PHILANTHROPY 2173

Peer review nonprofits - a proposal

2009-11-21T09:31:00.000-08:00

How often have you heard the complaint "There are too many nonprofits?" This is one of those issues - like politics and religion - that can be so divisive that you don't want to talk about it with certain relatives at certain holiday meals.

Is it true? Those who think it is say things like this, "In 1975 there were 220,000 organizations filing 990 forms with the IRS; in 1995 there were more than 1.2 million; and in 2005 there were more than 1.8 million." Ironically, the creation of new nonprofits is one place where growth in numbers is often met with derision, whereas growth in other enterprises is touted as a sign of progress and societal health.

But how are those numbers calculated, how many of those organizations are functioning past their filing, how do those numbers compare to populations and needs? How would we know if more is too many? Isn't it really a question of "Do we have an adequate set of supports, service providers, and enterprises producing and distributing social, environmental, and cultural goods to meet the needs?" This is a question which has meaning mostly at local levels - it doesn't help if we have "enough" museums or "enough" shelters for abused children if they're located in places that can't be reached by those who need them. In other words, the question of "too many" also needs to consider "to do what and for whom?"

Nonprofitmapping is one initiative that is trying to get better information on the number and distribution of nonprofit organizations. I've heard some folks talk excitedly about the possibility that the economic crisis will winnow the number of nonprofits, though the assumptions of efficient markets, accurate data on impact, and rational donor behavior that drive these expectations are tenuous at best, in my opinion.

For me, the question that really matters is a combination of the above:

"Do we have the right number of nonprofits to provide and distribute the social, environmental and public goods we need to those who need them?"**

This more complicated question gives us an opportunity to think about how we decide how many we need.

It has to be more than just market-driven, if for no other reason than the known inefficiencies and indirectness of the donor/organization/client market.
It can't be dictated from above, for choice is a cherished right embedded in the American philanthropic system and culture.
And this week's uproar over cancer screening recommendations - which provide a perfect case study of the conflagration that ensues when data meet popular and personal expectations - should give pause to all of us who tout the rationality of data as a force for public good.

Which gives us the opportunity to focus our attention on how we get nonprofits. I know there is some research underway - soon to be public - about the approval rates of 501c3 applications. When this research is released - regardless of its findings - it will no doubt further fuel the discussion about "too many."

I want to take this moment to look not at the outcome of the process for approving nonprofits - that just drives us back to the "enough or too many" question. I want us to look at the how part of the equation. If we presume, for the sake of argument, that we need nonprofits to produce and distribute public goods that are not adequately provided by markets or government, shouldn't the public have some say in how we allocate this tax privileged organizational status? Right now, the tax exempt status that 501c3 approval designates is decided by professionals within the IRS. They rule on regulatory fit, not community need. There has not been, to-date, a viable way for these professionals to consider community need.

These IRS professionals have a federal government employee peer group with a similar problem, patent officers. The US Patent Office is also charged with ruling on the adequacy of public applications for a federally granted privilege - patent protection. In 2009 the US Patent Office began an experiment - peer to patent. This experiment uses 21st century crowdsourcing technologies to bring the public interest into work with the expertise of the patent office. Community reviewers - who both know and have a vested interest in the areas of invention - provide insight and information to the patent office, vastly increasing the breadth of the officer's expertise. There are checks and balances built in to maximize the wisdom of the crowd and the specificity of a patent officer's expertise.

Would something like Peer-to-Patent make sense for the 501c3 approval process? Could it provide a means of factoring in community need and existing community resources to approval decisions? Where would it be subject to abuse and where do the pitfalls lie? What expertise and data would be needed to strengthen a system that might match regulatory reviewers with community-based practitioners?

I'm thinking out loud and in public. You may well hate this idea. Go ahead - please tell me why (but no need to be nasty about it). What problems, if any, might it solve? What problems would it cause? What vested interests does it threaten? What benefits might it provide, and at what increased (decreased?) cost?

**For simplicity's sake in this blog post I am deliberately leaving out the discussion of other enterprise forms that can provide and distribute social, environmental and public goods we need to those who need them. These include social enterprises, social businesses, public agencies and informal networks. This oversimplification is itself, I realize, problematic.

Experimenting around expertise

2009-11-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

(photo by Joe Shlabotnik, Flickr, Creative Commons)

All the experimentation about crowdsourcing is, in my mind, really a discussion about how to organize around expertise.

Time was, an organization needed to have certain skills and knowledge in-house to get things done. So, for example, John D. Rockefeller built a foundation in 1913 and hired the people he thought had the expertise to guide his giving. Those folks, in turn, used the foundation's resources to support the work of other organizations where other experts could further the goals of public health access. Large institutional philanthropy has continued in this pattern since last century - hire expertise in organizations and fund expertise in organizations.

Now, with all kinds of blurring boundaries, communications practices and tools, and changing career paths we really can think differently about how to access the information we need when we need it. Sometimes, the "expertise needed" question is really a "rent or buy" question. Neither the funding organization nor the enterprise doing the work may need to have certain expertise on hand at all times.

A new initiative, launched yesterday at the Web 2.0 Expo (#w2e), is geared toward accessing expertise as needed to build technology solutions that policy makers need and communities value. This effort, ExpertLabs, has some impressive credentials behind it. Anil Dash (@anildash) was an early blog platform innovator. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Omidyar Network, Sunlight Labs, The MacArthur Foundation, The Knight News Challenge and Craig Newmark are all noted as "friends" of the effort.

Here's how ExpertLabs describes its work:

"Expert Labs is a new independent initiative to help policy makers in our government take advantage of the expertise of their fellow citizens. How does it work? Simple:

We ask policy makers what questions they need answered to make better decisions.
We help the technology community create the tools that will get those answers.
We prompt the scientific & research communities to provide the answers that will make our country run better.

Each community provides its own unique expertise. And the end result is a government that uses the web not just to talk to citizens, but to listen to them."

There are several characteristics to this effort that drew it to my attention, especially as we try to link experts in capital allocation with program experts as part of the "What Capital When?" conversation. I think these characteristics are important to consider in developing change strategies:

It is cross-sector by design
It is a network of different expertise, focused on problem solving.
It is not a "collaboration" of different organizations, but a networked, problem-focused partnership
Expertise is intended to stay where it is, but work together as needed
Crowdsourcing principles are in place, so a variety of "expertise" can be accessed.

In December ExpertLabs and several partners will be promoting Sunlight Labs' "Great American Hackathon" - a two day, all out buildfest. Or in Sunlight's own words,

"...The goal is to solve as many open government problems as we can with as many hackathons across the country as possible. We've teamed up with Mozilla, Google, Redhat and Fedora, who will all be working with their developers to make things happen, and we've teamed up with Open Source for America and Code for America —there are opportunities for everyone to make a difference."

You needn't be a developer, you can help organize in your community, identify the community needs to which technology might be addressed, or just help publicize the event. If you're a funder, you might also just keep an eye on how these efforts work, what they accomplish, who gets involved, who gets left out, and what, if any, organizational or strategic analogs they inspire as you think about your area of expertise.

