Stanford Social Innovation Review

Cause Docs

Thanks to the rise of social media (and the woes of mainstream media), the world is talking as never before. But more than ever, the world is getting its news from increasingly partisan sources.

Inevitably, the hot trend in “new philanthropy” is for nonprofit advocacy groups to try to break news—specifically, through the production of short, nonfiction documentaries and online video clips paid for by wealthy donors with an axe to grind, organized by PR-hungry nonprofit advocacy groups and produced by documentary filmmakers competing as never before simply to get funded.

Case in point: The Humane Society of the United States (http://www.hsus.org/), an animal rights nonprofit, famously drummed up more than one million hits to its otherwise sleepy Web site earlier this year after circulating video clips (http://hubpages.com/hub/USDA-Beef-Recall-Hallmark-Westland-Meat-Packing-beef-recalled) of its investigation into cattle abuse. The film, funded by the society’s marketing budget, showed slaughterhouse workers abusing sick cattle. The abused and ill animals were later produced, nonetheless, into food that ended up in school lunchrooms across the country—an action that filmmakers said endangered food safety. According to Michael Markarian, executive vice president of external affairs for the nonprofit, the film’s allegations were picked up by Reuters and CNN and eventually, the story led to the recall of 145 million pounds of ground beef, the removal of beef from school lunch menus, and eight congressional hearings on the issue of animal safety’s relationship to healthy food. Cruelty charges were also filed against meatworkers found abusing animals at the Hallmark/Westland Meatpacking Company in California. (http://www.westlandmeat.com/)

Markarian says the nonprofit plans to stage many more such investigations. “Big cuts in news journalism staff, in funding for investigative journalism and the rapid decline of newspapers is affecting advocacy and is having an impact on documentary filmmakers, as well,” he told a panel last month at the 2008 SILVERrDOCS international documentary film festival in suburban Washington, D.C. (http://silverdocs.com/)
“Obviously, the media is changing but the issues remain, so it’s falling more and more to advocacy groups to investigate and uncover what’s happening and play the role of the watchdog in society—which the media is playing less and less.”

To be sure, the “cause doc” trend is just getting started, and some nonprofit groups and philanthropists are joining forces to get such films funded and distributed as widely as possible. “A Powerful Noise” (http://www.apowerfulnoise.org/), a film that debuted last month about three activist women in three countries, is being co-sponsored by CARE (http://www.care.org) and Bono’s One Campaign—and also funded by feminist philanthropist Sheila C. Johnson. The film, created by filmmaker and ex-cable network executive Tom Cappello, was one of the dozens of cause docs screened at the recent Tribeca Film Festival and SilverDOCs. “I turned to film because after years of doing advocacy work and testifying before countless congressional committees, there’s no substitute for getting quick action than showing a film” Johnson told the social media blog, Cause Global (http://www.causeglobal.blogspot.com). Cappello, the filmmaker, adds: “We had the footage and heard that Sheila was looking to make a film about women activists around the world so CARE helped to bring us together and this was the result.”

Look out for much more cause doc advocacy to come, as nonprofit groups set up new arms to train fellow advocates to join them. This summer, the nonprofit, Witness, (http://www.witness.org), founded by rock musician Peter Gabriel, expands its new documentary film training site, called The HUB (http://hub.witness.org), and starts offering advocacy groups new ways to have greater impact and visibility in the world at large. “Ideally, this will be a platform eventually for filmmakers and news organizations to pull together,” says Sameer Padania, who has run The HUB since its debut last December. He says the purpose of the site is to “give people here and in the developing world a way to share and show the world things that haven’t been seen.” And last but not least? IndieGoGo (www.indiegogo.com) is another new Web site to encourage independent cause docs to be made. This site bills itself as a “social marketplace where filmmakers and fans connect to make independent film.”

Is this burst of citizen-produced video news a good thing? To be sure, information is power and the cause doc movement is putting Big Media back on its toes: In July, AOL/Time Warner is kicking off SNAG films (www.SnagFilms.com), a 2.0 version of AOL’s True Stories Web site (http://movies.aol.com/truestories) that AOL site executive Stephanie Sharis says will offer more than 200 feature-length documentaries, available free to users.

And that’s not all. msnbc.com just announced it would be creating MSNBC Films, which will finance feature-length documentaries in an effort to turn the cable news channel into more of a player in the feature world. Not to be outdone, CBS recently created a film unit that will deliver about 4-6 theatrical features a year, each budgeted at under $50 million—at least half of them to be documentary film about social issues.

But even the new citizen journalists are starting to ask the question: Is partisan media an entirely good thing? On his blog (http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog), Ethan Zuckerman, the cofounder of GlobalVoices.org, asks: “Should we expect that readers are aware that media has changed and that we should expect every voice to have strong, visible bias? Or does this point to a need to re-learn how to read both online and offline media to understand that we’ve got far more activist media and far less neutrality?”

It’s a good question, and so is another asked on the film festival circuit this summer: When does advocacy turn into propaganda? For his part, the Humane Society’s Markarian told a SilverDOCS forum on the subject that he wasn’t worried about it because “viewers know propaganda when they see it.”

But do they?  If propaganda is really good, it feels like fact. Let’s just hope that traditional journalists, as well as the new citizen activists, keep asking the question.

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.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Are We Still Involved in the Pursuit of Truth? If Not, Why Not?

Sam Davidson shares a great quote he saw at the National Civil Rights Museum:

“Truth comes from being involved, and not from observation and speculation.”

Amen to that. The pursuit of truth is really why many of us came into the nonprofit sector. Most of us were looking for something real, something meaningful happening in this big bullshit world. But the question is, do most of us find it when we get here, or do we just find more spin, just as much posturing as we see coming from our politicians? As Jeanne Bell will tell you, we pay a price for the stories we tell about ourselves. Because the problem with many nonprofits today is that we are supposed to be in the business of making social change—the kind that can be funded, measured, replicated, and tied up in a pretty red bow. The kind of change that can only happen in air-conditioned offices with receptionists screening our calls, that doesn’t need to speak out against anything because the good work speaks for itself. We think we know what the community needs even though we’ve never set foot over on the east side of town. We have our protocol and our fears about getting too political, and we think we’re doing some good if we get a little mentoring program up and running without addressing the piss-poor state of the school system.

Really?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the inauthenticity of keeping quiet. I moved to DC in 2004 after participating in the March for Women’s Lives, a huge march on Washington and a real protest to secure reproductive rights for women in the face of the Bush administration’s actions. I helped organize one of our bus groups of women’s studies students from Richmond to DC and it really felt like I was doing something, for once in my life. My grandmother thought I was insane to be involved with such an event, and was convinced I would forever be on the “government’s list.” And the college feminist radical in me really wished I was indeed on some watch list. I was proud to be identified as a dissenter. I wanted it to be on the record that I did not agree with the political decisions that were being made on my behalf as a woman. I got involved because NOW (National Organization for Women) along with the Black Women’s Health Imperative had provided me with some real knowledge I wouldn’t find in the history books or on primetime TV. And they showed me what it meant to take action, armed with that truth, to drive change. Yet somewhere along the way I traded in my protest signs for business casual and board meetings. I’m not really sure how I feel about it now, I’ve been wondering if this is the same sector I discovered in 2004. I mean, we can’t be all about protest and dissent 24/7, right? Someone has to pick up the pieces. But maybe this sector dichotomy is just a representation of the way we’re being trained to toe the line. As Elisa, one of my readers, comments:

It doesn’t help that our educational system and the organizations we work in don’t encourage us to do this kind of try and fail experimentation. I don’t know about anyone else, but where I went to school, toeing the line was going to get you farther all the time. Then you transition to a work place that is the same way and it becomes in your best interest (at least in terms of staying ‘comfortable’) to again toe the line.

