PhilanTopic

Weekend Link Roundup (June 1-2, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

Guest blogging on the Inside Philanthropy blog, Katherine McLane, vice president for communications and external affairs at the Livestrong Foundation, explains how the organization plans to move on from the doping scandal involving its founder, international cycling star and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. "None of us anticipated the rapid and radical changes that are now the new normal," writes McLane. "But we're dusting ourselves off and keeping the focus where it should be: helping people with cancer...."

Community Improvement/Development

The folks at the Philanthropy Potluck blog give a shoutout to MCF member the Bush Foundation, which has launched two new grant programs designed to "enable, inspire, and reward community innovation" in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the twenty-three Native nations that share the same geography.

Fundraising

On the Chronicle of Philanthropy blog, Carol Weisman, an international consultant who specializes in fundraising, governance, and volunteerism, shares some advice about "what to do when donors say 'no' or 'I'm not sure'."

Grantmaking

On the GrantCraft blog, Rosien Herweijer shares links to a handful of "visual summaries" for grantmakers in Spanish, French, Italian, and Turkish.

Leadership Development

"What if, instead of barreling ahead, relentlessly focused on keeping their organizations afloat (until they burn out trying), effective nonprofit leaders started delegating more and more responsibility to staff -- at once paving the way for a next generation of leaders, and freeing themselves to think about their own leadership in more expansive ways?" asks Stefan Lanfer, knowledge officer at the Boston-based Barr Foundation. "And what would emerge if, at the same time, a critical mass of these great leaders become a great network?" These are the questions the foundation set out to explore in creating the Barr Fellowship, a network of nonprofit leaders whose stories of personal, organizational, and city transformation are now featured in three short films: Reflection and Rejuvenation, The Power of Disruption, and Social Capital & Emergence.

Regulation/Oversight

As the Internal Revenue Service continues to deal with political the mess created by its exempt organizations office in Cincinnati, Lucy Bernholz suggests on her Philanthropy 2173 blog that the real issue has more to do with the money flowing into political campaigns and less to do with "incompetence and mismanagement" at the IRS. "For this there are two...solutions," adds Bernholz.

[F]irst, fund candidates and parties directly and require full disclosure of all such gifts. This is was what campaign finance looked like before Watergate revealed the cracks in the system and we responded by taking the first steps to today's broken system. The second...is to provide public money for campaigns and not allow private gifts above a certain percentage. This is what Larry Lessig has been promoting with Rootstrikers. It's appealing, but even Lessig recognizes it's very slim chances of happening under current conditions (which is why he's also calling for a Constitutional convention).

There is a third way that has nothing to do with stopping the flow of money in, but instead focuses on the flow of money out. Most of the dollars raised go to broadcasting candidates’ messages. If we made air time (television and radio) free to candidates and campaigns, limited the length of campaigns to a certain period of time and gave everyone the same amount of airtime (on those publicly owned, privately leased airwaves of ours) we’d kill the beast of demand and supply would wither in response....

Social Media

According to analyst Mary Meeker's annual review of Internet trends, mobile usage globally will continue to grow rapidly over the next twelve months, writes Katya Andresen on her Non-Profit Marketing blog. According to Andresen, Meeker also predicts that multimedia content will continue to dominate on the Net, that social media usage will continue to grow, and that organizations will discover "it’s nearly impossible not to have full transparency -- whether that’s coming from your organization or those talking about you."

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

--The Editors

Scaling Social Innovation

(Paul L. Carttar is a partner at the Bridgespan Group and former director of the Social Innovation Fund, a federal initiative that enlists private intermediaries to help expand innovative programs proven to promote economic opportunity, healthy lives, and youth development.)

In much the same way a parent feels extraordinary awe and wonder in watching his or her child grow up and succeed, I recently experienced a powerful sense of pride at a conference in Washington, D.C., devoted to the subject of bringing to scale innovative nonprofit programs, particularly those serving low-income communities.

The conference was sponsored by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the country's largest community development organization, and focused on LISC's successful scaling of Financial Opportunity Centers (FOCs) -- an initiative to help low-income people take control of their family finances. Working off a model developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in just three years LISC has expanded the program from four centers in Chicago to seventy-one locations in thirty cities across the country. Much of the funding for this growth came from an innovative federal program called the Social Innovation Fund when I was the fund's director. As I said, I couldn't be prouder.

The FOC approach is simple but sound. It recognizes that getting a job is just the first step toward achieving long-term financial stability. So FOCs focus on improving the actual net cash a family has each month, taking account of what a family spends as well as what it earns, and helping low-income and unemployed individuals by providing an integrated set of services that are typically siloed. These services include not only job training and help getting and keeping a job, but also hands-on financial coaching related to budgeting and building credit, as well as assistance in identifying and applying for public benefits.

While we still have much to learn about the full impact of FOCs, there are clear indications the approach works. Over the past two years, nearly 75 percent of FOC clients improved their monthly cash flow and net income, while 43 percent raised their credit scores. In addition to improved cash flow and credit scores, clients receiving this integrated set of services showed dramatic gains in employment and net assets compared to those who received such help piecemeal.

At the Bridgespan Group, we often work with funders to determine how they can most effectively invest their resources to advance their missions. And while there are many valid approaches to generating social impact, one of the most compelling is to identify promising programs that are producing strong results in low-income communities and help those programs scale their impact.

But just because an approach is compelling doesn't mean it's easy to implement. So what has enabled LISC to make such dramatic progress in scaling the FOC program? We see three major factors.

First, the FOC model represents an intuitive, evidence-based means of addressing a widespread, persistent challenge facing low-income individuals. Job training and placement are critical, but true financial security comes from the totality of how individuals manage their financial affairs -- and that is what FOCs aim to affect on an individual client basis.

