Sadly, however, many see themselves as victims and supplicants, or at least act as if they are.

Nonprofits are heroic because they address the symptoms and causes of urgent social and global problems that government and business cannot or will not take on.

Nonprofits work hard for little pay, continually are expected to do more with less, and face growing scrutiny and expectations from funders.

And in the current economic recession, with rising demand for services, nonprofits face growing pressure to reduce costs and increase their fundraising and impact.

With those kinds of seemingly intolerable working conditions and stress, people who work at nonprofits often feel alone, under siege and burned out.

They stick with it, however, because they care, and because they find fulfilling the job of making a difference and working with people in need and with other people who care.

Yet, needing revenue to meet their payroll and pay their rent, and fearing they lack the know-how to map a business strategy to sustain their organizations, they are too quick to swallow funders’ demands and consultants’ advice without critically questioning it.

Nonprofits are not victims and should not underestimate the knowledge of their staff and board, the value of their programs and services, the extent of their impact in the communities they serve, or their potential to generate even more contributed and earned income.

Rather than falling prey to the herd hysteria the recession has unleashed in the giving sector, nonprofits should treat the economic crisis as an opportunity to get back to basics and recognize the value and impact of the work they do and the untapped potential they possess to do more and do it better.

That means scrutinizing their mission, board, staff, operations and programs with brutal honesty.

It means using common sense to look for ways to improve their efficiency, impact, fundraising and communications.

And it means finding smart supporters and partners who care about their cause and understand that getting involved by making a donation, volunteering, serving on a board, collaborating or even merging requires recognizing the organization’s true needs and potential.

Nonprofits play an indispensable role in America, serving both as the safety net for the most vulnerable among us, and as the research-and-development arm to find ways to fix our biggest social and global problems.

America’s economic crisis has underscored nonprofits’ role and value, and compounded the challenges they face.

To fulfill their role, expand their value and meet those challenges, nonprofits must stop acting like victims and start thinking and working as independent and entrepreneurial agents for social change.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

“That a new information technology—[so-called “now media” such as Twitter, cellphones, mobile vlogs]—could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times,” blogger Andrew Sullivan gushed in a post titled, ”The Revolution Will be Twittered.” “ …You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.”

Meanwhile, political blogger Maegan Carberry told last week’s 140 characters conference in Manhattan, the nation’s first all-things-Twitter thoughtfest, that “social media are pushing us into an era of post-partisanship,” where political parties become far less important as wider and more personal communication among groups start to blur the political distinctions that authoritarian institutions of government have previously used to divide us and mute our penchant for dissent.

That statement followed remarks by NYU new media scholar Clay Shirky to TED interviewers earlier in the week that “we are living through the the largest increase in expressive capability in human history” and that the surge of Twitterized news reporting out of Iran has made the Iranian uprising historically unprecedented. “This is it. The big one,” he told TED. “This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media.”

Iran, of course, isn’t the first world hotspot where social media have played an abrupt and interventionist role in focusing the world’s attention to urgent social causes and events happening on the ground. Text-messaging and vlogging (video-blogging) was instrumental in revealing government corruption around foreign aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis in Burma last year. Social media also helped to leak word out to the world about the pro-democracy uprising by Burmese monks, hardline censorship by Chinese authorities during last summer’s Beijing Olympics, and the extent of the devastation of the Chinese earthquake —details of which, says Shirky, would have otherwise taken months to go public.

But whoa, Nellie. Indeed, while Twitter with its velocity to spit out information can expose the undercurrents of dissent and the underbelly of corruption, hunger, and the abuse of power in often shocking detail, social media haven’t been able to drive those undercurrents of dissent, nor bring about widespread reforms—at least not yet. For every successful social media-fueled protest, such as the Facebook-fueled protests last year to destabilize FARC in Colombia, there are at least a dozen more digitized uprisings that end when authorities shut down the Net or, as in the case of the as-yet unmutable Twitter in Iran, track down the people whose tweets have been most prominent and revealing and “disappear” them, creating a chilling climate of self-censorship that all but cedes power to those abusing it.

