PhilanTopic

Bill Gates at the 92nd Street Y

Mitch Nauffts — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:26:08 -0500

I had a chance to see Bill Gates being interviewed by Matthew Bishop, New York bureau chief for The Economist and co-author of Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World (read our interview with him here), the other night at the 92nd Street Y here in New York.

Security was surprisingly light, and the Y's wood-paneled concert hall offered a suitably dignified setting for the well-attended event, though both men walked on stage tieless and in good humor. Bishop, who devotes a whole chapter to Gates and the Gates Foundation in his book, almost immediately referenced the February TED talk at which Gates, to illustrate a point, released a swarm of mosquitoes into the audience. Then Bishop, to much laughter, pulled out a can of insect repellent and set it down on the table between them. (You can see the aerosol can in the picture above.)

From there, the conversation moved briskly. At one point, Gates, a man clearly comfortable in his own skin and with his own wealth, dismissed Bishop's suggestion that the global financial crisis had been caused by "the rich" and rejected the notion that he -- or any person of wealth -- should view philanthropy as a path to redemption.

Other takeaways from the evening:

It's possible but unlikely malaria will be eliminated by 2025; resistance and the evolving nature of the pathogen makes that difficult. At the same time, much is being done (bed net campaigns, etc.) to control the disease and limit its toll, in terms of deaths and lost productivity, in the developing world, and Gates expects that to continue.
Polio, now down to about 2,000-3,000 cases a year (most of them in Nigeria, India, and a few other places), is likely to be the second disease (after smallpox) to be eradicated from human populations. It is difficult, and expensive, to eliminate those last few cases, but it will happen.
An effective vaccine for AIDS will probably be the most expensive vaccine ever developed, and we're unlikely to see one in the next ten years, though maybe in twenty. But Gates is confident one will be developed in his lifetime.
Gates has no regrets about the foundation's focus on specific diseases as opposed to taking a more "holistic" approach to public health problems. As he told Bishop, in the developing world the first thirty days of life are where you lose the greatest number of children, and the diseases the foundation is targeting are responsible for causing many of those deaths. As you reduce the number of childhood deaths -- down from 12.5 million in 1990 to under 9 million today -- parents respond by having fewer children and spending more money on educating the children they do have. Lower birthrates and a better educated populace leads to more opportunity and economic growth, which feeds back into public health initiatives. So, Gates added, in a sense you could say our approach is holistic, in that everything we do is related.
Unlike governments, which change on a regular basis, or business, which tends to focus on the profit expectations of shareholders, foundations are well-suited to funding risky research and unproven approaches because they can stay the course over the many years and even decades it takes to achieve big, hairy, audacious goals (my phrase). And because of our assets and scale, said Gates, we have to tackle big problems.
It's easy to criticize the lack of clear, understandable metrics in social change work, but at the end of the day the field (i.e., foundations and their nonprofit partners) is pretty good at identifying and moving into areas where traditional market signals don't exist or have failed.
Entrepeneurship is inherent in human nature and will flourish when structural impediments -- corruption, lack of infrastructure and/or rule of law -- are removed. In the U.S., there are immense opportunities emerging for entrepreneurs in science-related fields.

Gates's final word of advice to other philanthropists in the audience (and there were more than a few there, including a couple of billionaire hedge fund types) was direct and to the point: Pick something you love and don't spread yourself too thin.

Come to think of it, good advice for anyone.

(Photo credit: Joyce Culver for the 92nd Street Y)

-- Mitch Nauffts

Readings (and Other Stuff) - Nov. 12, 2009

Mitch Nauffts — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:14:42 -0500

Here's what we're reading today:

Times' special section on Giving
- New Fame for the Everyday Donor (Stephanie Strom)
- Billionaires Learn Giving Is Only a Start (Matthew Bishop and Michael Green)
- Outreach in the Age of Pullback (Rachel L. Swarns)
- As Foundations Close, Anxiety for Charities (David Cay Johnston)
- Charity Bankruptcy Leaves Many Donors in Distress (Deborah L. Jacobs)
- Leaving a Bank for a Foundation Proved Rewarding (Geraldine Fabrikant)
- From an Idea by Students, a Million-Dollar Charity (Gretchen Morgenson)
- The Chain Store as Patron of the Arts (Robin Pogrebin)
- Raising Real Money in a Virtual World (Peter Wayner)
- Dollars That Turn Into Bees, and Other Gifts Given Twice (Jennifer Saranow Schultz)
- Clicking for a Cause (Brad Stone)

Lucy Bernholz: New York Times Giving Section (Philanthropy 2173)
Brian Reich: Why Today's NYTimes Giving Section Isn't Good Enough (Thinking About Media)
Video: Philanthropist Eli Broad on Why 'Venture Philanthropy' Works (WSJ's Financial Adviser blog)
Felix Salmon: The Goldman Sachs Foundation's Torrid 2008
Beth Kanter: A Tale of Two Nonprofit and Social Media Adoption Surveys (Beth's Blog)
Evolution, as Traced by the Lens (NYT)
It's the End of the Phone as We Know It (Next Billion)

What are you reading?

Readings (and Other Stuff) - Nov. 11, 2009

Mitch Nauffts — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:39:15 -0500

Here's what we're reading today:

Phil Buchanan: The Attack From Within (Philanthropy Central) (h/t @tactphil)
Sue Halpern, Nicholas Kristoff: The Micro Miracle? (NYRB)
Matthew Bishop: Raj Shah's Opportunity
Sam Dillion: States Compete for Federal School Dollars (NYT)
Michael Luo: A Parent's Unemployment Stress Trickles Down to the Children (NYT)
Is Your Nonprofit Too Social Media Dependent? (Frogloop)
Doc Searls: Beyond Social Media (h/t @p2173)

And, on this day of remembrance, maybe the greatest poem written about WWI:

T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land (1922) (h/t @irasocol)

What are you reading?

Brooke Astor, the People’s Philanthropist - Part One: Public Spaces

Mitch Nauffts — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:12:42 -0500

(Michael Seltzer is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. His last post was an ode to the T-shirt.)

On December 8, Anthony Marshall, the 85-year-old son of Brooke Astor, will be sentenced in a Manhattan courtroom for knowingly taking financial advantage of his mother in her declining years. For those of us with some connection to Mrs. Astor, the end of a trial that lasted five months and produced thousands of pages of recorded transcript will go down as one of the saddest epilogues ever attached to a beloved public figure's life.

Fortunately, for the hundreds of nonprofit organizations in New York City that received support from the Vincent Astor Foundation over the years, Mrs. Astor will be remembered in a far different light. Indeed, few foundations in my lifetime have been so positively associated with a single individual -- or admired so widely.

While some have tried to portray her as a twentieth-century Lady Bountiful, the characterization has never gained traction. Mrs. Astor took her philanthropy quite seriously, as evidenced by the twenty or so site visits she made each year. And while the New York Times' Bill Cunningham would regularly photograph her at swanky after-dark fundraisers, few managed to capture her image as she traveled to Harlem, Morrisania, Chinatown, and scores of other neighborhoods in the city’s five boroughs. Even in the two reports produced by the Astor Foundation over a forty-year period, she made sure the photographs were of the people she visited and not of herself.

Indeed, while other individuals with her social standing limited their philanthropic support to the city's museums, performing arts organizations, and other high-profile institutions, Mrs. Astor chose to reach into communities served by organizations that were rarely the beneficiaries of the New York elite and was never afraid to trust her instincts.

A closer examination of the Vincent Astor Foundation's achievements reveals her wisdom -- and gives us a picture of an individual distinguished by bold, insightful, and impressive talent.

The Story Behind Central Park's Renaissance

As a child growing up a hundred feet from Central Park in the 1950s, the park's 843 acres were my front yard. At the same time, venturing into the park was both a source of adventure and anxiety (if not outright fear). The "Jewel of Manhattan" had fallen into disrepair, and everyone -- habitués of its many nooks and crannies as well as long-time New Yorkers and wary tourists -- took it for granted that its fallen state was immutable.

As recounted by Frances Kiernan in her excellent biography The Last Mrs. Astor: A New York Story, in 1975, several decades after my own boyhood forays into the park, Mrs. Astor learned about Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, an employee of the Parks Department. "Betsy," as she was known to everyone, had a vision that involved using private resources to restore Central Park to its original glorious state. The Astor Foundation subsequently made a grant to the Parks Department to support Rogers's work, and when the parks commissioner balked at being told how the foundation's funds should be used, Mrs. Astor arranged for another organization to receive the grant with the stipulation that it be used to support Rogers's efforts. Those efforts soon were institutionalized in the Central Park Conservancy, the first public-private partnership of its kind in the United States. Today, Central Park truly is a jewel and the Conservancy provides 85 percent of its $27 million operating budget -- a perpetual gift to the 25 million annual visitors and countless New Yorkers who reap the benefits of Mrs. Astor's foresight on a daily basis.

"Outdoor Living Rooms"

Mrs. Astor's support for what she called "outdoor living rooms" extended across the city. One of the Astor Foundation's first significant grants after she became its president in 1960 was for construction of a small park (including playgrounds and an amphitheater) on the grounds of the George Washington Carver Houses, then a new public housing project in East Harlem.

At the same time, she did not want her philanthropy to supplant a neighborhood's own resources and capacity to create and preserve green spaces. When the Women's House of Detention, a notorious women's prison located in Greenwich Village, was torn down, Village residents banded together to create the Jefferson Market Community Garden. In 1974, the Astor Foundation pledged $6,000 a year over five years to the effort on the condition that neighborhood residents match the sum, which it did. Subsequently, the Astor Foundation made a challenge grant of $250,000 to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation to cover the costs of installing a handsome wrought-iron fence around the garden, which by then had become a cherished part of Village life.

Mrs. Astor's efforts on behalf of a greener city were shaped by a variety of factors. She read widely and was greatly moved by the call to action in Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But she was no armchair donor. She insisted on visiting neighborhoods throughout New York and on seeing with her own eyes the challenges that residents faced and, most importantly, the opportunities they sought to create for themselves. She also had an uncanny ability to pick out individuals who had the qualities to be effective change agents and was more than willing to court and cajole reluctant city officials when she needed their support for particular projects. At the same time, she did not shrink from using her personal relationships and unique standing in New York society to bring other donors to the table. Indeed, she was an indefatigable fundraiser.

So as the last chapter of Brooke Astor's long and amazing life comes to a close, let's take a moment to remember all she gave us and what we can still learn from her.

Photo: Courtesy of the Vincent Astor Foundation

(The next installment in this series will focus on Mrs. Astor's contributions to the field of community economic development.)

-- Michael Seltzer

New Racial Equity Statement From Woods Fund of Chicago

Mitch Nauffts — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:28:22 -0500

I haven't come across many statements like the one below, but in light of the debate over diversity (or lack thereof) in the sector, I thought it was worth noting. According to a note on the Woods Fund Web site, the fund "has chosen to employ a racial equity lens and adopt this core principle to help our foundation think more intentionally about addressing inequities both internally, within the communities in which we operate, and beyond."

