Category Archives: Social Media

Tactical Philanthropy Community Helps FORGE

November 3, 2008 – 12:47 pm

OK, enough talk. Let’s see if the Tactical Philanthropy community just likes to debate or whether we can accept a call to action.

A quick recap: FORGE is a small nonprofit that works with refugee communities in Africa to help them gain community rebuilding skills. The organization is on the ropes due to a mismatch between their fundraising strategy and their impact strategy. But changing to a model where refugees provided training instead of outside volunteers (a model most international development experts would applaud) they cut off a key source of funds (the volunteers generally raised significant funds from their networks back home in the United States or other developed counties). The executive director Kjerstin Erickson decided to use her blog on the Skoll Foundation’s Social Edge website to embrace “radical transparency” and lay bare her situation.

Here at Tactical Philanthropy I called her Forging Ahead blog “the most important nonprofit blog” due to her decision to go transparent. In a later post I wrote that I was not explicitly advocating for the refugee cause, for FORGE or for Kjerstin, but I very publicly wanted to support the cause of transparency and Kjerstin’s brave decision.

Then the Tactical Philanthropy community kicked into action:

  • I had lunch with nonprofit consultant Curtis Chang of Consulting Within Reach and told him I wanted to hire him to provide an executive summary type report to FORGE on what they should do next. The hook was that the report had to be published on my blog.
  • I then spoke with Victor d’Allant, who runs Social Edge and told him I wanted Social Edge to publish the report as well.
  • Victor upped the ante and suggested that Curtis take on a larger assignment with FORGE and blog about the experience along side Kjerstin on the Forging Ahead blog.
  • Curtis took on the challenge and decided to do the project on a pro bono basis and work with Kjerstin for an indeterminate period of time.
  • Rich Polt, founder of nonprofit PR consulting firm Louder Than Words left a comment on Tactical Philanthropy giving advice to Kjerstin on her PR strategy.
  • I called Rich and suggested that he offer pro bono consulting in a more formal arrangement with FORGE.
  • Rich suggested a larger contract than I expected and he agreed to provide a minimum of 20 hours of free work.
  • Rich than suggested that a large nonprofit that specializes in financial analysis might be willing to offer their assistance as well. He’s on the case.
  • Another Tactical Philanthropy reader has been busy pitching a foundation on why they should consider funding FORGE and sharing details of the pitch with me.

On Friday I met with Kjerstin (my first time meeting her) and told her what I had put together. I told her that if she wanted to accept all of this, the one requirement was that she waive confidentiality with each group so that I and they had the opportuntity to share their side of the story. Kjerstin didn’t even blink before telling me that they could write anything they wanted.

FORGE needs to raise close to $200,000 in order to close their budget and retrofit the organization so that they have the fundraising capacity to run sustainably next year. That’s a fair bit of money for such a small organization and I don’t know if it will happen. It may be that some large foundations who care about transparency will provide the capital to build fundraising capacity if FORGE can close this years budget gap through broad donor support. If some sort of plan like that can be worked out, than a donation to FORGE would be a high impact grant in support of transparency.

But no matter what happens with FORGE, it is all going to play out in public. Whether FORGE is saved or not, Kjerstin has displayed amazing bravery. Any smart foundation or nonprofit should be figuring out how to lure her to work for them should she become available.

So what about Curtis Chang, Rich Polt and anyone else who steps up to help? Sure they will receive some nice publicity, but they will also have to share their own work publicly. I can only imagine that the smart readers here at Tactical Philanthropy will disagree with some of their recommendations even if they approve of most. But here’s the thing, all of this is going to play out live. If you don’t like where things are headed, speak up and you might just change the outcome.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve heard numerous foundations tell me that they are not transparent about their grantee analysis because they do not want to risk hurting the nonprofit. But let’s look at FORGE as an example. Kjerstin knows that criticism can only make her stronger. She wants to learn and get better because she cares about her cause more than she cares about her organization. FORGE exists to help refugees rebuild their lives. Kjerstin is willing to do whatever it takes to help them. Even if that means publicly taking advice from people who might tell her she should do some things differently.

