Category Archives: 2007COF

Online vs. Offline Conversations

April 30, 2007 – 7:58 am

I ran into Lucy Bernholz at the first session yesterday. She and I have met in person before, but I’m always struck by how much more interesting in-person interactions are than the online version. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate of how blog and other social media software allows for interactions between people who would otherwise never meet. But nothing trumps face to face conversation. Nothing trumps seeing Lucy dart up to the front of the room half way through the session and stick her iBook with camera accessory up into the air to capture the photo you can see on her blog today.

Emotion doesn’t come through very well online. But it sure does in person. I had a conversation with Susan Herr of PhilanthroMedia, Albert Ruesga of White Courtesy Telephone and Suzanne Perry, one of the driving forces behind the Chronicle on Philanthropy’s Give and Take feature, during one of the post conference receptions. We could have talked for hours — which is funny, if you think about it, because we all interact online. There is something about the emotion behind the ideas we discuss that only become readily accessible when you talk in person. Blogs are great. They have the power to transform our culture because they have the power to transform our relationship with information. But they’ll never replace conversations in the corner of a conference room, or over a glass of wine or cup of coffee.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (2)

Web 2.0 Media & Philanthropy

April 29, 2007 – 1:34 pm

I’m a bad blogger. I don’t buy into all this Web 2.0 bubble talk that bloggers are going to replace the “mainstream media”. For me, the important element about blogs is the technology that allows for the information stream to run back and forth and around and around instead of simply being piped in one direction. This kind of technology is best suited to debating opinions, not revealing facts. For the most part bloggers debate the meaning of the facts rather than reporting them.

Last October, a survey was released that focused on how the wealthy practiced philanthropy. At 7:11am on the morning the news was reported, I posted my thoughts regarding the implications of the survey results. I think that this symbiotic relationship between bloggers and the mainstream media is the future.

To me, the importance of blogs to philanthropy is that most philanthropy reporting focuses on the size of a grant or the focus of the grant, but not the implications of various philanthropic actions. For instance, everyone read in the mainstream media about the fact that Bill Gates was going to work at his foundation full time. And they read about the dollar amount of the gift that Buffett made to The Gates Foundation. But what were the implications? Philanthropy doesn’t have magazines like The National Review or The Atlantic Monthly that provide a forum for deep analysis and opinion. With philanthropy still an area of niche interest, blogs provide an ideal forum for this deep analysis and opinion sharing to develop without the need for an economic model to support a mainstream media outlet.

During the Morphing Media session, I was struck by Maxwell King’s assertion that in an era of “dramatically increasing complexity”, it is not possible that there is not significant economic value to good information and analysis. I think he is exactly correct. However, I also think that philanthropy, unlike most other media spheres, doesn’t need a functioning economic model to finance the sharing of information and analysis. This is because the sharing of information and analysis about philanthropy, even without an economic return, produces large social returns. If a foundation CEO writes about the successes and failures of a new program, she will increase capital flows from other philanthropic entities towards the reported successes and away from the revealed failures. Since foundations and other philanthropic entities are not competing against each other, but instead can measure success by challenges jointly conquered, there already exists a functioning model to reward the sharing of good information and analysis.

Huffington’s diagnoses of attention deficit disorder in the mainstream media and obsessive-compulsive behavior among bloggers got a good laugh, but it also has some important implications for philanthropy. In a world where philanthropy is still of niche interest, it takes an obsessive-compulsive personality to write constantly about areas of interest to the philanthropic community. Look at NetSquared for a good example. To my knowledge, there has been no mainstream media coverage to date. But the Giving blogs have been talking about it constantly. This is of no small importance to philanthropy. According to CompuMentor/TechSoup the following foundations are going to be attending and/or sponsoring NetSquared:

  • Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
  • W.K. Kellogg Foundation
  • Ford Foundation
  • The Case Foundation
  • Surdna Foundation
  • The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
  • Google.org
  • Sunlight Foundation
  • California Emerging Technology Foundation
  • Schwab Charitable
  • Community Foundation Silicon Valley

And Mark Bolgiano, former Chief Information Officer of the Council on Foundations had this to say about NetSquared:

"I’m in awe. The projects, the energy, the votes, the outcome, and the people paying attention to flaws and suggesting improvements… all of it feels to me like something that will be looked back on with a "Wow.  I was there when it happened… when it got started"…

So what if this turns out to be a scale model of something bigger that turns philanthropy inside out?  What if we could do this with a just ONE TENTH OF ONE PERCENT of foundation grants next year?  That’s at least $20 million.  What if we involved folks outside our motivated/activist/subversive tribe, say only a million of the people who would love to weigh in on these proposals?  Best of all, what if this new way of doing things convinced a lot of new  people with good ideas to go for it…?