Second, because FOCs are not independent organizations but rather programs based on a model, they can readily be expanded to new communities by aligning with existing service-providing agencies that already have the clients, presence, funding, and governance needed for success. The model offers the potential for the host agency to significantly increase its own impact by providing a more complete and better integrated set of services aimed at achieving clear benchmarks.

Third, FOCs have the benefit of LISC's network of offices in dozens of urban and rural communities nationwide, as well as partners such as the United Way, which co-sponsored the conference. Working through these networks enables LISC to more rapidly and effectively attract funding and support, develop on-the-ground relationships, and engage staff while still preserving the integrity of the FOC model.

Our country needs more stories of successful social innovation and scaling. Simply put, we are not getting the biggest bang out of our investment in the public sector, where marginally effective programs often hang on well past their sell-by date and innovative, potentially high-impact ones face enormous challenges getting off the ground, much less achieving significant scale.

Fortunately, the federal government is beginning to recognize the problem. As Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, noted at the conference, the government is looking to do more to support promising programs like Financial Opportunity Centers, innovations that have the potential to generate real impact and change lives. Not only will such an approach help government be a more effective funder and partner, it will also greatly increase America's ability to effectively address its most critical problems.

That's something we can all be proud of.

-- Paul Carttar

Weekend Link Roundup (May 11-12, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Fundraising

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

Impact/Effectiveness

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

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

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

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

Leadership

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

Nonprofit Management

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

Philanthropy

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

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

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

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

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

Technology

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

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

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (March 16-17, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Impact/Effectiveness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Innovation

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

Journalism/Media

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

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

Philanthropy

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

Social Justice

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

Social Media

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

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

-- The Editors

Better Ways to Bring Social Programs to Scale

(Chris Walker is director of research and assessment for the Local Initiative Support Corporation. A longer version of this post was published online in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in December.)

Increased demand for social programs that are simultaneously threatened with budget cuts creates a need to not only ramp up proven innovations, but also to be smarter and more effective in doing so. In 2011, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a national community development intermediary dedicated to the comprehensive revitalization of low-income neighborhoods, leveraged an investment from the Social Innovation Fund to further expand its Financial Opportunity Center (FOC) program. LISC recently undertook a thorough study of its expansion of the FOC model to identify which elements and strategies made it work, and how they might help similar organizations.

Financial Opportunity Centers help low-income families by offering a suite of counseling services, including financial coaching to support basic budgeting and credit repair; advice about how to get and keep a good job; and assistance in identifying and applying for public benefits. Early results have been promising -- the program has gone from four original sites in Chicago to sixty-six centers nationwide.

The study revealed some important takeaways.

First, successful scaling of the program requires a certain amount of standardization. While granting some flexibility, LISC works hard to maintain the integrity of the core FOC model.

Second, infrastructure is critical and requires conscious investment and development. LISC has continued to invest in program-delivery processes, protocols, and standards; performance measurement; direct technical assistance and peer-to-peer learning approaches; and resource generation.

Third, scaling can only happen through a deliberate and strategic rollout. The SIF funding enabled LISC to formalize its program expansion and build the national structure needed to ensure a disciplined process.

That said, certain aspects of our scaling process are unique. The FOC model demands client participation and changes in behavior, meaning some customization is necessary. It also varies from community to community, and thus entails constant monitoring and adjustment. Few organizations can go this alone, which is why LISC's local and national infrastructure is so critical.

Successful scaling ultimately requires sustainability; the current fiscal crisis underscores that need. As the FOC model will always rely on some subsidies, we also measure success in how well the legal and administrative structure of the mainstream workforce system incorporates our approach. Only when our model becomes part of the policy mainstream can we claim to have fully gone to scale.

-- Chris Walker

 

“Beep, Beep”: The Sound of Philanthropy and the Social Economy in 2013

(Bradford K. Smith is president of the Foundation Center.)

"We will change what we do with and without institutions, and we will change how our institutions (funders, nonprofits, and others) work." So predicts self-described philanthropy wonk Lucy Bernholz in Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2013, a must-read roadmap available for the first time as a GrantCraft publication. "Beep, beep." Wile E. Coyote (me, nonprofit executive) has just been left holding a burning stick of dynamite while the Road Runner (Lucy, blogger extraordinaire) races headlong onto her next prediction. That is the true value of Blueprint 2013 for those who are busy running the institutions that make up the "social economy": Lucy has seen the future for us, and now we must struggle to adapt, respond, and innovate. The data- and technology-driven future she envisions is both exhilarating and a bit unsettling, but one thing is clear: the Silicon Valley credo is fast approaching the staid world of philanthropy: "Disrupt yourself or be disrupted."

The vast majority of today's social sector leaders grew up in a world where foundations were the funders and nonprofits were the doers. Blueprint 2013 lays out a vision of a social economy inhabited not only by traditional nonprofits, but also by social businesses, socially responsible corporations, peer networks, and institutional forms not yet invented. Donors in this economy have choices between well-known forms of charitable giving (like creating a foundation), impact investing, and political giving to bring out the change they desire.

Running throughout the social economy is the lifeblood of data. In 2012 alone:

• GuideStar and the Nonprofit Finance Fund released an online tool for comparing the financial health of nonprofits;
• 15 of the largest U.S. foundations teamed with the Foundation Center to launch the "Reporting Commitment," making their grants data available in open, machine readable form; and
• the China Foundation Center started rating more than 2,000 Chinese "foundations" with an elaborate Transparency Index.

