Category Archives: nptech

PhilanTech

January 14, 2008 – 9:11 am

Dahna Goldstein, the founder of PhilanTech, sent me the following email. She didn’t post it as a comment because she didn’t want to appear to be plugging her company, but I asked her for permission to share it.

I’ve just caught up on the discussion on your blog about Google Finance and nonprofits, and wanted to share my $.02.  Google is potentially in a unique position — as are you, by virtue of your thought leadership and initiative on this front — to positively affect how information is shared with the sector at large, with donors, and with other interested parties.

The absence of standardized information about nonprofits makes it difficult to suggest a set of metrics or a pre-defined combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, as a number of your readers have pointed out.  And asking for new types of reporting from nonprofits risks placing an additional burden on already-burdened nonprofits.

PhilanTech has taken a step towards addressing this issue.  We created the PhilanTrack online grants management system to centralize and streamline the grants management process — creating centralized reporting about nonprofit organizations, activities, outcomes, and finances.  Our vision is for a centralized reporting for all donors (institutional and individual) and other interested parties (researchers, the nonprofits themselves, etc.) to obtain information to inform funding decisions — without creating additional hoops through which the nonprofits must jump.  I’d be happy to tell you more about how it is structured, but in a nutshell, PhilanTrack helps foundations request the information they want to receive from nonprofits (to help them evaluate their effectiveness as grantmakers and to help evaluate potential grants) while helping nonprofits avoid reinventing the wheel each time they report to a different funder.  The types of information that the system manages (activities, outcomes, finances, lessons learned, etc.), I believe, are the types of information that Google should consider posting about nonprofits.

While expense ratios, as you have pointed out, have significant shortcomings, there is still a lot that can be learned about the financial health and stability of an organization (if not its effectiveness) by looking at its finances.  It requires looking beyond CharityNavigator and beyond 990 data in ways that are not familiar to many (both individuals and institutions) who are considering gifts to nonprofits.  At PhilanTech, we have addressed this issue by developing a financial analysis tool that uses basic financial statements to provide six analyses (financial mix, efficiency, debt servicing ability, liquidity, long-term viability, profitability) with a number of different metrics and explanations of why each metric is important and useful in evaluating the financial health of a nonprofit.

Google Finance pages (or Google Knol) should, in my view, combine these financial analyses with the following:  quantitative information about outcomes (where available and qualitative where quantitative info isn’t available); qualitative information about activities, programs/projects, mission, people, sustainability, replication (where relevant), lessons learned, challenges faced and overcome; related organizations (including any partnerships/collaborations); news; funders; discussion (like the type of discussion you prompted about the Red Cross), and perhaps something like the 360 degree views GreatNonprofits is working to create.  And there are ways it could be done without placing too great a burden on nonprofits by leveraging some of the reporting nonprofits are already doing.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Evaluation, Impact Measurement, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

United Way on Google Finance

January 10, 2008 – 9:57 am

After reading a United Way blogger’s reaction to my prediction that UW would develop an industry standard, narrative outcome measurement form and my discussion of Google Finance, I’ve started a discussion thread on the Google Finance page for United Way.

The United Way’s focus on Outcome Measurement is wonderful. I wish  there were more resources like the ones you list at http://www.unitedway.org/Outcomes/  elsewhere on the web. I was wondering if someone at United Way could  explain to me a little bit about how your organization thinks about  qualitative vs. quantitative evaluation of nonprofits. It seems to me  that quantitative metrics are probably easier to measure, but less  valuable than more difficult to measure qualitative outcomes.

Any help you can provide in thinking through this issue would be  wonderful. Thanks!

FYI: While the Red Cross has stopped posting to the thread I started on their page, I understand from sources that they are taking the questions about their effectiveness quite seriously.

I wonder how the United Way will respond?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Impact Measurement, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (3)

Rebooting Nonprofit Evaluation Debate

January 7, 2008 – 9:46 am

A lively debate about nonprofit evaluation and metrics has been raging in response to my request for input on my meeting later this week with Google.org. However, the conversation has splintered into a debate over whether a systematic, “metric” driven process of scientific measurement is needed, or whether the frame of scientific measurement is “an epistemologically impoverished frame” through which to understand nonprofit evaluation.

I personally believe evaluating nonprofits is mostly about evaluating their output (the social good they produce). Since it is difficult (impossible?) to quantify this output, I think the focus on metrics as a framework for evaluation is misplaced. Metrics can be used, but they should be designed on a case-by-case basis for each situation. That being said, I think the conversation has fallen into the trap of being constrained by historical frames of reference.