More significant, perhaps, is how Twitter and other forms of social media are accelerating the rate at which events play out, regardless of outcome, and how that speed can be potentially destabilizing, in and of itself. Jason Calacanis, a social media entrepreneur and cofounder and CEO of mahalo.com, speaking on a panel I convened and moderated for the recent Milken Global Conference 2009 on social media and politics, said: “The good news is that the Internet is an accelerator, probably the greatest accelerator since the advent of the written word. Truth gets wrestled away from the rumors more rapidly now; if you’re on the wrong side of society, you get outed in hyperspeed.” Further, he says, activists are better at the conversations spawned by social media because “those on the right side of society are the most willing to engage in conversation; when you’re on the wrong side of an issue, it’s very hard to be involved in a discourse because if you are involved in one, the quicker you get to the inevitability of being wrong.”

Just how much power, ultimately, social media can have will be debated again widely at next week’s Personal Democracy Forum in Manhattan, which opens Monday with a late-addition workshop entitled “Social Media and Iran.” Such debates are likely to go on for months, if not years.

As Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey queried the a standing-room-only crowd of Twitterati at the 140 characters conference:  “We have this brand new tool to help us in this experiment in democracy but where are we taking this? What are we doing with this technology and how are we sustaining these concepts of immediacy, approachability and transparency to open up the process of every social community from families to the largest governments in the world?”

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

• Some nonprofits are better than others
• Some donors are better than others

On their face, these don’t seem like elephants, they seem like statements of the obvious. But I remember the heated debate that exploded when at the second NetSquared conference someone suggested “some nonprofits just suck.” To many, this was an intolerable comment (even though, it is objectively true). The fact is, while they try hard and are good people, some nonprofits are not very good. Some of them are even doing harm. The resources these organizations are using are being wasted and could be used by a better organization to make a real difference in the world. The nonprofits that can do more good with the available resources are better than other nonprofits.

Are some donors better than others? In a recent post I talked about a shift from thinking about philanthropy as the act of making a gift to thinking about it as the achievement of impact. When we measure philanthropy by looking at the gift, then it is hard to argue that some donors are “better” than others. Maybe more generous. Maybe more rich. But better? However, when we think about philanthropy as the achievement of impact we begin to see that by making gifts to the right nonprofits in the right way, some donors can achieve more impact than other people who give the same amount of money. These donors are better donors.

This same conversation came up again at the recent National Convention on Volunteering and Service. In a panel I spoke on with Sonal Shah, the head of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement, Shah said that it should be OK if there is not a spot for everyone who wants to volunteer. While this seemed heretical to suggest at a conference on volunteering, I think Shah is right. Just like some people are better employees than other people. Some volunteers are better than others.

All this makes many people uncomfortable. These really are “the elephants in the philanthropic room.” But why? It doesn’t seem to make us uncomfortable if someone tells us they think Honda is better than Toyota, or Starbucks is better than Dunkin’ Donuts. We’re all free to believe that some investors are better than other investors or argue over whether the 1998 Yankees were better than the 1986 Mets.

Say it after me: Some nonprofits are better than others! Some donors are better than others! Some volunteers are better than others!

Its OK! That’s how life is. Just because some donors, nonprofits or volunteers are better than others doesn’t mean the others aren’t good people who are trying hard. Doing good is hard work. Really hard work. And some people and organizations are better than others at doing this hard work well.

Sean Stannard-Stockton is a principal and director of Tactical Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital Management. Ensemble Capital provides families both traditional investment management and philanthropic planning. He is the author of the blog Tactical Philanthropy and writes the column Tactical Philanthropy for the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Because that crisis is rooted in a widespread breakdown in ethics across the government, for-profit and giving sectors, nonprofits need to lead by example in doing the right thing.

That is the view of Tim Delaney, the president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, who says nonprofits can best serve their mission and communities by “focusing on their core missions and then acting with purposeful attention to ethical leadership.”

The first step, he says, is for nonprofits to “see the broader context in which they operate” and then set high ethical standards and build them into their thinking, planning and operations.

Speaking last week to a lunch ‘n’ learn workshop in Charlotte, N.C., sponsored by the Philanthropy Journal, Delaney said a widespread “moral meltdown” led to America’s current “economic meltdown.”

To show the context in which massive ethical failures have eroded public trust, he cited dozens of recent headlines about scandals in all sectors, often involving groups “previously seen as pillars of community values.”

To help America rebuild its economy, Delaney says, nonprofits need to lead the way in “rebuilding the public’s trust that has been breached.”

Rebuilding public trust, he says, starts with organizations intentionally gearing themselves to make sure they always do the right thing.

Delaney suggests 12 steps for creating a responsible ethics program.

