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Current News

Goldman Rips Off Non-Profits, Endowments, Foundations, And Charities?

I pay some attention to The Consumerist for grassroots information about customer service issues and similar matters. In a break from what he usually writes about, Ben Popkin shares the story of a Goldman Sachs trader telling him he constantly rips off endowments, charities, and foundations when they would call up and want to invest. He says he was told, "whenever I hear it's a non-prof, then you just ladle on the extra fees." Posted: 11/17/08; 6:06:37 PM #

When It Comes to Social Change, The Machine Metaphor Has Limits

One of the things that the juxtaposition of information technology and civil society has done is affect the metaphors that we use to describe our work, our organizations, and our movements. As I see it, there are two conflicting categories of metaphors that have been encouraged: mechanistic comparisons that treat social systems as machines and organic metaphors that treat them as ecosystems. As anyone who reads me will know, I have always favored the latter. In When It Comes to Social Change, The Machine Metaphor Has Limits, Virginia Lacayo describes in very specific and practical terms why the former is so damaging. Posted: 11/17/08; 5:55:14 PM #

It's Not What We Teach; It's What They Learn

I recommended the work of Alfie Kohn to blogger Asher Bey and he returned the favor by pointing me to Kohn's recent article entitled It's Not What We Teach; It's What They Learn. It's remarkable to me how many people would easily agree with this assertion and yet not let it change how they work in any way. Let me ask you: What are people actually learning from a quick visit to your website? Or from repeated receipt of your fundraising solicitations? Posted: 11/17/08; 3:35:44 PM #