PhilanTopic

Weekend Link Roundup (February 23-24, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Diversity

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

Impact/Effectiveness

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

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

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

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

Philanthropy

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

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

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

Social Good

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

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

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

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (February 16-17, 2013)

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

Arts and Culture

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, James Irvine Foundation president and CEO Jim Canales discusses the foundation's new arts strategy, which has received both positive and negative feedback from the nonprofit community. "I admire those who have stepped forward to criticize aspects of our strategy, whether they believe it is wrong on its merits or they view it as yet another example of 'strategic philanthropy' gone awry, where we are dictating and imposing our solutions upon the field," writes Canales. "That is certainly not out intention.

What is different for us in our new Arts strategy is that rather than continuing with a broad-based approach that funded projects across multiple objectives, we made the strategic decision to direct our finite resources in a way that, in our view, will best position the arts field for future viability and success. In doing so, we are openly expressing a point of view about how we think the field must evolve to ensure its dynamism and relevance. Yet, we are very clear about our willingness to learn with our partners in this effort, to refine our approach accordingly, and to help to advance the field's understanding of the many ways to engage a broader cross-section of Californians (in our case) in the arts....

So, please keep the ideas, observations and critiques coming. It's the best way to ensure we can achieve the end we all agree upon: a vibrant, relevant and successful arts field....

Fundraising

The Mertz Gilmore Foundation and NYU Wagner's Research Center for Leadership in Action have issued a new report, Beyond Foundation Funding: Revenue-Generating Strategies for Sustainable Social Change (84 pages, PDF), that's designed to aid social change organizations, funders, and technical assistance providers in discussing and implementing different fundraising and revenue-generating practices.

Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks has a few choice words for fundraising consultants who show up at sector conferences with slick PowerPoint presentations designed to shame attendees into contracting their services, but who never, ever reveal whether the campaigns they are so proud of creating actually worked or not.

Impact/Effectiveness

On her blog, Beth Kanter has a few tips for nonprofits struggling to measure "difficult stuff" like social media results and success. Among other things, Kanter suggests that organizations spend time "brainstorming the 'chain of events' of how your organization's strategic use of social media can be a pathway to your organization's overall definition of success or mission."

The Weakonomist reflects on a recent Wall Street Journal article from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates in which Gates described how his foundation is working to improve measurement of the problems it has set out to tackle, which in turn improves its understanding of a problem. An approving Weakonomist notes that while "Measuring a problem is sometimes more difficult than finding the solution...this is where more work should be focused."

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Mark Russell takes issue with Gates' argument, which Russell says "reinforce[s] the myth that if only nonprofits would follow the business model, the world would be a better place." Russell goes on to point out that there are any number of measurements that businesses don't track, such as the chemicals used in the hydrofracking process and how those chemicals might affect local residents, and/or information that businesses don't share about the things they do track, such as "who pays for [the] data (and who benefits)." And he closes by reminding us why key stakeholders need to be involved in any measurement process:

In short, to be data savvy is to be a bit of a data skeptic. As [MathBabe blogger Cathy] O’Neill says, there's "power behind a data collection process." Part of that power is to choose what to measure, based on values, or biases, or simply limited resources. As Fay Twersky, director of the Effective Philanthropy Group at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, puts it:..."We cannot evaluate everything, so we choose strategically...."

And in a long piece over at The Nonprofit Quarterly, Rick Cohen argues that mission-related investing is "worthy of recognition and support not just by nonprofits managing large endowments, but by mainstream nonprofits concerned about maximizing the capital markets' support of socially beneficial investment opportunities."

Journalism/Media

On the Humanosphere blog, Tom Paulson weighs in with a thoughtful consideration of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "strategic media partnerships and concludes that

as journalists and news organizations come to depend increasingly on philanthropies like the Gates Foundation for financial support, it is even more important than ever that we stay focused on our main job -- arguably, pushing for critical analysis and accountability -- and tread carefully when asked to strategically partner with even the most well-intentioned humanitarian in promoting a cause...or solution.

