Filed under “nonprofit”

Fundraising Tool Memo Boilerplate

 Sent this off after some wild, though not misplaced, enthusiasm for Kickstarter, Indiegogo and a few other newish online fundraising services; the soft lead-in and enthusiastic closing paragraph are not included. No fundraising tool will replace an engaged membership who well-understands the necessity for monetarily supporting the organization’s activities. Yes, a certain tool may be [...]

Similar message, wider audience

 I was interviewed for NAMAC’s (National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture) Idea Exchange and the interview is now up on their website. The interview went great and I’m really appreciative of the opportunity to share our work at the Transmission Project with a wider audience. An excerpt: NAMAC: August 2011 marks the end of [...]

Advocacy in print — Survival News for 2011

 Today I sent another issue of Survival News—“the voices of low-income women”—to the printers; this is my second year as layout artist for the newspaper. At 40 broadsheets (11“x17”), the newspaper is the same size as last year. Published by Survivors, Inc., Survival News is the official newspaper of the National Welfare Rights Union and [...]

The benefits of age

 Havard Business Review’s Dan Pallota quoted from Julia Moulden’s book, RIPE: Rich, Rewarding Work After 50: I can tell the difference between a customer who has a legitimate gripe with my company and one who is an alcoholic or has anger-management issues. At 25, I thought it was all and always about me. My bullshit meter is [...]

Proposals to change the tax-deductibility of donations

 The New York Times yesterday gave a breakdown of proposals to change how donors calculate donations in their taxes: All three deficit reduction proposals from the blue ribbon panels would eliminate the deduction in its current form. One of the panels, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform would give taxpayers a tax credit [...]

Undermining nonprofit significance

 From a Facebook comment on Kate Barr’s “Nonprofits, Social Enterprise, and Hot Buttons” (blog link): The craving to undermine nonprofit signficance, value and tax-exemption is endless and will probably never be “satisified” until the entire 501-c section of the tax code is repealed. And there do exist those who want to do exactly that. Those [...]

Accessible leisure through technology

 I always talk about technology as a multiplier of action; here is someone with better credentials than me making the same point: Kentaro Toyama writing in the Boston Review on “Can Technology End Poverty? [No]” The following excerpt touches upon how technology enables the developing world to experience the same leisure activities the developed world [...]

Goofus & Gallant, MBA

 Colleen Dilenschneider (of the Nonprofit Millennial Alliance) recently revisited Abraham Zaleznik’s “Manager’s and Leaders” from the Harvard Business Review. I read it when I did the Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership at Boston University;  it reminded me of Goofus and Gallant; but most proposals of dichotomous identities do.

Professional writing sample

 I quote a lot on this blog from other places, so I wanted to post something I’ve written. I’m Program Director of the Transmission Project’s Digital Arts Service Corps: we recruit and place yearlong, full-time, stipended volunteers in support of capacity-building projects at nonprofit organizations that use media and technology to strengthen communities. We’ve placed [...]

Don’t confuse “online” with “Twitter”

 My advice to the Public Conversations Project (who are awesome, BTW) in response to them posing a question about social media and “Can real dialogue be practiced online, modeled in a way that will shift online conversations from torrents to curiosity, from blame to understanding?” Don’t confuse “online” with “Twitter“ I think the strength of [...]

Mystics, poets and best practices

 At the Transmission Project we’re steadily working towards fleshing out our critique of best practice and the proposal of an alternative: honest practice. If “best practices” are the standards of excellence within organizations considered high performing, how can it be expected that those standards could be immediately implemented in startup programs? What of differences in organizational [...]

Kitchen Consensus Conjecture

 Last weekend I visited Hudson, NY for the Prometheus Radio Project’s first full-power radio barnraising. I spent Saturday morning volunteering in the kitchen: despite all of the consensus-process workshops offered at the barnraising, the kitchen ran as an autocracy. Lunch remained delicious.

“…be manically participatory…”

 Three years ago I told a friend of mine—he having just been hired as a community support manager for a global ICT in education project—to “be manically participatory” as he retells it over dinner this evening. He is now convening their first international volunteer summit with attendees from 6 continents and the event is sold out.

Commodity work

 From the New York State Constitution: Article 1, Section 17. Labor of human beings is not a commodity nor an article of commerce and shall never be so considered or construed. As a result of this Newshour report on the Mott’s worker strike: “Workers who feel they’re now being treated as a commodity in a land [...]

