PhilanTopic

Welcome to the New World of Fundraising

(Dave Boyce is the chief experience officer at Fundly, a widely adopted crowdfunding platform for social good that to date has enabled more than thirty thousand nonprofit organizations, volunteer groups, and individual fundraisers to raise over $300 million.)

Meet NaaLamiley, a fifteen-year-old sophomore at Chapel Hill High School in North Carolina who describes herself as a "sea nerd and a shark geek, pretty much more at home on the water than on land."

When NaaLamiley learned she was accepted to the prestigious Class Afloat program, which  exposes academically gifted high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen to a rigorous, one-year curriculum at sea, she was both exhilarated and disheartened. Exhilarated, because this was a dream opportunity to advance her future career in ocean conservation. Disheartened, because she knew that even though she had made it through the rigorous selection process, neither she nor her family could afford the $50,000 tuition.

But NaaLamiley is a member of a new generation -- one that simultaneously distrusts traditional institutions and places great value in social networks. No scholarship agency was going to swoop in and hand her a check for $50,000. She couldn't depend on her public high school, a federal grant program, or any other institutional source of support. Without sufficient family resources, she was left to her own devices.

Enter crowdfunding.

NaaLamiley was so proud of being accepted to the program, she was ready to shout it from the rooftops. And when teenagers shout, they use social media. NaaLamiley knew that if she told enough people about her incredible opportunity, they would rally to her side. So she set up a crowdfunding campaign, worked diligently for several months to promote it, and successfully raised the $50,000 she needed to set sail with Class Afloat.

Why did it work?

Because on the giving side of the equation, donors have also changed. Next-generation donors distrust traditional institutions. They're dissatisfied with the lack of information they typically receive regarding what happens with their donations and are demanding more transparency and an opportunity to give directly to causes.

So crowdfunding was perfect for NaaLamiley, and for her donors as well. She was able to make her case directly to friends, family and friends of friends, set up a fundraising campaign page that accepted credit cards and connected to her e-mail, Facebook and other social media accounts, and become her own one-stop teenage marketing department. Her donors were just as satisfied with their experience. Donors who never would have given to a general Class Afloat scholarship fund were happy to support an inspiring young person who was demonstrating tremendous initiative. There was no ambiguity around where their money was going, and they received regular updates on the campaign's progress and when NaaLamiley victoriously declared that her campaign had crossed the $50,000 finish line.

And NaaLamiley is not the only remarkable young person to take matters into her own hands:

• After seeing a disturbing photo of two young boys with heavy stones strapped to their backs, nine-year-old Vivienne Harr set up a virtual Lemonade Stand and raised over $150,000 to help free child slaves.
• Nine-year-old Jack Pullman created a campaign that raised more than $26,000 for the pediatric infusion unit where he was treated for cancer.
• Nineteen-year-old Ryan Reed, a NASCAR driver diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes, is using a crowdfunding campaign to raise awareness and money for the American Diabetes Association.
• Students at St. Ignatius School in the South Bronx raised $15,000 so they could take a once-in-a-lifetime educational field trip to Washington D.C.

The list goes on. But if there's a common theme behind all these campaigns, it is this: Fundraising has changed forever. We may not be willing to acknowledge it yet, but ask anyone in the rising generation and you'll soon understand. Kids today depend on their social networks for pretty much everything. They crave direct opportunities to make a difference. They don't understand the concept of writing a check and sending it off in the mail to a faceless fundraising officer. They get that fundraising is social.

I know this firsthand from my six kids, who range from preschool to high school and are involved in music, sports, and scouts. They are constantly asked to fundraise -- from bake sales to car washes to selling cookie dough, holiday wreaths, and candy bars -- with each of them raising $3,000 a year on average for their various teams, clubs, and activities. Not surprisingly, when given a choice to fundraise online versus door-to-door, they jump at the former.

So what can nonprofit organizations learn from this new generation?

1. We have to give our donors more. When people give to our organizations, regardless of the amount, we owe them updates and information about the impact of their donations.
2. People want to give to people. If we can get our individual supporters to fundraise for us (as Vivienne did for the anti-slavery nonprofit Not for Sale), we'll have greater success than if we limited our efforts to direct mail or e-mail campaigns.
3. Our supporters' social networks are the single largest untapped source of new donors for us.
4. The next generation is generous, but they are also demanding.
5. The next generation is powerful, and they know how to wield that power.

