PhilanTopic

After the Giving Pledge: Strategic Philanthropy Is More than Money

(Mary Glanville is Managing Director, Institute for Philanthropy UK. The London-based institute works to increase effective philanthropy in the United Kingdom and internationally by providing donor education, building donor networks, and raising the awareness and understanding of philanthropy.)

In February, the Gates Foundation announced that the Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010, would for the first time extend its invitation to philanthropists outside the United States. The pledge, whose signatories propose to give at least half their wealth to charitable causes, welcomed twelve more people to its ranks, bringing the total number of those who have signed the pledge to a hundred and five.

It's a commitment that does not tally with the traditional media-held view of wealthy individuals and their families, a view that portrays the preservation of assets as the primary if not sole consideration. In order to understand what has prompted the apparent urgency and scale of this charitable giving, we asked twenty-two donors in our networks about the rate at which they intend to deploy their philanthropic capital. Their responses were revealing in several respects.

The donors came from many countries and regions -- from the UK, the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Lebanon, and Mexico -- and they or their foundations had philanthropic assets on average of $79,081,250, from which they gave an average of $2,168,050 each year. Half said they would give at least 25 percent of their wealth to charity.

Despite the regional differences, it was possible to discern a common theme in their areas of giving: none of the respondents gave money to the arts, as might be expected, but instead gave to address social issues that they considered among the world's most pressing problems. One donor was particularly forthright on this point, stating that "I generally believe in addressing the needs of underserved poor in the neediest parts of the world, where I have worked for much of my professional life, not the arts or environmental needs so popular among donors here at home, or SOBs (symphony, opera, ballet) -- as much as I love them personally."

Among this group of twenty-two, the four leading charitable causes, by frequency, were education, children and youth, community re-generation, and the environment. Impact investing and technology also were fairly high in the rankings. In addition, there was a notable emphasis on the part of respondents on being proactive and fully engaged in their grantmaking. One donor remarked that "I strongly believe that philanthropy can be more effective when driven by the wishes and strategy of a living donor. Long-lasting philanthropic institutions can become sclerotic and bureaucratic, not always but often. Family foundations may end up with their hands tied by a legacy directed at tackling a social problem that no longer exists." Another highlighted the need to avoid "safe" causes, saying: "I focus on leadership and because my funds are limited support smallish charities with dynamic leadership in unattractive and unpopular fields where it is difficult to raise funds."

Perhaps the most promising theme was the focus on collaborating effectively with other individuals and organizations toward a common goal. One donor put it best, identifying the key elements of such collaboration: partnership, engagement, and empowerment. As he put it:

Partnership: the more we -- civil society, philanthropists, NGOs and activists -- can work together toward a cause, the faster we can move the needle.

Engagement: not only personal engagement, but moral and legal and financial engagement. Empower the organization so they do the best they can to move the needle. Help the executive team to excel in their strategy and operations to achieve their mission and reach goals they have set with their trustees and other constituencies.

What is clear is that making well thought-out, intentional decisions about the rate and timeframe over which assets are deployed can often assist in making one's philanthropy more strategic. It is encouraging to see these issues being raised more frequently between philanthropists across the globe, and it will be particularly exciting to see how donors in emerging markets inform this new vitality in charitable giving. We look forward to seeing and reporting on how the space develops.

-- Mary Glanville

Weekend Link Roundup (May 18-19, 2013)

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

Data

We're big fans of data visualization whiz Hans Rosling, and so is Humanosphere blogger Tom Paulson. But, writes Paulson, Rosling "is strikingly upfront about the limitations of data. Sometimes, the problem is that different countries measure things -- like unemployment -- in different ways....In other cases, there are real uncertainties in the data that must be assessed: child mortality statistics are quite precise, whereas maternal mortality figures are not; global poverty measurements are infrequent and uncertain." And so on. Still, when it comes to telling stories with numbers, few can rival Rosling, as the video Paulson embeds in his short post well illustrates.

Education

In a post on the Huffington Post Impact blog, Chris Gabrieli, co-chair of the Time to Succeed Coalition and founder and chair of the National Center on Time & Learning, and Ford Foundation president Luis Ubiñas discuss the progress the coalition, which works to ensure that children in high-poverty neighborhoods have access to more and better learning time in school, has made since its was established a year ago.

Fundraising

On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz gives a thumbs up to Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks' The Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistble Communications. Among the things she liked, writes Fritz, is Brooks' admonition that "our biggest mistake in fundraising is thinking that what we like is what works. We're self-centered, rather than donor-focused. And, frankly, we are soooo off the mark."

International Affairs/Development

On the Mashable site, Casey Brown announces the creation of G-everyone, a "24-hour digital convening" that, on the eve of next month's G8 Summit in Northern Ireland, will unite local groups around the world to discuss the pressing issues addressed at the summit. According to Brown, "G-everyone will provide an open dialogue around the G8's core themes of 'Open Economies, Open Governments and Open Societies.' [And] Mashable will crowdsource the best ideas and thoughts from our community...and report back to the leaders at the [summit]."

Nonprofit Management

David La Piana draws some important lessons from a merger involving two Texas providers of adoption services that ultimately failed to save the weaker of the two organizations. The case, writes La Piana, "offers a reminder that merger is not designed to change the underlying market dynamics an organization faces. A good merger can strengthen management, improve strategic positioning, and bring needed scale, but it cannot move a marginal or declining operation into the black if demand is just insufficient or the economics of the activity don’t pencil out."