And I have to be honest here, a lot of my idealism from four years ago has since waned because I’ve seen how nonprofits really work. But I’ve been thinking about what my responsibility is to the Rosetta of four years ago, the one who found out what was really going on and told everybody about it. What is my contribution if I forgo seeking truth in order to avoid getting into some kind of trouble? Where are we going as a nonprofit sector if we lose our drive for the pursuit of truth at all costs? And what good are we as independent organizations if, when we find it, we are too afraid to speak truth to power?

Am I the only one that’s lost a little of my college idealism? What’s been your experience?

Rosetta Thurman is an emerging nonprofit leader of color working and living in the Washington, DC area.  She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofit leadership and management issues at Perspectives From the Pipeline.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Investment Needed in Nonprofit Policy Work

Nonprofits can do a lot more to help shape the public policies that affect their work and constituents. Working to fix flawed policies at the root of social problems is a key role nonprofits should play.

But far too many nonprofits fail to play that role because of concerns that the law limits their advocacy work, and because they lack the resources to be effective advocates, says a new survey by the Nonprofit Listening Post Project at Johns Hopkins University.

Among nonprofits that engaged in any lobbying or advocacy, for example, fewer than 15 percent devoted as much as 2 percent of their overall budget to that work, the report says.

And while roughly half of nonprofits surveyed undertook limited forms of advocacy or lobbying, such as signing correspondence to public officials or distributing materials on policy issues, only a third engaged in more involved forms of participating, such as testifying at public hearings or organizing a public event.

The survey says nonprofits may shy from lobbying, compared to advocacy, because of existing laws limiting their involvement.

Lobbying consists of voicing a position to a legislative official on a specific piece of legislation, while advocacy consists of voicing a concern or information about policy without expressing a position on a particular piece of legislation.

The Johns Hopkins report recommends foundations invest more in nonprofit policy advocacy, that nonprofits be encouraged to get more involved in advocacy, that small and mid-sized nonprofits receive more training and other assistance to encourage advocacy, and that more resources be made available for policy work to “intermediary” groups in specific fields of interest.

“Our nation’s nonprofit organizations are widely expected to play a key role in helping to promote democracy and civic action, and our survey results indicate that they are making strenuous efforts to fulfill this expectation,” Lester M. Salamon, author of the study and director of the Center for Civil Studies at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, says in a statement. “However, financial and other constraints are limiting their ability to do so.”

Compounding the lack of resources, support and expertise for policy work, as well as the concern about legal constraints, are other hurdles nonprofits face, including rising demand for services, ongoing pressure to sustain their organizations, and fears that policy work could result in a loss of funding from foundations, givers and government.

To clear those obstacles, nonprofits should work to educate their boards and funders about the importance of policy work, and to secure their support to equip their organizations to be more effective policy advocates.

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.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Dollar Days

A panel talk on social media that I moderated today at the Harvard Business School Club of New York underscored what cash-crunched nonprofits ailing in the current financial crisis are just beginning to figure out: “crowdsourcing”—using the Web and online social media to invite mass collaboration—will become ever-more critical to 21st century advocacy. Those on my panel at the Club’s first-ever social enterprise summit—Vinay Bhagat, Greg McHale, Katrin Verclas, and Shelley Bernstein—agreed that the rise of social media, from mobile phones to online social networks to digital video-sharing, is forcing many charities to expand and rapidly accelerate their use of new Web capabilities to drum up much-needed new converts, dollars, and ideas. I call it the Engagement Imperative; panelists agreed the description is spot-on. “It’s true that [nonprofits] need to engage people they haven’t reached before,” said Bhagat, founder of Convio. “They need to reinvent the way they build support.”

Given the week’s financial meltdown on Wall Street, all four panelists acknowledged new levels of skittishness about the U.S. and global economies. “If you doubted it before,” Bhagat said, “engaging supporters in this way is now mandatory.” Added McHale, founder of Good2Gether, a Boston-based Web service that helps nonprofits promote their work by placing widgets next to online news stories relevant to their cause: “The word out there [among nonprofits] is terror.” Organizations that have not previously taken big strides with technology, he said, are being forced now to play catch-up—and not all groups are going to make it. “This economy is really focusing people on finding ways to use social media to get to more people, faster,” he said.

But Bernstein, manager of information systems for the Brooklyn Museum, cautioned that marketing shouldn’t be the sole focus of the Web’s new social engagement tools. “It’s really important that people participate in a cause, and feel like they’ve had some input,” she said. “That must come first…If people feel personally engaged and part of [your cause], they will contribute. But first and foremost, this is about engagement, not marketing. It’s a critical distinction to understand. If you’re not personally more engaged with your supporters using these tools in authentic, sustainable ways, they’ll go somewhere else.”

To be sure, the rise of social media will trigger structural changes at many nonprofit organizations, panelists agreed. “Organizations as we knew them are dead,” said Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive.org, when asked to come up with a quick phrase summarizing the impact of this so-called Web 2.0 on philanthropy. Elaborating, Verclas said social media are so powerfully reshaping the way people organize themselves into groups for change, that not only do nonprofits need to manage donors differently—they also must rethink the way they manage themselves.

For more on the push by some nonprofits to use crowdsourcing and other forms of social engagement to boost support in this flagging economy, see my story on MSNBC.com, the first in a series I’m producing to explore the rise of social media and their influence on the nonprofit sector during the current economic downturn.

One final note: Worries about the future of philanthropy similarly dominated the conversation at a private book party hosted tonight by Economist North America Publisher Paul Rossi to celebrate the September 30 release of U.S. Editor Matthew Bishop’s new book about America’s new class of philanthropic billionaires, “Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World.” Co-authored by Michael Green, the book describes how these wealth titans are reshaping philanthropy, using big-business-style strategies and expecting results and accountability to match. Do these new giving powerhouses like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, George Soros and others have too much power? Who holds them accountable, Bishop and Green ask—and, perhaps most urgently, will these leaders continue to give generously through the financial sector’s meltdown?

Bishop, for his part, told guests assembled at The Campbell Apartment in Grand Central Station that the new climate on Wall Street will put the much-professed commitment of these new philanthrocapitalists to its first real test. “We’ll know soon enough if this was just a hobby born of a company’s or an individual’s desire to burnish an image or whether today’s activism represents the deep commitment to change that has been expressed these past years,” Bishop said. Either way, Bishop added, “the rich will probably get richer, regardless”—and philanthropy, ever-more critical. Said Green: “The huge cost of bailing out the financial system will mean that the government will have far less to spend on everything else.”

As if to emphasize that point, next door to the Harvard Club—where Bishop and I addressed side-by-side panels earlier in the day—someone put a sign made out of masking tape on the cornerstone of the old New York Trust building. Just beneath the chiseled granite that heralded the bank’s founding in the late 1800s, the sign added the postscript: “Floundered, 2008.”

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.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Clout-Sourcing

Forget about the wisdom of crowds. For Andrew Mason, creator of The Point, it’s more about tapping into their clout.

Want to stage a quick boycott against, say, Pepsi? Or gather enough people online to buy chickens for poor women in Nicaragua? Or wait. Maybe you just want to crowdsource an audience for your favorite indie rock band—to convince it that showing up in your town would be worth the trip?