I want to have a different conversation.

I’m interested in what information is available to donors who want to evaluate a nonprofit and which of this information is useful. Google.com is mostly a resource that points to information; they don’t tend to create a lot of their own content. So if we imagine a future version of the nonprofit data inside of Google Finance, I don’t imagine it will be some new metric that we design. Instead, it will point to existing information on the web. When I first wrote about nonprofit info in Google Finance, I said I hoped they would not display Charity Navigator ratings (although I would support them noting if a nonprofit had a zero or one star rating since I do believe that a Charity Navigator rating at this level is a significant red flag)

So the conversation I want to have is what information do readers think that donors should consider when evaluating a nonprofit? Then secondly, where or how can this information be captured online so that it can be displayed in Google Finance?

Open Invitation to Foundation Employees

I realize that if you work at a foundation, you may not want to jump into a conversation that involves telling another foundation what to do. However, the conversation we’re having here is really important and would not be complete without the input of the army of program officers (ie. Nonprofit evaluators) that read this blog. So please consider commenting anonymously (just let us know you’re a program officer) or comment publicly and realize that we’re having a broad conversation about nonprofit evaluation that goes beyond Google.org and Google Finance

Open Invitation to Nonprofit Employees

A conversation about nonprofit evaluation would not be complete without the input of the nonprofits being evaluated. What information do you, as nonprofits, what donors looking at when they evaluate you? It could be that someday the Google Finance website about your organization becomes the top ranked search result on google for your nonprofit. What do you want on that page?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Grantmaking, Impact Measurement, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency, nonprofits | Comments (70)

Philanthropy Conversation Wants You!

January 4, 2008 – 9:09 am

Rather than post today, I’m going to point you back to this post and encourage you to join the growing conversation in the comments section. I think the topic of this conversation is the most important issue facing philanthropy today. The fact that this conversation is centered around Google adds time sensitive relevance to the subject, but the subject matter at hand is far bigger than Google. The issue is how can we improve the available information about nonprofits so that the $300 billion+ donated to charity each year can flow to the best nonprofits. Improving the flow of philanthropic capital will completely transform the nonprofit sector and you won’t believe what we as a sector will be able to accomplish.

So click here and add your voice to the mix. Philanthropy needs you.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Grantmaking, Impact Measurement, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency | Comments (2)

What to Measure and Why in Philanthropy

January 3, 2008 – 12:24 pm

I’m meeting with someone from Google.org next week to talk about what kind of information I think they should make available about nonprofits in Google Finance and other ways that Google.com’s mission statement to “organizing the world’s information” can be directed at the Third Sector.

In preparation, I’d like to spend some time speaking as a community about this issue. I encourage you to leave comments or email me your thoughts.

In response to the thread I started on the Google Finance Red Cross board about how effective they are, I got a comment from Leyla Farah of Cause + Effect public relations:

One item I’d offer: a measurement of “average cost of impact” - in other words, the organization’s total budget divided by the total number of people (or animals, or acres of land) it’s benefited within a specific time period. That metric would (1) force each organization to provide a definition of how it helps people (etc.) - and (2) force it to account for all the costs associated with providing that help.

While Phil Cubeta of Gift Hub scolded me for focusing on metrics:

Paradise Lost versus Gone with the Wind. What metrics do we use to determine which is better? Some subject matter requires judgment, taste, discernment, even wisdom. We have movie critics, book critics, educators to help us make more discriminating judgments. Before we cry ourselves hoarse over metrics, we have to ask whether philanthropy is more like art or more like business. The call for metrics can be a bullying move by the half educated to impose their MBA logic on a sector whose reason for being is that it stands in contrast to both government and business. As the old saying goes, “Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand.” Stressing metrics, Sean, is in terrible taste. You paint yourself as Barbarian.

Personally, I’d like to state that I don’t intend to stress metrics as being valuable unto themselves. However, I do think that all things in life can be judged, at least in each person’s personal view, as being bad, good, better and best (I’m sure there are some exceptions, but you get the point). I think it is critical that we find ways to judge nonprofits so that philanthropic dollars can flow to the organizations that do the most good in the world. To me, funding the best of what is available is far more important than trying to invent the next big thing. I think that information about nonprofits is what is needed and this is why I care about nonprofits being in the Google Finance portal.