Philanthropy

On the GrantCraft blog, Rosien Herweijer takes a closer look at the newest GrantCraft guide, Foundations Moving On: Ending Programmes and Funding Relationships. As Herweijer notes:

All funders somehow have to deal with exits. Venture philanthropist and limited-life or spend-out foundations tend to be very deliberate about exits, but other grantmaking or operating foundations also change strategic priorities, leave fields, or leave countries. And on a smaller scale, project funding ends automatically or -- in rare cases -- has to be withdrawn. You cannot wait for all the complicated questions to pop-up once an exit decision looms. And once you make and communicate a decision to exit, you need a lot of answers....

Social Media

In the latest installment of her Social Good podcast, Allison Fine chats with Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, a network of a thousand women bloggers using their influence to drive attention to a range of social causes.

Transparency

On the Keeping A Close Eye Blog, NCRP executive director Aaron Dorfman compares a three-decades-old report from his organization that ranked and scored more than two hundred foundations on their ability to meet a standard of transparency with a new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy that surveyed 138 nonprofit leaders on what they'd like to see from foundations in the way of transparency. According to Dorfman, the old NCRP report found that "60 percent of foundations in the sample did not meet an acceptable standard of transparency," while findings in the new CEP report reveal that the more things change, the more they stay the same. "I see many parallel findings between that report and CEP's...report," writes Dorfman.

A full 33 years later, nonprofits are still clamoring for more information about how foundations make funding decisions and they want clear and open communication about priorities. They want to know whether it's worth their time to cultivate a relationship and pursue funding. And despite an explosion of glossy annual reports and fancy Web sites, leaders of grantseeking organizations are still highly frustrated by the lack of clear communication about a central element of foundation activity, namely how foundations decide which organizations to fund....

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

-- The Editors

The Social Progress Index: Measuring What Counts?

The Washington, D.C.-based Social Progress Imperative made a splash at the Skoll World Forum earlier this month when it launched its Social Progress Index (SPI), an ambitious effort to inform and influence development policies around the globe.

Developed by Harvard Business School professor and competitiveness expert Michael E. Porter in collaboration with Scott Stern of MIT, the index is founded on the principle that "what we measure guides the choices we make." To that end, the index analyzes fifty-two outcome-based (as opposed to input-based) indicators in three dimensions of social progress: meeting basic human needs; establishing the foundations of well-being that enable individuals to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives; and creating opportunity for all to reach their full potential. (For a complete breakdown of indicators, click here.)

While the index and the report (154 pages, PDF) released in conjunction with the launch of the index includes only fifty countries, those countries represent three-quarters of the world's population. Here's a chart from the report that plots their aggregate SPI scores against GDP per capita (PPP):

As the chart shows, the countries included in the index and report are fairly well distributed across income levels, ranging from Switzerland at the high end with a GDP per capita of $51,262; to middle-income countries such as the Russian Federation ($21,246), South Africa ($10,960), and China ($8,400); to lower-income countries like Egypt ($6,281), India ($3,627), and Mozambique ($975).

So, what do the SPI team's findings based on an analysis of a full year of data reveal? For starters, that countries' level of overall development -- as measured by GDP per capita and/or indices of global competitiveness -- often mask striking social and environmental challenges and strengths. For example, Costa Rica, a lower-middle-income country with a PPP of $12,157, ranks twelfth overall in the index, ahead of richer countries such as Israel ($27,825) and Argentina ($17,554); nineteenth in terms of basic human needs; and eighth for opportunity -- ahead of France, Japan, and Germany, all of which rank higher in terms of overall score. In contrast, the United Arab Emirates, the third-richest country ($47,893) in the SPI sample, ranks nineteenth overall, including eleventh in terms of basic human needs, but only thirtieth for opportunity and a disappointing thirty-seventh in terms of foundations of well-being.

The index/report also seem to indicate that economic development is necessary but not sufficient for social progress; that it is possible to achieve a high level of social progress at a relatively modest income level; and that while low-income countries are clustered at the bottom of the index, there is a wide range of social progress within this group. For instance, Mozambique, the poorest country in the SPI sample, is ranked fourteenth in terms of equality and inclusion, whereas Rwanda, the third-poorest country in the sample, is ranked forty-fourth for equality and inclusion. At the same time, Rwanda tops the index in terms of ecosystem sustainability, while the United States, which has the second-highest PPP in the sample and is ranked sixth overall, ranks near the very bottom (forty-eighth) in terms of ecosystem sustainability.

If by highlighting each country's strengths and weaknesses with respect to various aspects of social progress these data get you thinking differently about development, then SPI is off to a good start. "The purpose of the Social Progress Index," the report's authors note, "is to benchmark performance and motivate improvement while providing useful insights that will help all stakeholders to make better choices, prioritize investments, and strengthen implementation capacity to improve the lives of citizens."

Looking ahead, SPI plans to refine its model based on feedback and empirical testing, eventually expanding the number of countries in the index from fifty to a hundred and twenty. It also plans to form a Social Progress Network comprising partners from research and academic institutions, think tanks, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and international development organizations "to identify the policies, institutions, legal frameworks, and financing mechanisms that can drive more effective and efficient social progress, through international benchmarking and fostering specific research projects." And it will explore the possibility of creating a Social Progress Capacity Index to measure the potential of a country's government, business, and civil society institutions to contribute to innovation in the social sector.

