PhilanTopic

Weekend Link Roundup (May 11-12, 2013)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Fundraising

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

Impact/Effectiveness

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

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

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

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

Leadership

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

Nonprofit Management

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

Philanthropy

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

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

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

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

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

Technology

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

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

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

-- The Editors

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

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 (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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Brad Smith

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 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

Stemming the Droput Crisis: A Q&A With AT&T's Beth Adcock Shiroishi

Beth Adcock Shiroishi, vice president for sustainability and philanthropy at AT&T and president of the AT&T Foundation, leads AT&T Aspire, one of the nation's largest corporate commitments focused on helping more students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. The telecommunications giant launched the $100 million initiative in 2008 and expanded it earlier this year with an additional commitment of $250 million over five years, bringing its total investment in the program to $350 million.

After a rigorous and competitive process, AT&T recently selected forty-seven schools and nonprofits from among thousands nationwide to share in nearly $10 million in funding through the Aspire Local Impact request for proposal. Applicants were evaluated based on their alignment with evidence-based approaches, their accomplishments in serving students at risk of dropping out of high school, and their ability to use data to demonstrate the effectiveness of their work.

PND spoke with Shiroishi earlier this month about the initiative.

Philanthropy News Digest: Give us a sense of the scope of the dropout crisis in America?

Beth Adcock Shiroishi: One in four students -- more than one million each year -- fails to graduate with their class. And the picture is even bleaker for minority students, with the graduation rate among Hispanic, African-American, and Native-American students nearly 25 percent lower than the rate for their white and Asian American peers. Obviously, this has huge implications for our future job force, the economy as a whole, and our nation's global competiveness. But while it's a serious and urgent problem, there are signs of progress. Nationally, high school graduation rates are increasing, and we've seen huge gains in certain states and with certain programs that give us hope.

PND: AT&T launched the Aspire program in 2008. What were the goals of the program when it was launched, and have they been met?

BAS: Our original goal was to commit $100 million to fund proven programs aimed at raising the graduation rate, create one hundred thousand job shadow opportunities for students, and support one hundred community dropout summits. Thanks to the tireless work of our employees and nonprofit allies, we achieved these goals. At the same time, we impacted more than one million students in all fifty states and worked with more than one thousand community and national organizations that, like us, understand how important it is to improve graduation rates.

PND: What was behind your decision to focus much of the local impact RFP on data-driven approaches?

BAS: As a company, we understand the power of data to help make good decisions, illuminate impact, and identify and spread best practices. So it was only natural for us to want to use that same powerful tool in our charitable work, especially when the issue at hand is so important to improving lives, positioning America to be more globally competitive, and our success as a company. As you mentioned, with our recent RFP we decided to seek out programs that effectively use data in a way that enables an understanding of how "on track to graduate" students in a funded program are performing and allows us to compare them to a control group of students not in the program. Hopefully, this will help us understand more about what programs work best in certain situations and give us the ability to share learnings and best practices with others working in this space.

PND: Do you consider feedback from parents and teachers and other types of anecdotal information in your metrics?

BAS: Absolutely. As important and powerful a tool as metrics can be, in the education space metrics must be contextualized and brought to life by an understanding of the experiences of the people involved. Said another way, the metrics must be viewed together with the anecdotes to truly understand what works and what impact is being achieved.

PND: What are some of the other challenges involved in measuring student achievement?

BAS: As anyone working in education knows, this is a challenging field with lots of highly emotional issues embedded in it. So, I'll just speak to some of the challenges we as a funder of programs face. And the first one is a good problem to have! Because there are so many varied approaches to raising graduation rates, it's hard to create an assessment framework in a way that allows for an apples-to-apples comparison. Variations that create measurement obstacles include the fact that states have different requirements for student progression to the next grade level and different timeframes in which they release data. These and other issues eventually led us to realize that we needed an expert to help us. So, we've engaged a third-party evaluator to help us on this journey toward more understanding and more effective use of data.