Cutting-edge nonprofits are already seizing the opportunity to put the above knowledge into practice. Teach for America raised $450,000 last year by letting their corps members (recent college graduates who spend a year or two teaching in underresourced schools) raise the money themselves. Habitat for Humanity recently launched what is turning out to be the fastest-growing fundraising program in its history. What's behind that success? Crowdfunding. Every volunteer about to head off on a Habitat Global Village build trip creates their own fundraising page, asks their networks for support, and, typically, raises $2,000 to $5,000 for the effort.

I am encouraged and inspired by the NaaLamileys, Viviennes, Jacks, and Ryans of the world and convinced that they and thousands of passionate, tenacious young changemakers like them are changing the face of fundraising forever. Now it's up to us to learn from them.

-- Dave Boyce

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

Most Popular PhilanTopic Posts (January 2013)

It's the first day of a new month, which means it's time to look back at the most popular posts on PhilanTopic in the month just passed:

• 'Don't Call Us, We'll Call You' (Brad Smith)
• [Infographic] The Importance of Donor Retention (Mitch Nauffts)
• "Beep, Beep": The Sound of Philanthropy and the Social Economy in 2013 (Brad Smith)
• Hey, Nonprofits, 'Usability' Is More Than a Tech Term (Derrick Feldmann)
• Foundations and the Freedom Not to Forget (Brad Smith)

Have you read/watched/listened to anything lately that our readers should know about? Use the comments sections to share your finds....

Foundations and the Freedom Not to Forget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Brad Smith

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

Hey, Nonprofits, 'Usability' Is More Than a Tech Term

(Derrick Feldmann is CEO of Achieve, an Indianapolis-based creative fundraising agency. In his last post, he urged nonprofit development professionals to join the donor revolution.)

My mother isn't a techie. And because I'm a so-called "digital native," I tend to serve as her tech support, troubleshooting problems with her iPhone and laptop. Let me put this as politely as possible: serving as Mom's tech support requires a certain level of patience.

Recently, over the Thanksgiving holiday, she asked me to go online with her to look at some Christmas gifts she was thinking about buying for my wife. After watching her inch the cursor across the screen and type a Web address into the browser that led us to a "page not found" message, I jumped in and suggested it might be faster if we used Google. So we went to the Google home page, typed "cute personalized Mac travel case" into the search box, clicked on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, and voila! -- link after link to sites offering cute personalized Mac travel cases.

Good comparison shoppers that we are, we decided to click on a link accompanied by a great short description and the promise of a steep discount. When we clicked on the link, however, it took us to a site that looked about ten years old. As I scanned the page, Mom said, "Derrick, we aren't going to buy it from here, are we?" I had already decided we weren't, but I wanted to hear her reasoning. When I asked her, she said, "Well, it looks like it's a scam. I mean, we should buy from a site that looks like the people behind it have been in business a while, right?"

Then I asked her to explain something that led me to write this article: "Tell me specifically what you don't like about this site." To which Mom replied, "Other sites just look nicer. They have easy-to-click buttons, and I feel like I can trust them with my credit card."

My mom is like millions of other ordinary consumers who have been exposed to a variety of e-commerce experiences. She has been trained to expect simple user interfaces and straightforward navigation schemes that allow her to easily find and purchase the item(s) she's looking for. What my mom doesn't realize is that someone, a developer or programmer, designed the Web page or site that enables her to do just that: to easily find what she's looking for, learn more about the item, and, should she choose, purchase it with a minimal amount of fuss and bother.

In the Web development/design business, this is known as usability, and it typically comprises five components:

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they visit a site?

Efficiency: Once users have become familiar with a site, how quickly can they find what they need?

Memorability: When users return to a site after having not visited it for a while, how easily are they able to reestablish their proficiency in navigating the site?

Errors: How many "wrong turns" do visitors to the site make? How deflating are these mistakes and dead ends and how easily are visitors able to recover from them and find what they were looking for?

Satisfaction: How pleasant is the user experience?