In the meantime, governments are paying attention, with Paraguay already having agreed to incorporate the SPI model into its national development framework. Which perhaps begs the question: How will the philanthropic sector, in the U.S. and elsewhere, respond? The index has already begun to spark discussions about impact investing and social entrepreneurship. Will foundations become more active in those conversations than they have been to date? And how, if at all, might the index change the way we approach economic development -- both overseas and here in the United States? Have thoughts you'd like to share? Use the comments section below.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Dispatch From Philanthropy’s Frontlines: Globalization in Chicago

(Michael Seltzer is a trustee of EMpower-the Emerging Markets Foundation and a distinguished lecturer at the Baruch College School of Public Affairs of the City University of New York. To read his earlier dispatch from the Council on Foundations' annual conference, click here.)

Global issues were front and center at the annual meeting of the Council on Foundations in Chicago earlier this month. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. While many U.S. nonprofits have long been active in the international arena, the transnational dimensions of a range of issues, from food security, to sex trafficking and violence against women, to global warming, have become ever more apparent and have helped fuel the growth of nongovernmental organizations globally.

At the same time, more and more U. S. corporations, especially in information technology, financial services, natural resources extraction, and pharmaceuticals, derive a larger percentage of their profits from overseas operations, while a handful of the nation's largest foundations continue to fund international efforts. In addition, newer players like Bloomberg Philanthropies regularly make connections between their work at home and global efforts.

On Sunday, the first day of the conference, Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, senior advisor to the U.S. secretary of state for civil society and emerging democracies, remarked on the growing importance of the nonprofit sector globally and State Department efforts to position the U.S. government as a leading supporter of the global philanthropic and NGO movements, elevate the role of civil society in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy, engage multilateral organizations working to advance democracy and civil society around the globe, and promote the independence of civil society globally.

Other positive trends in this arena include the lowering of barriers that historically have discouraged U.S. foundations from funding efforts in other countries. John Harvey, managing director of the council's Global Philanthropy program, reported on recent efforts to modify and improve U.S. Treasury and IRS rules governing international grantmaking, including the launch of equivalency determination service NGOsource. Charities Aid Foundation America has announced that it is now providing 501(c)(3) equivalency services (something it has been doing for many years) at no cost to American donors. And public foundations like the International Youth Foundation and Tides Foundation have ramped up their international efforts. Tides now supports projects in more than seventy countries, while IYF is working with partners in more than eighty-six countries. More recently established organizations such as the African Women's Leadership Foundation-USA have joined the ranks of older organizations like the American India Foundation and Brazil Foundation in working to forge connections between diaspora communities in the U.S. and civil society efforts back home, while the International Center on Not-For-Profit Law (ICNL) today serves government officials and the donor community in more than a hundred countries.

Another indicator of the growth of global philanthropy is the emergence of national philanthropic associations around the globe. Centro Mexicano para la Filantropía (CEMEFI) boasts more than twelve hundred members and is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. Indeed, the philanthropic sector accounts for 1 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product, while more than eight hundred Mexican companies have signed corporate social responsibility pledges.

The conference closed on Tuesday with a plenary appearance by two of America's most important social sector thought leaders: feminist playwright Eve Ensler, whose latest project, V-Day, seeks to create a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and who spoke about the organization's work in the war-torn Congo; and Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health, the award-winning global health organization, who spoke about PIH's work in impoverished Haiti, where PIH has long had a presence.

As technology and capital flows continue to shrink the globe and the need to address climate change, nuclear proliferation, and other borderless problems grows more urgent, we should expect that more and more people in more and more places will look to philanthropy for funding and answers. The sense that this is already happening was palpable in the halls and conference rooms of the Chicago Hilton, and I, for one, am confident that it is one of the trends we'll be hearing a lot about it in the years to come.

In the meantime, click here to catch up on highlights from the 2013 CoF meeting. And if you'd like to share your thoughts about what philanthropy can and should be doing to promote the "greater good" globally, we'd love to hear them. Use the comments section below...

-- Michael Seltzer

Weekend Link Roundup (April 20-21, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Current Affairs

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

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

Data

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

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

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

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

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

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

Environment

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

Impact/Effectiveness

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

International Affairs/Development

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

Philanthropy

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

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

Professional Development

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

Social Media

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

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

-- The Editors

Philanthropy and Global Development: When Worlds Collide

(Jeff Falkenstein is vice president of data architecture at the Foundation Center. In October, he wrote about the challenges of gathering foundation grants data in a timely fashion.)

Earlier this month I had the good fortune to join policy makers, academics, and leaders from civil society and the private sector in Paris at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD) annual Global Forum on Development. (For those who haven't heard of it, the OECD works with governments, multilateral agencies, and bilateral agencies to better understand global trade and investment flows; the drivers of economic, social, and environmental change; and what can be done to address urgent global development problems. It then builds on that work to predict future trends in global trade and development.)

In the past, forum attendees typically discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by efforts to alleviate poverty around the globe. This year, however, the focus was on the progress made over the past decade in meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- and on jumpstarting a dialogue about new challenges in a post-2015 world.

