Stories, software and strategies to help nonprofits do the social web
Eric: Why not just have experts help develop ideas and directly fund them? Marnie: There are many people — universities, foundations, private individuals — who find experts, give them resources to develop amazing and elegant solutions and fund them. That’s a model that has been around for a long time and, like any model, it has its strengths and weaknesses. We wanted to do something different with NetSquared. via casefoundation.org I caught up with Marnie Webb of NetSquared to ask about their Challenges...
April, 16 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
April, 12 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
The point: data are the new platform for change. They will continue to fundamentally alter how philanthropic capital flows. The changes are not about the digital technologies that allow access, or about the data themselves. They are about the expectations and behaviors they unleash.* These changes, coupled with changes in the public and private sectors, are pushing a transition to a "social economy" made up of interdependent public, private and philanthropic capital and creators of social goods. All of these...
December, 7 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
How does 100% authorship change your business? In philanthropy, might it reduce the cult of the expert? Contests and competitions give rise to their own results-based expertise. Scaling, as always, becomes an issue, and people with scaling expertise even more valuable. Fundraising comes to look like what Kiva’s Matt Flannery calls “the larger trend toward more connected experiences.” At home, we are all walkathoning (or growing mustaches...
November, 5 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
So the battle is Kiva’s spin on their operations and whether or not it is misleading. But the war is the illusion of person-to-person giving. This is a big deal. Kiva is a super successful organization, yet as everyone in the debate seems to agree, the best way for them to operate does not fit donors’ preconceived notions about what is best. Therefore promoting the fact that they use the best process will almost certainly lead to less social impact. via tacticalphilanthropy.com Sean Stannard-Stockton follows...
October, 13 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Paul Lamb writes: So how we can innovate the sector as a whole so any nonprofit can do better regardless of the prevailing economic winds? One radical idea is to adjust the nonprofit model and begin to let communities engage directly with causes and people in need. Taking a page from the playbook of peer-to-peer services such as eBay, charity "buyers" and "sellers" could engage directly without the need for a middleman. Instead of giving money to the United Way to support food banks, why not give the money...
October, 7 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Knight is rethinking how to deal with projects funded by the foundation that are later sold. “It’s a safe bet that grant agreements are going to change in the future,” [Gary Kebel] told a large crowd gathered to hear about the Knight News Challenge. (He also described EveryBlock’s sale to MSNBC as a “multi-million-dollar deal.”) When a Knight-funded project is acquired in the future, Kebbel said, the founders may be required to relinquish some of that money: “It might be a certain percentage, it might be a certain...
October, 4 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Kristin, my colleague at the Case Foundation, has some good advice for folks thinking of starting their own nonprofit: think twice. http://www.socialcitizens.org/blog/start-nonprofit The post goes on to list some ways of partnering with existing orgs -- to do the good works without having to do your own 501(c)3. With one nonprofit for every 300 Americans, that's probably a good idea. But I wonder what it is about nonprofit thinking that makes successful, businesslike individuals forget their horse sense. Nonprofiteers...
October, 1 2009 • 2 Comments • 0 Faves
Startup thinking for the social sector. Code to help nonprofits do the social web. Plus photography.
(And reading aloud.)
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