77 Federal

Fundraising Monitor Widget from Maplight.org

2008-04-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

Keeps an up-to-date tally of funds raised...

Get embed code from maplight.org

The Six Sectors of Impact #4 Leadership

2008-04-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

Continuing the blog series on NPC’s sector approach to building “Impact Funds” and how this enables you to invest strategically across the issue impact spectrum...

Sector #4 LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Strong and sustaining issue movements need to recruit and develop the next generation of leaders. Within this sector we define those organizations that strive to build a continuous pipeline of leaders. To demonstrate, here are the leadership development providers in the NPC Victory in 2008 Fund:

Bus Project - Mobilizes a new generation of state political activists with an innovative and effective model.
Wellstone Action! - Trains a large number of progressive leaders, many of whom become elected officials across the United States.
Women’s Campaign Forum - Provides support for women to run for office regardless of political affiliation.
Young People For (PFAW) - Encourages young people to get involved and become new leaders.

Like looking in the mirror!

2008-04-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

While we are not affiliated … NPC (New Philanthropy Capital) in London England is providing strategic giving services for their clients. Issue impact potential- based on analysis- is what drives their consulting services, just like us - NPC in San Francisco! There is a movement in charitable and political giving – people are demanding a more clearly defined strategy for their giving – they want to create an impact. NPC – we like what you are doing!

'Social' Stock Market

2008-04-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

The Rockefeller Foundation has announced a $500,000 grant to study the feasibility of creating a stock market for businesses that seek to achieve a social mission and make a profit. Read article.

Calculate your Carbon Impact

2008-03-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

The average American generates 9.44 tons of CO2/year. FYI - that's not good. How much are you creating? Take a quick test at Yahoo Green. How long does it take to change a light bulb? 18 seconds. Are you using CFL bulbs in your home? You can also create a strategic political impact by investing in the Energy Independence & Environment impact fund.

Mutual Social Responsibility – Brands and Consumers Unite

2008-03-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

Major PR firms like Edelman are realizing that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) needs to be more than a sideline activity for their clients if they want to remain competitive for consumer mindshare. Issue leadership now has to be part of a company’s ‘brand persona’ – which the leading brands demonstrate (Starbucks, CNN, The Body Shop, etc.). Corporations must now collaborate with their consumers to be part of the new global citizenship.

Edelman has launched its goodpurpose™ site to describe how brands and consumers can come together for mutual social responsibility.

The Six Sectors of Impact, #3 Idea Generation

2008-03-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Continuing the blog series on NPC’s sector approach to building “Impact Funds” and how this enables you to invest strategically across the issue impact spectrum...

Sector #3 IDEA GENERATION
Perhaps the most important element of an effective movement is the constant development and support of new ideas. Knowledge is power. Think tanks, policy institutes, and other idea generating organizations fuel new approaches to issue solutions. Taking risks to try and test new ideas and then implementing those that prove most successful enable workable solutions to emerge. These new ideas must also be effectively disseminated and advocated. To demonstrate, here are the Idea Generation providers in the NPC Energy Independence & Environment Fund:

Energize America– Creates cutting-edge, open-source environmental policy.
Institute for America’s Future – Organizes labor and environmental communities to clean energy as a creator of jobs and means to energy independence.
Science & Environment Health Network – Repositions the burden of environmental impact from communities onto corporations.

New Organization Profiles

2008-03-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

NPC's Organization Directory got a facelift this week. The organization profiles have a clearer presentation of the data and analysis. You can see an example here. We hope you like it.

Do you know of an organization that you'd like to see listed in the directory? Well, organizations are able to self sign-up here.

Let them know!

Ice Shelf Breakup

2008-03-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- Some 220 square miles of ice has collapsed in Antarctica and an ice shelf about seven times the size of Manhattan is "hanging by a thread," the British Antarctic Survey said Tuesday, blaming global warming.

Invest in Energy Independence & Environment, an NPC Impact Fund. The fund supports innovative organizations working towards a green planet and an energy independent country.

The Funding Gap for Social Enterprises

2008-03-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

In an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review – The Funding Gap - the authors examine the difficulty that social enterprises face when raising money. These organizations are for-profit but are engaged in a social mission and often bring important innovation to their chosen issue. It is likely that these organizations will more effectively lead the way in creating real social change, but philanthropists and commercial investors have not yet fully embraced social enterprises; the former because of the for-profit status of social enterprises and the latter being unsure of businesses with a social goal. NPC sees organizations in this category as a highly strategic tool for issue investing and we are evaluating their inclusion in specialized impact funds.

The Six Sectors of Impact, #2 Advocacy & Organizing

2008-03-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

Continuing the blog series on NPC’s sector approach to building “Political Mutual Funds” and how this enables you to invest strategically across the issue impact spectrum...