It was clear from reports presented at the meeting that, two years from their original 2015 target date, the MDGs are already a success. Poverty rates have declined globally. Access to health care has improved. The number of deaths of children under the age of 5 has fallen, to 7 million in 2011, down from 12 million in 1990. The number of AIDS-related deaths also has fallen, to 1.7 million in 2011, down from 2.3 million in 2005. Thanks to the MDGs, well-designed and coordinated social programs are producing a wide range of positive outcomes, including improved nutrition and food security and higher rates of school enrollment.

Despite this progress, forum attendees made it clear that challenges remain. The income gap between the poorest and wealthiest individuals continues to widen, while acute poverty afflicts tens of millions of people around the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, half the population still lives on less than $1.25 a day. Access to basic services remains a global challenge; close to 2.4 billion people around the world go without proper sanitation facilities, while 1.1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water. Meanwhile, the economic growth of the last twenty years has not translated into job creation. The number of informal, poor-quality jobs remains high in many developing countries, with young people particularly affected. In Africa and the Middle East, young people comprise 60 percent of the unemployed.

Somewhat lost among the good news is the fact that development aid globally fell some 4 percent in 2012, following a 2 percent decline in 2011. There has also been a noticeable shift in aid allocations from the LDCs (i.e., the poorest countries) toward middle-income countries. For example, bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa totaled $26.2 billion in 2012, a year-over-year decline of nearly 8 percent.

As already thread-bare social safety nets become more frayed, the global development sector is looking to the private sector to pick up the slack, leading many to question whether that's an appropriate role for foundations -- and whether, collectively, they have the resources to do so. After all, the majority of foundations in the U.S. are independent or family foundations that focus their grantmaking in two or three areas of interest and/or in a specific geographic region. Similarly, corporate foundations tend to fund efforts in communities where they have employees and facilities, while community foundations, by definition, target local geographic areas. Outside the U.S., foundations tend to use their resources to operate their own programs and often look more like grantseeking public charities than private foundations.

The U.S. foundation at the epicenter of global development work is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the scope and scale of its work has tended to reinforce the notion that foundations are the answer to shortfalls in global development assistance. In the global health field, for example, the Gates Foundation is the third largest donor after the government of the United States and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The level at which Gates supports global health work is an exception, however, not the rule. And while Heather Grady, vice president for foundation initiatives at the Rockefeller Foundation, noted in her plenary remarks that Rockefeller itself has been an important driver and supporter of multi-stakeholder engagement with global development issues over its hundred-year history -- and while many other foundations are active in the global arena -- Gates is by far the biggest player.

So the question remains: If the global development community is eager to increase its engagement with private foundations, how do we bring more foundations to the global development table? And for those foundations already at the table, how can they better coordinate with other actors in the global development space?

I'm happy to report that a number of initiatives to do just that are under way. In an effort to increase communication among various stakeholders in global development work, the OECD and United Nations Development Programme created the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-Operation to support and monitor development cooperation and "ensure it achieves the maximum impact in eradicating poverty and building better lives." To date, the partnership has brought 160 countries and 45 organizations together around a set of principles that it hopes will form the basis for effective development cooperation going forward.

In addition, UNDP, the UN's Economic and Social Council, the Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support (WINGS), and OECD's netFWD initiative are actively engaged in helping the global philanthropic community understand how it can support development efforts and, with an eye to the future, are working to scale collaboration among philanthropic organizations, governments, and multilateral agencies. To that end, feedback from an ongoing e-discussion will feed into a special policy dialogue on "The role of philanthropic organizations in the post-2015 setting" on April 23 at the United Nations in New York.

The Foundation Center, too, is doing its part to increase the engagement of foundations with the global development sector. Through our partnerships with OECD, Development Gateway, and the World Bank, as well as through the development of Web portals like WASHfunders, the center is helping to shed light on the intersection of global development and philanthropy and creating greater understanding of those fields among governments and foundations.

I'll be attending the event at the UN on the 23rd and will be interested to see which foundations are represented there. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts about whether private foundations should think of themselves as part of the global development community? And if not, why not?

-- Jeff Falkenstein

Weekend Link Roundup (April 6-7, 2013)

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

Advocacy

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

Communications

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

Fundraising

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

Impact/Effectiveness

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

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

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

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

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

International Development

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

Nonprofit Management

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

Regulation/Oversight

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

Social Entrepreneurship

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

Social Media

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

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

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

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

-- The Editors

Read of the Week: 'US Giving for Japan Disaster Exceeds $710 Million'

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a tsunami that devastated more than four hundred miles of Japanese coastline, swamped (and permanently disabled) the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power complex, and left more than eighteen thousand people dead and half a million displaced from their homes. According to a new report from the Japan Center for International Exchange, Americans have donated a total of $712.6 million for relief and recovery efforts in Japan in the two years since the disaster -- the most ever given by Americans in response to a disaster in a developed nation and the fifth-largest giving total ever for a disaster.

The report, US Giving for Japan Disaster Exceeds $710 Million (5 pages, HTML), notes that initial disaster relief tallies underestimated the giving of tens of thousands of Americans who, instead of donating to the usual suspects, organized their own fundraisers, as well as off-the-radar groups with connections to Japan that launched fundraising campaigns of their own. Indeed, the report argues that whereas the outpouring of charitable donations following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was magnified by the well-documented poverty of the most of the victims and survivors, the American response to the disaster in much wealthier Japan seems to have been motivated in many cases by personal and/or corporate ties -- despite the fact that more than a few disaster-relief experts and media outlets suggested that Americans' donations would be more usefully applied to "everyday disasters" in poorer developing countries than in infrastructure-rich Japan.

