of predictions for the coming year, an article by Matthew Forti and Colin Murphy in the Stanford Social Innovation Review about what President Obama's successful reelection campaign can teach nonprofits about measurement, and a post by Foundation Center president Brad Smith about the unique freedom of foundations "not to forget" those whom society has forgotten.

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Jacqueline Ackerman, project coordinator for the Million Dollar List at Indiana University's School of Philanthropy, explains why the list is useful to high-net-worth donors, nonprofits, the media, and the general public. "Perhaps the most significant benefit of the [list] is that it promotes transparency in philanthropy," she writes. What's more,

Donors have provided their own information to the [list] in order to help provide a clearer picture of patterns and trends in million-dollar gifts. At the same time, the [list's] transparency offers donors the opportunity to leverage and coordinate their giving in supporting particular organizations or causes....

Women and Girls

Finally, on the Impatient Optimists' blog, Melinda Gates looks beyond the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals to share the different hopes and visions of prominent activists in the space for 2030.

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 (January 26-27, 2013)

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

Diversity

On the Tides Foundation's What's Possible blog, Toby Thompkins asks some thought-provoking questions about African Americans and U.S. history to remind us that "Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not just a day for or about black Americans; it is a day for and about all Americans."

Governance

On her Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington shares five questions to get your board "moving." They include: Why do you serve? What do you bring to our organization? And what do you want to contribute financially?

Impact/Effectiveness

Are we on the threshold of a new economic movement "that will result in all investors -- individual and institutional -- committing at least some portion of their investable assets to social impact"? Lisa Hall, president and CEO of the Calvert Foundation, believes we are, and in an essay in GreenMoney she explains how impact investing is driving that paradigm shift.

In a guest post on the Forbes blog, Kayleigh O'Keefe, associate director at the Corporate Executive Board, shares a "three-step method for "converting passive support into lasting partners":

1. For each of your key stakeholder groups, define a specific desired behavior.
2. If a certain stakeholder group is not doing what you’d like them to, determine why.
3. Focus your efforts o n removing the barrier to the desired behavior change.

Philanthropy

In a deeply thoughtful piece on the Nonprofit Quarterly site, longtime Public Welfare Foundation board member Thomas Scanlon reflects on the benefits and pitfalls of "strategic" philanthropy. A must-read for anyone who works in the sector.

In a similar vein, Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan, writing on the Harvard Business Review blog, argues that capitalism, while good at lots of things, is pretty bad at many other things -- which is precisely why an advanced capitalistic society like the United States has a nonprofit sector. Another must-read for all who work in the social sector.

On FSG's Social Impact blog, FSG board member and Global Philanthropy Forum president Jane Wales takes a closer look at philanthropy in Asia and sees a sector that, while experiencing some growing pains, has unlimited potential.

On its Philanthropy Potluck blog, the Minnesota Council on Foundations shares highlights of an open letter released by the Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation in which the foundation announced that it plans to distribute $79 million in grants in the coming year and will finalize an additional $25 million in grants -- part of a larger $100 million commitment -- in support of organizations working to address climate change and encourage the development of renewable energy.

Social Media

Following up on her post about twenty-nine nonprofit bloggers to follow on Twitter, Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield shares a list of twenty-nine nonprofit resources to follow on the microblogging site.

Transparency

At the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Rob DiLeonardi, executive director of the Chicago-based VNA Foundation, explains why there is value in small foundations like VNA signing on to the center's Reporting Commitment initiative. Writes DiLeonardi:

Small to medium-sized foundations are far more common in number, size and grantmaking level than their larger brethren. In fact, small foundations account for approximately half of America's total foundation grant dollars, and often provide the kind of essential local support that impacts lives on a daily basis.

In addition, most observers judge foundations by their effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency, not their asset size. Participation by smaller foundations like VNA (foundation philanthropy being one of the few settings in which a $50 million bank account is considered "small") is key, in my opinion, to making the Reporting Commitment's impact felt in more than a handful of sectors....

Women

Forty years after the Supreme Court protected a woman's right to an abortion in its landmark Roe v. Wade decision, "a quick look at the recent past demonstrates the tenuous status of a woman's right to choose, in spite of the fact that a majority of our population supports the Court's decision," writes Niki Jagpal on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog. Philanthropy can help protect a woman's right to choose, adds Jagpal, by stepping in "when groups such as Planned Parenthood come under attack from right-wing politicians or by supporting state groups like Reproductive Services.

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

-- The Editors

2012 Year in Review: Underserved Communities Targeted for Larger Share of Philanthropic Pie

The amount of money flowing to nonprofit organizations serving underserved populations and communities of color, and the number of private funders backing such programs, continued to grow in 2012, even as support for those communities from other sources was declining.

Over the course of the year, a number of foundations announced multimillion-dollar commitments to programs designed to address the needs of underserved communities and communities of color. They included the Ford Foundation, which announced a commitment of $100 million over ten years to extend its Ford Fellows program to young scholars from traditionally underrepresented groups; the Lumina Foundation, which awarded $11.5 million to thirteen partnerships working to increase college graduation rates among Latino-American students; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which announced an investment of $9.5 million over three years to improve the health and success of boys of color; and the California Community Foundation, which launched a multimillion-dollar initiative to expand educational and employment opportunities for African-American teenage boys in Los Angeles.