Those steps range from recognizing the need to set ethical expectations, naming an ethics officer and assessing the current state of the organization’s ethics to involving all stakeholders in developing an ethics policy, continually monitoring compliance and tweaking the policy, and making sure the organization’s leaders serve as ethical role models.

In the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, nonprofits face rising operating costs, growing demand for services, and the fear that individual donors, foundations and corporations will cut back their giving.

Instead of panicking and worrying only about the survival of their own institution, nonprofits can best serve their missions and communities by setting high ethical standards and organizational aspirations, Delaney says.

By doing the right thing and truly practicing what they preach, nonprofits can help lead America out of its moral and economic mess and move on to the job of addressing the symptoms and causes of our most urgent social and global problems.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

In the early 1990s, a seasoned executive shared a metaphor that has stayed with me ever since. He said that innovation is like a coral reef. Marine biologists don’t understand fully what causes reefs to form, he said, but we do know that human actions can nurture (or harm) the process. The same is true for innovation. Innovation is a natural, chaotic, unpredictable process that is hard, perhaps even impossible, for well-meaning outsiders to foster. If we try to control or micromanage innovation, we risk squeezing out the very life forces that give rise to successful new ideas. Instead we must focus on finding ways to nurture and accelerate the natural processes of innovation once they’ve begun organically.

For almost a half century, Silicon Valley has been the country’s most compelling example of a healthy innovation ecosystem. Yes, first the dot.com implosion and now the Great Recession have dampened the exuberant spirits in the Valley—and the exotic Italian sports cars in the parking lots of Sand Hill Road now seem jarringly out of keeping with the somber reality of our times. But even after the deluge, Silicon Valley is the kind of reef ecosystem we need to support and nurture across our nation.

Over many decades, Silicon Valley developed a unique, creative, informal, hierarchy-leveling culture. It developed an interconnected web of talented engineers, risk-taking entrepreneurs, big-think investors, and service providers that inherently understood the Valley’s culture. It became the world’s most fertile breeding ground for innovative technology businesses—starting with HP, then Intel, and then other successes like Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google. This ecosystem is now nurturing a disproportionate share of promising tech startups like Tesla and Facebook that have great potential to transform markets.

Academia, government, and the nonprofit community have also played a big part in the success of Silicon Valley. Stanford University, the alma mater of many of the Valley’s most prominent leaders, played an enormously catalytic role following World War II and continues to do so in the commercial and social arenas. Today, for example, Stanford engineering students and graduates are at the forefront of efforts to create inexpensive, culturally appropriate technologies for helping people in the developing world meet their basic needs.

The federal government, which rarely gets credit for its catalytic role in any field, provided critical infusions of innovation capital through the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and NASA. The Valley’s successful entrepreneurs—such as Hewlett, Packard, Jeff Skoll, Pierre Omidyar, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page—often start charitable foundations and other ventures to support innovators (nonprofit and for-profit alike) working to address the world’s hardest social and environmental challenges. Today, Silicon Valley and the Bay Area as a whole are every bit as much of an epicenter of social innovation as they are of commercial innovation.

It is critically important to point out that there has never been a defined, structured way to connect the dots in the Valley. Instead, it has been this organic ecosystem—with its interrelated professional and personal networks—that has allowed the “dots” to connect themselves. A good example of this phenomenon is the remarkable TED conference, which brings together the brightest minds in a wide range of fields to advance its mission of “spreading ideas.”

Of course, Silicon Valley is not the only ecosystem of commercial and social innovation in America. However, most regions, and the nation as a whole, default to linear thinking with formal structures to define and control innovation. What they need instead is to turn the forces of innovation loose—to create the right conditions for that reef ecosystem to grow on its own and take hold.

I have come to believe that nurturing innovation at the national level will require both top-down and bottom-up strategies.

First, our nation needs an overarching framework—perhaps it could be called a “national innovation strategy”—that would define a shared vision, create a clear direction, and identify priority areas for innovation. This national innovation strategy could be drafted by a Presidential Commission made up of A++ innovators and thinkers from across a host of relevant disciplines (and outside the political process), and then quarterbacked by a high-profile Innovation Czar appointed by the President.

The priorities might naturally start with the three top priorities the President spelled out in his address to the joint session of Congress in January: “harnessing the power of clean, renewable energy,” “addressing the crushing cost of health care,” and “expand[ing] the promise of education in America.” It should also embrace other needs, such as the enormous challenge of rebuilding our infrastructure and developing more robust emergency response and homeland security.