As a professional investor in for-profit companies, I can tell you that there are very few (none) golden metrics that allow you to comprehensively judge one for-profit against others. Even very widely used metrics like “price to earnings ratios”, “dividend yields”, “profit margins”, and “earning growth rates”, have been show in practice to be very useful, but not in any way adequate to judging the superiority of one investment choice vs. another on their own.

In my Philanthropy Predictions for 2008 that I wrote for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, I made one reference to measurement:

A United Way-authored outcome-measurement template will be adopted by the sector as the standard format for nonprofit organizations to report on their effectiveness. The narrative-driven form will soon be available for download from the home pages of many nonprofits.

Note that I suggest a “narrative-driven form”. If you read analyst reports on for-profit investments, you’ll see a lot of numbers and metrics, but the heart of the report is a narrative about the company.

This brings me to an excellent comment from the thread mentioned above from an anonymous “young staffer”:

If I may carry the Paradise Lost vs. Gone with the Wind analogy a little further, I think it raises some interesting points.

The first is that there are plenty of potentially relevant metrics with which one could back up one’s a claim for each work’s superiority: their longevity in years, the number of universities that include them in introductory freshmen humanities courses (as a proxy measure of their centrality to our cultural canon), a RottenTomatoes.com-style survey of critics. I can even imagine poor grad students counting allusions to them in last year’s bestsellers.

Relying solely on any one of these potentially valid measures, however, would obviously leave you wide open to criticism for the flaws of your methodology and the limits of the analysis. To construct a strong argument for your preferred choice, one could use both the metrics and qualitative measures. Same goes for nonprofits - the measures are neither perfect nor complete, but that is not the same as nonexistent.

I think the other point is the difficulty of comparing apples and oranges. Let me reframe the question as “Paradise Lost” work of literature vs. “Gone with the Wind” work of film. Both are widely-considered seminal works in their mediums. It’s not hard to imagine metrics, like those above, that could easily distinguish each as a leader within its respective medium. It is much harder, however, to compare them very convincingly across mediums. An author and a film buff might reach very different conclusions about which one matters more in today’s culture. Their distinctive values and tastes will influence that decision.

The same, I think, is true for nonprofits. Too universal a measure like “average cost of impact” might not be helpful for identifying whether a great afterschool program in New York or a great community health program in Uganda is better. The costs and the measures of impact are on different scales. But metrics certainly might help you identify each within its field as the seminal nonprofit. From there, one’s values and tastes might be expected to guide your choice.

So there you have it, a good beginning to an important conversation. If there was a single webpage, like this one for the Red Cross, or this one for Cisco Systems, that contained all the information you would like to see when you wanted to examine a nonprofit for the first time and decide if you might want to support them, what information would you like there to be on the site?

Google.org owes me nothing and anything I tell them might be ignored. But on the other hand, I will deliver the message that we co-create over the next week in this discussion. Someone from one of the largest (and oldest) foundations has already asked me to pass on their offer of help to Google.org after reading my posts on the subject. I do think that any effort that you the reader put into this discussion will be heard by the powers that be at Google.org, even if they do not take action.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Grantmaking, Impact Measurement, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency, nonprofits | Comments (37)

More Google Finance for Nonprofits

December 27, 2007 – 10:01 am

Someone at Google.org read my posts (here and here) about nonprofit information being available within Google Finance and invited me to meet with them early next month. If you have any thoughts you’d like me to share with them, shoot me an email or leave a comment.

Checking back on the Red Cross discussion I started on the Google Finance discussion board, I found a new reply. I commend the Red Cross employees who have taken a shot at my question of how they know if they are effective, but I’m a little shocked that so far the organization has be unable to provide even minor information related to whether they do a good job. “Hard Nose Philanthropy” is on the rise, nonprofits need to be able to answer a simple question like “Tell me how you know if you’re being effective”.

Does anyone know of any other discussions on Google Finance nonprofit discussion boards? Here’s the new reply from the Red Cross:

From: ike.pig…@gmail.com - view profile Date: Wed, Dec 26 2007 7:36 am

Hello — this is Ike, and I am a regional communicator for the Red
Cross.  I stumbled across this over the holiday break.

I understand what you are talking about, with regards to our internal
measure of “effectiveness.”  Unfortunately, you’re asking us the
equivalent of choosing a favorite child.

Such a metric would be arbitrary, and could be easily fashioned to
highlight whichever line of service we wished to justify.  In doing
so, number-crunchers would ask the question “Why in heck is Red Cross
involved in things that AREN’T as high-payoff as _______?”  Just look
at the numbers.  Why be involved in disaster relief when blood
provides the higher “impact?”  Or vice versa?

