Category Archives: Giving Blogs

The Philanthropic Family

May 12, 2008 – 4:42 pm

My friend Sharon Schneider, a philanthropic director at Foundation Source, has launched a new blog called The Philanthropic Family. From the Christmas photo of her and her extended family on the masthead, to the tag line, “infusing everyday life with the love of humanity”, Sharon makes it clear that this is a very personal blog about a very personal passion for giving.

I’ve sat with Sharon in the offices of one of my clients and watched as she gave very high quality, technical advice. Yet in addition to these “tactical” skills, Sharon’s blog makes it clear that she understands the human qualities of community and giving.

A great new blog! Check it out.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Millennials as Social Citizens

April 29, 2008 – 9:00 am

The Millennials are coming!!

Millennials (or Generation Y), the generation coming of age in the new millennium, have been derided as having “helicopter parents” being “boomerang kids”, having an excessive sense of self-worth and generally being a pain in the butt in the corporate world.

But they are also volunteering like mad.

USA Today reports that they volunteer more than any previous generation and the Wall Street Journal reports today that corporations are finding that one of the best ways to attract them as employees is to offer them paid time off to volunteer.

The Millennials are the children of the Baby Boomers, the generation that I argue is fueling a Second Great Wave of Philanthropy. They don’t have the assets yet to be a force in philanthropy on the donation side (although Resource Generation is already organizing those that do), but the way that they will interact with and view the nonprofit sector is being defined right now.

You can read about this group on the excellent Future Leaders in Philanthropy blog (co-founded by my sister who no longer writes for it). And now you can follow the role of Millennials as “social citizens” at the aptly named Social Citizens blog.

Authored by Kari Dunn of the Case Foundation and Allison Fine, an author and experienced blogger, Social Citizens is a blog discussion focused around the Social Citizens paper that Fine wrote for the Case Foundation. In a recent blog post Fine talks about the blog:

The release of Social Citizens BETA today is very exciting for what it isn’t – and what it is. Late last year, Kari Dunn and Ben Binswanger of The Case Foundation asked me to write a paper for the Foundation about the emergence of Millennials, 15-29 year olds, as activists. They wanted to know more about how these young people are using all of their widgets and gadgets for causes.

And that’s when we talked about what the paper isn’t.

We decided to go beyond a simply litany of the ways that young people are using blogs, social networks, and videos to share information about their favorite causes. We wanted to go a step further and ask harder “so what” questions. What does it mean to Millennials to have the ability to become an advocate for their cause instantly, broadly, inexpensively, and what does their ability to do so mean for the rest of us?

The Foundation provided me with an opportunity to cast a wide net across the real of Millennial activism; from Facebook to the Red Campaign, from the presidential campaign trail to the human devastation in Darfur, from Gossip Girls to Invisible Children, a documentary about the difficult lives of the children of Uganda. I followed the trail of email, blogs, YouTube videos, websites, donations, Tweets, and IMs around the country and even across the globe. I interviewed over thirty people, read many articles, papers, books, and websites, and examined the data on who is doing what for causes. And what I found was astounding for its scope, scale, and idealistic intentions.

Marnie Webb, a key informant in the paper, asked, “What, if anything, does all of the clicking, blogging, and “friending” add up to in the end?” And my answer is, “Far more than I imagined, far greater than I had hoped.”

Millennials are doing more than pinging and poking and sharing information about causes. They are radically altering the very notion of what it means to be an active citizen in the process, and that’s why we’re calling them Social Citizens.

This is definitely going to be a blog to watch.

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

The Growing Blog Team

April 24, 2008 – 9:03 am

After the success of last year’s One Post Challenge, I thought that putting together a large blog team for the upcoming Council on Foundations conference might lead to a more dynamic conversation. So far, the list of people signing up has been excellent. You can read some background on what I’m looking for here and here. If you’ll be at the conference and would like to sign up to participate, shoot me an email. The conference this year combines the annual events for corporate philanthropy, community foundations, family foundations and private foundations. I would particularly like to add some representatives from family foundations to the list below.