"What Capital When" An online conversation about social capital

2009-11-19T02:12:00.000-08:00

My colleagues and I at Blueprint Research & Design are launching a new experiment (for us) - a blog hosted conversation about what types of philanthropic/social capital make sense and when. This is not new territory - there are lots of experts, lots of experience, lots of resources, and some great advice out there. We hope they and you will engage in this discussion. What else are we hoping to accomplish and why are we trying it this way? A few things:

First, much of the expertise around capital allocation is held by financial professionals at foundations and the financial intermediaries with whom they work. Blueprint works largely with general management and program executives at foundations. We'd like to help bring these two sets of expertise together.

Second, we've had some very informative discussions with other consulting firms and foundations about many elements of our work with MacArthur around field building, but those have been limited to people in the SF Bay Area who could join us for lunch or coffee at a local foundation. This way we can get more people involved. If real face-to-face conversations emerge from this online discussion, that would be great.

Third, people use information when they need it. They may not need it when it first becomes available, they may not know the network to tap into to find what they need, and what may be old news to some is brand new information to others. So this is also an attempt to have a discussion out in public, that will link to resources and the experts out there, and that may be "bookmarkable" so that it ultimately helps people find what they need when they need it.

So, the conversation is starting. Join us over at "What Capital When?" with your ideas, questions and resources on the many choices we have when it comes to financing social goods. If you're on twitter, we'll use the hashtag #wcwhen to link useful tweets and resources as well.

Top 2010 trend? Using twitter to ask what the top 2010 trend will be

2009-11-17T15:42:00.000-08:00

(photo by pdsphil, Creative Commons, Flickr)

I think the trend of crowdsourcing trends has just jumped the shark.

OK - that's it. I'm done asking others to identify trends for me. Now that we have a wiki to identify fundraising scenarios for 2020, a twitter hashtag on 2010 nonprofit trends, and my own September contribution about 2010 trends - I'm done. Clearly the most pervasive trend is using these tools to ask about trends. As we approach December and the list making frenzy of "top 10s" that marks that month, let us all take a deep breath and perhaps even do some of our our own thinking.

As we are now 40-something days away from the second decade of the 21st century this New York Times article asked "what will we name the decade" from 2000-2010? Experts offer up suggestions like the age of overshooting, age of disruption, and Bob. I don't know about the decade, but certainly the year 2009 needs to be named "tweet."

---

OK it is 30 minutes later and I'm feeling slightly less snarky than I was when I wrote the above. Chances are, I will continue to ask folks for input using twitter and the blog. And those who know where the cafes really are and which streets are one way should continue to edit and add that information into online maps. And open organizations are good. And FutureLab was a great effort. And crowdsourcing ideas and information and expertise is vital to the future of how work gets done, change gets made, and organizations function (or not). However, we also need to realize the degrees to which we can begin to talk to ourselves with these media and the sometimes limited nature of the conversation (just because the tools make it possible for lots of new voices to participate doesn't mean they do). I'm not going to riff on how and when social media work well and when they don't, there are much smarter people than I am already having that discussion. More lists of trends, more reports on the same trends, more groups of trends - enough already. It is definitely not enough to just throw together another list and call it data or insight. Time for some analysis.

More data platforms for philanthropy

2009-11-12T09:39:00.000-08:00

(Photo by Andrew Roddewig, New Clarion Media,
http://burnhamplan100.uchicago.edu/multimedia/image_gallery/detail/2256)

Data are getting their moment in the sun. Data visualization (also known as infographics) like this unemployment map from The New York Times, may be part of the reason reading newspapers on the web can be so much more fun than reading them on paper. It may also be part of the business model solution for news sites, as people might just pay to see these data.
This CNN slide show offers some beautiful examples of how data can be the basis of art as well as science.

Two new data sources for philanthropy and public decision-making launched today - the beta test site for TRASI (Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact) and KidsData.

TRASI is the product of a partnership by McKinsey & Co's Social Sector Office and The Foundation Center. The database provides information on 150 different tools (questionnaires, interview protocols, scorecards, audits, surveys, certification protocols) for assessing impact. It can be searched and sorted in a variety of ways and users can suggest new tools. Each tool is classified by the organization that provided it, the costs of using it, what it assesses, and its intended purpose. The hosts welcome your feedback - go to TRASI now (tell them Lucy sent you), search it, share it, and help improve it. This is truly a public resource.

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health launched the KidsData site with information on children in all cities, school districts, and counties of the state. Currently, the site contains data on childrens' physical health, demographics, and family economics. More data will be added through 2010, including information on child safety, disabilities, emotional and behavioral health, education and child care. I'll admit, my first response to seeing the site was "How does it compare to KidsCount?" (KidsCount is perhaps the grandmother of all foundation-funded data sources for policy makers, nonprofits and funders. KidsCount is now in its 20th year of support from the Annie E Casey Foundation).

So how do they compare? Top level - KidsCount provides national data, KidsData is California specific. KidsCount, however, also allows you to search within counties and cities in a state, and for California it provides data on 17 indicators just within California - including data on foster care, dental care, children living in poverty, reading scores, obesity, tv watching, access to childcare, and health insurance access). Both sites make the data easy to understand and provide back up links to the original data sources.

KidsCount would provide a great case study of foundations, data, policy making, and infographics. What started as a printed book twenty years ago is now online and exportable, linkable, widgetable and interactive in almost every way the web lets us interact. Soon, we'll no doubt see mashups of KidsData, KidsCount and Google Maps (probably already exists), or subway map overlays like this one.

I just read about California Data Camp (which I wished I'd known about it in time to attend). This one-day event included folks from Spot.us, MAPLight, SF Muni, and DataSF. Some of them came to make applications that use the SF data streams. Examples include EcoFinder, Routesy (which I use daily to find out if a bus will ever come), and MomMaps. Others came to share ideas for using data in journalism and other fields. The blog from spot.us includes a nice round up of tools to visualize data, excerpted here:

Development Seed

Twistory - combine your Twitter history with your calendar

IBM’s ManyEyes
Trendalyzer, a software for animation of statistics developed by a Swede, then acquired by Google

Linkfluence

Finally, a reminder to keep your eyes on NonprofitMapping.org - which I've written about before and which is getting closer to releasing their nonprofit data scorecard. I become ever more convinced of the roles data will play as platforms for change.

Open organizations

2009-11-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

(Photo from Boboroshi, Flickr, Creative Commons)

Thanks to an email from Martin Kaminer I just read about PresenTense's open source efforts over at Community Organizer 2.0. According to the post, PresenTense, an organization focused on building the Jewish community's next generation of pioneers and innovators, open sources much of its programming and advisory roles. Community Organizer 2.0 quotes PresenTense's founder @ArielBeery as saying:

"The PresenTense Group calls itself an “open source organization." Co-founder Ariel Beery defines an Open Source Organization as one that “enables all members to add to it, change it, modify it and improve it. Everyone benefits from the intellectual property of the organization’s members. The whole point is to make it as collaborative and idea-generated as possible.”