Philanthropy

On the GrantCraft blog, Lisa Philp, the Foundation Center's vice president for strategic philanthropy, discusses the genesis of Next Gen Donors: Shaping the Future of Philanthropy, a companion piece to the just-released Next Gen Donors: Respecting Legacy, Revolutionizing Philanthropy(80 pages, PDF), which found that high-net-worth Gen X and Geny Y (Millennial) individuals are keenly interested in structuring their philanthropy around personal values, measurable impact, and hands-on engagement. A project of GrantCraft, the Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University, and 21/64, the companion report highlights the "practical wisdom" and insights of next-gen donors with respect to their interest in engagement, new ways of learning, and making a difference sooner rather than later.

Transparency

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz reflects on two recent examples of a foundation confronting its critics publicly. In the first, Irvine Foundation CEO Jim Canales (see above) linked directly to bloggers critical of Irvine's new arts strategy. And in the second, the Knight Foundation said it regretted paying Jonah Lehrer, a journalist who was caught plagiarizing by his employer, The New Yorker, and subsequently fired, $20,000 to speak at a recent Knight-sponsored media seminar. Bernholz said she found herself

considering these two events from a few steps further back. We criticize foundations for being opaque, and mostly they are. Steps toward transparency aren't going to be easy (sounds real good if you say it real fast). Both of these examples involve foundations actually in conversation with publics they could (easily, legally, and rather comfortably) ignore. The more important question for all us may be -- why is that the case?

Water/Sanitation/Hygiene (WASH)

Over at the WASHfunders.org blog, our FC colleagues Nina and Seema share a three-minute video in which Water.org co-founder and award-winning actor Matt Damon pledges to stop using the toilet until more people take the issue of water scarcity seriously. "Aside from publicizing WASH issues, the video aims to inspire people to action," they write, "[and] directs viewers to a new web site, strikewithme.org, where they can learn more about the crisis, and donate their money and social media accounts to the campaign."

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And enjoy the long weekend!

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (February 9-10, 2013)

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

Fundraising

Guest blogging on the GuideStar blog, Big Duck founder Sarah Durham shares three fundraising trends that gained traction in 2012 -- more sophisticated data collection and analysis, greater use of social media by nonprofit executives to engage with constituents, and more effective use of online technologies -- and suggests three things that nonprofits should add to their to-do lists in 2013: collect AND analyze data, "open up," and act fast when a crisis strikes.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Ellie Buteau discusses the organization's new Room for Improvement report, which found that funders often request performance information that is more useful for them than it is for their grantees. "More than half the nonprofit leaders we surveyed agreed that funders care more about performance information that is useful to the foundations than information that is useful to the grantees. Only 28 percent of nonprofit leaders disagree with this sentiment," writes Buteau. "Not surprisingly, the more strongly nonprofits believe funders are prioritizing their own data needs over nonprofits', the less helpful they find their funders to be to their organizations’ ability to assess its progress."

Steve Lohr has an interesting post on the New York Times' Bits blog about the etymological origins of the term "big data."

And in an article in Wired, Nassim Taleb, the former derivatives trader who popularized the concept of "black swan" events, offers a few cautions designed to temper our current enthusiasm for data of the big variety. "Big-data researchers," he writes,

have the option to stop doing their research once they have the right result. In options language: The researcher gets the "upside" and truth gets the "downside." It makes him antifragile, that is, capable of benefiting from complexity and uncertainty -- and at the expense of others.

But beyond that, big data means anyone can find fake statistical relationships, since the spurious rises to the surface. This is because in large data sets, large deviations are vastly more attributable to variance (or noise) than to information (or signal). It's a property of sampling: In real life there is no cherry-picking, but on the researcher's computer, there is. Large deviations are likely to be bogus....

The Bridgespan Group's Daniel Stid has nice things to say about a just-released working paper from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation titled "Evaluation Principles and Practices." "The first two principles articulated in the paper," writes Stid, "are especially noteworthy":

1. We lead with purpose. We design evaluation with actions and decisions in mind. We ask, "How and when will we use the information that comes from this evaluation?"
2. Evaluation is fundamentally a learning process. As we engage in evaluation planning, implementation, and use of results, we actively learn and adapt.

"These two principles are reciprocal," writes Stid. "The first emphasizes that information gleaned from evaluations will be used for decisions and actions; the second that the point of evaluation is learning, adaptation, and course correction." What would you add to the list. use the comments section below to share your thoughts.

