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Beyond Lip Service to Mission

In the first of a series of improvements coming to our programs in 2006, we have decided that some topics deserve to be treated in a single in-depth online briefing, rather than in a series format. The first of these is entitled Beyond Lip Service to Mission: The Risks, Failures, and Opportunities of Nonprofit Technology Planning. For years, many nonprofit technology planners have been leading organizations down a path of resistance to change, long sales cycles, inappropriate technology, unexpected costs, and unused tools. But the field is now mature enough for us to know better, for us to bring technology more fully into the service of the missions of our organizations. We'll be teaching these ideas in this single intensive briefing, on January 26th, 2006. Posted: 12/22/05; 8:25:17 PM #

Giving So It Matters

Bishop V. Gene Robinson gave a stunning speech entitled Giving So It Matters at October's OutGiving Conference. I will quote the most important thing he had to say: "There are two kinds of giving, but I like to think of it as downstream giving and upstream giving. It's not enough to pull the drowning victims out of the river, you need to walk back upstream and find out who's throwing them in." During our time of winter reflection here in the north, it is good to draw inspiration from these words, and then start marching ourselves and our organizations upstream, where there is justice to be done. Posted: 12/22/05; 7:58:03 PM #

New York Police Covertly Join In at Protest Rallies

I'm old enough to remember the Nixon administration and its aggressive conflation of national security and political opposition. The revelations keep piling up about domestic surveillance, with the latest being extensive video evidence of New York Police Covertly Joining In at Protest Rallies. Only one of two things could come from this: A backlash that restores civil protections, transparency, and accountability, or the sad erosion of the bonds of trust that make our civil society possible. I hope that you and your organization aren't waiting for someone else who you think may be more formally involved in "civil liberties" work to help us avoid the latter. Posted: 12/22/05; 7:52:41 PM #

U.S. Surveillance Moves Rile LGBT Groups

Hundreds of organizations have been combing through the meager records made public in the wake of of revelations about the U.S. military spying on domestic citizen groups. So we learn that a gay rights student organization at the New York University Law School was classified as "possibly violent" and that a kiss-in organized by a similar organization at the University of California at Santa Cruz was labeled as a "credible threat" of terrorism. As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up. Posted: 12/22/05; 12:21:29 AM #