Authentic Foundation Communication

For the past few months the staff at Headwaters has been thinking a lot about how social media tools fit into our charge of being a transparent grantmaker. Tools like blogs, facebook, Twitter can start an effective two way dialog where the foundation and our various constituencies (grantees, donors, community organizers, and interested individuals) can exchange information and together build effective movements for social change or social media tools can be an amazing time suck that alienates your audience and undermines your brand.Yikes, nothing like a little pressure to help clarify your communications strategy. We've been taking the slow and steady approach to social media (not usually my style but it works in this case). Instead of throwing out a bunch of content and hoping something sticks, we are organically growing our Facebook friends and inviting them to our events, twittering program updates, and actively searching for content that will be useful for our audience. What nonprofits are at the cutting edge of social media and what do you like about their content or strategy?

Check out the new site!

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

Bringing Foundations into the 21st Century

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

Build Your Base

Paulette is a new voice in the field of philanthropy. She has contributed a great post to New Voices of philanthropy about how she built her base of knowledge in the field. From Paulette:

A colleague of mine sent me this link- http://www.mcf.org/mcf/resource/philanth.htm-to get my opinion. She was planning to use it for the philanthropy course she taught and she figured it was a great ice breaker for her students. As I watched it I had to chuckle at some of the responses given. Then I realized I was probably just as naive about the real meaning of philanthropy as they were when I embarked on this journey.

I didn’t have a clue as to where to begin. So, I began at the beginning. Believe my when I say that Google is your friend. Aside from information received from my various non-profit and philanthropy courses, I sought out other resources and tools I could use in my work. Below is a list of books, websites and other primers that remain a large part of my philanthropy library:

      • “The Insider’s Guide to Grant Making” by Joel Orosz. This was a required text for my philanthropy course and is still my go-to guide. Orosz lays out the work and obligations of a program officer along with background and history of the field. A very enjoyable read.
      • “GrantCraft” This is produced by the Ford Foundation and offers a wealth of information on philanthropy, grant making, mission-related investments and anything else related to philanthropy. If you register on the site you can download virtually all of the guides for free or you can purchase a hard copy.
      • “The Complete Guide to Grant Making Basics” This was originally put out in two parts but the updated version combines both. It costs around $65 as an individual (cheaper if your foundation is a member) but well worth the cost for anyone who wants a grant making 101 course. It covers everything—from reading proposals, to how to conduct site visits and understanding non-profit finances (a personal thorn in my side).
      • Philanthropy and non-profit blogs. I can’t say enough about them. These offer a great perspective on the current trends in the field—Perspectives from the Pipeline; New Voices in Philanthropy (shameless plug but true-this blog was the one of the first I discovered while on my journey); and Tactical Philanthropy. Also, sign up to receive newsletters and blog information from the various foundations. This is a great resource for seeing what social issues other foundations find imperative and where they are putting their money.
      • Philanthropy magazines and periodicals.

While there is no dearth of information available and this doesn’t even cover issue- or policy-related blogs I subscribe to, the above list is the one I found most helpful to build my base of knowledge. I continue to use these sources as well as many others I have discovered. Books and blogs are important but networking is key. This avenue worked for me—after joining a local women’s philanthropy group, I met and now work with one of the program officers. The take-away: Stay hungry and never stop learning. I myself have just scratched the surface.

Paulette Pierre is a Program Officer intern at The Field Foundation of Illinois. She has a graduate certificate in Non-Profit Management and Philanthropy from Loyola University and is currently pursuing her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies at DePaul University.

You are the master of your fate (and your outlook calendar)

Two weeks ago I was at a crossroads. I have always prided myself on a semblance of work life balance and feel like I am very effective during the workday. I cross things off my to do list, I don't sit under a mountain of paperwork, I return phone calls (for those of you that are not employed by a foundation, I swear these things are revolutionary). But the last couple weeks were different. My email in box was overflowing (it seemed like every item in there needed about 3 hours of strategic thinking to make a decision), my normally clean office was covered in piles of papers, and I was eating sour cream and cheese chips out of the vending machine for lunch as I was driving to another meeting. The bags under my eyes were making my staff nervous and I think I looked like I was on the edge of a hide under my desk breakdown. So much for balance.

Luckily I have a great coach, who asks common sense questions that I get too busy to ask myself. Her question was "why did I let my schedule get so crazy?". That gentle reminder that my schedule is not the boss of me was all I needed to get back on track. So here are the four things that have given me my sanity back and ensured that my hair does not all fall out:
1) I set aside an hour at the end of each day to clean out my emails and handle all the paper on my desk,
2) I set aside one and a half hour blocks every other day for uninterrupted strategic thinking,
3) I set aside time for lunch each day. I may decide to have a lunch meeting those days but I will always have time to eat, and
4) I am saying no to meetings that I would normally say yes to out of obligation or fear of missing something good.

What do you do to keep your schedule on track?