Technology
Getting the Most Out of the Fall Conference
In preparation for the conference, I scanned the event schedule a few times for the sessions most relevant to my involvement in the community foundation world. The conference has a breadth of participants, and technology is making it easier than ever to explore resources and connect with people who…
Looking to Accommodate More of Your Foundation’s Mobile Website Visitors? Here Are Four Points to Consider
As the current chair and webmaster for an affinity group, I decided to create a Flash-based website because I believed it would be more aesthetically pleasing than a site coded in regular HTML. I have been pleased with the results, but recently found out that Android’s new mobile operating system,…
Funder Tools for a More Efficient Marketplace
Two years ago, the Foundation Registry i3 was a lifesaver for me.
I was working as a philanthropic advisor and was looking for an opportunity to lead a group of emerging philanthropists interested in education reform from talking about collaboration to taking action. The U.S. Department of…
Philanthropy Vital to Technology for Schools
The prevalence of computers in modern society has led to a greater need for technology-based curricula and wired classrooms for students of all levels. Top online PhD programs are now available, but some primary schools don’t have a single computer. As a result, companies and organizations…
Three Ways to Make Your Conference Experience Go Green
I recently attended a conference and between brochures, pamphlets, and folders, I amassed quite a bit of print material. Upon viewing the stack, I wondered: Why does information transfer require so much paper? For those who are interested in going green for their own events, here are four ideas to…
Five Technology Tools to Make Your Work Life Easier
I recently had the opportunity to connect with several young nonprofit professionals at a lunch meeting. After learning about issues several were facing that ended up complicating work with grantees, I immediately suggested several free technology tools that could streamline their current work.…
Is Getting People Online the “Secret Ingredient” Needed to Achieve Your Mission?
With one-third of Americans still lacking broadband Internet connections at home, access to the internet is often considered an equity issue. Yet programs aimed at narrowing the digital divide may leave their strongest legacies in the areas of community and economic development. Online access is a…
Challenges and Opportunities for Foundations Communicating in a Digital Age
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Center for Digital Information’s session on philanthropy and the digital public dialogue at theCouncil on Foundations Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
Jeff Stanger, director of the center, arranged a session that brought together 21st century thought…
Is Outcomes-Driven Philanthropy Affecting Creativity?
“The movement towards outcomes-driven philanthropy has done a lot to diminish creativity,” concluded one CEO at a recent GMA Foundations’ NPO Conversation on creativity. At this regular lunchtime forum, leaders of seven Boston-area nonprofits were asked to open up about their organization’s most…
Do IRS nonprofit media rules need a digital-age update?
Funders, nonprofit journalists and academics gathered this week at the Council on Foundations convention in Los Angeles to discuss challenges nonprofit news outlets face in getting charitable 501c3 status. It’s part of a project called the Nonprofit Media Working Group, a partnership between…
Philanthropy Happens Every Day, Not Only in the Celebrity Ether
Don’t get me wrong: I love Madonna. Really, I do. But for a while there, anytime I searched the topic of global philanthropy, the only news that surfaced focused on Madonna and her effort to build a number of schools in Malawi. I’m not saying it’s not important or that she’s not doing great work,…
Philanthropy and the Digital Public Dialogue: Challenges and New Opportunities
Wayne Gretzky famously said that a great hockey player skates to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. These are instructive words for philanthropic foundations and other groups confronting fundamental and rapid shifts in the communication landscape. Two disruptive forces are…
Flexing the Muscle of Nonprofit Technology
“The nonprofit sector as a whole has the opportunity to harness the power of innovation to improve the quality of service delivery.” That’s one of the key findings from “Unleashing Innovation: Using Everyday Technology to Improve Nonprofit Services,”a new research report from MAP for Nonprofits…
Catalysts for Change: Game, Set, and Match for Social Change
Like many of us, I hate to lose when I play a game, whether it is cards, sports, or video games. The serious online game Catalysts for Change that I invite you to play this week (April 3- 5) counts on the playful and competitive nature in all of us to propose, debate, and improve on ideas that have…
Games for Change @ Council on Foundations’ Annual Conference
At the invitation of Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media (GFEM) and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Games for Change is part of the curatorial team introducing a new theme around games that will run throughout the Annual Conference of the Council on Foundations. CoF is a national non…
Empowering Community through Partnering and Experimentation
Attending this week’s annual Knight Foundation Media Learning Seminar in Miami, we were struck not only by how much has been accomplished by the Knight Community Information Challenge (KCIC), but also by how much the conversation has evolved. It was just a few years ago that Alberto Ibargüen,…