Take something as simple as the rebuilding of our highways, bridges, and rail systems. In spite of the infusion of stimulus dollars, our approach to infrastructure is, for the most part, no different from how we’ve done things for decades. Where are the breakthroughs, the new materials, the embedded communications, smart transportation systems, and digital sensors for safety and maintenance that would give us smarter, better, longer-lasting transportation systems?

The national strategy would have to identify, to the fullest extent possible, the specific inflection points and/or tipping points within each of the priority areas—that is, opportunities where targeted innovation could have a disproportionate impact. This would be an even grander version of what the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has done in the field of global health with its $100M Grand Challenges initiative.

Simultaneously, we will need bottom-up approaches to engage tens of millions of Americans and nurture reefs in every part of our country and society. For example, building on the “stock exchange” approach used by innovative companies and outlined in this New York Times article, the Administration could create a Federal Innovation Stock Exchange and open it to any federal employee who wanted to float an out-of-the-box idea for addressing a tough societal challenge or creating new innovations that add to our economic engine.

All of the ideas listed on the “stock exchange” would be available for all to see on the Web—sparking additional ideas from inside and outside the federal government. All federal employees whose innovations were adopted would receive some form of bonus and some form of recognition from the President. And if this works for the federal government, one could imagine a network of innovation stock exchanges in which states, metropolitan regions, large universities, hospitals, and civic-minded corporations put in place similar mechanisms to advance innovation to address key social and economic needs.

With a national strategy combined with efforts to seed the creative chaos from bottom up, the Obama Administration could put America on the right path for the long term. Helping to unleash, channel, and connect the millions of innovative minds across all regions, all disciplines, and all walks of life is the most important form of long-term stimulus the President can provide.

Mario Morino, a former software entrepreneur, is the chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners, based in Washington, DC.

Many nonprofits may be reluctant to play an advocacy role because they believe they lack the resources or know-how, or because they fear they might put their foundation, corporate or public funding at risk.

But advocacy work can make a big difference in shaping the public policies that affect nonprofits and their clients

Recent research in New Mexico and North Carolina by the National Committee for Responsive shows investment in nonprofit advocacy and community organizing in those states yields a big return in benefits for underrepresented constituencies.

And as two new reports make clear, nonprofits that are resourceful about fundraising and use of the Internet can better support their advocacy work.

Untapped, a new report by The Linchpin Campaign, offers a practical guide for community organizers to cultivate and strengthen their relationships with major donors.

“Community organizing attracts financial support from major donors, pointing to a viable and important opportunity for those raising money for organizing,” says the report by Linchpin, a project of the Center for Community Change.

Ninety-four percent of over 100 private donors Linchpin surveyed give to community organizing, with 42 percent of those donors focusing less than one-fourth of their giving on organizing, suggesting the potential for even greater giving for that work.

A second report, published in Administration & Society, says nonprofits are becoming more active through their web sites in promoting causes and civic engagement.

While regulations limit nonprofit advocacy, many nonprofits are finding innovative yet legal ways to serve as advocates, says the study, Nonprofit Advocacy and Civic Engagement on the Internet, by David Suarez, an assistant professor of policy, planning and development at the University of Southern California.

Already faced with more than enough challenges in delivering services and operating their shops, many nonprofits may look at advocacy work as beyond their mission or their means.

But advocacy work can address the policies at the root of the problems nonprofits exist to address.

By tying their fundraising to their role as advocates, and using the web to push their cause and engage their supporters, nonprofits can be more effective in serving their clients and advancing their mission.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

“When we assume we are separate, we build systems that reinforce that separateness.  When we assume we are interconnected and interdependent, we build systems that reinforce those connections.

The Six Pollyanna Principles

There are six core statements that represent The Pollyanna Principles and they include:

1. We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.
2. Each and everyone of us is creating the future, every day, whether we do so consciously or not.
3. Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.
4. “Being the change we want to see” means walking the talk of our values.
5. Strength build upon our stengths, not our weaknesses.
6. Individuals will go where systems lead them.

   The Pollyanna Principles boil down to a similar premise I have blogged about before: we are creating organizations that

   1. are vested in the social issues they work towards ending in such a way that they require those issue to persist
   2. are built in a bubble
   3. are consistently missing opportunities to succeed by operating like a business (with competition) instead of as a living part of the community.