PND: Along with its emphasis on data-driven approaches, the RFP focused on local, community-driven efforts. How are the two connected?

BAS: AT&T and the AT&T Foundation have always focused on communities where our employees live and work. Local organizations are on the frontlines of education every day, and they know better than we do what approaches work best for students in their communities. Together with our increased focus on data collection and analysis, we hope to work with these local organizations to better track the students served and shine a light on the supports and interventions that are most effective.

PND: What would be the likely consequences of not successfully addressing the dropout crisis in America?

BAS: Dropouts from the class of 2010 alone will cost the country more than $337 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetimes. But for our company, this is about our future workforce and our future customer base. Like all American employers, we need a diverse educated workforce to power our company into the future. And we need an economy that can avail itself of the technology that will keep us a leader in innovation. We know we can make a difference by supporting programs that are having a real impact. A recent study found that every dollar invested in the model pioneered by dropout prevention organization Communities in Schools increased graduation rates and produced an average of $11.60 in economic benefit for the community. We want to support and help scale more programs like that. That's why we have broadened and deepened our commitment to AT&T Aspire with an additional $250 million investment. We know the time is now; we can't wait any longer to address the problem.

-- Emily Robbins

On Putting Your Data to Work: A 'Flip' Chat With Jake Porway, Founder/Executive Director, DataKind

(This video was recorded as part of our "Flip" chat series of conversations with thought leaders in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. You can check out other videos in the series here, including our previous chat with Paull Young, director of digital at charity: water.)

There's no shortage of data in the nonprofit/philanthropic sector. Indeed, a growing number of nonprofits are filling virtual filing cabinets with data on their constituents, donors, outputs, and outcomes, while more and more foundations are creating digital records of their program activities and grantees' performance. But what are nonprofits and foundations doing with that data once it has been collected? In most cases, not a whole lot.

At the same time, computer programmers have elevated so-called "hackathons"  and "codefests" into an art form. In rare cases, these events even enable hackers to contribute to the greater good by developing software or a mobile app that can be used to address a social problem. Too often, however, as Jake Porway, founder of DataKind, noted at a recent 501 Tech NYC event, they're just "a bunch of white dudes looking to solve their own problems, like where to find parking or farmers markets." Which is why his organization focuses on connecting programmers and data scientists interested in doing some social good with nonprofit leaders working to address some of the world's most urgent problems.

Formerly known as Data Without Borders, DataKind accomplishes its mission through weekend-long "DataDive" events; a DataCorps (i.e., a group of volunteers and/or contract employees who focus on a single project for up to six months at a time); and by providing on-demand/in-house data services.

After the event, I had a chance to chat with Porway about the nonprofit sector's relationship to and use of data and what nonprofits could be doing to make better use of their data. Porway also offered advice for nonprofit leaders who are worried about the steepness of the data learning curve.

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

   

(Running time: 5 minutes, 51 seconds)

Is all data created equal? And if not, what types of data should nonprofits look to collect, manage, and analyze -- and to what end should they use it? Share your thoughts and feedback in the comments section below.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (August 25-26, 2012)

Our (slightly delayed) weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Environment

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal commends the Kresge Foundation for a recent grant of $500,000 to Princeton-based Climate Central in support of efforts to provide decision makers and the public with information about future coastal flood exposure and sea level rise. "Kresge," writes Jagpal, "is leading the way by example: focusing specifically on socially vulnerable populations is precisely what environment and climate philanthropy expert Sarah Hansen recommends for environment and climate funders in Cultivating the Grassroots: A Winning Approach for Environment and Climate Funders."

Leadership

Philanthropy 411's Kris Putnam-Walkerly shares a post from Trista Harris, executive director of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice, in which Harris explains what an informational interview is for those "too embarrassed to ask."