The confirmed bloggers are:

My hope at last year’s conference was to open a “portal” into the event through which non-attendees could participate. While I think I was at least partially successful in providing a view into the event, the “participation” I was hoping for (for instance, a reader posting a question which I could then ask at a session and then blog about the answer) did not really occur. After the huge success of the One Post Challenge in creating reader debates around certain issues, I’m hoping that this year, we might get more of a back and forth going.

Let me know if you want to join the team and mark May 3-7 on your calendar for an explosion of activity on this blog as I begin posting entries from 10+ bloggers.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Foundations, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency | Comments (0)

Tactical Philanthropy Blogger Team

April 16, 2008 – 11:03 am

A quick update on the blogger team I’m building for the Council on Foundations conference. Right now the team includes Jacob Harold of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Paul Shoemaker of Social Venture Partners and Sara Melillo of the McCormick Tribune Foundation. Do you have something to say about philanthropy? Would you like to share your thoughts on the conference? Shoot me an email, we’ll work on the details and I’ll add you to the team.

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

“a fundraiser” Writing for the The NonProfit Times

February 1, 2008 – 3:38 pm

In what I think is a coup for The NonProfit Times, the paper today launched an online column authored by “a fundraiser”, the anonymous author of the blog Don’t Tell The Donor. The paper says they know the identity of the blogger who they say is anonymous, “because the author is well known in the sector and he/she/its bosses wouldn’t be pleased.”

The inaugural column begins:

How would you feel if you discovered that 500 of your donors had created a group on a social networking Web site like Facebook to publicly discuss their experiences donating to your organization?

I suspect some fundraisers would panic with a sense of fear.

You can read the full column here.

You’ll remember that “a fundraiser” won (in a landslide) my One Post Challenge, when he/she figured out a simple, clever way to generate an unbelievable 700 comments on her/his post and inspired refugees in Africa to dance in joy.

Better read that column.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Information Sharing in Philanthropy

January 23, 2008 – 11:45 am

I wrote a post a while ago called Paul Brest Needs a Blog (Paul is the head of the Hewlett Foundation). I’ve been an advocate for more people in philanthropy to start blogging in general. In the above mentioned post I wrote:

So why should foundations blog? It seems to me that the imperative is not for them to embrace technology so much as it is for foundations to join and begin to drive the online philanthropy conversation. [But] it is the two-way flow of information that blogs encourage that is important, not blogs themselves.

Even so I’ve noted recently that some people feel that I’ve pushed blogging rather than information sharing. As the conversation we’re all having unfolds I think it is important to take a step back and make sure we haven’t missed the forest for the trees. I wish I had expressed my thoughts with more clarity.
When Phil Cubeta recently asked why nonprofits should blog, astute reader Michele Moon asked:

I’m not entirely sure why it’s blogging, in particular, that’s the focus of discussion, especially because it’s now considered a little bit old-hat, Web 1.5. What is it about the format that makes it so essential to transparency and its tyrant? Is it actually blogging you want to see - personal, real-time updates and editorials, followed (if you’re lucky) by people who read, comment, and sometimes stick around to converse?… Why should it be blogging that we aim to do, or is that shorthand for more complicated online interactivity?

I’m guilty of using “blogging” as short hand for information sharing. I’ll stop making that mistake.

When economists speak about efficient markets they are talking about a situation where money flows to the organizations that can put it to the best use. Widely available, robust information is a critical factor for a functioning efficient market. Recently, in a conversation with Phil Buchanan and other readers on this issue I wrote the following (you can find the full thread here. The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently highlighted the conversation):

In an efficient market, investing is a zero sum game. Maximum returns are generated globally so the only question is matching an investor’s risk/return preferences. In inefficient markets, higher returns accrue to more “effective/smarter” investors. In a public benefit market, since all returns accrue to everyone, investors should desire an efficient market within which they could align their social investments with their personal values/goals.

The philanthropic capital markets are highly inefficient. Far more inefficient than any for-profit marketplace.

Therefore, it seems to me that making the philanthropic capital markets more efficient should be the number one priority of large funders who desire to be effective…

I’m not arguing that the public will make better decisions than the “experts”. I’m saying that efficient markets will produce better outcomes than inefficient markets. In the for-profit world, inefficient markets are great for “expert” investors because they can exploit superior information to generate outperformance of investment returns. But these inefficient markets reduce the total returns in the market by preventing capital from flowing to the best performing investments.