   You can find previous blog posts (with great conversations in the comments) here, here and here.

   Why I’m excited about The Pollyanna Principles

   We have a huge opportunity before us to remodel our social benefit organization structure. There is so much talk both online and offline, from inside organizations and from outside, that “nonprofits are broken.” We’ve done step 1: admitted that we have a problem. Now, what?  Well, as Hildy explains, we need to start driving our work with our vision of how we want the world to be, instead of what the problems are before us. What does that mean? Well, imagine that your organization said you wanted to have a public education system in your state that provided opportunities for all students to learn, fair pay for both teachers and staff, opportunities for growth for students, teachers and staff, and an entry point for all students to enter the “real world” prepared. You can imagine that by operating under that vision (instead of focusing on drop-out rates, teacher pay scales, or job skill training) that partnerships with the community, new opportunities for learning exchanges and career paths, and much more start to take shape organically, naturally. 

   Collaboration is a huge focus of mine: Finding ways for organizations working in the same sector to share calls to action to amplify the impact, helping organizaitons understand where their work aligns to cross pollinate across their networks, and so forth. Reading the Pollyanna Principles was like finding a twin I had been separated from at birth!  But, that isn’t to say it’s the complete conversation. This is truly a great starting place from which we can all move the conversation forward. 

   There are still many questions I have and that I imagine all organizations, boards, volunteers, community members will have when they read the book. But I want to, am ready to, ask those questions and answer them as a community. Questions like:

   • How do we truly create community planning opportunities as funders that include all members of the community when the “community” of interested people is often limited to the grantee pool?
   • How do we begin to change the cultural view of nonprofits in society/by the community so that the public, those who use the services or are otherwise affected by nonprofits’ work can have a stake in the responsibility to create organizations making real change and all of the community is shaping its future?
   • How do we help organizations redefine their “community” to understand the entire ecosystem in which they operate?
   • And many more...

   What’s Next
   The Pollyanna Principles is about social benefit organizations, but it’s really about community. Community is the most important thing to me, and I truly believe that we can’t create any amount of change, any amount of real world impact, or any lasting effects without participation, ownership, and shared responsibility by community members in the work these organizations do. This means we have to have community members represented in building and implementing an organization’s work, as well as building grant programs from funders. We need to have those receiving the services and those delivering them in constant collaboration.  We need people in the community to expect organizations to succeed and take a stake in making sure they do.

   So, what’s stopping us from doing this? Hildy says it’s the Culture of Can’t that we are all accustomed to operating within that holds us back.  Can we move to the Culture of Can? Are we ready? What are the Can’ts holding you or your organization back? 

   I’m ready to start: to start asking questions and coming up with answer, to think and share collaboratively, and to really focus on the vision we share for a better world and work towards that goal instead of focusing only on the problems - are you?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

   You can learn more about The Pollyanna Principles at: http://pollyannaprinciples.org

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   Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.

   ]]> 2009-06-11T15:13:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/site/new_publication_merge_minnesota_a_great_resource_to_any_nonprofit_investiga/ “Merge Minnesota: Nonprofit Merger as an Opportunity for Survival and Growth” published by MAP for Nonprofits proves a useful source of information about the merging process of nonprofits.  Nonprofit Management I search the web for information about nonprofit collaborations, mergers, and partnerships on a daily basis. Though I find a steady stream of articles about recent nonprofit mergers, it isn’t often that new publications drop in my lap completely out of the blue. That happened with the new booklet on nonprofit mergers called “Merge Minnesota: Nonprofit Merger as an Opportunity for Survival and Growth,” published by MAP for Nonprofits which was mailed to my house. This 8 ½ X 11 paperback is 71 pages long and crammed full of information about the merger process, from soup to nuts including a template for the steps to organizing and implementing a merger, stories about completed mergers, and appendices which identify experts, a literature review, and a very nice bibliography. There were several items in the literature review I had never seen before and it’s so nice to have all that information in one place.

   The publisher of this unique document is MAP for Nonprofits, a management consulting firm to nonprofit organizations based in the Twin Cities. MAP launched a three year initiative called Project Re-Design to “help nonprofit organizations with organizational realignment, including mergers, program transfers, joint operating agreements, joint ventures, parent-subsidiary relationships, and dissolutions.” Though they didn’t know in 2007 when they launched the initiative that the country would be in a recession at the time of publication, they couldn’t have picked a better moment to come out with such a document.