Here's the statement:

The Woods Fund of Chicago believes that structural racism is a root cause of many challenges facing less-advantaged communities and people and serves as a significant barrier to enabling work and eradicating poverty. The Woods Fund encourages and supports organizations, initiatives, and policy efforts that lead to eliminating structural racism. Success in this area will be evident when there is equal distribution of privileges and burdens among all races and ethnic groups, and when a person's race or ethnicity does not determine his or her life outcomes. Woods Fund will support organizations that pay disciplined attention to race and ethnicity while they analyze problems, look for solutions, and define and document success. Ideally, these organizations will incorporate an analysis of structural racism into all aspects of their operations. Woods Fund is committed to raising awareness in the philanthropic community to support this work.

You know what they say: It only takes a pebble to start a landslide.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Readings (and Other Stuff) -- Nov. 10, 2009

Mitch Nauffts — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:15:45 -0500

Here's what we're reading:

Matt Flannery: Today's New York Times Article (Kiva.org)
State Attorneys General Should Investigate Kiva.org and Consider Enforcement Action If the Findings Warrant (Charity Governance Consulting LLC)
Ryan Calkins: Microfinance's Circular Firing Squad (SeaMo)
Phil Buchanan: The Attack on Philanthropy (Intrepid Philanthropist)
Brian Reich: What's Wrong With the Analysis of "What's Wrong With Charitable Giving - and How to Fix It" (Fast Company)
David Cohn: The Pacific Garbage Patch: Published (Spot.Us)
A Helping Hand: The Case for (Smart) Government Support of Journalism (Columbia Journalism Review)
Robin Sloan: The Future of Media? Bet on Events (Snarkmarket)
Charlie Brooker: Better the Broken Windows Than Life With the Mac Monks (Sydney Morning Herald)

What are you reading?

Readings (and Other Stuff) -- Nov. 9, 2009

Mitch Nauffts — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:21:42 -0500

Here's what we're reading:

Wall Street Journal’s 2009 Philanthropy Report
- What's Wrong With Charitable Giving -- and How to Fix It(Pablo Eisenberg)
- Finding the Silk Purse (Sarah E. Needleman)
- Expanding Your Horizons (Anjali Cordeiro)
- Time to Convert? (Jilian Mincer)
- Profiles in Giving (Melissa Korn)
- Is It Public, or Is It Private? (Shelly Banjo)
- Consider It an Investment (Shelly Banjo)
- Tough Times, New Tactics (Shelly Banjo)
Stephanie Strom: Confusion on Where Money Lent via Kiva Goes (NYT)
Tim Ogden and Laura Starita: Social Networking and Mid-Size Nonprofits: What’s the Use?
The Urbanophile: Detroit: Urban Laboratory and the New American Frontier (via New Geography)
The Berlin Wall: 20 Years Later (NYT)

How about you?

How to Fix Charitable Giving?

Mitch Nauffts — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:17:40 -0500

The Wall Street Journal is out with its year-end philanthropy package, and long-time observer/critic of the sector Pablo Eisenberg steals the show with a section-heading article entitled "What's Wrong With Charitable Giving and How to Fix It?"

Those who know Eisenberg or follow him in the Chronicle of Philanthropy (where he's had a column for the past seventeen years) will recognize his concerns: "Much of current philanthropic giving, by foundations and individuals, neither meets the needs of...charitable organizations nor addresses some of our most urgent public needs." Foundations are "too bureaucratic, inflexible and cautious, and too focused on short-term objectives." Grantmaking processes and procedures "are more tailored to the needs of foundations and their trustees than to the requirements of nonprofits." And the depressed economy is making matters much, much worse.

To address these problems, Eisenberg offers nine recommendations that "would go a long way toward making philanthropy do what we all claim we want it to do":

1. Increase the payout rate. Currently set at 5 percent of foundation net assets (calculated on a rolling mutliyear basis) for grants and administrative expenses. Eisenberg would like to see it raised to 6 percent and limited to grants, which he says would add $10 billion to the roughly $40 billion awarded in grants by foundations annually.

2. Increase general operating support. Foundations allocate roughly 20 percent of their grant dollars to general operating (a/k/a unrestricted) support; Eiesenberg would like to see foundations up that to 50 percent.

3. Increase multiyear funding. Most foundations award grants on an annual basis, renewable for a year or two. But, says Eisenberg, excellent organizations pursuing long-term goals require financial commitments of five, ten, even twenty years.

4. Award grants on a rolling basis. Limiting grant decisions to biannual or quarterly board meetings serves trustees' interests first and foremost, says Eisenberg, not grantees'.

5. Allocate more funds to the truly needy. Most individual and institutional giving is directed to established charities and tax-exempt institutions in higher education, health, and the arts, while only "a small slice goes to those who require the greatest assistance." We can do better, says Eisenberg.

6. Reach out to local groups and underserved regions. Large parts of the country (e.g., the Mississippi Delta, rural areas) "are underserved by philanthropy." There are ways to remedy this, and Eisenberg mentions a few in his piece.

7. Simplify application and reporting procedures. Time is money, says Eisenberg, and time spent filling out "lengthy, exhaustive proposals with great detail" is money not spent on programs and advocacy.

8. Improve public accountability. Government doesn't have the resources to do the job and the collapse of the daily newspaper model means that soon no one will be around to hold nonprofits and foundations accountable. One answer, says Eisenberg, is to convert failing or at-risk newspapers into nonprofits. (Don't hold your breath, he adds.)

9. Fund watchdog groups. "Foundations," says Eisenberg, "are reluctant to fund activities that are controversial, generate inordinate publicity and create too much criticism" -- in other words, the very things that are the hallmark of a "healthy and vibrant democracy." If the public sector can't, or won't, fund them, philanthropy must.

As I say, a classic Pablo piece chockful of good ideas (general operating and multiyear support, more of a focus on underserved regions), a few controversial ideas (payout, diversity benchmarks), and a non-starter or two (foundation subsidies for newspapers).

But here's the question that has been nagging me all afternoon. Do his recommendations really address the problems of nonprofits and charitable giving in 2009? Or are they more of a backward-looking prescription for the problems of a sector that, like so many other industries, is in the midst of a fundamental restructuring and in five years, ten at the most, won't look anything like it does today?

Where are the recommendations related to what LaPiana and Associates, in a new report (30 pages, PDF), argue will be the trends that shape the nonprofit sector of the future (generational and other demographic shifts, the rise of social media and other new technologies, the growing importance of networks, the changing nature of volunteerism and civic engagement, and the blurring of sectoral boundaries)?

And is his critique too one-sided in its focus on the shortcomings of funders? In other words, isn't this crisis an opportunity for nonprofits willing and able to surf the five key trends outlined in LaPiana's report? Or are they forever fated to rely on the kindness of deep-pocketed strangers?

Use the comments section to share your thoughts.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (November 7 - 8, 2009)

Regina Mahone — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:25:15 -0500

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

Corporate Philanthropy

On the Reimagining CSR blog, Jessica Stannard-Friel shares examples of "companies identifying CSR activities that are relatively cheap for them to carry out, but relatively high value for the community at large."

Economy

On Friday, the National Bureau of Labor announced that the unemployment rate had jumped four-tenths of a percent, to 10.2 percent -- the highest level in twenty-six years. On the Kaufmann Foundation's Growthology blog, a downbeat Tim Kane puts the number into sobering perspective.

Fundraising

In her new book, Reliable Fundraising in Unreliable Times: What Good Causes Need to Know to Survive and Thrive, Kim Klein suggests that fundraisers need to expand their definition of "donor" to include "someone who gives time, shares ideas about how your organization can succeed, says nice things about the work you do, opens doors for you, [and] expresses gratitude for the services you provide." In addition to sharing other tips from Klein, Joanne Fritz, on About.com's Charitable Orgs blog, offers this advice:

Look for people who have a lot of relationships, who offer to help in all sorts of ways, and who are grateful for your services. Then get in contact with them and stay in contact. Say thank you frequently for whatever gifts they provide, and nurture those relationships....

Using language like "we haven't heard from you" or "we want you back," says John Thompson on the Donor Power Blog, is a sure way to weaken rather than strengthen your donor relationships.

Social networking site MySpace has announced that it is dropping the online fundraising application Causes "due to the lack of activity." Amy Sample Ward argues that this will negatively impact nonprofits on MySpace and their "communities of supporters," while Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb suggests that it might not matter at all.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the WiserEarth blog, Diane Scearce, a consultant at the Monitor Institute, offers a few things to keep in mind when evaluating network effectiveness in terms of social impact.

Journalism/Media

In a two-parter at the Cohen Report, Rick Cohen looks at the looks at the emergence of online nonprofit news and investigative journalism venues and speculates about whether the Newspaper Revitalization Act introduced by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) can save the industry.

Leadership

Live blogging from Independent Sector’s annual conference in Detroit, Rosetta Thurman shares some questions for emerging sector leaders posed by panelists David Simms, managing partner at the Bridgespan Group, and Michael Watson, senior vice president at Girl Scouts of the USA .

And in a different post, Thurman recaps the breakfast plenary session featuring Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Philanthropy

"Got a story about how many times you were asked to give in one shopping trip?" If so, Lucy Bernholz wants to know. Click here to share the "embedded giving" story from 2009 "that made you scratch your head."

Speaking of embedded giving, Philanthropy Action editor-in-chief Tim Ogden says the real problem with the approach is the "near complete lack of transparency (who gets the funds? when? how much?) in the industry."

Guest blogging on Tactical Philanthropy, Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon, chairman and president, respectively, of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies and co-authors of The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan, argue that understanding WHY you give is just as important as figuring out how and where to give. Their post has generated a lively comments thread (thirty-plus and counting), and visitors to the blog can also read an extended excerpt from the book.

Riffing on that conversation, Nathaniel Whittemore at the Social Entrepreneurship blog asks, "Is there such a thing as selfless giving?" Whittemore doesn't think so but does believe that "giving can be much more self-aware -- and in the process, much more fulfilling, sustainable, and effective."

Social Media

Nonprofit marketing guru Nancy Schwartz shares three tips for managing your nonprofit's reputation on social networking sites that she picked up at the recent Communications Network conference in New York City:

Use what you hear: 1) To better serve your networks by knowing what they're saying to others and to you; 2) to respond to and/or engage critics; 3) to stay abreast of the latest developments in your area of work.
Overcome objections that listening is unnecessary: Compile and share online conversations related to critical keywords and themes over a week or a month. Provide some concrete examples of how not listening to or participating in those conversations meant that others spoke for (and defined) your organization.
Use the best free listening tools: 1) Google Alerts and RSS feeds for keywords (org name and URL, issues, leadership names, competitive/colleague org names); and 2) Twitter search/hashtags for real-time tracking.

