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News for February 2009
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 25 February 2009 |
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| Building a Blog Network Seminar Now Available On-Demand |
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Most organizations are sitting on top of a vast untapped resource, in the form of the passion and voices of their stakeholders. Building a Blog Network is quickly emerging as a clear strategy for leveraging that resource. It's not all about recruiting people to blog for your organization. Rather, it's about identifying and building up the network of voices by all sorts of means and in all sorts of configurations. This workshop will help you develop a plan that makes sense for your organization. And the news is that you can now take this workshop on your own schedule.
Posted: 2/25/09; 12:54:50 PM # |
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23 February 2009 |
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| Decision Makers Do Want Communication, But They May Not Want Participation |
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I have noticed for some time a disconnect regarding the term "communication". What absolutely baffles me is how often so-called communication professionals regard their craft as a one-way process. They talk and others listen. Through some combination of hierarchical organizational structures, peer group effects on ego involvement, and the way mass media shapes professional practices, we have lost track of the inherent two-way nature of communication. As Wendy Quarry points out in her analysis of the 2006 World Congress on Communication for Development - Decision Makers Do Want Communication, But They May Not Want Participation - this problem is actually very widespread indeed.
Posted: 2/23/09; 4:44:05 PM # |
| UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge |
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NetSquared has launched another funding contest, in the form of the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge. My gut response to this was that it was a solution in search of a problem, but I see that is mistaken. For example, mobile technologies are much more likely to actually be where a human rights violation has occurred. There's $30,000 of funding at stake, to be allocated through the usual two stage process of popularity contest and panel of judges.
Posted: 2/23/09; 4:35:58 PM # |
| Recession Obsession: Some Observations from Four Recent Fundraising Studies |
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In Recession Obsession, Allyson Kapin briefly extracts some key lessons from four studies of fundraising in 2008 (and gives links to the studies in question). She concludes that we should be very creative while at the same time sticking with what works. There are a mix of strategic conclusions (such as testing cycles) along with minute tactical ones (such as size of donate buttons). My favorite conclusion: "Don't be a downer. Let's not remind people we are in a recession. One organization tested two email messages. One appeal mentioned the state of the economy against one without. The message without the economy reference performed the best."
Posted: 2/23/09; 4:30:37 PM # |
| Why I Deleted My Facebook Account |
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I enjoyed reading one blogger's account of Why She Deleted Her Facebook Account. Her reasons: (1) Just too much information. (2) The high school mentality. (3) Nonsensical updates from people I'm not close to anyhow. (4) 95% of my "friends" were not real friends. (5) People who "friended" me but never wrote on my wall or contacted me in any way. (6) I already see many of my "friends" during the week. (7) Disliked the idea of yet another third-party mediating my relationships with others. It's that last one that prevents me from participating, in fact.
Posted: 2/23/09; 4:01:43 PM # |
| Marshall Goldsmith's 20 Bad Leadership Habits |
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There are so many leadership books out there. Is this another sign of what happens when you spend other people's money? Or are people hungry for ideas? I imagine it's both, of course. Anyway, until recently I was unfamiliar with Marshall Goldsmith. I don't think his work is groundbreaking, but it's a really good example of the "quick tips" method of teaching. For example, his 20 Bad Habits list (for some reason a 1 page PDF), is really quite useful. (My reaction to reading some of these was "ouch, yeah I do that one".) Go ahead and read his full explanations, but here they are in summary: (1) Winning too much. (2) Adding too much value. (3) Passing judgment. (4) Making destructive comments. (5) Starting with NO, BUT, HOWEVER. (6) Telling the world how smart we are. (7) Speaking when angry. (8) Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work". (9) Withholding information. (10) Failing to give proper recognition. (11) Claiming credit that we don't deserve. (12) Making excuses. (13) Clinging to the past. (14) Playing favorites. (15) Refusing to express regret. (16) Not listening. (17) Failing to express gratitude. (18) Punishing the messenger. (19) Passing the buck. (20) An excessive need to be "me".
Posted: 2/23/09; 12:34:48 PM # |
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17 February 2009 |
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| Less is More: Personal Empowerment in the Age of Information Overload Now Available as On-Demand Seminar |
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It seems like every day there is a new web app (or new iPhone app) that will send you more information, more often, more cleverly. We're attracted to these things, but cumulatively they are an enormous burden to our scarce attention. I've taught time management and burnout prevention workshops to activists, social workers, and all sorts of civil society leaders. My seminar - Less is More: Personal Empowerment in the Age of Information Overload - takes those ideas and translates them into this era of perpetual connectivity that places such demands on our ability to manage our own boundaries. In the interests of helping you keep your time boundaries intact, we are pleased to announce that this workshop is now available on-demand.