The point of The Point? To reduce the risks of collective action—like the angry backlash of an employer or an embarrassingly sparse turnout at a well-publicized rally. Mason tries to commit people before they actually have to engage. It works like a tipping point in that way: the site attempts to guarantee critical mass. “By delaying action until you know that you have all the pieces in place for the action to be successful and get the outcome you desire,” Mason told public radio earlier this year, “you’re reducing the risk of acting as a group.”

Click here for further explanation.

Mason’s site, which garnered some interest last week at the Convergence conference at the Desmond Tutu Center in Manhattan, is one of the early examples of how social media is helping people to self-assemble for social action.

So far, there have been a few dozen demonstrations, more than 50 charity fundraisers, and dozens of petition drives launched from the site. Posted today, for example, are efforts to crowdsource funding for a documentary on youth poetry in Chicago; the construction of a new animal adoption center and rescue kennel; and the rental of billboards around Lansing to support Barack Obama’s presidential bid.

Not all campaigns seek money. One calls for collective action to force Exxon to lower gas prices. (Good luck!)

Does it work? Not very often—but that’s the point, Mason says. Only those campaigns able to gather a serious, committed crowd—before they get down to work—end up progressing offline.

Click here to watch a video on Vimeo about how one woman crowdsourced action on The Point to beautify her neighborhood. Or watch this video, about one woman’s effort to organize change in her workplace.

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.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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The Secret Sauce

Both Barack Obama and John McCain used the Internet to reach voters this election—but Obama mastered the medium early “and exploited it to the hilt,” says Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and co-founder of TechPresident.com. There’s no question: Election 2008 will go down in the books as the first nationwide political contest for social capital.

In an interview today with Cause Global, Rasiej credits Team Obama’s “culture of belief in the Internet” for building a movement for change among ordinary citizens energized via social media into a community of engaged, viral marketers for Obama’s campaign. The Web strategy, says Rasiej, was critical in helping the Illinois senator win the White House. (Indeed, an analysis of the vote today by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press says that without a doubt, “the overwhelming backing of younger voters was a critical factor in Obama’s victory.” Obama drew two-thirds—or 66 percent—of the vote among those younger than age 30, Pew reports. In addition, Trendrr, an online statistics mashup tool, shows Obama had a clear lead in using social media to connect to his audience, as well as an overall lead in winning the attention of the blogosphere as a whole. On social networks, Trendrr says, Obama held a big lead over McCain, with 844,927 MySpace friends compared with McCain’s 219,404. Between November 3rd and 4th (election day) alone, Obama gained more than 10,000 new friends, while McCain only gained about 964. On Twitter, says ReadWriteWeb, Obama gained 2,865 new followers between November 3rd and 4th, for a total of 118,107, while John McCain’s Twitter account only had 4,942 followers in total.)

Team Obama also saw an opportunity in exploiting the flagging credibility of mainstream media—again chiefly among younger voters. “[Obama’s team] leap-frogged the mainstream media by producing content that they knew would get distributed for them [via social media] once it was uploaded,” Rasiej said. Especially in the final days before November 4th, Obama’s campaign sent daily emails and text messages directly to supporters, urging them to vote with friends, participate in phone drives, and volunteer at campaign events—even offering up a contest in which last-minute donors could be selected to attend Obama’s election-night party in Chicago. Says Rasiej:

“Going forward, social capital will become increasingly more valuable than fundraising dollars…The political power of the future will be a question of how robust and engaged a political entity’s [social] network will be”—not just how much money a candidate has in the bank or how many friends he/she has in Congress.”

A key lesson for cause activists everywhere from the election? Says Rasiej: “What we’re really seeing here is the reaction of a new network publicsphere—or, you could argue, a whole new political media ecology, a generational shift that’s empowering an entirely new human experience of participatory, civic engagement. It’s taking our former notions of civic engagement and redefining it as something continuously very relevant to people’s lives.”

For more on the lessons for nonprofits in Election 2008, check out Tom Watson’s post today at onPhilanthropy.com, where he is a consultant and writer. Watson is also the author of the forthcoming Cause Wired, a book about the use of social media in advocacy.

Writes Watson: “While there is a temptation among those who track causes and online fundraising to separate political organizing from philanthropy, I think that’s a mistake—it’s wishing for a division that the audience simply won’t tolerate going forward. It’s like hoping that a print classified operation will continue to grow during the age of Craigslist. Young people don’t separate their causes into neat little boxes labeled politics and charity. They simply respond to what moves them, what their friends recommend, what they believe might change the world.

“...It’s no accident that my nonprofit clients are asking about Web sites like Barack Obama’s. The [old] order is rapidly fading.”

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.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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The Changing Role of Nonprofits

Last night, I had the great opportunity to interview Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody.  The first thing I asked about was his view of the new role of nonprofit organizations in the social media or technology revolution that is well underway.  I think it’s an interesting topic and wanted to continue the conversation here with you!  The topic is also featured as this month’s NetSquared Net2 Think Tank.

I asked Prof. Shirky specifically about the avenues of participation, content, and convening online.  Last month, my blog here on SSIR discussed the idea that nonprofit organizations, with the use of social media, can now create shared spaces online for their communities—truly convene groups online.  I still think this is one of the most dynamic opportunities that nonprofit organizations have now, providing a way to be more than a source, a service, or a membership.

Shirky points out in the video that nonprofits can’t participate online in the same way that individuals can.  I think this is a hard concept for many to agree with because of the process by which the social media tools are most often adopted in organizations:  for example, Jane really likes taking pictures and usually posts them to Flickr (an online photo sharing website) as a way to store them, sort them, and share them.  After taking some pictures at the local holiday parade, she finds that many others wanted to post their pictures on Flickr and started a group to pull them all together.  She posts her photos to the group and something clicks, “we could do this for our annual holiday event!”  Jane brings up the idea with her organization’s executives and they decide to give it a try, but only if Jane takes responsibility for implementation, monitoring, support, and so on. 

In that example, it would be difficult for Jane to really approach using Flickr from a different perspective than how she is already using it personally.  Why?  Because the difference isn’t in using the tools per se, we all have the same functionality to upload, tag, comment, etc.  But the important difference is all about the formation of connections, or relationships.

We have all heard before that social media is allowing a conversation to take place online: people are talking to each other, people are talking to organizations, organizations are talking to people, and so forth.  Well, those connections are really important, but not in a highest-friend-count kind of way.  It’s great for organizations to inspire hundreds or thousands of supporters to join their group, forum, network or whatever other opportunity that’s available.  What’s really great and exciting to see happen more and more across the web is organizations creating opportunities to connect members to members, and not just to the organization.

Here’s another example:  I may really support the League of Women Voters, could maybe find them online and join a network, but it would probably be nationally oriented or have chapter-specific relevancy that was still larger than me and my networks.  If the League of Women Voters could look at the network, see the kinds of opportunities present for members to connect with each other, and then provide the resources to connect (whether it is online tools, facilitating offline events, or just letting people know about each other) the ripple effects in the network could really create synergy amongst members and produce untapped enthusiasm for the organization.

Instead of thinking, “what can the relationships with members do for our organization?” or, “what can our relationships do for our members?” try thinking of this:

“What can the relationships between our members do for our community?”

So, perhaps the changing role of nonprofit organizations in the online space is not one of playing catch-up to the early adopters and hyper-connected individuals, nor is it one of “friending” big names or joining every platform; but is one of strategically convening supporters to create dynamic connections across the community.

What do you think?  Are there organizations that you think are doing this already and are doing it well?  Which organizations do you wish were doing this?  How do you think organizations can begin?

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.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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A Technology Revolution for Revolutions!