Schwartz also recommends following Amy Sample Ward's advice about creating a one-stop listening dashboard.

Technology

"Just as we are phasing out snail mail a few decades after email first became popular," writes Kristin Ivie in an interesting post on the Case Foundation's Social Citizens blog, so may "many offline opportunities eventually be phased out as well."

In yet another information-packed post, Beth Kanter reminisces about the early days of the World Wide Web and offers her take on how nonprofits can use Twitter's new "Lists" feature to filter the growing flood of information that comes to us courtesy of the Internet.

Transparency

Building on a recent blog post by Lucy Bernholz, Allison Fine takes a closer look at copyright expert Lawrence Lessig's claim in a recent issue of The New Republic ("Against Transparency") that "there is such a thing as too much transparency in government." While Fine doesn't buy Lessig's argument, she does agree with Bernholz that "requiring too much transparency of foundations may drive them into the dark, back rooms...of donor advised funds." Writes Fine:

Even with their enormous tax breaks, foundations are private entities that more than any other kind of institution have very little incentive to make their operations and programs more open and transparent except out of a noble assumption that by doing so they will be more effective....

Fine goes on to suggest that nonprofits, which are not public or as "private as foundations," should ask themselves the following questions as they try to strike the right balance between transparency and confidentiality:

Will sharing this information advance our mission?
How can others build on our content and make it better?
Will revealing this information improve morale and make staff feel better informed and able to make decisions on their own?
Will sharing this information better connect us to our network and help us build the relationships that we need to be successful?

Last but not least, on the Social Actions blog, Christine Egger rounds up a number of thought-provoking conversations on the topic of transparency and data standards in the sector.

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

-- Regina Mahone

TED on Sunday: Geoff Mulgan on Social Innovation and the New Capitalism

Mitch Nauffts — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:04:19 -0500

Two-plus years after the global financial system began to melt down, we find ourselves in a "strange twilight zone" characterized by paralysis and retrogade thinking, argues Geoff Mulgan in this talk from the 2009 TED Global conference. Even as governments around the world borrow trillions of dollars from future generations in an attempt to reignite economic growth, many measures of social and environmental health are deteriorating. Indeed, says Mulgan, director of the London-based Young Foundation, the financial crisis has made plain the fact that economic growth doesn't automatically translate into social progress or human growth. Too much of it goes into boosting unsustainable consumption; too much of it leaves people feeling they aren't allowed to be useful -- and when people aren't allowed to be useful, they soon start to think they are useless. The question is, What are we going to do about it? Mulgan's answer may surprise and inspire you.

(Filmed: July 2009; Running time: 17:57)

Liked this talk? Try one of these.

And for those who can't get enough of TED, check out Jim Simpson's post about a cool hidden feature of most TED Talks.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Jim Collins's Recipe for Greatness in Tough Times

Mitch Nauffts — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:46:59 -0500

Management consultant Jim Collins is best known as the author of Good to Great and Built to Last (co-authored with Jerry Porras).

In his latest book, How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In (click here for an excerpt), Collins explores what he calls the five stages of institutional decline: hubris born of success; the undisciplined pursuit of more; the denial of risk and peril; grasping for salvation; and capitulation to irrelevance or death.

The wild 60 percent snapback in the Dow notwithstanding, a lot of nonprofits find themselves sliding out of stage three and into stage four as they head into the critical year-end fundraising season. That's the bad news.

The good news is that it's not over till it's over. Indeed, says Collins, the signature of the truly great organization vs. the merely successful one

is not the absence of difficulty. It's the ability to come back from setbacks, even cataclysmic catastrophes, stronger than before. Great nations can decline and recover. Great companies can fall and recover. Great social institutions can fall and recover. And great individuals can fall and recover. As long as you never get entirely knocked out of the game, there remains hope....

The key to not just surviving but thriving, to being great not just good, says Collins, is to identify and hitch your organization's star to

those exasperatingly persistent individuals who are constitutionally incapable of capitulation. It's one thing to suffer a staggering defeat -- as will likely happen to every enduring business and social enterprise at some point in its history -- and entirely another to give up on the values and aspirations that make the protracted struggle worthwhile. Failure is not so much a physical state as a state of mind; success is falling down -- and getting up one more time -- without end....

There will be a lot of failure in the social sector over the next couple of years. The organizations most likely to emerge stronger after the dust settles are those with leaders, of whatever age, willing to run through walls to deliver on their organization's mission.

Are you one of them?

-- Mitch Nauffts

Sunk Costs and the Need for Social Innovation

Mitch Nauffts — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:15:22 -0500

(Farnaz Golshani is director of programs and services at the San Francisco-based Tides Center. This is her first post for PhilanTopic.)

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of "sunk costs." In economics and business decision-making, sunk costs are unrecoverable past expenditures that, under normal circumstances, should not be taken into account when determining whether to continue or abandon a project, effort, or initiative because costs that are already "sunk" cannot be recovered.

Inevitably, thinking about sunk costs reminds me of my "Saab stories." I purchased a used Saab for $15,000 a number of years ago and then spent more than $5,000 on repairs for it over the next few years -- not to mention the considerable time I spent at the repair shop and the stress I experienced each time the "check engine" light would blink on. But I kept sinking dollars into that Saab, if only to justify all the money I had already "invested" in it.

Organizations and bureaucracies often behave in a similar fashion. Rather than innovate, they choose to stay the course and keep sinking money into existing projects and initiatives simply to justify their previous investments. Indeed, government does this all the time. Two glaring examples -- failing workforce development systems and inadequate treatment of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) -- are particularly noteworthy, given that we are fighting two wars and the unemployment rate is the highest it has been in decades.

On the workforce development front, the federal government continues to fund WorkSource Centers through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). In 2009, the Department of Labor had a budget of $53 billion, a good part of which funded WorkSource Center "One-stops," even though the average WorkSource Center only has a 20 to 40 percent success rate.

In contrast, truly innovative workforce development organizations such as Chrysalis, the Delancey Street Foundation, and Rubicon have achieved phenomenal outcomes with the "hardest to employ" -- the homeless and individuals with multiple felonies. Even in this challenging economy, Chrysalis, a workforce development organization based in L.A.'s Skid Row area, helps more than 80 percent of its homeless clients secure jobs each year using transitional employment opportunities.

Sadly, the innovative workforce development models pioneered by these organizations receive only a pittance from DOL, forcing them to rely on variable and much more modest revenues donated by individuals, corporations, and foundations. Adding insult to injury, stimulus funds now going through DOL are simply getting dumped -- sunk -- into existing WIA programs and contractors/agencies already in place. This precludes workforce development programs lacking WIA contracts from receiving stimulus funds, even if those programs have been proven to be more effective.

It also pains me to see the government sinking funds into ineffective treatment for veterans rather than investing in proven models with better track records. The federally funded Veterans Affairs (VA) system offers a largely ineffective thirty-day Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) support program that leaves most of the young men and women who complete it with persistently high levels of anxiety and depression and often no recourse other than to turn to drugs, alcohol, violence, homelessness, or even suicide.

There are existing programs that actually help veterans with PTSD develop the coping skills they need to face their anxieties and reintegration challenges. One such program is the Pathway Home for Returning Veterans, an LLC of Tides. Most veterans entering Pathway are referred by other VA hospitals because their PTSD or traumatic brain injuries were so severe that they had attempted suicide or were still suffering from seizures. Through its holistic 90- to 120-day program, Pathway has helped veterans with PTSD overcome their fears, secure jobs, and live healthy lives with their families. Indeed, its graduates consistently attest that the program saved their lives, armed them with the coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety, and even helped their families to better understand their PTSD.

Pathway's successes could not have happened in the VA -- they are the result of innovative partnerships involving nonprofits, the state of California, and donors who are committed to doing right by those who put their lives on the line for our country. Yes, a 90– to 120-day program is more expensive, but the long-term cost of PTSD is far greater when you factor in the social costs of homelessness, violence, long-term medical issues, drug problems, and so many other problems plaguing our veterans.

In his first months in office, President Obama said it was time for the government to invest in social innovation. Most of us in the social sector were delighted to see our efforts and good work finally get some recognition -- even if it meant we had to ignore the fact that the federal government was willing to sink $85 billion into AIG to keep the giant insurer afloat or spend $13.4 billion on rescuing General Motors but was only willing to invest $30 million in social innovation.

That was then. The "official" unemployment rate in the U.S. is now over 10 percent. We continue to put the lives of brave young men and women on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's time for the public, private, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors -- as well as individuals -- to invest in best practices and proven models of successful social innovation and to stop sinking money into organizations and efforts that no longer work, or never did.

Even I managed to learn that lesson. After four years of waiting in dealerships for more bad news, I finally bought a new car.

-- Farnaz Golshani

Foundations' Year-End Outlook for Giving

Mitch Nauffts — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:32:35 -0500

Our Research colleagues here at the Foundation Center have issued a new advisory (5 pages, PDF) that looks at how foundation thinking has evolved since the center conducted its last giving forecast survey in January.

Based on a follow-up survey of leading funders conducted in September, the advisory suggests that foundation giving will decline by more than 10 percent this year -- toward the middle of the 8 to 13 percent range estimated by that initial survey -- and that overall foundation giving will decline further in 2010. Indeed, consistent with findings from the January survey, a larger share of respondents expect their giving to be lower next year (26 percent) than higher (17 percent).

Other findings from the advisory:

More than two-thirds of respondents have reduced their operating expenses in order to shore up their giving or for other purposes, with cuts to staff travel budgets and conference attendance the most common action in the cost-cutting area, followed by freezing or reducing staff salaries, reducing staff training and professional development opportunities, reducing/cutting institutional memberships, reducing the number of publications produced, cutting staff and the use of consultants, and reducing staff benefits.
Grantmakers expect the field of philanthropy to become more strategic as a result of the economic crisis, with 78 percent of respondents agreeing with that statement, 7 percent disagreeing, and 15 percent opting for "no opinion."
The majority of funders believe that the nonprofit community in general was not sufficiently prepared to weather a significant economic downturn, but most (though not all) expect the sector to emerge stronger from the crisis. Still, skepticism that anything good will come of the crisis abounds, with one funder saying that "in a weak sector like the not-for-profit sector, crisis creates more weaknesses rather than increased strength," and another remarking that nonprofits "will lose good people with years of experience and will not be able to replace them."

What do you think? Will 2010 be an annus horribilis for nonprofits and the nonprofit sector? Will organizations, both good ones and those that are underperforming, fail in unacceptable numbers? Or will most find a way to muddle through and emerge stronger as a result? And what will be the most important quality or compentency for nonprofits in the new Reset Economy?

Use the comment section to share you thoughts....

-- Mitch Nauffts

Detroit: Back to the Future?