Kjerstin cares about the cause over the organization and so should all of us.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Information Sharing, Philanthropy, Transparency, nptech | Comments (2)

FORGE Update

October 28, 2008 – 7:07 am

Last week I wrote about the nonprofit FORGE, who’s executive director Kjerstin Erickson has been using her blog on the Social Edge website to chronicle the effect of the financial crisis on her organization. For FORGE, this isn’t just an experiment in radical transparency, they are in very real danger of going out of business. Admitting this publicly, might 1) attract attention to FORGE and bring in more donations, 2) scare donors away who don’t want to fund an organization who might not exist next year, 3) result in a totally unexpected outcome that could be positive or negative.

Yesterday, Kjerstin started sharing details of their fundraising year to date and how they are dealing with their failed direct mail campaign (which was mailed out in the midst of the meltdown in the financial markets). I don’t know Kjerstin, but as I mentioned last week she engineered a way to grab the money raised in my One Post Challange last year. After I blogged about FORGE last week, Kjerstin asked to meet with me to talk about her situation on Friday of this week. So today I’m asking the Tactical Philanthropy community what advice you have for FORGE. Leave a comment or shoot me an email. Is Kjerstin doing the right thing by blogging about their troubles? Is she out of her mind? They only need to raise $100,000 by the end of the year. How can they leverage their willingness to embrace radical transparency and their social media savvy to sidestep the financial crisis and continue pursuing their mission?

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Fundraising, Information Sharing, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Transparency, nonprofits | Comments (23)

The Most Important Nonprofit Blog

October 21, 2008 – 3:03 pm

Forging Ahead, hosted on the Social Edge website, just became THE must read nonprofit blog. The quick synopsis of the blog:

Kjerstin Erickson was 20 when she launched FORGE. She didn’t have a business plan. She didn’t have a revenue model. She didn’t have connections. And she didn’t have a penny. But she now works in three refugee camps in Zambia, helping 60,000 refugees build better lives. This is her story.

My small personal connection is that Kjerstin was successful in winning the grant from my One Post Challenge last year. But I don’t know Kjerstin or FORGE otherwise.

So the story today: FORGE, like many nonprofits is seeing the impact of the financial crisis first hand. And in reaction, Kjerstin is embracing radical transparency. The Forging Ahead post from October 17 is titled “We’re in trouble…”:

So, conventional wisdom says that a nonprofit should never put all of its cards on the table - that showing your weaknesses is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. In order to be strong, you must appear strong, or so the saying goes. If you reveal your vulnerabilities, people won’t have faith in you and won’t want to invest in you.

Well for FORGE, it’s time to send conventional wisdom to hell. The truth is that though our programs have never been stronger, our bank accounts have never been lower. We’re in trouble… and I can’t sit back and act as if everything is okay. For the first time in 5 years, I’m kept up at night not by how to improve FORGE’s impact but by how to avoid laying off 150 of the world’s most vulnerable people and shutting our doors. It terrifies me.

Kjerstin continued on October 20 with “How we got into this crunch”:

In my last post, I talked about the financial hardship that FORGE is currently going through and the emotional strain that comes with determining how to best move forward. The first question that everyone has been asking is “why?” - why are we struggling to meet our baseline budget of $400,000, when there are trillions of dollars out there in the world. Sparing you the obvious answers, I’ll use this post to elucidate the 4 main lessons about things we’ve done wrong and things that have worked against us:

The rest of the post includes lines like, “Unfortunately, along with the positive change in outcomes, we lost a huge amount of guaranteed revenue every year.”, “[we] have been disappointed in how little traffic we’ve been able to drive to [our website]” and “On average, people have been giving about 25% of what they’ve given in the past!  Yeah…that’s really bad.”