What I’m saying is that unlike in the for-profit market, “expert” philanthropist enjoy no advantage from superior information. The returns they generate accrue to the public, and so no “outperformance” is possible. Instead, they should be interested in the total market functioning at a higher level, since that is the only way to increase the social return on investment that accrues to everyone.

This is the challenge we face as a field. How can we ensure that the $300 billion that is given to charity each year is flowing to the organizations that can put the money to its best use? The key will be our ability to supply market participants with widely available, robust information. Blogs are one tool in this work. There are many others.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Evaluation, Foundations, Grantmaking, Impact Measurement, New Philanthropy, Open Source Philanthropy, Philanthropic Capital Markets, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (18)

Blogs as a Public Commons

December 11, 2007 – 4:46 pm

When you interact with Tactical Philanthropy or any other blog in the comments section, you are engaging in public speaking. Proof of this comes from this weeks Chronicle of Philanthropy, which quotes me by republishing comments I posted to the GiveWell blog.

The story in question is the cover story, which provides an extensive overview of GiveWell. In a section discussing co-founder Holden Karnofsky’s “brash” style, the Chronicle writes:

“I get the impression that you are very authentic in your desire to make the world a better place,” [Stannard-Stockton] wrote in the blog’s comments area. “But my take is that a submission like the one you wrote will be dismissed out of hand because you used your normal writing style of sharp criticism.”

Mr. Karnofsky responded that it was not natural for him to “nice up” but conceded “there are times to tone it down.”

I’ve been harping on Holden to figure out how to present his incredibly important message in a way that funders can be more receptive towards (see my back and forth with Holden on this issue during the Chronicle of Philanthropy hosted live chat from today). But if a Chronicle of Philanthropy reporter had called to interview me on the record about GiveWell, I would have focused on the very positive work they are doing, not their drawbacks.

Frankly, though, as much as it can be scary to live in an “on the record” world, I think that it does benefit a more authentic conversation. Like everyone else I turn on my “media face” when I get a call from a reporter.

Welcome to the public square.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Media, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (3)

And The Winner Is…

December 4, 2007 – 8:58 am

Surprise, surprise, the post $500 For Your Nonprofit won, no… absolutely dominated, the One Post Challenge. Regarding whether the post actually furthered the online philanthropy conversation, I will note that a number of people who were drawn to Tactical Philanthropy to vote for their charity stuck around and commented on other posts.

Without further ado here is the victory speech from the author of $500 For Your Nonprofit, the anonymous author of the blog Don’t Tell The Donor.

By “a fundraiser”

When I submitted my entry to Sean’s “One Post Challenge”, it wasn’t my intention to hijack the contest.

Fourteen months ago when I started my Don’t Tell the Donor blog, it was one of only a handful of fundraising blogs. Over the past year, I was initially excited to see so many more bloggers add to the online conversation.

Unfortunately, the proliferation of websites has all too often produced an incestuous conversation. For this medium to reach its strongest potential and serve as a true benefit to the nonprofits we serve, we must find a way to reach out beyond a limited number of fundraisers and foundation staffers to engage directly with individual donors.

As I wrote in my initial post, “blogging is not about talking AT PEOPLE, it’s about making readers part of the story and giving them a reason to be engaged.”

Engaged was a bit of an understatement. Within the first 24 hours, my post generated 57 comments, which by itself would have been enough to win the contest.

Sean himself noted that the deluge of hopeful supporters leaving comments for their cause generated more traffic to the website than his mentions in both the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the New York Times. That single comment proved my point more than the huge number of posts that came in.

…oh, but by the way… there were a heckuva a lot of comments. As I write this now, it looks like there are 683 total comments. I will leave it to Sean to see if he thinks there was any cheating with multiple votes coming from the same IP address (Sean’s note: The voting seems to be valid. Some duplicate voting on both sides, but nothing that would change the outcome)… but here is how I saw the horserace unfold:

A total of ten nonprofits tried to lobby for votes. The early leader, Pride at Work after generating more than 60 votes within the first 36 hours. Thanks to one dedicated activist who was able to use his own site to reach out to more people, Pride at Work built a commanding lead… so much of a lead, they stopped thinking about the contest.