In the good ol’ USA it’s no surprise to anyone that the Internet has transformed power dynamics. In some respects, it took the Internet to push out the old guard and bring in the new—and the first minority president in the history of our nation. Obama had four times the number of Facebook supporters compared to McCain.  He also had 24 times the number of Twitter followers and three times the number of website visitors to his site in the final weeks of the campaign. Voters watched 15 million hours of Obama video on YouTube and his campaign regularly emailed approximately 13 million people and received of course half a billion dollars in online donations. The Washington Post termed this the “YouTube Presidency.”

The revolutionizing of revolutions is not only an American phenomenon; it has quickly become a critical catalyst behind collective action throughout the world. Interestingly these Internet savvy activists are using tools not designed initially or intended for these purposes, but they are powerful tools nonetheless with regards to social action, labor action and really any kind of collective action. In its article, Revolution, Facebook-Style, the New York Times reported recently about how these Web 2.0 tools have been adopted for Jihad but also to protest dictatorial leaders in police states. As the Internet improves at exponential rates, so too will the way it is harnessed for the sake of power and influence. It will be used for forces of good and forces of bad. 

Similarly the Economist wrote recently about how online protest spontaneously emerged after the Greek police shot a young boy, facilitated by an online-enabled self-organization.

Activism does not only affect those in political power, but also big business. In 2007, the first virtual strike was organized in Second Life and caused IBM’s CEO of Italy to resign and the workers to gain better terms in their union negotiations.  See the video below.

IBM Virtual Strike

Labor strikes, PR scandals and government regulation are all examples of non-market threats that are recognized as a major business risk in today’s economy. Billions of dollars are spent in this industry every year. As the nature of this threat transforms itself and grows more daunting with the adoption of new social software technologies and the saturation of internet penetration, business will need to react. Social protest and advocacy is evolving at a similar pace as well threatening those in political power. They will need to embrace this phenomenon as quickly as those without power.

Existing tools and future Web tools yet to have emerged are not going to be used only for insurgents trying to overrun those in power: a tool for revolutionaries. They are utilities whose fundamental value is to help crowds emerge into organized campaigns deployed as a force by the organizers, be it those in power or those seeking greater influence.  However, because crowd-sourcing is most effective when voluntary, those businesses, organizations or governments looking to do so better be in the right. They better have such great products and such good policies that their supporters and evangelists are willing to hit the e-streets. One more point for democracy!

Lloyd is the founder of Blitz Bazaar, a social network and campaign-management platform for a new class of young, grassroots changemakers organizing in a networked society.  In 2002, Lloyd founded and directed HelpArgentina.org, a pioneering organization of the online giving marketplace model.  He is a Fulbright scholar, Stanford MBA and a Williams College undergraduate.  He has contracted for Prosper, Ashoka, Endeavor, the UNDP and the Inter-American Development Bank.  Lloyd grew up in New York City playing soccer, ice hockey and has been seen teaching tango to Stanford football players.

He’s starting Blitz Bazaar because “there is nothing more exhilarating than building an enterprise that changes the world.”

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Second (and Third) Thoughts About Public Funding for the Arts

The Nonprofiteer was in Bloomington, IL, last weekend to see Ailey II, the farm team of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. As she watched this astonishing company perform to an ecstatic crowd in a converted Masonic Temple building, a light bulb went on over her benighted head.

Of course you’re indifferent to public funding for the arts, you dodo; you live in Chicago, where major performers and exhibitions will show up anyway. Public funding for the arts isn’t for Chicago–it’s for Bloomington.

And she remembered growing up in Baltimore, which is not a small town but which waited for months between visits of major dance companies; and she remembered the thrill of seeing those dance companies for the first time.  And she realized (or remembered) that that’s the real point of public funding for the arts: to make available to everyone the thrill of exposure to first-rate art.  Everyone: that means people who live in Bloomington, and International Falls, and Arroyo Hondo, even though the free market would not support a stop in any of those places by the latest tour from the Joffrey or the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Met.

Doubtless her arts-administrator readers are thinking “Duh!”–but cut the Nonprofiteer some slack.  The conversation about public funding for the arts has for 30 years been a clash between the Jets of “We’re artists!  Art is important so if you challenge the value of anything we create you’re a boob and a censor and a miser!” and the Sharks of “We’re ordinary people!  We don’t want our tax money spent on things we don’t grasp or approve of so that over-educated sissies can avoid getting jobs!”  Needless to say, this has not been a very productive debate, unless by “productive” you mean “of hysteria and hostility.”

But if it’s public funding for the performance of the arts, or their exhibition, or education about them–if it’s public funding for the arts audience, who can disapprove?  Except in the deepest reaches of the Glibertarian right, we’re beyond debating whether education should be publicly funded, and making arts displays and performances available to the widest possible audience is simply public education on a grand scale.  Yes, yes, the Nonprofiteer knows: education isn’t well-funded either; but relatively few people argue that public funding for education is just a plot to spread disgusting lies, or to keep teachers from having to work.  Let’s get the discussion about public funding for the arts to the level of conceptual agreement we have for public education, and then we can engage in any further battles that might need to be fought.

In other words, brethren in the arts community: stop talking about public funding for the arts as if the point were for the public to support YOU.  No one cares about you.  What we care about as a society is US, and how exposure to what you do will improve us.

And once you accept that, you have to accept another, equally painful truth, which is that no one can actually determine what “art” is until at least 25 years after it’s been created. Probably the Nonprofiteer doesn’t need to remind you that people threw things at the stage the first time they saw and heard The Rite of Spring, now part of the musical canon. But what she probably does need to point out is that this doesn’t mean the public should accept and/or fund every objectionable thing it sees in hopes that it will ultimately turn out to be art. Rather, it means that support for creation is a mug’s game, a gamble at which most players lose, and that the public should instead put its money into presentation.

Many arts advocates roll their eyes at this and ask from where, then, money for creation is supposed to come. The Nonprofiteer refers those people to the Guggenheim Foundation and 3Arts/Chicago and the Rosenwald Fund and all the other agencies of private patronage that have supported artists and their creative process over the years, and urges them to reach out to reestablish private patronage.  Yes, yes, times are financially tough; but if Julius Rosenwald could single-handedly support the Harlem and Bronzeville Renaissances throughout the Depression, surely our contemporary moneybags can do as well.*

Or, as Rabbi Joshua said much more succinctly: render unto Caesar . . .

Let the public fund what benefits the public, and let private wealth make possible acts of private creation.
——-
*Note that this required that the Rosenwald Foundation spend itself out within 25 years of the founder’s death. In Rosenwald’s eyes that was a feature, not a bug (as our software colleagues would say); but it requires the philanthropist to value what s/he accomplishes above how s/he’s remembered.

Kelly Kleiman, who blogs as The Nonprofiteer, is a lawyer and freelance journalist whose reportage and essays about the arts, philanthropy and women’s issues have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and other dailies; in magazines including In These Times and Chicago Philanthropy; and on websites including Aislesay.com and Artscope.net.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Swarms

Manhattan’s birds are brilliant. From my 42nd-floor conference room in Midtown, I often see flocks fly by in perfect formation, suddenly veering right, then left, to dodge the buildings below. It’s as if they’re being choreographed by some grand master hawk squawking orders from atop the Empire State Building.

Truth is, of course, birds aren’t very smart. [Central Park’s birds still can’t seem to distinguish a cookie wrapper from a bagel chip.] But flocks of them? Different story. Group-think helps them to negotiate skyscrapers and migrate to Miami in a heartbeat.