I’m serious.  It really could happen…"

All of this attention on what I believe is a groundbreaking moment for philanthropy and there’s been zero press coverage, but massive blog coverage. That’s why blogs are important to philanthropy. That’s why understanding the “morphing media” is key for foundations and why foundation executives and other philanthropic leaders need to be engaging the blog community.

There are real risks to blogging. The article I linked to earlier about the role of bloggers at the California State Convention was not a glowing story about blogs. It cited a lot of trends in political blogging that I personally find to be negative. But blogging is happening, the media is morphing. There’s no stopping change. But if philanthropy ignores the morphing media, then it loses the chance to effect the new media that emerges. If philanthropy doesn’t wake up quickly to the changes being wrought by information technology, than blogs like Inside Foundations and Don’t Tell The Donor will be the ones setting the agenda. Wouldn’t it be better if leaders, new comers and everyone in between discussed the issues at hand out in the open and let the most vibrant, robust ideas rise to the surface?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Media, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (3)

Morphing Media: Philanthropy & New Media

April 29, 2007 – 11:02 am

The four panelists at the Morphing Media session were:

  • Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post
  • Dorothy Ridings, Former COF CEO
  • Ian Rowe, vice president, MTV
  • Jay Harris, COF Board Member
  • Maxwell King, The Heinz Endowments

All four of the panelists saw the value of New Media and the growing importance of its role in philanthropy. But there was wide disagreement on whether the New Media was a wonderful new opportunity (Huffington & Rowe) or if there was a more equal balance of risks and rewards (Harris & King).

Harris talked about the role of technology in encouraging public discourse and that while he had hesitations about the New Media’s current impact on philanthropy, he thought that in the end it would be good for the public discourse. He applauded the new networks of common interest that were developing (in the philanthropy arena, that is the readers of this and the other blogs on my blogroll.)

Huffington talked about the way that old media models have encouraged giving to established, well-known charitable entities. And also, by only talking about giving during Christmas and thanksgiving, failed to engage readers on philanthropy as part of their daily life. She mentioned how her teenage daughters would been transformed, for a week or two, by some sort of philanthropic experience, but that you needed constant engagement to spur true change. She joked that the mainstream media has ADD, while bloggers are obsessive compulsive and can bring the media back to an important story that they quickly moved on from. She used disasters as an example of how people irregularly engage philanthropically. Said that when Amazon changed their home page to a charitable giving button 7 hours after 9/11, they raised $70 million in three days. If we can engage people more regularly, the capacity to give is enormous.

Max King: The economic model of information distribution is broken. But “dramatically increasing complexity” is the dominate theme of our time. Under those circumstances, it is impossible to believe that there is not economic value to good information and analysis.

Ian Rowe: Talked about the joint ventures that MTV has done with various nonprofits to educate and engage young people on social issues. Pointed out that there can be more impact for the foundation by partnering with MTV than making a grant to a nonprofit. Gave as an example the idea that a $100k “grant” to MTV can spur the development of a 30 min show on an issue that reaches 400 million households and is designed specifically to connect with young people.

Harris speculated that journalism needs to be removed from the pure free market to preserve the important role it has in serving the public good. Huffington responded by saying that there has been no golden age of journalism serving the public good. She gave numerous examples of how the mainstream press failed during the run up to the Iraq war. She said all of this has created a disenchantment with the media that is there own fault and pointed to this disenchantment as the reason we’ve seen the rise of blogs.

Rowe: Said that the amount of time that senior leadership of any organization spends with young people is directly correlated with the innovation that comes out of that organization.

A question from the audience brought up the concept of the digital divide as an age related, not economically related issue. Huffington said it was important that we marry the best of the old with the best of the new and bring together wisdom and innovation, not just young and old.

Harris ended by telling the audience that we need to be sure that we do not ignore the power of things that are hard to measure and Huffington added that the concept of the Tipping Point is useful when trying to understand the role of New Media to Philanthropy.

These Cliff Notes are for readers to digest and comment back on. I’ll be writing up my analysis of the session soon. Let me know what you think and what the notes above stir up in your mind.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Media, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (0)

Tom Edsall Joining Huffington Post

April 29, 2007 – 10:14 am

It is not everyday that a blog like Tactical Philanthropy gets to break news. I even said earlier that I’m not attending the Council on Foundations conference to “report”. But here I am at the Morphing Media session and Arianna Huffington says that next week the Huffington Post will be announcing that they’ve hired Tom Edsall, formally of the Washington Post, to be their new Political Editor. This is probably of no interest to most of my readers, but I’m guessing there’s more than a few political blogs that will find this of interest.