Social Entrepreneurship

In a post on his Harvard Business Review blog, Uncharitable author Dan Pallotta discusses how he went from building Pallotta TeamWorks, one of the most successful charity event businesses in the country, to losing everything -- including four hundred full-time employees and sixteen U.S. offices -- after his biggest client jumped ship.

Social Media

On the NTEN site, social media vet Beth Kanter offers a few good Pinterest tools, tips, and resources, and gives a shout out in the process to Chris Sietsema's "advice about taking a birds' eye view of your organization's content to determine whether every bit of that content is integrated into an overall communications strategy. If a certain kind of content isn't, writes Sietsema, maybe it's time to abandon it.

Meanwhile, in a guest post on Kanter's own blog, Darren Barefoot of the Mountain Equipment Co-op discusses a recent digital collaboration with pop musician Sarah Harmer to raise awareness around threatened Canadian landscapes. Among other things, Barefoot suggests that nonprofits interested in adopting an "unorthodox" approach to a planned advocacy campaign can improve their chances of success by looking to the Web for examples of campaigns that have succeeded.

Technology

On the Knight Blog, Elizabeth Miller and Chris Sopher take a second look at a handful of Knight-funded digital technology projects designed to help Americans become more informed and engaged in the democratic process and introduce a new one: the SuperPAC App, which, through the use of audio fingerprinting technology, enables iPhone owners to find out which people and groups are behind presidential election TV ads. The post also mentions Politifact, which is developing tools to make its fact-checking information available on demand; TurboVote, which makes registering to vote "as easy as renting a Netflix DVD"; the Wesleyan Media Project, which "is monitoring the large amount of money expected to be spent on political advertising in the 2012 elections"; and the the Internet Archive's TV Research Database, a platform to make TV news content available and searchable in real time.

Transparency

And in a two-parter -- here and here -- on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, veteran nonprofit sector leader and muckraker extraordinaire Rick Cohen addresses the role of transparency in philanthropy and how foundations can do a better job of being transparent.

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (August 11-12, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

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

Disaster Relief

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

Diversity

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

Leadership

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

Social Media

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

Technology

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

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

Transparency

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

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (June 30 - July 1, 2012)

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

Corporate Philanthropy

On the Deep Social Impact blog, Peter Karoff identifies two different types of corporate social responsibility -- "those having to do with social impacts or what business does to society and those having to do with social problems or what business can do for society." The first one, writes Karoff, "is the first rule of life, which is to do no harm. If a business is not successful in satisfying that imperative, no amount of charitable giving, employee volunteerism, and creative ideas around social innovation is going to matter...." He adds:

Doing no harm, however, is not merely a zero-sum game if there is evidence of preventing negative consequences and producing positive societal impact. For example, if a company is an extractor of natural resources and its actions left unchecked could devastate ecology, and the company invests in and implements systems to preserve and sustain that ecology, doing no harm goes beyond being defensive. It is a proof that business and the natural world can productively co-exist.

This suggests that the most creative role for corporate social responsibility and philanthropy goes far beyond being an act of redress, correction, amendment, or atonement for a misdeed. The toughest ROI for this work, but perhaps the most important, is right in the 'heart of darkness' that every commercial venture must face one way or another. The value added for corporate philanthropy -- defined in the broadest terms -- is not as frosting on the cake of goodness, but in meeting squarely those aspects that are most troubling. To turn a negative into a positive is a very good thing indeed.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the GiveWell blog, Holden Karnofsky shares details of GiveWell's new relationship with Good Ventures, a new foundation started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his significant other, Cari Tuna. "This is a partnership, not a merger; we remain separate legal entities," writes Kranofsky.

Cari is president of Good Ventures, while Elie and I are co-executive directors of GiveWell; our authorities differ accordingly. If Good Ventures is interested in an area or activity that we aren’t interested in, it will use its resources to pursue this area or activity; likewise, if we are interested in an area or activity that Good Ventures isn’t interested in, we will use GiveWell's resources to pursue this area or activity.