Now, while it's true that the way we do disaster relief in this country doesn't always ensure the most efficient distribution of resources for victims and survivors, it's also true that, as wealthy as Japan is, its nonprofit sector is relatively underfinanced. In fact, donations from Americans made a significant impact, the report argues, precisely because the funding base of Japanese nonprofits -- which did and continue to play a crucial role in relief and recovery efforts -- traditionally has been limited.

The report includes links to JCIE's searchable database of roughly $1 billion in donations and grants made by overseas organizations in support of relief and recovery efforts, as well as a handful of innovative ideas that emerged from the response. It's worth checking out.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Leveraging Momentum in the Movement to End Violence Against Girls and Women

(Jennifer Buffett is the president and co-chair of the NoVo Foundation, an organization that seeks to empower girls and women worldwide and to end the violence and exploitation against them. )

When girls are empowered, they can transform communities and the world. But for too many girls, domestic and sexual violence stands in their way.

Countless advocates have worked tirelessly for decades to end violence against girls and women. Thanks to their work, we have made progress: Attitudes have shifted. Resources have been allocated. Systems have started to change. And yet, rates of violence remain staggeringly high -- violence that makes the headlines, like the gang rapes in India and Steubenville, Ohio, as well as everyday rapes and beatings that are so commonplace in our culture they are not even considered news.

What will it take to create lasting change -- to create a world where women and girls are safe and respected and can reach their amazing potential? We believe it will take bold action. And change is certainly afoot.

There has been incredible momentum building over the last two months around ending violence against girls and women. On February 14, One Billion Rising (an initiative led by V-Day) mobilized millions of women and men around the world in the largest global action in history to end violence against girls and women. On former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's penultimate day in the office, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum that institutionalizes an ambassador-at-large to run the Office of Global Women's Issues, ensuring that girls and women have a place on our national agenda.

During the first week of March, as the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status on Women explored the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls, President Obama signed the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. This version of VAWA, which among other things ensures critical funding for programs that support victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, education, and training for the judges and lawyers who prosecute these crimes, now guarantees that the LGBTQ, Native American, and immigrant communities also will find protection under the law. The bill also includes the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a law designed to prevent trafficking, aid victims, and hold traffickers accountable in court.

While big gains are being realized on the national and international stage, innovative organizations are changing the attitudes and behaviors of hundreds of thousands of Americans in their own communities. A Long Walk Home, an organization that uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against girls and women, has educated more than a hundred thousand survivors and their supporters to build safe communities and end gender violence in just a few years. A CALL TO MEN is working to engage men, who have the primarily responsibility for preventing domestic and sexual violence, in the solution. The organization goes where men are, from community centers and college campuses to football fields and boardrooms, and provides education, tools, and strategies to help them change their attitudes and behaviors. Over ten years, A CALL TO MEN has reached more than a hundred thousand people, including thirty thousand young men in high school and college and 90 percent of the teams in the National Football League.

While these incredible sparks of innovation are happening in pockets across America, groups tend to operate in silos, and culture-shifting campaigns like these are disconnected from one another. At the NoVo Foundation, we started the Move to End Violence program, a ten-year operational program to identify visionary leaders who are doing innovative social change work in isolation and bring them together to strengthen the movement to end domestic and sexual violence in the United States. Through their work, we will achieve a movement made up of powerful organizations working toward a shared vision for ending violence against girls and women.

Two years into our commitment, we could not be more pleased with the direction of this work. We are transforming leaders and ensuring they have the resources and capacity to lead the way in ending violence against girls and women. We are bringing together organizations that once saw one another as competitors and now see themselves as invaluable partners. We are helping these advocates adopt a more sustainable, impactful way of doing this work. And the leaders in this program and their allies are beginning to envision a new way of moving forward together.

Right now, leaders in the field are hosting "movement conversations" all across the country, engaging their allies in discussions around a bold vision for ending violence against girls and women and the actions needed to make that vision a reality. The field is on the precipice of becoming a powerful movement for social change in which talented leaders working in concert can leverage the power of their organizations to achieve bold impact.

It is clear the time is now. Years of hard work by many have set the stage for a series of policy wins, a new level of consciousness, a growing group of transformed leaders, and a public ready for change. We must collectively leverage this momentum. We need to invest in the advocacy and social change agenda that these innovative leaders are creating -- and work together as funders to put resources behind these efforts to create lasting change.

-- Jennifer Buffett

Good Read of the Week: 'Women and the Web'

Today is International Women's Day, and a whole host of events and discussions celebrating extraordinary women and highlighting the inequities women around the globe continue to face are taking place -- many of them online. Yet few women in the developing world are aware of these online activities, let alone able to participate. Despite all the knowledge and opportunity the Internet has created over the last two decades and the millions of lives it has transformed, women in many parts of the world have little or no access to the mother of all networks.