Journalism/Media

On the Knight Foundation blog, Eric Newton lists ten digital tools that Michael Maness, the foundation's vice president for journalism and media innovation, think journalists should be familiar with. To that end, the foundation, in partnership with the Poynter Institute and the American Press Institute, has launched a series of tutorial webinars to help media people learn new tools as fast as they're coming out. Eventually, tutorials will be available for all the tools in Newton's post, including DocumentCloud, Panda, Poderpedia, Timeline.js, Scraper Wiki, TileMile/Map Box, Frontline SMS, Zeega, Amara, and Ushahidi. Newton also likes video notebook and Storify. "News [changes] constantly," he writes. "So [do] the tools. Journalists [need to] be as creative and enterprising about how they do the news as they [are] about the news itself."

Philanthropy

If there's one thing we should take away from the uptick in charitable giving at the end of 2012, it's that professional and legal advisors counseled their high-net-worth clients to take advantage of existing tax laws, writes Ellen Remmer on the TPI blog. "So, hurray for uncertainty in the tax laws! If it drives charitable giving then I'm all for it; but let's take note that the drivers of this 'river of money' were the advisors to the affluent."

Writing on the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Albert Ruesga reflects on "an extraordinary thing [that] happened some three years ago at the Council on Foundations annual meeting in Denver: philanthropy was put on trial." The session, which featured Gara Lamarche, then-CEO of Atlantic Philanthropies, as the prosecuting attorney and Ralph Smith, senior vice president at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, for the defense, was extraordinary for a number of reasons, writes Ruesga, but most of all because nothing was done after the conference was over "to explore what it meant for the grantmaking profession that five out of six of its practitioners, chosen at random, voted to condemn it." Writes Ruesga:

While philanthropy may have gone on trial three years ago, we're not past the moment when we can fruitfully ask those five out of six why they voted as they did. If, as I suspect, their judgment represents the general sentiment of the field, what, in their view...are the primary reasons why grantmakers tend to underperform? Is it because foundations generally fail to identify and address the root causes of our problems, treating only their symptoms? Is it because foundations are too top down, woefully in the habit of doing "to" rather than "with"? Do they fail to deliver social change because their work is little governed by metrics or business principles? or is it because there's such an attenuated sense of accountability at many of these institutions?...

Writing on the Huffington Post's Impact blog, Josh Baron, co-founder and partner at Banyan Family Business Advisors, has a different take on why philanthropy so often fails to take advantage of "unprecedented opportunities" to make a difference in society -- and what can be done to change the existing calculus of social good.

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Bella Vista Foundation executive director Mary Gregory explains why her organization decided to develop a theory of change and how that process was used to help other groups interested in creating their own theory of change.

Social Media

On the Minnesota Council on Foundation's Philanthropy Potluck blog, Megan Sullivan shares highlights from the Chronicle of Philanthropy's most recent Social Good podcast, in which Allison Fine and Kivi Leroux Miller, president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com, discussed how nonprofits can use social media to achieve social good.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (February 2-3, 2013)

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

Diversity

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

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

Gun Violence

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

Nonprofits

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

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

Philanthropy

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

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

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

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

Social Entrepreneurship/Innovation

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

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

Transparency

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

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

Women and Girls

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

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (January 26-27, 2013)

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

Diversity

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

Governance

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

Impact/Effectiveness

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

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

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

Philanthropy

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

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

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

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

Social Media

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

Transparency

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

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

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

Women

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

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (January 19-20, 2013)

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

Advocacy

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Nonprofits

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

Philanthropy

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

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

Social Good

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

Social Media

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

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

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

Technology

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

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

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

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (January 13-14, 2013)

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

Disaster Relief/Recovery

It's been three years since Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, was devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. In the weeks and months following the disaster, individuals and the international donor community stepped up with more than $5 billion in cash and commitments for relief and recovery efforts. So where do things stand today? Mark Leon Goldberg, managing editor of UN Dispatch, provides some basic facts and figures.

Nonprofits

Marie Deatherage, director of communications and learning at the Meyer Memorial Trust, curates a nice list of 2013 predictions for nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and the social economy. Her list includes Lucy Bernholz's Philanthropy and the New Social Economy: Blueprint 2013, which is available as a free download from the Foundation Center's GrantCraft site; Pantheon president Mark Tobias ((@PanthTech) on "Ten Technology Trends to Watch in 2013"; and Nonprofit Revolution Now's "missing" predictions.