Latinos/Hispanics

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Kaitlin Ostlie of the Minnesota Council on Foundations shares key findings from a recent Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP) report, Foundation Funding and Latino Community Priorities: Gaps and Opportunities, which identified a "mismatch" between foundation funding and the priorities of Latino communities receiving support. According to the report, the disparity stems largely from "institutional resistance from senior management in the philanthropic community, overly specific grantmaking strategies and program objectives, and the limited capacity and small size of nonprofits that serve the Latino community."

The report offers four recommendations for HIP, which has been working with grantmakers to strengthen Latino communities for nearly thirty years:

1. Continue to conduct research and develop initiatives that address needs and opportunities in Latino communities with respect to specific grantmaking areas;
2. Offer customized consulting services to help foundations develop strategies for reaching Latinos;
3. Continue to provide capacity-building support and technical assistance for high-impact grassroots Latino nonprofits;
4. Consider working with groups of funders to develop shared frameworks for tracking grantmaking data with realistic benchmarks for increasing funds benefiting Latinos over the next decade.

Social Entrepreneurship 

In a recent post on the Idealist blog, blog editor Allison Jones offers some advice to this year's college graduates from the Idealist Twitter community. When asked to complete the following sentence: "Dear Class of 2012, if you want to change the world, remember..." @aimee587 responded, "to find friends to help you out. No one can do it alone!" And @MAWGtheFROG said, "to live humbly and compassionately." Check out Jones's post for the full list of responses.

Social Innovation

Bridgespan partner Daniel Stid takes a closer look at social impact bonds, a pay-for-success approach to solving social problems that has been pioneered in the United Kingdom, and decides that it might be a little early to jump on the SIB bandwagon. "If the what-works movement is about scaling proven solutions," writes Stid,

there is considerable irony in so many of its participants calling for widespread adoption of a financial mechanism for doing so that is literally untested. I also question whether private capital will readily flow to underwrite the costs of supporting the most intensive users of our social safety net. Ultimately, though, my skepticism is grounded in the challenges that federal, state, and local government agencies have faced in trying to use performance-based contracts over the past two decades—and how social impact bonds may make several of these challenges worse....

On her blog, Allison Fine takes issue with David Bornstein's contention that "growing individual organizations can solve complex, local community problems," arguing instead that "every community has a huge number of organizations trying to meet the needs of their communities, and a huge number of individual volunteers and donors, too. The problem is that they continue to work as standalone silos rather than as networks."

Technology

On the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's blog, Daniel Latorre, VP of Digital Placemaking at the Project for Public Spaces, introduces the Tech for Engagement Manifesto, which was started at the Technology for Engagement Summit in May. It was always the intention of the folks behind the effort to invite the larger community of civic technologists to flesh out the manifesto, and in the process of doing that this is what they've learned:

• The civic technologist community has talented leaders but needs to grow the size and diversity of its leadership cadre.
• The community's problem isn't just about access, it's about a larger gap in skillful practice.
• The community is characterized by innovative partnerships but needs to increase levels of collaboration and trust.
• The community has good data but needs to increase the understanding, accessibility, and standardization of that data.
• The commmunity has designed civic tools but needs to increase community input as those tolls are iterated, designing them with, not for, the community.

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

-- The Editors

Innovation Forum 2012

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

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

Live streaming by Ustream

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

Weekend Link Roundup (June 2-3, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Diversity

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

Journalism/Media

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

Leadership

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

Philanthropy

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

Social Media

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

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

Science/Technology

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

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

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

--The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (May 19-20, 2012)

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

Advocacy

On NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Lisa Ranghelli gives a shout out to the Alliance for Justice's new site, Bolder Advocacy, noting that the "'A' in advocacy used to be akin to the adultery committed in Hawthorne's novel,...a symbol of failure to adhere to the mores of the community, a sign of risky behavior, even law-breaking."