I wish FORGE the best and I’m impressed with the guts it takes to write blog posts like these ones. This approach may very well attract new donors to FORGE (because they aren’t just saying how desperate their cause is, they are making a case for why their RESULTS are at risk, but can be sustain via new funding). Or it might scare people away. Either way, it is a fascinating real world drama of a social media savvy, impact focused nonprofit trying to deal with the financial crisis.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Fundraising, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Transparency, nonprofits | Comments (3)

Flashback: Carnivals, Podcasts & More

September 18, 2008 – 6:41 am

This week I’m reviewing the history of Tactical Philanthropy and digging through the archives. You can see Monday’s post for more background.

One of the reasons I started Tactical Philanthropy was to have a platform to talk about philanthropy with other people. As a wealth manager, my professional network was not (prior to launching the blog) filled with people who were passionate about philanthropy. But blogs and other social media tools allow people of common interests to gather.

My first attempt to really get a cross-disciplinary conversation going was my Giving Carnival series. The first one is found below (published on January 23, 2007) and you can read the background here. Over time I replaced the Giving Carnival with my podcast series. You can see the way this format encouraged back and forth by visiting the comments section of my interview with Bill Schambra (got people a little riled up I’ll say!). The podcast series came to a peak when the United Way pitched me to interview their CEO Brian Gallagher. I’ve been thinking about my next step in facilitating cross-disciplinary debates about philanthropy and I’m currently strategizing an off-line event that I’ll be sharing here first in the coming weeks.

The Giving Carnival: Edition One

Welcome to the first edition of The Giving Carnival. The topic of this edition is the debate surrounding the LA Times coverage of The Gates Foundation investment policy (you can read the two part article here and here).

First up we have Phil Cubeta channeling Marxist Leon Trotsky in his post “Leon Trotsky on Socially Responsible Investing”.

Allison Fine calls The Gates Foundation “cowardly” in her post “Outrageous Behavior by The Gates Foundation”.

Lucy Bernholz reviews the various points of view on the topic of socially responsible investing and brings us a reader poll in her post “Foundations and Investing”.

Paul Botts brings us his thoughts with “A Thoughtful Response from Gates” and “More on Foundation Investment Practices”.

Carol Kirshner points out that “being a leader can suck at times” in her post “GatesGate: Conscious Spending and Investing”.

Holden Karnofsky says “I’m basically fine with investing in evil” and then adds “More Thoughts on Responsible Investing” and finally “One More Thing”.

I weigh in with “Private Foundation Investment Strategy” and a post I wrote before the discussion hit firestorm status “The Gates Foundation”.

And finally Jed Emerson (who doesn’t update his blog with the manic frequency of the other Carnival participants) points us to his Op-Ed on the subject in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Maximizing Our Missions”.

Thanks to everyone for sending in your submissions. The response was so positive that I’d like to make The Giving Carnival a bi-weekly event. This is going to be a traveling carnival meaning that future editions will be hosted by other Giving Blogs in addition to being hosted here.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Giving Blogs, Information Sharing, Philanthropy, The Giving Carnival | Comments (0)

Flashback: Giving Blogs

September 16, 2008 – 9:20 am

I’m reviewing some of the early posts on Tactical Philanthropy this week. You can catch Monday’s posts for a little background on the history of this blog. Today I want to revisit Giving Blogs, a post I wrote on November 27, 2006. In this post I looked at the giving blog landscape and noted how immature it was and how I thought it was poised for growth.

The theme of this post is that all philanthropy related blogs were being grouped together, but that over time they would separate out into “fundraising blogs”, “nonprofit blogs”, “philanthropy blogs”, etc. This prediction has definitely come true and in fact the Chronicle of Philanthropy later launched Give & Take, their philanthropy blog summary service that lists well over 100 philanthropy blogs and breaks them into categories. On the day that Give & Take was launched I wrote about the “professionalization” of philanthropy blogging after my post on Social Media Tools for Philanthropy was one of the first posts featured. In the post I note how I separated my blogroll into my daily read and other blogs. With the launch of Give & Take I changed my blogroll to just display the blogs I read every day.