When moderator Dot Ridings laughingly told her that since there were bloggers in the audience she already had announced the news, Arianna said “oh, that’s OK, let the blogs have it first”.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Comments (0)

Philanthropy & Blogs

April 28, 2007 – 10:18 pm

What exactly does it mean that the Council on Foundations has invited me and other bloggers to cover their conference under a press pass? As I discussed when I accepted the invitation, I had some hesitations:

I do not think of myself as a member of the press. I’m not a reporter. I think the role of bloggers in general is more one of commentator/analyst/columnist. But in talking with the Council it was clear to me that they “got” what my role should be.

This morning the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about the role of bloggers at the Democratic California State Convention. The gist of the story is that five years ago, there was one blogger in attendance.

“This year, a record 50 Internet-publication bloggers will join the estimated 400 credentialed "mainstream" media in the press room to track the doings of seven Democratic presidential candidates and 2,100 California party delegates this weekend.

And those numbers don’t count the estimated dozens of mainstream media journalists who will be blogging for major newspapers or the unknown numbers of delegates who will be producing their own running commentary of the convention.”

To me, the best kind of blogging is informed, opinionated, personal and conversational – not just in tone, but in actually being part of a larger community of diverse opinions. The worst kind of blogging is ill-informed soapboxing. Political blogs have both types of bloggers. I hope that the philanthropy community can cultivate an online culture that revolves around my first set of standards. I think we’re on the way there.

In would be interesting to see the 2012 edition of the Chronicle on Philanthropy’s COF conference coverage. Maybe it will begin…

“A record 50 Internet-publication bloggers attended the Council on Foundations conference this week. And that number doesn’t include the dozens of foundation CEOs and philanthropic leaders who blogged their thoughts or the unknown number of attendees who reflected on their experiences in their personal blogs…”

 

Special Message: Sean Stannard-Stockton will be live blogging the Council on Foundations conference from Sunday April 29-Tuesday May 1. During that time, this blog will be an open portal for a lively debate around the conference topics. This is your opportunity to express your thoughts and be heard by the wider community. Email your thoughts by clicking here or leave a comment by clicking on the “comments” link in the lower right portion of this post.

This is the first time the Council on Foundations has invited bloggers. Take part in something special and make sure you participate.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Media, Philanthropy | Comments (2)

Conference Sessions

April 27, 2007 – 12:29 pm

There’s a LOT of conference sessions. Here’s a few that have caught my interest:

  1. Foundations and the Morphing Media: Why We No Longer “Read All About It”
  2. Bottoms Up Philanthropy: How Remittances Transform Communities and Families
  3. Linking Money to Mission: Structure Your Grants to Promote Grantee Performance
  4. Investing in Nonprofits to Scale Impact: Lessons Learned
  5. Demonstrating Impact: How Foundations Can Show Their Value
  6. All in Good Measure: Building Capacity to Learn and Improve Performance
  7. Changing Poverty Through Profit
  8. What Can Foundations Be Doing? Innovative Ideas for Wealth Creation and Asset Building
  9. Outside the Box, Inside the Mission: Leveraging Social Investing at Your Foundation
  10. The Philanthropic Fault Line: Exploring the Sometimes Shaky Ground Between Foundations and Nonprofits

Which sessions would YOU like me to attend? Let me know and I’ll use your votes to create my schedule.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy | Comments (3)

COF Conference & Philanthropy Blogs

April 27, 2007 – 11:48 am

Bruce Trachtenberg of The Communications Network, on the intersection between the COF conference and the philanthropy blogs:

If what you are asking for happens — that is, people take you up on your offer and engage in a dialogue with you and each other, which I’m sure they will — then the next step is to keep the conversation going long after the conference ends. Blogging and other online tools provide an opportunity for the kinds of in-depth discussions, information exchanges, etc., that back in the old days we could only have when we gathered in conferences. Now we get to meet and talk to each other in places like this, and for all the world to see.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Council on Foundations Conference: You’re Invited

April 27, 2007 – 8:51 am

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “Conference”:

  1. a meeting of two or more persons for discussing matters of common concern
  2. a usually formal interchange of views

The formal COF conference is for members only. But, with seven blogs officially covering the conference and at least six active blogs that are authored by COF members, everyone is invited to the more informal “discussion of matters of common concern”.

You could think about the blog coverage of COF as a “window” into the conference, but I’d rather the blogs be seen as a portal through which “matters of common concern” can flow both ways. Use the blogs to learn what is being discussed on the inside, discuss these topics online and then send them back in along with new topics through comments and emails to the participating blogs. Too many people see blogs as soapboxes for personal opinions. But blogs can be more, blogs can be platforms for discussion and refinement of ideas.