These are but a few of the examples included in Blueprint 2013 to illustrate how "new data-driven insights will become a first step, an input, into the practical work of decision-making." Lucy notes that the "next step in using social economy data is for community organizations and funders to join in this ethos of using, sharing, comparing, and contrasting data and tools."

While fast-developing technology makes it easier by the minute to collect, access, analyze, and visualize data, unresolved issues loom on the horizon. "Nonprofits in the future will be defined by how they use their data for public good while protecting the personal privacy rights of all who contribute that data." Data use, ownership, and access rules will be as definitional for the social economy in the 21st century as the charitable deduction was for nonprofits in the 20th century. Blueprint 2013 urges the social sector to take the lead in setting standards for collecting, using, storing, and sharing individual data in ways that thread the needle between personal control and social good. The Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support (WINGS), a federation of some hundred and forty philanthropy support organizations around the world is doing just that by promoting a global philanthropy data charter much like that already adopted in the field of health.

Not all of Lucy’s predictions are about the shimmering world of data and technology. Something everyone in our sector cares about -- the charitable deduction -- is also on her radar: "They (Congress) will set lower limits for charitable deductions." Others -- "Civic crowdfunding will grow and may exacerbate inequality" -- require serious debate and reflection. But among the rich density of Blueprint 2013, the most interesting thought comes toward the end in a section entitled "Glimpses of the Future": "We still need to think about what purposes we want served and what the right mix is of institutional and financial systems to accomplish those goals." Lucy laments that a narrow focus on maintaining the tax deductibility of charitable gifts will crowd out a much-needed and broader discussion about "the most effective ways to provide incentives for private involvement on behalf of the public benefit."

In this regard, perhaps philanthropy and the broader social sector cannot escape the largest question facing our global community -- what kind of world do we want? Data, technology, institutional forms, and regulation are tools to be used to create a better world. While no one expects a return to the failed welfare states of the 20th century, we still need a destination. Otherwise all of our networking, crowdsourcing, analytics, social entrepreneurship, and innovation will occur in a vacuum where change, though sometimes inspiring, will ultimately be retail. Aspiring to something greater requires the kind of thought and questioning contained in Blueprint 2013: a roadmap filled with tantalizing glimpses of where we might be able to reach. As the fuse grows shorter, defining the destination is our responsibility.

-- Brad Smith

2012 Year in Review: Impact Investing, Other New Forms of Giving Gain Traction

Impact investing -- the practice of making loans and equity investments in nonprofits and socially minded businesses working to generate measurable social or environmental impact with the expectation that the money will be repaid over time -- and other new forms of giving continued to gain traction in 2012, thanks in part to the efforts of organizations like the Nonprofit Finance Fund, Omidyar Network, and the Skoll and Rockefeller foundations.

The year got off to a flying start when, in February, NFF announced a $40 million New Markets Tax Credit allocation in support of community development projects across the United States; an initiative of the U.S. Treasury Department, the NMTC program enables nonprofits to affordably complete facility improvements and finance projects in low-income areas around the country. In March, Omidyar Network and ACCION International made a $3.2 million investment in Zambia-based Mobile Transactions to boost financial transactions across the Zambian economy. In April, the Skoll Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development launched a $44.5 million global initiative to identify and fund high-impact social entrepreneurs who have created workable innovations and sustainable, scalable business models. And, in May, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced its participation through its Knight Foundation Enterprise Fund in a $3.7 million Series A venture financing round for Umbel, a privately held digital audience measurement company.

The year also saw the announcement of the first social impact, or pay-for-success, bonds in the United States. In May, the Omidyar Network announced $2.1 million in grants to London-based Social Finance Ltd. and its sister organization, Boston-based Social Finance, Inc., to encourage the use of social impact bonds as a tool to finance sustainable solutions to social problems in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, and Scotland. Then, in August, shortly after the release of a report from McKinsey and Co.'s Social Innovation practice that examined how SIBs might be applied to persistent homelessness and recidivism in the criminal justice system, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that investment banking firm Goldman Sachs had agreed to provide a $9.6 million loan to a New York City-based nonprofit overseeing a four-year program aimed at reducing the rate at which young offenders incarcerated at the city’s Rikers Island complex re-offend after their release — and that the Wall Street firm could profit from the investment if the program exceeds certain benchmarks. Bloomberg's announcement was preceded by a few days by news that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had selected seven nonprofit social service providers to tackle the problems of chronic homelessness and juvenile recidivism in the state under a new program that rewards the agencies only if their programs prove effective.

The White House also got into the act when, in May, it proposed a series of new rules designed to encourage foundations to use their assets in more creative ways to promote social good. Later in the year, the Global Impact Investing Network, which was established in 2009 to encourage impact investing globally, announced a three-year collaboration with  Omidyar Network, the Rockefeller Foundation, and USAID to promote and help build the emerging field. And news organizations like the Washington Post and the New York Times did their part to put the concept on the map by reporting on and highlighting institutions that were looking more closely at allocating a portion of their capital to impact investing approaches.

Ironically, as the field and its promoters basked in the newfound attention, a note of caution was sounded by Philanthrocapitalism author Matthew Bishop, who warned that impact investing was likely to experience growing pains as it grew in popularity, just as microfinance had before it.

Taking Bishop's words in the spirit in which they were meant, Nonprofit Finance Fund CEO Antony Bugg-Levine told the Times that it was incumbent on the field "to harness the best of both the capital markets and the social sector to address problems we cannot solve inside the two silos. [But any] ensuing confusion," added Bugg-Levine, "is a small price to pay if what it ends up in is adaptations that bring some sustainability to our social endeavors."