Then, on November 26th, someone who went by the name “Kjerstin” posted comment #75 - the first vote for Forge. That was followed by more than 50 more votes for Forge within the next couple hours… and the battle lines were drawn.

For the last week, votes poured in from both charities. It wasn’t until late on December 3rd when Pride at Work must have thought the voting was over when Forge moved in for their final push. The refugee assistance group poured on more than 250 votes in the final day and won the contest by a final vote (through 683 total votes) by a score of 423-231.

Truth be told, I had never heard of either group when this contest started, but I have learned a lot about them in the past couple weeks… I hope others have. Both groups did an excellent outreach marketing job… and I would suggest that even though I will donate the $500 gift card (Sean’s note: the prize increased to $750 during the contest) I won to Forge, I would like to suggest that Sean award his second $250 award to the second place group in this contest, Pride at Work.

My work here is done. This “fundraiser” is off to run a couple victory laps around the blogosphere. Congratulations to Sean and to Forge (who apparently live about an hour away from each hour). I would encourage other bloggers to organize these challenges… it seems much more effective than those bland carnivals.

Thanks again for letting me be a part.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, One Post Challenge, Philanthropy, Prize Philanthropy, Social Media, nptech | Comments (3)

Blogs Aren’t For Everyone

November 26, 2007 – 9:19 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from an anonymous writer named “S”. S works in communications at a large California-based foundation and has worked in the philanthropy sector for more than a decade.

By “S”

You know what? Blogs aren’t for everyone. I get so tired of hearing how important it is to start a conversation online and care for it and feed it and make it go. Blogging can be a great tool, but has anyone thought about the fact the blogging may not be the greatest thing to ever come to philanthropy? How is posting a blog and receiving comments really a conversation? I post, you post, I post…

Paul Brest needs a blog. Really? What for? Let’s step back and think about this for a moment. Paul Brest needs a blog why? So that his completely scrubbed words can help philanthropy make its mark on the world? Let’s be real. Not only is Paul Brest too busy to have a blog, but the honest truth is, people don’t crave news about philanthropies, they just don’t. I work for a foundation and we share about our work only as much as we want to. Other than that, no go.

This blogging community in philanthropy is tiny. The only people who regularly comment on others’ posts are the bloggers themselves. When you need to ask people to Digg it or to StumbleUpon it, what are you doing? Skewing the result of what normal people might do. People aren’t Digg-ing it or StumblingUpon it because it’s not what is on their agenda.

Philanthropy is a great thing and helping out all kinds of people is a great thing. But foundations get so wrapped up in trying to tell everyone about their work and how great they are. Who cares about what the general public thinks? We are important and we are doing great work. We are so convinced that we need to get out there with our message.

The foundation I work for has spent nearly four decades doing good work. And before the Internet and blogging and Digg and StumbleUpon and other avenues online, we have been able to get the word out as necessary.

I am not against an online conversation or building the interest around philanthropy. We just need to think about it and not assume that everyone should be interested. They have their lives, too.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Foundations, Media, One Post Challenge, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency, nptech | Comments (11)

Blogging Is Like Life

November 23, 2007 – 11:32 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Julia Moulden. Julia is a regular contributor to the world’s #1 blog, the Huffington Post. Her new book, WE ARE THE NEW RADICALS: A Manifesto for Reinventing Yourself and Saving the World, will be published internationally by McGraw-Hill, New York in January 2008

By Julia Moulden

Blogging is like life: it takes on the meaning you give it.

At first, blogging was an act of faith. Long before I had a publisher, I had a blog. From this tiny cyberplatform, I sent forth word about a movement I saw taking shape — that people were longing to do good works. My earliest posts felt like calls into a virtual Grand Canyon, and I listened intently for the first faint echoes.