Mitch Nauffts — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:51:01 -0500

Yesterday afternoon, I had the chance to speak with a very busy Diana Aviv. Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector, was getting ready for her organization's annual conference, which opens today at the Marriott Renaissance in downtown Detroit and runs through Friday. (With a little luck, I'll post the transcript of our conversation tomorrow.)

The theme of this year's conference, "Challenging Times, New Opportunities," couldn't be more timely, and the choice of Detroit as host city -- a decision made four years ago -- was prescient. The pre-conference materials on the IS Web site describe the Motor City as "a laboratory for exploring how the nonprofit and foundation community, government and business can together respond to the new opportunities offered by these challenging times" and goes on to commend Detroiters for their "creativity, passion and entrepreneurship" in reinventing their city and the region.

Those qualities are certainly evident in the urban farming movement that has taken root within the city's 140 square (and often deserted) miles. Indeed, the "de-urbanization" of Detroit has become a fertile topic of discussion for the likes of Aaron Renn (a/k/a "the Urbanophile"), City Journal's Steven Malanga, and others.

The latest to explore the topic is Mark Dowie, the former publisher and editor of Mother Jones magazine (and the author of American Foundations: An Investigative History). As Dowie explains it, the phenomenon is largely driven by two things: Detroit has become a "food desert" -- i.e., "a locality from which healthy food is more than twice as far away as unhealthy food, or where the distance to a bag of potato chips is half the distance to a head of lettuce." And it has a lot of open space.

"Manhattan, Boston, and San Francisco could be placed inside the borders of Detroit with room to spare," Dowie writes,

and the population is about the same as the smallest of those cities, San Francisco: eight hundred thousand. And that number is still declining from a high of two million in the mid-nineteen fifties. Demographers expect Detroit’s population to level off somewhere between five hundred thousand and six hundred thousand by 2025. Right now there is about forty square miles of unoccupied open land in the city, the area of San Francisco, and that landmass could be doubled by moving a few thousand people out of hazardous firetraps into affordable housing....

Combine the two with old-fashioned American ingenuity and you have a recipe for...well, if not an urban paradise, then

something close to it. The most intriguing visionaries in Detroit, at least the ones who drew me to the city, were those who imagine growing food among the ruins -- chard and tomatoes on vacant lots (there are over 103,000 in the city, sixty thousand owned by the city), orchards on former school grounds, mushrooms in open basements, fish in abandoned factories, hydroponics in bankrupt department stores, livestock grazing on former golf courses, high-rise farms in old hotels, vermiculture, permaculture, hydroponics, aquaponics, waving wheat where cars were once test-driven, and winter greens sprouting inside the frames of single-story bungalows stripped of their skin and re-sided with Plexiglas -- a homemade greenhouse. Those are just a few of the agricultural technologies envisioned for the urban prairie Detroit has become....

It's an intriguing piece and well worth your time. Click here to read it in its entirety.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Weekend Link Roundup (October 31, 2009 - November 1, 2009)

Regina Mahone — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:03:10 -0500

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

Arts and Culture

“I do not think I believe anymore in forcing Eurocentric arts organizations to do diverse works or to put one minority on a board,” writes Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in a recent Huffington Post blog entry. Adds Kaiser:

When large, white organizations produce minority works they typically select the "low hanging fruit," the most popular works by diverse artists featuring the most famous minority performers and directors. This almost invariably hurts the minority arts organizations in the neighborhood, most of which are small and underfunded, and cannot afford to match the marketing clout or the casting glamour of their larger white counterparts....

And when a single minority is placed on a board with no responsibility other than to represent a race, it does nothing to change the true mission, or audience base, of the organization. More is required....

Kaiser goes on to suggest that "we...build the board strength of these vital groups and work with them to build individual donor bases that match their white counterparts," and he concludes by stating, "I am not certain I am right. We need more discussion."

What do you think? Is he right? Share your thoughts below.

Communications/Fundraising

Given the state of the economy, it's impossible to know the particular circumstances of every one of your organization's donors, says Katya Andresen on her Non-Profit Marketing blog. To keep those all-important donor relationships intact, Andresen suggests a few "tweaks" to your fundraising appeals:

Empathy is appropriate
Show you are tightening your belt
Demonstrate that all donations count
Show your impact

As always, great advice.

According to fundraising guru Dr. Stephen Goldstein, there are at least seven things fundraisers can learn from a good panhandler:

Tell the truth
Have a plan
Use psychology
Be persistent
Be creative
Make your donor feel good
Be upbeat and thankful

On her Nonprofit Blog at About.com, Joanne Fritz, host of this month's Nonprofit Blog Carnival, offers a selection of blog posts on the topic of fundraising. (H/t: Katya Andresen)

Impact/Effectiveness

On his blog, Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, explains why donors should care about outcomes and impact. For starters, writes Berger, 98 percent of all nonprofits are unable to demonstrate that their programs create impact. In fact, all "the evidence we see," adds Berger, "shows that objective data on nonprofit performance is needed and desired now more than ever."

Nonprofit Management

In an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor, Paul Lamb, a former nonprofit executive, considers the question of whether there are too many nonprofits in America and concludes that the more important issue is the cost-effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the nonprofit service delivery model.

The Minnesota Council on Foundations has compiled a helpful list of resources related to partnering -- from collaborations to mergers and everything in between. (H/t: MCF's Philanthropy Potluck blog)

Philanthropy

According to a recent study by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, regional trends and values have less of an impact on donor motivation than income and education. But as Sharon Schneider explains on the Philanthropic Family blog, not all donors feel that way. Writes Schneider:

Charity, for me, is about living up to my inner voice, about bridging the gap between the person I am today and the person I aspire to be. And that's also why check-writing isn't the pinnacle of charity, no matter how big the check. In fact, it's just the first step on a journey of a million steps....

Increasingly frustrated by how "profoundly segregated the people trying to change the world are from one another," Dan Pallotta argues on his Free the Nonprofits blog that it's

time for a gathering that will bring everyone in the nonprofit world together, every year, for four or five days of unbelievable 20-minute talks, a la TED, to introduce each of the silos to the others; to expose them to each other's frustrations, expertise, and potential. It should be held in the biggest indoor arena in the country. And it should be open to the world....

Social Entrepreneurship

Last week, twenty-five social entrepreneurs met at FailCon to learn how to turn their failed ventures into learning experiences. Shalyn Hockey, VP of Operations at Assetmap, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that creates Web tools to help other organizations leverage their social capital, summarizes the event on the Social Entrepreneurship blog and offers ten sure-fire "equations" for failure, as well as five equations for success.

Social Media

On the Chronicle of Philanthropy's Prospecting blog, Nicole Wallace notes that of the 587 people who responded to a recent Cone survey, nearly three-quarters agreed with the statement that "new media raise[s] their awareness about causes but do[es] not motivate them to do any more to help."

Guest blogging on Beth Kanter's blog, Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 Communications, explains how nonprofits can make the most of the video-sharing site YouTube.

Twitter has rolled out a new "lists" feature that allows individuals to categorize and create public lists of other Twitterers. Lauren Cochrane, a "geek girl" who works for a nonprofit in Australia, shares a half dozen or so list building ideas for nonprofits on her blog, Geeking for Good, including: lists of your organization's chapters and campigns, related organizations and campaigns, and media types with an interest in your cause.

Following on Cochrane's post, Amy Sample Ward counsels nonprofits to also create a list of their supporters on Twitter.

Technology

At the Case Foundation's blog, Andrew Jensen, CEO and senior consultant for Sozo Firm, an SEO and Web marketing outfit, offers some advice to nonprofit organizations on how they can improve the visibility of their Web site.

Volunteerism

A week or so ago, Greg Baldwin, president of VolunteerMatch, wrote a thought-provoking post about the Entertainment Industry Foundation's failed iParticipate campaign, which aimed to promote volunteerism by incorporating service themes into primetime television shows. Despite the cooperation of the industry, wrote Baldwin, the efforts did not result in a surge of visits to VolunteerMatch, VolunteerSolutions, Craiglist, 1-800-Volunteer.org, or Idealist. In fact, notes Baldwin, "Google and the long-tail of the Internet...out performed Hollywood on Thursday [the day of the event] 16 to 1."

In a thought-provoking post of her own, Allison Fine suggest that the iParticipate campaign was a case of "malmeasurement," of "hyperbole gone wild." Writes Fine:

We hear this kind of language so often. That the next campaign will be a "game changer," or create a "tidal wave" of interest, etc. The expectations that highlighting volunteerism within TV programs would be a catalyst for millions of people to volunteer was never realistic in the first place. The distance between raising awareness and action is too far through the light touch of a mention in a TV show. But that doesn’t mean that raising awareness isn't important....

The whole post is worth reading.

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

-- Regina Mahone

Quote of the Day (October 31, 2009)

Mitch Nauffts — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:03:47 -0400

"We live in tumultuous and challenging times; we can stand on the edge of the precipice. We can fall headlong into an abyss of unprecedented poverty, shrinking opportunities, environmental devastation, and increased social turmoil. Or we can embrace our current set of crises as an opportunity. As we are forced to cope with food shortages, high fuel costs, a shrinking middle class, growing wealth divides, global migrations, and cataclysmic environmental events, so too must we face changing the social world because we cannot afford merely to tinker with the consequences of these problems. We must move more deeply into the roots of these challenges in order to solve them...."

-- Maya Wiley, executive director, Center for Social Inclusion

Frightening Proposals

Mitch Nauffts — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:54:34 -0400

(The following post was written by Stephen Sherman, reference librarian at the Foundation Center-Atlanta, and originally appeared on the Philanthropy Front and Center-Atlanta blog.)

Foundation staff review stacks upon stacks of grant proposals each year. From time to time, they may even see proposals that are downright scary. In the spirit of Halloween, here are three "monster" proposals that you should try to avoid.

Frankenstein's Monster

Sure -- it sounds easy enough. Everyone writes their respective sections of the proposal and then puts them together in one document and sends it to the funder. Too often, however, the result can be a loosely-stitched-together proposal that's confusing and full of inconsistencies and repetition. Reviewers can tell when a proposal has been patched together without substantial revision, and a narrative that is disorganized and incoherent is much less convincing than one with a consistent voice that flows smoothly from section to section.

While it's not uncommon for several different individuals in an organization to be involved in the proposal writing process, it is imperative that one person take the lead when it comes to editing and formatting the final document. This individual should review the proposal for accuracy, consistency, organization, and especially continuity. A well-edited proposal will flow naturally from section to section and convey the story of your organization and its programs with ease.

The Blob

It starts with an executive summary and a statement of need. Then the narrative hits the project description and continues to grow -- rapidly surpassing 3, 5, 10 pages -- until the proposal has become a bloated mass of paper and ink.