A number of corporate grantmakers also stepped up their support for underserved populations. They included Walmart, which through its foundation awarded $3.35 million to six women's foundations working to help economically vulnerable women achieve financial and economic security; AT&T, which announced a huge, $250 million commitment over five years to improve graduation rates among at-risk youth; and the UPS Foundation, which in February awarded $6 million to nearly a hundred and twenty organizations working to promote diversity and support underserved communities across the country and in June announced grants totaling $6.9 million to support the same kind of work globally.

A number of reports on the state of giving to underserved and underrepresented communities released during the course of the year also served to highlight philanthropy's growing interest in underserved and -represented communities. In January, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation issued Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Color (112 pages, PDF), which describes how identity-based funds -- funds specifically designed to pool contributions from donors and redistribute those funds through grants to individuals or organizations working at the community level -- have become essential drivers of social change. In February, Funders for LGBTQ Issues released Forty Years of LGBTQ Philanthropy: 1970–2010 (44 pages, PDF), which found that over the past four decades nearly eight hundred foundations have invested more than $771 million in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities, with a significant portion of that funding -- some 40 percent -- awarded between 2000 and 2006. And in the spring, the D5 coalition released a report (52 pages, PDF) that found a growing number of foundations and grantmaking organizations launching efforts aimed at making philanthropy more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

An article in Louisiana Weekly found more good news, citing the success of the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement, which since 2008 has awarded $29.6 million to organizations working to increase educational opportunity for black males and strengthen African-American families; and the Kellogg Foundation's Men and Boys of Color initiative. Around the same time, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy announced that the number of signatories to its Philanthropy's Promise campaign -- an eighteen-month-old effort to encourage grantmakers to provide at least half their grant dollars for the benefit of underserved communities and at least one quarter of their grant dollars for systemic change efforts involving advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement -- had nearly doubled, to a hundred and twenty-five foundations responsible for nearly $3.4 billion in annual grantmaking.

George Soros' Open Society Foundations continues to be an important driver of these efforts, and in the fall, in partnership with the Foundation Center,  it released a report which found that philanthropic support for black men and boys has grown steadily over the last decade, from $10 million in 2003 to $29 million in 2010. Two reports released by NCRP in November echoed that finding. The first, The Philanthropic Landscape: The State of Giving to Underserved Communities (6 pages, PDF), found that the share of U.S. foundation grant dollars benefiting economically disadvantaged people, the elderly, women and girls, and other marginalized groups had increased from 33 percent between 2004 and 2006 to 40 percent between 2008 and 2010. And the second, The Philanthropic Landscape: State of Social Justice Philanthropy (6 pages, PDF), found that since 2004 more grant dollars are being classified as social justice grants and that the number of foundations saying that they provide social justice funding at a substantial level has increased.

A final sign of progress was the launch, in September, of the Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement, a national membership network that aims to support the growth, sustainability, and impact of leaders and organizations across the country working to improve life outcomes and create systemic change for African-American men and boys. Sponsored by OSF, the Skillman Foundation, the California Endowment, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Heinz Endowments, the institute will work to assist advocacy and service programs focused on African-American men and boys that have experienced difficulties in sustaining their own work.

"Black men and boys are challenged by entrenched and systemic problems in need of innovative solutions," said Shawn Dove, who manages the Campaign for Black Male Achievement. "Leaders working in the field of black male achievement have always grappled with a lack of funding, capacity, and momentum. With the strong network of leaders created and sustained by the LSI, we [hope to] create the support system necessary to sustain effective programs and policies that will do much to improve the lives of black men and boys across the United States."

Related items:

UPS Foundation Awards $6 Million for Diversity Programs (2/13/12)

LGBTQ Community Received More Than $771 Million in Grants From 1970 to 2010, Report Finds (2/23/12)

AT&T Commits $250 Million to Boost Graduation Rates (3/19/12)

New Initiative Launched to Expand Opportunities for African-American Boys (5/07/12)

Foundations Working to Increase Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in Philanthropy, Report Finds (5/18/12)

Foundation Initiatives to Assist African-American Males Showing Results (6/07/12)

Number of Signatories to 'Philanthropy's Promise' Campaign Nearly Doubled (6/21/12)

UPS Foundation Awards $6.9 Million to Nonprofits Cultivating Diversity (6/21/12)

Walmart Foundation Awards Nearly $3.4 Million to Support Underserved Women (8/08/12)

Initiative Launched to Help Boys, Young Men of Color Succeed (8/21/12)

Lumina Foundation Awards $11.5 Million to Boost Latino Student Success (9/04/12)

Ford Foundation Commits $100 Million to Extend Fellows Program (9/21/12)

Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement Launches (9/28/12)

Foundations Put African-American Men and Boys on the Map, Report Finds (10/01/12)

Giving to Underserved Groups, for Social Justice on the Rise, Reports Find (11/19/12)

Demystifying Corporate Responsibility Rankings

(Emily Keller is an editorial associate in the Corporate Philanthropy department at the Foundation Center. In November, she reviewed Roger Thurow's The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.)

