Post: Forgive us for thinking we live in the promised land
Stories, software and strategies to help nonprofits do web 2.0+
Startup thinking for the social sector.
Code to help nonprofits do web 2.0+.
Plus photography.
(And reading aloud.)
More about Eric Johnson.
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Post: Will Apple ever support Micro Four-Thirds camera raw?
Yesterday Apple updated the digital camera raw support for both Leopard and Snow Leopard.
That's good news for folks with new Canons or Nikons, as the update adds support for recent cameras.
But Micro Four-Thirds users are still left crying in the wilderness.
- No support for the Olympus EP-1's ORF raw format
- Still no support for Panasonic RW2 raw in the Lumix LX3, G1, GH1, GF1, etc. -- that's any Panasonic camera released since the fall of 2008
- No support for DNG 1.3 lens corrections, which means there's no good work-around. Adobe DNG Converter can turn these raw formats into proper DNGs. But OSX can't read them.
I'm beginning to get worried.
The trick with these micro four-thirds cameras is that the camera corrects for lens distortion in the raw files. That helps Olympus and Panasonic save money on lenses, while still producing stellar images. But decoding these raw formats adds a layer of math, which complicates image processing.
I used to think this was a problem that Apple would fix in Snow Leopard. I hoped the new operating system would add lens corrections to its image processing. But this is the first raw update for Snow Leopard.
Does Apple ever intend to support these raw formats?
Maybe they won't -- unless we ask them for it. The Aperture feedback form is the place to let Apple know we want raw support for micro four-thirds cameras:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/aperture.html
In the meantime, there is one alternative. Adobe Lightroom does supports micro four-thirds raw.
Please, Apple, don't push us away from Aperture and iPhoto. Please add support for micro four-thirds cameras. I like my G1 and I like it raw.
Meanwhile, here's what the update does provide --
Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 2.7
This update extends RAW image compatibility for Aperture 2, iPhoto ’08 and iPhoto ’09 for the following cameras:
- Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
- Canon EOS 7D
- Canon PowerShot G11
- Nikon D3S
- Nikon D300S
- Nikon D3000
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Post: The hardest working mustache in nonprofits
So I’m growing a mustache—for cancer.
Participatory fundraising has become popular for very good reason. We run races, we walkathon. And—around here anyway—we grow mustaches.
Movember = Mo(ustache) + (No)vember
Movember is just like a walkathon, but with facial hair. Enterprising mustache growers sign up, then fundraise for the cause. In the US, that’s cancer research: both the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Livestrong benefit from donations.
Yes, my mustache fights cancer. With your help --
- Donate today if you can, or
- Grow a mo' and join the Itchy Lips team
- Spread the word about how Movember fights cancer
And check out Itchy Lips, our team blog, for mustache updates like this one --
Most of all, thank you. Growing a mustache is itchy, but easy work. Fighting cancer isn't.
- Eric
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Post: From Consumers to Creators
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) and asking our friends to help.
In journalism and publishing, it looks like the rise of the individual reputation and the individual voice. Blogs over mainstream publications. Aggregators will still be important, be they search engines, social networks, or perhaps mainstream web properties.
The shift to short, quick, forms like Twitter reduces the influence of professional copywriters. Amateurs have the time to write influential micro posts. Sharing among friends becomes the measure of influence.
This changes the search engines’ power as the reference source. Right now Google is struggling to keep up with real time publishing. Here’s Jeremiah Owyang on what the search engines’ shift to realtime means for reaching people:
Search marketers must understand that blasting marketing information through Facebook or Twitter won’t be effective, as search engines will filter out irrelevant messages that nobody listens to.
It comes down to content that’s useful, that other people can share. In a future where everybody writes, will anybody notice if your organization doesn’t?
My post for the Case Foundation blog this week looks the explosion of authorship (with blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) -- and what that means for nonprofits. Click through to the original post on casefoundation.org, or listen to the audio above ipodding pleasure.
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Post: Four Lessons from the Kiva Debate
“Empathy increases generosity. The pictures and stories on the Kiva site increase understanding between various parties that would otherwise operate in completely different universes.” That’s Matt Flannery, Kiva’s CEO and co-founder replying in his guest post on David Roodman’s blog.
“If you’re going to advertise yourself as giving choice to the donor, you’d better do it.” That’s Mike Everett-Lane, formerly of Donor’s Choose, commenting on tacticalphilanthropy.com.
Openness buys an organization benefit of the doubt. Even in his initial post, David Roodman acknowledged that statistics in plain view on Kiva’s own website caused him to question Kiva’s message. There was clearly no skulduggery involved.