Posted: 2/17/09; 6:27:50 PM # |
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16 February 2009 |
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| A Heroine for Human Rights |
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Alison Des Forges, who died in the Feb 12 plane crash in Buffalo, NY, was A Heroine for Human Rights. I am bothered sometimes by the number of fawning articles written about business people who, in their later years, give away the profits of their rapacious monopolies. The reason I'm bother isn't because they don't deserve the attention - it's because people like Alison Des Forge, in my opinion, deserve it more. As someone who dedicated her life to justice and to the suffering of others, it is she who should be a role model for our citizens. I am very pleased to be able to share with you this eulogy, written by Kenneth Roth, her longtime colleague at Human Rights Watch.
Posted: 2/16/09; 4:27:11 PM # |
| Gaming Against the Greater Good: The Social Norms of Wikipedia |
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I'm working with several organizations and projects that are using wikis as part of their toolkit for managing collaborative content. As is typical in these situations, the social norms are far more important contributors to success than the technology itself. (Indeed, you might even say that, in much the same way that email requires people to develop new boundaries around communication rhythms, wikis require people to develop new norms about shared creation.) In Gaming Against the Greater Good, Ryan McGrady looks at the biggest wiki of them all - Wikipedia - and explores the norms that have been developed in order to make it work.
Posted: 2/16/09; 4:18:19 PM # |
| The New Volunteer Workforce |
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The Stanford Social Innovation Review is apparently publishing articles in conjunction with the Foundation Center's Philanthropy News Digest. Last week's piece on The New Volunteer Workforce is a worthwhile read. The four authors pull together the findings of several reports from the last few years about high turnover among volunteers and offer five reasons for why volunteers leave: (1) not matching volunteers' skills with assignments, (2) failing to recognize volunteers' contributions, (3) not measuring the value of volunteers, (4) failing to train and invest in volunteers and staff, and (5) failing to provide strong leadership. They offer several fairly high-level recommendations for how to turn this around.
Posted: 2/16/09; 4:12:56 PM # |
| Interview with Gavin Clabaugh |
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I did an online interview with Gavin Clabaugh last year. We may never see the results of that interview, but fortunately Marc Osten did a little video interview with him, which is definitely worth watching.
Posted: 2/16/09; 3:56:38 PM # |
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12 February 2009 |
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| 21st Century Fundraising Resources Now Available in Hard Copy |
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We're closing in on having our entire publication catalog available in hard copy. The latest publication to be released in print form is the 2nd Edition of 21st Century Fundraising Resources. There are six articles, two Quicksheets and 105 annotated web resources organized into nine categories, including Community, Email, Design, Principles, and Websites. These ideas continue to form the basis for ninety percent of the most successful online fundraising practices today.
Posted: 2/12/09; 2:50:59 PM # |
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9 February 2009 |
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| Ten Dimensions That Shape Your Board |
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In Ten Dimensions That Shape Your Board (38 page PDF), Kim Sundet Vanderwall and Ellen Benavides build on the research that went into Coloring Outside the Box: One Size Does Not Fit All in Nonprofit Governance, a great report built on interviews with 117 nonprofit leaders in Minnesota. This workbook identifies ten questions, the answers to which seem to play a huge role in shaping governance structures: (1) What role does our board play? (2) Who drives our board activity? (3) How do we define our community base? (4) What size is our community base? (5) Who should lead our organization? (6) How do we feel about power and authority? (7) How responsible are we to our community? (8) Do we focus more on relationships or tasks? (9) How much structure do we like? (10) How important is history and tradition?
Posted: 2/9/09; 5:36:55 PM # |
| World Social Forum 2009: A Generation's Challenge |
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In World Social Forum 2009: A Generation's Challenge, Geoffrey Pleyers explores a topic that has concerned me for some years. As you probably know, I am a supporter of the Forum and its vision. But just because you can bring 100,000 people together in opposition to a corrupt world order, doesn't mean you have a strategy. Pleyers describes the Forum as being at a crossroads. While I think it's at more than one crossroads, I like his descriptions of three overarching strategic options: The local approach, the advocacy approach, and the state approach. These are three frameworks that affect almost every change organization and movement in the world. These questions matter today more than ever.
Posted: 2/9/09; 5:26:34 PM # |
| Unsung Heroes of Social Capital: Charity Donors Give More than Mere Money |
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In Unsung Heroes of Social Capital, nfpSynergy summarizes a recent survey they did on social capital and donor behavior. Their conclusions are the ones you would expect: "People who donate to charity are also significantly more likely than non-donors to boost social capital through greater involvement with local communities." For example, 40% of donors were involved with local clubs or associations, compared to 23% of non-donors. Nearly half of donors said they were on a first name basis with neighbors, compared to about a third of non-donors. It goes on in that vein, underscoring the tremendous importance of mapping the social capital of your organization and stakeholders.