Corporations have long collected data generated by and/or relevant to their operations –- everything from sales figures, to permit applications, to industry trends and customer behavior. Increasingly, however, regulatory and watchdog groups are demanding that companies provide information about the impact of their activities on society and the environment.

As the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement has gained traction, indices and lists that seek to quantify and rank company activities according to sustainability principles have proliferated. Financial analysts, media groups, and independent consultancies today produce annual assessments of everything from the amount of carbon companies put into the atmosphere to the sustainability of their supply chain management and the diversity of their boards. Those metrics, in turn, are often used by customers, investors, and prospective job candidates to determine their level of engagement with a particular company.

Earlier this year, the Foundation Center added a CSR tab to the company profiles in Foundation Directory Online that highlights nearly two dozen of these corporate sustainability ratings lists and presents basic information from them in a user-friendly format.

But in an emerging field characterized by a multiplicity of definitions and standards, even simple numbers can be hard to make sense of. Using hundreds of data points and a unique methodology, SustainAbility, an independent think tank and strategy consultancy, has taken it upon itself to "rate the raters" in order "to better understand the universe of external sustainability ratings and to influence and improve the quality and transparency of such ratings." As the firm is quick to note, many of these lists have been introduced within the last five years and there's plenty of room for improvement.

With that in mind, here are a few of the more prominent ratings lists/indices:

Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. The Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, which are offered cooperatively by SAM Indexes and S&P Dow Jones Indices, were launched in 1999 to track the stock performance of the world's leading companies in terms of economic, environmental and social criteria. DJSI World tracks the top 10 percent of the 2,500 largest companies in the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market Index, while DJSI North America tracks the top 20 percent of the 600 largest U.S. and Canadian companies. The evaluation process includes a survey customized for fifty-eight industry sectors covering governance, workforce diversity, disclosure of compensation, risk and crisis management, greenhouse gas emissions, waste generation, branding strategies and metrics, data privacy, talent attraction and retention, and other areas. According to the DJ Sustainability site, "The indexes serve as benchmarks for investors who integrate sustainability considerations into their portfolios, and provide an effective engagement platform for companies who want to adopt sustainable best practices."

Carbon Disclosure Project. Every year, the London-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers, produces a dense, chart-filled report detailing the progress of S&P 500 companies toward their greenhouse gas emission goals. Based on a detailed questionnaire (the data collection process is so complex that CDP runs a series of workshops around the world to help companies answer it), the 2012 report offers a three-tiered breakdown of GHG emissions totals by sector; a performance band from A to E assessing actions to promote climate change mitigation, adaptation, and transparency; and a disclosure score from 0 to 100 for the provision of data. Multiyear leaders in the rankings include Bank of America and Lockheed Martin in the performance category, and Cisco Systems, Gilead Sciences, and Spectra Energy in the disclosure category.

Newsweek Green Rankings. In contrast to DJSI's rankings of only the most sustainable companies, Newsweek ranks the five hundred largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. as well as the five hundred largest in the world, regardless of their sustainability record. And unlike the Carbon Disclosure Project's rankings, only 10 percent of the scores are based on disclosure, with the remainder split between environmental impact and management (a category that takes public controversies into account). The magazine (which recently was purchased by The Daily Beast site and is transitioning to an online-only format) includes more than seven hundred data elements in its survey of companies, including greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste disposal, water use, equity investment (companies are responsible for the impact of the companies they own), hazardous waste reduction, biodiversity protection, company operations, contractors and suppliers, and products and services. Based on a scale of 0 to 100, IBM (82.9) and Santander Brasil (85.7) topped the 2012 rankings.

The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity. Consulting firm and magazine publisher DiversityInc, which launched its diversity rankings in 2001, bases its ratings on the responses it receives to a 300-question survey. As the organization explains in the methodology section of its site: "Ratios between key factors in diversity management, such as demographics of managers compared with managers who received promotions and demographics of the workforce compared with people promoted into their first management positions, play a significant factor in determining point scores." Companies are rated by industry, and the rankings include thirteen different top-five and top-ten lists. Topping the list in 2012 were PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sodexo, Kaiser Permanente, AT&T, and Procter & Gamble.

Corporate Responsibility Magazine's 100 Best Corporate Citizens. Corporate Responsibility Magazine and the Corporate Responsibility Officer Association (CROA) began publishing their list, which is 100 percent based on verifiable publicly available information, in 2009. The rankings are driven by companies' performance in seven broad CSR categories -- environment, climate change, human rights, employee relations, corporate governance, philanthropy, and finance -- with some three hundred and eighteen data points tracked across those categories. Carbon Disclosure Project and Foundation Center data are incorporated into the assessments.

And that's just a sampling. Indeed, the diversity and number of CSR ratings lists now available can be overwhelming at times -- for consumers and investors, as well as for companies, which feel pressured to respond to detailed surveys and questionnaires from dozens of groups and do not always understand the reasons they are selected or omitted from a given list.