We’re dealing with two different dynamics here.  As a large multi-
purpose humanitarian organization, we’ve got a tradition being
involved in a number of different activities.  Disaster, blood,
service to armed forces, preparedness, first aid/safety, and some of
the international initiatives Maura described.  Whether we like it or
not, there is a significant slice of America that expects the Red
Cross to play a role in each of those arenas.  Public expectation
drives part of our mission.  In some circumstances, we have made a
promise to be there (like immediate disaster relief).  In others, we
end up getting involved because people think that’s what we’re
supposed to do, and no one else is stepping up (like the Safe and Well
website partnership.)

The second dynamic is our volunteers.  Some only have an interest in
disaster.  Some only want to teach first aid classes.  Some want to
volunteer to drive needed units of blood from the storage centers to
the hospitals.  As a volunteer-led group, we’d alienate so many people
who are truly volunteering their time to make it all work.

Are you really asking us to pick the one most effective line of
service, and do that to the exclusion of the rest?  Because applying a
universal metric to all the lines of service is an invitation to
starting feeding some and starving others.  That would be akin to
comparing the costs of helping 10 families in an apartment fire versus
10 single-home families spread out on different nights.  Yes, one is
more “cost-effective.”  That doesn’t mean it’s time to abandon the
rest.

I think the key element you are dancing around here is the way we
handle donations.  If someone wants to donate just to local fires in
their local chapter jurisdiction, we can assure that happens.  If
someone wants to donate just to Services to Armed Forces, their wishes
are respected and followed through.  We look at the business model of
each of those lines differently, asking first “Are we meeting this
mission?” and “Can we meet it more efficiently another way?”

From: sstannard-stock…@ensemblecapital.com - view profile Date: Thurs, Dec 27 2007 8:28 am

Thanks so much for jumping into the conversation. I’m not asking you
to choose anything. I’m just asking how the Red Cross tracks whether
you’re doing a good job.

For example, at my firm, Ensemble Capital Management we look at hard
numbers like revenue growth, assets under management and assets per
client. We also look at softer measures like visibility in the media
and online, depth of relationships with referral sources, and client
satisfaction. You can put good numbers on the first set, but not on
the second.

All I’m asking the Red Cross is how do you know if you are doing a
good job? What do you track? And how do you compare yourself? For
instance, what if I asked you why my money could do more good by
donating it to you than donating it to another similar organization or
even to FEMA? If an investor or prospective client asked me why I
thought that Ensemble was a better investment or firm to hire than our
competitors, I could speak to the issue for hours, citing both hard
data and soft qualities. I’m just asking the Red Cross the same
question.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Impact Measurement, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency | Comments (8)

Google Finance for Nonprofits

December 17, 2007 – 11:10 am

I don’t know the inside story of how and why Google began including nonprofits in Google Finance. I almost wonder if it was an accident. Google pipes in data from Hoovers.com, which in turn has some limited info on nonprofits. Poking around Google Finance, I realized they also include profiles of cities (like this page for San Francisco).

The Google Finance nonprofit pages seem to not just be in beta, but appear to have not actually have been designed intentionally. For instance, the page on the Red Cross includes “Key Stats & Ratios” such as Net Profit Margin, which of course is not relevant for a nonprofit. The page also refers to “Related Companies”, instead of a more appropriate heading like “Related Organizations”.

So let’s assume for a moment that we have a bit of a blank slate to work with. If you were designing a template for the Google Finance nonprofit pages, what would you include? I was just cc’d on an email to Larry Brilliant asking him to consider some suggestions for what info might be made available on these pages and the sender is someone who is use to getting replies to his emails. So while we might have limited input into what Google eventually does, I don’t think this discussion is academic.

Here’s what I would like to see on the nonprofit pages:

Key Stats and Ratios: I would rename this “Key Stats” and not include any ratios. Displaying ratios imply that the ratio should be high or low, but very few ratios in the nonprofit world are all that relevant. In the for-profit world, most ratios include some sort of profitability number (not relevant to nonprofits), valuation metrics (not relevant to nonprofits) or are balance sheet ratios showing assets or debt (for nonprofits a big cash hoard can be viewed either positively or negatively). Instead, include info like: Fundraising Total, Total Budget, Total Employees, Endowment, etc. My strongest feeling is that the most important thing is for Google to avoid any mention of overhead expense ratios. Google has a chance to break the grip that overhead expense ratios have on donors and the media.