PresenTense also posts quarterly reports (annual reports are so web 1.0). The example of PresenTense dovetails nicely with the dashboard examples @Kanter shares in this post, including the work of the Indianapolis Art Museum. Christine Egger (@cdegger) has done a nice job of tracking several related conversations about data, transparency, and open organizations in this post on the SocialActions blog. From comments across these links I get the strong sense that both SocialActions and NTEN are thinking hard about these issues - in terms of developing actual standards, developing tools for best practice, and for prompting real thought about the roles of nonprofit organizations in helping make sense of all the data we can now access.

This is exciting. We may have moved past rhetoric and hypothesis to real examples we can discuss and learn from. We can also ask some big questions about the future, like those on this must-read post from Scott Hartley on SSIR. I'm sure that someone is tracking examples of nonprofits and foundations sharing data in new and interesting ways (right? someone?) - I'd love to see that slide show. Here are some contributions to the list:

Those noted above: PresenTense, Indianapolis Museum of Art

Those I've mentioned before: Peery Foundation open source strategic planning, Lumina Foundation sharing of strategic plans and objectives.

Stories of crowdsourced giving from ModernGiving's list: Knight News Challenge, Phil Bucheit's crowdsourcing of ideas for donor advised giving.

Others....? Send 'em in [in comments or email lucy at blueprintrd dot com]. We'll track them here if no one else is already keeping the list. If you know where the list is being kept, please let us know.

Mixing data with your values

2009-11-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

I've written a lot about how data can transform giving. The November 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review includes a compelling feature story about how this is true at some of the country's biggest foundations. Written by staff from The Bridgespan Group, "Galvanizing Philanthropy" looks at the relationships between data, timing, strategy, and external feedback. The article provides several examples and points out the common mistakes of relying on "evidence too early" or "values and beliefs too late."

The importance of this insight is even bigger than the HBR piece emphasizes, in my opinion. By focusing on the relationship between data and values, and looking at when and how they are best used, the article reminds us that there is much about philanthropy that is neither rational nor data-driven. While foundations are making progress in terms of sharing information, using data, and even seeking external feedback, there are limits to how rational and empirical (and strategic) these enterprises will ever be. It is easy to lose sight of this, given the current zeitgeist about market forces, the power of technology, new measurement systems, and so on.

"Galvanizing Philanthropy" is well worth a read. HBR subscribers will find it in their November issues. Others can request a free reprint directly from Bridgespan by emailing Chris.Lindquist [at] bridgespan[dot] org. Tell him Lucy sent you.

The 2009 Embedded Giving Challenge

2009-11-02T12:18:00.000-08:00

(Photo by Roland. Flickr, Creative Commons)

It's that time of year again - giving season. Time to play: What is your favorite embedded giving experience of 2009?!*

While being asked to donate a dollar for [name your cause here] has become a year-round experience for anyone who a) shops at a store b) searches online or c) leaves their house, the "opportunity" to round up your bill for a good cause should present itself even more frequently in the mad dash to Christmas shopping that is the next 8 weeks. And shoppers this holiday season will no doubt have endless opportunities to choose between "Sweater A" and "Sweater B - the one that will save the polar bears."

After all, the $1.55 billion that companies are expected to spend on cause marketing (a 2% increase over 2008) is one of the few areas of charity-related spending that will show any increase in 2009.** NOTE: that is what will get spent on the marketing, not the amount that will go to good causes. It is notable that one can find very detailed predictions of the value of companies' spending on embedded giving but almost no data on how much money charities raised through these promotions.

So, let's get those stories rolling. Got a story about how many times you were asked to give in one shopping trip? Ever asked the cashier where the money really goes and gotten a particularly mind-boggling answer that you'd like to share? Or have you found a really odd partnership (pet food store and homeless person shelter? Electronic gadget and global warming prevention?) that made you scratch your head? Please send them in via the comments section, twitter (@p2173) or via email [lucy at blueprintrd dot com]. In true crowdsource fashion I'll collect them, post them, and let you - the readers - vote on them. Heck - I'll even let you the readers choose the categories for the voting - Most absurd? Biggest ripoff? Most asks in one day? You name it - I'll track it here in the first ever Embedded Giving challenge.

*Just to be clear: I think embedded giving is a ripoff. It puts far too many steps between donor and recipient, we have terribly lax reporting standards on what money is raised and where it actually goes, and the one true effect of this kind of giving is for an individual donor to give away their tax deduction to a company. I've been involved in the debate about embedded giving for years - you can read most of my blog posts on it here. I'll say it outright - I'm not promoting embedded giving as an effective donation practice. Still, if this post is like any of its predecessors I will get bombarded with emails from embedded giving platforms asking me to promote their version/product/tool.

**Source: IEG (sponsorship.com), reported on MediaPost, August 18, 2009. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/

The downsides of transparency

2009-10-30T06:09:00.000-07:00

Once again, the readers of this blog have provided critical insights and resources for my learning. Thank you. Specifically, a comment on the Decoding the Future (1 of 3) post pointed me to this AidfInfo Wiki - a resource for open sharing of data on development aid. Thanks.

And I want to encourage everyone to read Larry Lessig's article in the October 21, 2009 issue of The New Republic. Lessig, a parent of the Creative Commons movement, a guru on technology and creativity and change, and a member of the advisory board to The Sunlight Foundation reaches off the newstand and grabs you as you walk by with just the title of his piece, "Against Transparency." The piece stirred up some important issues - and has led to a wonderful debate (which you should check out after you read his article) online at The New Republic.

Now, Lessig's piece does an incredible job of marrying his first professional passion, technology change and creativity, to his second professional commitment, campaign finance reform. In arranging these nuptuals, Lessig points out what he sees as techno-deterministic blinders worn by transparency advocates (and this is where his respondents come back in the debate). Since my interest is in transparency, data, and philanthropy I'm going to step away from the campaign finance part of Lessig's article and extrapolate to money and data.

Several of the points that Lessig makes really matter from my point of view:

Policy solutions or industry responses to technology that think we can go back in time are doomed to fail. As he points out, in about a decade the majority of Americans alive will not remember the "good old days" of the 20th century, before file sharing; instant, replicable digital copying, open data access, and absolutely whiz-bang data-driven info graphics as a distinguishing value of a news source.
Technology doesn't determine our future. Our institutions and norms and practices and applications and laws determine technology and then they all mush together (my term, not his), each advance offering a platform for more change.
Technology changes far faster than laws (see also Sascha Meinrath at New America Foundation and the Open Technology Initiative) on this point.
This last point is important to Lessig's argument because his solution to the dangers of transparency as he sees them is not to try to fix transparency laws or technology, but to address the role of money and politics, as it is at the root of our normative assumptions between money and politics. His article is about changing how we finance politics, not how we make data available or use technology.

So what does all that have to do with philanthropy? As a champion of efforts to share information and data more widely within philanthropy, I need to step back - as Lessig's article forces its readers to do - and ask, what are the downsides of transparency? Which of these are due to technology or existing legal frameworks, and which of them come from elsewhere, from our norms and assumptions about how giving works or what philanthropy is for? And what scenarios can we imagine from greater data sharing that we'd prefer to avoid?

