Weekend Link Roundup (December 18 - 19, 2010)

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

Fundraising

Network for Good's Katya Andresen reminds nonprofit fundraisers and marketers to be extra good as 2010 comes to a close, because, as the organization's new Online Giving Study shows, more than 20 percent of all online giving happens in the last forty-eight hours of the calendar year.

Governance

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy blog, Aaron Dorfman explains why the Nathan Cummings Foundation's recent white paper on shareholder activism is one of "the very best publications release[d] this fall."

Impact/Effectiveness

"In the quest for transparency, it is important for foundations to refrain from selecting certain indicators simply because they are easily quantifiable," writes Center for Effective Philanthropy vice president for research Ellie Buteau on the Foundation Center's new Transparency Talk blog. "Rather, foundations must commit to having the difficult conversations and doing the soul searching required to get clear on what they are trying to achieve -- and how -- before they can begin to consider measuring success...."

Nonprofit Management

As part of the Case Foundation's new blog series on "accidental entrepreneurs," Sokunthea Sa Chhabra shares advice offered by AnyClip.com CEO Nate Westheimer in a recent presentation detailing how anyone can launch a nonprofit for less than $60.

Philanthropy

Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz looks into her crystal ball and shares her best guesses as to what philanthropy will look a decade from now. According to Bernholz, by 2020:

• Philanthropy will be operating under a fundamentally different set of rules;
• More spend-down foundations will have been created;
• Gaming and game pedagogy will be built in to philanthropic problem solving;
• Disaster relief giving will be more structured and planned;
• The value of impact investing will surpass that of charitable giving;
• Institutional philanthropy will be more collaborative;
• Data analysis and visualization will be key skills for philanthropists;
• Foundations and nonprofits will still be here;
• Giving by mobile phone will replace credit-card donations;
• "Scale" will be less associated with "getting bigger" and have more to do with being "networked."

In a two-part series on the Philanthrocapitalism blog (here and here), Matthew Bishop and Michael Green share their favorite nonprofit books of the year. Their respective lists include Stephen Goldsmith's The Power of Innovation: How Civic Entrepeneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good; Arianna Huffington's Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream; and Peter Buffett's Life Is what You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment.

And in this video on The Economist Web site, Matthew Bishop shares his predictions for philanthropy in 2011.

Social Media

Over at the Huffington Post, Beth Kanter pushes back against some of the points in a recent George Weiner post about "the pitfalls of crowdsourced philanthropy."

And Kanter's Zoetica colleague, Geoff Livingston, gives props to Facebook's PR department for "their masterful (and somewhat annoying) job" of creating the "Facebook Effect" -- the domino-like phenomenon that unfolds whenever Facebook has a new announcement; their news, says Livingston, "essentially derails the entire communications social Web conversation for hours or even days."

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

-- Regina Mahone