Brevity can be one of the most difficult traits to develop as a proposal writer. There is a compelling urge to include as much detail as possible when describing programs to prospective funders. However, this can cause a proposal to become lengthy and cumbersome for the reader. Besides, most applications now come with strict guidelines that limit sections of the proposal to certain page lengths. How can a proposal writer cope with these restrictions?

First, it's all about finding the right amount of detail to include. For example, if you are seeking funding for a tutoring program, the grantmaker probably doesn't need to be told how many desks are in each classroom. They might want to know, however, the number of volunteer tutors you plan to recruit and how. Other ways to keep your proposal concise include using simple, direct language and avoiding long, rambling sentences. Having an outline can also help you stay focused on the key points you want to get across to the reader in each section. Brevity doesn't just apply to the narrative, either, so remember to limit your attachments and supporting materials to those items that the funder specifically requests in their guidelines.

Night of the Living Dead

Who among us hasn't pulled an all-nighter? Whether it was cramming for that final exam in college or staying up to get that presentation ready for the big meeting, we've all been guilty of procrastination at some point in our lives. Still, this is no way to succeed in grantseeking.

What quality do reviewers look for most in a proposal? Clarity. This is something that you're not likely to achieve while hunched over your laptop at two o'clock in the morning. Moreover, the less time you leave to check through a proposal, the more likely it is the reviewer will find troubling mistakes in grammar and spelling that may contribute to a negative response. How do you fight the urge to put off finishing a proposal until just before the deadline?

Keeping an updated grants calendar with important submission deadlines and follow-up dates will help you stay on track with your proposals. Even better, creating self-imposed due dates for proposals well in advance of actual deadlines will ensure that you have plenty of time to revise and edit the document before sending it off. And on those occasions when you become aware of a new opportunity at the last minute, consider waiting until the next funding cycle to apply. Keep in mind: You only get one chance to make a first impression with a grantmaker. Don't let it be a frightening one!

Want some more tips on proposal writing? Check out these titles:

Grant Proposal Makeover: Transform Your Request from No to Yes
Cheryl A. Clarke and Susan P. Fox
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2007

The Foundation Center's Guide to Proposal Writing, 5th ed.
Jane C. Geever
New York: Foundation Center, 2007

-- Stephen Sherman

'The Philanthropist': Going, Going, Gone?

Mitch Nauffts — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:30:45 -0400

Back in July, we ran a nice piece by Diana Campoamor, president of Hispanics in Philanthropy, about NBC's summer replacement series The Philanthropist. Over the course of eight episodes, the show, which featured a hard-partying, skirt-chasing businessman-cum-philanthropist by the name of Teddy Rist (played by James Purefoy), provided viewers with a whirlwind tour of (and brief history lessons about) some of the poorest and most conflict-ridden places on earth.

It also rubbed some people in philanthropy the wrong way. Campoamor wasn't one of them. In her piece, she made the point that

for the first time in recent pop culture history, a depiction of someone who calls himself a philanthropist (until recently, one of the most boring words in our language to most people), will have a chance to enter our homes and make us all aware of the need for the truly lived, philanthropy-centered life. That in itself is a big accomplishment....

Now, two fans of the show, Deborah Brancheau and Tamara Rudorfer, are trying to use the Causes application in Facebook to save the show from cancellation and, in the process, generate some donations through America's Giving Challenge for Human Rights Watch, the U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting and promoting human rights around the world.

According to the two women, the show is a great example of how capitalism and philanthropy can coexist and work together to solve tough social and economic problems in war-torn and poverty-stricken regions.

(You can watch all eight episodes of season one, with limited commercial interruptions, on Hulu through September 10, 2010.)

Brancheau and Rudorfer are asking supporters of the show -- and of human rights in general -- to:

Become members of "Save 'The Philanthropist' Through Charity" cause by visiting: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/380724.
Make a donation to the cause. The money will go directly to Human Rights Watch. If you have questions about how donations are handled check out: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/help?category=Donation+questions.
Urge the president of primetime entertainment at NBC to reverse the decision to cancel The Philanthropist by following the directions outlined on their Cause page: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/actions/2241?cause_id=380724.

I don't know about you, but I think this might be a cause worth supporting. Sure the show was glitzy and over the top, but how many prime-time network dramas deal seriously (and often compellingly) with things like ethnic cleansing, child slavery and sex trafficking, and desperate poverty? How many mention, let alone try to understand, countries and places such as Myanmar, Kosovo (my favorite), Kashmir, and Haiti? ("None" is the correct answer.)

America's Giving Challenge ends November 6, but Brancheau and Rudorfer vow to continue their efforts on behalf of the show beyond that date. We wish them luck.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Does Measurement = Randomized Control Trials?

Mitch Nauffts — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:24:42 -0400

(The following post by Andrew Wolk, CEO of Root Cause, a nonprofit that works to advance solutions to social and economic problems by supporting social innovators and educating social impact investors, originally appeared on Andrew's blog. Click here to read a recent op-ed piece by Wolk in PND.)

There is a debate going on about how to identify and invest in the highest-performing nonprofits -- with a great emphasis on randomized control trial (RCT) studies.

The RCT, a research methodology that involves randomly selecting subjects from a larger test group to receive an experimental product or service, is undoubtedly a rigorous way of determining whether a cause-and-effect relationship exists between a given service and a desired outcome.

The current interest in RCTs is an encouraging sign of the growing momentum for linking nonprofit funding to proven results and investing in what works, particularly if we can also disseminate the information far and wide.

At the same time, RCTs raise concerns for me, as they could end up stifling rather than encouraging social innovation.

The trouble with randomized control trials is that they are extremely expensive to carry out and so only the more developed and/or the best able to access resources participate. Most nonprofits struggle with finding the funds for general operations, let alone conducting an RCT.

So, we are stuck between encouraging social innovation and the strong desire to invest in what works. I believe we need to develop a spectrum that links an organization’s stage of development, with measurement requirements, to levels of investment. The stages could look something like this:

The Social Impact Measurement Spectrum

Stage 1 - Start-up: At the earliest stage, start-ups with promising ideas could receive minimal support in exchange for a commitment to developing and tracking an initial set of measures that align with standards in the organization’s field.

Stage 2 - Proof of concept: At the next stage, the organization would have a simple, internally driven performance measurement system that would drive internal continuous improvements while generating initial data on the impact of the organization’s model. Funding would be increased to match the increased rigor of the organization’s measurement, but it would still be far less than that given to organizations at later stages.

Stage 3 - Promising, not proven: At this stage, organizations would be required to operate a full performance measurement system that is integrated with their business models and publicly share the results. They might also do an external evaluation at this stage to further elucidate their impact.

Stage 4 - Spread of proven model: This final stage would occur when an organization has conducted an RCT study with positive results. They would be able to receive substantial investment in exchange for a commitment to share the details of their model so it spread and others could learn and adopt the organization’s successful practices. The Coalition for Evidence Based Policy is building a site that will identify social interventions shown in rigorous studies to produce sizable, sustained benefits to participants and/or society.

A spectrum like this would do a few important things. It would provide a framework that would inform how a social innovation might spread; it would provide a roadmap to the kind of measurement system an organization should develop over time; and, lastly, it would give an idea as to the amount of funding an organization could expect as an innovation moved toward greater proven social impact.

-- Andrew Wolk

What do you think? Is Wolk's concept helpful and/or workable? Share your comments below....

Social Issue Documentaries

Mitch Nauffts — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:02:09 -0400

(Kathryn Pyle is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. In her last post, she wrote about the annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar.)

The audience for documentary films is bigger than ever, as evidenced by the increasing number of documentary festivals and broadcast venues, both public TV and cable, as well as streaming and Video on Demand (VOD). And the opportunities to see documentaries are matched by the variety of documentaries available -- from expository to impressionistic, right wing to progressive, local to global, short to very long.

As the field has grown, more funders are considering whether and how they can connect their priorities to documentary films and, indeed, the broader field of media. At the same time, nongovernmental organizations are considering how to use documentaries beyond the traditional "public relations" or "lesson" formats. Confronted by an explosion of social media sites (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook) and the proliferation of "screens" (laptops, netbooks, smartphones), groups are experimenting with technology to see what makes sense for their message and their constituency.

Documentary filmmakers and distributors are challenged to keep up. The familiar venues of the past are not necessarily the best ones today. For example, theatrical release, even in "art houses," works only for films that can attract a broad audience -- An Inconvenient Truth and Fahrenheit 9/11 are anomalies in terms of number of tickets sold and box-office revenues. Which is not to say that a good documentary film without an Al Gore cannot find an audience; it just might be an audience that would rather watch the film on their preferred personal screen rather than in a movie theater.

In previous posts here at PhilanTopic, I’ve written about the work being done by Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media, and in particular about GFEM's Media Database, which links funders with documentary filmmakers. In a post about the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, I also highlighted the LEF Foundation's support for New England documentary filmmakers. Indeed, at several conferences and seminars over the past few months, I've heard foundation representatives and filmmakers discuss how they could work together to merge the art of visual storytelling with urgent social issues. Two different approaches emerged from these events: one involving direct engagement with the issues, and the other counseling a more oblique convergence. Both have something to offer.

At several of these events I've run into folks from Witness ("See it film it, change it"), an NGO that encourages people around the world to use cellphones and video cameras to record human rights abuses and then post them to the Hub, a Witness-supported platform for human rights videos and action. Founded by the musician and social activist Peter Gabriel, and with major funding from the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, Witness has created an important niche for itself in participatory media, providing training and support to other organizations interested in making and using video and also partnering with human rights organizations on a variety of issues. Videos on the Witness site run the gamut of social justice concerns, from a fifteen-minute report on the disappearance of women in Mexico to a two-minute interview with an abused elderly woman that has been featured in the Elder Justice Now Campaign, an effort to get Congress to pass the Elder Justice Act. On the site, you can find video projects dealing with immigration reform, women's economic development, even a panel discussion on the use of viral video to effect change.

Trouble the Water, a documentary about a couple who filmed the trauma of Hurricane Katrina from the porch and attic of their 9th Ward home, gives human voice to government's shameless neglect of the poor during the disaster -- most shockingly through recordings of futile calls to 911 for help. "We wanted to show how needed resources were being diverted to the Iraq war -- most directly in that situation by the fact that the local National Guard units were in Iraq," said producer/director Tia Lessing at a recent Sundance Institute seminar for producers I attended. The film's Web site offers updates on the film's protagonists, links to a variety of organizations providing social services and infrastructure support to Katrina victims, and ways that people can organize a response in their own communities.

Several filmmakers featured at this year's Flaherty Film Seminar presented a more nuanced approach to social issues, often because they work in political contexts in which a more confrontational approach is problematic.

