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News for October 2005

28 October 2005

Bill Moyers: Finding Justice In Charity

Bill Moyers recently delivered a talk on Finding Justice In Charity to a forum on wealth and giving. Too many nonprofits in the United States, as well as too many philanthropists, play it safe with their work in ways that seems to say that there is such a thing as charity that does not concern itself with justice. Moyers mounts a strong moral and logical attack on that kind of philanthropy and calls upon us to see and work with both eyes open. Posted: 10/28/05; 7:17:06 PM #

Q & A with Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka
	I am a big admirer of Ashoka, an organization that has done a lot to promote genuine social entrepreneurship around the world. U.S News interviews founder Bill Drayton and reveals the disciplined optimism that I believe is an essential characteristic of innovative leaders. Posted: 10/28/05; 7:10:30 PM #

Multiethnic Hurricane Poll Says Ending Poverty is Key

The passion of American citizens for justice has often been twisted into a means for vast private profit by well-connected corporations. The war in Iraq is one example and the rebuilding contracts after Katrina are proving to be another. So, it makes me happy to learn that a new Multiethnic Hurricane Poll Says Ending Poverty is Key. With any luck, that's good news for American civil society. Posted: 10/28/05; 6:59:09 PM #

Loosely Coupled Communities and the NPTech Tag

In the late nineties, I wrote a piece of software called InWeb, a web based knowledge management system. One of its key paradigms was the use of tagging, rather than the folder metaphor, for organizing content. Users maintained their own bookmarks and assigned tags (technically facets) and short descriptions in a way that any user of one of the current crop of social bookmarking systems like del.icio.us would immediately recognize. We added RSS feeds and all the rest. Users hated it. Over and over again, we got the same complaint, from people who I thought would know better: Where are the folders? So, it's with a complex mix of feelings that I've taken note of the distinct interest now being shown to tagging by nonprofit techies. In her notes for a talk that she'll be giving at Tag Camp, Marnie web explores Loosely Coupled Communities and the nptech Tag. It's well-linked, thoughtful, and poses many interesting questions. Posted: 10/28/05; 6:52:52 PM #

27 October 2005

Nonprofits and Weblogs

I had the recent privilege of being interviewed by Beth Kanter on the subject of nonprofits and weblogs. Just this week, I got to deliver a talk on weblogs to audiences in three South African cities as part of World Development Information Day. I think the idea is actually catching on. My new article on Nonprofits and Weblogs is derived largely from my interview with Beth. It covers the origin of Nonprofit Online News (one of the two oldest weblogs still around), the potential of blogging for nonprofits, the nature of the motivation to blog, and some thoughts on the subject of information overload and focus. I think you'll enjoy it. Posted: 10/27/05; 5:30:54 PM #

25 October 2005

Effective Economic Decision Making by Nonprofit Organizations

In an effort to help some folks in my Frictionless Fundraising workshops understand the economic landscape of new media, I spent part of my day explaining marginal costs. I should probably also recommend this book to them, as I am recommending it to you: Effective Economic Decision Making by Nonprofit Organizations, edited by Dennis R. Young. Although the chapter on ICT avoids a number of major issues, the book as a whole is very strong. I enjoyed the editor's last words, in which he develops these seven insights: (1) Mission is a primary concern, central to making all wise economic choices in nonprofit organizations. (2) As a practical matter, mission related effects are often difficult to codify and quantify, but they should be made as precise as possible. (3) Qualitative as well as quantitative benefits and costs must be acknowledged. (4) The tensions between mission and market must be understood and appropriately managed. (5) Diversify to manage risk. (6) Nonprofit organizations are pushed and pulled by multiple, diverse stakeholders. The challenge is to retain a clear focus on mission and core capabilities, in light of these pushes and pulls. (7) Economic conditions change. Nonprofit economic decisions need constantly to be revisited. Posted: 10/25/05; 7:54:37 PM #

Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

William Bridges' book on Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change is justifiably a best seller. As you can tell by the subtitle, the book is not about planning for changes or about making wise changes. Instead, it presents a clear, well organized approach for dealing with it. One example: Identify the losses that people are suffering from the change, acknowledge them sincerely and thoroughly, and compensate people for them. Another example: Sell the problem, not the solution. Posted: 10/25/05; 7:30:09 PM #

24 October 2005

Foundation for Community Encouragement Training Materials

When the Foundation for Community Encouragement decided to close in 2001, they made all of their Training Materials available for free online. The FCE was a community building organization and their key method was a workshop that built intimacy in a group setting. The materials cover pretty much all aspects of their workshops, including surveys, preparation and guidelines, as well as general material on the vision and practice of community. Posted: 10/24/05; 5:13:08 PM #