Philanthropy

Writing in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Nick Penniman and Ian Simmons take philanthropy to task for its "chronic" underinvestment in political reform at a time when the "special interests that finance and influence the political process have amassed unprecedented power." What would be an appropriate amount? ask Penniman and Simmons. Their answer? One percent, or as they write:

Some $300 billion is donated annually to charitable causes. So, $3 billion for reform. Yes, $3 billion sounds like a lot of money. But 1 percent of philanthropy is not excessive -- especially not for a purpose as important as maintaining a government of, by, and for the people. We spend magnitudes more than that funding the arts and humanities, fighting infectious diseases, providing the poor and needy with the services they need, and trying to improve our educational institutions. Committing a sliver of philanthropy to making sure Washington and the state capitals are free of corruption -- both legal and illegal -- seems like a smart investment. Doing so should not be seen as merely advancing an abstract concept of “good government,” but as a concrete and necessary step in advancing solutions to the great challenges of our time -- solutions that the philanthropic sector often invests in but never sees actualized....

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, CEO and president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest healthcare philanthropy, is named one of New Jersey's most fascinating people and is profiled in depth by the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Chris McCrum, chief operating officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, argues that employee satisfaction is inextricably linked to feelings of empowerment and offers three lessons for foundation leaders looking to boost the sense of empowerment among staff.

And speaking of CEP, Nell Edgington has a nice Q&A with Phil Buchanan, the organization's president, on her Social Velocity blog.

Web Analytics

For those who are tired of (or don't trust) Google and Google Analytics, the search giant's ubiquitous Web analytics package, Sharon Hurley Hall, a professional writer and blogger, looks at a number of alternatives. In addition to good overviews (including screenshots) of Clicky, GoSquared, Woopra, KissMetrics, and Crazy Egg, Hurley Hall also lists nearly a dozen other packages in less detail.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And Best Wishes for a very Happy and Productive New Year!

-- The Editors

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

Weekend Link Roundup (December 22-23, 2012)

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

Giving

Philanthropy 2173's Lucy Bernholz wants to know which would have a greater effect on charitable giving: "[G]etting rid of the tax deduction or removing the ability to give anonymously." Cast your vote here.

In the most recent installment of her Social Good podcast series, Allison Fine chats with Giving Tuesday creator Henry Timms, deputy director of the 92nd Street Y, about "the phenomenally successful first year of the event."

"The day took on a life of its own," Fine says on her blog. "Organizations broadened the original concept to include volunteerism as part of the 'donations' for the day and it became [part of] a larger conversation about creating what Henry called Opening Day for the giving season."

Impact/Effectiveness

As part of its annual awards program, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy is asking people to help choose the three grantmaking institutions that "embody philanthropy at its best."

Impact Investing

On their Philanthrocapitalism blog, Matthew Bishop and Michael Green wonder whether the latest position taken by activist hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, should be considered a form of "impact investing." Ackman's firm is shorting the stock of Herbalife, a vitamin supplements company it believes is little more than a "pyramid scheme," and has promised to donate any profits from its bet against the company to charity. "If this is as much as he expects, most of the money will go to his Pershing Square Foundation," write Bishop and Green, although Ackman has "guaranteed that $25m will go to the Sohn Conference Foundation, a pediatric cancer charity....Short selling by a hedge fund is not normally thought of as impact investing," Bishop and Green add. "Yet if Mr Ackman is onto something with his move against Herbalife, perhaps impact investors will start to see shorting as a valuable tool of social progress."

Nonprofits

Charity Navigator's Sandra Miniutti shares a few facts from the Urban Institute's new Nonprofit Almanac 2012, which "features the most recent data on the philanthropic sector, presented in more than 50 charts and 100 tables."

Social Good

On the Impatient Optimists blog, Melinda Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reminds readers to pursue their passions with a vengeance. "There are many reasons Bill and I remain inspired and optimistic about the work we do at the foundation," she writes. "But one very important reason that doesn't come up as much is this: It's a lot of fun."