Companies and organizations that have mastered usability with respect to their Web sites are able to get customers like Mom coming back to purchase more of their products or services. Straightforward navigation and simple transaction mechanisms help to establish a level of trust with the individual customer/visitor and make it easier for her to learn about additional products and services. In short, sites that offer a good usability experience make it easy for folks like my mom to move quickly from being a potential consumer to becoming an informed buyer.

And that's exactly the kind of experience that every nonprofit should provide to  prospective online donors. Organizations need to think about the online donation experience in terms of usability. This includes taking the five critical components of usability noted above and applying them to your online donor cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship pages.

Learnability: How easy is it for a prospective donor to understand the mission and purpose of your organization? Is it clear why your organization is asking for money and the ways in which donated funds are used to assist your organization's constituents? Are donors able to actively engage with your organization the first time they visit the site?

Efficiency: Once a prospective donor understands the reasons your organization requires additional funding, how easy is it for him or her to make a donation? Is the process quick and painless, allowing the donor to act on impulse? Is the experience one that instills trust? And, most importantly, does it build on the knowledge the donor gained during the cultivation process?

Memorability: When a donor returns to your site after a period of time, is it easy for her to reestablish the connection she made with your organization the last time she visited? Was her previous experience on the site memorable enough to inspire her to return, learn more, and perhaps make another gift for a larger amount?

Errors: How many "wrong turns" do potential donors make during the donation process and do they affect their willingness to donate? Could donors' navigation mistakes and dead ends be avoided if your organization provided better tools, easier options, and/or additional support during the donation process?

Satisfaction: Do donors leave the site feeling satisfied? Are they satisfied with the additional knowledge they gained, the efficient donation process, and the overall user experience?

As I hope the above makes clear, usability is not just a "techie" term. It's a way of thinking and a way to ensure that current and future donors' experience with your organization online is educational, efficient, and satisfying. Indeed, nonprofits that are busy acquiring new donors tend to be ones that have solved the usability puzzle. And their donors tend to return year after year -- and sometimes more frequently -- to support the important work the organization is doing.

So ask yourself: Does your organization's Web site pass "the Mom test"? Or is it more like the ten-year-old site that no one really trusts and wants to spend time on?

-- Derrick Feldmann

Weekend Link Roundup (October 20-21, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

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

Diversity

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

Health

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

Higher Education

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

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

Impact Investing

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

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

Philanthropy

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

Social Media

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

Volunteerism

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

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

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (October 13-14, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

In a guest post on the Communication Network blog, Hattaway Communication's Doug Hattaway shares a couple of insights based on psychology and neuroscience into how people make decisions:

Insight 1: Two mental systems work together to drive decision-making and behavior. Effective communications influence both intuition and cognition -- encouraging instant intuitive judgments and enabling fluent cognitive reasoning.

Insight 2: People are more likely to trust information that they easily understand. "Fluency" theory holds that if people readily comprehend an idea or information, they are more likely to believe it. Being easy-to-understand obviously doesn't mean the information is more reliable, but people are more likely to perceive it as true. Hattaway's advice for nonprofit communicators: "It's smart to dumb things down."

In a post on her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Network for Good's Katya Andresen shares seven tips designed to improve the stories that nonprofits tell about their impact, the people they help, and their generous supporters.

Disaster Relief

Eye-opening article by Deborah Sontag in the New York Times about Yéle Haiti, the charity created by Haitian-American hip hop artist Wyclef Jean in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake to help the people of that impoverished country.

Journalism/Media

Fasten your seat belts. With funding from the Open Society Foundations, the Reuters Institute for Journalism has released a report, "Ten Years That Shook the Media World," which shows "that even after more than a decade of often dramatic turmoil in the media sector, we are only at the beginning of a longer transitional period."

Philanthropy

Over at the Nonprofit Quarterly, Simone Joyaux looks at what has changed -- and mostly what hasn't -- about social justice philanthropy in the eight years since she first addressed the topic in her newsletter.

Regulation

While open to the "notion that non-charitable tax-exempt organizations should have to pay property taxes," The Nonprofiteer takes issue with the city council in Scranton (PA), which threatened to withhold approval of zoning changes from tax-exempt property owners unless they made "voluntary" payments in lieu of taxation (PILOTS). "Let's not torture the concept of 'voluntary'," she writes, "by suggesting that a payment extorted in return for rezoning is somehow a free-will contribution to the public fisc."