Sector #2 ADVOCACY & ORGANIZING
Advocacy organizations work for the widespread support of progressive positions. They push for the adoption of new ideas and approaches (including those from progressive think tanks) in legislatures, governments, and with candidates. They achieve this by organizing and activating groups of like-minded people to help build the political will to effect the desired change. To demonstrate, here are the Advocacy providers in the NPC Affordable Health Care fund:

America’s Agenda Health Care Education Fund – Advocates strategic implementation models to state-based health care reform decision makers and mobilizes action across the country.
Tennessee Justice Center & Tennessee Health Care Campaign Collaborative – Mobilizes a growing base to pass health care reform in Tennessee. Demonstrating the successful implementation of health care models in individual states leads the way for other states in passing health care reform legislation.
Small Business Majority – Brings small business to the health care reform debate in NY and CA - two pivotal states in the health care movement.
Consumers for Affordable Health Care Coalition - Employs a successful consumer lobbying model to be emulated.
Campaign for America’s Future – Provides a forum to advocate progressive solutions for providing health care coverage to all Americans.

For Good, Measure (NYT Magazine March 9, 2008)

2008-03-10T10:52:00.002-07:00

An article in NYT Magazine looked at modern philanthropy trends and says that “The question that troubles many of the newest philanthropists… is whether their bequests will have a notable impact.” Small donors and large foundations both struggle to understand how they can be more strategic in their grant-making. Foundations have begun to approach philanthropy the way a money manager might, considering not only whether a theory of change for a particular program is correct but also whether a grant can result in a good “return” on investment.
Paul Brest, the president of the Hewlett Foundation…

“These attempts for philanthropies to think as investors as a metaphor is fairly new and so is the decision to use metrics to help you guide those investment decisions.”

The article concludes that defining metrics of success can help push issues forward, but that a simple analysis of cost vs benefit might be counter productive, causing grant makers to give to those initiatives most easily analyzed.

NPC’s strategy is to place “issue impact potential” as the most important metric in evaluating an organizations effectiveness rather than cash efficiency alone. Then, using a sector approach, we group high-potential organizations into “Impact Funds” that present a truly strategic high-impact solution to tackling the issue at hand.

The Wicked Wiki

2008-03-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

The Obama Campaign has been successful using a Wiki to enable organizers to collaborate and share information says an article on readwriteweb.com. The efforts of ‘Precinct Captains’ – those volunteers critical in getting out the vote – have been effectively managed. This is a new use for the Wiki -which has now become a popular tool used by businesses for creating a type of private intranet for real-time project collaboration. Here at NPC (always on top of our game) we use a Wiki for all types of projects from developing Engineering specifications to Marketing message creation. All hail the Wicked Wiki!

The 6 Sectors of Impact. # 1: Capacity & Infrastructure

2008-03-03T12:23:00.000-08:00

To create our “Political Mutual Funds” and to help our customers more easily navigate issue politics, NPC identified six key sectors that each span the progressive, political, legal, and issue spectrum. When creating an effective fund it is important that it be diversified across these sectors to achieve maximum issue impact. In this blog series, a different sector will be highlighted each week.

Sector #1 CAPACITY & INFRASTRUCTURE
A successful movement needs a robust network of technical assistance and service providers who improve the impact and efficiency across all the other sectors. Organizations in this sector are typically involved in providing a technology or service to other organizations or providing infrastructure training or networking. To demonstrate, here are the Capacity and Infrastructure providers in the Victory in 08 and Beyond Fund:

ActBlue – Leading Democratic candidate fundraising payment processor
Democratic Gain – Hub for progressive and Democratic job-seekers
The Media Consortium – Coordinates progressive media outlets for content distribution
Netroots Nation - Forum for grassroots community that use the internet for expressing viewpoints and advocating change.

Badge of Honor

2008-02-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

Get and Display a "Political Mutual Fund" Badge on your website or social page.

Promoting a fund is another way you can invest in the issue.

Count What Counts!

2008-02-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

“Count What Counts…” a recently published article from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, examines how charitable investors are making their giving decisions. The article begins..

“Imagine choosing a mutual fund or securities investment based on a telemarketer or one-paged postal solicitation. Imagine learning the fund’s strategy and peer-rating exclusively from its own homepage and marketing material. And, finally, imagine determining a prospective investment’s future financial potential exclusively from the ratio of one year of revenue to one year of administrative costs. Yet, this is what investors are asked to do every time they make a charitable contribution.”

The article goes on to describe how NPC’s PROI and Sectoral Analysis offer charitable investors the type of analysis that is until now only available to foundation program officers and policy insiders.

“The PROI tool, which intends to use the rigorous measures that venture capitalists use in evaluating private start-up companies, features a single set of “core metrics” and at least six “sector metrics.” The article concludes how important it is that there be a tool that “..enable charitable investors to evaluate a prospective investment for its potential social return on investment. Moreover, we would suggest that donors would find charitable giving more meaningful, more powerful, and more effective if they were offered a comprehensive tool that allowed a comparison among prospective investments.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Part 5: Why I Do What I Do

2008-02-21T15:32:00.000-08:00

Everyone at NPC was asked to write a blog post about “Why I do what I do,” and this month it’s my turn . . .