Humans, too, gain some advantages in groups: we’re just starting to figure out how much smarter we can be when linked online. [Five years ago, we began using social media to find and aggregate the people we knew into simple social networks. Then we started organizing our networks to do things, like raise money for a cause.] Now? We’re experiencing another big evolutionary shift in the way we use the Net to collaborate. Think swarms—multiple social networks that aggregate rapidly to influence the offline behavior of others. They’re much bigger and more powerful than our single social networks ever were. And like SWAT teams, they’re all about swooping in to do something quickly, then disbanding.

Four types of super-swarms made headlines recently, offering up some tough lessons in mass collaboration for organizers and bystanders, alike:

• Twestival—the 250-city, one-day global gathering of Twitter users offline—ended up catalyzing hundreds of thousands of people in 186 cities worldwide to raise money for charity:water.org, a New York-based nonprofit that builds freshwater wells in Africa. It was the largest, if not the first, swarm-for-good ever assembled. Yet for more than a week after the Feb. 12 event, Twestival organizers still didn’t know how much money they raised toward their goal of $1 million. Amanda Rose, Twestival’s London-based chief organizer, sent out a tweet that attempted to lower expectations: “Reaching $1 million that quick was always going to be tough,” she tweeted, “but the awareness that came out was worth it. Will not blame those who didn’t reach it.” [This followed an earlier tweet that indicated that only 25 percent of the cities participating had reported how much money they raised. Later still, she tweeted: “We are close to £200k ($284,703.210) so nothing small. Announce soon.”] Throughout the day, Rose urged people to continue donating in a last-ditch effort to bring the tally closer to the goal. Take-away: Swarms can easily overwhelm the individuals who organize them; their behavior is very difficult, if not impossible, to document in detail or control by any one individual or nonprofit once catalyzed.
• More than 4,000 people swarmed into London’s Liverpool Street Station Feb. 9 to both mock and mimic an ad by a local phone company. Some characterized this Facebook-driven swarm—which totaled 14,000 participants online and off—as, simply, the latest in a series of Internet-inspired pranks in recent years [The first recorded flash mob occurred in Manhattan in 2003.] But this one was different. It might be the first swarm mobilized to mock or mimic something commercial. Previous “flash mobs”, new media experts say, have been focused simply on having fun. This swarm resulted from viral marketing writ huge. Take-away: Companies can help to launch a swarm as part of a viral marketing campaign but can’t guarantee it will stay “on message.”
• The Women’s Media Center mobilized a swarm in New York and Washington on Feb. 10 to protest remarks made by TV personality Bill O’Reilly following President Obama’s first press conference. O’Reilly derided veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, calling the 88-year-old journalist “the wicked witch of the East” and poking fun at her age. Within hours, more than 10,000 people sent angry emails to O’Reilly and his producers, forcing the conservative provocateur to apologize to Thomas on air the next day—precisely what the swarm ordered. Take-away: Swarm-advocacy can be used to both challenge and promote free speech and social norms in new and highly powerful ways, raising new questions about the power of a networked crowd to shape the expression—and the behavior—of an individual.
• al Qaeda forces Feb. 11 staged simultaneous suicide attacks on three Afghan government ministries by mobilizing newly formed online strike-swarms. Terrorist “flash mobs” are now being used in smaller-scale terrorist violence, similar to the kind first seen in Mumbai last November, swarm theorist John Arquilla says in a piece he wrote Feb. 17 for The International Herald Tribune. Arquilla says al Qaeda and its affiliates have been using swarm tactics for several years and that they are being coordinated, increasingly, through the use of social media. Take-away: Flash causes, or swarms—when politicized—can be dangerous and difficult to minimize or pre-empt.

Howard Rheingold, the author of the 2003 bestseller, “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution”, says digital swarms are just getting started. Given the evolving “brush fire” mentality of the Web, expect to see many more of them taking collective action offline—for better or worse—in coming months. Warns Rheingold: “As these [flash groups] become politicized, there is a potential for good and for danger.”

For more on the early work of swarms, see Cisco engineer J.D. Stanley’s recent paper, “Digital Swarms”, here. Also check out “Swarm Theory,” an article by Peter Miller in the July 2007 National Geographic. And for the upside of swarms, check out Charles Leadbeater’s 2008 book, We Think, about mass collaboration and innovation.

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.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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You’re Never Too Young to Change the World

Last night I gave a short talk to about 100 high school students in the LeadAmerica program. The experience was probably more inspiring for me than for the kids! I opened up my speech with a question: how many of you have ever volunteered for a charity or done community service? Almost every single hand shot up into the air. Then I asked a few of the kids to stand up and tell me about their volunteer experiences. One girl had been a junior leader for the City of Rockville. One boy had handed out food to the homeless, and he described the mission of the nonprofit he helped as succinctly as if he worked there.

I shared three stories with them: my background and why I work in the nonprofit field, the story of Adele Ann Taylor ,who at 13 years old, started a nonprofit to promote literacy. I also told the story of a young Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. when he was a teenager trying to decide whether he would study law, medicine, or theology and what a remarkable young man he was. Then to see his short rise to leadership as one of the most influential figures in the civil rights movement just 10 years later.

The point I tried to make is that you’re never too young to change the world. As a young person, we all have stirrings of great ideas to improve the communities where we live. The only difference that only certain people actually act on those ideas. At the end of my remarks, I asked the roomful of kids to do me a favor and think about something they really care about, to tell me their big crazy idea for creating the world as it should be. What I heard from those high schoolers was astonishing and inspiring:

• One girl wanted to save the Everglades in Florida
• One young man wanted to make college free for everyone that wants to go
• One young woman wanted to spread the love of God to everyone who hurts in the world
• One girl wanted to prevent cruelty to animals

We could have gone on all night long. But what I realized was that these young people were probably going to be our future nonprofit leaders. And as I listened to each one of them stand up and share their passion, I almost cried right there. If ever there was a time I doubted that the next generation would want to take up the torch of social change, these kids restored my faith right then and there.

I also realized that it’s up to you and me to make sure these motivated young people find a great place to work when they come to the nonprofit sector. We might be Gen x or Gen Y, still young ourselves, but we have to continue to pave the way for those that will inevitably come behind us.

Here’s a short video with clips from the talk set to my favorite John Legend song. Too bad I couldn’t show the kids, as they are all underage, and I didn’t have a waiver to film them. You’ll just have to take my word for it that they were pretty awesome.

Rosetta Thurman is an emerging nonprofit leader of color working and living in the Washington, D.C. area.  She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofit leadership and management issues at Perspectives From the Pipeline.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Charter Schools and Unions: Good Ideas in Conflict?

The on-line ChiTownDailyNews reports a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on at a charter school where teachers are talking–and preparing to do more than talk–about organizing a union.

The Nonprofiteer doesn’t know the rights and wrongs of this particular engagement, but she firmly believes that charter schools–like other nonprofits–are the most fertile territory for union organizing, and she’s not surprised to see that organizing professionals have figured that fact out as well. Combine the relative immobility of most nonprofits–the Art Institute of Chicago won’t pick up stakes and move to Singapore–with their routine underpayment and general exploitation of their employees, and it shouldn’t be a surprise when the union comes to call.

Nonprofits sustained themselves for many years on the unwaged labor of women, and for many years after that by skimping on financial capital and trying to make up the difference in human capital. Everyone who works in the sector is familiar with poor salaries, no benefits, routine demands for unpaid overtime and other violations of the labor laws, and a resistance to improved working conditions based on the “let’s you and him fight” argument that decent salaries for nonprofit workers can only come out of the pockets of nonprofit clients–instead of the pockets of nonprofit Board members, whose job it is to provide resources for their beloved agencies.