The Nonprofit Sector and the Federal Budget

The Aspen Institute's new report on The Nonprofit Sector and the Federal Budget is out. One of the key findings is that current budget projections indicate that there will be billions cut in programs of interest to nonprofits and, at the same time, likely increases in the demands for the services of those nonprofits. I'm looking forward to seeing what other analysis comes out of this report. Posted: 10/24/05; 5:04:37 PM #

Dangerous Ideas for Nonprofit Start Ups
	I liked Amy Kincaid's short post on Dangerous Ideas for Nonprofit Start Ups, if only for a few short phrases that remind me of Put Barber's thinking on the topic. I would love to read a full length piece from her on the nonprofit archetypes of The Prideful Underdog or The Impoverished Supplicant. Posted: 10/24/05; 4:40:43 PM #

Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005

My readers know that I regard freedom of speech as a key pillar of civil society. So, it's with profound interest that I reviewed the 2005 Worldwide Press Freedom Index, produced by Reporters Without Borders. The bottom rungs are occupied by North Korea, Eritrea, and Turkmenistan. The top places are held by the Scandinavian countries, Ireland, The Netherlands, and Switzerland. The United States is at 44th of 167 places. Shouldn't our place on this list be something we compete for? I don't know that I have ever heard an American politician mention this list. Posted: 10/24/05; 4:33:09 PM #

Source book on Public Service Broadcasting published by UNESCO

UNESCO's Source book on Public Service Broadcasting is an impressive collection that focuses on key notions such as editorial independence, universality, secured funding free of all pressures, distinctiveness, diversity, representativeness, unbiased information, education and enlightenment, social cohesion, citizenship, public accountability and credibility. It's available as a PDF and as an interactive CD ROM. Posted: 10/24/05; 4:24:23 PM #

20 October 2005

The Ten Faces of Innovation

Tom Kelley runs an innovation consulting firm. In The Ten Faces of Innovation he describes a vision of innovation that has a place for everyone. His ten faces are The Anthropologist, The Experimenter, The Cross-Pollinator, The Hurdler, The Collaborator, The Director, The Experience Architect, The Set Designer, The Storyteller, and The Caregiver. I think too often innovation is seen as the role of specialists or of certain very specific personality types, so it is encouraging to see a vision that is so inclusive. Posted: 10/20/05; 6:04:53 PM #

MapAction

We saw some of the relatively new power of online mapping during Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. MapAction is a UK based NGO that provides real time mapping services for relief and development work. Their capabilities page has a nice illustration that shows the flow of information that supports their work, including observation satellites, field teams with PDAs, GPS, and lots of data integration. Posted: 10/20/05; 6:00:15 PM #

ACLU: Tell Our "Intelligent Design" Clients They Have Support

This is a great example of the kind of frictionless cultivation that is possible these days: The American Civil Liberties Union is asking its stakeholders to send supportive messages to the families who are part of the religious freedom lawsuit going on in Pennsylvania right now. (This is about local school officials putting religious instruction into biology courses through the concept of "intelligent design".) There is no request for money at all and the only add-on options are about expanding the channels of communication between the ACLU and its stakeholders. This is fantastic. Posted: 10/20/05; 5:55:05 PM #

Sutter Strikers Blog
	To the best of my knowledge, the Sutter Strikers Blog is the first use of a weblog for documenting and communicating this kind of labor action. Recent posts include descriptions of violence against strikers by mercenaries in the employ of The Steele Foundation (not our kind of foundation, mind you) and the day to day drudge of working a picket line. Posted: 10/20/05; 5:45:43 PM #

Order Back Issues of Nonprofit Online News Journal

We've decided to make back issues of our Journal available for sale. There are currently five back issues available on the order page, back to when we had our formal launch in May. You might want to check out the contents of back issues to see if you are interested in any of the articles and quicksheets that we've published only in the Journal. We've also decided to make single back issues available with either an individual or an organizational license, so that (with the latter) you can share material on your intranet. Posted: 10/20/05; 5:19:21 PM #

19 October 2005

In the Tiger's Mouth

For years, I taught workshops on time management and burnout. That was very satisfying work, but it dismayed me how organizations and individual pathologize some very natural, human responses to unhealthy working conditions. Staff would be sent to my workshop to be "fixed" and while many would return with healthier habits, some would make the bold decision that they needed a better place to work. When I could facilitate it, I always appreciated a healthy tension between those two outcomes. One of the books that helped me work with organizations that were prepared to take a more systemic approach was Katrina Shield's In the Tiger's Mouth: An Empowerment Guide for Social Action. With very little wasted space or fuzzy thinking, this is a book that will help any organization with sustainability. Posted: 10/19/05; 10:28:45 AM #