   If you have been looking for an easy to read, succinct, how-to booklet on mergers, this is a great publication to get. Don’t be fooled by the title; Merge Minnesota was funded by Minnesota foundations and therefore targeted to the local nonprofit market, but I am sure that the information in this booklet is (mostly) helpful to any nonprofit operating in any state in the U.S. 

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   Jean Butzen, Mission Plus Strategy consulting, specializes in mergers and alliances in the Chicago area.

   ]]> 2009-06-11T14:59:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/site/green_shoots_for_new_philanthropic_forms/ Nonprofit Management, Philanthropy, Responsible Investing I’ve been writing about information as the currency of change for a long time. Everything I have seen in philanthropic innovation in the last two decades is predicated on this simple observation—there are two kinds of philanthropy products: financial products and information products. They used to be bundled together, in the form of foundation staff, personal advisors, or community foundation program officers. In these forms a donor got both services—a place to manage the financial assets that fueled their philanthropy and professional advice on strategy, grants, and outcomes.

   In the early 1990s the advent of national donor advised funds showed that a huge market existed for unbundled products—donors would eagerly purchase the financial product by itself. Several billions of dollars in charitable assets were soon being managed through Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and others who provide best-in-class financial accountability, responsiveness, and transaction processing, with no promises of strategic advice, support or other types of information products. The market worked—we’ve had two decades of new innovations, new customers, and new financial products for donors.

   Nowadays, some of the same technological advances that led to scalable efficiencies in transaction processing are beginning to shape the landscape for information products and service providers. First, the broad and deep adoption of broadband access and a decade plus of online banking, travel booking, emailing and searching have changed our collective expectations about where information lives, how to get it, and whom to trust. Second, the massive storage and searching capacities that underlie systems like GuideStar now make it a commonplace assumption that basic information on nonprofit organizations should be only a “click away.”

   From these “expectational starting points” new behaviors begin to sprout, leading to the possibility of new products. If financial information is a click away, why not more nuanced information? This leads to systems like DonorEdge or Blackbaud’s Nonprofit Central. If there is “professional vetted information available,” why not the insights of customers or volunteers, leading to innovations such as GreatNonprofits or Keystone’s constituent response work. And if I can get information on one nonprofit, why can’t I find lots of options for action in one place (SocialActions.org) or compare the work of multiple efforts (New Philanthropy Capital’s reports or Acumen’s Pulse system)?

   These are exciting developments. And they are built around data—data that can be found, compared, searched, mashed up, re-purposed, questioned, and applied. The data are the currency of change.

   And rest assured, today’s data systems and information products are just the beginning. How we use these products, build off these services, interact with them as individual donors or change makers, or iterate entire new organizational forms on top of them is what the future holds. The information products for better giving are not as good as they will be, we have not yet seen all of the forms they will take, nor are they widely deployed or integrated into other financial management tools. Yet.

   But we’re getting there. In which case the landscape for philanthropic giving—the structures and tools that donors use to organize, aggregate, learn, give, and bank (literally) their philanthropic financial resources will change yet again. This might explain why we’ve seen a notable rise in independent philanthropic advisory firms (SeaChange Capital Partners, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors) in the last five years, why online giving markets (such as GlobalGiving and Kiva) have taken off, or why the never-ending stream of new social media tools are all quickly unleashed for giving-related purposes (Facebook Causes, Twitter fundraising, and blog/badge challenges). And it might be inciting new forms from familiar ones—new roles for community foundations or new services from donor advised fund vendors.

   We should also plan on this changing landscape of information being full of the seeds of new forms. If you imagine that any donor, anywhere, has quick, easy access to meaningful, comparable, useful data on organizations they could support and issues they care about, what kind of philanthropic entity, service provider, financial tool, public/private partnership, broker, deal platform or relationship builder would you build? That is the question we all need to ask, no matter where we work in philanthropy now, because that is the well-seeded field on which all existing philanthropic enterprises are now playing. And that is the question that some innovator, somewhere, is working on, right now, in the proverbial garage.

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   Lucy Bernholz is the Founder and President of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc, a strategy consulting firm that helps philanthropic individuals and institutions achieve their missions. She is the publisher of Philanthropy2173, an award winning blog about the business of giving and serves as Executive Producer of The Giving Channel on Fora.tv.
   

   ]]> 2009-06-05T17:24:00-08:00