Nonprofit News

Why your non-profit won’t make a KONY 2012

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 05:24:50 +0000

Oh, Jason Mogus, thank you! This needed to be said! Although the point of his recent article on Why your non-profit won’t make a KONY 2012 has likely been obscured by other (weirder or more troublesome) stories about the most successful viral video of all time, that doesn’t make his points any less valid. Striking [...]

The Knight News Challenge: How it works, what succeeds, and why that matters for the shaping of journalism innovation

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 05:09:08 +0000

I have mixed feelings about the Knight News Challenge. The grantmaking program is a strange mix: It’s brave, innovative (as a funding program), transparent but still opaque in odd ways, brilliant and clueless, democratic but maybe in the same way as a presidential election. (Disclosure: I worry that my feelings are colored by having had [...]

What Data Visualization Should Do: Simple Small Truth

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 04:49:54 +0000

At The Gilbert Center, we’ve always been interested in data. And we’ve always been interested in communication, of course. In the last several years, we’ve invested a lot of resources in how to bring those two together. Fortunately, so are a lot of other people. Even though he isn’t focusing on civil society, when Drew [...]

Myth: Good Board Members “Give, Get, or Get Off.”

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:20:32 +0000

It’s great to see Bill Ryan, writing at Nonprofit Quarterly, touch on the myth that good board members “give, get, or get off”. Personally, I’m not sure I fully subscribe to the alternative notion that good board members “govern”, because I think it’s far from clear what governance is, exactly. It’s even less clear whether, [...]

Tips for Writing Great Links, by Gerry McGovern

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:08:57 +0000

Tips for Writing Great Links by Gerry McGovern

The World War on Democracy, by John Pilger

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:07:11 +0000

The World War on Democracy by John Pilger

Gates: Benevolent Dictator for Public Health?

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:05:09 +0000

Laura Freschi and Alanna Shaikh, in their article: Gates: Benevolent Dictator for Public Health?, ask us to imagine this scenario: “It is not inconceivable that you might find yourself some day reading a story about a Gates-funded health project, written up in a newspaper that gets its health coverage underwritten by Gates, reported by a [...]

Allen Gunn on Blackbaud’s Acquisition of Convio

Michael Gilbert — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:52:10 +0000

You may have read that Blackbaud just acquired Convio. I invite you to recall that Blackbaud acquired eTapestry in 2007 and Kintera in 2008. Convio itself acquired GetActive in 2007. If you know the field, you’ll recognize this as a dramatic consolidation of market power in one firm.

In Talkin’ Blackbaud Blues, Aspiration’s Allen Gunn [...]

Marcia Yudkin’s No-Harm Marketing Manifesto

Michael Gilbert — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:02:56 +0000

I wonder what the nonprofit equivalent of Marcia Yudkin’s No-Harm Marketing Manifesto (12 page PDF) would be. Some of the specifics don’t apply to fundraising, because donors are definitely not customers. (Although many nonprofits do in fact have customers.) I don’t even agree with all the principles here, but I appreciate the ethos.

Those principles [...]

Seven Predictions for Philanthropy in 2012

Michael Gilbert — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:45:39 +0000

In the Nonprofit Quarterly, Rick Cohen offers Seven Predictions for Philanthropy in 2012, and I was fascinated to see him predict an enormous shaping influence of the Occupy Movement and its issues. In brief, his predictions are as follows: (1) The movement itself and the wellspring of discontent that it has tapped will drive requests [...]