Wellness for Helping Professionals: Creating Compassionate Cultures

Back when I was running an organization called GoodWorks, where I often consulted on issues of organizational health, one of the books that had the greatest influence on me was Wellness for Helping Professionals: Creating Compassionate Cultures, by John Travis and Meryn Callander. The book is a dense compendium of practical resources for anyone with a commitment to following Gandhi's advice to "be the change you want to see in the world". The book has a fair share of fluffy thinking, but to this day, the contents continue to surprise me with their value. The organizational assessment tools and techniques for cultural analysis are particularly useful. Posted: 10/19/05; 10:20:43 AM #

16 October 2005

Thoughts About K4D: Musing About the Digital Divide
	John Daly's Musing About the Digital Divide is a worthwhile read if you're interested in the use of ICT in development work. I have to quote his closing line: "The real digital divide is not measured in personal computers and cell phones, but in the power that people and societies have to appropriate ICT for their benefit." Posted: 10/16/05; 6:50:44 PM #

Idealware: Vision

I am a fan of Laura Quinn and all the folks who have helped start Idealware, a Consumer-Reports style approach to software reviews for nonprofits. This is probably the right vision for such an endeavor, although I think there are a lot of potential barriers. The number one issue is going to be to develop criteria that are relevant to actual communication centered requirements of different clusters of nonprofits and different usage scenarios. It will be interesting to watch their methodologies develop. Posted: 10/16/05; 6:46:24 PM #

Mayomi: Supporting Creative Thought
	If you're curious about the conceptual diagrams or mind maps that I use from time to time, but you're not yet ready to install new software on your computer to support your use of the technique, you might want to consider exploring Mayomi, a flash based mind mapping tool. Posted: 10/16/05; 6:32:09 PM #

Open Space Technology: A User's NON-Guide

I've been noticing that the "Open Space" meeting process has become quite popular at conferences in the last few years. If you haven't encountered it yourself, you probably will soon. I have mixed feelings about the approach, largely because it depends profoundly on the skills of the participants, rather than the facilitators. Just as I believe that a democracy requires citizens with certains skills, knowledge, and motivation, rather than just good voting technology, so does Open Space require qualified participants. At most conferences, little effort is put into either selecting or training the participants. But in the hope that you might be prepared next time you are part of this process, I suggest you take a look at the Open Space User's NON-Guide (114 page PDF). Posted: 10/16/05; 6:29:24 PM #

Introduction to Stocks and Flows in Online Communication (part 1 of 3)

Lee Lefevre's three part Introduction to Stocks and Flows in Online Communication is a great example of communication centered analysis producing valuable insights. In the classic language of systems thinking, he concludes that Weblogs are highly suited to facilitating the flow of information and that Wikis are highly suited to developing stocks. He concludes with some excellent systems questions to ask when developing online knowledge and communication tools. Posted: 10/16/05; 6:21:37 PM #

Models of Collaboration
	I missed this back when it was published in 2003, but I really like Timothy Butler and David Coleman's Models of Collaboration. They created a matrix of level of interaction and group size and came up with five models: Library, Solicitation, Team, Community, and Process Support. Posted: 10/16/05; 6:16:54 PM #

10 Ways RSS Can Help Build Online Communities

Alexandra Samuel gives us 10 Ways RSS Can Help Build Online Communities. I have reworded her headlines a bit, as follows: 1. You can start in the middle in regard to content. 2. Small numbers can be aggregated into larger communities. 3. It helps you go to where the people are. 4. It puts your members to work for you. 5. It reduces the time commitment required to participate in a community. 6. It allows you to diversify content but allow people to stay within familar groups. 7. It can help foster discussion, not chatter. 8. Reading an RSS feed enrolls more people than a signup process. 9. It facilitates hand-off of a short lived community to a larger network. 10. You can manage multiple communities with less effort. Posted: 10/16/05; 6:15:36 PM #

13 October 2005

Nonprofit Online News Journal - October 2005

The October 2005 issue of Nonprofit Online News Journal is out. I think it's an amazing issue, densely packed with thought provoking material. We have a piece on the emerging place of civil society organizations in a world of more direct communication between citizens and government, a lengthy exploration of the role of contemplation in social justice movements, a compelling argument for open standards in the context of disasters, and some thoughts about the nature of collaboration in an interoperable world. I have written a couple of new pieces for this edition myself, a Quicksheet on melding old and new frameworks of publishing authority and a research report on knowledge management in grantmaking called Opening the Silos. Plus there are 66 annotated resources in 28 categories, including a special category this month with news and resources related to Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. Posted: 10/13/05; 6:30:06 PM #