Related items:

Nonprofit Finance Fund Awarded $40 Million in New Markets Tax Credit Allocation (2/28/12)

Omidyar Network, ACCION International Provide $3.2 Million to Zambian Mobile Technology Company (3/02/12)

Skoll Foundation, USAID to Partner on Global Development Efforts (4/30/12)

Omidyar Network Awards $2.1 Million in Support of Social Impact Bonds (5/03/12)

White House Aims to Boost Spending, Investment by Foundations (5/11/12)

Knight Foundation Enterprise Fund Invests in Digital Audience Measurement Tool (5/30/12)

'Impact Investing' on the Rise (7/17/12)

Goldman Invests $9.6 Million to Reduce Recidivism Among Young Offenders in New York City (8/03/12)

Massachusetts Announces Nonprofit Partners in 'Pay for Success' Experiment (8/03/12)

Global Impact Investing Network Announces Partnership to Expand Reach of Impact Investing (10/04/12)

Foundations Making 'Impact Investments' See Positive Returns (12/13/12)

Weekend Link Roundup (December 29-30, 2012)

To help mark the end of another eventful year, we've rounded up a dozen or so of our favorite "best of" and nonprofit trendspotting pieces. Have a list you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments section below.

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares Trendwatching's list of consumer trends to keep an eye on and weighs in on what each could mean for nonprofits in 2013.

And in a two-part series on her Getting Attention blog (here and here), Nancy Schwartz lists the nonprofit marketing trends that are "must-dos" for your organization in 2013.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Kula CEO Gerrit McGowan looks back at some of the CSR high- and lowlights of 2012 -- and tells us what companies looking to take their CSR programs to the next level will be doing in 2013.

Innovation/Leadership

As it has it has for many years, Foreign Policy magazine closes out 2012 with an eclectic list of the top global thinkers -- a list that includes Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, novelists Haruki Murakami and Chinua Achebe, and Russian environmentalist Yevgenia Chirikova.

In addition to his appearance in the FP list, Barack Obama was honored in December by TIME magazine as its Person of the Year. "We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes," explains TIME, "and Barack Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America...."

Philanthropy

Turning to the philanthropic space, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shares the top 2012 reads from its Impatient Optimists blog, while the Ford Foundation looks back at its major accomplishments in 2012, including the launch of Time to Succeed, a national coalition that encourages and enables communities to add more learning time to the school day and year.

On the BlackGivesBack blog, Tracey Webb names the top ten African-American celebrity philanthropists of 2012. Now in its sixth year, the list was compiled with help from the Admiral Center, an initiative of New York City-based Living Cities that helps celebrities use their time, influence, and money to develop sustainable solutions to pressing global challenges.

On its site, New York City-based Bolder Giving announces the twelve Bold Givers who in 2012 "[supported] important causes at remarkable levels of income and assets...[and embody] Bolder Giving's mission to inspire and support people to give at their full lifetime potential."

And Philanthropy 2173's Lucy Bernholz wraps up her list of the top buzzwords of 2012 -- words and terms that, in a field known for its love-hate relationship with jargon, "are becoming ever more a part of the philanthropy conversation."

Science/Technology

Like the Eye of Sauron, Google never sleeps. As the year was drawing to a close, the tech giant released Zeitgeist 2012, an online platform that highlights "the searches that defined 2012."

And on the Tech Soup blog, Jim Lynch looks at the big nonprofit technology trends of the year, including cloud computing and mobile technology.

Social Media

Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes weighs in on the social media trends to watch in 2013.

Women

And the Washington Area Women's Foundation takes us out with a list of five policies that affected women and their families in 2012.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a happy and safe New Year!

--The Editors

Of Fire Trucks, Obama, Romney and Philanthropy

(Bradford K. Smith is president of the Foundation Center. In his last post, he announced the launch of the Reporting Commitment, an effort initiated by a group of the largest U.S. foundations to develop more timely, accurate, and precise reporting on the flow of philanthropic dollars.)

"I live in a rural community where the Tea Party dominates, no new taxes can be passed without a super majority, and government is cutting back on everything. The other day someone asked me how I can help the fire station find money to buy a new fire truck. What do I tell him?"

I was recently asked that question by a librarian at "Network Days," an annual live/virtual gathering of the librarians, nonprofit resource center administrators, and community foundation leaders that are the human face of the Foundation Center's Cooperating Collection Network. In all fifty states and fourteen countries around the world, CCs help struggling nonprofits, those who want to create nonprofits, and people who want to work in nonprofits connect with the resources they need. Except when there are no resources to be found.

Despite being president of the Foundation Center, the world's largest source of information on organized philanthropy, my response to that librarian's question was pretty feeble. All I could really muster is a few words to the effect that, around the country, there are small, local foundations which, on occasion, are willing to contribute to the purchase of a fire truck, an ambulance, emergency medical equipment, and the like. You can find some of them through the Foundation Directory Online or by searching 990-PF tax returns. Most of them don't have Web sites.

Another librarian asked me what she could say to the five hundred people who will lose their jobs next year when a factory in town closes. On that one I was able to muster a slightly less feeble answer, in that there are more foundations willing to fund job training, enterprise creation, and advocacy than there are foundations willing to contribute to the purchase of a fire truck.

Every day, these librarians ask people, "How can I help you?" And in return, they get questions like these. Of course, they listen, they empathize, and they struggle to come up with good answers. But good answers are increasingly difficult to come by. My job is all about philanthropy, not about business or government. I know foundations are concerned about government continuing to retreat from education, health care, and social services, and that legislators and many others expect philanthropy to pick up the tab. On the face of it, that's preposterous: the resources of even the largest American foundations are a rounding error in the federal budget. And channeling foundation dollars into basic service provision would kill off the independence, creativity, and risk taking that makes philanthropy so valuable to society.