Youth and Philanthropy

Measuring the Networked Nonprofit co-author Beth Kanter has some advice for parents looking to engage their children in charitable work. Her tips include:

1. Help your children learn more about nonprofits;
2. Let your kids choose how to spend some of your charitable dollars;
3. Offer to match their contribution;
4. Set up a spend, give, and save allowance policy; and
5. Encourage them to give their time.

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

--The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (December 15-16, 2012)

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

Advocacy

On the Keeping a Close Eye blog, Sean Dobson of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy shares some takeaways for grantmakers from Steven Spielberg's new film Lincoln. "Many, if not most, foundations work on issues -- education, health care, environment -- that cry out for systemic solutions that only government can provide," writes Dobson. "But as Spielberg's [movie] shows once again, enacting systemic solutions into law is very difficult in this country. That of course does not mean grantmakers should shy away from the challenge. In fact, if they are serious about achieving their missions, recognition of the challenge should prompt them to fight harder than ever for systemic solutions."

Dobson goes on to identify the different types of grantmaking that would help to meet said challenge:

• Investing in those who are most in need;
• Investing in systemic change, not band aids; and
• Investing for the long haul.

Communications/Marketing

"If you're bad at direct mail, don't think you'll find a refuge from your shortcomings by focusing on social media marketing," writes Jeff Brooks in a post on his Future Fundraising Now blog. "In fact, if your direct mail is ineffective, your social media will likely fail even more spectacularly than your mail does...."

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares findings from three new reports from Network for Good and partners that all came to the same conclusion: "Online giving is significantly up this year."

Journalism/Media

On the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation blog, Eric Newton explains "why journalists need to get behind the #opendata movement" -- and why they currently aren't paying enough attention to how governments are opening up data. Part of it is cultural, he writes, as journalists are used to governments keeping secrets; journalists also tend to be leery about technology. "But now all reporting is computer-assisted reporting," writes Newton. "Newsies that embrace data, from the Texas Tribune to ProPublica to Washington Post, find rich returns in readership."

Newton's post highlights several data projects and trends reporters should know about, including the Code for America Commons and Community PlanIt, as well as resources and potential partners like the Sunlight Foundation, the Digital Library of America, Knight-Mozilla fellowships, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. Writes Newton:

It's refreshing to see a few groups trying new things, like the Reporters Committee with their mobile app helping people who want access to public meetings or records. But that's not enough. We need to agree that the only real solution to freedom of information is technological. Liberals are a little more liberal with public records. Conservatives are a bit more conservative. Yet neither side releases half of what it should. Government systems need to be redesigned. All public information must be public from the moment it enters the system. Since these are computer systems, that means freedom of information advocates, along with journalists in general, need to be tech savvy....

Nonprofits

On the Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington identifies five nonprofit trends to watch in 2013.

Philanthropy

Philanthropy 2173's Lucy Bernholz looks back at the ten predictions for the sector she posted in 2010 and scores them based on recent developments.

Social Media

Social media superstar Beth Kanter shares a list of eight books "that should be valuable to those who work in the nonprofit and social good sector." Anyone interested in winning a copy of one of the books should leave a comment on Beth's blog before December 18 explaning why they want to read the book.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (December 8-9, 2012)

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

Arts and Culture

On its Web site, the James Irvine Foundation unveils a snazzy new infographic format to share what it has learned about arts and arts organizations in California through the work of its Arts Innovation Fund.

Climate Change

In an impassioned post on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping A Close Eye blog, Lisa Ranghelli urges foundation leaders to get involved in the fight against a warming planet.

Fundraising

On his Future Fundraising Now blog, Jeff Brooks, author of the Fundraiser's Guide to Irresistible Communications, provides a timely reminder to fundraisers to "keep calm."

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Minnesota Council on Foundations research manager Anne Bauers shares findings from NTEN's The State of Nonprofit Data report, which found that a lack of expertise, issues of time and prioritization, and challenges with technology, among other things, are holding many organizations back from tracking and using data more effectively.

To help organizations looking to close their data skills gap, Beth Kanter, co-author (with KD Paine) of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, shares some data visualization resources that she's come across recently.