Listening pays. Kiva responded to the criticism with action. It altered those marketing materials, and Matt Flannery responded quite graciously in a guest blog post. But before any of that, Kiva’s staff listened.
That listening, and that response, ultimately drew praise from the critics. David Roodman summed it up:
I think Flannery’s response to my criticism blended grace, humility, and quiet confidence. The world would be a much better place if all charities, all organizations for that matter, were as open and responsive to criticism as Kiva has been. I trust the Kiva folks will keep refining. I will visit them today.
For more Kiva conversations – a post on my blog, Code, Camera, Action, outlines the story. The comments in particular, summarize how Kiva resolved the issue. For more detail, see this list of excerpts from the Kiva debate or Tim Ogden’s post linking to the major blog debate.
My post on the Case Foundation blog this week sums up the debate over Kiva and person-to-person fundraising. Plus audio, for your pod-listening pleasure.
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Post: Social cause innovation - More, please?
Geoff Livingston responds to Kristin Ivie and my previous posts about new nonprofits.
Entrepreneurs look at things, see how they can be improved, tear down models, and rebuild them. So when we’ve experienced enormous successes in the for-profit world and then turn our eyes to higher causes, it’s only natural to think the same approach will work.
Granted there is ego at play, but are you going to tell someone who successfully sold a business or took a company public, that they can’t win again in a different sector? Good luck with that one!
For Geoff, an entrepreneur and blogger, advice to slow down is like reigning in the horses as they dash for the barn. Good luck with that one. And he's right, of course.
Having seen a few horses in this business, though, I was hoping to point out how the economics of nonprofits can work against that entrepreneurial spirit.
As a nonprofit, it can be a challenge to know if you're making progress, much less to best organize around it.
Can you imagine this conversation taking place in the private sector?
Nonprofit entrepreneur: I want to take a fundraising job for a nonprofit that's really changing the world. What do you think?
Mentor: Be careful not to get pigeonholed. "Once a fundraiser, always a fundraiser."
Maybe Sasha's example here is just isolated old-school thinking. I hope so. And maybe, as Geoff says, entrepreneurial spirit and gutsy social enterprise will be what shakes up slower organizations.
But I can think of a couple of things that could help speed that day for more entrepreneurs --
- Competitions with incubation or startup coaching (a la Y Combinator)
- Metrics for success. Government provides some of these statistics, larger NPOs and NGOs provide others
- Market valuation for social enterprises. For another post, but in our attention economy, this may be possible.
What else should be on this list?
Who wants to help?
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Post: Kiva Is Not Quite What It Seems
David Roodman's long post is a great explanation of how Kiva works. It's also critical of the way Kiva markets.
Here's the issue. Let's say you make a $25 loan on kiva.org. You pick an entrepreneur, you make a loan. The web site makes it look like you have funded that particular entrepreneur. But that isn't really how the microfinance organization works. For practical reasons, that entrepreneur has already been funded by one of Kiva's partners on the ground. On one level, Kiva is open about this, providing dates of loans and so forth -- though its marketing simplifies these details. The post is well worth reading if, like me, you're a fan of Kiva or of microfinance generally.
There's a bigger issue here between the stories that motivate donors and poverty in the developing world. Do donor stories help fight poverty -- or do they put drag on the efficiency of the fight?
Kiva brings microcredit and microchips to child sponsorship. Like sponsorship charities, it is all about stories: it was inspired by them and it succeeds by telling them. As a result, it operates in a pincers between the giver’s desire for personal connection and the costs and constraints that imposes on business of serving poor people. In fact Kiva can be seen as an ingenious finessing of this old tension. Technology has brought down the cost of transmitting stories and images.
via cgdev.org
Though the cost of bringing these stories and photos back to sponsors has come down, it is still significant. Can we afford the photos and stories of entrepreneurs? How can we not afford them?
Hat tip to @tactphil for sharing the post.
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Post: People start pollution. People can stop it.
On Earth Day, 1971, a nonprofit called Keep America Beautiful launched TV ads to persuade people to stop littering.