According to Women and the Web (104 pages, PDF), a report from Intel and Dalberg Global Development Advisors, an average of only 21 percent of the women and girls in 144 developing countries have access to the Internet, compared with 27 percent of men -- a weighted gender gap of 23 percent. And the gap widens to 33 percent in South Asia, 34 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 43 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. The situation is even more serious, the report argues, when one factors in the tangible benefits of Internet access for women. These include increases in women's income potential and a greater sense of empowerment. Indeed, the longer a woman has been active online, the report finds, the more likely she is to engage in activities that generate economic benefits.

In contrast, societies unwilling or unable to provide women with access to the Internet increasingly must do without the tools and resources needed to achieve development goals such as reducing infant mortality or boosting per capita GDP. In other words, the Internet gender gap holds back not only women, but their families, communities, and countries. "As more of the world's communications and business migrate online, women who cannot or do not use the Internet risk deeper isolation, including missed opportunities for education, jobs and career advancement," says Nancy Hafkin, a senior associate at Women in Global Science and Technology.

What are the barriers that prevent women from accessing the Internet in developing countries? According to the report, 23 percent of the women surveyed were unaware of the Internet or its benefits, 23 percent cited a lack of facility with technology, and 8 percent cited cultural norms. On the latter point, one in five women in India and Egypt believed that the Internet was not "appropriate" for them, while a supportive family was a critical factor in enabling women's Internet use in other countries. Even when women are able to overcome social and cultural norms, however, they often are hampered by technological barriers, including the lack of a robust network infrastructure, limited availability and/or affordability of devices and network access, and the absence of public policy supportive of equal access for women.

So, how do we remove these obstacles and expand Internet access for women in the developing world? For starters, a coordinated effort among industry, the development community, and policy makers is needed to eliminate barriers at both the individual and structural levels, the authors argue. And stakeholders must do more to support and accelerate these shifts. Specific interventions recommended by the report include:

1. Forming a coalition of stakeholders to advocate for women and girls' right to access the Internet;
2. Building on existing partnerships with mobile operators to make mobile content more relevant and available on mobile devices;
3. Incentivizing entrepreneurs to create content targeted to women in local contexts;
4. Identifying women leaders in the industry to serve as advocates for the benefits of Internet access; and
5. Tracking on a systematic basis how women and girls access and use the Internet.

Clearly, there's much work to be done if women and girls are not to be left behind as the global economy continues to move online. At the end of the day, the lack of Internet access among so many women and girls is not just a problem for them; it's a problem for all of us.

What do you think about the issues raised by the report? What role -- if any -- does access to the Internet play in advancing gender equality and women's empowerment? Have any examples you can share of how the Internet has transformed women's lives? And what about other areas in which social or cultural norms have been a barrier to women's progress? Use the comments section below to share your thoughts....

-- Kyoko Uchida

Version 2.0: The Giving Pledge Globalizes

(Bradford K. Smith is the president of the Foundation Center. This post originally appeared on the center's Transparency Talk blog.)

They said that the Giving Pledge was "made in America," they said that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett didn't understand other cultures, and that their brand of philanthropy was inappropriate for (substitute the country of your choice). They were wrong: on Tuesday, February 19, the ranks of the 93 American billionaires who have already signed the Giving Pledge -- a public commitment to dedicate more than half their fortunes to philanthropy -- were joined by a dozen more representing eight countries. In one fell swoop, the Giving Pledge has gone global.

How could the skeptics have gotten it so wrong? Since the Giving Pledge launched in 2010, wherever my travels have taken me, I have heard Brazilians, Mexicans, Europeans, and Chinese go to great lengths to explain why it would never catch on in their countries. On the eve of the Gates/Buffett visit to China, I was interviewed on CCTV2 (the English language channel of China's state-controlled media conglomerate) by a reporter who bombarded me with question after leading question to prove that theirs was a fool's errand. It was all I could do, in vain I suppose, to tell her that as hyper-developed as philanthropy may be in the America, it is alive and well and growing in China.

Here's what the skeptics fail to understand about the Giving Pledge:

Bill Gates is not (only) American -- While the world has struggled to come to agreement on standards for just about everything else that matters, Bill Gates created and proliferated a standard operating system -- Windows -- that came to be used in every corner of the globe where there was a desktop and a computer. He led a second revolution when he and his wife Melinda turned their personal wealth and vision to creating an internationally minded philanthropic institution. For both of these enormous achievements, Bill Gates represents a unique example of private success and public altruism on a global scale that many seek to emulate.

Billionaires are a culture unto themselves -- As much as they may be African, Asian, European, or Latin American, the wealthiest billionaires are also part of a growing, global culture of the ultra-rich. They are densely networked through business and investment ties and "hang" together in places like Davos, Aspen, and at the Clinton Global Initiative. In deciding to join something like the Giving Pledge they are more likely to look to the example of their fellow billionaires, wherever on the globe they may be from, than to pay credence to the skeptics in their own backyard.

Philanthropy is an aspiration -- Whether the Giving Pledge billionaires started out poor or were born into wealth, they see their fortune as a form of immense privilege. And, as their public pledges reflect, they recognize that they are in a position to do something about things in the world they feel could be better. As the ranks of the world's billionaires grow, we have the Giving Pledge to thank for elevating philanthropy to the level of a higher calling to which they can aspire.