Find fresh perspectives at NonprofitMillennials.org

nonprofitmillennials-screenshot-top
 Myself and the Nonprofit Millennial Blogger Alliance are proud to announce the launch of a new website: NonprofitMillennials.org: “We blog about the millennial generation and nonprofits!” The Nonprofit Millennial Blogger Alliance is made up of young writers collectively bringing important issues about the nonprofit sector to the forefront. While each of us looks at the [...]

Zilch for a nonprofit

 Last week I was contacted through LinkedIn by a stranger asking for help in forming a nonprofit organization. I get these types of requests not infrequently—whether directly through this blog, LinkedIn or Aardvark—or on mailing lists like Mission Based Massachusetts. My response is usually “Why does your cause necessitate its own 501©3? Have you considered [...]

Typology of Social Giving Transactions

 Giving: a gift. “Please take this dollar. Have a nice day.” Mercy: a gift to someone of lower social class. “Please take this dollar. But don’t buy beer with it.” Charity: a gift to someone of similar social class. “Here is 50 dollars for your cause. Have you tried the shrimp?” Donation: an exchange with the expectation [...]

Principles of Organizational Development Practice

 From the Organizational Development Network: Definition of OD Organization Development is a dynamic values-based approach to systems change in organizations and communities; it strives to build the capacity to achieve and sustain a new desired state that benefits the organization or community and the world around them. Principles of Practice The practice of OD is grounded [...]

Laying out latest layout

SurvivalNews-W2010-chop
 Since November I have been working on print layout for the Winter 2009/2010 edition of Survival News. “The voices of low-income women”, Survival News is half-yearly-ish compendium of news, personal stories, and advocacy information. Nearly half of this edition is devoted to Survival Tips, a collection of services and advice from legal aid to food [...]

Metaphor death

 A well-worded comment by Kia to a Gift Hub post entitled Money Has Failed in its Role of Allocating Resources towards Human Survival? (my own, typo-prone comment is lower down in the thread)—also reposted on IMproPRieTies: We are just now witnessing the collapse of the markets. We may also see the collapse of “the markets” [...]

Starvation begets starvation

 An article that confirms my anecdotal experience: “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle” from the Stanford Social Innovation review: A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results [...]

Leverage your nonprofit status

 My boss pointed me to the NY Times obituary of Elizabeth Clare Prophet (a featured radiobituary on Bubbles in the Think Tank): In the late 1980s, Mrs. Prophet issued warnings of an impending nuclear strike by the Soviet Union against the United States. More than 2,000 of her followers left their homes and gathered at [...]

Chasing Best Practices

 At work we’re pushing the idea of Honest Practices over Best Practices. Honest Practices are stories and analysis that include both successes and failures—the latter being something nonprofits often omit (or reframe). Our focus on developing Honest Practices stems from frustration with the meaninglessness of many “Best Practices” that are out there. From Wikipedia: A [...]

Social work is women’s work, so we don’t care

 Two articles came across my desk today that I think are strongly connected. The first is from Danah Boyd on Teaching, nursing and second-wave feminism: Since the 1970s, the number of brilliant, motivated individuals working as teachers and nurses in particular declined rapidly. Many women left these professions because they had many more opportunities and [...]

Millenial Nonprofity Exposition

 I was recently invited to participate in a blogging alliance of millennial nonprofity folks. Which is pretty fitting considering I am of the appropriate age range, employment and that “nonprofit” is the largest tag in the tag cloud in the sidebar of this blog. I can’t speak to any teleological path leading me to where I [...]

Nonprofit Budgeting Scenario

np-budget-worksheet
 While cleaning up some files, I came across this awesome scenario I wrote for our AmeriCorps*VISTA orientation last summer. I wrote it to give our new service members an idea of what it’s like to enter a small community nonprofit organization in contemporary times: under-staffed, under-resourced, broadly missioned, lacking in a comprehensive strategic plan. Most [...]

Good advice to live by

 Douglas Rushkoff wraps up Life, Inc. with the clearest conception of “act local, think global” I’ve read (and usually seems to be misinterpreted). Instead of fighting corporations with corporations of our own [like nonprofits–Ben], or working through corporations to reduce their negative impact on society, we’re better off reinventing ourselves as humans. We live on [...]

Attributes of Respected Chairs

 I found the following on the photocopier (after a few days, I assume its orphaned). Sourced from a SurveyMonkey print-out, it’s part of a “BYU Chair Study” which through context I assume is polling what training resources the owner of this printout requires. These are attributes of Respected Chairs. The context is a faculty member [...]

Harnessing inequality

 The following quote from Here Comes Everybody is interesting in that it exposes dewy-eyed optimism surrounding equal participation (rather than equal access or equal ability) as untenable: …imbalance drives large social systems rather than damaging them. Fewer that two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create profound value for millions [...]