Journalism/Media

On the Knight Foundation blog, Benoit Wirz shares some takeaways -- and questions -- from the recent NewsFoo conference, which brought together leaders in the digital news space to discuss problems and potential solutions for news organizations struggling to make the transition to digital:

1) Building credibility (and engagement) in digital news. Most news publications are not as transparent about their reporters' biases and sources as they could be, and many don't report retroactively on whether pundits/sources got things right or wrong. How can news organizations move toward embedding more credibility into their operations?

2) Improving content recommendations. Today, news consumers learn about content largely through algorithms based on relevance, social recommendations, or as a result of editorial selection. What other ways can news organizations enable the discovery of content?

3) Freeing news content from news sites. News sites capture just 1.1 percent of the total page views on the Web (and even less on mobile). Thus, if content continues to be restricted to news sites, digital ad revenue will remain modest. Can news gathering and reporting operations develop a standard to allow news to be distributed as easily across the Web and mobile platforms as ads are while preserving some benefit for content creators?

4) Scaling media-focused social enterprises (while safeguarding mission). Media companies have traditionally had a source of revenue (advertising) that is not directly tied to content or customers. New socially focused media companies likePolicyMic, Upworthy, and Zeega are trying to build business models that, in addition to ad revenue, include other sources of revenue (e.g., lead generation, content creation). How best to balance these and other potential revenue streams against the needs of the people whose lives they are trying to change?

5) Making data visualization work on mobile. Data visualizations are thirty times as likely to be shared as traditional text articles. Can the industry develop standards to maximize the impact of data visualizations on mobile devices?

Philanthropy

On the New York Times' Opinionator blog, journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tina Rosenberg (The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism) looks at some of the reasons why people give to charity and concludes that, regardless of motivation, "perhaps the most relevant point for most people is that whatever cause moves us, we should be looking for effectiveness."

Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz taps "MOOC" -- Massive, Open, Online Course -- as the ninth philanthropy buzzword of 2012 and says that if any reader of the blog can guess the tenth and final buzzword of 2012, she’ll send him/her a free copy of Blueprint 2013, Lucy's annual look at the trends shaping the philanthropic and social change landscape.

In a guest post on the Forbes.com site, Bridgespan chair and co-founder Tom Tierney discusses the implications of the recent embrace of charitable giving by the mega-wealthy. "While politics contrives to divide us, our fundamental generosity -- our willingness to lend a hand -- offers extraordinary opportunities for all of us to help improve our society," writes Tierney. "Taken together, we have the potential to shape America's golden age of philanthropy. We must leave divisiveness behind, respond to our country's true needs, and strive to collaborate -- to give generously and give smart."

In a letter posted to the Council on Foundations Web site, the organization's new CEO, Vikki Spruill, offers a first look at the council's new direction, which includes an ambition to "operate as the hub of the largest, most connected philanthropic network in the
world...."

Technology

Getting into the holiday spirit, the Sunlight Foundation, which works to leverage the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, has come up with the perfect gift for the open data developer: a Sunlight API key and twelve ways to take advantage of the API offerings on the Sunlight Web site.

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

--The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (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

Weekend Link Roundup (November 17-18, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

With the critical holiday fundraising season right around the corner, new reports from Charity Dynamics/NTEN and Blackbaud remind us that "Establishing emotional connections with donors remains paramount," writes Katya Andresen on her Non-Profit Marketing blog.

In a guest post on Beth Kanter's blog, Big Duck's Meghan Teich has some advice for nonprofit communications pros in the aftermath of a crisis or major natural disaster:

• Make sure your staff is kept up to date on your communications plan and that they have a clear understanding of your messaging.
• Strike while the iron's hot, but not so soon that it looks like you're capitalizing on the crisis.
• Don't use the crisis as an opportunity to do general fundraising for your organization (unless you have a particularly relevant mission). Instead, create a specific fund or give donors a tangible item or event to which they can donate.
• Reach out to other nonprofits, even those you view as "competitors," to explore how you might work together.
• Keep your supporters and donors updated on the progress you're making in real time via e-mail and social media.

"I urge you to take the steps necessary to make sure you are engaging the right people in the right ways to reach your marketing goals," writes Nancy Schwartz on her Getting Attention blog. "And to start today." Sounds like good advice to us.

Nonprofit Management

On the Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington argues that for nonprofits looking or needing to change, merely wanting to change is not enough; certain key building blocks need to be in place. They include someone in a leadership position willing to be a champion for change; a clear statement of why change is necessary; a funder or funders willing to support the change process; and a "navigator" who can guide the organization through that process.