I’ve been avoiding writing this for a while because, as you can probably imagine, after four months on a new job and nine months out of college, “why I do what I do” changes about every two weeks. I had a moment of clarity, though, last week while listening to Laura Flanders speak about her book, Blue Grit. There was obviously some discussion of the primary contest at the event, but I was impressed by how Laura kept emphasizing that we needed to be “keeping our eyes on the prize and the prize isn’t only the presidential election.”

I wrote down that phrase because it seemed like a great marketing description for NPC’s Victory in 2008 and Beyond “Political Mutual Fund,” but as I walked home that evening, I couldn’t get the line out of my head. It just made so much sense to me, and that, in a nutshell, is why I’m at NPC.

May 2007 was a great time to graduate from college for anyone with any sort of civic/political inclination because there was so much momentum for change in the political sphere and so many opportunities to get involved. While my initial thought was to work for one of the presidential campaigns, I couldn’t ever really commit myself to the idea that one candidate would be the answer, the person that was going to take us forward.

Though I found out about NPC by a lucky coincidence, what really sold me on moving across the country (after three phone interviews) was NPC’s optimistic and pragmatic approach to change. I was excited to be at a company that interfaced with such innovative and interesting groups in a place that is on the leading edge of the progressive movement.

What I love about the NPC team is everyone’s willingness to just roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty to find a solution, despite all of their cumulative years of experience with the problems in the current system. Though we don’t waste any time defining it, there is a real consciousness of and focus on “the prize” that shapes and drives all of NPC’s activities. It has been really inspiring to be part of a product that offers a tangible, viable way to move our country forward.

Presidential Money Race Widget - From MapLight.org

2008-02-19T16:09:00.000-08:00

MapLight.org provides essential transparency into the political process by illuminating the connection between money and politics. Maplight.org has been NPC PROI™ analyzed and are featured in the Victory in 2008 and Beyond "Political Mutual Fund".

21st Century Dems on PROI™ Evaluation

2008-02-19T09:07:00.000-08:00

Mark Lotwis said...

"Twenty-First Century Democrats is honored to be included in the National Progressive Coalition’s Victory in 2008 and Beyond Fund. The application process we went through was lengthy, involved, and worth every minute. Beyond the obvious benefit of being included in such a bold and creative investment model and with such a stellar group of progressive groups, the NPC PROI™ model provided us an opportunity to quantify all our many accomplishments over the last twenty years. I was proud of what we had done across America before NPC, and am even more so now. Understanding that donors have choices…" (more)

21st Dems seek to elect progressive new leaders for the Democratic Party; they evaluate and support candidates based on 6 results-oriented qualities.

Bonkers Video! League of Young Voters

2008-02-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

The League of Young Voters is an organization featured in “Victory in 08 and Beyond” Political Mutual Fund. They empower young people to be players and winners in the political game. Your contributions certainly keep them enthused….

The Web in Politics

2008-02-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

In every election cycle web technologies and online campaign strategies become increasingly effective. The web has created unprecedented access to the candidates and the issues; over-night online contributions in the multiple millions of dollars; and viral campaign messaging that spreads to massive audiences through video and social networking sites.

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy on her website, indicating how important the web would be in her strategy. A viral music video ‘I Got a Crush on Obama’ has had over 6 million plays on YouTube. Both candidates raised over 6 million dollars a piece in the two days following Superbowl through their sites.

There are many web strategies that can be used to propagate momentum behind causes. Some of which are highlighted in the article “11 Web technologies political campaigns should consider” posted at TechnologyEvangelist.com.

Now, following the launch of our "Political Mutual Funds”, NPC's marketing strategies will leverage the web to maximize the impact of each fund on its core issue.

NPC's Research &Technology + Your Passion

2008-02-11T10:39:00.000-08:00

NPC's "Political Mutual Funds" allow you to invest strategically and effectively in forward-thinking approaches and solutions to today's political issues. We help you to keep progressive-change moving!

You have passion about the issues but politics is not your day job. How can you be sure that your contributions are making a difference? NPC's analysis of organizations using our proprietary PROI™ methodology ensures that your giving is targeted where it will be most effective. Our technology platform enables you to make your contributions securely and gives you the information and reports you need to stay involved.

Political Investing Not Driven by Big Names

2008-02-11T09:57:00.000-08:00

While big names and celebrities may drive traffic to a charitable website, they are not so effective at creating donations, a study shows. Recommendations from family members and friends are the more important influencers. The study researchers also evaluate charities by their financial health.

NPC's philosophy is that it is the results that an organization can deliver that are important for its evaluation. That donors want to see a real return on their political investment PROI. When donors see how they can personally make an impact on the issue that concerns them - they are sure to stay engaged, continue to give and tell their friends how they did it!

Google Primary Tracker

2008-02-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

Google has a clear results overview page with a cool map showing voter-posted comments from all across the country. Have a look.

NPC Mascot?

2008-02-08T19:08:00.001-08:00

If NPC had a mascot, it would probably have to be Mia, who camped out under Catalina’s desk yesterday:

Mia is 2 ½ half months old and belongs to our CEO’s mother.