If you grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons in the '70s, you'll remember them. Each one featured an American Indian paddling or riding or walking through a trashy landscape and a grave voice over, ending with "People start polution. People can stop it." At the end of each ad, the camera zooms in on the Indian's face, onto a single tear. The crying Indian got America to stop littering. That ad is the one I remember most. Do watch it. Then forgive me a guess about what you're thinking: Powerful TV, but really. Of course, the '70s were top-down times. One example: Elvis Presley, master of media, had three TVs built into the wall of this basement at Graceland. Three televisions were all he needed to watch everything shown on TV in America. There were only three channels, so The King was set. The Indian in the ads was a career actor named Iron Eyes Cody. He became known as The Crying Indian -- better known for those ads than for any other role in in his career, which began when he was 12. While Iron Eyes lived his life as an Indian, Wikipedia says he was born Italian-American, from Louisiana. And there are all sorts of conspiratorial accusations against Keep America Beautiful. The organization purportedly got its funding from corporations and fast-food vendors. Wouldn't it be better, the accusers say, to encourage people to buy less styrofoam than to clean up litter? Yet the ads inspired genuine feeling. And people did (mostly) stop littering. A mark of their power today: their YouTube comments are mostly positive. What's the Crying Indian for our time? And, post-network-TV, what's the medium? The net, surely -- but which net? A thousand blogs? Twitter? Facebook? YouTube? (And do all the brand names in that list creep anybody out, is it just me?) I want to know what kind of campaign it would take to stop pollution -- really stop it.People start pollution. People can stop it.
But how?
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Post: Think before you leap: Four truths about starting a nonprofit
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 seem enamored by the dream -- all the people they will help, how they will at last be able to give back. Here's one example I've retold: Helping Ghana Without Reinventing the Wheel.
The reality is, as usual, more complicated. Nonprofits are business in every sense save the profits. And removing profits -- and the resources that come with them -- complicates things indeed. I wish for everyone thinking of starting a nonprofit some clear-eyed market analysis.
1. Not-for-profit doesn't remove competition
You will face competition for donations. You may face competition among other providers of similar services. You will certainly face competition for attention. How is what you're doing unique? What about your approach or beneficiaries will help you reach donors? Or, as Kristin suggests, might you be better to contribute to, or partner with related organizations?
2. Robin Hood is romantic, but it's easier to sell to people who need you
Most nonprofits ask for donations from the rich to provide services for somebody else. In this sense, help is a luxury good. "Give us money to solve a problem that other people have" isn't the strongest of appeals. How will you find people who share your priorities for social good? (Social media can help.) How will talk about your cause to help galvanize those who don't?
Like Robin Hood, you may find yourself bridging the worlds of your customers who use your services and your funders. Are you ready to translate?
3. Metrics for your success may be hard to come by
In the for-profit world, your accountant helps you know you've failed. Not so with nonprofits. There, your long-term success depends on slipperier metrics. Did literacy levels increase among at-risk kids in urban Houston? How many meals did you serve? And how do these short-term metrics connect with longer-value impact?
4. Solve problems, don't just create organizations
Folks like Dan Pallotta are concerned that nonprofits lack ambition for the big stuff.
In the for-profit world, it takes a product that's 10 times better than the competition to persuade folks to give it a try. How can you be 10 times better at targeting potential donors? Or 10 times better at addressing your issue?
At the end of the day, is that ambitious enough?
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Apps we like: Epicurious
Great recipes (zillions of them) -- and in-app advertising done right.
Back in the web 1.0 days, Conde Nast put all of the recipes from Gourmet and its other food magazines online at http://epicurious.com. The recipes were searchable and over time Epicurious added ratings and other community features. It's been a fabulous resource for cooks. They are great recipes, and there are lots of them -- including the 1955 recipe for steak au poivre that keeps me from going vegetarian. Epicurious has now come to the iPhone with the free "Epicurious recipies and shopping list" app http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=312101965&mt=8 . That whole recipe database is now searchable from your iPhone. And, yes, it will make a grocery list from the recipes you pick.- search the entire Epicurious recipe database -- from the phone
- see how other Epicurious users have rated the recipes
- save favorite recipes
- generate a shopping list from the recipes you pick
- check off items as you buy them
- price: free
It's a great app, and the shopping list makes it the best way to use these recipes. But how do they pay for that? The app is ad-supported, but in the least-intrusive way I've seen in an app. Here's how it works -- A search tells you how many results were found (see the second screenshot below). If you click to see the results, the app then splashes an ad while it retrieves the recipes (third screenshot). The experience feels perfectly natural. "Oh," I thought, "I'm waiting anyway, may as well view an ad." Woah! This is completely different than, say, the New York Times approach -- where the splash ad get between you and content you may not want anyway. What's the difference? With Epicurious, I've seen enough to know I want to go on, so an ad is okay with me. Search confirms my intent. The Times, though is a browsing operation. From a headline I don't often know if the story will be what I want -- or worth sitting through an ad. For me, the result of the experience is annoyance or, for Epicurious, gratitiude. Can you afford to annoy your users?
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