But as much as I would love to see the fire truck question put to President Obama and Governor Romney in one of the next two debates, that ain't gonna happen. No matter which candidate wins in November, he will be faced with deciding what government will not fund, as an over-leveraged economy struggles through an anemic recovery. Meanwhile, the private sector will continue to shutter factories, locate them overseas, or create new ones at home that are heavy on technology but light on workers.

So that leaves philanthropy. The good news is that philanthropy, in the U.S. and around the globe, is a growth industry. The world economy is manufacturing billionaires at a record pace, and thanks to efforts like the Giving Pledge, more of them are embracing the notion of giving back. But those of us who work in philanthropy need to do more than just wring our hands over concerns that government may start telling foundations what to do with their money.

What, you ask?

First, foundations can fund more advocacy. Great Recession notwithstanding, there is still a lot of money sloshing around the public sector, and every year some of it goes to pork and some of it flows to organizations and causes championed by special interests. As Bill Clinton was fond of saying, politics is a contact sport, and advocates interested in public support for vital community services need resources to stay in the game.

Second, foundations can support and even lead efforts to foster broad public dialogue about how best to piece together a social safety net that works and is sustainable. Until the paralyzing rhetorical divide between the ideologies of "big government" and the "magic of the market" is bridged, families and communities will continue to crash through growing gaps in the frayed social safety net.

Third, foundations can support sustained social innovation. Now, innovation alone will not solve all the large-scale societal challenges we face, but it has the potential to create breakthroughs that lead to entirely new and less expensive ways of addressing those challenges.

Fourth, foundations can be more forthcoming with data and information about the good work they do. If nothing else, this will make it much easier for a rural librarian in Idaho or Arkansas or Wyoming to help the local volunteer fire department locate resources to buy that fire truck. And it will also make it easier for foundations to see what others are doing so that there can be a lot less duplication than exists today and a bit more impact.

Fifth, foundations can support local libraries. Libraries have been the information backbone of this country for more than a hundred years, and librarians, the original data scientists, take their responsibilities seriously. America is filled with people who still believe that hard work, optimism, and cooperation can save and improve their communities. When librarians have the courage to ask them, "How can I help you?" we need to be sure they have good answers at hand.

-- Brad Smith

Jeff Raikes on the 'Innovation Pile Up'

(Jeff Raikes is chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The following post originally appeared on the foundation's Impatient Optimists blog and is reposted here with the permission of the foundation.)

Welcome to my new blog series, where I'll be sharing my thoughts on the Gates Foundation and philanthropy. Every six weeks I'll be posting a new blog discussing a pressing issue at the foundation or addressing some of the challenges and opportunities facing the philanthropic community. More than anything else, this is a space for a conversation. So please submit your questions, share your feedback, and let me know if there are any topics you would like to hear about.

For my first post, I want to discuss a challenge at the foundation that's been on my mind lately. It's called the "innovation pile up." Let me explain.

At the Gates Foundation, we believe in the power of innovation to improve lives. That's why over the last decade we've invested in one of the fattest pipelines of lifesaving technologies the health and development world has ever seen. A new, rapid diagnostic test for tuberculosis that will help reduce transmission of the disease. Better tools to enable women to plan their families. Even improved toilets that provide clean sanitation for the world's poorest people. In all, the foundation and its partners have developed more than a hundred new innovations that are available today or scheduled to be introduced by the end of the decade.

That's the good news.

Here's the bad news: None of these innovations will make a difference if they can't reach the people we aim to serve.

Many obstacles stand in their way. Some public health systems in the developing world lack staff, training, or infrastructure to take advantage of these new tools and technologies. Regulatory agencies can be slow to approve new drugs and devices. Market forces may make it difficult to introduce these new products. Then there are actual roadblocks. Transportation systems and roadways may be so bad -- or nonexistent -- that just getting these new tools safely to the people who need them is a challenge. Finally, even if new drugs and tools arrive in remote villages, cultural practices may dissuade people from adopting them.

That's why we need to get smarter at delivering these innovations. If we don't, we risk not improving and saving as many lives as we could.

At the foundation, this challenge has been dubbed the "innovation pile-up," and solving it is one of my top priorities. As part of the re-organization of our global programs, which I outlined in my 2011 annual report letter, we are now balancing our research and development efforts with a greater focus on how these innovations will get delivered. Chris Elias, our new president of global development, brings decades of on-the-ground experience in heath and development. He is leading our work to better understand the obstacles to introducing and scaling access to new tools and technologies and how we can overcome them.

We've already learned a lot about effective delivery from our work on vaccines. We have a better understanding of the best funding mechanisms for new vaccines and the most reliable ways to deliver them safely to the remotest health clinics. Thanks to these efforts we are on track to significantly scale up the delivery of lifesaving vaccines in developing countries and prevent the deaths of millions of children under the age of five by the end of the decade.

Now we need to build on this success and ensure other promising technologies reach the people who need them the most. We are exploring ways to integrate some of these new innovations into existing delivery systems. For example, a new, easy-to-use injectable contraceptive that would provide women living in remote areas a simple, effective family planning tool will likely be introduced through family planning programs already operating in these countries.

Other existing innovations will require new delivery systems and business models to be successful. Consider the challenge of expanding access to a simple, lifesaving product like the mosquito coil. The spiral-shaped insect-repelling incense has the potential to protect families from malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But the cost -- even at pennies per day -- remains out of financial reach for many of the world's poorest families. Donors may be able to help drive down the costs for these families, but there hasn’t been much interest in this solution without more data on the impact of wide-scale coil use. That's why we’re working to fill this knowledge gap by funding new research studies. We're also exploring next-generation mosquito repellents that would last for months, cost less, and not require burning. All of these solutions will require the cooperation and partnership of governments, the private sector, and consumers to be successful.