Philanthropy

In the first of a series of posts, the Association of Small Foundations' Andy Carroll argues that foundations, small foundations in particular, do not acknowledge the complexity of the problems they are trying to address "openly enough." Indeed, writes Carroll, "Many funders who keep asking how they can have more impact eventually come up against challenges that are too big for them to solve alone."

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Anne Bauers shares findings from a recent NCRP report which found that "foundation giving to support the general operations of nonprofits increased through the recent recession, but the share of foundation dollars classified as providing this vital type of funding remains the same, at about 16 percent." As the report explains, general operating support benefits nonprofits in a number of ways. For that reason, writes Bauers, funders should award more general support grants in addition to or in place of other types of support.

On the new Markets for Good blog, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations' Darin McKeever and Victoria Vrana, Brian Walsh, the executive director of Liquidnet For Good, and the Hewlett Foundation's Kelly Born share the first draft of a vision paper "that signals how and why we think that the sector needs to upgrade its information infrastructure. By that," they add,

we mean the architecture that helps to connect, organize and structure information so that it can be supplied and used more easily. We acknowledge that upgrading the information infrastructure will not change the sector's use of information overnight, and that other elements are needed to support the free flow of quality data in the social sector. But we believe that in order to move towards a more effective sector, powered by information, we need to begin by strengthening the core building blocks of data exchange....

It's buzzword time, which means Lucy Bernholz is collecting the words and terms that were on every philanthropoid's lips in 2012. But she needs three more to complete the list, so hop on over to Lucy's Philanthropy 2173 blog there and leave a suggestion or two.

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Andrew Wolk of Root Cause and Wendy Yallowitz of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation discuss the benefits of collaborative learning, which, as Wolk explains, is "an intentional effort between two organizations to exchange, analyze, and apply knowledge that will lead to better outcomes."

And on NCRP's Keeping A Close Eye blog, Kevin Laskowski commends the Foundation Center for its recently announced Reporting Commitment initiative, which, in an effort to help foundations more effectively address the many complex problems confronting our communities and the world, aims to develop more timely, accurate, and precise reporting on the flow of philanthropic dollars.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (November 10-11, 2012)

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

Communications

In a guest post on the Communications Network blog, Philanthropy New York's Michael Hamill Remaley shares five lessons he learned from Superstorm Sandy about communications during and after a disaster:

1. A little bit of forethought and planning can make a big difference to your organization's ability to keep communicating during a disaster, and once your team has been through a disaster like Sandy, it'll have a much better idea of what to expect next time.
2. After disaster hits, be prepared to improvise. After the power grid for lower Manhattan went down, Remaley just started walking north from his apartment on the Lower East Side and kept walking until he was able to get a cell phone signal thirty-five blocks later.
3. Make sure you have personal e-mail addresses for all staff and that they are cloud-based like Gmail addresses.
4. To be an effective communicator during a crisis, you have to already have a loyal audience that follows you on a number of channels -- blogs, Web sites, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
5. When you have a great team of people who are determined to stay connected, you can find mechanisms to make it work. There are so many channels for communicating now that, unless there is absolutely no cell service at all, you can find ways of establishing two-way communication with your key audiences even amidst significant system disruptions.

Disaster Relief

On Blackbaud's new NPEngage blog, Steve MacLaughlin looks at how fundraising in support of Superstorm Sandy relief efforts compares to that of other recent natural disasters, from the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011. MacLaughlin says there are at least two aspects of Sandy giving to watch, including a rise in multi-screen fundraising and the long tail. "Giving to this and other disasters is going to continue for some time," writes MacLaughlin. "And very soon it will be important for organizations to start showing the impact these donations have had on those hit hardest by the storm."

Governance

On the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit co-author Beth Kanter discusses how online social networking tools such as LinkedIn Board Connect make it easier for nonprofits to find the right people for their boards. "On LinkedIn, you can see past first connections, and check out a potential candidate's knowledge and their network," writes Kanter. "If all board members add their networks, this produces a richer set of potential candidates. And, remember, you are not just adding a board member to your team -- you are also adding their network."