The Giving Pledge is a social movement -- When the Giving Pledge was first announced, I blogged about it being akin to a billionaire social movement. Several years later it has become one. Its ranks have swollen to over a hundred, it has its own Web site, an independent resource in the Foundation Center's "Eye on the Giving Pledge," and periodic gatherings where pledgers share their experiences in philanthropy. As a movement, the Giving Pledge provides identity, recognition, and -- above all -- a network through which philanthropists can learn from one another. When you think about it, as wealthy as they are, the only place Giving Pledge members can turn for advice without being sold a service or pitched a project is probably to each other.

The most surprising thing about the globalization of the Giving Pledge is that anyone should be surprised that it is happening. Information is global, technology is global, many of the world's most pressing challenges are global, and ultra-wealth is global. Welcome to Giving Pledge 2.0, to be followed by future upgrades. I for one am eager to see where it will take philanthropy.

-- Brad Smith

[Infographic] WINGS Network Profile 2012

This week's infographic provides some basic facts about the Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support, better known as WINGS, a network of 147 organizations in 53 countries working to encourage and strengthen philanthropy and a culture of giving globally.

The graphic, which is based on responses from fifty-two WINGS member organizations (and was produced in partnership with the Foundation Center), shows, among other things, that the growth in organizations supporting philanthropy globally is accelerating and that the longer an organization has been around, the more likely it is to participate in advocacy and research activities related to philanthropy.

With the global economy generating wealth at an accelerating rate, philanthropy will be expected to play an ever-larger role in addressing and mitigating urgent environmental, social, and security challenges. For its part, WINGS has set itself the goal of determining, over the next five years, whether the philanthropic sector will continue to grow globally, or whether it has reached a saturation point. We look forward to reporting on those efforts.

Foundations and the Freedom Not to Forget

(Bradford K. Smith, president of the Foundation Center, wrote about Lucy Bernholz's annual look at trends in the social economy in his last post.)

Recently I had a front-row seat for two profoundly moving presentations that highlighted philanthropic freedom in action. Both involved groups of forgotten people -- the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam and rural Americans without Internet access -- and one foundation, the Ford Foundation.

First, Charles Bailey, the former representative of the Ford Foundation in Vietnam, spoke to staff here at the Foundation Center about the "Make Agent Orange History" campaign. During the Vietnam War, the United States dumped 12 million gallons of a herbicide known as Agent Orange on South Vietnam, exposing in the process some 4.5 million Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands soldiers from America and other nations. Agent Orange contains the chemical dioxin, which remains toxic to living things for hundreds of years and is concentrated in contaminated soil, or "hot spots," throughout the Vietnamese countryside. The Ford Foundation quietly began working on the issue of dioxin remediation at a time when there was no official dialogue between the American and Vietnamese governments and none of the sixteen corporations that had produced Agent Orange would accept any liability for its devastating side effects.

Subsequently, in 2000, Ford announced its Special Initiative on Agent Orange/Dioxin, which was transferred to the Aspen Institute in 2011. Over time, other foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies began to contribute to the effort and Congress started to act. Today, while lives have been restored and hot spots have been cleaned up, legal action has yielded almost nothing and millions of people remain at risk. The effort lives on, however, spearheaded by Bailey and the Aspen Institute, in partnership with the U.S.-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin.

Later in the evening, I stopped in at the Ford Foundation to hear Susan Crawford talk about another group of forgotten people: the millions of Americans without Internet access. Crawford opened her remarks by painting a vivid picture of a mother and daughter sitting in a car outside the local library after dark. Why? So the child could piggy-back on the library's wireless connection to do her homework.

Crawford, a dynamic professor of law at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law here in New York City, is the author of the just-released Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, which chronicles how a combination of bad policy and corporate power have turned the U.S., once the undisputed leader in all things Internet, into a nation that pays higher prices for slower download speeds than virtually any industrialized country in the world and where Internet access is anything but universal.

That Ford was sponsoring such an event should come as no surprise. Crawford's work and that of other scholars and activists inform the foundation's Advancing Media Rights and Access initiative -- which has supported a number of high-profile public events under the banner "Wired for Change," as well as grants to organizations around the world working on these issues. (Many of those organizations also can count on the Open Society Foundations for support.) Tackling issues like "net neutrality" (which is anything but neutral) and supporting research that often runs counter to the "facts" and analysis provided by industry giants such as Comcast can be controversial. But Ford has been a leader in this space.

Indeed, issues like Agent Orange remediation and the digital divide receive relatively little foundation support compared to more traditional causes. The fact that a handful of foundations like Ford choose to take them on tells us something important about philanthropic freedom. More than just a tax code-enabled right, private foundations' freedom to work on issues of their choosing is also a unique asset, one that must be used responsibly and, at times, courageously.

What an inspiring day that was. It reminded me of the many ways in which private foundations -- free from the bottom-line pressure of markets, the partisanship of electoral politics, and the demands of fundraising -- can use their independence to do remarkable things, whether it's taking on issues that no one wants to touch, sticking with an issue for decades if required, or keeping the rest of us from forgetting the millions of people who, through no fault of their own, continue to be harmed and/or excluded by war, economic injustice, disease, and discrimination.

-- 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 1-2, 2012)

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

Communications

On the Big Duck blog, Jenna Silverman shares some social media tips for maximizing exposure for an article, blog post, newsletter feature, or report:

1. Don't be afraid to state your conclusion right away;
2. Use jargon-free and audience-centric language; and
3. Use include images if it's posted to Facebook, and hashtags if shared via Twitter.