And on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz asks readers to answer the following question: "What would affect donors' behavior more, changes in the tax deductions associated with their giving or rules requiring greater transparency about their giving?" What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Social Entrepreneurship

Earlier in the week, serial social entrepreneur Robert Egger, the founder of DC Central Kitchen, Fresh Start Catering, the Campus Kitchen Project, and CForward, announced that after twenty-five years at the helm of DCCK, he was "moving on." To retirement? Not likely. No, Egger is "returning to the city of my roots -- Los Angeles -- to launch the L.A. Kitchen in 2013." As the always enthusiastic Egger writes on his personal blog, the new endeavor

will roar into an incredible vacuum in America. Our first goal is to recover millions of pounds of California’s abundant fruits and vegetables. The traditional model moves perishable foods through the system (from farm to food bank/kitchens to pantry to people) at a brisk pace to avoid spoilage. We want and use these precious commodities to fuel a job training program that will produce nutritionally dense salads, snacks and vegetarian/vegan meals. But we also want to develop inter-generational volunteer opportunities so that, working side by side, we can prep, package and freeze millions of pounds of produce and fruit, which will allow our partners to distribute portion controlled product that can be used in a more purposeful way, at a more focused pace.

We will also explore social enterprise through a new business we will launch named Strong Food. Like the name says, it isn't about sustenance, it's about helping people stay strong, vital and engaged.

We will also explore large scale urban composting, showing how every part of a plant can be used to build stronger bodies and healthier communities.

Most of all, I want to delve deeply into the issue of aging in America. L.A. Kitchen will be at the very forefront of supporting a new era of inclusion and health for our elders. I don't want to feed to old; I want to help redefine aging in America. And I want to show the role that food and a dynamic nonprofit organization can play in keeping our elders engaged, healthy, vital and active....

We wish Bob the best of luck in these, and all future, endeavors!

Social Media

In the most recent installment of her Social Good podcast series, Allison Fine chats with filmmaker Marc Erlbaum about his use of crowdfunding platform Indiegogo to raise $150,000 and crowdsource stories about the meaning of life for his next film project.

On LinkedIn, Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, asks for help in developing a mobile strategy for his organization. "We know that mobile is important," writes Best. "We agree that mobile devices are becoming many people's primary way to connect to the Internet. We see that the percentage of site visitors coming to us from mobile devices is steadily increasing. We know we have to do something, but we're not sure what." Has your organization had success with mobile? Share your experience with Best and others in the comments section below.

Women & Girls

Thursday was International Day of the Girl, and, as Beth Kanter notes on her blog, the launch of the "Because I Am a Girl" campaign by the Plan, one of oldest and largest children's development organizations in the world. Why a campaign to raise awareness about the importance of educating girls? Because, as Kanter writes, "Globally, one in three girls around the world is denied an education by the daily realities of poverty, violence and discrimination. Every day, girls are taken out of school, married far too young, and subjected to violence in school. Not only is this unjust, it's also a huge waste of potential with serious global consequences...."

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

-- The Editors

 

Not All New Media Is ‘New’ Any More

(Bruce Trachtenberg is executive director of the Communications Network, an organization of people who work for or on behalf of the nation's grantmakers. A version of this post appears on the Commnetwork blog.)

I'm pretty sure we didn't pop any champagne corks, do fist bumps, or high five each other, but I recall a feeling of exhilaration the first time -- probably in the 1990s -- I pressed the send button on e-mail with an attached PDF version of a report detailing findings from an initiative underwritten by a foundation where I worked. My colleagues and I -- freed from the labor and time-intensive process of distributing print publications -- thought we'd truly entered the digital age. In a blink of an eye, reports of any length could be on their way to key audiences in seconds.

Fast forward almost twenty years, and even though the PDF is still very much with us, that habit of turning reports, white papers, books, policy briefs, and the like into digital facsimiles and e-mailing and posting them online is on its way to being labeled an OLD new media practice.