Here is one small example. I was in a recent conversation about disclosure requirements on private foundations. We were discussing the fact that most of what is required has to do with financial accountability, and how that drives what we know (and don't know) about philanthropy. Someone posited the idea of expanding the disclosure requirements to cover more programmatic issues or actual accomplishments. And then it occured to us - one logical effect of increasing disclosure requirements on private foundations would be to drive more donors to use advised funds, where the disclosure requirements don't (and probably wouldn't) apply. That would be a predictable end-around - and wouldn't aid the cause of learning more from philanthropy.

That story covers the imagined unintended consequence of a regulatory change. What are the imagined unintended results of using technology to shed more light on what foundations do and on the data they have and could share? Given our normative association between money and influence (back to Lessig's article) will more transparency into data lead foundations or donors to take fewer risks? Or might they respond by demanding even more paperwork and making hoops even higher and smaller for applicants?

Those are a few, small "what ifs?" What really matters here is this: Can we collectively identify what the normative assumptions are about philanthropy and its roles in society, and then identify what the interaction of technology-enabled transparency and those assumptions might be? We can't go back to a pre-techno-transparent age. And we'd be fools to expect a solely positive, linear interaction between the new visibility that it provides and our existing philanthropic institutions and behaviors. So instead, if we assume "backlash" and unintended consequences, perhaps we can surface our assumptions about roles of public and private resources, money, power, public, private, leadership, and social change in such a way that we really do change the game.

I'd welcome your thoughts on Lessig's article and the conversation that it sparked over at The New Republic. Transparency is here to stay - how do we make sure it yields the good we want from it?

Huff Post Game Changers in Philanthropy

2009-10-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

So there I was, minding my own business with friends in New Hampshire, watching the Yankees game (or what most of you call "The World Series") when I get a call - "You're on the front page of the Huffington Post!" So....I turn away from the TV (Yankees up 2-1)*, boot up laptop and find this:

"Huffington Post Game Changer: Who is the biggest game changer in Philanthropy"

"Current Status: Blogging the business of giving

Changing The Game By: Creating a conversation pit for the philanthropic sector with her blogsite Philanthropy 2173, an “accessible round-up and analysis of emerging trends.” The founder of Blueprint Research and Design, a strategic consulting firm for philanthropic organizations, Bernholz brings all the elements -- individual donors, foundations, trends and issues -- together in an effort to divine, and optimize, the future of generosity in a time of economic crisis.

Killer Quote: “Necessity is the mother of social innovation.”

Fun Fact: The blogsite takes its name from Woody Allen’s Sleeper, which was set 200 years in the future, because the 1973 film “helps us realize that so much of what we think is true may not be.”

Must Click Link: Philanthropy 2173

The list of 10 game changers is really humbling - founders of some of the most significant innovations in philanthropy in our time, from Ashoka to Kiva, from big givers to the big change that micro makes happen. I'm flattered and astonished to be listed among them.

Thank you, Arianna Huffington and HuffPo for including an idea person in this esteemed crowd. Thanks to all of you readers who have helped shape the ideas on this blog over the past several years. And thanks to all of you are changing the game in philanthropy - we all benefit from the good that you do.

*Don't hate me for being a Yankee fan, I was born into it. And to add to the confusion my mom was a Red Sox fan - it's lucky I made it this far. And yes, I'm rooting (quietly and behind closed doors) for the NYY in New England.

Crowdsourcing ideas

2009-10-19T19:17:00.001-07:00

There are at least three efforts underway that I am aware of that could serve as useful, crowdsourced idea lists for funders and or policymakers interested in leveraging someone else's due diligence. In my mind, these are good examples of being able to "listen in on" the criteria, legwork, and due diligence of grant makers PLUS get some crowd wisdom.

First, the Google 10^100 project - 16 "ideas that can change the world" and an open voting platform to let anyone register their opinion. These are big ideas - from socially conscious tax policy frameworks to scaling social enterprise to better banking tools for everyone.

Second, the Purpose Prize. If you are planning on getting older (and really, consider the alternative) then this is a group to watch. Each year a $100,000 Purpose Prize and several $50,000 grants are given out to individuals who have made major social contributions in their "Encore Careers." This video is a tease - the winner will be announced on October 26.

Third, The Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge. This is one of my favorites - my dad is a huge Bucky Fuller fan. This prize goes to "support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Entries are now being accepted and the deadline is midnight, Eastern Time on October 30, 2009." I love the ideas they get and I love the IdeaIndex that they share with everyone. (and this year @sashadicter of @acumen fund is a jury member!)

Other prize platforms -NetSquared, Ashoka's Changemakers, the HASTAC Digital Media Competition, - also share their entries. In my opinion, as I've written before, this is the real power of good prize philanthropy - the ecosystem of ideas and innovators that they attract. If you are looking for good ideas, wondering what people think is important, or looking for ways to piggyback on someone else's strategy - these tools make it easy to do.

Prizes aren't the only way to share this kind of information. The Cloud helps. In response to my post "why don't foundations build a document cloud?" I was reminded of ConnectiPedia, an initiative of the Meyer Memorial Trust in Oregon which does share a lot of information that the foundation has organized for anyone to use and share. This falls more in line with online resources such as the Pennsylvania Cultural Data Project, the Repository of Equivalency Determined Organizations (hey @TechSoup - got a new name yet?), the Media Database of Grantmakers for Film and Electronic Media, or Global Philanthropy Forum's International Resources Database (actually a list of organizations).

Networks that made change happen

2009-10-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

(Photo by Noah Sussman, Creative Commons license on Flickr)
I'm looking for examples of networks that have made some kind of positive social change happen. Ideally these are networks that:

Consist of unaffiliated individuals, not coalitions or alliances of existing nonprofits
Made something concrete, and socially positive, happen
Continue to exist after making a change - so they are more than "just" a protest group (this is the hardest one to find)

I want to be able to (oversimply) describe the impact like this:

"The X network made Y happen."

Here are some examples I know of or that folks have shared with me - along with my parenthetical questions about them.

David Pogue led a twitter campaign - "Take Back the Beep" - that changed how cell phone companies charge for accessing your voicemail. (but was it just a protest network?)
Beth Kanter's network of friends raised enough money to send a Cambodian woman to college (Do members of Beth's network know they are in something together or does only Beth know them all?)
The International Campaign to Ban Land Mines got international treaty signed and won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work (But it is more of a coalition of NGOs then an example of the definition I used above)
The Coalition for Airline Passengers Bill of Rights got NY State law changed in only 8 months (I don't know enough about their org structure to stand behind this example yet)
Twitter Vote Report monitored the 2008 U.S Presidential Election, sharing info on wait times and reporting on voting problems (See case study here http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/public_media_20_field_report_building_social_media_infrastructure_to_engage/)
The Peanut Butter Plan has more than 2300 individual members in its Facebook group and feeds homeless people in several cities one night per month. (There are pros and cons to this kind of volunteerism)
A network of environmental activists made Verizon apologize for sponsoring an anti-climate event on its Facebook Wall (protest and...?)

