Posts by Maria Di Mento
September 30, 2009, 11:50 AM ET
Northwestern Grant Makers Decrease Giving, and More: Wednesday's Roundup
- While 42 percent of foundations in the northwest plan to decrease their giving in 2009 by 10 percent or more, grant makers in the region are trying to be more creative in how they help poor people and assist grant recipients, writes Carol Lewis, chief executive of Philanthropy Northwest, a Seattle coalition of foundations and corporations in six Northwest states, on her group’s Web site.
- Holden Karnofsky questions the value of supporting scholarships for students in developing countries on the blog of GiveWell, a charity he started to identify the best nonprofit groups.
- ProPublica and other nonprofit online newspapers are quickly learning how to raise money effectively, acknowledging that generating philanthropic interest is key to their future success, writes Alan D. Mutter on his blog. Mr. Mutter, a former newspaper editor, is a media consultant and teaches at the...
September 29, 2009, 11:35 AM ET
Are Charities Losing Momentum to Change? Tuesday's Roundup
- Gordon Campbell, president of the United Way of NYC, writes on the Huffington Post about his concern that charities are “losing momentum for significant change” during the recession. Groups ought to be streamlining their operations, more creatively engaging with donors and volunteers, and holding themselves more accountable, he writes.
- A stringent vetting process for new officials is denying the federal government talented people from the nonprofit world, says John Podesta, chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, in a video interview on The Economist’s Web site.
- Sean Stannard-Stockton, an adviser to wealthy donors and a Chronicle columnist, says that requiring foundations to give out more than 5 percent of their assets each year — the figure they must contribute now — probably isn’t the solution to the nonprofit world’s...
September 28, 2009, 11:25 AM ET
Applying the eBay Model to Charities, Plus More: Monday's Roundup
- With more than one charity for every 300 Americans, the nonprofit world should consider ways to operate more like Internet companies such as eBay, share back-office expenses, and use other ideas to reshape how they deliver services, argues Paul Lamb, a nonprofit consultant, in an opinion article in The Christian Science Monitor.
- Last week’s Clinton Global Initiative emphasized charitable ideas that can offer investment banks a “route out of their reputational hell,” like supporting the development of women and girls in poor nations, writes Stephen Foley, a columnist for The Independent, a British newspaper.
- Lucy Bernholz, a consultant to foundations, recently asked readers of her blog to submit their answers to the question, “What trend, change, entity, or idea will matter most to the social sector in 2010?” Among the responses: the shuttering of some nonprofit groups a...
September 25, 2009, 11:39 AM ET
Shift in Tone at 2009 Clinton Conference, and More: Friday's Roundup
- The Clinton Global Initiative, the former president’s annual gathering on philanthropy, hasn’t exactly jumped the shark, writes Mitch Nauffts, of the Foundation Center. But the mood at this fall’s meeting is less breathless than in year’s past, says Mr. Nauffts his PhilanTopic blog.
- Matthew Bishop, an editor with The Economist and the author of a book about philanthropy, writes on his blog that the Grameen Bank’s founder, Muhammad Yunus, has takend “too narrow” a vision of a “social business” by saying it should be nonprofit rather than for-profit.
September 24, 2009, 12:22 PM ET
Debate on Government Money for Religious-Run Social Services; Plus More: Thursday's Roundup
- The Washington Post’s On Faith blog is encouraging a debate on whether religious charities that receive government money should be allowed to discriminate in their hiring. Susan Jacoby, an author, says requiring religious institutions to hire people who do not agree with their principles is “absurd,” but argues that that is why the government should “not be in the business of funneling money for social-services through any faith-based organization, whatever its hiring practices.”
- John Copps of the philanthropic advisory group New Philanthropy Capital writes about how the recession is forcing grant makers in England to rethink the way they give. Grant makers have traditionally paid for the start-up costs of promising projects, and then looked to government to pick up the tab as the organizations grow. But Mr. Copps suggests that with governments cutting their budgets, donors...