Overview: Right now, the Hoover’s profile is here. I’d like to see Google partner with someone more focused on the nonprofit sector than Hoover’s is.

Discussion: This is great. Don’t change a thing!

News: Recent headlines is a nice feature.

Blog Posts: Only some of the nonprofit pages include this section. This seems odd since I assume there must be only one template. But of course I would like to see this section maintained or expanded.

Related Companies: Calling this “Related Organizations” would make more sense. I think in this area Google should leverage their Map software and show me not only similar organizations, but local ones as well. If I’m looking at the Red Cross site from my home outside of San Francisco, I’d like to see disaster relief organizations that focus on the Bay Area.

Resources: This is a section I’d like to see added. Display links to GiveWell, Great Nonprofits, the nonprofit’s 990, the nonprofit’s website, a Wikipedia page, etc.

Video: Allow nonprofits to upload video content that donors can watch to get a better understanding of the organization.

Donate: Partner with Network for Good to allow donors to give directly to the nonprofit.

Contact info: Display contact info.

Blogging: Why not integrate with Blogger and offer a hosted blog to nonprofits to write their own blog?

Events: Include a list of upcoming events that the nonprofit is hosting or participating in.

Lastly, I’d like to see an area where the nonprofit can upload their own text about the organization as well as their answers to a set of predefined questions such as, “How does your organization track its effectiveness” as well as provide links to information such as mission statement, historical goals and what was actually achieved.

What would you like to see on the page? Leave a comment on this post and I’ll do what I can to get the suggestions into the right hands at Google.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency, nonprofits | Comments (10)

Google Nonprofit Pages Feature Foundations

December 14, 2007 – 11:45 pm

The Google Nonprofit pages feature large private foundations as well as nonprofits. I can’t wait to see the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation discussion board explode once people wake up to this new service.

I thought I’d go ahead and post a question to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation discussion board. You can find the thread here. I’ve reprinted my question below. I look forward to their response.

To the Hewlett Staff,
I live in California and have a two year old son and a four year old
daughter. I’m very interested directing some of my philanthropic
resources to improve K-12 education in my state. I see from your
website that you have a program focus on Improving Public Education in
California. I’m particularly interested in the third “strand” of this
focus, which you describe as “supporting innovative approaches to
improving the quality of academic instruction in the state’s
demographically diverse public schools.”

I’m personally at a loss to identify how I might donate my money to a
nonprofit which is improving the quality of academic instruction in
the state. I realize that picking a four star nonprofit from Charity
Navigator doesn’t make any sense, since improving education likely
requires extensive program evaluation and educated staff (both
categorized as overhead).

Would you mind pointing me in the direction of a few nonprofits that
your program staff believes are worthy of my donation? If you wouldn’t
mind linking to some of the research you’ve performed to come to your
conclusions, it would make me feel better to not just be following you
blindly.

I look forward to partnering with you in your efforts to support
education. While my donations might pale in comparison to your annual
grants, I know a ton of other parents who would be thrilled to donate
time and money to your grantees if they felt that doing so would
actually do something to improve education.

-Sean Stannard-Stockton
TacticalPhilanthropy.com

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Foundations, Grantmaking, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (1)

Red Cross Replies

December 14, 2007 – 11:21 pm

The Red Cross took less than 7 hours to respond to my question about their effectiveness on the new Google Finance for Nonprofits portal. You can read our back and forth here. I believe that this is the first discussion occurring on a Google Nonprofit page. Personally I’m glad the discussion is about effectiveness. The Red Cross gives a good reply that most donors will be happy with. I was impressed. But I’m sure that no foundation or someone like Holden Karnofsky would find the answer sufficient. No links to impact data. But that’s OK. All of that is coming a short way down the road. I think that open discussions between donors, nonprofits and others in a hosted forum like Google will only hasten the move towards transparency and demonstrated impact.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Impact Measurement, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Social Media, nonprofits | Comments (4)

Google Launches Nonprofit Portal

December 14, 2007 – 12:23 pm

This is a big deal. If you go to Google Finance, you can now search for charities by name and pull up data about them, news stories, blog posts and leave comments in a discussion forum (hat tip to “a fundraiser”). As far as I know this is brand new and as far as I know, I’m the first person to leave a comment in a discussion group.