Thanks to everyone who shared those examples.

Please send me your sentences - I'll buy you a cup of coffee if I use them in the piece I'm writing (assuming you live somewhere in Bay Area or somewhere I travel to frequently. And assuming you drink coffee. Otherwise, I'll owe you one!)

Independent Sector: FutureLab

2009-10-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

Here's some info on Independent Sector's FutureLab - a worthwhile and intriguing experiment about the future of the sector. If you participate it will be that much more worthwhile and intriguing.

I've joined in and have been reading and learning from the comments on technology for the technology paper. Next I'll be diving into - and sharing my thoughts - in their section on policy, as it directly relates to the Policy Project on the Social Economy.

Hats off to IS for going this very inclusive route about these critical questions.

Decoding the Future - part 3

2009-10-15T05:49:00.000-07:00

(photo from NASA - http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov)

This post begins with an apology. To all those who requested draft 1.5 of the technology and philanthropy paper, and to whom it was scheduled to be sent on October 9 - apologies. Simply put - it is not ready yet. We're working on it. We got so much great information and feedback from folks on draft v 1.0 and so much feedback to the blog posts here and here - (and here, here and here) - well, we've got a lot of work to do. Our internal timeline for revisions, edits, revisions etc. put us into the middle of November. If you already requested it, you are on the list - we will send it to you when it is ready to go. Again, our apologies.

That said, here's some insight into what we're working on. (and here and here are the back posts that give you the story so far) - which can be summed up as:

"Data are the new platform for change.

The changes are not about the digital technologies that allow access, or about the data themselves. They are about the expectations and behaviors they unleash.

These changes, coupled with changes in the public and private sectors, are pushing a transition to a "social economy" made up of interdependent public, private and philanthropic capital and creators of social goods.

All of these changes are not an end of a story, they are simply the beginning.

Philanthropy is an industry of passion and volunteerism in which collusion should be encouraged. It may not change in the same way, at the same speed, or driven by the same forces as the newspaper or music industries or the public sector.

We are also looking at cloud technology and peer to peer philanthropic networks. Finally, the rising interest in networks - both for doing work and donating to work (do-ers and donors) - raises fascinating questions about governance and enterprise structures for change going forward. Yesterday there was an interesting discussion of funding in networks that was captured on twitter (Hashtag #netfunders). The Annie E Casey Foundation offers several useful case studies on this, and Working Wikily is chock-full of insights.

Also relevant here, and the topic of one of my books in progress - The Giving Commons - is the re-emergent understanding of the commons as a framework for governance in and around social change. Once the purview of shared agricultural resources, the commons has come to provide a frame for understanding the ways we interact around shared information resources. Elinor Ostrom, who was just awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work in this area, describes it as such:

"There appears to have been a spontaneous explosion of "Ah ha" moments when multiple users on the Internet one day sat up, probably in frustration, and said, "Hey! This is a shared resource!" People started to notice behaviors and conditions on the web - congestion, free riding, conflict, overuse, and "pollution" - that had long been identifed with other types of commons. They began to notice that this new conduit of distributing information was neither a private nor strictly a public resource."*

In addition to the emergent commons awareness around the Internet, climate change has also re-catalyzed interest in the commons. Those of us old enough to remember the Whole Earth Catalogue are familiar with the impact of that very first photo of earth from space which made the beauty and limits of this shared resource starkly visible.

Many of us are familiar with the Creative Commons, the open licensing system launched by Larry Lessig with signifcant financial support from the MacArthur Foundation, among others (and the licensing system that I use for this blog, by the way). Other visible commons-related efforts that matter to philanthropy include the Public Library of Science, the Science Commons, and efforts to make public data freely available, searchable and usable (Obama's Open Government Initiative, the work of the Sunlight Foundation, the work of the Internet Archive, OntheCommons - the list goes on and on.) Ironically, a recent study by the Berkman Center at Harvard noted that, despite the involvement of foundations and philanthropy in developing Creative Commons and other open content licensing systems, few of them actually use them as part of their own knowledge production and sharing policies.** Open content licensing and open access is now cool enough to warrant its own week of activity and activism - next week, October 19-23 marks Open Access Week.

So as we continue writing about the future of philanthropy and technology, these big issues - networks + network governance, the commons, cloud technology - are front and center. We've got a lot to make sense of - I better leave this here and get back to work.

*Hess and Ostrom (eds) Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007, p. 4
**http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/Open_Content_Licensing_for_Foundations

Structure Labs on hybrid ventures

2009-10-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

I've written a lot about hybrid organizational forms for social change - from L3Cs to B Corporations to social enterprises. I want to draw your attention to a series of workshops for entrepreneurs and others thinking about these forms.

Here's the blurb from Criterion Ventures, which is leading these workshops (Structure Labs):

"New corporate forms are blurring the boundaries between for profits and nonprofits. Entrepreneurs and established organizations alike are bending the marketplace to meet multiple bottom lines including a return on social capital. While some nimbly explore the space between for profit and nonprofit, many more are struggling to make sense of the new landscape of social change.

... As the world of social enterprise matures, Criterion is helping to create the methodology that can make it more accessible. Criterion has spent the past year creating an easy to engage process to understand how new forms are structured and how they might work to support the efforts of social change agents."

The Packard Foundation is funding the work behind these workshops. They will be held in San Francisco (Nov 4, Nov 5), Minneapolis (Nov 12) and New York City (Nov 19). You can register for them here.

These new enterprise forms - and the possibilities they represent for drawing more and different capital to social good production, as well as the new regulatory and policy implications they raise - are key to understanding how the social sector is moving forward. I'm glad to see a major foundation providing support for this, and of having a firm like Criterion - and several law firm partners - put on these workshops.

*In keeping with FTC regulations on public disclosure, I am not affiliated with Criterion Ventures, though I am familiar with their work. My firm has worked with The Packard Foundation. I would attend one of these sessions if my calendar permitted. I was not materially compensated for this post.

More maps of the sector

2009-10-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

Here are two more sets of maps to add to our growing atlas of the social sector. These were created and shared by the folks noted below - they were kind enough to share, please give them credit if you use their work.

First, thanks to Lisa Richter of GPS Capital Partners for her maps of social capital. Lisa and I recently published Equity Advancing Equity - a review of community philanthropy, mission investing and social equity. Three of Lisa's excellent maps are attached:

A comparison of foundation resources to US government and capital markets;
A segmented look at the MRI supply by issue area
A map of an efficient social capital marketplace

Second, McKinsey and Co., led by Laura Callanan, has been making sense of the universe of tools and approaches for social impact assessment. Their work includes the building of a publicly accessible database of these tools that will be hosted by The Foundation Center. In addition to the database, they've drawn these maps of two elements of that landscape:

Landscape of tools
Landscape of common standards

You can get more information on McKinsey's work here.

These maps join the others on the Flickr page. Thanks folks, I'm still trying to figure out how to redo the original doers and donors maps - I welcome your continued input and your map examples.