Posted: 2/9/09; 5:13:55 PM # |
| The Most Important Part of Your Strategic Plan |
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The current issues of the GuideStar Newsletter has an article by Larry Checco on The Most Important Part of Your Strategic Plan. What excites me about this article is that it reflects a growing understanding that the relational power of trust is a nonprofit's greatest asset. That building trust is a strategic decision, not just something we pay lip service to, or worse, that we exploit and deplete.
Posted: 2/9/09; 5:11:00 PM # |
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4 February 2009 |
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| The Modern Nonprofit Web Site: Strategies, Patterns, and Tools, Now Available On Demand |
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Lots is happening with our seminars these days. We're rolling out several new seminar titles in the next few months, we're increasing the usefulness of our live seminars with our new "hosted" model, and we're exploring some new partnerships. On top of that, we're continuing to add our strongest titles to our on-demand catalog. Today, we're announcing The Modern Nonprofit Web Site: Strategies, Patterns, and Tools, a three part seminar that covers Communication Centered Web Site Design, Managerial and Strategic Issues for Content Management, and Nonprofit Weblogs as a Model for Online Publishing. Substantial workshops like this are particularly hard for people to schedule into their day, so I'm really happy to be making the on-demand version available. And don't forget that it comes with a private phone consultation.
Posted: 2/4/09; 2:38:22 PM # |
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3 February 2009 |
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| Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter? Perhaps, but Slowly |
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In a study published in 2008, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations asks this question: Are Grantmakers Getting Smarter? (cover for 16 page PDF). With some longitudinal information provided by a previous Urban Institute survey in 2003, the GEO report finds a persistent gap between the practices that both grantmakers and grantees say they should be using and the practices that are actually in place. There is a broad consensus on three priorities: (1) Provide more general operating support. (2) Provide more multiyear support. (3) Work in a supportive and respectful relationship with grantees. Although there are signs of hope here and there (in the self-reporting of the gap, if nothing else), it's clear that philanthropic organizations are moving very slowly in these directions.
Posted: 2/3/09; 3:52:38 PM # |
| How We Make Websites at the BBC Radio Labs |
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The BBC Radio Labs have written up their model for building websites. It's packed with resource links and well-illustrated with the paper and white-board work that they use to make key decisions. Their twenty-one steps, in order of application, are: Explore The Domain, Identify Your Domain Objects and The Relationships Between Them, Check Your Domain Model With Users, Check to See If Your Website Already Deals With Some of Your Domain Objects, Design Your Database, Source Your Data, Pipe In Your Data, Make Your Models, Design Your URI Schema, Make Hello World Pages For Your Primary Domain Objects, Make Hello World Pages For Your Primary Aggregations, Define The Data You Need to Build Each of Your Pages, Build Up Your Html Pages and Other Representations, Add Caching and Search Sitemaps, Apply Layout CSS, Test and Iterate, Apply Decor CSS, Test and Iterate, Add Any Javascript/Ajax, Test and Iterate, and Continue.
Posted: 2/3/09; 3:35:09 PM # |
| Nonprofit Collaboration Prize Finalists Announced |
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The eight finalists for the $250,000 Nonprofit Collaboration Prize have been announced. The prize is an interesting knowledge building model, leveraging write-ups on innovative collaboration (in the form of proposals) from 644 organizations, in exchange for a chance at the prize. (I'm both impressed and slightly bothered by it.) The finalists, about whom you can read more at the site, are: the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative, the Chattanooga Museums Collaboration, the Crittenton Women's Union, the Museum of Nature and Science, the New York LawHelp Consortium, Ready-Set-Parent, and the YMCA/JCC Integration.
Posted: 2/3/09; 3:27:54 PM # |
| The Networked Nonprofit |
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Last year, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Jane Wei-Skillern and Sonia Marciano published their paper on The Networked Nonprofit (6 page PDF). The essence of the piece is similar to that of our journal, Networks and Civil Society: There is a new model for the successful organization, one that invests less acquiring traditional corporate control over resources and more on investing in the (much larger) network of resources that shares a cause. The paper is mostly good examples, which can come in handy when trying to convince leadership of these ideas. But it also has a few valuable generalizations, including the use of networked power to address perennial issues in the sector, such as efficiency, the coordination of affiliates, and the bridging of divides within a cause.
Posted: 2/3/09; 3:12:13 PM # |
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