Giving Blogs

The new edition of Fast Company profiles three blogs from the Giving community. The article labels as “Best Blogs” Lucy Bernholz’s Philanthropy 2173, Jeff Brooks’ Donor Power Blog and Marc van Gurp’s Houtlust Nonprofit Advertising. I read Philanthropy 2173 and Donor Power Blog regularly. The funny thing is that the Fast Company article implies that 1) these are all “social entrepreneur” blogs and 2) that they are inside looks at nonprofits. I’m glad to see Giving blogs getting press attention, but none of these blogs cover what the article implies they do.

Philanthropy 2173 covers a broad range of philanthropic industry issues with special attention paid to the emerging “philanthropic capital markets” and the interface of internet technology and philanthropy. Donor Power Blog gives fundraising advice looks at fundraising trends, and Houtlust Nonprofit Advertising is really a blog about advertising that focuses on nonprofit advertising.

The “Giving blog” segment of the blogosphere is still relatively immature. Many of the blogs are relatively new and their numbers pale in comparison to political blogs, business blogs and tech blogs. At this point, blogs targeting a nonprofit employee readership are much more prevalent than blogs targeting donors as readers. Many blogs, like this one, cover a variety of topics and have readers from many different segments. My bet is that as the Giving blog community matures we’ll see particular niches begin to arise. Just as we use to have many “Investment Blogs”, we now have venture capital blogs, stock picking blogs, technology stock blogs, business blogs, economic blogs, etc. Over time, I expect the Giving blog community to fracture into fundraising blogs, social entrepreneurship blogs, donor blogs (with separate blogs addressing issues of Vision, Strategy and Tactics), nonprofit technology blogs, cause marketing blogs, Venture Philanthropy blogs, hybrid blogs addressing concepts like Good Capital, and philanthropy industry blogs.

I’ve tried to separate my own blog roll into Philanthropy Blogs and Nonprofits blogs. However, I’ve realized that at this point in the maturation process of our community, segmenting blogs in this way does more harm than good. So beginning today, you’ll notice that I’ve changed my blog roll into two areas: My Daily Read (Giving blogs I read religiously) and Giving Blogs (blogs that cover some segment of the Giving community). I’m always on the lookout for new or interesting voices, so let me know if you read a Giving blog that I don’t have on my list.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Giving Blogs, Information Sharing, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy | Comments (2)

The Big Give

July 15, 2008 – 10:50 am

The Big Give (not to be confused with Oprah’s Big Give television show) is an interesting UK based website that allows donors to search for projects to fund. Much like a stock screening tool (which lets you look for stocks to buy that fit your criteria), The Big Give lets donors “screen” projects based on size of gift, charitable “sector”, geographic location and beneficiaries. The site is a good example of the type of tool that I think will become the leading way that donors of all size will find the nonprofits they support. See the column I wrote for the Financial Times that looked at philanthropy in the year 2033 for more details.

Tactical Philanthropy reader Jon Brooks is Managing Director of The Big Give. Rather than explain the site myself, I thought I’d let Jon take the floor. (FYI: Jon sent me a note about The Big Give after I suggested that most foundations should stop accepting most grant requests and instead proactively seek out grantees. At the time, I said that being deluged by grant requested “sounds like spam to me.” So one way to think of The Big Give is as anti-spam software for your foundation!)

In 2007 the UK-based Reed Foundation was struggling to find quality funding proposals for its £1m/year grants. Unsolicited requests were never appropriate and seemed a waste of valuable charity resources.

With no paid members of staff, processing requests also used valuable foundation resources. Promoting the foundation’s need for quality proposals (e.g. through a website/marketing) would have only led to more administration work for both charities and the foundation.

We felt the most suitable solution was an online database of charity projects, and so developed The Big Give. UK charities upload and categorize their own projects - remaining responsible for all content - which allows the Reed Foundation to filter by various factors. Once we have a short-list of projects, we can contact the charity to discuss their proposal in more detail.

The beauty of the web is that we can share The Big Give with other donors looking for new projects. The site is free, and users remain anonymous until they decide to contact the charity. With over 4,500 charities registered, we do not carry out in-depth due diligence. Instead, we provide links to third party websites - such as the Charity Commission - to make it easy for donors to research potential charities to a level that suits their needs.