On the Red Cross page, I wrote:

Is the Red Cross Effective? I don’t mean do they have low overhead expenses or some silly measure like that. I mean do they take donor dollars and use them to fund an organization that produces high levels of social impact? If the answer is yes, I’d love to know about any data that backs this claim up.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Sean Stannard-Stockton
TacticalPhilanthropy.com

It was just last month that a One Post Challenge entry suggested that Google should buy GuideStar. Maybe Google thinks they can do it alone.

I think this is a game changer. If these Google pages resided at the top of the search results when people look up nonprofits, than these pages will become de facto home pages, but with blog posts, new stories and discussions that are both positive and negative. What if you’re a donor thinking about giving to the Red Cross and the first link you find is the Google Finance page? You take a look and find a question from someone asking if the Red Cross is effective… and no response from the Red Cross.

This is a big deal.

But it is obviously beta. Right now there is no silly overhead expense ratio analysis. But on the other hand Google bizarrely lists “Key Stats and Ratios” that are all blank, since the stats and ratios all refer to profitability measures. What data will Google choose to display? The choices they make will influence donors and the flow of charitable dollars in a big way.

What information do you think Google should list? I’ll do my best to get suggestions in front of Google.

If you want your voice heard, check out the Google Finance site, search for a nonprofit and leave your own comment in the discussion forum. You’ll be one of the first.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Media, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Social Media, Transparency, nonprofits | Comments (12)

Great Nonprofits

December 14, 2007 – 11:06 am

I wrote yesterday about the Chronicle of Philanthropy article about Great Nonprofits. In the article, some people voice the criticism that the site has just positive reviews. So I emailed founder Perla Ni and put the criticism to her.

(Full Disclosure: Perla is a friend of mine. I know her professionally, but I also went to a party at her house earlier this month. Also, the photo of me that appears in the Chronicle of Philanthropy article is from when I volunteered at a Great Nonprofits event a few months ago. Clearly, I’m not the person to argue the merits of Great Nonprofits. So I’ll let Perla’s response to my question speak for itself. If readers have further questions, I’m sure Perla will respond in the comments section.)

Sean: “The criticism I know that you will hear and I will for writing about your project, will be that all the reviews are positive. The lowest rating on the site for a nonprofit with two or more reviews is 4+. How would you respond to someone who complains about the lack of negative reviews?

Perla’s response:

Great question. The answer is long - but I think your question deserves a full answer.

First, your readers shouldn’t look at the star ratings so much.  It’s a short-hand really and cannot fully reflect the nuances of someone’s opinion about a nonprofit.  Unlike product reviews, for instance, where the product is supposed to do a specific thing, nonprofits do a lot of different things sometimes and so it’s much more valuable to read the full review, especially the part on the “Great” things about the organization as well as “How to make it even better” which offers very concrete ideas for how the nonprofit can make its programs/services better.

Secondly, we have a selection bias right now in 2 ways because we’re just starting out.

1. As you’d expect, nonprofits that feel confident about their programs/services are more likely to participate on a website like ours. Though “consumer reviews” are standard now in just about every other sector - restaurant reviews, book reviews, car reviews, hotel reviews, movie reviews - it’s a new concept in the nonprofit world.

And so only the nonprofits that feel pretty confident about the quality of their services/programs are going to participate. My theory is that these probably are nonprofits that do indeed provide better than average programs/services.

2. Because since we’re starting out and the larger world of nonprofit stakeholders hasn’t heard of us, we rely on the nonprofits to get the word out to their clients, volunteers, donors and other stakeholders.

And the natural inclination is to ask one’s most trusted and closest stakeholders to write a review. But in time - as with anything on the internet - because the information is so readily available and transparent, other stakeholders become aware of the site, they will chime in and react to the reviews on the site. There’s a counterbalancing effect on the web because information is so transparent. People tend to feel more free, in fact, to disagree online than in person.

So in time, those two selection biases should correct itself in time.

Now, there’s a third bias that will continue even when the site gets more counterbalancing reviews. It’s the psychological tendency that people remember good experiences more strongly than negative experiences. This is well documented in psychology studies - and it’s the reason why the average review about consumer products is not 3 out of 5, but 3.4 out of 5. But this is still probably more accurate than the “Expert” reviews (ie: staff writers for consumer products magazines) where the average rating is 4 out of 5.

I hope that helps.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Transparency, nonprofits | Comments (2)

Kjerstin Erickson of FORGE

December 5, 2007 – 11:41 am

Who is FORGE, the nonprofit that posted 423 comments to the One Post Challenge winning entry? Well here’s the story as written by FORGE founder and executive director Kjerstin Erickson.