People like Drew McManus read my blog and made contact. Drew is co-founder of Bring Light, an innovative new website where people can find causes they care about, dialogue with charities and the community, and collaborate to fund a specific project (and, yes, they have a blog). Drew shared many wonderful stories with me, including how, when they were deep in the R&D phase, he came across a young woman’s MySpace page. She was talking to her friends, telling them that her rent had just been lowered by $40 a month, and that she wanted to give that money to charity. She asked if anyone had any suggestions of good causes she might consider. Drew remembers taking a sharp breath in and thinking, “Wow, when I was her age, that extra forty bucks would have gone to beer.”

Fifteen months later, blogging no longer feels like whispering shyly into the void. It has become a way to meet men and women I would otherwise never have encountered, and learn about their lives. Most importantly, it is a way to begin — and nurture — conversations with these people so that we can find ways to work together (like the MySpace woman and her friends) to make an even greater difference.

The need to tell and hear stories is as old as civilization. I now understand that a blog is simply a new tool.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, One Post Challenge, Philanthropy | Comments (3)

Does Blogging Substitute Real Action?

November 21, 2007 – 11:19 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Perla Ni. Perla was the founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her current project is Great Nonprofits, a “Zagat’s”-like guide to nonprofits.

By Perla Ni

Does blogging substitute real action?

I get asked about this a lot because I blog.   Why are all these people blogging?   Why aren’t they out there in the real world doing something?

Especially in the nonprofit world – where there’s so much need and most ED’s I know are busy enough running their programs, fundraising, doing the jobs of 4 people – blogging about nonprofits or philanthropy seems quite a luxury in navel-gazing.  There’s so much work that needs to be done in the real world, why waste time blogging?

I have two minds about this.  On one hand, yes, I’ve seen blogging become an end to itself for some bloggers.  One blogger I know started blogging in order to vent his frustrations about the lack of community spirit in his town.  Though he’s still very much looking for solutions, he’s equally absorbed with monitoring how many people have visited his blog and how long they’ve stayed on the site.  Because the “success” of blogs are measured by these metrics, it’s easy to see how some can get so absorbed in the process of blogging that it saps their focus from tackling the real world problem.\

On the other hand, blogging is essentially the mass, interactive, publishing and the dissemination ideas.  It’s an efficient means for spreading ideas.  As Seth Godin says, “ideas that spread, wins.  Period.”

When we think of some of the most important accomplishments of nonprofits – the civil rights movement, environmental movement, women’s rights movement – these are all massive systemic changes that required the winning of millions of hearts and minds.  The ideas and values at the heart of our nonprofit work – whether it be providing after school programs, cleaning up local streams, providing battered women shelter – need to be spread and supported even more widely if we want systemic change.

That’s where blogging can matter.  Blogging is not the only means – but one easy and efficient channel for you to spread your ideas far and wide.    Even those of you who are on the front lines – working with incarcerated juveniles, or running a museum, or providing health counseling – you are all also in the business of winning support for your patients, clients and cause.   You are all in the business of gaining converts to your ideals and goals.  Now if they can only add another 2 hours to the day!

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, One Post Challenge, Philanthropy, Social Media, nptech | Comments (4)

A Shout-Out to Youth!

November 18, 2007 – 5:23 pm

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Jamie Kong. Jamie is the Program Coordinator for YouthChoose, a DonorsChoose.org Youth Philanthropy Program.  DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit website that connects individual donors with teachers requesting materials and experiences their students need to thrive in the classroom.  When donors entrust large donations to the YouthChoose program, youth in the program have the opportunity to reflect on their own educational experiences and decide together how these funds can have the greatest impact on public school classrooms through the DonorsChoose.org website.  In this way, YouthChoose offers young people, who are often the beneficiaries of philanthropy, the chance to become philanthropists themselves.

Jamie Kong

A shout-out for youth.  They are the next generation of philanthropists.  It’s young people who are on MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Xanga, and are the segment of the population that is the most comfortable with blogging.  And it’s young people who will direct the future of philanthropy.  So, wouldn’t it be great if we could connect youth with the conversation that is happening here?

Reading the “$500 for Your Nonprofit” post got me thinking.  The beauty of this post is that it opened the conversation to everyone and gave everyone a chance to participate—even without a new idea to introduce.  It invited people who may not have their own conversation starter to join the discussion.