In an effort to standardize the ratings process, Ceres and the Tellus Institute, founders of the Global Reporting Institute (GRI), recently launched the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR), which aims to establish best practices in the sustainability ratings field, with a focus on performance-based results, forward-looking indicators, relevance to market forces, integration of sustainability criteria into investment decisions, transparency of methodology, independence of raters, and an expansion in the scope of participating companies. The initiative hopes to release the initial draft of its standards in 2013.

In the meantime, the number and scope of CSR ratings lists continue to grow. Last year, the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, in partnership with the Reputation Institute, released its fourth annual list of the top fifty companies in the U.S. based on the public's perception of their corporate citizenship, governance, and workplace practices. And earlier this year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Vestas released their third annual Global Corporate Renewable Energy Index (CREX) report, which tracks voluntary demand for renewable energy among the world's largest companies.

Other entrants in the field include the UN Global Compact, which asks companies around the globe to embrace universal principles and partner with the United Nations in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption issues, and A Billion + Change, which seeks to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono work and skill-based volunteerism by the end of 2013.

Is any of this work making a difference? I believe it is and, having compared some of the largest lists against our corporate FDO profiles, can see that many corporations, here in the U.S. and around the globe, are beginning to walk the CSR walk. But from climate change to human rights to corruption, we -- and they -- still have a long ways to go.

What do you think? Is CSR a movement whose time has arrived? Are CSR ratings a useful tool for consumers, investors, and advocates? And if not, how can they be improved? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

-- Emily Keller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Kelly Brown

Weekend Link Roundup (October 20-21, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

Network for Good's Katya Andresen offers "five tectonic technology shifts changing our world, our work, and our potential," including the "messenger shift," in which one's peers are now the most influential and amplified messengers in a person's life; the "social action shift"; and the "message shift," where a single message for everyone is no longer enough.

Diversity

On her BlackGivesBack blog, Tracey Webb announces the most recent winners of the D5 coalition's Insights on Diversity grants.

Health

How is "big data" changing health and health care? Steve Downs, chief technology and information officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, chats with a colleague about the latest trends in the use of health-related data at both the personal and population level and the promise these innovations hold for the future.

Higher Education

Guest blogging on the James Irvine Foundation blog, Lisa García Bedolla, an associate professor at UC Berkeley, argues that trends in college completion rates in "Latino heavy" California have "important economic consequences for California and the United States as a whole." Unfortunately, "at a time when the state needs to be investing more in the education of its children," writes Garcia Bedolla,

California is caught in the worst budget crisis it has faced since the Great Depression, resulting in unprecedented disinvestment in the social safety net needed to address these structural disparities. That is where private philanthropy, like the James Irvine Foundation, may be able to step in. In an era of dysfunction within public institutions, perhaps the future lies in public-private partnerships geared towards addressing the cumulative disadvantage that lies at the heart of these inequalities. Children in poverty face a number of developmental challenges, rooted in inadequate prenatal care, nutrition, access to health care, quality housing and early-learning opportunities, before they even enter kindergarten. Institutions like the James Irvine Foundation have the ability to address those many structures of inequality by supporting holistic solutions that bridge the traditional silos and focus resources in the places where youth live, simultaneously addressing the numerous cumulative inequalities that negatively affect youths life chances....

Impact Investing

Writing in Alliance magazine, Sarah Gelfand, director of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing, shares some thoughts about the role that data can play in mobilizing additional resources for the solution of social and environmental problems.

Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer has floated a proposal to create a social impact bond to pay for expanded access to the Early Head Start program, and the implication, says the Nonprofit Quarterly's Rick Cohen, is that the approach will protect "the wallets of hard-pressed taxpayers." Is this "smart policy," asks Cohen, or just the "latest positioning of social enterprise...as an approach to governing that is less costly than the old-fashioned notion of taxpayer-funded government programs"? Good question, Rick.

Philanthropy

In a post on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz shares a list of things we can no longer assume -- no one in the room has a video camera, every American wants to own a car, we will work until we retire, among them -- as a way to "help us see how different the world we live in now is from the world for which we created many of our institutional philanthropic and nonprofit practices, purposes, and regulations."

Social Media

"[Y]ou can no longer truly separate your personal life from your professional life on social media," writes Rosetta Thurman in a recent post on her blog. "We are...definitely in the era of online integrity. And no matter how scary it seems, this is a very good thing." Do you agree?

Volunteerism

And on the Idealist.org blog, Allison Jones has some advice for people who have surveyed the nonprofit landscape and are interested in creating their own volunteer opportunity.

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 (October 6-7, 2012)

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

Advocacy

With the airing of the PBS documentary Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide earlier this week, Mashable reporter Zoe Fox was moved to wonder whether the documentary, which is based on the book of the same name written by New York Times reporter Nick Kristoff and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, can "be a wake up call for [women's] issues" in the same way that nonprofit Invisible Children's thirty-minute Kony 2012 Internet video brought widespread attention in March to the depredations of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army.

Communications/Marketing

In a post on her Getting Attention blog, Nancy Schwartz offers nine lessons that nonprofit communicators can learn from the first presidential debate of 2012. They include:

• Focus on the concrete, not the abstract.
• Communicate with confidence.
• Stay positive.
• Take off the gloves, when required.