Communications/Marketing

There's an opportunity for nonprofits to improve their organizational stories with data beyond presenting the information in a simple chart, writes Susan Stehling at the Minnesota Council on Foundations's Philanthropy Potluck blog. Indeed, software like Microsoft Excel has made it too easy for organizations to create bad graphs and charts. To avoid such a fate, Stehling suggests that nonprofits follow in the steps of Cole Nussbaumer, people analytics manager at Google, who advises them to "step back and answer some basic questions" before creating their next chart.

Philanthropy

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders whether "the next ten years [will] see the creation of hybrid foundations -- a capital investing form structured specifically to allow greater flexibility in how funds are used for social good?" Few of today's "institutions...look as much like their forebears as do philanthropic foundations," writes Bernholz. "It's illogical that this century's wealth creators are going to be content with last century's philanthropic forms...." Interesting discussion in the comments section, as well.

Responding to news that a second closed-door meeting of Giving Pledge signatories was held earlier this month in Santa Barbara, Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green ask why the billionaires are being "bashful" about sharing their giving stories, successes and failures, with the general public. "The importance of failure as a way to learn is now well understood in the world of business," write Bishop and Green.

In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs wear their first disastrous start-up or two as a badge of honour. Philanthropy, by contrast, has long missed out on the feedback loop from failure that is so valuable to business, and so often ends up frittering away scarce resources on projects that someone else has already found wanting. Thus it is excellent news that in Santa Barbara the leaders of America's new generation of philanthropists started to take their failed efforts at giving seriously enough to learn from them. Nonetheless, how much better if at next year's gathering they open up and let the rest of us learn those lessons from failure too....

As if anticipating Bishop and Green's concern, James Irvine Foundation president Jim Canales and Kevin Rafter, the foundation's manager of research and evaluation, describe the Irvine Foundation’s approach to performance assessment and discuss three lessons the foundation has learned over the past six years in an article the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

In the first in a series of six blog posts, Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan suggests that "the nonprofit sector may be losing the public battle to define itself" to those who espouse a "business-as-savior perpesctive." Yes, writes Buchanan, we must "push harder to maximize the effectiveness of foundations and other nonprofit organizations....But we need to do our work

in a way that is rooted in a deep understanding of the particular role and context of nonprofit organizations, rather than in a way that assumes that “business thinking” and market approaches represent the secret formula for nonprofit success. We must be clear that the advocacy of those pushing market-based solutions for all of our social problems, which sometimes takes on a cultish feel, is misguided. It won’t work, and it threatens to undermine the public’s understanding and appreciation of the vital role of the nonprofit sector as distinct from business and government....

Social Entrepreneurship

On the Social Velocity site, Nell Edgington reviews Billy Parish and Dev Aujla's Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money and Community in a Changing World, "a career guide for the generation that finds themselves on the precipice of some pretty monumental global challenges."

Social Media

In a guest post on Beth's Blog, Geri Stengel, founder and president of Ventureneer.com, explains the benefits of LinkedIn groups for nonprofit professionals and asks readers to weigh in on a discussion about the ethics of accepting "tainted" money.

Science/Technology

On the Growthology blog, Dane Stangler, shares findings and a great map from a recent study published by the Center for an Urban Future, a Kauffman Foundation grantee, which found that technology startups have boomed in New York City over the past few years.

Although the semantic Web envisioned by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee "might be able to reduce donor 'friction' -- the many steps and processes that interpose themselves between a donor's initial desire to give and her consummation of a gift," it may be years before it becomes a reality, writes Greater New Orleans Foundation president Albert Ruesga on the White Courtesy Telephone blog. In the meantime, there are things nonprofits can do to "maximize their online success," including putting "Give Now" buttons on multiple pages of their Web sites.

Transparency

And in a post on her blog, Allison Fine commends the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for its effort to "go beyond the busy-ness of social media to get to the 'so what' of it for social change."

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

-- The Editors