Weekend Link Roundup (November 13 - 14, 2010)

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

Communications/Marketing

On her Philanthropy 411 blog, Kris Putnam-Walkerly rounds up blog and video coverage from the recent Communications Network Fall Conference.

After a recent conversation with a Facebook IP lawyer, Zoetica co-founder Geoff Livingston revisited the social networking site's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Based on what he found, Livingston shares his reasons why content marketers should steer clear of "hard selling" on the site.

Education

On the Century Foundation's Taking Note blog, Gordon Macinnes looks at A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools (120 pages, PDF), a new statistics-packed report from the Council of Great City Schools, and concludes that while it's "a helpful reminder of one of education's most durable and stubborn problems," the study's recommendations for action "are timid given the magnitude of the problem...."

Philanthropy

With the gift-giving season almost here, Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blogger Heather Mansfield shares her annual list of eleven holiday gift programs "that benefit nonprofits and make the world a better place."

Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz takes issue with the idea, advanced by UK-based Alliance magazine's fall issue, that "philanthropy advising as a service is becoming institutionalized." Writes Bernholz: "The examples, practices, and issues raised in the [magazine] collectively sound as if philanthropy is still offline, only [for] the rich, and only slightly concerned with investing. That's not where I think philanthropy is now or where I see its future, and so it's not where I think the future of advising will be...."

On the Deep Social Impact blog, Ellen Remmer explains why she believes the Giving Pledge, the campaign launched by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates to encourage the nation's billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to charity, may be "sputtering."

Tactical Philanthropy's Sean Stannard-Stockton takes a closer look at the San Francisco-based Mulago Foundation and says it may be "a case study of an emergent model of how to run a foundation."

Social Innovation

Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets author Steve Goldberg argues that the recent decision by the Corporation for National & Community Service to "investigate" the process used by CNCS's Social Innovation Fund to choose its first cohort of grantees "might be yet another case where a responsible government agency is trying to do the right thing in the way that it manages taxpayer money."

Social Media

A new social media study by LoyaltyClicks, a division of North Carolina-based Smart Online, found that 91 percent of the nonprofits surveyed are on Facebook, 63 percent use Twitter, 45 percent have a YouTube channel, and 35 percent use LinkedIn. Allison Fine, co-author of The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting With Social Media to Drive Change says that's all well and good, but when it comes to mobile, "Clearly, it's time for [nonprofits] to get moving...."

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at [email protected] and have a great week!

-- Regina Mahone

Comments

[Geoff Livingston]

Thanks for including me!

[Regina Mahone]

Happy to! Thanks for stopping by, Geoff.