What's the difference between good writing and great writing? Chris Howard, the president of Hampden-Sydney College, and Elizabeth J. Deis and Lowell T. Frye, Hampden-Sydney professors of rhetoric and humanities, explain all in this short but sweet piece on The Atlantic Web site.

Impact/Effectiveness

The Digital Citizenship team at the Knight Foundation has posted a thoughtful overview of the difficulties and opportunies inherent in measuring social impact that includes a number of recommendations (h/t @marikalynch):

• Standardize metrics for assessing the impact of technology for engagement projects, including measures of online engagement, offline engagement and social capital.
• Create metrics specific to the programmatic outcomes sought.
• Adopt common survey tools and Web analytics.
• Explore approaches for transcending Web site stats by measuring the impact new platforms have on offline behavior.
• Include qualitative data in the assessment to better understand the results.
• Empower communities to co-design and contribute to impact assessments.

In the first installment of a four-part series at the Stanford Social Innovation Review site, the Rockefeller Foundation's Margot Brandenburg explains how "three distinct but complementary tools" -- IRIS, PULSE, and GIIRS -- are helping to define and bring clarity to the burgeoning field of impact investing.

And on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz weighs in with additional thoughts about data and the social sector. (You can read part one here.)

Philanthropy

Writing on the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president and CEO Albert Ruesga offers six tongue-in-cheek predictions about the future of the foundation field.

Social Good

Back from last week's Clinton Global Initiative event in New York City, Solutions Journalism Network co-founder Courtney Martin, in a post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, argues that when it comes to "real, radical cultural change...rich people are both part of the problem and fundamental to the solution." Writes Martin:

While the fervor for good ideas and effective solutions is palpable at gatherings like [CGI], too often there is an absence of self-scrutiny. I have frequently witnessed wealthy donors ask what others might do differently to make the world a better place -- how, for example, can we get poor mothers to cook healthier food for their kids or speak and read more to their babies? But rarely have I witnessed them consider what role they might play beyond their pocketbooks -- how, for example, might rich parents be perpetuating inequality by paying high-end SAT tutors for their teenagers?...

Social Media

In time for next week's Social Media for Nonprofits conference, Ritu Sharma shares "three of the simplest, most practical [social media] tips" past participants have come to live by: timing is everything, ask questions, and become a content curator.

And on the Duck Call blog, Big Duck's Meghan Teich shares "ideas you can implement right now [to deepen your engagement] on five of the most popular [social media] channels."

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 (August 11-12, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

Welcome to the Fifth Estate author Geoff Livingston has a list of tips for artists and writers seeking to brand and market themselves. The list includes:

• Focus on actions.
• Go beyond Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• Monitor social media conversations.
• Let your fans embrace your experience.

Disaster Relief

GiveWell's Holden Karnofsky shares findings from a recent evaluation of charities working to help people in Japan recover from the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeastern part of the country in 2011. After reviewing reports about their activities over the past twelve months, Karnofsky concludes that he and his partners "stand by the conclusions we reached last year: that the relief and recovery effort did not have room for more funding, that those interested in emergency relief should have donated to Doctors Without Borders, and that those determined to help Japan specifically should have donated to the Japanese Red Cross."

Diversity

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Wendy Wehr, vice president of communications and information services at the Minnesota Council on Foundations, reminds us that while gathering data to monitor diversity among foundation staff and boards is a critical step, organizations also must focus their attention on "turning data into knowledge, and then acting on that knowledge."

Leadership

Rosetta Thurman shares some helpful tips on plotting a guilt-free vacation.

Social Media

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, our colleagues chat with Jane Lowe, senior program officer and team director of the Vulnerable Populations Portfolio at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, about how social media, and more broadly, the transparency and participation they offer, are adding critical new dimensions to [the foundation's] work.

Technology

Buzz Machine blogger Jeff Jarvis shares a few principles for news and technology companies trying to develop online platforms:

• Users come first. A platform without users is nothing. Screw your users, screw yourself.
• A platform is defined by its users. In other words: Hand over control to your users. Give them power. Design in flexibility.
• Platforms collaborate.
• Platforms need principles.

Transparency

"With all that they have at their disposal (money, expertise, networks, flexible time horizons, and reputation), foundations have a great opportunity to try lots of different ways to share information," writes Lucy Bernholz on her Philanthropy 2173 blog. "It's not as simple as having a publications arm or a communications officer or a learning office or a knowledge management strategy, but it's about using whichever of the above means/mechanisms fits the 'who' and the 'why'...."

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

-- The Editors

5 Questions for…Kimberleigh J. Smith, Board President, Paul Rapoport Foundation

(Laura Cronin is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. Recently, she chatted with Kimberleigh Smith, board president of the New York City-based Paul Rapoport Foundation, about the foundation's decision to spend down by 2015, what the foundation is doing to help grantees navigate that transition, and Smith's advice for other foundations that may be considering spend-down scenarios. In her last post, Cronin wrote about the Disability Funders Network's efforts to make access to arts and culture a central focus of their education and convening efforts.)