Thoughts on Nonprofit growth, management and culture

 On the ride home last night from my Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership Class, I was talking to my classmate about the difficulties of creating a comfortable workplace environment.  Both of us had worked with organizations who’s good works externally did not match internal working conditions. Nonprofit organizations walk a difficult line. Businesses have [...]

Mission and Promise: there is a difference

 I was forwarded this from Angelina, who apparently read it on the side of her Starbucks cup (emphasis mine): “There is a subtle difference between a mission and a promise. A mission is something you strive to accomplish — a promise is something you are compelled to keep. One is individual, the other is shared. [...]

From “Web 2.0″ to “Produsage”

 Fact: I now feel uncomfortable when people talk about Web 2.0 as a philosophy. Last night, I had a free-ranging conversation with my longtime friend and occassional coworker/coproducer Danielle Martin centered around her developing thesis on “Participatory Media Catalyzed by Ouside Facilitators” at MIT. In developing her thesis, she had been referring to Web 2.0 as [...]

The Nonprofit between Scylla and Charydbis

 In my Boston University Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership program, we always get up to the edge of talking about the interplay between resource development and need, but then it always seems to drift away. So this is my contribution: if you swing too far towards either (ignoring the other), you’re toast. And for [...]

Strengthening Organizations through Community Engagement

 The following is from a handout I created for the CTCnet Conference in which I presented on capacity building models for community engagement. You can download the handout with worksheet (PDF), or read the overview below. Introduction to Community Engagement The core competency for any organization—private or nonprofit, funder or grantee—is learning to manage change [...]

Equally good alternatives to collaboration

 Yesterday I posted an article that sought to give a broader frame to the idea of cross-sector nonprofit collaboration: placing collaboration within a process of negotiation to create new value. Today I will break down negotiation a little bit further to show why I think it’s important to take a broader frame of things and [...]

How to create cross-sector nonprofit value

 I really like this post from Entry Level Living about the need for nonprofits and for-profits to collaborate in these dicy economic times. She lays out some good examples of collaboration and ties it into a compelling sandwich. But it also begins with a an false cliche (nonprofits war with the for-profits) and doesn’t actually [...]

Community Organizer = Community Outreach Minister

 While wasting time on the political blogs, I ran across this interesting comment in the comments of an anti-community organizing article: Community Organizers are the same thing as Community Outreach Ministers : The problem with the title “community organizer” is that most Americans are not familiar with it because it is an inner city position/term. [...]

Nonprofits and the Economy of Free

 My RSS feeds of late have been delivering to me many interesting posts by Chris Anderson as he explores the different kinds of free. I’ve been specifically interested in his visualizations of the Advertising Model of Free: advertisers pay for advertising, which subsidizes programming, which is then given away for free, with the goal being [...]

Questions for external brand interviews

 I just received a great set of questions to ask people when conducting Brand Interviews: if you’re trying to lock-down who you are and how to communicate that, it helps to ask people who know you and what they think. These are those questions. What do you personally value most about [YOUR ORGANIZATION]? Why is [...]

Nonprofits and Political Activities

 Today, according to NPR (and many other outlets), “more than 30 pastors across the country are expected to preach a sermon that endorses or opposes a political candidate by name. This would be a flagrant violation of a law that bans tax-exempt organizations from involvement in political campaigns.” I’ve previously discussed two pillars of nonprofit [...]

Why are nonprofits tax-exempt?

 In my last post about nonprofit structure, some interesting and important aspects of tax-exemption weren’t fully explored. Specifically, I glossed over why tax-exemption exists in the first place. Let’s rectify that. The tax-exemption at the heart of nonprofit organizations—along with “nondistribution constraint” (i.e. one cannot profit from, or own equity in, a nonprofit; it may [...]

What is a nonprofit? A structural definition

 My radio program piece I posted last week generated some good discussion in the comments. In this post I would like to follow up by providing some background to the discussion that nonprofit organizations are not fully deserving of the aura they they receive. The following is a synopsis of the Nonprofit Structure training I [...]

How to make do with what you got

 I like taking on the role of facilitator to help people realize their potential, whatever it might be. In a strategic planning class I audited last year, I found myself spending more time (and enjoying myself more) turning other people’s vague concepts into plans, than I did my own. Many of the AmeriCorps*VISTA members I [...]

