Weekend Link Roundup (March 13 - 14, 2010)

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

Communications/Marketing

"Nonprofits are heroes, not unskilled hired help," writes Todd Cohen on the Inside Philanthropy blog, "and they need to start owning their role and championing their worth."

What Would Google Do? author Jeff Jarvis shares his notes for a talk he gave to a recent TEDxNYed gathering in which he used the opportunity to question the whole TED format. Like old-media, writes Jarvis, the lecture format needs to move past a one-way conversation to collaboration. Do you agree?

Fundraising

Future Fundraising blogger Jeff Brooks says that sending extra appeals to your donors not only doesn't hurt, it's the smart thing to do. Adds Brooks: "It turns out that asking donors to donate is something like asking fish to swim or birds to sing. It's what they do, what they want to do. Giving them the opportunity is not a rude and hurtful intrusion...."

International Affairs/Development

In the aftermath of the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the New York Times' Anand Giridharadas suggests that the kind of "everyone-as-informant mapping" pioneered by Ushahidi, a small Kenya-based nonprofit, "may have something larger to tell us about the future of humanitarianism, innovation and the nature of what we label as truth."

Nonprofit Management

Responding to a recent Professionals for Nonprofits salary survey, Rosetta Thurman asks her readers whether they are satisfied with their pay. You can learn more about what they had to say here.

Philanthropy

At the New Philanthropy Capital blog, Martin Brookes chides himself for "wasting charitable funds" because he donated to an animal charity at the request of his daughter. This type of giving, adds Brookes, represents a "misallocation of charitable funds" because it was done "to make [himself] feel good, not charitable giving for public benefit."

Tactical Philanthropy's Sean Stannard-Stockton offers his own take on Brookes' post here.

And in a post on the GiveWell blog, Holden Karnofsky argues that giving money for "selfish" reasons is "no more wrong than unnecessary personal consumption. The point at which it becomes a problem," adds Karnofsky, "is when you 'count it' toward your charitable/philanthropic giving for the year."

Last week, President Obama released the list of charities to which he has decided to donate the $1.4 million cash award that came with his Nobel Peace Prize. On the Social Entrepreneurship blog, Nathaniel Whittemore grades the president's choices.

Social Media

Beth Kanter, Geoff Livingston, and Kami Watson Huyse -- the principals of recently launched consulting firm Zoetica -- share their thoughts about how the rapid uptake of social media and other online technologies is changing corporate social responsibility.

Wealth Management

The Weakonomist takes a look at the 2010 edition of Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people and identifies a few noteworthy trends.

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

-- Regina Mahone