Philanthropy News Digest: As a founder of two of the most important nonprofit organizations in New York City -- the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center and Gay Men's Health Crisis -- and as the donor who created one of the first foundations to make grants in support of LGTB communities of color, Paul Rapoport left not only a financial legacy but a substantial legacy as an innovator in the nonprofit sector. How has that legacy shaped the Rapoport Foundation's giving program?

Kimberleigh J. Smith: Unfortunately, I never knew Paul, but from what I've been told, he was sharply intelligent, funny, and a generous human being who sought to give to and support communities that were marginalized, including the LGTB and queer community. That has always been at the core of PRF's giving and it has not changed in the years since Paul's passing. But the foundation has adapted with the times, and today we pursue this vision in a slightly different way in order to continue to reach those least likely to access resources from mainstream sources -- those being communities of color, young people, seniors, and gender-non-conforming folks. This shift in the foundation's mission is, in and of itself, a reflection of Paul's original innovative spirit. Furthermore, we don't just confine this legacy to our giving. Our board of directors, for example, reflects the racial diversity we promote in our giving. I wonder whether Paul could have ever imagined that one day his foundation’s board would be led by an African-American lesbian! We're very proud of how Paul's life as a gay, Jewish, attorney, lover of culture and the arts, and philanthropist has impacted our foundation and its giving today.

PND: In 2009, as the recession was beginning to bite hard, the board of the foundation decided to concentrate its funding over a five-year spend-down period ending in 2015. Can you describe the thinking behind that decision and tell us how the foundation is helping its grantees to navigate what has been a stubbornly difficult funding environment?

KJS: The decision to spend down was a difficult one for the board and staff of PRF to make. It had become clear, however, that the foundation's endowment could no longer support or sustain the foundation’s existing grantmaking and staffing levels. So we decided to turn the economic downturn into an opportunity by pivoting our focus and making larger grants to fewer grantees with the idea of generating deeper, longer-term reach and impact. We really wanted to help our grantees rise to the challenges they are facing but continue our years of innovative and responsive grantmaking as long as we could.

To help us navigate these difficult decisions, we engaged two sets of consultants through a competitive process. We used Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to help us crunch the numbers and Marta Siberio to guide us through creating and revising our program guidelines. Both were excellent choices.

We have since developed funding guidelines designed to help our grantees survive and thrive in this difficult funding environment. We are purposefully focusing on grants that promote and espouse racial and economic equity, that generate sustainable programming and service, and that have the potential to drive impact even after our support has ended.

And we're really proud to have recently launched the Paul Rapoport Cash/Operating Reserve Fund Project, which will combine intense fiscal technical assistance with actual reserve funds for eligible organizations in order to help some of our grantees cover gaps in their cash flow. The Nonprofit Finance Fund is assisting us in selecting and training eligible groups from our pool of existing grantees. How cool is that?

PND: The board has been engaged in implementing the decision to spend down for some time now. What have you learned, what positive outcomes are you seeing, and what concerns do you have? And what advice do you have for other foundations considering a similar approach?

KJS: I think I can speak for the board and staff in saying the implementation of the decision to spend down has been an ongoing learning process. And I think we all feel pressure to do it right. But while, as a team, we've always been disciplined and driven, having an end date really keeps us focused and on our toes. Among other things, we've learned that the concepts of "sustainability," "impact," and "racial and economic equity" are big, complicated ideas that are continually evolving. We continue to learn how to be flexible and nimble and manage risks and challenges within a shorter amount of time. It's hard, but I'm confident we’re on the right track. There's also something humbling about speaking to grantees and potential grantees about the notion of sustainability when our own decision to spend down reflects how challenging sustainability is these days. I like to think this dissonance gives us a deeper understanding of what organizations are going through and eliminates some of the guess work when asking difficult questions like, "Should this organization or program continue in perpetuity?"

My practical advice for other foundations considering this approach is to be transparent with your grantees about your decision. It's important to give grantees real notice before funding is shifted or ends. My philosophical advice is to work closely with staff in order to ground any decision of a possible spend down in your foundation's values and beliefs. And try to do that kind of "generative" thinking -- a term I learned at a conference a few years back -- separately but in conjunction with your strategic and fiduciary planning.

PND: Can you give readers an example of a recent grant that demonstrates how increased funding during difficult financial times can make a real difference for a small nonprofit?

KJS: You might get a different answer to this question depending on which member of the PRF board or staff you asked. I feel good that all our recent grants have made a real difference. But one example that rises to the top for us is the Ali Forney Center, whose mission is to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning youth from the harm of homelessness and to support them in becoming safe and independent as they move from adolescence to adulthood. Just prior to the recession, AFC had experienced significant growth, so it needed to develop its own in-house development department. After our decision to spend down was made, we awarded the organization an infrastructure development grant that has enabled it to develop individual donor and special events income streams at a time when government funding has been constrained. In fact, the new dollars today comprise nearly 12 percent of the organization's revenues. This is precisely the kind of forward-looking thinking and planning we want our organizations to be able to do with our funding.