Lessons for Nonprofitteers from Majora Carter

 This is more notes from last weekend’s Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Bootcamp. Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx, gave the afternoon keynote (I think the afternoon speech of a conference should be called a plenary). She spoke from experience in designing socially and ecologically sustainable projects. I think she covered some good points in her [...]

Nonprofit Board Management, Governance and Advice

 Last weekend I was in NYC for the Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Bootcamp. As a one-day conference, I’ve really enjoyed it as having a wide variety of informative sessions. This is my second time going and for 2 out of 3 of the sessions, I attended the Board Governance track. The following are my combined notes [...]

Individual Challenges for Nonprofit Leaders

 Last month I was lucky enough to attend the NAMAC Leadership Institute in gorgeous Silver Falls, Oregon. The Leadership Institute was a weeklong exploration and advisement of leadership issues in the arts. Tucked away in the backwoods of the Silver Falls State Park, it was a great opportunity to network and dialogue with peers without [...]

Poverty as the singular moral challenge

 We just had our AmeriCorps*VISTA orientation last week—which to our delight and hard work turned out great—and one of the things I’ve been ruminating on since then was one of the powerful dialogue we had around poverty. AmeriCorps*VISTA’s mission is to help individuals and communities out of poverty rather than focus on making poverty more [...]

Facebook to Phone Trees: Nonprofit Technology for Everyone

 I was really excited about this year’s Grassroot’s Use of Technology Conference because I had submitted and had accepted a great proposal entitled “Facebook to Phone Trees: Multi-Generational Outreach Strategies” that was to be co-presented with Angela Kelly of Mass Peace Action and Daniel Karp of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). [...]

7 Nonprofit Challenges

 An article on nonprofit challenges from the British org Yorkshire Culture: In business, we are told that the customer is king; in the non-profit sector it is more like Jack, Queen and King — multiple stakeholders ranging from funders, to brokers to end users. The problem is that the end user or recipient often has [...]

Progressive Terminology for Discussing Poverty

 .!. Because of constructive criticism of some of my organization’s archaic language, I asked the Mission Based Massachusetts Listserv, a nonprofit discussion list, what terms they use in place of “poor people”. Below are all of the responses I got, which were awesome! Some terminology… low-income under-resourced under-served (Barbara humorously notes that “overserved” is a [...]

Nonprofit Job Misconceptions

 Brief article on getting a nonprofit job from the NY Times Q. What are the biggest misconceptions about switching from the corporate world to the nonprofit world? A. Many people are surprised to find the hours longer and stress greater than in the corporate world. Brian Olson, who left the private sector for a nonprofit in [...]

Criticism of Civic Literacy

 I’ve been reading up on Civic Literacy and so far I’m kind’ve disappointed with what I’m seeing and my own involvement in it as well: Civic Literacy seems to be geared towards government and politics, as opposed to broad participation in communities and society—especially NGOs or other social groups. They seem to be based on what [...]

Alternatives to a Nonprofit Job

 I was really happy with the feedback I received from my last article“Should I get a nonprofit job?” The responses I got, some of which you can read in the comments, helped me focus the message I was trying to convey: A nonprofit job is not the only way to make a living and make [...]

Google Relevance

 On Slashdot today was an entry about Google Search if it was designed for Google. Basically redesigning the page for a higher pagerank. Fun, but the interesting thing was a comment from the comments: Should read: What if Google was a useless site… …and had to design for Google? Lets see… counter examples… how about [...]

“Should I get a nonprofit job?”

 I have a lot of friends and acquaintances considering a job in the nonprofit sector. I’ve been employed within small (under $2 million budgets), community nonprofit organizations for three years now, beginning straight out of college, but have also talked to many people with many different experiences and histories in the sector and outside of [...]

Planning Strategic Planning

 At work I have been furiously engaged in strategic planning in advance of some major grant-writing. This process is a continuation from some vine-withered efforts my coworker and I had made last fall, but due to some changing circumstances—a better understanding of the existing processes at play and increased authority to manage the outcomes—this most [...]

Nonprofit Communications 2.0

 Last week I attended NTEN’s 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference and sat in on a wonderful session entitled Nonprofit Communications 2.0: Seven Steps to Transform Your Organization. Led by Lauren-Glenn Davitian of the CCTV Center for Media and Democracy, the session provided a strong framework for nonprofits to better communicate in an increasingly networked society. I [...]

Nonprofit Competition & Concept Map

 At this summer’s CTCnet Conference the thing I most took away–or rather, repeated to the most number of people–was something said by the keynote speaker, Ami Dar, the creator of Idealist.org. He was asked by someone in the crowd something along the lines of “In what areas do you want to see nonprofits develop into [...]