In fact, just last week, the Center for Digital Information held a roundtable discussion with the title "Beyond the PDF" that showed off some impressive examples of how think tanks, foundations, and policy institutions are taking advantage of the best the new technology has to offer -- interactive graphics and visualizations, mapping tools, online databases, multimedia, and touch-interface smartphone and tablet applications -- to do what Jeff Stanger, the group's executive director, describes as more effectively "injecting” information into public policy debates and other social change discussions.

For anyone who cut his or her teeth in a world where print and print-like products were the gold standards of information dissemination, it takes a moment (sometimes longer) before you realize that a game can actually do a pretty good job of informing people about the challenges of trying to come up with a manageable federal budget or that a cartoon-like presentation can answer the question "How will the affordable health care act affect me?" at least as well, if not better, than traditional text presentations.

Those examples -- and others that detail the differing political beliefs Americans hold, the potential threat to developing countries from climate change, and how Americans cope with high energy costs -- demonstrate that by embracing the power of new digital technologies, we can turn static, often dry data into useful online engagements that hold great promise for thoughtfully informing and advancing public dialogue on topics such as health, education, the environment, the economy, national security, international affairs, and global development.

Another advantage that true digital publications offer is the ability to comprehensively measure the depth of user engagement -- from number of visitors to page views to which information garnered the most attention and interest. It’s far better knowing that people are paying attention to your materials than wondering if they're getting read at all. Still, that level of measurement is no substitute for the higher bar that any material disseminated to influence thinking or behavior must ultimately meet to be judged a success: Did anyone do any thing different as a result? Did they take action?

Ironically, whereas the now (in some quarters) scorned but still ubiquitous PDF offers great efficiency and obvious cost savings over its traditional print counterparts, these newer digitally native products come with both a higher price tag and greater time demands, not to mention the requirement for people with new skills to do the work. It's a fact that shouldn't dissuade us from turning more information products into digitally native forms.

Gabriella Fitz, co-director of IssueLab, a nonprofit that archives, distributes, and promotes the extensive and diverse body of research being produced by the nonprofit sector -- and someone who probably sees more traditional research reports than most people -- agrees that "more and more social cause research should be presented in interactive formats. The fact is that people don't have the time to read forty-page white papers."

But Fitz also worries that the research smaller foundations and nonprofits produce might get ignored "just because they don't have the budget to produce these kind of interactive pieces." And she acknowledges that "a lot of folks default to PDFs because they simply don't have the skills or creative encouragement to do it differently and don't have the money to hire those who do." Still, she's optimistic that "we can work on the skills and the creative encouragement." The money, on the other hand, will probably remain a hurdle too high for some.

On that point, Stanger says organizations doing the research need to take the lead in making the case that the cost of not embracing the new "threatens the vital informational role" of foundations, think tanks, and policy institutions. "In a society increasingly accustomed to information in digital form," he adds, "credibility, authority, and relevance are attributes that will be reserved for research organizations that successfully adopt new interactive forms that are native to digital media."

-- Bruce Trachtenberg

Wikipedia Goes to College

(Laura Cronin is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. In her last post, she chatted with Karen Brown, vice president of programs at the Fairfield County Community Foundation, about the foundation's capacity-building efforts.)

Since 2003, the Wikimedia Foundation has been quietly going about the business of operating the fifth most visited site on the Internet without trumpeting its own story as one of the most successful volunteer organizations in the world.

With 20 million volunteer-authored articles in over 282 languages, the foundation has taken the old-fashioned volunteer effort online and achieved a scale for Wikipedia, its biggest and most successful project, that few people in traditional nonprofit circles would dare to imagine. For those in the sector focused on impact, the numbers are impressive. According to a Pew survey, 53 percent of adult American Internet users visit Wikipedia regularly, and the site boasts more than 400 million user visits a month (the strategic plan calls for topping one billion in 2012). Let's face it, is there any other nonprofit organization in the world that can help you find Lady Gaga's real name (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ) or tell you how to properly categorize Pluto within seconds of firing up your smartphone?

While the Wikimedia Foundation has grown in recent years, it is still primarily a volunteer enterprise. Headquartered in San Francisco, the 501(c)(3) organization has only 73 full-time employees and, despite a very sophisticated technology infrastructure, an annual operating budget of under $30 million. To maintain and improve its financial position, the foundation has become more aggressive this year about raising additional funds. Like its volunteer efforts, these initial forays into the world of fundraising have been models of efficiency and innovation. Indeed, the foundation's first online fundraiser last year netted some $15 million in just fifty days.