Human Services

In time for Veterans Day, Matt Cifaldi, a community engagement associate at Idealist, gives a shoutout to a handful of nonprofits working to address the needs of veterans, from providing retirees with counseling and arts programs to matching them with a companion dog or cat.

Leadership

In a post on her blog, Rosetta Thurman reminds us that regardless of who was elected president, it's up to each of us to address the collective challenges we face by being engaged members of society. "No president can or will dramatically change our communities," writes Thurman. "We have to do that ourselves. It is important to stay rooted in the reality that WE have to work for the change we want to see...."

Nonprofit Management

On the Duck Call blog, Big Duck's Sarah Durham has some advice for underresourced nonprofits based on this year's presidential campaigns.

Philanthropy

And on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders who will be the Nate Silver of philanthropy and "put predictive analysis to the test in the social sector." Silver, of course, is the New York Times-employed "data scientist" whose election predictions based on an analysis of aggregated polling data turned out out to be uncannily accurate. Writes Bernholz:

Silver's analytic model relies on calculating the probability that each candidate will win based on the results of numerous state and national polls. The model is inherently dependent on the quality of each of those polls but it also benefits from the sheer number of polls done during a presidential election.

As individual foundations share more of their information in more userful ways, IssueLab catalogues and organizes the research that foundations and nonprofits do, independent analysts like GiveWell or users of the Nonprofit Finance Fund's FinancialSCAN tool, and local, state and federal agencies make more data available publicly we may be reaching the point where meta-analysis of others' research -- whether program evaluations, strategy plans, or needs assessments -- is possible and worth considering. We are slowly building the repository of raw material -- data that can be shared, compiled, compared and considered in the aggregate -- that makes such research feasible....

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (November 3-4, 2012)

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

Civil Society

On the NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal discusses a recent article from the Poverty & Race Research Action Council about the "unsettling statistics on the status of voting rights in our country." According to PRRAC, voter identification laws, early voting restrictions, purging of "legitimate registered voters because of baseless suspicion of their citizenship status," and felon disenfranchisement continue to marginalize low-income individuals, communities of color, younger voters, and the elderly.

Disaster Relief

In the days following the devastating landfall of Superstorm Sandy near Cape May, New Jersey, nonprofit bloggers were busy sharing resources for those interested in contributing to relief and recovery efforts. On her Have Fun, Do Good blog, Britt Bravo has compiled a list of articles and Web sites that suggest ways to donate and volunteer; Idealist's Allison Jones has a few additional suggestions for New Yorkers looking to get involved in relief and recovery efforts; and longtime New Jersey resident Nancy Schwartz suggests three organizations on the ground in that state -- the NYC Rescue Mission, the Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless, and the Community FoodBank of New Jersey -- that are "providing services right now and need your help to keep it up."

Looking at the response to the storm through a tech/data lens, Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz tracks, in a series of posts, the many ways in which organizations and individuals used information communication technologies during and after the storm, while the Weakonomist looks at how Sandy might affect the economy.

Professional Development

After another season of conferences and events, you're probably wondering what to do with all the business cards you collected. New York Foundation for the Arts program officer Eleanor Whitney has some advice about how to deepen your connection to individuals with whom you swapped cards, including how to prepare for the initial communication and what you can do to move the conversation offline.

In a post on her blog, How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar author Rosetta Thurman reminds us to invite young professionals to the table when discussing the future of the sector.

Social Media

On her blog, the tireless Beth Kanter, reflects on her experience to date as a "social media ambassador" for the #GivingTuesday campaign, an effort to make the Tuesday after Thanksgiving a national day of giving.

Urbanism

And on the Huffington Post, Charles A. Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, explores the significance of hedge fund manager John Paulson's recent $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy. "The gift is important in two ways," writes Birnbaum, "it directly benefits the park and the [conservancy]...and it impacts public perception. This gift places the park and designed landscapes on the same plane with other philanthropic beneficiaries -- cultural institutions including museums, libraries and performing arts centers, medical facilities, universities, etc. This helps elevate the understanding of landscape's fundamental role and value, and it could also spur similar acts of philanthropy for other parks in New York and around the country."

That's it for now. Our best wishes for a speedy recovery to all those who experienced the wrath of Sandy. Drop us a line if we missed anything at rnm@foundationcenter.org.

-- The Editors