An example:

In 2007, the Reed Foundation trustees wanted to consider a £100k donation to rainforests. Other websites provided limited information on the work each rainforest charity did, and the charities’ own websites concentrated on the £5/month donors. The only way to find out if a charity could provide us with an interesting project was to ask - and that led to face-to-face meetings, offers to tailor projects to our needs, and so on.

With The Big Give, we are able to search for rainforest projects at £100k and have a short-list of concrete proposals within seconds. Only when we have selected the best ideas and checked the accounts of the charity behind the project do we meet with the charity.

My personal story:

As happens at many small foundations, I worked on the Reed Foundation alongside a full-time job within the Reed recruitment company. As the idea for The Big Give developed, I spent more time on the project and went full-time with The Big Give in August 2007. The website launched to charities in October 2008, and we are now looking at how to make The Big Give relevant to all charity donors.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Foundations, Grantmaking, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, nptech | Comments (3)

Online Grant Applications

June 25, 2008 – 10:10 am

Flaw #9 from the Project Streamline report:

More than 80 percent of the grantmakers who responded to our survey reported that they have taken steps to make their information gathering practices “more efficient and streamlined for nonprofit applicants.”

…Many streamlining strategies have turned out to be useful to foundations and their grantees. Yet others, notably online applications and common grant applications, have produced mixed results, creating new issues for grantmakers and grantseekers alike.

…Common grantmaking forms for application and reporting (here, generically referred to as CGAs), which provide a single set of application and/or reporting questions that a substantial number of funders in a region (or funding area) will accept, have seemed like a logical time and resource saving tool for philanthropy. Yet our research found surprisingly little support for common grantmaking forms as a strategy for effective streamlining. CGAs are accepted (or, much less frequently, required) by 34 percent of foundations that responded to our survey.

Common grant applications is one of those ideas that make so much sense on the surface. But then I think about how any investment manager would reject the concept of having a standard template of information on which to base their decisions. Every person has at least slightly different criteria for making an investment or grantmaking decision.

But investors do have a very important infrastructure in place that philanthropy lacks. Investors in publicly traded markets know that every company will file their financials with the SEC. Unlike nonprofits’ 990s, SEC filings are not documents focused on compliance and IRS driven issues. SEC documents are designed to inform investors (the recent changes to the 990 did move them in this direction). In addition, companies host quarterly conference calls to discuss their business. While every investor has their own criteria for investing, they have a common set of information they can obtain about any company.

But here’s the critical difference. A common grant application means that there is a standard set of information that nonprofits can send to funders. In the stock market, the common set of information is available for investors to go get. This switch from passive receiving of information to proactively going out to find what you want is one of the core changes that the internet (and especially web 2.0) bring to the world. A common grant application misses the whole value of the internet. Instead of having nonprofits fill out and submit lots of grant applications, why don’t they just post a single set of common information for any funder to download? The 990 could serve this purpose, but why should funders let the IRS dictate what information is important? Why can’t the philanthropic community design their own “impact report” template that every nonprofit could complete and keep updated? (I asked Brian Gallagher, CEO of United Way of American, this question in a recent podcast.)

Personally I think that most funders should do away with even accepting most grant requests. I think it would be boring to be deluged with requests, most of which I wasn’t interested in. Sounds like spam to me. I’m much more interested in proactively identifying and researching the investments (for-profit or nonprofit) that I am interested in. It sure would help if I could pull up good information about nonprofits on Google Finance the same way I can pull up good information on stocks!