Why don't foundations build a DocumentCloud?

2009-10-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

(photo from http://imgs.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/index)

I tweeted this question yesterday and quite a few people passed it on - Why don't foundations build a document cloud? What is a document cloud, you ask? DocumentCloud is an online resource of source documents for investigative reporters - you can check it out here.

The site, which has received funding from the Knight News Challenge and has content partners such as The Atlantic, New York Times, TPM, and The New Yorker, is still in development but, once it goes live, it is intended to serve as a shared storage and search file cabinet for all the stuff reporters use to research and write their stories. As described in the New York Observer:

"DocumentCloud's software, once its fully built, will take all those papers that reporters, bloggers and civic groups usually stack in their bottom drawers or computer desktop folders at the end of their investigations, and extract all the information so that it's findable, shareable and searchable on the Web."

OK. Now apply this analogy to philanthropy. Imagine if the world's foundations shared their applications, due diligence reports, evaluation findings, and commissioned issue reports....Close your eyes, and imagine this.....

Maybe grant applications would get approved faster because research could be done more quickly. Maybe more funders would collaborate, once they realized how often they were funding the same things. Maybe the quality of funder due diligence would improve, as certain program staff members research and write ups were frequently accessed and began to be seen as a "quality standard." Maybe some siloed program areas would break down, as funders realized they were using the same source information to look at different issues, or were each funding the same organization but one was working from a health vantage point and the other from an environmental justice lens.

Maybe nonprofits would be able to gain the kind of mezzanine view of their issue area that program officers now have, and put that intelligence to work on the ground. Maybe they would find real collaborators, not just "marriages of funder-driven convenience." Maybe the paperwork for applications would decrease, because nonprofits could point new potential funders to the "cloud" where their information was already available (and had already been vetted).

You can open your eyes now.

So why not? DocumentCloud is moving into full swing development mode for less than $800,000. The contributing news agencies include commercial newspapers and nonprofit investigative outfits such as ProPublica. They include competing newspapers, news magazines, the Sunlight Foundation, WNYC, Amazon Web Services, OpenCalais, and PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer. During the early days only organizations that contribute documents will be able to access the source, but once it is all up and built the information will be available to any reporter, blogger or interested party.

And the best part? Once the code is written and the site is functioning, it will all be open source - other developers will be able to work from the code and adapt it to different markets. Like philanthropy. So, why don't foundations build a document cloud?

More maps of Do-ers And Donors V 3

2009-10-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

Wow - this map thing is taking off. I should have started here - with the great maps from the Skoll SocialEdge, SocialActions session at #SoCap09. At this rate we're going to have to plan a gallery tour of "maps of the social sector." If you have more, please send them in - we'll get 'em all posted - for now, here's the Flickr set.

Jill Finlayson's posts from the session - accessible here, here and here - give some background on the maps and their purpose. I'll be trying to fold these data into my maps - and again, thanks everyone for sharing maps, suggestions, and improvements - please keep the insights coming!

Do-ers and Donors v 2

2009-10-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

Your comments on the first version of my map of the social sector are fabulous - check it all out here. And special thanks to Tim Ogden, who shared his version of this idea from some years ago. It is below. If you have other versions that you'd like me to share, please send 'em along.

I am working on the improvements you've been suggesting - will post a revision as soon as I can.

Equity Advancing Equity

2009-10-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Impact Investing is a growth field. It builds from socially responsible investing, double bottom line approaches, mission/program related investing, and drives, potentially, lots more capital to the production of social good.

Some of the roots of impact investing come from efforts to redress inequities in access to capital. The history of mission and program related investing as practiced by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations in the 1960s through the development of community development finance and all the way to last week's $400 million announcement by the Gates Foundation, is one of trying to make capital available to communities and issues where it has been scarce.

I am thrilled to announce the publication of the final Future Matters report - Equity Advancing Equity: Community Philanthropy, Social Equity and Mission Investing. The report focuses on how community philanthropies - community foundations, loan funds, and others - are using mission investing to address these fundamental inequities in their communities. The social inequities shaped by race, ethnicity, class, and gender and sexual orientation are exacerbated by inequitable access to capital. Success stories abound of community driven efforts to redress these challenges - many of which start locally and become national models. The report chronicles these successes, offers resources and guidance for incorporating these strategies into your portfolio, and provides sample measures of impact.

This paper, which marks the official conclusion of the Future of Community Philanthropy Project - five years of work funded by the Ford and Mott Foundations with final support from The Bank of America and led by my firm, Blueprint Research & Design in partnership first with The Monitor Institute and now with Lisa Richter of GPS Capital Partners - produced On the Brink of New Promise: The Future of US Community Foundations, (OBNP) 8 Future Matter reports over 2 years, and a toolkit of materials to help community foundations use this information. We've conducted several dozen consulting engagements based on the work, presented the materials at countless conferences, incorporated crowdsourced improvements into the tools, and heard from thousands of community philanthropists - in the U.S and abroad - about the importance of this work.

This current moment is one of great potential and challenge to community foundations. Much of what was outlined in OBNP has come true, some of the drivers of change are accelerating, and innovation in business models, impact measures, resource allocation, and vision are valuable currency among community philanthropists. I hope Equity Advancing Equity can contribute to shaping the near and long term futures of all our communities.

Donors and do-ers

2009-10-03T14:02:00.000-07:00

What do you think of this as a way of visualizing the landscape of capital providers and enterprises in the social sector? Is it helpful? Can you help me improve it? Thanks.

Impact Investing Index

2009-09-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

(Photo from Flickr, Biking Nikon PDX, Creative Commons License)

I have a basic question.

How big is the current impact investing market?

Somewhere between $4 billion - $2.71 trillion. Well, that narrows it down. Not.

In this recent article in Forbes, Jed Emerson, the father of Blended Value, says:

"Impact investing covers that category of investment, which is viewed as "sustainable," generating financial returns by integrating consideration of social and environmental factors into the investment strategy. The category also includes a growing number of CDs and other fixed-income investment options--except in this case invested funds are used to support small, sustainable business and community development....What was a niche industry has grown significantly in recent years--now totaling over $2.71 trillion in the United States alone."

But that number is misleading - that includes ALL socially responsible investment funds - it comes directly from the Social Investment Forum which notes $2.71 trillion out of $25.1 trillion in U.S. Investment marketplace. SRI includes a number of practices (screening, shareholder advocacy) that don't result in more dollars flowing to mission driven businesses.

In the 2009 report, Impact Investing, The Monitor Institute defines the term Impact Investing as "Actively placing capital in businesses and funds that generate social and/ or environmental good and at least return nominal principal to the investor." That would define impact investing as a subset of SRI - so we know it is smaller than $2.71 Trillion. The report goes on to aspire to a market that is 1% of assets under management in 10 years (emphasis added)- a number it targets as $500 Billion. But the report doesn't give us a 2009 baseline number.