I don’t want to go to the conference and “live blog” the event like some kind of transcriber. Instead, I want to capture the key concepts under discussion and present them to the online world for further debate. Sure, I’ll have my opinions, but your opinions are just as important. Let me know what you think and I’ll make sure I showcase the dialogue, not just my own monologue.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (1)

Permission to Blog?

April 20, 2007 – 2:20 pm

The nptech roundup refers to the four bloggers who have been issued press passes by the Council on Foundations as “invited live bloggers” and asks:

What about other conference attendees who might also be bloggers? How does one track their voice or (is) the COF only letting those four bloggers live blog or are these the only four people who are attending who might be possibly be blogging?

Do you need permission to blog a conference? Of course not. Do you need an invitation to get in the doors of the Council on Foundations conference? Most decidedly yes. See the comment my friend made about the COF being “very, very careful about inviting anyone outside the membership.”

So will anyone else be blogging the conference? Are there any invited members who blog? Well, well, turns out Albert Ruesga will be there. I hope he joins the fray!

Is there anyone else out there who will be attending the conference and who writes a blog? If so, let me know.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (1)

2007COF Tag

April 20, 2007 – 10:54 am

At the suggestion of Beth Kanter, I’m initiating the tag 2007COF for all 2007 Council on Foundations conference information. Bloggers can tag their posts with 2007COF and then by searching Technorati for this tag, readers will find all related posts. You can also use this tag in del.icio.us or subscribe to the tag to see all tagged information.

The philanthropy blogging community isn’t quite as tech savvy as Beth’s nptech community. But let’s give this a shot. If you don’t know what a tag is or want some further info on how the 2007COF tag works, drop me a comment or an email.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (3)

Blogs at Council on Foundation Conference

April 20, 2007 – 7:56 am

Susan Herr, who blogs at PhilanthroMedia, will be blogging the Council on Foundations conference and thinks that the rise of transparency is heralding "€œthe end of philanthropy as usual."

So here’s my question for readers. If the Council is offering transparency, what do you what to see? I’m sure that Susan, Lucy and I will each take a different approach to blogging the conference. I’d like my approach to reflect the spirit of the Giving Carnival (which will be returning in a new form after the CoF conference). I plan on blogging at high speed and would love to offer readers an opportunity to submit questions and comments that can be integrated into the offline conversation taking place at the conference.

Blogging conferences isn’€™t new. But it’s a big deal that the Council on Foundations decided to give it a shot. A friend of mine told me:

They are very conservative at the Council, and your invitation should be viewed as a real breakthrough. They are very, very careful about inviting anyone outside the membership.

And the Council seems to agree. They’€™ve called our invitation "a groundbreaking move".

The Council seems ready to really embrace the interactive nature of blogging. They are advertising our presence to their members and even seem to be framing our presence as a draw for members who have not yet signed up to attend. They are encouraging attendees to use the blogs to "weigh in on the issues being discussed, comment on a particular session, and share your opinion on how the conference is going."

Just because you’€™re not attending in person, doesn’t mean you can’t use my blog, Lucy’s and Susan’s to participate in the same way as the onsite attendees. With three of us onsite, you should be able to get a significant view of what’€™s going on.

You’ve got transparency, what do you want to see?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (4)

Lucy Bernholz on Blogging Conferences

April 13, 2007 – 1:42 pm

Lucy Bernholz, who’s currently blogging the Global Philanthropy Forum, has weighed in with her thoughts on blogging philanthropy conferences in general. Lucy will be blogging the Council on Foundation conference with me, so I’m intensely interested in her thoughts. Check her out.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Media, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Press Coverage of Philanthropy

April 11, 2007 – 1:54 pm

Bruce Trachtenberg, the executive director of The Communications Network, stopped by to leave me a comment:

Hopefully the attention that blogging is bringing — and the many discussions and conversations it is spawning — will encourage traditional press to deepen its coverage of philanthropy. It’s not enough to simply report on the number and size of grants — which is what the Philanthropic Awareness Initiative found as typical of foundation news coverage in its recent study of reporting on philanthropy over a 15-year-period. As my co-author and I wrote in a Chronicle of Philanthropy op-ed last July (http://www.comnetwork.org/72006oped.htm), "When reporters cover the business world, they produce articles when new products or strategies are announced, when money is made or lost, and when companies grow or fail. And in between the coverage of those developments, enormous attention is paid to the types of businesses they are, what underlies the decisions companies make, and what they could do to become more successful. That same approach should guide philanthropy coverage . Reporters should be encouraged to provide in-depth and analytic coverage about the underlying problems in society that foundations are trying to solve, the likely results of their investments, and follow-up coverage about what did or didn’t happen."