PND: What should funders not currently focused on LBGT issues know about the groups that the Paul Rapoport Foundation has supported? And how can other grantmakers -- especially those serving youth and seniors in communities of color -- be more responsive to LBGT issues?

KJS: Funders should know that LGTB communities are resilient but that we still need their money! I'm only half-kidding. LGTB-serving and -run institutions are an integral part of the human service and social justice landscape in New York City, and they should be treated and respected as such. Community-based organizations that serve communities of color, queer, and gender-non-conforming communities are vital in addressing a host of needs -- and they have a host of needs. They need funding to keep their lights on, to operate their programs, to raise hell and bring about change. There are far too few beds for homeless young people. LGTB seniors of color in mainstream senior centers are hard pressed to speak up about their needs for, or access, quality health care or get support as caregivers. Transgender people of color are shut out of quality health care because of ignorance and a lack of competence. Yes, our communities are resilient, but too often the institutions that support and serve our health and well-being needs are cast aside as not necessary or important. Deep and meaningful support for the groups that serve our communities equals an investment in a just, dignified, and equitable society.

-- Laura Cronin

Weekend Link Roundup (June 2-3, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

In a guest post on the Getting Attention blog, Kimberlee Roth shares eight tips for nonprofit communicators interested in conducting "better interviews and accurately captur[ing] the most compelling stories."

Diversity

NCRP's Kevin Laskowski commends the D5 coalition of philanthropic organizations working to make philanthropy more diverse, equitable, and inclusive for "creating some urgency by...focusing philanthropic attention" with its recently released State of the Work report. But Laskowski goes on to ask, "What's taking so long?" "Foundations are supposed to be turn-on-a-dime social innovators," writes Laskowski. "Unencumbered by the pressures of bottom lines and ballots, they can provide much-needed sources of flexible, catalytic capital to communities in need around some of the biggest issues of our time. And yet, here we are at the confluence of issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, wealth, power, and community, and the pace of foundation movement is simply geological...."

Journalism/Media

Responding to news that the Los Angeles Times was awarded $1 million from the New York City-based Ford Foundation to expand its coverage of neglected beats, Peter Osnos, writing in the Atlantic, wonders whether the grant represents a larger trend of foundations "supporting newspapers as they move increasingly towards digital delivery." If so, writes Osnos, "then the prospects for traditional news could take a turn for the better."

Leadership

On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz has a few suggestions for nonprofit professionals looking to hone their skills this summer.

Philanthropy

In the third installment of a promised six-part series, Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan urges those who work in the social sector to embrace the term "nonprofit," because, as Buchanan writes, "in describing what it isn’t, the sector differentiates itself in a fundamental and important way...."

Social Media

Networked Nonprofit co-author Allison Fine waxes nostalgic about life before the Facebook IPO, when social networking was "free and open and easy to use -- and fun...."

Fine's co-author, Beth Kanter, explains that while social networking has become commonplace in the nonprofit sector, "the competency of having a networked mindset [still] is developing." Kanter goes on to share six takeaways from a recent Packard Foundation report, Ideas Into Action: Reflecting on Three Years of Building Network Effectiveness (44 pages, PDF).

Science/Technology

New York Times reporter Kelly Slivka discusses how scientists are using crowdfunding platforms to raise money for research projects on her Green blog. Through the #SciFund Challenge, for example, "any interested scientist with a feasible project and a fundraising goal can sign up." In fact, more than $75,000 was raised by forty-nine participants during the first challenge, which ran from November 1 to December 15.

On the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's blog, Ben Wirz, director of business consulting at the foundation, writes that audience measurement technology "creates a real opportunity for publishers to better understand their audience and approach brands directly, thereby boosting their digital ad revenue." Knight is investing in Umbel, which "does this by correlating audience social information (Facebook, Twitter, Flurry, etc) with Web analytics (Google Analytics, Omniture, etc.) and other data to create anonymized, rich user profiles."

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

--The Editors

The L.A. Riots, Twenty Years Later: A PubHub Reading List

Last Sunday, April 29, was the twentieth anniversary of the start of what became known as the Los Angeles Riots -- four days of civil unrest and violence sparked by the acquittal of white LAPD officers who had been captured on video in March 1991 brutally beating Rodney King after a high-speed car chase through the San Fernando Valley. In the days that followed the verdict, Reginald Denny, a white truck driver, and a Guatemalan immigrant were brutally beaten by a mob in the South Central neighborhood, home to many of the city's low-income African Americans; buildings were torched; stores were looted; and more than fifty people lost their lives. The prevailing view at the time, as captured by New York Times reporter Don Terry, was that "the acquittal...was only a spark put to a tinderbox of anger constructed from years of deep poverty, governmental neglect, racism, charges of police abuse and high unemployment."

Twenty years later, how much has -- and has not -- changed?