It’s not clear that the tactic in this particular organizing battle–to point out that charter schools get public money and thus should treat their teachers the same as those in public schools–is especially on point. (And, to reiterate: the Nonprofiteer is not making any assertions about this particular school, its particular Board of Directors, or its particular employment policies.) Rather, it seems to the Nonprofiteer, teachers at nonprofit charter schools should range themselves on the side of all nonprofit employees, and note that the people who do society’s hardest and most important work should probably be paid reasonably for the privilege.

Nonprofits must economize, sure, and more now than ever; but they don’t get to do it on the backs of their workers.

Kelly Kleiman, who blogs as The Nonprofiteer, is principal of NFP Consulting, which provides strategic planning, Board development and fundraising advice to charities and philanthropies. She is also a lawyer and freelance journalist whose reportage and essays about the arts, philanthropy and women’s issues have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and other dailies; in magazines including In These Times and Chicago Philanthropy; and on websites including Aislesay.com and Artscope.net.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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The Best Thing we can do for Nonprofits–and Ourselves

Have you seen Rick Cohen’s typically smart and on-target piece “The Worst Thing We Can Do for the Obama Administration”?  While he’s speaking about the nonprofit sector and its/our special-interest-group needs, there’s a broader point: that those of us who supported the President’s election because we share his basic principles and values should express that support by remaining independent and criticizing when necessary, rather than by becoming supplicants to or apologists for the people we put in office.  That’s an idea relevant to each and all of us as citizens.

The Nonprofiteer’s own version of this insight struck her while she was raging at news of the Administration’s refusal to investigate and prosecute allegations of torture.  Abruptly she realized she had two choices: struggle to construct a rationale for a constitutional law professor’s apparent indifference to violations of the Constitution, or struggle to make it impossible for such apparent indifference to continue.  So she’s now volunteering with the ACLU,  whose legal work contributed to the release of the torture memos and which is helping to orchestrate public pressure to bring to justice the people who violated our laws in our name.

Politics, it is said, is the art of the possible.  The citizen’s job is to define for politicians what’s possible, and to make sure that the definition encompasses everything that’s essential.

As nonprofit leaders, we know first-hand how much of what’s essential requires the government’s support.  But as Cohen says, our primary job is not begging for that support; it’s giving or withholding our own based on how well the government–our government–lives up to our ideals, and its own.

Kelly Kleiman, who blogs as The Nonprofiteer, is principal of NFP Consulting, which provides strategic planning, Board development and fundraising advice to charities and philanthropies. She is also a lawyer and freelance journalist whose reportage and essays about the arts, philanthropy and women’s issues have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and other dailies; in magazines including In These Times and Chicago Philanthropy; and on websites including Aislesay.com and Artscope.net.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Resourcefulness can boost nonprofit advocacy

Speaking up for a cause is critical, yet the giving sector often lags in pursuing advocacy work.

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.

Posted by loreal

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Social Entrepreneurship vs. Activism; SOCAP09 vs. Momentum09

A couple weeks ago was the SOCAP09 conference attracting social entrepreneurs from all over the world.  Last week was the MOMENTUM conference attracting the leading activists from all over the world. Interestingly there was only minor overlap in the attendees. Is there a divide between these two camps?  The civil society is already fragmented enough. If there is a growing divide between the social entrepreneurship and activist camps then surely the greater good would call for us to bridge the gap.
 
Sure enough during a Tuesday evening cocktail networking at the Tides Momentum Conference, I oversaw Ellen Friedman (ED of Tides and the host of this conference) at a table with Kevin Jones and Rosa Lee Harden (the co-founders of the SOCAP conference last week among other important endeavors).  It was as if both gang leaders were huddling up in a dark alley to decide the fate of civil society, or so I melodramatically imagined.  I was intrigued and so I interviewed them the next day. 

Friedman mentioned that they did discuss this divide and are keen on beginning a dialogue to start bridging the gap.  In fact, Friedman suggested that one important outcome from the conference might be this very dialogue. She intends to “keep the conversations going.”  I met with Kevin and Rose Lee separately and they confirmed their interest in strengthening the dialogue and start to build bridges. So keep an eye out and start pressuring from your end.  All those with the passion to drive social progress need to find a way to stay united. 

I also asked their opinion on the difference between activism and social entrepreneurship. There was consensus that entrepreneurship is about creating something new while activism is about taking action of any kind so you can indeed be both an activist and a social entrepreneur. Friedman gave Kevin Bales and Willie Smits as examples.  Both changemakers spoke eloquently in the Momentum conference about their work. Bales’ mission is to end slavery over the next 25 years while Smits’ is to curb global warming, save local fauna & flora while simultaneously developing local jobs in Borneo, Indonesia.  Both individuals are creating something new and innovative but are required to influence government and others in positions of power as part of their important work.  As Friedman eloquently put it, “often you need to build a movement and a market.”

Most social entrepreneurs, like me, don’t identify with activism, but, like corporate managers have understood for a long time, we mustn’t overlook the fact that influencing those critical non-market actors in positions of power is often a critical part of our work as well.  One can influence non-market actors in two ways: with votes or with dollars.  Most social entrepreneurs don’t have the deep pockets of the corporate world, so they will have to follow the path blazed by the activists: build political leverage with votes.  On the other hand, activists should also start to recognize that their work will only be enhanced by learning from a new wave of changemakers who want to go beyond the traditional activism born out of the 60s to incorporate principles of the market and best practices of management and private industry to achieve the same goals.  The millennials, particularly in the US, don’t identify as activists but will usually need to incorporate their best practices for the purposes of movement formation and advocacy.

Do you think the activist community and the social entrepreneur community are divided?  Should that divide enough of a concern to be seriously addressed now?

Lloyd Nimetz founded the online giving market HelpArgentina.org. While pursuing his MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Nimetz has focused on for-profit business models that address social challenges. This summer he will launch a payments platform for India’s bottom billion.

Posted by Jason Chua

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How the Recession is Hurting Young Nonprofit Leaders

