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Current News

Nonprofit America: A Force for Democracy?

Because a commitment to the interdependence of democracy and civil society motivates a great deal of my work, it's to be expected that I would be interested in this new report by Lester M. Salamon and Stephanie Lessans Geller: Nonprofit America: A Force for Democracy? (27 page PDF). The researchers based their findings on a survey of 872 organizations in four fields (children and family services, elderly housing and services, community and economic development, and the arts). I won't over-summarize their findings. Suffice it to say they are not dramatic, but are still hopeful. Of all the other disasters of the last eight years (social, environmental, economic), the biggest disaster (and the one that underlies all the rest) has been the brutal upward redistribution of power. Although I have grave misgivings about the use of surveys to identify causal relationships in people's decision making, I still think this report is a critical step in mobilizing support for the democratic power of the sector, in the hopes that together we might begin to return the rule of this country to the people. Posted: 8/11/08; 4:46:06 PM #

Knight News Challenge Garage

It's been very interesting to watch the Knight News Challenge evolve. It's a $5 million a year grantmaking program focused on supporting innovative neighborhood and community based news and information projects. They are in their second year now and in an effort to improve the quality of applications and encourage the sharing of ideas, they have opened the Knight News Challenge Garage, a web site staffed by mentors, past Challenge winners and others. I think the idea here is to work out your ideas in this environment. I conducted a study a few years back in which I found dozens of foundation extranets that failed to elicit this sort of participation from people who are, in effect, competing with each other for money. So, I'm skeptical that this will reach the potential the Knight Foundation envisions, but I hope I'm wrong. Posted: 8/11/08; 4:21:56 PM #

Real-World Social Networks vs. Facebook 'Friends'

Although I believe they should never be conducted without the clear consent of the participants, I am an advocate for and practitioner of what some people call "reality mining", but which as far as I'm concerned is just good behavioral research. What those who use this term are referring to, in particular, is the application of network centric data mining techniques to offline interactions. One of the many interesting results of this type of research is described in Real-World Social Networks vs. Facebook 'Friends'. From gathering data using a proximity and logging tool built into ID badges, the two results reported here are (1) that managers are rarely information hubs (but are often fairly peripheral to most information flow in organizations) and (2) that internal networks rely on strong relationships rather than the weak ones that are predominate outside of organizations and in most online social network sites. Posted: 8/11/08; 4:08:45 PM #

How Social Networking Saved New Orleans

Although the title is a bit overstated and the scope of the article narrower than you might think, I believe there's a lot to be learned from John Fontana's exploration of How Social Networking Saved New Orleans. The intimate social connections of the city were clearly among its greatest assets. Although the character of New Orleans has been changed forever (among the results being the conversion of Louisiana into a Republican stronghold), its civil society organizations can be justifiably proud of how they leveraged relationships into assets and influence. Posted: 8/11/08; 3:56:47 PM #

Nominations Open for 2008 Excellence in New Communications Awards

Nominations are open for the 2008 Excellence in New Communications Awards. In addition to their big awards - for visionary, innovator, and brand of the year - there are separate divisions each for nonprofits, education, government, business, media, and vendors. Their categories this year are Online Reputation, Internal Communications, Blogger Relations, External Communications & Communities, Media Creation, Collaboration, and Mobile Media. Although this is an award that is plagued by the Tyranny of the Tangible (pretty media, sexy topics, etc), the Society for New Communications Research really makes a valiant effort to encourage nominations to be based on effectiveness. Posted: 8/11/08; 3:13:38 PM #