According to Reparable Harm: Assessing and Addressing Disparities Faced by Boys and Men of Color in California (126 pages, PDF), a report from the RAND Corporation, African-American and Latino men and boys continue to be negatively affected by structural racism and a variety of socioeconomic, health, and education disparities. Young African-American and Latino boys are more than three times as likely, for example, to live in poverty as their white counterparts; almost seven and more than three times as likely to have HIV/AIDS; more than five and almost three times as likely to end up in prison; more than sixteen and five times as likely to be a victim of homicide; and nearly twice and almost seven times as likely to drop out of high school. Funded by the California Endowment, the report calls for a range of targeted interventions, including more effective foster care and prisoner-reentry policies; community-based zoning laws that address the social determinants of health; and mentoring and school-based programs for children traumatized by violence. The California Endowment itself has funded the National League of Cities Institute's Gang Prevention Network and the Healthy Returns Initiative.

One nonprofit that has worked with disadvantaged and at-risk youth in Los Angeles since before the riots is the PUENTE (People United to Enrich the Neighborhood Through Education) Learning Center, which offers preschool, kindergarten, tutorial, and college preparation programs as well as job and computer skills training, English as a second language, and literacy programs for adults. Of, By, and For the Community: The Story of PUENTE Learning Center (21 pages, PDF), a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, describes how the family-focused organization -- which had a thriving center in the Boyle Heights neighborhood -- was offered the site of a burned-out ARCO station by the ARCO Foundation in the wake of the riots. "The embers were still warm, and the total damage had not been tallied," recalled former ARCO Foundation president Russell Sakaguchi. "We wanted somebody to provide hope and relief to that very visible corner. We wanted an organization that wasn't going to flounder, that was sensitive to the shock in that community [and] had faith in its ability to deliver."

Starting with two trailers, PUENTE eventually built a state-of-the-art facility with ten classrooms serving a thousand students of all ages, one-third of whom are African-American and two-thirds Latino. (As of 2005, the population of South Central was 45 percent African-American, 47 percent Latino.) One of the organization's keys to success, the report notes, is its sharp focus on its educational mission, which enables it to address issues even more fundamental than racial disparities or cultural differences. "Our mission," says PUENTE vice president Luis Marquez, "is not about any particular ethnic group; it's about people. It goes way beyond ethnicity and race. It's about humanity."

Among other things, the riots highlighted the serious racial/ethnic tensions that existed between long-established African-American communities in Los Angeles and the more recently arrived Korean and Latino communities. The influx of immigrants into historically African-American neighborhoods has continued in the two decades since, and racial/ethnic tensions have become more pronounced as unemployment rates have climbed. All Together Now? African Americans, Immigrants, and California's Future (66 pages; 7.15MB; PDF), a report from the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at the University of Southern California, examines the potential of inter-ethnic alliances to address tensions created by demographic and economic changes. But bringing the various communities together first requires a forward-looking agenda. To that end, the report notes,

• A number of community-based organizations have developed new mechanisms to both manage tensions and build toward a common ground. Leadership development is key, but the first step is creating the space for new and honest dialogue about what is shared and what is different.
• Seemingly specific issues can be effectively connected to both populations. The criminalization of black (and Latino) youth has its parallel in the excessive enforcement of a broken immigration system; the racial profiling embodied in Arizona's 2010 immigration law echoes an experience all too familiar to African Americans. If [minority groups] pursue economic opportunity and fair treatment for all residents, the [focus on] difference[s] can give way to a concert of common interest.
• A common and unifying agenda should be based on a vision of everyday social justice. "Everyday" means three things: address[ing] daily needs around education, the economy, and the social and physical environment; ensur[ing] that dialogues go beyond a more comfortable middle-class and multi-ethnic elite and reach grassroots participants; and realiz[ing] that this will require effort every day and over the long haul.

Funded by the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, James Irvine Foundation, and John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, the report calls for an approach which recognizes that "African Americans have laid the groundwork for America's commitment to equality and fairness" and "that immigrant rights will be insecure as long as African Americans remain vulnerable to racial profiling and economic despair."

All three reports suggest that twenty years after the L.A. riots and almost fifty years after the Watts riots, the City of Los Angeles, the state of California, and the nation still have a long way to go in addressing the racial and socioeconomic disparities that made South Central such a tinderbox on the eve of the Rodney King verdict. At the same time, all three reports suggest that we have only begun to tap the potential of civic engagement, advocacy, and community organizing efforts to bring communities together and advance the cause of social justice. And, of course, funders have a role to play here. Funded by the California Endowment and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the NCRP report Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing, and Civic Engagement in Los Angeles notes that for every dollar invested in the advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement efforts of fifteen Los Angeles County nonprofits between 2004 and 2008, $91 in benefits were generated for marginalized communities.

To learn more about the factors contributing to enduring socioeconomic, health, and education disparities in Los Angeles (and across the country), the demographic shifts that sometimes exacerbate racial/ethnic tensions, and efforts to address these and other problems, see also:

Why Place & Race Matter
PolicyLink; California Endowment

State of Metropolitan America: On the Front Lines of Demographic Transformation Brookings Institution

Critical Condition: Examining the Scope of Medical Services in South Los Angeles
California Endowment

Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America's Older Industrial Cities
Brookings Institution

Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions: An Agenda for Rebuilding America's Older Core Cities
PolicyLink

What do you think? Have we made as much progress, as a country, as we should have in the twenty years since the L.A. riots? And if not, what is holding us back? Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

-- Kyoko Uchida