Update: I should be more clear when I say foundations should not accept grant applications. What I believe is that the system of philanthropy should switch from a system of where nonprofits ask for money to one where funders proactively seek out grantees. I layed this thesis out in a Financial Times column earlier this year. But within the current context, I realize there are ramifications if a single foundation stops accepting requests.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Foundations, Fundraising, Grantmaking, Information Sharing, New Philanthropy, Open Source Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Tactical Philanthropy, nonprofits, nptech | Comments (5)

connec+ipedia

June 23, 2008 – 6:00 am

For some time now I’ve been talking about the need for large foundations to share their knowledge base with the general public. While some people have made this argument from the standpoint of obligations that foundations have to the public, I’ve thought that foundations will find that they are able to more effectively further their own mission by sharing their knowledge base. Since individuals give seven time more money each year than all the foundations in the country combined, it stands to reason that foundations who share their knowledge with the public might influence some of these vast flows of funding to support the mission of the foundations.

Recently the Meyer Memorial Trust, a $700 million+ foundation that has proven innovative in a number of ways, launched an attempt to share their knowledge base with anyone who is interested. The project is called connect+ipedia. Rather than explain the project myself, I asked Amy Sample Ward - Communications and Learning Associate at MMT and author of the foundation’s New Media Blog - to share her thoughts with Tactical Philanthropy.

By Amy Sample Ward

If you are looking for some introductory information about after school programs, for example, and you do a Google search for that term, you would get 40,200,000 results. But, if you use connec+ipedia, you get 111, all of which are cards on the topic or organizations involved in such work. So, what is connec+ipedia?

Let’s start at the beginning: A few years ago, Meyer Memorial Trust (a private, regional foundation based in Portland, OR) recognized the need to explore the world of knowledge management. A full program staff turn over in a short amount of time (with program officers retiring after decades of service) meant an irrevocable loss of institutional knowledge, and the adoption of a knowledge management tool could ensure that such loss did not happen again. Marie Deatherage, Director of Communications & Learning, was tasked with the investigation and discovered that foundations around the country were investing a lot of dollars (millions, even) to develop tools that only the organization could use and that often faced little-to-no staff buy-in.

MMT had shown a commitment to both supporting open source software and to supporting the broader philanthropic and nonprofit sector through grantmaking and other projects, so, when Marie met the two great minds behind Grass Commons who were working on an open source wiki tool that incorporated database functionality, the choice seemed clear. What was also clear to the Trust, was that this wouldn’t be a tool for internal use only, but would be completely open. Other foundations, nonprofit organizations and state agencies were often all working on the same kinds of programatic work, so it would make sense that they should be able to collaborate online, in a way that allowed for sharing of best practices, data, standards, and other information—that these parties should all have access to the same information when working to make informed decisions about work that effected the field.

Wagn is the free, open source software that connec+ipedia runs on, combining the editable functionality of a wiki (like Wikipedia) with ‘tagging’ or referencing functionality of a database. Anyone (with Intern access) can view, search, and read the site. Users (request an invitation!) can edit, create and contribute content, all organized through people, places and things, as well as the intersections between them. Back to the initial example: If you wanted to find out about after school programs, searching Google may be too much information. Searching on connec+ipedia, instead, could mean a more easily digestible avenue to tailored information. Users from across MMT’s service area and beyond, in foundations, nonprofits, state agencies, as well as corporations and public citizens are already making connec+ipedia a resource. The Oregonian has even gotten behind it!

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Foundations, Information Sharing, New Philanthropy, Open Source Philanthropy, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy, Transparency, nptech | Comments (2)

NetSquared and Philanthropy

May 29, 2008 – 9:02 am
I almost didn’t go to the NetSquared conference this year. Big mistake, I’m glad I went.

Two years ago I attended NetSquared (which that year was a learning conference about how nonprofits could use social media tools). I, like most people attending, heard about YouTube and Facebook for the first time. And more importantly, I learned how to launch a blog.

This year, the conference focused on “mashups” for good. At first I thought the conference had become a hardcore tech conference (I like technology, but it is not my profession and I don’t attend tech conferences). But as I looked more at the structure (two days of presentations by 21 projects that had already been culled down by online voting, followed by winners being announced with cash awarded) I realized that what I was really looking at was an early example of the “nonprofit roadshow” concept that I wrote about in my Financial Times column about philanthropy in the year 2033.