Mission Related Investments (MRI) and Program Related Investments (PRI) are one sub-class of impact investments. So how much do they add up to? On the advice of my colleague and co-author of Equity Advancing Equity, Lisa Richter of GPS Capital Partners, I went back to the Social Investment Forum to get a value for community investing - which includes PRIs and MRIs, as well as community development finance institutions, community development banks, and community venture funds. Their number? Total community investing assets (2007) $25.77 Billion. Subset of that in MRIs and PRIs? Lisa offered an estimate of $4-5 Billion, based on a report that used 2005 data and trends and self-reports in the last four years. But that $4-5 billion is an informed estimate.

How much of that comes from foundations making PRIs or MRIs? I checked public sites from More for Mission and the PRI Makers Network. I couldn't find hard baseline numbers for now (Please send to me if you have them or can find them). More for Mission is a foundation-led campaign to increase mission investing by $10 billion over the next five years - but, again, provides no baseline number.

My quest also took me to the websites of The Calvert Group, Good Capital, the Community Investing Center, Investors Circle, RSF Social Finance, One California Bank, New Resource Bank, the TakeAction Summit, Boston College's Institute for Responsible Investment, and EuroSif. I found all kinds of numbers and impressive rates of growth (SRI assets under management in Europe increased 102% in two years 2005-2007). But no baseline.

Can you help? I need an index and a value for the monograph I'm writing on the future. Those in the space of impact investing and MRIs/PRIs need a baseline to know if they are meeting their growth goals. Standardizing ways to measure the social and environmental returns is critical work, and the impact investing community is working hard on this. Doing so will help with market definition - as those measures can help set "what is impact investing and what isn't."

Is there some industry definition and standard measure of the financial resources in it? If I simply failed in my search and all my email inquiries, please point me in the right direction and forgive my naivete.

If not, well, I'm not the right person to go adding up all the numbers reported on these sites, classifying them, and defining a number - but someone out there is. Please - someone - create the "I-cubed"- Impact Investing Index. Define your terms, analyze current size of the components, and identify our baseline.* Please email me with any data you do have, any benchmarks I can cite with some assurance. Doing so will directly help me - I don't want to publish a report that claims the Impact Investing market is somewhere between $4 billion and $2.71 trillion. Much more important - it will help the market.

*And yes, these kinds of indices are created in precisely this way. The Dow Jones Index, easily the most well-recognized such market measure, was created by a newspaper editor in 1896. By the way, it is now for sale.

A transition in embedded giving

2009-09-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

Maybe you are not done with talking about embedded giving, but I sure thought I was. Or hoped I was. After all, this was the buzzword without equal way back in 2007.

But sure enough, I still get interview requests about the concept. I still get email pitches and PR announcements asking me to write about the latest, greatest version of it. And there is still NO RELIABLE DATA on how much money is raised this way, what percentage goes to charity, or what it costs to move that money.

And then I realized how much I like BetterWorldBooks. On one hand, it is a really cool social enterprise. On the other, embedded giving is the sine qua non of this company. To remind you - BetterWorldBooks buys used books from libraries and others and resells them online with part of the proceeds going to literacy programs around the world.

So I started to wonder about myself as a donor and as a consumer. Just in time along comes a white paper, From Legacy to Leadership: Is Philanthropy Ready for the New Consumer? to tell me who I am, what I care about and how nonprofits should respond to me. Now, to be clear, the paper is written by BBMG, a marketing consultancy, so they have skin in the game on this. You can get a copy of the paper here, but you will have to fill out a form adding yourself to BBMG's mailing list.

Here, in brief, is what I took from the paper. Today's consumer (i.e., me) is looking for 3 types of value from the brands they choose - practical, social, and tribal (BBMG's lingo, not mine. They are the marketers, after all.

Practical - does the item do what I need it to (BetterWorldBooks - sold me books I wanted at low cost).
Social - does it make me feel good about myself (BWB - Hey, I'm keeping old books out of the landfill AND helping support literacy programs)
Tribal - does the brand make me feel part of something cool that is bigger than myself (BWB is way hipper than Amazon - it lets me flaunt my "independent, do-gooder, 3BL" self, even as I surreptitiously read other stuff on my Kindle)

Sure, I'd like to think I'm too cool for this stuff. But there you have it - me, the brand, the white paper, and the very practice I most distrust (embedded giving) all wrapped up into a nice package.

Which, me being me, made me think of something else. For the last several months ago I've been thinking about business models for media companies - largely because I think much of what is happening in the news industry is destiny for many other industries. One of the trends I've noticed is that media companies, especially newspapers, are going into other lines of business - like wine club hosting, cruise organizing or reward points.

Now if these were 501 c 3 organizations, the IRS would no doubt call all this "Unrelated Business Income." But since they are, nominally, commercial enterprises, the question arises, what is going on, when The New York Times is offering me membership opportunities, not just a chance to buy some news and read some advertising? I think the answer is the Times is trying to embed itself into my life even more than it already is, by becoming my trusted source of wine advice and a way to meet new friends (other wine club members), in addition to providing me news and Paul Krugman columns.

Maybe BBMG is right about what is going on - that our values and social goals are becoming as important in our consuming, donating choices as our practical needs. If so, then just as the public, commercial and philanthropic sectors are blending - see social enterprise, impact investing and the Office of Social Innovation for examples, - so are our individual behaviors.

If this is the case, and we are making consumer purchases on a mass scale that reflect our values and social goals, then embedded giving will truly be here to stay. It will become an integral part of new enterprises, B Corporations, L3Cs, and social enterprises. In essence, it will get ever more embedded - both through technology and through the kind of organizational hybridization represented by BWB. If this happens, there may be a bright side. With all the focus on measurement of social return in the Social Capital Markets, we may finally get some reasonable data.

2010 Futures - add these to the curated list!

2009-09-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

You all are just amazing! As if the dozens of answers already noted to my question "What single idea, entity, practice, trend, force or innovation will matter most to the social sector in 2010? " weren't enough, here are more from twitter, sent to me via email and posted on blogs.

From the Social Velocity Blog:
"There are three things that I think will matter most to the social sector in 2010:

Increased Philanthropic Dollars Will Go to Organization Building. Donors will increasingly realize that they can achieve a greater social return on their investment (more social impact) when they invest in the capacity, or growth of a successful nonprofit. That is to say that donors will increasingly realize the power of BUILDING organizations rather than BUYING services. I don’t think donors will move away from buying services, there will still be a majority of that. But I think donors will start to understand the difference between a “donation” where they are simply supporting an organization’s current program, versus an “investment” that makes the organization stronger, healthier, better positioned to address the social problem head on.
Nonprofits Will Move From Outputs to Outcomes. And in order to meet this trend of donors wanting to invest rather than donate, nonprofits will begin to understand that they will attract more capital if they can demonstrate a social return on investment, or a change in outcomes, not just outputs. Outputs have been a favorite of the nonprofit sector, i.e. 500 kids went through our after-school program, 1,000 meals were served in our kitchen. But outputs don’t demonstrate social impact, or a change to a problem. Outcomes do, which is what investors increasingly will want to see. Outcomes are about changed lives, changed trajectories. It is so much more powerful and compelling to be able to say that the 500 kids that went through our after-school program stayed in school and increased their academic achievement which was a marked difference from their cohorts that didn’t attend our program. Then, if you can continue to track those children and demonstrate that they continued to stay in school at a higher rate than their contemporaries, you have a compelling change to a trajectory. You begin to show how your organization is an intermediary between donors who want to invest in social change and a change you are making in the community. I believe that philanthropic capital will begin to flow more readily to those nonprofit organizations that can demonstrate outcomes as opposed to outputs, and those nonprofits that can comply will be more successful at attracting capital.
The Social Capital Market Will Increasingly Include Philanthropic Capital. The social capital market to date has focused mostly on investing in social businesses that provide both a social and financial return. Philanthropy and nonprofit organizations have been somewhat left behind. But this will change with a growing recognition of the benefits of broadening the definition of social capital markets to include nonprofits and philanthropy. There is much to be gained when ALL organizations working towards social impact and ALL investors interested in social return can pool resources and work towards closer collaboration, creation of new financial vehicles, sharing of ideas and information.
Perhaps 2010 is too early for all three of these trends to really take hold, but I think the beginnings are there."

From an email from Tony Pipa at Harvard:

"Contraction & uncertainty. Can a field get to "impact" without abandoning folks with urgent needs as organizations fold/struggle? Is it “reset” or “retreat?” The corollary is that the lag of employment in relation to macro economic recovery will be critical. Needs will continue to rise throughout 2010 even if economy looks likes it's recovering. And will all those good NPers losing their jobs find new, better ones where they could have greater social impact?"

From an email from Michael Moody, USC:

"Economic recovery will take longer to reach the hardest hit, lowest income folks, and their continued (perhaps even rising) needs for basic services and urgent assistance in 2010 will force the field to innovate new ways to fulfill our persistent role of relieving immediate suffering. New ideas for doing so will spread, like the special "safety net funds" that community foundations have started this year."

From twitter:

"I think/hope it will be the use of networked collaboration to make efficient use of shrinking funds." @workingwikily

"change investor mindset and the role of mvmt bldg in phil+social sector" @FLO_A

Thanks everyone. Please take a minute to read through all the responses - this crowd really is wise. I'll do my best to make sense of it all.

Wither 2010: Your answers, curated!

2009-09-27T10:23:00.001-07:00

Last night my family and I had the great pleasure of hanging out with Beth Kanter and her family. Beth (@kanter) and I both have 9 year old sons named Harry - what other indicator do you need that we should get together? Among other things, we chatted about what blogging had brought into our lives....

Well, here's one living answer. Check this out...from my email this morning

"Hi, Lucy -- I'm working on an experimental Twitter tool that tracks a conversation. I grabbed the 2010 conversation so far and then hand-edited it into regular English, and I thought I'd send it on to you, in case it's useful. -- @peterkaminski.
My website is http://peterkaminski.com/

====

Program-Related Investments? L3C's? -- @artfulmanager

Moving from "sustainability" to "thrivability". Now: 1 + 1 < 1 =" 2,"> 2. -- @valdiskrebs

The thing most essentially in need of change is investor mindset. The space between giving and investing is real, but needs more people. -- @Kevindoylejones

Having a vision for significant Community Change will guide all work within all aspects of all organizations. http://blip.tv/file/1871539 -- @HildyGottlieb

Accountability and transparency. Social Impact as a currency. -- @conches

Would love to say thrivability - catalyzing resource sharing and solution-focus. But that might be a bit optimistic. :) -- @NurtureGirl

Libertarians en masse finally figure out how to channel all their anti-govt angst into out-of-box for-profit social innovation. -- @atomiota

Proliferation. Significantly more organizations, people, roles, issues. Social sector reach/impact/actors proliferating on all fronts. -- @CDEgger

Downturn limits money not expertise; funders recast as social fund managers; growth of managed peer-to-peer funds. -- @alexsteer

Creative disruption, multi-sector strategies, measuring results, social media, transparency, public sector, survival. -- @vppartners

The institution as we know it is dead. Collaboration between and within organizations will be paramount to creating REAL change. -- @ntenhross

Foundations as Social Impact Knowledge Brokers - http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/2009/09/the-2010-crises-in-philanthropy -- @tactphil

Impact of and response to the economic recovery (slowness or lack thereof) and the inherent unintended consequences. -- @mmorino

Yes, the institution as we know it is dead. The illusion of institution boundaries is crumbling - collaboration proves more useful. Remix. -- @NurtureGirl

Foundations leveraging unrestricted funds to "challenge" people to engage in philanthropy (S.A. Comm. foundation match days trending upward.) The role of movement-building in philanthropy and the social sector as a whole. The closing doors of non-profit organizations due, a.k.a. the final wave of impact from the recession and the "new normal" that will emerge. -- @ChangeEvnglst

Movements, for all kinds of issues & sectors - movements any organization can join, and anyone can be a part of, and more sustained than campaigns. -- @engagejoe

Embracing Millennials/Gen Yers as full partners in the enterprise. Mission-related investing is embraced by a generation of chastened fund managers. -- @pndblog

The big story will (should) be the shift from serving causes to solving them. Audiences won't stick with nonprofits that don't make progress on issues and won't donate to groups that aren't having MAJOR impact. Note that MAJOR impact is not to be confused with activities that get attention or build lists. The whole way nonprofits operate will change in 2010. It won't be viewed that way; people will say the economy is still struggling, etc. But make no mistake, the shift will be in approach and strategy. Non-profits must operate with a new mindset and focus, or lose audience. -- @BrianReich"

Thank you, Peter! For some other input, that came to me via email, see this roundup. Here's the original blog post. And here are a few more tweets from this morning....Please keep the conversation going, coming, and moving on...Tweet me at @p2173, email at lucy@blueprintrd.com or comment below.

"2010 social sector: orgs that thrive will maximize existing resources, collaborate effectively and BE STATEGIC." @Hailayates

"hmm .. @p2173 asking about trends for 2010. I'm wondering about 2020 http://bit.ly/N3uU6" @kanter

"the big story will (should) be the shift from serving causes to solving them....audiences won't stuck w/ NPs that don't make progress on issues. Won't donate to groups that aren't having MAJOR impact....nd note that MAJOR impact is not to be confused with activities that get attention, build lists....the whole way NPs operate will change in 2010. Won't be viewed that way, people will say economy still struggling, etc....but make no mistake, shift will be in approach and strategy. Operate with new mindset, focus, or lose audience." @brianreich

"Here's one for the list, Lucy. Embracing Millennials/Gen Yers as full partners in the enterprise...And here's one more: Mission-related investing is embraced by a generation of chastened fund managers" @PNDblog

"Foundation giving is going to drop off a cliff in 2010--Tactical Philanthropy answers @p2173's question http://bit.ly/3sFjQo" @CHayling

"what matters: having more meaningful conversation and interactions wherever you are" @GRMeyer

"Maximize social return on assets nonprofits already have ($, people, knowledge)-Not getting new" @IdeaEncore