New Voices of Philanthropy has moved to its new site, look around, tell me what you like and what you don't like, and what you want to see more of. Leave your thoughts in the comments.Trista
P.S. If you subscribed to the RSS feed for New Voies of Philanthropy at the old site, please re-subscribe above
My former foundation is doing a survey on what web tools donors use when they give. I think it is wonderful that they are asking donors what they want instead of building a tool and then hoping that everyone will line up to use it. It's also great that the survey is a partnership between multiple community foundations. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. It is a great opportunity to help foundations begin to use cutting edge tools to connect with donors in new ways. From the Saint Paul and Minnesota Community Foundations: Social media and e-philanthropy are changing what donors want and expect from nonprofits. Minnesota Community Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation are partnering with community foundations in Columbus and San Francisco to sponsor joint research to learn directly from donors about what web tools they may use for charitable purposes.
As part of this effort, they want to survey as many people as possible who are already givers to nonprofit organizations. I hope that you will take a few minutes to complete the survey attached below. They will not collect e-mails and all responses will be anonymous.
Thank you for your time to complete this!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=p8nhnNYPQtNjQNo_2fM395CA_3d_3d
Dan Pallota, the author of Uncharitable, has a great article on nonprofit effectiveness at the Huffington Post. An excerpt is below:
...The word "profit" comes from the Latin noun "profectus," meaning "progress." Thus the term "nonprofit," means literally, non-progress. The sector remains bound by an ethos of deprivation laid out by the seventeenth century New England Puritans in a twisted effort to ameliorate the terrible reality of their self interest. It said that on this side of a line we can make a profit and on this other, which we shall call "charity," we will deny ourselves. Thus the carpenters and farmers of the world got free-market capitalism, and the needy got a religion -- charity -- in which everything that worked in commerce was banished.
By and large, it is still what the needy have today. We let people make a fortune doing any number of things that will harm the poor, but want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them. This sends the top talent coming out of the nation's best business schools directly into the for-profit sector and gives our youth mutually exclusive choices between making a difference and making money. This we call altruism. We let Apple and Coca-Cola plaster our billboards and television sets with advertising, but we don't want important causes "wasting" money on paid advertising. So the voices of our great causes are muted and consumer products get lopsided access to our attention, twenty-four hours a day. This we call frugality.
Amazon could forego investor returns for six years to build market dominance. But if a charity embarks on a long-term plan with no return for the needy for six years we expect a crucifixion. This we call caring. We aren't upset when Paramount makes a $200 million movie that flops, but if a $5 million charity walk doesn't make a 75% profit in year one we want the attorney general to investigate. So charities are petrified of exploring new revenue-generating methods and can't develop the powerful learning curves the for-profit sector can. This we call prudence. We let for-profit companies raise massive capital in the stock market by offering investment returns, but we forbid the payment of a financial return ("profit") in charity. The result? The for-profit sector monopolizes the capital markets while charities are left to beg for donations. This we call philanthropy.
...It is time to give charity the big-league freedoms we really give to business -- the freedom to get the best people and pay them whatever it costs for the value they can produce, freedom to buy ads on the Superbowl -- yes, at a cost of $2.6 million a pop -- to start building market demand, freedom to take big risks, and to fail big if that's what it takes to learn, and the freedom to start attracting capital in a stock market by paying investors a financial return. It's time to stop obsessing about overhead and start focusing on progress.
Read the rest here.
Enjoy a calorie-filled day with your loved ones and when you pull out the old family album remember that everyone looked crazy in the 70's.
During this year's Council on Foundations annual conference there was a plenary session focused on what role philanthropy could play within the new administration. Many ideas were tossed out there, such as creating an advisory position on the new President's cabinet and changing the foundation tax laws. For those who may still have some thoughts and questions about what the new administration means to philanthropy, Grantmakers in Health is partnersing with other grantmaker groups to host a session on this topic on December 1st and 2nd in Washington, DC. Here's the description:
Grantmakers Income Security Taskforce; Grantmakers for Children, Youth & Families; and GIH invite you to attend a Post-Election Briefing for Grantmakers. This timely briefing will inform grantmakers about the priorities of the new Administration and Congress and provide funders with an opportunity to help inform, shape and influence this agenda. Several informative sessions will be offered, including:
-A diverse panel of experts and representatives from the new administration’s transition team will discuss the priorities of the new Administration and Congress on a variety of domestic policy issues including health, human services, and budget and taxes.
-A panel of grantees will discuss the implications of the new political environment and what it suggests in terms of opportunities and challenges for the short- and medium-term on a federal, state, local, and community level.
-A facilitated strategy session will provide grantmakers with an opportunity to reflect on the briefing and consider strategies and opportunities for investments and cross-sectoral collaboration.
For more information, go to http://www.gih.org/calendar_url2665/calendar_url_show.htm?doc_id=706190