These are tough challenges. But I'm confident we can overcome them. We now have a team dedicated to speeding up the delivery of existing innovations and finding new system delivery models for entirely new innovations. More importantly, we will be listening closely to the people who will benefit from these innovations. By understanding their needs, we can design the best solutions and most effective ways of delivering them. Working together, we will realize the full potential of these innovations, and, in doing so, help the people we serve realize the full potential of their own lives.

-- Jeff Raikes

Clinton Global Initiative 2012 - Monday a.m.

PhilanTopic is at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan this morning to cover the eighth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. (Watch the livestream here.) The theme of this year's meeting is "Designing for Impact" -- how can we design our world to create more opportunity and more equality? And how might we design our lives, our environments, and global systems in order to impact the many enormous challenges at hand.

The meeting opened yesterday with a session moderated by CGI founding chair and former President Bill Clinton that featured Michael Duke, president/CEO of Wal-Mart Stores; Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan; Ban Ki-Moon, secretary-general of the United Nations; and Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group. (Watch the video here.)

Things really got rolling this morning, however, with a powerful speech ("Designing Diplomacy for the 21st Century") by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- who was welcomed by CGI attendees as if she were a rockstar (or once-and-future presidential candidate). In it, Secretary Clinton shared a three-part framework for U.S. diplomacy and development assistance in "a time of great change." My scribbled notes don't do it justice (you can watch the livestream here), but here's the gist of what she said:

-- In a time of enormous technological, demographic, political, and geopolitical change, the goal of U.S. development assistance is "to help solve problems and support opportunities around the world."

-- In the 1960s, official development aid from donor countries to developing countries represented 70% of capital flows into those countries; today, it's 13% -- relatively insignificant compared to trade, business investment, and remitttances.

-- The U.S. aid budget has increased in real-dollar terms over that period -- but represents a much smaller share of aid to developing countries overall.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. State Department has three objectives going forward with respect to development assistance. As Clinton put it:

1) We want to move from direct aid to investment. The political and geopolitical landscape has changed, needs have changed, assistance needs to be rethought. We need to be intentional and strategic. We need to focus on and promote public-private partnerships ("You cannot do development in today's world without partnering with the private sector"). We need to recognize that many of yesterday's laggards are today's rising stars (in the last decade, six of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world have been in Africa). We need to be rigorous and demonstrate results.

2) We need to encourage "country ownership." That means building capacity within developing countries so they are able to set their own priorities, develop plans to achieve those priorities, execute on those plans, and, increasingly, fund those plans. And it means ownership by "the whole country" -- men and women. The surest path out of poverty for developing countries is educating and empowering women and girls.

3) We need to put ourselves out of business. The State Department looks forward to the day when public-sector assistance is replaced by private-sector investment. ("I'm always surprised when people are surprised to hear that.") Before we get there, however, State (and others) need to expand the number of partners with which it works; the days of government working through large international NGOs only are over. Elites around the world also have to recognize that they need to pay their fair share of taxes and support critical investments in public education and infrastructure. And donor governments around the world need to step up their efforts to combat corruption, which as much as anything is responsible for stifling innovation and smothering human aspiration in too many countries.

In closing, Clinton reminded those in attendance that "freedom and dinity are more important than food and water." And she urged everyone in the room "to stand together to resist the forces of extremism and violence and stand firm for peaceful transitions to democracy in North Africa and the Middle East." (Watch her complete remarks here.)

Back with more in a bit...

-- Mitch Nauffts

Why 'Risk' Is An Unloved Word in Philanthropy

(Derrick Feldmann is the CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based consulting firm that works with nonprofits. In his previous post, he cautioned organizations to think twice about flying the "innovation" flag.)

"There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."

 -- John F. Kennedy

Whenever I visit my financial advisor, he almost always gets around to talking about risk. The subject usually comes up when I ask him how I can increase the value of my portfolio. His response is almost always the same. "What's your tolerance for losing money?" He always has ideas for new investments, but he's quick to point out that many aren't "sure bets." Anyone seeking bigger investment returns in this environment -- and lucky enough to have discretionary resources to invest in the first place -- has played this game at one point or another.

So why are risky investments something most of us are willing to tolerate in our personal financial lives, but something we avoid like the plague in our philanthropic work?

The answer is simple: We're afraid to make risky philanthropic investments because we don't want to "lose" money.

As funders and donors, we've grown accustomed to making investments in organizations we know will succeed. They have a history, proven track records, and staff and leadership that can execute. Pressure from boards and other stakeholders who view philanthropic investments only through the lens of success contributes to this predictability. Typically, these stakeholders are most concerned about protecting the corpus and in signing off on decisions that won't get them into trouble. This isn't all bad. It ensures, among other things, that people in need will be helped, especially during times when they need it most. But as an investment approach, it does little to encourage innovation.

Think about your own work for a minute and ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the riskiest grant we ever made?
• What was our motivation for making that grant?
• How many times have we given a grant to an organization that didn't have a track record of success?
• How much money are we willing to set aside to fund riskier initiatives?

If you're like a lot of program officers, it may not be easy to think of a grant you made that could be classified as "risky." But you need look no further than your own personal giving for examples of risky philanthropic investments. Indeed, we make these kinds of investments every time we support a friend, colleague, or family member in a run/walk/race for a medical cause or cure. As a country, we invest more than $20 billion a year to find cures for diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and stroke. And those investments are "risky" because there's very little measurable return on our donations short of a cure or significant new discovery. But we choose to fund this type of research anyway, knowing that most failures in the lab bring us closer to the ultimate goal.