"Just remember," adds Silverman, "that your followers on Twitter are expecting something different from the people that like you on Facebook. Facebook users don't want to see hashtags and your Twitter followers don't want you to waste space with full URLs. Instead of auto-feeding those updates across all platforms, write new messages for each one. You'll see a difference."

Giving

Last week saw the debut of Giving Tuesday, a national movement to boost support for nonprofit organizations at the start of the annual holiday season. Despite all the hoopla surrounding the event, not everyone was a convert. Writing on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Timothy Ogden, managing director of the Financial Access Initiative at New York University and executive partner at Sona Partners, said he wasn't convinced the campaign would "materially affect giving in any positive way." The United States, writes Ogden,

has a deserved reputation for generosity when it comes to charity. According to GivingUSA, total annual giving now tops $300 billion. What many don't realize, given that the GivingUSA numbers change each year (usually in a positive direction), is how static the giving behavior of Americans is. Americans on average give about 2 percent of their income. When they earn more, they give more. When they earn less, they cut back. Over the last 10 years the percentage of national income given away (according to GivingUSA's totals) has varied from 2.1 to 2.2 percent. The only thing that has changed that percentage in the last 40 years, according to the Minneapolis Fed, is a tax law change that led to many wealthy people starting foundations at the end of 1986....

Ogden goes on to say that "while Giving Tuesday may make Americans' giving more visible, there's no reason to believe...it will affect how much they give." More likely, he writes, is that it will "shift more giving to the week of Thanksgiving from other times of year." We're not sure whether that's a good or bad thing. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Writing on the Bridgespan blog, Daniel Stidt suggests that it may be time for the nonprofit sector to rethink its unstinting defense of the charitable deduction. It's a long and nuanced post, and Stidt suggests in closing that perhaps

the biggest problem with the die-hard defense of the charitable deduction is the opportunity cost it presents in the form of what social sector leaders are not speaking about so long as this issue is at the top of their agenda with policy-makers. Our country faces a range of pressing problems that are begging for a solution, from failing schools and rampant homelessness to accelerating climate change and a prison-industrial complex that ensnares 1 out of 3 black men over the course of their lives. Any one of these issue -- and many more like them -- warrants a convergence of sector leaders to press the urgent need for a solution in the halls of power. Yet so long as nonprofit leaders are jostling with the dairy farmers and real estate brokers and the bevy of other interests in these same corridors, with everyone determined to preserve their benefits and subsidies and tax breaks without modification, our voices risk ending up sounding remarkably like everyone else's....

HIV/AIDS

December 1 was World AIDS Day, and to mark the occasion the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Lisa Ranghelli urges philanthropists and funders to step up and support advocacy aimed at "influenc[ing] health care access for people living with or at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS."  The Gates Foundation shares ten facts to help readers of its Impatient Optimists blog "reflect on the current state of AIDS around the world, as well as some reasons to be optimistic that together, with strong leadership, we can end this epidemic." And, on the Huffington Post blog, Dr. Mphu Keneiloe Ramatlapeng, executive vice president of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, suggests three ways to harness the idealism and ambition of AIDS activists. "Governments need to ask themselves whether they are spending their money on the highest impact interventions," adds Ramatlapeng, "and if not, to make the hard choice to change course and cut programs that aren't working."

Impact/Effectiveness

Is charity more effective than government? Can it efficiently and fairly take the place of government in important areas? Or will the power of wealthy donors and patrons let them set funding priorities in the face of inevitable government cutbacks? Those are some of the important questions addressed in an interesting "Room for Debate" forum on the New York Times Web site.

Instead of jumping on to the Big Data bandwagon and racing to collect gigabytes of new data -- data that could be used to generate "misinformation that can be (and is already being) manipulated by people and institutions to convey the findings they want" -- nonprofits should focus on developing "more trusted and reliable sources of 'what works,'" writes Cynthia Gibson on the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog. "That will require a process to thoughtfully evaluate and analyze data and information through some sort of vetting process," writes Gibson. "Instead of relying on experts, though, perhaps this process could incorporate some of the open source practices that technology is driving by making information public [and] pulling in some experts to weigh in on what's real and what's noise. After all, research shows that the best decisions are made when 'real people' and experts work together...."

International Aid/Development

In a rebuttal to a recent series of lectures by development economist and MIT professor Esther Duflo, Ed Carr, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina, argues that to "discuss the mistakes the poor make, we must first understand what the goals of the poor are" -- something that behavioral economists like Duflo don't do enough of. Writes Carr, "I have laid out [how], in the context of livelihoods,

material considerations are always bound up in social considerations. If you only evaluate these actions as aimed at material goals, you've only got a part of the picture -- and not the most important part, in most cases. Instead, what you are left with are a bunch of decisions and outcomes that appear illogical, that can be cast as mistakes. Only most of the time, they are not mistakes -- they are conscious choices....

Other

And on the Inc.com site, Kevin Daum, author of Video Marketing for Dummies, shares five "Rs" that will help you get the most out of the holiday season:

• Reconnect with important people you haven't spoken to in a while.
• Reflect on the year and think about what you've learned and what's left to resolve.
• Reposition how you are presenting yourself in the business community.
• Recruit people who will help you soar in 2013.
• Relax and spend quality family time or alone time to get ready for the year ahead.

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

-- The Editors