12 October 2005

Thinking about Disasters and Resources

I've been paying as much attention as anyone to the recent earthquake disaster and I have realized several things: (1) The digital divide is alive and well in that part of the world, resulting in very little information flow. (2) I know very little about civil society in that region and the capacity of NGOs to respond, but I get the impression that clans and families are tight knit and that those community connections are the greatest resource many survivors have right now. (3) Thinking back on the tsunami and the recent hurricanes, I am clinging to a hope that this pattern of catastrophes will help to reorient the spending patterns of the world's governments, but I don't think it will. I'm saddened, for example, by the recent Republican initiative to slash spending on poverty programs as a response to Hurricane Katrina. (4) I know I am utterly naive about such things, but don't the world's governments have thousands and thousands of helicopters and other suitable aircraft? Why aren't they at the front lines, delivering aid? Posted: 10/12/05; 11:01:40 AM #

9 October 2005

Gracious Space: A Practical Guide for Working Better Together

Patricia Hughes' Gracious Space: A Practical Guide for Working Better Together is an elegant little book published by the Center for Ethical Leadership. The book pulls together concepts of dialogue, learning, and trust building into a common framework for leadership and management. The book is full of concepts that will be familiar to anyone who practices techniques such as Appreciative Inquiry or Active Listening, but given how rarely these work their way into the day to day management of most organizations, I am always looking for frameworks such as this. Posted: 10/9/05; 5:55:03 PM #

Estrategies Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit

Aref Adamal, Bruno Lanvin, and Robert Schware have published an Estrategies Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit (80 page PDF). The focus of their methods are on holding national ICT strategies meant to alleviate poverty to some standards of effectiveness. Too many ICT for development projects, in this country and internationally, lack this kind of rigor. The toolkit looks to incorporate monitoring and evaluation into fifty different strategies. Posted: 10/9/05; 5:50:18 PM #

An Argument for Small Business Blogging

Chris Campbell has written a great Argument for Small Business Blogging. Almost all of his reasoning applies to nonprofits in equal measure. Of course, I'm afraid that I'm starting to see nonprofits think that they "need a weblog" the same way they "needed a website" a few years ago. Maybe articles like this can help keep their decisions grounded in their communication goals. Posted: 10/9/05; 5:43:57 PM #

Hurricane Katrina: Innovative Information and Communications Responses

Notes from last week's webinar on Hurricane Katrina: Innovative Information and Communications Responses are now online. I was unable to hear the webinar since Skype evidently isn't very reliable in trme of tone generation used to log in to the webinar service and the video consisted of static images of the speaker's names and affiliations, so I'm really pleased to read these. There are lots of sound ideas here, many of which I'm sure will be developed at the Oct. 17, 2005 conference on ICT responses to disasters. Posted: 10/9/05; 5:40:11 PM #

Dialogues on Civic Philanthropy: Accountability
	I've been paying attention to the Dialogues on Civic Philanthropy, the next round of which will be held on October 20, 2005. Opinion pieces and transcripts from the May 19, 2005 dialogues on accountability in philanthropy are available. They are also open to broader public comment on the web site. Posted: 10/9/05; 5:35:07 PM #

2005 Right Livelihood Award

The 2005 Right Livelihood Award goes to activists from Mexico, Canada, Malaysia, and Botswana. The award is presented annually in the Swedish Parliament to winners chosen by a remarkable international jury. It was founded in 1980 after the Nobel Foundation turned down Jakob von Uexkull's proposal to fund awards for ecology and anti-poverty work. This year's winners have worked on issues including democratic water rights, historical preservation, the rights of indigenous people, and preventing violence against women. Posted: 10/9/05; 5:31:18 PM #

6 October 2005

Nonprofit Knowledge Management Briefing Series - November 2005

I'm very excited to announce a brand new series of online briefings, on the subject of Nonprofit Knowledge Management, to be held November 15, 16, and 17, 2005. "Knowledge management" is an overused phrase with a dubious lineage, often connoting a software centric solution of some kind. But underneath the phrase is a powerful concept: that there are opportunities for learning inherent in the new information and communication networks. This series will help you find those opportunities, keep you from taking expensive wrong turns, and give you guidance for high impact knowledge management initiatives. Posted: 10/6/05; 7:28:16 PM #