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The Council On Foundations Opens Up To New Journalism

In my recent post at With, I look at how the Council on Foundations opened up to new journalism at their 2007 conference. Although Nonprofit Online News has been welcome at the conference for years, this was the first year in which they have welcomed and supported self-identified bloggers. My article is a survey of the news and commentary generated by this new step toward transparency. Posted: 5/27/07; 1:32:10 PM #

API Dashboard

With mashups and network centric approaches getting increasing attention in civil society, I want to encourage people to take a look at the API Dashboard created by ProgrammableWeb. It's focused on the web as a set of application programming interfaces and includes how-tos and a comprehensive database of API resources. Obviously, we have to evaluate the technical, economic, and political reliability of every tool we depend upon, but increasingly there are genuine choices to be had in this realm. As I consider this week's NetSquared context and the 21 projects vying for attention, I'm tempted to look at them to see which ones really leverage the full resources of the web as a platform. Posted: 5/27/07; 1:04:00 PM #

Is it ok for our campaign to donate a list to an allied or friendly group?
	Given the indiscrimate way in which many nonprofits treat the implied promises of an email relationship these days, it's nice to see Kari Chisholm encourage policial campaigns to avoid being spammers. I really don't get it. Is it so hard to put yourself in the position of the person receiving email? Posted: 5/27/07; 12:57:47 PM #

Philanthropy in the News: An Analysis of Media Coverage, 1990-2004

The Philanthropy Awareness Initiative report on Philanthropy in the News (28 page PDF) is a worthwhile read for anyone who wants a reality check about how giving is reported in the United States. The report covers 1990 to 2004 and examined tens of thousands of articles. The findings include: Most coverage of philanthropy is transactional rather than mission or outcome related. (In other words, as with political campaigns, the media takes the easy way out and reports on the dollar amounts.) Only 1 percent of stories were negative. (But of course, those stories have remarkable impact.) My number one concern about this study is the lack of a key context: How is the media covering the work of the organizations to which these donations are being made? If I were a grantmaker, I wouldn't treat my communication efforts as completely separated from that of my grantees. Posted: 5/27/07; 12:45:21 PM #