Unfortunately, many problems today -- whether social, environmental, or economic -- are every bit as large and complicated as finding the cure for cancer. And the only way we're going to solve them is to take our approach to medical research and apply it to other areas. In other words, we need funders and individual donors who are truly willing to embrace risk and invest significant dollars in potential solutions that may not yield immediate results but get us closer to our ultimate objective, even if it's only by demonstrating what doesn't work.

Here are four things I believe philanthropy can and should do in order to embrace more risk.

Emulate the founders. On the road to building great fortunes, the founders of some of the biggest foundations in the country took risk almost every day of their professional and business lives. Whether they played a leading role in forging the modern steel or oil industry, made it easy for people to use a computer or reap the benefits of globalized supply chains, or created online social networks that connected the world, our greatest entrepreneurs and philanthropists were great risk-takers who never lost sight of their objective: To deliver the most value to the greatest number of consumers. That's precisely the kind of entrepreneurial spirit we need today as we look to provide and fund solutions to the most intractable problems affecting our communities.

Set aside funds for riskier ventures. If foundations were for-profit companies and had to compete in the marketplace, they almost certainly would rush to set up research and development arms with a mandate to innovate, develop new programs and initiatives, and evaluate how existing programs and initiatives were performing. But as endowed tax-exempt entities, foundations rarely have to compete and so have little incentive to set aside funds to invest in anything other than proven organizations and concepts. Now, I get that foundations and donors can't fund every risky investment and innovation that comes along. But I'm convinced that they can and should begin to pool and earmark funds for investments in organizations and concepts that don't have a track record of success but do have potential to bring about dramatic change in our communities.

Ask new questions. Donors and foundations need to start asking new questions when a risky investment presents itself. Instead of the historical "proven impact" questions typically posed during the proposal and due-diligence stages, funders should focus on questions designed to help them understand the level of risk involved in the proposed idea or solution. Questions like:

• Why is this a risky concept/approach?
• Why is your approach to the problem better than existing approaches?
• What's the worst that could happen if you fail?
• Even if you fail, what do you hope to learn from the approach you're proposing?
• Who are the experts/mentors you look to for guidance in your work and what do they have to say about the approach/concept?
• If the approach/concept demonstrates success, how do you plan to sustain it?

Foster new learning environments. As a funder, you have a tremendous opportunity to be transparent about grants and programs that worked -- as well as those that didn't. Here's your chance to create a learning opportunity -- indeed, a learning community -- for social entrepreneurs and innovators. Share your knowledge about the grants you made, the internal reports that tracked the progress of those grants, and why the investments you made did, or did not, succeed. Take it a step further and create a forum on your Web site where grantees can come together and learn from each other about what worked and didn't. At a minimum, it will help them think about new approaches to their existing work and perhaps lead to new ideas that you may want to support in the future.

There you have it. Let's create a philanthropic marketplace where risk is celebrated, not avoided, and serves to bring us closer to solving some of the biggest challenges we face. History invariably shows that if we give good ideas a platform and a chance to succeed, they will. The sooner we get over our aversion to risk and instead support those individuals and organizations willing to think outside the box, the sooner we'll prove history right.

-- Derrick Feldmann

 

Weekend Link Roundup (July 14-15, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

Network for Good's Katya Andresen shares a list of thirteen signs your Web site might be out of date. The list, which was originally posted on the Branded Out Loud blog, includes:

• The calendar widget on your site resembles an actual calendar;
• "WELCOME" appears anywhere on your site;
• There are more than eight menu options or drop-downs with their own drop-downs; and
• Stock photos on your site are not connected to your organization's mission, or the photos don't load properly.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Huffington Post Impact blog, Global Philanthropy Group president Trevor Neilson has three recommendations for nonprofits worried that it's only a matter of time before the economy -- and their fundraising results -- take a turn for the worse: think "different" about fundraising; decide what not to do; and value performance over passion.

Guest blogging on Beth's blog, GreatNonprofits chief executive Perla Ni and Family Independence Initiative vice president Mia Birdsong discuss the importance of listening and responding to feedback from the people being served by your nonprofit. "With a good feedback system in place programs can be held accountable to those they serve," write Ni and Birdsong. "Consumers will see that their voices make a difference when programs are adjusted and measures of success redefined in response to feedback....Nonprofits will benefit from detailed information about program strengths and shortcomings....And everyone wins when programs become more efficient and effective, improving program quality and outcomes."

Leadership

Rosetta Thurman, co-author of How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar (with Trista Harris), has a few suggestions for young nonprofit professionals on how "to handle slip-ups with maturity in the nonprofit workplace."

Nonprofit Management

In the latest installment of her Social Good podcast series, Allison Fine chats with former Apple creative director Ken Segall, author of Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success, about how nonprofits can "create a culture of simplicity in their organizations."

Philanthropy

in an e-mail to Council on Foundation members and colleagues, Vikki Spruill, the council's new president and CEO, shares her vision for organized philanthropy. "Philanthropy has a proud legacy and an awe-inspiring focus on the future," Spruill writes,

but its most critical moment is right now. At a time when our world faces a storm of converging challenges with dwindling resources, philanthropy's positive impact remains a mystery to far too many. Swirling through this storm is a lack of understanding about the role philanthropy plays in society as investor, innovator, leader, and partner. Yet we all know philanthropy is more relevant and necessary than ever. That's why we must seize the imperative to help society better understand philanthropy's impact and contributions. If we can't imagine a world without philanthropy, we need to make sure those outside our sector recognize what an unlivable world that would be....