By Kjerstin Erickson

One week ago Monday, I stumbled across the One Post Challenge after following a few links from the ‘Philanthropy Today’ update that I receive in my inbox every weekday. As a blogger myself, I first considered entering. But then I came across the $500 for your nonprofit entry and immediately knew that with the right mobilization strategies, FORGE would win.

FORGE is not a huge organization, but we have three things working in our favor:

a) an engaged and highly motivated network

b) a strong presence in today’s online social networking tools

c) a staff that understands the power of social media and is willing to use it

The beauty of web activism is that you don’t even have to know the people that you reach – they are often 3 or 4 degrees of separation away from you. I know everyone that has ever worked or volunteered for FORGE, but I only knew approximately 15% of the people that voted for us.

So what did we do? Every nonprofit keeps a master listserv of their supporters, but we didn’t even have to use ours. Rather, we depended on the personal connections of our core staff and alumni – approximately 50 people – who we then asked to reach out to others. Being requested to do something – anything – is much more potent when it comes from someone you know well. Therefore, dozens of smaller emails are often much more powerful than a few large email blasts.

Sending the request to our core staff was our original, ‘catch-up’ strategy. But we asked people to not reach deeper into their networks until the deadline was upon us. When there was just 12 hours left in the competition, we pounced.

Facebook is our networks’ social networking tool of choice, so we:

1) formed a Facebook Event and invited thousands of people to “virtually attend” (the event was named “FORGE go go WIN!” after comment #200, our favorite, from one of the refugee students we sponsor to University)

2) asked our staff members to “Post a Facebook Note” telling everyone in their network about the contest and how they could take part

3) asked our staff members to “change their Facebook status” to “Just Voted for FORGE at http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/11/500-for-your-nonprofit”

Within 3 hours, we had 100 new votes. By the end of the evening, we had more than 260 new votes. And the rest is history…

Do I have any lessons to share? I think that the majority of the nonprofit world is blissfully unaware of the revolution that is happening in cyberspace. Many organizations have little idea what Facebook is, much less how great of a tool it can be for them if used properly. Web 2.0 has brought with it a great transformation of the possibilities for human outreach and interaction, and the social sphere is one of the best places to use it.

Everyone loves a little competition, and this contest was extremely fun for us. But perhaps the best part of it was not the winning or even the funds, but the way in which our ‘constituents’ – the refugees that FORGE serves – got involved from across the world. Most of the refugees we work with live in camps that don’t have electricity, much less internet access. However, we are currently sponsoring six talented refugee students to attend university in Lusaka, and they have internet access at the ‘flat’ where they live. The day I found the post, I decided to send them a quick email to let them know about the competition. The next morning, I woke to find that not only had they all posted a comment of support, but that they had gotten so excited about the contest that they went all over their apartment building, knocking on doors, and getting people to come over to vote for FORGE! When you are an African refugee, you have little opportunity to break down the barrier between ‘server’ and servee’ and fundraise for yourself – they took the opportunity with gusto.

And boy we’re they excited when FORGE won…you’ve just gotta check out the video and attached photos they sent!

fef-u-guys-celebrating-forge-victory1.JPG

fef-u-guys-celebrating-forge-victory.JPG

Kjerstin Erickson

FORGE Founder and Executive Director

www.FORGEnow.org

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in One Post Challenge, Philanthropy, Social Media | 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, Giving Blogs, One Post Challenge, Philanthropy, Prize Philanthropy, Social Media | Comments (3)

The Futures of Philanthropy, Fundraising, and Advertising

November 28, 2007 – 12:50 pm

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Peter Deitz. Peter writes a blog called About Micro-Philanthropy and is the founder of Social Actions, a community website that aggregates person-to-person fundraising campaigns and helps people to start their own. Deitz also works as a consultant to nonprofits and philanthropists interested in leveraging the power of social networks.

By Peter Deitz

The Futures of Philanthropy, Fundraising, and Advertising

The futures of philanthropy, fundraising, and advertising are looking remarkably similar. In all three fields, technology innovators are turning to real people to do the hard work of moving money.

Foundations are asking non-specialists to “crowd source” their grant recipients. Development teams are using “wired fundraisers” to increase online donations. Companies are relying on “fansumers” to promote their latest products.

The online marketing guru Seth Godin first reported on this trend in a series of e-books entitled Flipping the Funnel. In three versions of the same e-book, Godin addresses companies, nonprofits, and politicians. He instructs them on how individuals can be empowered to sell products, raise money, and recruit votes respectively.