For example, Syrian filmmaker Omar Amiralay showed his 1977 documentary The Chickens, the story of a large, ultimately unsuccessful, chicken farm promoted by the government. In the black-and-white film, the farmers comment about their state-imposed transition from artisanal trades to industrial production and the lack of effective government assistance, but the film mainly focuses on the hundreds of chickens as they go about their feathered lives in a huge open building, establishing their pecking order and seeming to strive for some measure of dignity in their overregulated, overcrowded environment. "It"s a metaphorical film about a place where it is forbidden to speak," said Amiralay. "In difficult times we let the animals speak."

In The Roof, another Flaherty Film Seminar documentary, Kamal Aljafari presents his extended Palestinian family, whose home towns of Ramla and Jaffa were taken over by Israel in 1948. Through the quiet details of their daily routines -- a seemingly timeless limbo -- we perceive a resignation and sorrow instilled by decades of marginalization and neglect.

Russian filmmaker Pavel Medvedev participated in Flaherty with several films about the lives of workers in Russia. Wedding of Silence follows a community of deaf families who produce church bells: Medvedev films them at joyful events -- dinners, a wedding, caring for their children -- and at hard labor in a bell foundry. In Vacation in November he presents a community of miners in northern Russia who live in a harsh, frozen landscape shared with herds of reindeer. On the Third Planet From the Sun is about descendents of people who settled on the rich Russian shores of the Arctic Ocean during the Middle Ages; today they risk their lives to gather up debris from the Russian space program in an area formerly used for nuclear weapons tests. Through a camera that lingers on the beaten-down architecture and humanity of these places, Medvedev draws the audience into the larger issues of community and work. "I present ordinary people in problematic situations," he said in an interview with me, "but I don"t try to elicit pity from the audience. I see these people as fully developed, living their lives as they find them. My task is to respect them and show how they are interesting. I dream that the lives of my characters might be better, but my only job is to film them. The more films like these are shown, the more public opinion would pressure for change. But this is difficult in Russia, because there’s no space on television for such films and there are not too many film festivals, though interest in them is growing."

In several films and a video installation at Flaherty, Indian filmmaker Amar Kanwar explored themes of environmental and social violence in the context of Indian history, particularly the 1947 partition of India that created Pakistan. His work directly addresses specific incidents, like the recent assaults on women in India thought to be perpetrated by Indian army soldiers. The challenge for Kanwar is not that he can't speak directly, but rather that speaking directly is not enough; poetry might be a more effective tool. A Season Outside is a video essay of images and scenes from the Wagah border crossing between India and Pakistan, with Kanwar's voice-over on the history of violence and non-violent movements in the region serving to remind us that even those who remember the past are sometimes condemned to repeat it.

These films and video projects have all stayed with me as wonderful examples of effective documentary approaches to social issues. But I've just scratched the surface of what's available. Indeed, we may well be living through the golden age of documentary film. So, the next time you're on a bus, plane, or subway, check out what's on the small screen in the hands of the person sitting next to you. It just might be the next great social issue documentary!

-- Kathryn Pyle

Weekend Link Roundup (October 24 - 25, 2009)

Regina Mahone — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:49:47 -0400

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

Arts and Culture

Social media guru Beth Kanter shares this nugget with arts organizations on her blog: "A successful social media strategy with arts audiences is more like an audience development or education program, not a straight ticket sales strategy."

Corporate Philanthropy

"While most U.S. companies are not making changes in their corporate citizenship practices...38 percent of those that are...have reduced their charitable giving, 27 percent have increased layoffs, and 19 percent have trimmed research and development for sustainable products," writes Todd Cohen, citing a recent study, on his Inside Philanthropy blog. And with "companies becoming more strategic in their giving," Cohen adds, nonprofits

should be working to team up with companies in ways that will generate not only the contribution of corporate dollars but also ongoing relationships that will build a pipeline of other resources that include in-kind support, employee volunteers and expertise, and corporate sponsorships and connections....

Social media site Twitter has announced a new partnership with Crushpad, a San Francisco company that tries to connect city dwellers with the resources and tools to make great wine. Through the Fledgling Initiative, Crushpad will help people "make awesome wine for the benefit of Room to Read," a nonprofit organization that works to increase the literacy of children worldwide. According to the ServiceNation blog, it's an interesting initiative "because it doesn't take the usual global approach to raising money....Instead, it...taps the passion of a small subset of potential donors, in this case wine lovers...."

To learn more, watch this video featuring Twitter co-founder Biz Stone; John Wood, the founder of Room to Read; and Crushpad founder Michael Brill:

Governance

Is the nonprofit governance structure flawed? Can board structures be eliminated altogether? Nonprofit Board Crisis blogger Mike Burns argues that the current system is flawed. And because "the IRS has not been willing to accept another construct," says Burns, only a new business structure, like the L3C, or low-profit limited liability company, may offer a solution to the problem.

Leadership

Rosetta Thurman offers this list of eleven tips for do-it-yourself nonprofit professional development:

Find your own mentors
Remember you can learn a lot from your peers
Don't underestimate the power of reflection
Join a board of directors
Communicate your leadership involvement with your employer
Be proud of the training you receive from your local YNPN chapter
Become an expert
Invite yourself to everything
Do a really good job in the position you're in right now
Ask a lot of questions
Find your true passion

Philanthropy

On his Tactical Philanthropy blog, Sean Stannard-Stockton challenges a commenter's claim that a previous post of his advanced the idea that social investors know better than nonprofits how to run nonprofit programs. What do you think? Leave a comment below.

Poverty Alleviation

On the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Albert Ruesga, president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, shares his thoughts on class mobility and what it has been like to spend his adult life working for social justice after growing up poor. His conclusion?

I wish there were more people in the nonprofit and foundation sectors who would speak out about their experiences of having grown up in poverty. It would be a good tonic. I and others might be more likely to discard some of our questionable experiments in social engineering. If I were able to see the poor neither as super-beings nor as eternal victims, I might gain a truer picture of how they sometimes participate in perpetuating their own misery. I might spend less time feeding my sentimentalism and my self-righteousness, and more time feeding the hungry.

The next step for us is even harder. It’s to admit that even with our privilege and our education, in spite of all the learned men and women at our beck and call, we typically haven’t the slightest clue about how to change a system that not only keeps people in poverty but continues to create them in prodigious numbers....

Social Entrepreneurship

"Will the Social Innovation Fund fund social innovation?" asks Nonprofit Quarterly contributor Rick Cohen in a new essay commissioned by the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. Among other things, Cohen raises seven areas of concerns about the fund. Here are a few:

Will it stay true to its commitment to find "hidden jewels" in the nonprofit sector as opposed to falling prey to focusing on nonprofits that have the better public relations, substantial research "proving" their innovations, and resources with which to match the SIF and foundation funds they will be receiving;
Given that the fund is administered by the federal agency whose primary mission is to promote service and volunteerism, will it be able to avoid the reflexive tendency to over-focus on organizations that emphasize volunteers (or stipended volunteers);
Will it remain cognizant of the limitations of foundations as intermediaries for identifying nonprofit innovations; and
Will it be able to support and sustain innovative nonprofit organizations in light of the severe financial constraints that are affecting most nonprofits during this economic downturn.

Social Media

Heather Mansfield has compiled a list of 29 nonprofit bloggers to follow on Twitter.

#BeatCancer, a charitable campaign launched at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, set a Guinness World Record last week for generating the most social media messages in a 24-hour period -- and in the process raised $70,000 from sponsors eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors Brewing Company, which donated a penny for each tweet, status update, or blog post that included the "#breastcancer" hash tag. (H/t: AFP blog)

A recent Financial Times article about MySpace "conceding defeat" in its competition with Facebook to become the largest online social network struck a chord with Allison Fine. Indeed, says Fine, nonprofits can learn a valuable lesson from MySpace, which "has changed its frame from competing with Facebook to focusing in what it does best." The lesson for nonprofits? Organizations that want "to be viable and effective in the digital age" should not wait to take the social media plunge.

Women

Last but not least, the World Affairs Council has posted an audio recording of a conversation between its CEO Jane Wales and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, co-author (with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn) of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity For Women Worldwide.

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

-- Regina Mahone

Pep Talk for a Rainy Day

Mitch Nauffts — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:47:54 -0400

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way...."

The opening passage of A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best-known in English literature. Writing seventy years after the events portrayed, Dickens managed, in a few brilliantly turned phrases, to capture the fear, euphoria, and relief of a disillusioned society on the threshold of epochal change.

A hundred and fifty years after Dickens published his book, we find ourselves at a similar threshold. And if, like me, your view of the world is tinged with a healthy skepticism, you're probably thinking it will be a while before the clouds part, our animal spirits are revived, and we're ready to plunge once more into the breach.

If, on the other hand, you've been around the block a few times and, like John Mauldin (Thoughts From the Frontline), prefer the sunny side of the street, this is the best of times.

It's all a matter of perspective, as Mauldin explains in the most recent installment of his weekly missive. "[L]et's review those wonderful days from whence we sprang, so fraught with the advantages of having nothing," he writes, addressing himself to his good friend, the author (Empire of Debt) and financial newsletter (The Daily Reckoning) writer Bill Bonner.

It was the middle of the '70s....Inflation was high and rising. The Soviets were seen as a major threat. Japan was beating our brains out and buying everything, even if nailed down (like Pebble Beach and New York skyscrapers). I had to borrow money at 15% (or more) to buy paper in order to meet customer demands for printing. And guess what? The banks got into trouble and called loans willy-nilly....

There were multiple successive and ever-deeper recessions. Gold was rising and the dollar was seen as a joke. Howard Ruff (a good friend to both of us when we were starting out!) and almost every newsletter writer were telling people to buy gold and freeze-dried food to protect themselves against a near-certain economic, if not apocalyptic, catastrophe. Unemployment was high and rising for a decade.

The correct answer to the question, "Where will the jobs come from?" back then was, "I don't know, but they will." And that is the correct answer today.

In 20 years, no one will want to come back to the halcyon days of 2009. Our kids...are getting ready to live through what will be the most exciting period in human history. There will be a century's worth of change, measured by the standard of the 20th century, just in the next ten years, and then we will double that pace in the next ten after that. Medical miracles will mean our kids and grandkids will live a lot longer than their dads, although I intend to be writing well into my 80s, like our mutual hero Richard Russell.

There will be whole new industries developed in the US. How do I know that? Follow the money. The rest of the world spends a fraction of what we do on research and development. Where do you go if you are looking for venture capital?

Do I care if the Chinese and the "developing" world are far better off, relatively speaking, than the US in 20 years? Not a whit. Good on them. I hope they make discoveries and inventions and grow new businesses that benefit us all. But we are not going into some long dark night. We, and our kids, get to choose how we respond to what is the reality of the day.

Our nation had to almost hit the wall in 1980 before a Volker could come along and force us to take the pain of recession to beat back inflation. And we will have to come perilously close to the wall this time before we take action as a nation. Way too close for comfort. Maybe you are right, and we have a soft depression. I hope not; but even so, the world will be better, far better, in 20 years, with far more opportunities than today....

