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May 2006 Edition

Nonprofit Online News Journal

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May 15th, 2006: We have a great issue this month, with several articles that embrace the challenge of practicality and vision. Michael Gilbert contributes an article in his series on nonprofit knowledge management, with a focus this month on nimbleness as a foundation for organizational learning. Seth Godin contributes his latest thoughts on turning your donors into fundraisers. Chip Berlet takes a look back at some of the bad decisions of the nineties that contributed to the current dominance of the radical right in the U.S. Rober Weiner is spot on with his ten common mistakes in choosing fundraising software, and moves the dialogue forward in favor of more mindful technology planning. And our last article is a great primer on power relation analysis -- essential for any serious political change work -- by the folks at Just Asscociates. We also have our usual features, including this month's Quicksheet on the topic of innovation, 23 annotated resources in 24 categories, and two short book reviews.

Table of Contents

 
Letter From the Editor ... 8
Contributors ... 9

Articles:

Nonprofit Knowledge Management Series
The Nimble Nonprofit, Part 1: Building Readiness for Knowledge and Learning ..... 10
By Michael C. Gilbert
Continuing his series on Nonprofit Knowledge Management, this month's installment is dedicated to the pursuit of nimbleness in organizations, which is defined as just the right combination of flexibility and groundedness. The method proposed focuses deeply on an organization's existing capacities for learning.

Flipping the Funnel ..... 18
By Seth Godin
This article takes the approach that there are three stages to fundraising: (1) Turning strangers into friends. (2) Turning friends into donors. (3) Turning donors into fundraisers. The focus here on the last element, and represents another aspect of the whole trend toward permeability in organizations.

Social Movements Need an Infrastructure to Succeed..... 29
By Chip Berlet
This is a short and painful documentation of the failure of the funders and organizations of mainstream civil society to develop the intellectual resources needed to fight the radical right. In particular, it highlights some decisions made in the mid-nineties, for which we're now paying the price.

Ten Common Mistakes in Selecting Donor Databases ..... 32
By Robert Weiner
The analysis here reflects the author?s systems perspective combined with his day to day work with nonprofits. All these mistakes really happen and all of them speak in favor of a more mindful approach to technology planning and decision making.

Dynamics of Power, Inclusion, and Exclusion ..... 38
By Lisa VeneKlasen and Valerie Miller
This primer on power relation analysis is far more than a tool for social justice activists. It presents several useful taxonomies of social power relations and takes a good look at different expressions and contexts of power differences.

Other Resources:

Sector Wide Innovation Planning Quicksheet ... 56
News ... 57
Book Reviews ... 90
Classifieds ... 91

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