Godin could easily have written a fourth version of Flipping the Funnel, one tailored to the needs of foundations and private philanthropists. The hypothetical e-book would have emphasized the important role that non-wealthy and non-specialist individuals can play in awarding grants and redistributing wealth.

Flipping the Funnel for Foundations and Private Philanthropists would have noted that:

  • Real people are often excellent judges of innovation and long-term impact;
  • If provided with the right incentives, individuals may back their grant recommendations with donations of their own, resulting in larger grants and more grantees;
  • People who are involved in grant-making are more likely to recognize a philanthropist for his or her contribution to the field.

Today, only a handful of nonprofits are effectively using wired fundraisers to raise money. Companies experimenting with fansumerism are drawing criticism for their attack on consumer privacy. And only a handful of foundations and private philanthropists are actually crowd-sourcing grant-making.

And yet, the innovators in these fields are continuing to experiment with new technologies that enable person-to-person communications and discernment. Overtime, the pioneers who balance privacy and fraud concerns with the opportunity for greater sales, donations, and grants will reap rewards for their early adoption.

Compared to fundraisers and advertisers, philanthropists have been the least exuberant in their embrace of the peer-to-peer economy. The sector needs leadership and technology innovation so that more wealth can be moved, and more effectively.

This post will hopefully serve as a starting point for discussing the trend as it pertains to philanthropy. Lessons from person-to-person fundraising and advertising will no doubt inform the discussion and provoke more innovation.

I look forward to exchanging ideas with the Tactical Philanthropy community and the larger world of emerging philanthropy bloggers.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Effective Giving, Foundations, Fundraising, New Philanthropy, One Post Challenge, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Social Media | Comments (2)

Creating a Generation of Digital Natives

November 27, 2007 – 10:43 am

This entry to the One Post Challenge comes from Daniel Ben-Horin. Daniel is the founder of CompuMentor/TechSoup, which puts on the NetSquared conference. Daniel has been named to the Nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50 a number of times.

By Daniel Ben-Horin

The bone I am gnawing on is about connecting these dots:

* There is something intrinsic in ‘knowing technology’ that makes the person with knowledge want to pass it on. So there is an almost infinite pool of ‘desire to help’ in the technological world (and I do mean ‘world’)

* The technologies associated with Web 2 make it easier and easier for communities to self-organize (although it is still by no means a slam dunk to do so, even with the new tools;  some level of external catalyzation and some level of structure are essential to successful, sustainable efforts, viz the relationship between Jimmy Wales and his staff and the larger Wikipedia community.)

* Financial resources are available for big web-based projects invoking large communities; the chance to be associated with the next Wikipedia or to be perceived as a leader in the climate change arena is very attractive to corporate sponsors. Likewise, some foundations see the potential.

* Absent a coherent effort to link the three dots above, there will be insufficient technological intellectual capital to train and support on new technologies in the developing world. This is an absolutely classic and pervasive issue. The digital divide has been ‘traditionally’ considered a matter of hardware and software, but it is as much or more a matter of training and support.  Projects like the xo (formerly ‘hundred dollar laptop’;  this is a good piece on that issue) offer a lot of promise for abetting a generation of digital natives (in the techie not colonialist sense of the word!) but in the short term, and in the longer as well, it is essential to create a way for these digital natives to get assistance along their learning curve, and also to create a way for the full demographic spectrum to learn to use these tools. And to do it soon.

Wiserearth seem to have a piece of this puzzle. The Impact Alliance might have an interesting piece or Oneworld.net,Techfinder, a project CompuMentor and NTEN developed has a piece (but only a piece).

I remember once hearing Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices talk about human rights bloggers, who often operate clandestinely, which it makes it all the harder for them to secure technology assistance. I think about Bill Lester, of Engender Health, telling me about an internet outage in South Africa and the very specific skills it takes to just understand how to talk to the ISP there. I think about ngos around the world working against extreme odds with the barest-boned of patchwork IT structures and so little access to help.

And I think about all the people who can help, want to help and, with current tools, can help remotely.

A project to build a largely self-organizing database of technology experts/helpers/mentors and to enable those people to create beneficial interactions with organizations that need help would need project planning and development resources would need, I think, at least two skilled staff for the first year– one a very technically savvy Web 2 savant who could figure out how to create the necessary interfaces among existing resources and build new ones as needed; the second a more development oriented person who could articulate the social possibilities and build the relationships.

What do you think?

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