Well, that was quite a success. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Carnival and all the readers who took the time to read the multiple points of view. Given the ease of creating the Carnival and the fact that bloggers can submit previously written posts and not write something brand new unless they want to, I’m going to make the carnival a bi-weekly event appearing every other Wednesday.

Allison Fine referred to the Carnival as an “organized swarm” (which I quite liked). With the idea that this event will be lightly contained chaos, I am going to host the next two events and then release the carnival to other Giving Blogs who want to host an edition or two.

The next Carnival will be held on Wednesday February 7 and I’ll announce the topic on Wednesday January 31.

If you are just catching up, make sure you go back and read all the great posts from yesterday.

There has already been a great response to The Giving Carnival. I’m looking forward to running all of the submissions on Tuesday the 23rd.

It seems that most people were not already aware of Blog Carnivals. I’d like to give proper credit to Kivi Leroux Miller whose Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants gave me the idea for The Giving Carnival. You can see the most recent edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants here. You can see a list of all 26 editions by clicking here and then clicking on “past posts” on the BlogCarnival widget on the right hand side of the page.

Here are the answers to a few questions that have come up already:

Can I submit more than one post?

Yes! (Although the host of the edition – myself in this case – has final decision over which submissions to post).

Do I have to write a new post for the carnival?

No! You can submit the permalink of any post you’ve ever written. Although, obviously, it should be on topic.

Why is the deadline so short?

Since The Gates Foundation situation (or GatesGate as Allison Fine has labeled it) is drawing a lot of attention, I wanted to capitalize on the current interest and run the first edition of The Giving Carnival as soon as possible. In the future, my plan is to announce the topic one or two weeks in advance of the deadline.

Do I have to be a “Giving Blog” to submit a post?

No! The content of the post is more important than the focus of your blog. Plenty of blogs that don’t focus on philanthropy have written posts about The Gates Foundation. As long as your post is articulate and well thought out (or interesting in some unexpected fashion), I will be happy to run it in the carnival.

What can I do to support The Giving Carnival?

The Giving Carnival exists to bring together the “conversation” about Giving that many people are not even aware exists. Many blogs are talking about the same issues, but I find that when these various blogs enter into back and forth discussion, the best posts are written. So, to support The Giving Carnival 1) submit a post, 2) write a post on your blog about the carnival and provide a link (once the first edition is live), 3) encourage other people to read the carnival and to submit a post.