Growing and diversifying its cadre of volunteers is now a top priority for the foundation. In theory, anyone in the world can edit a Wikipedia page. In practice, the barriers to becoming a successful volunteer (or "Wikipedian") are rather high. The editing protocols require technical skills and practice. And in order to make a lasting contribution, subject-area expertise and excellent language skills are needed as well.

With an eye to ensuring that more people become successful volunteers –- especially more women and people from the global South -- the foundation piloted its first Public Policy Initiative during the 2010-11 academic year on thirty-two university campuses across the United States. The project engaged university students and faculty in an effort to explore how volunteers could improve and increase the number of English-language articles on Wikipedia. Working with teams on campus, the foundation developed lesson plans and training materials that make it possible for faculty to incorporate the creation of high-quality entries into the curriculum. The foundation also provided the services of "campus ambassadors," who mentored students interested in becoming first-time Wikipedians. Veteran Wikipedians from the online community were instrumental in breaking down technical barriers and guiding students as they learned editing protocols and developed their online writing skills.

One notable success involved the work of a student at Georgetown University who had an interest in Egyptian politics and edited a page on the National Democratic Party of Egypt just months before the Arab Spring uprising in Cairo. There had been little information in English on the site about the group and its complex history, and as the uprising played out (eventually leading to the overthrow of the Mubarak government) there was considerable interest in the new content from English-language readers. In fact, the page soon was netting five thousand views a day and eventually began to be updated by people with direct knowledge of the subject on a regular basis.

Clearly, research, writing, and media literacy are all skills that students can sharpen by turning a college term paper into a Wikipedia entry. Indeed, during the Public Policy Initiative faculty conducted research on how this approach might improve student learning and shared it with the foundation. According to Frank Schulenburg, a veteran Wikipedian and director of the initiative:

The U.S. pilot was extremely successful in providing students an authentic learning experience and increasing the quality of articles on Wikipedia. We're excited to continue expanding the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States as well as in other countries, where students can improve content on Wikipedia in their native language.

With this new campus-based program as a launch pad for its outreach work globally, the Wikipedia Foundation is positioning itself to maintain and extend its position as a leading mobilizer of volunteer energies in the nonprofit sector -- and on campus. And that's something for which we can all be thankful.

-- Laura Cronin

Weekend Link Roundup (September 24 - 25, 2011)

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

Arts and Culture

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Susan Stehling shares findings from a new Minnesota Council on Foundations report which found that giving to the arts in the region fell 10 percent in 2009 and was down 19 percent from 2004 levels.

Communications/Marketing

While attending the Communications Network conference in Boston, Katya Andresen looked at three different ways to measure social media on her Non-Profit Marketing blog.

Impact/Effectiveness

Center for Effective Philanthropy vice president for research Ellie Buteau shares key findings from a new report that "looks at strategy at community foundations and concludes that, just as is the case at private foundations, there is a gulf between rhetoric and reality...."

Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, announces the relaunch of the nonprofit rating site. Three years in the making, the new CN 2.0 "evaluates [transparency and accountability] practices that have been researched, advocated for and recommended for years by many, many nonprofit experts."

Philanthropy

National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy research and policy associate Kevin Laskowski explains why technological advances and shifts in the industry could spell the end for many community foundations.

Social Entrepreneurship

Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green recap the Startups for Good Challenge, which was held on the final day of the 2011 Social Good Summit in New York City last week.

Social Media

On the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Impatient Optimists blog, Melinda Gates announces that she has joined Twitter and explains why. Writes Gates:

Most people associate philanthropy with great wealth. In my mind, philanthropy is not about the money. It’s about using whatever resources you have at your fingertips and applying them to improving the world. If you are passionate about helping humanity, then you can get creative about the ways to do so.

Twitter is an example of this -- it is the type of vehicle that allows you to share stories of impact in an instant. I'll be using Twitter to pass along stories that inspire me....

Last but not least, Beth Kanter looks at the "new dramatic, life altering changes in the Facebook Platform," including Timeline and Open Graph, and teases out some of the implications for nonprofits.