So, I would like to start a post for youth philanthropy.  If are a young person, share the issues you care about or your experiences with philanthropy. If you work with youth, share any ideas to increase youth engagement in philanthropy.  And if you don’t belong to either of these groups, share how your experiences as a young person informed your decisions about philanthropy today.  The sharing of experiences can be as catalytic as the sharing of ideas.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, New Philanthropy, One Post Challenge, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Youth, nptech | Comments (4)

One Post Challenge Outcomes

November 15, 2007 – 5:15 pm

When this thing comes to a conclusion, we’ll get to look back at what we learned, what we can do better next time and what impact we’ve had.

Impact Item #1: One Post Challenge participant Rich Polt (find his entry here) caught the blogging bug and has signed up as a regular guest contributor to PhilanTopic, one of my favorite philanthropy blogs. You can catch Rich’s first post here:

Rich begins his post: “I am incredibly conflicted about Second Life.”

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, One Post Challenge, Philanthropy | Comments (1)

$500 For Your Nonprofit!

November 12, 2007 – 8:34 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from the anonymous fundraiser who runs the blog Don’t Tell The Donor. If you’ve been forwarded this post, I vouch for the fact that the $500 is real and will be given to the winner. You can read about the details of this contest here. I would like to note that the winner is the post with the largest number of people posting a comment, not the most comments. So no need to post multiple comments from the same person.

By “a fundraiser”

I’m the anonymous fundraiser who runs the blog DontTellTheDonor.org and I am thrilled to be published on Tactical Philanthropy as part of Sean’s One-Post Challenge. I have also noticed the same tendency Sean cites that if we can encourage readers to leave just one comment - it can be a springboard for a rapid and engaging discussion.

My blog tries to inject a daily dose of humor into fundraising news stories… sometimes I get my hands on a juicy piece of gossip that makes its way from development office to development office… but my real love is for the profession of fundraising and the opportunity my day job gives me to connect people to the causes they believe in. I love providing opportunities for donors to give.

Therefore, I am going to use Sean’s “One Post Challenge” to demonstrate the power of fundraisers who understand the online world. Blogging is not about talking AT PEOPLE, it’s about making readers part of the story and giving them a reason to be engaged. I am going to attempt to win this first annual one post challenge by turning this contest on it’s very head.

I need your help… and I promise to try and make it worth your time.

The blogger who gets the most comments to their post will win a $500 “Good Card”, the new “gift card” from Network for Good that let’s the receiver make a grant to the nonprofit of their choice.

If I win, I will give the $500 to the charity named by the most people in the comments to this post. For example, if you are reading this post and you want me to give the $500 to your local Habitat for Humanity or your neighbor’s animal rescue - simply post a comment with the name of that charity. I hope to encourage people who love charities to visit this website and leave a comment.

Maybe I’m being conservative, but I think I would need 50 comments on this post in order to win the contest… and there will probably be a dozen different charities with varying level of votes… so, technically a plurality of 10 comments for one non-profit could win your favorite group a $500 donation. It’s that easy.
Forward this post to your friends and co-workers and encourage them to post a comment on my form and you could be a hero for your favorite charity

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Fundraising, One Post Challenge, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (700)

Blogging Anonymously

November 5, 2007 – 1:00 pm

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from the anonymous author(s) of the Gates Keepers blog:

Gates Keepers amplifies civil society voices on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Anyone can join us in exercising our rights by blogging and commenting anonymously at http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org

By Gates Keepers

If we want to develop a critical analysis of the activities of Big Philanthropy we need to exercise our rights to freedom of opinion and expression without interference. To exercise these rights without fear we must blog anonymously.

Digital technology has allowed those of us who disagree with mainstream views and manufactured consent on Big Philanthropy to safely amplify our voices. Where formerly we feared retribution from governments, foundations, and the private sector, we can now speak out about the hegemony of the philanthropy-industrial complex in setting the agenda for global development and public health.

In the case of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we are afraid of what we like to call ‘Bill Chill’. If we criticise the Foundation in our own names our funding will be cut or we will lose our jobs. Anonymity is necessary for us to survive in our professional activities and our daily work. It allows us to exercise our right to expression without fear.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Foundations, One Post Challenge, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (13)