Disrupting Philanthropy
Technology is changing how we work, play and give.
Lucy Bernholz and the disrupting philanthropy team say: Information networks—the Internet primarily, and increasingly SMS (text-messaging) and 3G (smart-phone) cell phone technologies—are overturning core practices of philanthropic foundations and individuals. Enormous databases and powerful new visualization tools can be accessed instantly by anyone, at any time. A [...]
Creatively Combining The Back Office: A Series on Shared Service Alliances
Creatively Combining The Back Office: A Series on Shared Service Alliances
Jean Butzen writes: There has been so much discussion about the push to merge nonprofits, that I thought it be good to shift the focus to another form of strategic integration: Shared Service Alliances, or what some people refer to as [...]
Online, Small Donations Add Up
If the question is how to reach the people who care about your creative work, your museum, your community art project, then can the web be your friend even though it’s not face to face? Kickstarter.com helps creative people reach donors near and far, online. Could this help cross the generational divide, meet young people [...]
Read MoreFollow the Crowd
Is mapping tool Ushahidi the future of humanitarian aid and philanthropy? The wisdom of the collective crowd on the ground drives real time decisionmaking. We see great insight when we get the experts out of the middle.
The new paradigm is many-to-many-to-many: the victims are re-imagined as agents who supply on-the-ground data; a self-organizing mob of [...]
$3M NH Energy Fund Opens
Good news for NH nonprofits and businesses–low interest loans are now available for energy improvements to help with the upfront costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy, saving energy and money in the long term. Proposals due April 30.
Over $3 Million Available for Businesses and Nonprofits to Finance Energy Improvements
CONCORD, NH — New Hampshire businesses [...]
Will Work for Camping
Can a barter system work for National and State Parks?
An itinerant, footloose army of available and willing retirees in their 60s and 70s is marching through the American outback, looking to stretch retirement dollars by volunteering to work in parks, campgrounds and wildlife sanctuaries, usually in exchange for camping space.
via Retirees Trade Work for Rent [...]
Ferris Wheel as Windmill
Reinventing the wheel for clean energy:
Last year Melbourne’s iconic Southern Star Observation Wheel found a sad turn when it had to be shut down due to cracks and buckling caused by the intense summer heat. The $100 million wheel has since been decommissioned, but that hasn’t stopped designers from thinking about what to do next [...]
Strategic Mergers
Mergers are not for everyone. But nonprofit boards with closely aligned missions should ask whether their missions are best served by standing alone.
…Longer term, say many nonprofits, the decline in donations to charities appears likely to continue. The sector’s difficulties are re-awakening a touchy debate among some leaders in the nonprofit world over whether the [...]
Disruptive Philanthropy
A new report from Lucy Bernholz with Ed Skloot and Barry Varela tracks new strategies and tactics for the social sector in the digital age.
…Technology … has become the lifeblood of new philanthropic networks, and has begun to unleash the power of aggregated individual donors and activists. Technologies are changing how philanthropists find and share [...]
Crowdsourcing Abundance
…We have excess of stuff, talent, ideas, information—in our homes , in our communities, and in our organizations. We are over-producing and under-utilizing resources all over the place.
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