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

-- Regina Mahone 

2011 Social Good Summit 'Storified'

On Tuesday, in a packed auditorium of young professionals, nonprofit and business leaders, and social entrepreneurs, I sat listening to Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore and Elie Wiesel of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity kick off the second day of the 2011 Social Good Summit, which again this year is being presented by Mashable, the 92nd Street Y, and the UN Foundation, in conjunction with United Nations week in New York City.

According to the SGS site, the summit (watch the Livestream here) brings together a dynamic community of global leaders to discuss how innovative thinking and technology can solve our greatest challenges.

Wiesel -- who founded the New York City-based foundation with his wife, Marion, after he won the 1986 Nobel Prize for Peace -- is not an actual user of social media. In fact, he mentioned that his favorite "machine" is the pen.  But he is an expert on justice and reconciliation, and he had a lot to say about how technology can both benefit society (as it did in the early stages of the Arab Spring revolutions) and be used to bully, intimidate, and abuse. When asked what people should do when they have the ability to influence millions via social media, Wiesel said that even if you have "the most perfect machine," it's imperative that you pay attention to the words and language you use and always respect those who are listening.

During the first two days of the summit, audience members and those watching via Livestream heard from Ted Turner, Charity: Water founder and CEO Scott Harrison, Idealist.org founder and executive director Ami Dar, Do Something CEO & "chief old person" Nancy Lublin, Howard Buffett (Warren's grandson), USAID administrator Raj Shah, and many others. For a full recap of the event, check out the Mashable site (here and here).

A final note: As a Generation Y attendee, even I was awed by the social media response to the summit. When, for example, Geena Davis, Serena Williams, and Lance Armstrong took the stage to discuss their respective social change efforts, the response was so immediate and overwhelming that their names quickly became trending topics on Twitter.

To help you navigate the first two days of the summit, I've "storified" a few of the most noteworthy tweets here: http://storify.com/pndblog/social-good-summit.

Did you attend the summit or watch via Livestream? What tools did you use to manage the flood of information? And what big ideas or initiatives were the stickiest? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (July 30 - 31, 2011)

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

Advocacy

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s Keeping a Close Eye blog, Aaron Dorfman looks at the largest grants awarded in recent years for advocacy and organizing efforts and wonders whether (and how) we should be keeping score.

Corporate Philanthropy

Writing on Forbes's CSR Blog, James Epstein-Reeves explains the difference between corporate social responsibility and philanthropy. "You see, CSR is much broader than philanthropy," writes Epstein-Reeves. "CSR looks to change business operations in a way that maximizes a company's benefits to society and minimizes the risks and costs to society -- all while keeping the company focused on creating business and brand value. The idea that a company can be socially responsible while only and exclusively focusing on philanthropy is as old-fashioned as my grandmother serving me Ovaltine while we huddle around waiting for the latest news from the telegraph...."

Microfinance

On her Good Intentions Are Not Enough blog, Saudra Schimmelpfennig has some advice for donors interested in supporting microfinance projects.

Nonprofit Management

Hosting this month's Nonprofit Blog Carnival, Britt Bravo shares a selection of blog posts chock-full of time-management tips.

Philanthropy

In a recent post on the Deep Social Impact blog, Ellen Remmer makes a case for why passion "can play a critical role in achieving deep social impact" in philanthropy.

Sean Stannard-Stockton argues in a Tactical Philanthropy blog post that foundations should "subject themselves to external accountability as a tactic to achieve better results." Writes Stannard-Stockton:

I think foundations should be free to run their programs in any way they like within the bounds of the law. But for foundations that strive to be effective in their giving, some sort of "pre-registration" of new programs could be very helpful in keeping them focused and motivated.

Self-discipline is critical for success in every domain of human endeavors. But self-discipline is hard. One savvy way to stay on track towards the results you seek is to voluntarily create systems that maintain pressure on you to perform. We all face moments when we're tired and can’t keep up. Or moments of judgment when we need to grade ourselves but go too easy and choose not to face hard facts. Creating a system of external accountability can help us accomplish our goals, whether those goals are getting in shape or running effective philanthropic programs.

Technology

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders how "the choices we make organizationally reflect our view of who is a stakeholder in an issue? And how is this changing with technology?"

