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What are we not doing?

This question - what are we not doing? - may be the most important question any strategist, funder, program officer, or board member can ask. It contextualizes the choices that are being made. It sheds light on how well you (or your staff) have scanned the landscape. It will help you think about what might come next. It may nudge you to reconsider ideas or plans that you had previously put aside. It requires you to explain, contextualize, justify, position the things you are doing.

Next time you are developing a funding strategy, considering a grant portfolio, thinking through evaluation, or doing due diligence with a potential grantee, ask yourself: What we are we not doing? (and why?)

Speaking of strategic planning here is a nice example of openness in the process - check out this "twitter conversation" and Presentation on Philanthropy's Tensions from the Peery Foundation's strategic planning process.

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Nonprofits and Social Media Podcast

Thanks to the Columbus Foundation and DonorEdge for making possible this podcast.

Sidney Hargo interviews Katya Andresen of Network for Good and me on the future of social media, nonprofits and philanthropy. Enjoy.

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Charity Challenge buzzword 2009.5

(photo by exfordy, Flickr, Creative Commons)


One of the key noted philanthropy trends of 2008 was the growth of philanthropy prizes.

This year the buzzword is charity challenge. These challenges tend to be some form of matching grant - based fundraising opportunity that uses blogs, twitter, widgets, online video and every other possible web-based communications tool. They allow the public to vote on where the sponsor's dollars go, or at least those recently run by Target, Toms of Maine, and American Express do so.

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Idea Index and changing how we look for change

(photo by psd, Flickr, Creative Commons)

The Idea Index is a great (and beautiful) example of learning from the ecosystem that prize philanthropy creates. The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) has taken all of the entries for its recent challenge and published them in the Idea Index. BFI refers to this as "an open-source database of solutions to the world's most pressing problems."

It is similar to the way Changemakers is running its prize platform. HASTAC also works to connect the many organizations that submit to its Digital Media Challenge. NetSquared's annual conference acts as a way for applicants to get to know one another. These opportunities for networking the people behind the ideas, those selected by competition and those who weren't, is a wonderful contribution to the ecosystem for change.

I think the Social Entrepreneurs API, SocialActions, and AllforGood are great examples of how we can pull data from disparate sources and let people use it for all kinds of purposes. Imagine if we could mashup these "challenge ecosystems" into one massive index of ideas and idea-makers - from health, digital media, social enterprise, poverty alleviation, and so on - and see what they can accomplish when they can find each other....

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Even further "embedded" giving

I was hoping I could come up with a term for "deeper than embedded" before writing this post, but my mind failed me. Since I am on vacation this is probably a good sign. So we'll open this up to you, dear readers - what term would you use to describe business models in which the giving element is so thoroughly integrated into the product and its marketing that it is a fundamental piece of the puzzle - even if the giving itself is not the core revenue driver, purpose of the product, or outcome of the service?

Here are some examples:

Contribune provides donor analytic software that allows an organization to track the news that its potential donors read. Users enter the URL of a news story that they care about, and Contribune facilitates donations to related nonprofits, tracks those donations, and elevates the story to the "front page" depending on the actions taken by readers. This seems similar to the services offered by Good2gether.

The Contribune site and blog include a movie that explains the process, but information on who is behind this site and what the revenue model is is somewhat vague (there are photos of the founder, but no last names listed). I presume that revenue (or predicted revenue) will come from selling data (donor analytics) to fundraisers (political and nonprofit) and from news sources. I suppose there could also be a token fee taken off of donations, but my guess is this won't be significant.

Giving is part of this model - but its really just the action that triggers the ratings that trigger the revenue. Sort of the way Nielsen ratings have been used to set broadcast advertising rates.

Contribune also launched a "charity focused URL shorteners - a technology that Twitter has made requisite. This URL shorteners allow you to clip a URL of any length into a shorter one, saving space in twitter and even allowing for some "built in" advertising. This is particularly true with the Giv.to shortener, as the clip will now look like "http://giv.to/cancerprevention" or "giv.to/savethewhales." These URL shorteners are loved for the brevity and vanity - they also provide great metrics as you can track who clicked through on the URL and what actions they took. Again, great data of potentially great value.

Last year we saw the development of search engines that enabled giving. Now we've got news sites and URL shorteners. What do you think will be the next technology action to integrate charitable giving? And what should we call this kind of embedded giving?


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Change native to the digital world

(photo by kjarrett, Flickr, Creative Commons)

I'm looking for examples of social change organizations that are totally native to the digital world. They were created in and around digital tools and they use these tools to manage their work, communication, programs, fund development - everything. The prevalence of these tools shaped the way the organization's founders defined the problem they hope to influence or the solutions they seek to spread. The organizations would not exist if it weren't for mobile or Internet-based tools that are free or cheap to use, readily available and familiar.

Here is what I've tracked so far. Please grow this list by adding those you know in the comments. I also welcome improvements of my working definition of "native to the digital world." Thanks.

• Lend4health
• Ushahidi
• socialactions
• tudiabetes
• patientslikeme
• charmtracker (part of MedicalMine)
• kiva
• globalgiving
• donorschoose
• Allforgood
• mobilemovement
  
• 
  

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On Vacation

I'll be out of town, road tripping through the national parks of the Southwest, hiking in the woods, and staying (mostly) offline until July 6. Several blog posts will automatically post while I'm on the road. Enjoy.…

Buzzword 2009.4 Leverage

(Photo by Tyger_lyllie, Flickr, Creative Commons)

I am remiss as I have just realized that I have not previously tagged leverage as a buzzword. I guess it goes to show that some buzzwords become so embedded that we almost miss them.

We've heard a lot of bad things about leverage lately - sub prime mortgages, bank bailouts, credit default swaps, etc. all have some connection to the idea that you can use a little money to access a lot of money. And much of the economic pain we face now seems to be because too many institutions were over- leveraged.

But in philanthropy the idea of leverage is usually less about debt* and more about using dollars from Pot A to access dollars from Pot B. If a donor puts in $1 and, in so doing, attracts another $1 to the issue or organization, that is a good thing. Leverage is at the root of matching grants, NPR pledge drives, giving circles, pooled grant making funds, social venture philanthropy, affinity groups, and lots of other things that are now normative on the philanthropy landscape. (Did I just write that? Oy. Let me try this instead - "Leverage is a common concept for both donors and foundations.")

If it is so common, why is it a buzzword? Partly because there is a good amount of discussion and innovation about how leverage is achieved. We increasingly hear foundations talking about the need to "leverage other funders" (both private and public) as part of their strategy development - especially now where stimulus funds are concerned. A lot of the discussion about "exit strategies" or "sustainability" is about leveraging other revenue sources beyond a foundation's initial support. Buzzword #2009.2 - sidecar funds - are all about leveraging someone else's infrastructure investment and their knowledge.

It also achieves buzzword status at this point in time because the public sector - in discussions of everything from stimulus funding to health care, to the Office of Social Innovation and State Department's public/private initiative - is talking leverage, leverage, leverage.

At their root, these developments represent a realization by foundations and donors that they cannot achieve their (often hyperbolic) mission statements by themselves, that they operate within funding streams that may or may not work well but are out there, and that the more each of us understands where we fit in these revenue systems the better chance we have of making them more effective and efficient. The rise of leverage as buzzword may also be a sign that systems thinking is really beginning to take hold in philanthropy. Or it may just be a buzzword.

*For discussions of debt and the nonprofit capital markets, and the ways that leverage works in that realm, I defer to the experts at the Nonprofit Finance Fund. To paraphrase Click and Clack, don't mistake the trends discussed on this blog as consulting, financial or legal advice.

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