I’ve been thinking lately about how grateful I am that the recession has not really hit me personally in my pocket. I am blessed to a have a decent-paying, flexible nonprofit job with benefits that I work part-time. Along with other projects and teaching, my lifestyle has pretty much remained constant, a much different reality than the millions of young people that are struggling right now. If I did not have advanced education, my outlook would probably be a lot different right now, but that’s another post for another day. For now I wanted to share some trends that I am seeing in the nonprofit community that are proving harmful to the vibrant cadre of young workers we have in our employ. Any way you slice it, the economy has crippled many groups in many ways, but it’s still up to us to be sure we are making the kind of decisions that are good for both our organizations and our employees.
Low, Lower, Lowest Salaries
I was sad to see the findings from the most recent AFL-CIO report, “Young Workers: A Lost Decade,” which surveyed a cross-section of workers under 35 and showed that:
• More than half of young workers earn less than $30,000.
• More than one in three young workers say they are currently living at home with their parents.
• 31 percent of young workers do not have health insurance coverage.
• One-third of young workers cannot pay the bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
While the findings from the AFL-CIO report were not exclusively geared toward young nonprofit workers, it’s easy to imagine that a significant portion of people in the sample had jobs in the nonprofit sector as it was a cross-section. We also know the prevalence in our field of hiring entry-level workers at the ever-so-common $30,000 a year joke of a salary. What we can now also surmise is that our young nonprofit leaders that fall into this income bracket are also less likely to have health coverage and may be forced to live with their parents because they may not be self-sufficient.
This very real economic reality can be illustrated in my own experience a few months ago. I was out for dinner with a colleague of mine - a fellow Gen Y nonprofit leader - and when it came time to pay the bill, her credit card was declined. She literally did not have enough money to pay for her portion of the meal. Is that the quality of life we want to pass on to the next generation of nonprofit leaders?
The Death of Leadership Development
Before the economy tanked, leadership development was a luxury typically reserved for employees at nonprofits that had huge budgets. But even if your organization was low on cash, there were still conferences you could attend or programs you could apply for that could fill in the gap. Now, those opportunities appear to be dwindling. I have seen fewer conferences being advertised this year, and the ones that have held conferences have had lower attendance. One of the most public was the Council of Nonprofits, which canceled its much-anticipated 2009 Nonprofit Congress earlier this year. Then there is the story about Jewish organization, Professional Leaders Project shutting down. The nonprofit had been “dedicated to increasing the recruitment and retention of outstanding leaders who will lead our Jewish community into the future.”
Due to all the budget cutting going on, pretty soon we won’t even be able to go to the library and read nonprofit books to enrich our leadership skills for free.
More Unpaid Internships
Sure, nonprofits are still recruiting interns - recent grads, high school students, people in between jobs. The problem is that I’m seeing more and more of these short-term positions being listed as unpaid. It wouldn’t be so bad if the nonprofits were offering the kind of experience that would help young people learn to lead. What I see happening with many of my colleagues is that we are hiring interns to do the extra work that has been placed upon us because we are expending more energy fundraising. Or we are using interns as a stopgap for administrative support because we can no longer afford to have a full-time administrative assistant. I will use an example from my own organization. We had an unpaid intern for the summer, and most days I observed her doing things like making copies and printing things. We never really gave her the chance to learn anything new, let alone practice leadership. We never even thought about it. We were too busy doing the “important work.”
There are so many opportunities for the younger generation of nonprofit workers to contribute to the success of organizations imperiled by the recession, but we’re clearly missing them. This is why if you are a young nonprofit professional, you must be prepared to be your own best advocate. No one is going to do it for you, especially in these difficult economic times.

Rosetta Thurman is an emerging nonprofit leader of color working and living in the Washington, D.C. area.  She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofit leadership and management issues at Perspectives From the Pipeline.

Posted by Jason Chua

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Real stories critical for giving

In a world ravaged by poverty, hunger, poor health, violence and intolerance, philanthropy can change lives.

Just ask Ron Archer.

At the 2009 National Philanthropy Day luncheon sponsored by the Triangle chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals in North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham region, the motivational speaker and former All-American middle linebacker smashed through the comfort zone that can insulate giving from the people it serves and the problems it addresses.

A one-time preacher who now runs an international economic-development network, Archer told a harrowing tale of a 10-year-old Cleveland kid who wanted to kill himself.

The boy was a “trick baby,” born to a teen girl who had become a prostitute at age 14 after her family plunged into poverty.

The boy’s childhood was a living nightmare.

With German and Caribbean grandparents, the biracial kid was an outsider who fit in nowhere and was shunned everywhere.

His teen mother was the victim of brutal physical and sexual abuse, abuse that Archer described graphically.

The boy stammered and was a chronic bed-wetter.

He himself was raped.

So at age 10, in possession of a gun, he wanted to end it all.

It was then, Archer told last week’s luncheon crowd, that philanthropy “found” that kid, who of course was Archer himself.

Somehow, some way, the often invisible world of social services discovered and connected with that lost child and helped him find and help himself.

Archer’s talk – it was more akin to a fire-and-brimstone sermon – stunned the crowd of roughly 270 fundraising professionals and donors at last week’s luncheon, held at Prestonwood Country Club in Cary.

And while Archer was swamped after the talk with well-wishers, a few of those in the audience privately voiced outrage at the blunt and disturbing details he shared about his life.

That reaction was unfortunate.

People working in the charitable marketplace, especially those whose job is to raise money from donors, often talk about philanthropy’s power to transform lives and fix urgent and horrific problems.

Professionals in the giving sector also emphasize the importance of telling stories that are authentic.

But real stories about real people and their real problems can make some philanthropy professionals uncomfortable.

The business of philanthropy is to heal and change lives, and the job of fundraising professionals is to engage givers and secure the resources their organizations need to be change agents.

A powerful tool to engage givers is storytelling – telling stories about people, the problems they face, and the role philanthropy can play in addressing the symptoms and causes of those problems.

Two of the organizations honored last week by the Triangle chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals were InterAct, an agency that supports victims of domestic violence, and Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina – agencies that offer precisely the kinds of services that can change the lives of people like Ron Archer and his mother.

Their stories, and those of others like them, need to be told, and told again, so that more givers get involved in making a difference.

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.

Posted by Jason Chua

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28 Days of Black Nonprofit Leaders: Benjamin Jealous

This post is part of a special series by Rosetta Thurman entitled “28 Days of Black Nonprofit Leaders.” In honor of Black History Month, Rosetta will be “highlighting 28 Black nonprofit leaders who have done or are doing their part to make our world a bit better, a bit more hopeful for the generations that will come.”

In her introduction to the series on her blog, Rosetta writes, “I love Black History Month because it reminds me of how far we still have to go in this country in terms of race relations and giving everyone a fair chance to take part in the “American Dream.” How far we still have to go before Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of social justice and economic opportunity for everyone will be realized. Fortunately, there are countless leaders out there who are continuing to address so many aspects of social change.” The SSIR is proud to publish some of their stories.

Benjamin Jealous is President and CEO of the NAACP.

From the NAACP website:

Benjamin Todd Jealous grew up believing that there was no higher calling than to further the cause of freedom in this country and in the world. It is a mindset he inherited from of his parents and grandparents. Their drive for community betterment blazed the trail for Jealous’ own deep commitment to social justice, public service and human rights activism. Now, as the 17th President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP, and the youngest person to hold the position in the organization’s nearly 100-year history, Jealous is well positioned to answer the call.

During his career, he has served as president of the Rosenberg Foundation, director of the U.S. Human Rights Program at Amnesty International and Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a federation of more than 200 black community newspapers. From his early days of organizing voter registration drives up until his nomination and election as NAACP president, Jealous has been motivated by civic duty and a constant need to improve the lives of America’s underrepresented. All things considered, Jealous’ leadership roles and active community involvement have well prepared him for his current duties as president of the NAACP. In fact, his path through journalism and the Black Press is not unlike several other former NAACP presidents, including Roy Wilkins, Walter White, Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Dubois.

As a student at Columbia University, he worked in Harlem as a community organizer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. On campus, Jealous led school-wide movements, including boycotts and pickets for homeless rights, a successful campaign to save full-need financial aid and need-blind admissions when other national universities were cutting such programs, and an environmental justice battle with the University.

These protests ultimately led to the suspension of Jealous and three other student leaders. Jealous used this time off to work as a field organizer helping to lead a campaign that prevented the State of Mississippi from closing two of its three public historically black universities, and converting one of them into a prison. He remained in Mississippi to take a job at the Jackson Advocate, an African American newspaper based in the state’s capital. His reporting — for the frequently firebombed weekly — was credited with exposing corruption amongst high-ranking officials at the state prison in Parchman. His investigations also helped to acquit a small black farmer who had been wrongfully and maliciously accused of arson. His work at the Jackson Advocate eventually lead to his promotion to Managing Editor.

In 1997, Jealous returned to Columbia University and completed his degree in political science. With the encouragement of mentors, he applied and was accepted to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar where he earned a master’s degree in comparative social research.

Jealous eventually went on to serve as Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). While at the NNPA, he rebuilt its 90-year old national news service and launched a web-based initiative that more than doubled the number of black newspapers publishing online.