"Technology makes it possible for a charity of any size to deliver a far better experience at very little cost," writes Katya Andresen on her Non-Profit Marketing blog. "We have no excuse not to do better, and it's dangerous not to improve our engagement drastically...."

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

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (July 16 - 17, 2011)

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

Capacity Building

At Beth's Blog, Paul Connolly of the TCC Group argues that "fortifying nonprofits' fundraising capability" is not a "no-brainer." In fact, new research conducted by the TCC Group on the Packard Foundation's nonprofit capacity-building efforts suggests that while "fundraising capacity is essential...it needs to happen in conjunction with solid leadership and organizational learning."

Diversity

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Nathan Henderson-James, online director at the Leadership Center for the Common Good, commends the Freedom from Fear Award program for its use of social media tools like Twitter to crowd-source nominations for the award. "Not only does this approach have the ability to help expand the potential grant pool beyond those with the most 'insider' knowledge," writes Henderson-James, "[but] it also has the ability to reach potentially deserving grantees from traditionally underserved communities, because those communities tend to be among the most voracious users of social media."

Fundraising

"Never accept a gift that costs your nonprofit more than it's worth," writes Stephen L. Goldstein on the Fundraising Guru blog. "A gift of a collection of ancient coins to a historical museum may be interesting, but impractical to receive because of prohibitive insurance costs. Sometimes, you must say 'No.'"

On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz shares findings from the most recent installment of Blackbaud's Index of Charitable Giving, which found that "charitable organizations experienced an uptick in donations in May to the tune of 11.3 percent."

Governance

On his Nonprofit Board Crisis blog, Mike Burns shares a few thoughts about effective nonprofit board governance.

Amy Ellsworth and Lisa Spalding of the Philanthropic Initiative wonder what a new foundation board member is to do when he/she observes "a number of bad behaviors that have become normalized." "How do you approach a difficult subject? How do you determine the best people to talk to?" ask Ellsworth and Spalding. Have you ever been around a situation like the one they describe? What's your advice? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Philanthropy

Guest blogging on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, Jacob Harold of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation reflects on the challenges and opportunities facing program officers, many of whom are well positioned to facilitate collaboration among nonprofits working to address the same problem.

In a three-part series on the Philanthropy Potluck blog, the Minnesota Council on Foundation's Chris Murakami Noonan shares insights from program officers at MCF member organizations, including some of their pet peeves with respect to the grant application process, tips on how to get on a PO's good side, and general advice for development officers.

On Kris Putnam-Walkerley's Philanthropy 411 blog, Richard Woo of the Russell Family Foundation explains why it's important for foundations to frame their "grants, programs, and initiatives" around "the relevance of those offerings and the nature of our relationship with the community." Writes Woo:

What if we offered a grant and no one wanted it?

We must emphasize our relationships even as we deliver grants, programs, and initiatives. When we pay as much attention to authentic relationship development as we do to program development -- there is a greater chance of becoming relevant. Relationships are boundless, programs are finite.

Technology

On the Idealist.org blog, Jeremy MacKechnie lists a number of new Web sites that have adopted the Groupon model to promote social good.

While tools like Visual.ly make it easy for organizations to "show" their data, "You still need to know what kind of data representation (picture) helps make what kind of point," writes Lucy Bernholz on her Philanthropy 2173 blog. "No doubt about it, a picture is worth 1000 words. Especially if it shows us something we can't see in the raw numbers or raw words, shows relationships we wouldn't otherwise find, or sparks new questions. If not, it's just a cool picture."

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

-- Regina Mahone

Talking Philanthropy: Holly Ross, Executive Director, Nonprofit Technology Network

In the latest installment of our monthly podcast series, hosts Larry Blumenthal and Bill Silberg talk to Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) chief Holly Ross about how philanthropic organizations are harnessing technology to more effectively pursue their goals. Larry and Bill spoke to Holly at NTEN's recent -- and very busy -- annual conference in Washington, D.C.

 

Running time: 00:11:06

(Right-click to download mp3)

Is your organization experimenting with new technologies such as GPS or video? What have you found are the value-adds? Any lessons learned along the way that might help others?

Do you have a topic you'd like to hear Larry and Bill address? Let us know in the comments section below, or drop us a line at mfn@foundationcenter.org.