Poverty

The folks at liberal think tank Demos have posted a series of charts that break down the poverty rate in America by race, gender, education, age, and family type and finds that it's highest among single female-headed households with kids -- a fact explored with great skill and empathy by this article in today's New York Times.

Social Innovation

On the Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington shares ten great social innovation reads from the month of June. We agree with Nell: Better late than never.

Strategy

On FSG's Social Impact Blog, Rebecca Graves explains why strategic clarity is important for community foundations. "Community foundations wrestle with an incredible array of decisions about how best to support their communities, advance solutions to complex social problems, and craft the right role for themselves," writes Graves. "[And] disciplined strategic thinking is essential to address these challenges. It helps [community foundations] articulate a clear and unique identity, become more aligned in pursuit of [their] goals, and define the right types of growth...."

Transparency

And on the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, CEP president Phil Buchanan suggests that the philanthropic sector is unlikely to "make real progress on meaningful transparency -- transparency that gets to effectiveness and improvement -- externally until we deal with the challenge of being transparent first at home, with staff and colleagues...."

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (July7-8, 2012)

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

Civic Engagement

On the Knight Blog, Elizabeth Miller looks at the report The Civic Tripod for Mobile and Games: Activism, Art and Learning, which explores the three dimensions of mobile games that focus on art or neighborhood civics: civic learning, performance/art, and social change. "Learning is inherent in games, since their engagement depends on providing challenges that are just barely possible," the report's authors note. "And when games are tied to physical space,

their action ties to learning about our own neighborhoods -- how to move through them, and to change them. The art of such games is often the physical world itself, with better sounds and graphics than any screen! And the digital side of games draws in the civic, if only because it is so easy to link to more information on how to take action, or how to learn more. In other words, the experiential nature of games pulls mobile experiences on civics into being a mix of art and learning....

Disaster Relief

On her Nonprofit Charitable Orgs blog, Joanne Fritz offers tips on how to help those affected by the wildfires raging in Colorado and elsewhere out West.

Fundraising

Fundraising is a valuable skill that nonprofits cannot afford to underinvest in, argues Joe Garecht on the Fundraising Authority blog. It is also a marketable skill that a good fundraiser can take to another organization if, as the title of his post suggests, "You Aren't Paying Your Development Staff Enough." Writes Garecht:

If your organization's executive director is making $150,000 per year and the top development staff member is making $60,000 per year, your nonprofit is in trouble. Likewise, if your organization is raising $5,000,000 per year and you only have one full-time development person, your nonprofit is in trouble. Under either scenario, you will never raise what you really could and should raise, and

never do all of the good that you really could do, simply because you aren't making a big enough investment in your development [function]....

"It seems that the Great Recession is similar to the Great Depression in one more way -- the drastic drop in large charitable gifts," writes Joanne Fritz in another post on her Nonprofit Charitable Orgs blog. Citing the Chronicle of Philanthropy's  Holly Hall, who found that the decline in large charitable gifts between 2007-10 mirrors a similarly precipitous drop between 1931-45, Fritz writes: "I have trouble with the idea that our tough economic times have been a match for the Great Depression, or that the decline in large charitable gifts will last as long. But I do think that large, monolithic fundraising campaigns of any kind are doomed...."

Governance

Gene Takagi has an excellent post on the Nonprofit Law blog, which he co-authors with Emily Chan, about the roles and duties of nonprofit board members.

Innovation

On the Forbes site, contributor Lori Kozlowski chats with Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin about the meaning of philanthropic innovation in 2012.

Social Media

"Although we often focus our discussion on how organizations can use social media for marketing and fundraising, the best reason for nonprofits and foundations to be on social media is to practice thought leadership," writes Rosetta Thurman in a post on her eponymous blog. "When it comes to foundations in particular, this opportunity can be even more impactful, as they are often seen as conveners, curators and catalysts for change within the nonprofit community." Thurman goes on to single out the Geraldine Dodge Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region for blogging "not just to share information, but to influence public opinion and community collaboration."

And on the First Giving blog, Taylor Corrado highlights six nonprofit branding lessons from the book Made to Stick, by Dan and Chip Heath:

1. Keep it simple -- Don't dumb it down, but get straight to the point.
2. Embrace the unexpected -- In other words, create curiosity.
3. Be concrete -- Provide details, examples, and facts.
4. Be credible -- Testimonials from beneficiaries are more effective than those from board members.
5. Don't shy away from emotion -- Humans respond better to emotions than statistics.
6. Think "story" -- Good stories are unexpected, filled with concrete details, and should always be emotional.

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

-- The Editors

Innovation Forum 2012

We thought it would be fun (and interesting) to share the livestream of the Rockefeller Foundation's 2012 Innovation Forum, which is supposed to start around 12:45 EDT and is one component of the storied foundation's centennial celebration.

The forum is designed to explore solutions to pressing global challenges and this year will focus on ways of ensuring that the benefits of new technologies do not bypass the world's poor. To that end, the event will showcase cutting-edge inventions, convene thought leaders from different sectors, and feature discussions that explore opportunities to help those who are becoming more vulnerable due to pernicious economic, social, and environmental forces.

Live streaming by Ustream

Later this evening, the foundation will honor Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons Ltd.; Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of the UK-based Portland Trust and Big Society Capital; and J. Carl Ganter, director and co-founder of Circle of Blue, an international network of journalists, scientists, and communications experts working to address and raise awareness of the global freshwater crisis, for their innovative work and philanthropy. And you can watch the whole thing from the comfort of your air-conditioned office.