Weekend Link Roundup (June 19 - 20, 2010)

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

Arts and Culture

Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, explains in a Huffington Post entry why size doesn't matter in the arts. "If [small orgs] take the time to plan large, exciting programs four or five years in advance," writes Kaiser, "they would be far more likely to find the resources they require to mount these programs."

Capacity Building

On the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, the Monitor Institute's Heather McLeod Grant discusses how the organization KaBOOM! used online tools to scale its offline program model.

Fundraising

"There's nothing dainty or secretive about a nonprofit arts organization's need for money," writes the Nonprofiteer in a new post, "so the more directly and entertainingly and memorably you state it, the better your chance of actually receiving the money."

On the Future Fundraising Now blog, Jeff Brooks explains why the best fundraising copy is written at a sixth-grade "reading ease" level.

Philanthropy

On the Tactical Philanthropy blog, Sean Stannard-Stockton argues that "smart funders who want to invest in the growth of outstanding [nonprofits will have] to restructure their process[es] so that the thrust of their work revolves around proactively locating great philanthropic opportunities rather than passively wading through grant applications."

Aaron Dorman and Niki Jagpal of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy offer three reasons why a new Florida law that keeps grantmaking institutions from having to disclose demographic information about their staff and board is problematic.

Social Media

Beth Kanter explains why you need to use social network analysis "to better understand your network." To ignore such analysis, writes Kanter, "[is] like a weatherman trying to predict a snowstorm without seeing a whole weather map."

On the Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog, Heather Mansfield wonders whether Facebook will authenticate her Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page, which has over 10,000 fans, or shut it down, as it has with other unofficial cause pages.

Volunteerism

On the Social Citizens blog, Kari Dunn Saratovsky outlines what every nonprofit should know about engaging the next generation of volunteers.

"It's obviously essential that people work for the common good through service and volunteerism," writes Zach Maurin on the Case Foundation's blog, "but we can't solve our most pressing social challenges if our citizenry only does that...."

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And Happy Father's Day to all the great dads out there. Have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone