Weekend Link Roundup (September 15-16, 2012)

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

Communications/Marketing

Looking to create or strengthen a tagline for your organization? Nonprofit marketing expert Nancy Schwartz has selected sixty-three nonprofit taglines from fourteen hundred submitted to her Getting Attention blog over the summer and is asking readers to help choose the 2012 Nonprofit Tagline Award winners. Voting is open through midnight on October 5, and if you subscribe to the Getting Attention e-update while you're on the site, you'll get a free copy of the 2013 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Report (due in late fall).

In a post on the Communications Network blog, Louis Herr says that "limiting Web evaluation to a clickstream product like Google Analytics starves you of critical information." In his post, Herr highlights the argument made by Avinash Kaushik in Web Analytics: An Hour a Day -- to wit, that to be truly actionable, Web analytics should focus on measures of behavior, outcome, and experience, not just page views and click counts.

Fundraising

On the Philanthropy Potluck blog, Lissa Jones, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Minnesota Council on Foundations, discusses the implications of the Millennium Communications Group's Donors of the Future Scan, which identified twelve key trends in giving. Those trends include a giving population that is growing more diverse, increasing pressure on endowed giving, and the growing popularity of "flash" and Internet giving portals.

Impact/Effectiveness

The Knowledge@Wharton blog has a good post on the potential, and obstacles to broader adoption, of social impact bonds (SIBs), which generate a return for outside investors only if the program is successful. 

Philanthropy

Writing on the Re: Phlanthropy blog, new Council On Foundations president Vikki Spruill lays out her vision for a re-energized CoF, one that is focused "on the future and what philanthropy can make possible," that supports its members with tools and ideas, that works to increase the understanding of the impact of philanthropy and enhances members' ability to effect positive change.

In a post on the Philanthrocapitalism blog, Matthew Bishop and Michael Green discuss #givingtuesday, a new grassroots campaign spearheaded by the 92 Street Y in New York City that seeks to get "everyone -- individuals and organizations alike -- to make a fresh commitment to give" on November 27. "The hope is that #givingtuesday will be a sort of 'opening day' for the giving season, the launch pad for a more productive than ever period of giving in the weeks and months ahead," write Bishop and Green. "It aims to build on the existing National Philanthropy Day (November 15th), which is a time to reflect on and celebrate past acts of philanthropy, with a day of action devoted to new giving, when everyone can make their personal giving pledge for the giving season and year to come."

Writing on his White Courtesy telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president and CEO Albert Ruesga urges young professionals working in the philanthropy field who may by "haunted...by the memory of some infelicitous essay on Plato’s Republic to "Let it go! Let it go...! Our first inklings of a world beyond that described to us by our parents have extraordinary value. The exhilaration we felt at being invited to question authority can still save our field from grave errors."

And on our sister Glasspockets blog, Foundation Center president Brad Smith takes a look at the Chinese Foundation Center's recently launched Foundation Transparency Index and asks, "[A]re Chinese foundations more transparent than American foundations?” His answer? Maybe. But while "American foundations may be different than Chinese foundations in some ways," Smith writes, "in facing growing demands for transparency from government, media, and the public [they] are more alike than we realize."

Social Media

In the most recent installment of her Social Good podcast series on the Chronicle of Philanthropy site, Allison Fine chats with network-weaving expert June Holley about how network weaving can help steer nonprofit organizations in the right direction with respect to their social media activity. "Network weaving...is the intentional activation of networks to do something together," adds Fine, "but it isn’t intuitive for people coming with a command and control mindset."

Beth Kanter explains why she had to reschedule a trip to Tunisia following a wave of anti-American protests there and in other Arab countries fueled by anger over an anti-Muslim video created by a Muslim-hating provocateur in California. Recent events in Libya, where the American ambassador and three others were killed by angry mobs, and Egypt, writes Kanter, raise a number of questions about censorship on the Internet and the need for "nonviolent approaches to resolving conflict."

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

-- The Editors