What are we not doing?

This question – what are we not doing? – may be the most important question any strategist, funder, program officer, or board member can ask. It contextualizes the choices that are being made. It sheds light on how well you (or your staff) have scanned the landscape. It will help you think about what might [...]

Charity Challenge buzzword 2009.5

(photo by exfordy, Flickr, Creative Commons) One of the key noted philanthropy trends of 2008 was the growth of philanthropy prizes. This year the buzzword is charity challenge. These challenges tend to be some form of matching grant – based fundraising opportunity that uses blogs, twitter, widgets, online video and every other possible web-based communications [...]

Idea Index and changing how we look for change

(photo by psd, Flickr, Creative Commons) The Idea Index is a great (and beautiful) example of learning from the ecosystem that prize philanthropy creates. The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) has taken all of the entries for its recent challenge and published them in the Idea Index. BFI refers to this as “an open-source database of [...]

Even further "embedded" giving

I was hoping I could come up with a term for “deeper than embedded” before writing this post, but my mind failed me. Since I am on vacation this is probably a good sign. So we’ll open this up to you, dear readers – what term would you use to describe business models in which [...]

Change native to the digital world

(photo by kjarrett, Flickr, Creative Commons) I’m looking for examples of social change organizations that are totally native to the digital world. They were created in and around digital tools and they use these tools to manage their work, communication, programs, fund development – everything. The prevalence of these tools shaped the way the organization’s [...]

Buzzword 2009.4 Leverage

(Photo by Tyger_lyllie, Flickr, Creative Commons) I am remiss as I have just realized that I have not previously tagged leverage as a buzzword. I guess it goes to show that some buzzwords become so embedded that we almost miss them. We’ve heard a lot of bad things about leverage lately – sub prime mortgages, [...]

Buzzwords 2009.2 and 2009.3

(Photo by Maurice King, Flickr, Creative Commons) Buzzword 2009.2 Sidecar FundsThe Gates Foundation got a fair bit of attention last week for the $10million in unsolicited funds that it raised in 2008. This is not just news for the Gates Foundation but for all of philanthropy – private foundations are going into the business of [...]

People who liked X also liked Y

You know those wonderful automatic recommendation engines we’ve come to rely on, courtesy of Amazon and Netflix? Well, here’s one the old fashioned way: If you liked this blog post on “What’s Next?” you should also read Mario Morino’s latest two columns on the VPP site. They are here: The Innovation Imperative and Nurturing the [...]

Foundations – get the widget

Last week I pointed out that the entire ecosystem of information on nonprofits in the USA is changing. Just as the 1990s was a decade of innovation in philanthropic financial products, the 00s have been, so far, a decade of innovation around information. You can read the full post either here or on SSIR. Here’s [...]

More thoughts on what is next

[Cross posted from SSIR] “Green Shoots” for New Philanthropic Forms 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 [...]