You are right in this: it is personal gumption that makes or breaks us. There are those who started out with less than we did (hard to imagine but true) and made a lot more. And there are those who started out with far more and made less. But there are very few who are happier than either of us. Or luckier.

Our kids? It is not the times that dictate the man (or daughter!), but the response of the man which dictates his own time. Today promises a brighter future for someone young than any other time in history, whether they are in the US or Brazil or China. They just have to seize it.

And as our kids do just that, and as the millions of kids of those who read us do so, and the billions of kids who are just now getting ready to bust loose all work to achieve their dreams, the world is going to be a far more fantastic place. Smooth ride? Not a chance. We didn't get one; and in thinking through history, there have not been many smooth rides. Why should we think that will get any better? Our kids will just have to live with our generational (and individual) iniquities, government debt and all, and figure out how to master their own fates. But if I had a choice to take the '70s or today? In less than a heartbeat I would choose today. And I bet you would too!

You're right, Mr. Mauldin. Good on you. Thanks for the reminder.

-- Mitch Nauffts

The Benefits and Limits of Storybanking, Part 2

Mitch Nauffts — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:17:38 -0400

(Consultant Thaler Pekar helps smart leaders and their organizations find, develop, and share the stories and organizational narratives that can rally critical support. Her first post in this series, Stories Are a Vital Source of Knowledge, appeared in September.)

My previous post on the Benefits and Limits of Storybanking generated this offline comment from a professor at Rutgers University: "Thaler -- a very informative and thought provoking post. My question -- do you limit your storybank contents to a select number of stories that can be used by members of an organization so people remain 'on point'? And who approves the stories to be told? Or is that approach too authoritative, too top down?"

My response: If your storybank is established to support advocacy on a specific issue (for instance, to get more farmers markets to utilize food stamps or to pass an increase in your state's minimum wage), then the organizers of your effort may wish to limit the stories used to those focused on the specific message. Ideally, you would also have stories that are personally relevant to each messenger and audience segment.

If your storybank is focused on programmatic outcomes and organizational successes, there should be no quantitative limit to its contents. In fact, I would urge you to listen for narratives and anecdotes that illustrate the values, failures, challenges, and problem-solving capacity of your organization.

What is always important is how the stories in your storybank are tagged and rendered searchable. A good way to get started is to use the tagging and search functions readily available in applications like Microsoft Word, FileMaker Pro, and Bento. Possible tag categories include program area, geographic location, population served, and age and gender of protagonist, as well as narrator, topic, action, results, expressed value, and potential application. (This applies to video and audio recordings as well as written stories.)

Remember: Stories are not commodities to be banked and forgotten. They are, instead, a valuable tool for information sharing and sense-making. And their use should not be limited to print and electronic newsletters, Web sites, and direct-mail pieces. Make certain your stakeholders are in the habit of sharing stories orally and frequently.

As they do, pay attention to the stories elicited from members of your audience. And ask yourself:

What emotions, values, and insights is each sharer of a story trying to convey?
What parts of the story become more meaningful over time? (Professional storytellers will tell you that a story must be shared a hundred times for its true meaning to be revealed.)
How might each story connect to and make sense of other, newer, organizational narratives?
In what ways do individual story-sharers differ in how they tell the same story?

With this knowledge in hand, reexamine your storybank categories and tags. Ask yourself: What should we add? Is there anything we don't need? Treat your storybank as a changeable source of knowledge and insights into your organization's work.

I'm continuing to explore and write about how organizations can elicit, listen to, and share stories as a way to better understand and communicate knowledge about their efforts and impact. At the moment, I'm thinking about neutrality in the curatorial process -- that is, how do we maintain objectivity in the process of selecting which stories to share? If you have confronted this challenge, I'd love to hear from you! Use the comments section below, or drop me a note at tpekar@thalerpekar.com. And thanks for sharing!

-- Thaler Pekar

Introducing the Social Impact Exchange

Mitch Nauffts — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:37:07 -0400

This is interesting.

Duke University and the Growth Philanthropy Network, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have launched the Social Impact Exchange -- a collaboration of funders, philanthropic practitioners, researchers, and others that "will act as a focal point for studying, funding and implementing large expansions of proven social purpose organizations."

More specifically, the Exchange has three main goals:

Developing and sharing knowledge on practices for expanding programs that work
Providing venues to collaboratively fund expansion of successful initiatives
Helping to build a field infrastructure for more efficient and effective scaling

To that end, the Exchange will make available an up-to-date library of relevant publications on a Web platform; offer training online and at an annual conference and regional meetings; and, most importantly, facilitate collaborative investment in "high-impact, well-vetted opportunities" through an online clearinghouse and a Social Impact Business Plan Competition.

If things work as planned, all this activity will serve a larger goal: the creation of a national social capital marketplace. According to Dr. S. Robert Levine, co-founder and chairman of GPN, such a marketplace, in order to be successful, must exhibit or feature:

investment standards, transparent information, and performance reporting;
a collaborative financing process that includes individuals, foundations, grants, and debt;
sufficient "deal flow," a pool of high-impact nonprofits to demonstrate how a marketplace works;
large-scale distribution to donors and a broad, diversified network of growth funders;
a network of expert intermediaries that aggregate growth capital for qualified scaling initiatives; and
a focal point for shared learning, knowledge development, and collective funding of high-impact growth initiatives.

Some of this "infrastructure" exists, while much of it is still the subject of discussion. And despite all the thought and hard work that people a lot smarter than me have invested in the idea, I remain skeptical. But that's a post (or three) for another day.

In the meantime, with folks like Joel Fleishman, Ed Skloot, Robert Levine, and Cynthia Massarsky involved, this is an effort you'll want to keep an eye on.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Making Sure the Important Stories Get Told

Mitch Nauffts — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:08:14 -0400

(The following was posted earlier today on the Communications Network blog and is posted here with the permission of Commnet director Bruce Trachtenberg.)

It seems that philanthropy abhors the absence of news outlets and news services as much as nature abhors vacuums. Increasingly, foundations are funding a range of non-traditional ventures to fill the growing gap caused by the shrinking number of newspapers and disappearing beat reporters who used to specialize in topics of national importance such as education and health. Examples range from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Kaiser Health News, an independent news service that provides coverage of the policy and politics of health care, to ProPublica, which specializes in traditional investigative reporting about issues of national importance such as tracking how the federal stimulus money is being spent and which is primarily funded by the Sandler Foundation.

One of the latest examples of a foundation-funded project to increase national and regional coverage, this time of education, is the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. Through initial support from the Gates and Lumina foundations, the Hechinger Institute is transforming itself from a training organization for journalists to "a source of in-depth, analytical and explanatory journalism about education." According to the institute's director, Richard Lee Colvin, who previously was the lead education writer at the Los Angeles Times, this change is occurring at a time "when traditional news media outlets have cut their spending on news-gathering due to a loss of advertising revenues."

Colvin says the institute will function like a broker -- seeking funding from foundations that want to increase coverage of education and then using that support to write and publish stories in partnership with mainstream publications as well as publish on and distribute through its own Web site.

Even as recently as "five years ago the idea that some outside entity, and one supported by foundations, would have anything to offer a commercial news operation would have been laughable," Colvin adds. "It would have been viewed as compromising journalistic integrity." Today, things have "completely changed. All sorts of new arrangements are being set up every day."

While being supported by foundations, Colvin is quick to add that the institute operates without any editorial oversight by its benefactors and that foundations are not the focus of its coverage. Instead, it's the issues driving the foundations' work that the institute seeks to focus on and, in the process, raise awareness of, especially among policy makers.

"What we're doing is just another way of demonstrating that the 'old rules' of the communications and news businesses no longer apply. Any foundation trying to affect policy understands the importance of engaging audiences. In the past, a big part of that might have been done working with and cultivating reporters and sending out releases and advisories. That practice will undoubtedly continue. But these days the number of people who specialize in certain topics or who can devote the time and attention that some subjects require, is shrinking."

Colvin notes that the institute is "agnostic as to platform and media." He says that in addition to print partners, it also will seek opportunities to create content for online outlets and produce radio and video stories.

Kevin Corcoran, a program officer at Lumina who previously was on the foundation's communications staff, sees the institute as "a credible third-party intermediary" that is able to produce content that both news organizations and the public "can trust." In particular, he adds, because the institute has focused on training journalists to be better at covering education issues, "the staff there knows these topics" as well as any beat reporter.

The fact that the Hechinger Institute can set itself up to produce independent journalism financed by a foundation and then offer the reporting to traditional news outlets is another example of how the news business is continuing to remake itself. And, maybe more importantly, the pairing of hybrid or non-traditional news organizations with foundations is helping to ensure a steady flow of information to inform both the citizenry and policy makers.

-- Bruce Trachtenberg

2009 Nonprofit Tagline Award Winners Announced

Regina Mahone — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:37:07 -0400

Earlier today, our friend Nancy Schwartz, president of Nancy Schwartz & Company and publisher at GettingAttention.org, a great resource for nonprofit marketing and communications professionals, announced the thirteen winners of the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards competition.

Selected from 60 finalists drawn from the 1,702 nonprofit taglines submitted for consideration, the winners include Common Cause (in the Civic Benefit category), the United Negro College Fund (Education), Earthjustice (Environment & Animals), the Cleveland Foundation (Grantmaking), and Homeboy Industries (Jobs & Workforce Development).

The winning taglines will be featured in the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Report (due out in November) along with:

The 10 Have-Tos for Successful Taglines
The 7 Deadly Sins – What Not to Do
Over 2,500 Nonprofit Tagline Examples

For a complete list of this year's winners and their taglines, visit Nancy's blog.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (October 17 - 18, 2009)

Regina Mahone — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:06:56 -0400

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

Climate Change

This year’s Blog Action Day, on October 15, saw bloggers from 155 countries contribute posts and resources related to climate change and the environment. For a roundup of featured posts, check out the Change.org site.

Communications/Marketing

On her Getting Attention blog, nonprofit marketing expert Nancy Schwartz shares a recent case study in which Tracy Mitchell, general manager of the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York, explains how she "tackled her marketing dilemmas, even before the recession hit in full force."

Community Improvement/Development

Referring to the recent incident involving ACORN workers who were caught on videotape allegedly advising individuals how to evade the law, Nonprofit Board Crisis blogger Mike Burns argues that as "in the public...and private sectors, mistakes...can be made by individual nonprofits." What is worrisome, says Burns, are the efforts by some members of Congress to use the incident as an excuse to repeal the Community Reinvestment Act, which, as Burns notes, was designed to end redlining -- the nefarious practice of "walling off" inner-city neighborhoods from mortgage loans. Adds Burns: "When [an organization’s] failing becomes a rallying cry to turn against parts of society that have limited voice, it's time for the nonprofit sector to take a stand."