Bruce’s co-author of the op-ed he refers to was Grant Oliphant, a vice president at the Heinz Endowments. Maxwell King, the president of the Heinz Endowments will be a speaker at the Foundations & The Morphing Media session that I referred to in my last post. You should read Bruce and Grant’s op-ed, it makes a critical point about the state of philanthropy press coverage.

So what can bloggers bring to the table to help enhance the media coverage? Cross-disciplinary perspectives. There are very few “philanthropy reporters” working in the media today. Most philanthropy related articles are written by reporters whose beats include either nonprofits or business. By today’s philanthropy stories often fall in between these neat categories. For instance, who should be covering the NetSquared Conference? To me, the NetSquared Conference represents a compelling media story. But who should cover it? The technology reporters, business reporters and nonprofit reporters with their distinct beats are unlikely to have the context to grasp the entire story. This is not meant to be a slight towards journalists in any way. But philanthropy is undergoing a transformation and evolving in new ways. As Susan Raymond said when Google.org was launched as a for profit “foundation”, we are at “The end of definitions”. When we can’t even define what philanthropy means, who should we ask to tell the story of philanthropy? I think the story is being told by the philanthropy blogs.

The authors of the philanthropy blogs include:

  • Foundation Consultants
  • Investment Managers
  • Nonprofit Employees
  • Nonprofit Consultants
  • Foundation Employees
  • Moral Tutors
  • Community Foundation Executives
  • Ex-Philosophy Professors
  • Social Entrepreneurs
  • Hedge Fund Employees
  • Philanthropic Consultants & Service Providers
  • Authors

The cross-disciplinary nature of this group is exactly why they are so well suited to telling this chapter of the story of philanthropy.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Media, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Council on Foundations Conference

April 11, 2007 – 8:15 am

Yesterday I accepted an invitation to attend this year’s Council on Foundations (CoF) conference from April 29-May 1 in Seattle. This is the first year that CoF has invited bloggers to attend the conference with a press pass.

As much as I was honored to be invited, I had some hesitation about attending. I do not think of myself as a member of the press. I’m not a reporter. I think the role of bloggers in general is more one of commentator/analyst/columnist. But in talking with the Council it was clear to me that they “got” what my role should be. In fact, one of the first Sessions is about new media:

Foundations & The Morphing Media: Why We No Longer “Read All About It” Room 204 9:00-10:30 a.m. Foundations and the media have always seen themselves as agents of social change, both working to serve the common good. But there has been a drastic change in the media landscape. Broadcast and cable news segments, accommodating waning attention spans, are becoming less detailed and more politically charged. Newspaper readership is down, Internet news is on the rise, and blogging is, well, moving in a direction of its own. This could be troublesome as philanthropy depends on the media to spearhead deep, thoughtful discussion of social issues—information that then guides philanthropy in its grantmaking. Listen to a thoughtful and provocative discussion of our own as a panel of experts, including former Council President/CEO Dot Ridings, also a former publisher with Knight-Ridder, and Max King, president of the Heinz Endowments and former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviews the challenges and opportunities foundations will face with the new mainstream media. Presenters:

  • Arianna Huffington, Speaker, Syndicated Journalist
  • Dorothy S. Ridings, Moderator
  • Ian Rowe, Speaker, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs, MTV
  • Jay T. Harris, Speaker, Board Member
  • Maxwell King, Speaker, President, The Heinz Endowments

So what is the role of philanthropy bloggers on the broader philanthropic landscape? Are we fringe commentators or will the conversation that we are developing here be one that, as the Council states above, “guides philanthropy in its grantmaking”?

We don’t know for sure yet. But I can tell you that since I received the invitation from CoF, a number of employees of the world’s largest foundations have subscribed to my blog. My understanding is that there was a lot of internal debate at the Council on whether or not to invite bloggers to the conference. I’m sure that a segment of the members are still very wary about our participation. But if, again in the Council’s words from above, “philanthropy depends on the media to spearhead deep, thoughtful discussion of social issues” then I think they’re going to like what they find.

One parting thought I want to leave everyone with is that I do not believe that online and offline media should be viewed as being separate. It is the message, not the medium that is important. My hope is that as groups like Council on Foundations and the Chronicle of Philanthropy begin to embrace philanthropy bloggers, that we welcome them and work to integrate the online and offline conversation. That is the challenge that I am working on as I refine the Giving Carnival.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Giving Blogs, Media, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (1)