Most recently, Jealous was President of the Rosenberg Foundation, a private independent institution that funds civil and human rights advocacy to benefit California’s working families. Prior to that, he was Director of the U.S. Human Rights Program at Amnesty International. While there he led efforts to pass federal legislation against prison rape, rebuild public consensus against racial profiling in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, and expose the widespread sentencing of children to life without the possibility of parole.

Active in civic life, Jealous is a board member of the California Council for the Humanities, and the Association of Black Foundation Executives, as well as a member of the Asia Society. He is married to Lia Epperson Jealous, a professor of constitutional law and former civil rights litigator with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. They presently reside in Washington, DC with their young daughter.

See also: Benjamin’s 2009 interview with the Chronicle of Philanthropy (video)

See also: Julian Bond’s interview with Benjamin during University of Virginia’s Explorations in Black Leadership series (video)

Photo credit: NAACP

Rosetta Thurman is a writer, speaker, professor and consultant working and living in the Washington, D.C. area.  She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofits, leadership and social change at rosettathurman.com

Posted by Samantha Penabad

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The Right Measures

I still remember the embarrassed silence that followed when a colleague, over a decade ago, stood up in a room full of foundation leaders at a Council on Foundations conference and asked “What if we all committed to one common goal – to end child poverty in the U.S. in ten years?”  People reacted as if she had made a rude noise.  It was awkward, but beautiful too.  Her question evoked the possibility of collective progress to a vital goal, and at the same time, it indicted everyone in the room, called our commitment and judgment into question.

Our sector is obsessed with the search for measurable impact in specific initiatives, but, as that story illustrates, resists calls to commit to such clear, measurable objectives like eradicating child poverty. 

The American Human Development Index is an important tool, new to the U.S., that could help us resolve that tension. 

The Index measures the three areas that most of us would agree are the basic building blocks of a decent life: health, education and income.  The Index is modeled on the approach taken by the annual U.N. Human Development Report, which has now been instituted in over 160 countries; in fact, the Human Development Report is so well accepted and well known around the world, that some reports on the progress of World Cup soccer teams also highlight their respective Human Development Index rankings, and as Bill Pitkin observes, if the rankings determined the results on the field, the Netherlands and Australia would meet in the finals this June.

The Human Development Index approach was developed by economist Mahbub ul Haq and incorporates the “capabilities approach best articulated by Amartya Sen, the Nobel Laureate economist. (Chapter 2 of Sen’s book “Development as Freedom” should be required reading for all philanthropic and social sector leaders.) I’m not capable of fully describing and advocating the capabilities approach – but in a nutshell, it is akin to what parents want for their children.  If we dig deeper than “I just want them to be happy,” most parents want their children to develop the capacity to choose their paths, so far as they are able.  If we were to survey a wide range of health and human service professionals, chances are they would say they want the same for all the people they serve. (The capabilities approach has many virtues; among others, it employs a strong “informational base” – it is possible to ask people what they want for themselves, their children and their communities and then measure progress in their capacities to achieve it – and unlike other theories of justice, you don’t need to imagine a pre-social contract state of nature or an original position in which people are blind to the advantages they will enjoy by birth.)

In the U.S., the Human Development Index has been championed by the renowned venture capitalist Bill Draper and Ed Cain, the VP of Grant Programs for The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, who were colleagues at the U.N.  Draper and Cain were driving forces behind the first annual American Human Development Report, published by the Social Science Research Council.  (For more on the genesis of the Index and the American Human Development Report, see the forewords to the report by Sen and Draper.)

The American Human Development Index can be a powerful tool for determining the greatest need, targeting resources to those needs and then measuring philanthropic impact, even when that impact is incremental.  By using the Index in conjunction with GIS asset mapping tools, like Healthy City (launching statewide California service on March 3), philanthropic, nonprofit and civic leaders can see where the greatest needs are in health, education, standard of living. The Index also could help leaders track progress index over time to judge whether targeted investments push the dial upward in a community’s overall well-being. “Successful investments in health care should, for example, result in measurable increases in a community’s life expectancy (which the index shows is lowest in Kentucky’s 5th congressional district, for example),” observes As Kristen Lewis, Co-Director of the American Human Development Project “Successful investments in education should result in fewer drop-outs and higher enrollment rates (these are lowest in Arizona’s 4th). Successful investments in the standard of living should result in well-paying jobs (particularly rare in California’s 20th district).”

Another important tool built on the Index is the Common Good Forecaster, which enables users to estimate the benefits a community would reap from increases in education levels, and a compatible tool is the Self-Sufficiency Standard. ¹

The Index is only sensitive to the variables that it measures; for some philanthropic initiatives, a more detailed index like the Self-Sufficiency Standard, or a custom, tailored index may be preferred (one great, as yet untold story is how The California Endowment used a series of indexes – and help from Healthy City - to select 14 communities in California on which to concentrate under its new strategic plan.) But a composite metric like the American HD Index can enable comparisons across different regions, and even internationally.

The beauty of the independent sector is that everyone can choose which causes to pursue. That can make it difficult to maximize the scale and impact of resources dedicated to a problem, but that freedom is more valuable than the inefficiency it allows.  The promise of ever-improving data leading to smarter philanthropic decisions – pushed by tools like the Human Development Index, the Self-Sufficiency Standard, HealthyCity.org and others – is that a broad range of philanthropic and nonprofit enterprises, acting independently and employing different strategies, will converge toward a shared goal, like eliminating child poverty, as my colleague so rudely demanded over a decade ago.

^{[1] Full disclosure: United Way is a partner with the American Human Development Report in the Common Good Forecaster, and I work for a United Way affiliate, United Ways of California, which also supported the publication of a report conducted by United Way of the Bay Area assessing the proportion of California residents earning less than the standard [. I’ve been a fan of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, however, for over a decade (I’ve written about it often, such as here and here), and that may do more to explain how I ended up doing the work I do now than it influences what I write in this post. I also am a proud founding member of Healthy City, a tool I’ve recommended in this space previously .}

Peter Manzo is President & CEO of United Ways of California, which improves health, education and financial results for low income children and families by enhancing and coordinating the policy advocacy and community impact work of California’s 37 United Ways.

Posted by Samantha Penabad

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Poor People or Poverty: Charity or Government

Some conservatives have begun to again argue that government should no longer provide for essential social services.  They say that charity can be an adequate and acceptable substitute for government in meeting needs and resolving social problems.  That is a befogging illusion created more in service to ideology than to society.

Charitable resources are dwarfed by government funding for social programs and there’s no sign individual and corporate contributions or social entrepreneurship makes up for even partial cuts.  Even if foundations gave away every last dollar in all of their endowments, that would do little more than cover this year’s federal deficit with a fraction left toward next year’s.

But resource questions cover the real agenda:  it’s about conservatives insisting that problems are much more a consequence of failures of personal responsibility than of any broader societal or economic dynamics.  They contend that the problem is poor people and not poverty, and that the remedy must be approached person-by-person, with little or no attention to correcting inadequacies in governmental institutions, programs, and policies.  In effect, they see poverty as a consequence of bad people making bad decisions and doing bad things; they see personal redemption, education and hard work as the only solution. Liberals, on the other hand, understand that government action is necessary to create the conditions under which individual responsibility can be successfully developed and exercised, including politically. 

In the face of a deluding exaggeration of the scope and power of charity and a continuing assault on scope and power of government, nonprofit organizations need to find new ways to improve and defend government programs while popularizing a sense of public responsibility among Americans as taxpayers, donors, volunteers, and voters. And philanthropic foundations need to fuel those efforts.

An elaboration of this discussion is in the current issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Posted by Mark Rosenman

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