Code, Camera, Action

Judi Sohn thinks beyond nonprofit "vote for me" fundraising competitions.

Here’s a community challenge I want to see: Reward nonprofits for projects that require collaboration and networking. 

An example straight off the top of my head: A cancer support organization working with a meals-on-wheels organization and one that helps people with job skills designing and implementing a program to make sure that patients are eating right after treatment and can get back into the workforce after a long health-related absence. 

I think the possibilities are endless if we can get out of our silos long enough to consider them.

Extra points to the projects that require the most diverse organizations to actually work together towards a common goal. The general public can view and comment on the proposed programs, maybe even make suggestions of partners. Community insight and transparency is wonderful. Yet ultimately the funding decision is by a team that will evaluate based solely on the viability of the project and what will have the most benefit for the population it will serve. Not necessarily which will serve the largest population. Not necessarily which has the largest mailing list or Facebook fan page.

Nice dream. 

In the meantime, all I can do is beg corporations to think it through before the next challenge. If you sprinkle food at the top of the crowded pond, the fish aren’t going to say, “you know, I’ve thought about it and I’m not really that hungry to fight for it.” They’re going to eat each other up like it’s their very last meal. It’s the fish’s nature. It’s ours. It’s up to you to design your giving programs to make sure we’re helping each other to the next meal and we’re all being fairly judged on our own value, not purely in competition.

via judisohn.posterous.com

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David Brooks' column pulls no punches about the failure of development efforts in Haiti and the unpredictability of international development generally. His recommendation --

It’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

via nytimes.com

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Hitwise's Sandra Hanchard reviews last year's web traffic trends. "The year of the status update," she calls it.

So if I had one standout message for marketers in 2010: ‘Brevity’ and ‘Relevancy’ of communications will be the earmarks of success for engaging with the 24/7 connected consumer.

via hitwise.com

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The New Yorker's Evan Osnos reports on China's booming green energy efforts. The sector is huge and growing, but not without critics in the West.

As an editorial last year in Nature put it, “An even deeper question is whether a truly vibrant scientific culture is possible without a more widespread societal commitment to free expression.”

via newyorker.com

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A dynamite report sponsored by the Wilburforce Foundation looks at the online tactics of Obama for America and how they apply to nonprofits generally. Worthwhile advice that goes well beyond political applications.

The most successful new media strategies for the campaign were all things that can – and should – be replicated by nonprofit organizations. Build an email list. Send high-quality, engaging emails to those constituents. Make them a part of the story. Run a program that is data-driven, and use analytics to improve that program. Use authentic organizational content – video, text and images – to tell a compelling story. Use email and phone calls to ask online volunteers to participate in offline programs.

http://www.wilburforce.org/pdf/Online_Tactics_and_Success.pdf

Hat-tip to @msmithDC.

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Nathaniel Whittemore on funding the causes (and friends) you know --

Today’s young people have grown up with access to more news - and more connectivity to direct on the ground sources - than ever before. We’re hungry to actually do, and less and less content to sit on the sidelines (or if you will, Morgan Stanley summer internships). When today’s young people are surveying their options for summers, and the options are getting research grants or volunteer positions with international nonprofits doing compelling work, or wearing a suit to get some guy coffee and learning how to jockey Excel spreadsheets, guess what they’re choosing?

The implication is not that every one of those people that has that sort of formative experience is going to start or join a social venture. But almost every young person today knows more people with their own nonprofit organizations than people a few years older. It’s just the norm.

If and as that trend continues, it’s going to make more and more sense to just support the work of people you know. That sort of giving has not only the personal return on investment discussed above, but a social return on investment that is about investing in the good work of your friends. And that’s even before you get to the fact that many will be more likely to trust the “outsourcing” of the social return on investment to people they know and in whom they have confidence.

via socialentrepreneurship.change.org

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