September 23, 2009, 10:29 PM ET
What Social Entrepreneurs and Activists Can Learn From One Another; and More: Wednesday's Roundup
- Hildy Gottlieb, president of the nonprofit Community-Driven Institute, says on her blog Creating the Future that the notion of “best practices” has contributed to “weaker, less confident” nonprofit leaders, board micromanagement, and other ills.
- Writing on the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s blog, Lloyd Nimetz, founder of a group that connects donors with Argentine organizations, discusses what social entrepreneurs can learn from activists, and vice versa.
- On Donor Power Blog, Jeff Brooks, a direct-marketing consultant, offers some reasons why nonprofit groups should continue effective direct-mail campaigns, even though many experts say direct mail is dead.
- Jacob Berkman, a writer for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Fundermentalist blog, highlights a few ways that Jewish charities are using the Yom Kippur holiday to raise money and attention. American Jewish...
September 22, 2009, 11:57 AM ET
New Approaches to Marketing Your Charity, and More: Tuesday's Roundup
- Replace your annual report with a postcard and conduct a study of how people are talking about your charity online. Those are just two of the recommendations from Gail Hyman, a marketing and communications consultant, in a blog post about charity marketing on the eJewish Philanthropy Web site.
- In his Piece of Mind blog, Robert Egger, the president of D.C. Central Kitchen, weighs in on the Supreme Court’s decision last week that struck down some restrictions on electioneering by nonprofit organizations.
September 21, 2009, 11:28 AM ET
Praise for Unrestricted Grants, Plus More: Monday's Roundup
- The Boston Foundation’s decision to offer more unrestricted grants is a “brave act of leadership” that other donors should follow, says Dan Pallotta, a former fund raiser, on a blog of the Harvard Business School.
- With the start of the Jewish new year last week, many Jewish nonprofit leaders are trying to forget the past 12 months, when Jewish charities and foundations were rocked by scandal and financial woes, writes Jacob Berkman, a blog writer for the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
- Nathaniel Whittemore, founding director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, discusses the bid by City Year’s co-founder, Alan Khazei, to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy’s Senate seat.
- What are the nonprofit world’s biggest problems? Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle, a marketing agency, and author of the Donor Power Blog, says the top two are a distaste ...
September 18, 2009, 11:19 AM ET
A Teach for America Approach to Health Care, and More: Friday's Roundup
- Can intuition play a greater role in how grant makers measure the performance of charities? Gabriel Kasper, a consultant at the Monitor Institute, a Cambridge, Mass., company that helps donors evaluate grantees, asks this question on a Good magazine blog.
- Governments and international organizations such as the United Nations are increasingly exploring “innovative financing mechanisms” — such as taxing airline tickets or holding a global lottery — to raise money to fight poverty around the world. Owen Barder, who works for a British organization called Development Initiatives, discusses the pros and cons of such financing approaches on his blog.
- To improve health care and curb rising costs, the country needs a program like Teach for America that would recruit and train college graduates to provide simple medical and hygienic tasks, says William V. Healey, a doctor and...
September 17, 2009, 11:31 AM ET
How Do Foreign Nonprofit Groups Pay for Health Care? Plus More: Thursday's Roundup
- To inform the health-care debate and how it may affect American charities, Patrick O’Heffernan, a blog writer for the Social Edge, is asking foreign nonprofit groups to tell him how they pay for health services in their countries. Social Edge is part of the Skoll Foundation.
- Young nonprofit workers may be hit especially hard by the economic downturn as charities cut back on leadership development and create more unpaid internship positions, says Rosetta Thurman, a charity consultant, on her blog.
- Do journalists use the terms charity and nonprofit interchangeably or with subtle distinctions? Elizabeth Clawson, a former communications coordinator for the National Council of Nonprofits, discusses the issue on her blog.
- The Boston Foundation announced this week a shift in how it will operate, saying that over the next two years it will increase the number and size of...