TechSoup (the producer of NetSquared) CEO Daniel Ben-Horin confirmed this view of NetSquared in an email to me:

One point I want to make to you is that from where we sit this year’s conference is much *more* about philanthropy than the past conferences. We think we’re working up a model for distributed philanthropy that is, in fact, highly congruent with ‘the next great wave of philanthropy.’ The “distributed” part works three ways–(a) the projects can be anywhere; (b) the people contributing can be anywhere; (c) by ‘contribution’, we mean both cash and what is actually just as if not more valuable–terrific technology talent committed to social change.

In fact, what we’ve 3/4-built, 1/4 wandered into is a new business offering - running N2-like challenges in a variety of formats. So, without really pushing this, we already have 5 clients for this product—including Yahoo and Case Foundation. They all want to hire us because (a) we have the engine; (b) we have the technical community; (c) we have access to philanthropy and investment.

You can check out an overview of the conference and see the winning projects here. Note that Peter Deitz’s project Social Actions was a big winner (Peter was a member of the Tactical Philanthropy Blog Team that covered the Council on Foundations conference.)

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Effective Giving, Fundraising, N2Y3, New Philanthropy, Philanthropic Capital Markets, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

Blog Mobbing & Crowdsourcing

May 1, 2008 – 4:16 pm

Lucy Bernholz of Philanthropy 2173 comments today on the Blog Team for the Council on Foundation Conference that I’ve put together.

It is a great example of crowdsourcing coverage, and I am particularly impressed that a blogger made this happen on his own. Given that COF only allowed bloggers for the first time in 2007 this is a good step forward…

The Blog Team gives us all one place to go for “coverage” of many sessions, from many perspectives. It is also an opportunity for those at the conference and those who miss it to participate in a conversation about the content. I’m assuming there will be a COF2008 tag so we can all follow the posts on del.ici.ous and COF has also put up a Facebook page.

As Lucy suggests, this post and all further Conference related posts will be tagged COF2008. If you are blogging elsewhere, posting photos to Flickr or anything else online, use this tag so we can all find it. (If you are confused about what a “tag” is and how to use it check out this explanation).

There will be at least 18 people blogging on Tactical Philanthropy during the conference. Get ready for a steady stream of commentary!

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in COF2008, Philanthropy | Comments (1)

More Bloggers

April 25, 2008 – 8:31 am

Not too long ago, I had to twist the arm of foundation folks to post comments to my blog, let alone blog themselves. I even wrote a post for the Stanford Social Innovation Review titled Paul Brest Needs a Blog. Starting in November of last year with the One Post Challenge I noticed a shift with more foundation employees posting their thoughts. Now I’m thrilled to see my COF conference blog team filling up so fast. I’m still in need of people from community foundations and family foundations and the team is still open to all comers. But with the new editions today, I’m aware that at some point I’m going to have to close the opportunity. So let me know if you want in. The new team members are:

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

How to Blog

April 16, 2008 – 11:17 am

A member of my blogger team asks, “Any instructions/advice as to length, timing, topics, style?” In case you’re thinking about signing up and are wondering what it might entail, here’s my response:

I think you should write about whatever topics you are most passionate about. If you attend a great session or one that you deeply disagree with, write it up! If you have a great discussion in a hallway, share your thoughts. You might want to read this post and click on some of the links to last year’s conference posts. Style should be casual. I’d suggest writing a single draft and then proofing once, but don’t work on this like an essay for publication. Length is really up to you. I find posts in the 400-500 word range to be best. But last year I wrote four words that set off a firestorm. What you say is more important than the length.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy | Comments (2)

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 Giving Blogs, Philanthropy | Comments (0)

N2Y3 Mashup Challenge Project Gallery

March 24, 2008 – 8:22 am

This year’s NetSquared conference is a celebration of mashups. You still have time to vote (until 5pm pacific time today) for which contestants will be invited to the conference and even if you don’t vote, you can still check out all the projects.

By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in N2Y3, Philanthropic Technology, Philanthropy | Comments (0)