Council on Foundations video now available

Select sessions from the 2007 COF conference are now online. Get them here. Coming soon to fora.tv (I hope).

Tags: philanthropy, cof2007

Competing with your inbox

Sean Stannard Stockton who was blogging the COF conference alongside me in Seattle, puts forward some right-on ideas about how to keep the conversations going. He is more optimistic than I am that the COF participants are really going to use new technologies to keep the conversations going. And its actually old tech at this [...]

Mistakes were made

What’s the point of conferences? Schmoozing? Check. Information? Sometimes. Networking? Check. Hallway meetings? Check.
The 2007 Council on Foundations Conference made some significant changes to its structure, but its pretty much “inside-the-beltway” kind of stuff, probably not of much interest to those outside the conference. Content tracks, focused on themes, more music and culture, that [...]

COF – lots on poverty, little on law

Good coverage of the COF sessions on poverty over on SSIR. Check it out.
Another point of view on the lack of technical legal sessions, can be found here.
Tags: philanthropy, cof2007

What’s faith got to do with it?

Most of my writing about philanthropy looks at it in the context of markets, public sector responsibility and citizen action. I appreciate it when I get to consider the spiritual and elemental nature of philanthropy while I’m at work, and not just in my own religious practice. Ambassador James Joseph reported on a studio [...]

Four short plays, four big ideas

The Council on Foundations conference this year is organized around four major challenges of our times. This is in preparation for a year of discussion and ongoing conversations, all geared to a 2008 convention that hopes to draw the presumptive presidential nominees.
The four themes: poverty, global health, climate change, and disaster relief. As they are [...]

The philanthropic fault line

Why do foundations and nonprofits struggle with each other so much? Who is more dishonest with whom – foundations who raise unrealistic expectations about funding or nonprofits who promise unachieveable goals to get grants?
As the revenue markets for the social sector change, will some of these behaviors change? Social entrepreneurs, sustainability models, fees-for-service, corporate social [...]

Blogs break political media news

My colleague Sean Stannard Stockton got this to the world a few minutes before I did – so you can note his scoop here – The Huffington Post has hired Tom Edsall from Washington Post to serve as political editor. This is heading into the 2008 Presidential campaign, which HuffPo will staff with 100 citizen [...]

Citizen journalism and citizen sector

Session COF: Foundations and the Morphing Media
Arianna Huffington:
Will the new media with its citizen journalists direct more giving to smaller nonprofit groups? She contends the old mass media helped inform philanthropy to the degree that it helped large prestigious organizations.
Blogs are obsessive (suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder) as opposed to old media’s attention deficit disorder [...]

Huffington’s Heroes

I had the chance to interview Arianna Huffington, eponymous media mogul of The Huffington Post, prior to her upcoming special panel discussion on new media and philanthropy at the Council on Foundations conference.
The Huffington Post, which started publishing on May 9, 2005 is a compelling example of new media – regular reporters, syndicated columnists, [...]