Fundraising

After reading a new study from the Center on Philanthropy which found that donors who were asked to give in person by someone they knew were more likely to give than those asked by phone, mail or email, Todd Cohen says nonprofits need to "get back to basics" and "invest the time...to understand, cultivate, and engage their givers."

International Affairs/Development

A lively debate erupted early in the week as bloggers responded to an october 2 post by the Center for Global Development's David Roodman in which Roodman argued that popular microfinance site Kiva isn't quite what it seems. According to Roodman, that's because fewer than 5 percent of Kiva loans are disbursed after they are listed and funded on the Kiva site -- the way most people think the site works. After defending that practice in a separate post, Philanthropy Action editor-in-chief Tim Ogden raised other questions about the microfinance lender. Writes Ogden: "First, all losses from Kiva-securitized loans are borne by the Kiva user. Second, Kiva's monthly repayment reports are not based on actual repayment data." Then he asks: Will the "illusion...of person-to-person" giving lead to Kiva's demise, as it did for sponsor-a-child organizations in the '90s? Tactical Philanthropy's Sean Stannard-Stockton weighed in with his own thoughts on the controversy (here and here), as did Holden and Elie at GiveWell (here). By week's end, Kiva co-founder and CEO Matt Flannery had posted a thoughtful response to Roodman, and, as GiveWell reported, the Kiva team had made some changes to its donor-facing page.

On her Business of Giving blog, Seattle Times reporter Kristi Heim takes a closer look at Africa Rural Connect, an online community that uses crowdsourcing technology to find a "solution for Africa's development challenges."

Nonprofit Management

According to a recent article in the Wall Sreet Journal, the "Great Recession" is over. (And we have a bridge in Brooklyn we'd like to sell you.) If that's true, says Sean Stannard-Stockton on his Tactical Philanthropy blog, nonprofits should move quickly to "reset the future path of [their]...financial health." According to Stannard-Stockton, that means:

developing the next generation of your most effective program;
putting in place an outcome measurement system;
creating and starting to build a reserve fund;
upgrading your technology infrastructure; and
hiring a top notch fundraiser.

Uncharitable author Dan Pallotta argues on his Free the Nonprofits blog that the so-called psychic benefits of nonprofit work are overrated. Writes Pallotta:

Most nonprofits are small and starved for capital, preventing employees from fully capitalizing on their personal potential. Nearly every good idea is met with a dearth of resources, a prohibition on taking risk, or a broken donated computer. Whatever psychic benefit that theoretically might have accrued from putting those good ideas into action is outweighed by the grind of shoestring budgets and overstretched systems that is the reality....

If you work for a nonprofit, you'll want to read the rest of his post.

Philanthropy

In part three of her "Decoding the Future" series, Lucy Bernholz offers further insights into the possible future nexus of philanthropy and technology. The big issues front and center in any such discussion, notes Bernholz, include "networks + network governance, the [giving] commons, [and] cloud technology."

Social Media

Ten Gen Y bloggers, including Allison Jones, Rosetta Thurman, Elisa M. Ortiz, Tracey Webb, and Kevin Gilnack, have formed the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance to help "young...bloggers reach wider audiences and collectively bring important issues...to the forefront." Congrats and best wishes to all involved.

Social media has moved beyond "shiny new object syndrome," says Future Buzz blogger Adam Singer, and that means the key to success for organizations (and individuals) hoping to establish a meaningful presence in an increasingly crowded landscape is to be the starting point of conversations. Adds Singer:

[T]hose who continuously start conversations in a niche become referential for the rest of that niche. And once people are conditioned to go somewhere on the web for certain type of content, it is a habit that may prove hard to break. If this place is your site, you’ll greatly benefit. This is because we have designed the web to be a very social place -- and so the places where people regularly converge will continue to grow....

On her blog, Beth Kanter explains how to put "social learning" (aka "learning in public") into practice.

Volunteerism

On Friday, President Obama visited former President George H.W. Bush in Texas to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Points of Light movement, which was created to bring "individual citizens together in their own organizations to solve problems in their own communities." Writing on the Huffington Post, Points of Light CEO Michelle Nunn argues that while the movement has been a resounding success, "the call to citizens to step up and make a difference has never been more important."

Women

Last but not least, Allison Fine offers her takeaways from the recent Voices Against Violence blogathon. Sponsored by the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham and NBC Birmingham affiliate Channel 13, the event was designed "to raise awareness of the terrible toll of domestic violence on women and communities." And it was a success, says Fine, because

the importance of the partnership between broadcast media and social media was clearly highlighted....Rather than being threatened by the bloggers, NBC and the Women’s Fund recognized the importance of building a strong relationship with them. The future won’t be social media or broadcast, it will be social media AND broadcast -- in some combination that we are still developing....

We couldn't agree more.

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

-- Regina Mahone

TED on Sunday: 'Acid Test'

Mitch Nauffts — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:23:57 -0400

I've been a little derelict about curating new TED talks over the last month or so. But instead of a new one today, I want to share a beautiful twenty-minute film titled Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification.

Narrated by Sigourney Weaver and produced by the National Resources Defense Council, the film argues that the burning of fossil fuels is steadily compromising the rich biological diversity of the planet's oceans and threatens to turn them into a "sea of weeds." The canary in the coal mine? Coral reefs, which, if current trends persist, could be extinct in twenty to thirty years. If you care about the future of the planet, you'll want to watch. (Running time: 21:34)

We'll be back with a new TED on Sunday talk next week. In the meantime, here's a list of some our favorites. Enjoy.

And for those who can't get enough of TED, check out Jim Simpson's post about a cool hidden feature of most TED Talks.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Strategic Planning in Uncertain Times: Rx (Roundtable Exchange) Program Summary

Regina Mahone — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:05:00 -0400

(This entry was originally posted on the Foundation Center's Philanthropy Front and Center-Cleveland blog.)

In August, a small, engaged group of nonprofit leaders joined K.C. Henry, Principal, Transitions Unlimited, at the Foundation Center-Cleveland for Rx: Strategic Planning in Uncertain Times. Rx (Roundtable Exchange), a free peer-support group for development professionals or leaders from any type of nonprofit organization, is designed for those with at least five years of experience and is limited to twenty nonprofit representatives who come ready to participate and actively contribute questions, answers, and ideas to the group. It is presented in partnership with the Nonprofit Consultants Forum. Walter Duvall, the reporter for this session, provided these notes.

The roundtable began with an exercise to identify the most pressing questions participants had regarding strategic planning. Here's a summary of the discussion:

Is there a right or wrong way to do strategic planning?
The right way to create a strategic plan for an organization is the way that produces the best result. The process will vary according to the organization's experiences, resources, culture, and needs. Working through the process of assessment (SWOT is a basic technique), goal setting, developing SMART (specific, measurable, realistic, and time-bound) objectives, and reviewing the organization's mission and vision is difficult if done in a piecemeal fashion. Kicking off the process with a planning retreat is generally a good idea and can be accomplished in as little as 6 - 8 hours.

The planning process can be initiated and led by either the board or staff, and both groups should be involved. When board members lead, their focus should be on mission, core values, organizational objectives, and key strategies. Staff should always be involved in putting the plan into operation, implementation, and creating functional work plans, staffing and resource plans, and detailed budgets.
When do we know that the time is right to hire a consultant to lead our organization through a strategic planning process?
Before hiring a consultant, you need to know why the organization is undertaking a strategic planning process and what you hope the end result will be. Knowing answers to those questions will help you determine exactly what you want a consultant to do. Another question to ask is whether the organization will benefit from an outside, objective opinion? Do you need someone who can say things that perhaps an internal group would hesitate to bring up? Do you need a fresh perspective that a consultant can bring to the table? On a more practical level, would your organization's strategic planning effort benefit from some managerial assistance in gathering data, scheduling and facilitating meetings, convening volunteers and other key stakeholders for input, and other tasks that the organization is not resourced to perform?

For more information about strategic planning, take a look at these resources:

Designing Your Future: Key Trends, Challenges, and Choices Facing Association and Nonprofit Leaders. Washington, DC: American Society of Association Executives, 2008. This analysis begins with a listing of fifty key trends that will impact society over the next decade and then delves into the challenges they pose for nonprofit leaders. The book concludes with a framework for decision-making, both in the short term and over several years.

"Tactical Mapping: How Nonprofits Can Identify the Levers of Change," Nonprofit Quarterly, Summer 2009. Discusses tactical mapping as a method for nonprofits to survey the terrain of the issues their groups address; the article focuses specifically on the area of human rights. Through tactical mapping, which visualizes the relationships and institutions surrounding an issue, nonprofits can better assess how to confront the issue and create change. Includes several diagrams to illustrate how the mapping process works.

Jeri Eckhart-Queenan and Elizabeth Bibb. "Tapping Into the Board's Talents". Board Member, September-October 2008, p. 8-11. The authors discuss how nonprofits can make use of their board members' expertise during the strategic planning process. Includes a list of questions that organizations should ask themselves while formulating a business plan.

Jay W. Vogt. "Grounded Visioning: A Quick Way To Create Shared Visions". Nonprofit World, July-August 2008, p. 12-4. A consultant offers six steps for developing a shared vision among staff members of the organization's future. Emphasizes the need for a vision to be inspiring yet practical.

Do you have other resources you can recommend? Feel free to share them in the comments section....

-- Cynthia Bailie

World Food Day 2009

Mitch Nauffts — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:50:45 -0400

Friday, October 16, is World Food Day. Here are nine things you should know about child hunger, courtesy of Save the Children USA:

For the first time in history, more than a billion people live with chronic hunger -- and at least 400 million of them are children.

In the developing world, volatile, historically high food prices together with the ongoing impact of the global economic crisis continue to drive families into poverty, putting millions more children at risk of hunger and malnutrition.

Drought is adding to extreme food crises in Guatemala and East Africa. In Ethiopia alone, three million children urgently need food.

A child dies every six seconds from hunger-related causes.

When there isn't enough food, poor families resort to skipping meals, pulling children from school, selling off livestock and assets and foregoing health care.

Poor families in developing countries typically spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food. Meanwhile, U.S. families spend only 5 to 10 percent of their budget on food.

When small children are malnourished, their physical and intellectual development may be permanently impaired.

Food shortages will increase as world population grows. By 2050, 70 percent more food will be needed to meet demand. Yet investment in agriculture is historically low.

It takes more than food to end hunger. For instance, the most agriculturally productive region of Mozambique has the highest rates of child malnutrition in the country. Poor families must be able to access a healthy diet.

(Sources: 1. FAO, WFP 2. World Bank 4. FAO 6. IFPRI, USDA 7. Lancet 8. FAO)

There is some good news. World leaders have pledged support for a $22 billion food security initiative and the Obama administration has outlined a new strategy to fight hunger. You can help these plans become reality by contacting your congressional representative today.

-- Mitch Nauffts