from Project InCite: Reflections on our Jewish Digital Future Right now, we are living through a fundamental shift in the structure of our society. Digital media and portable connective devices are transforming our world by eliminating the transaction costs that once acted as barriers to offline activism. ... Our digital tools are stretching the limits of human potential, expanding the capacity of the individual and the collective to affect scalable, rapid change in our communities. ... Jewish institutions cannot afford to carry out their missions on the ground without simultaneously engaging with thought leaders and activists in “cyber space”. If we are doing a phenomenal job, our success will be reinforced and extended by the community online. If we are not, well, there is cause to … Continue Reading
The Role of PR in Fundraising
from voluntary sector network blog: Why fundraisers need to give more thought to PR PR and fundraising can have an uneasy relationship. Each can have high expectations of the other without really understanding what role they both play and how they would benefit from working more closely. Good communication and planning between PR and fundraising teams or individuals is essential. PR should reinforce and build on the messages that fundraisers are giving to supporters and in challenging times, such as the sector is facing now, the relationship between the two is even more important. Ask a charity what it wants PR to achieve and after 'raise awareness' will often come the answer 'raise money'. Sometimes it's even the other way round. There is often an assumption that the two are directly … Continue Reading
Legal Structure as a Tool for Accomplishing Your Goals
A veteran social entrepreneur provides a guide to those who are thinking through the thorny question of whether to create a nonprofit, a for-profit, or something in between. from Stanford Social Innovation Review: For Love or Lucre Social entrepreneurs who want to start a new venture quickly confront an important question: What type of legal structure should I create? Should I start a traditional nonprofit, a for-profit, or something in between? This is not a simple question to answer, and it is in some ways becoming more difficult with the proliferation of new legal structures like the B corporation that are intended to allow entrepreneurs to meet financial, social, and environmental bottom lines. I have started successful and unsuccessful for-profit and nonprofit ventures. My goal in … Continue Reading
How We’ll Fund Innovation and Sustainability
by Joe Brewer for Socialbrite.org It’s time to solve a fundamental problem that plagues progressives everywhere - the lack of seed money to get innovative projects off the ground and the absence of workable funding models to scale up the ongoing efforts to create systemic cultural, economic and political change. Every major economic paradigm shift throughout modern history has been propelled forward by the influx of financial capital to build institutions that support the new framework. In the 1850s and ’60s it was investment in cheap steel to lay down railways. A century later there were massive capital projects to build the interstate highway system and the explosion of suburban landscapes that accompanied it. Now we face a deeper challenge. Not only must we cultivate technological … Continue Reading
The Case for a Different Kind of Philanthropy
from Stanford Social Innovation Review: A Different Kind of Philanthropy What if foundations mostly gave unrestricted funding instead of dictating how grantees could spend their grants? What if foundations kept supporting grantees who performed instead of ending funding because the “grant cycle” had ended? What if foundations ditched the whole system of soliciting grant proposals and focused on proactively searching for great grantees? What if foundations expected grant reports to mostly consist of information the nonprofit was collecting anyway rather than specialized requests that sap the grantees resources? It seems like a pipe dream. A wish list of a harried executive director. But this sort of foundation exists. And it is thriving. … Continue Reading
Things That Should Scare Fundraisers
from Future Fundraising Now: Halloween special: Things that should scare fundraisers In honor of Halloween, when we seek that thrill of tiny fingers on the back of the neck, here are some things that should scare the heck out of fundraisers: Branding experts. These guys are the marauding, brain-eating zombies of the fundraising world. If they show up at your door, slam it. If they get in, run away. They are going to devour your fundraising program with their grand abstractions and faddish design. After the branding experts have come and gone, many organizations are stuck with a drop of up to 50% in fundraising revenue. Be sure to read the complete post for more. … Continue Reading
With Online Fundraising, Real-Time Events Rule
from The Agitator: Online Fundraising Mistakes “Fundraisers focus on so much control and preapproval and thinking about what a Dec. 29 e-mail will look like today, and I don’t know that we should know that answer because I’m not writing e-mails today for Dec. 29 in anything else I do,” Gensemer says. “While we work schedules for clients that may go a month, two months, even three months out, there’s always flexibility because if today something’s in the news about cancer and I’m working for the Cancer Society, the e-mail that mentions something in the news is probably more relevant than what was planned a month ago on the schedule.” … Continue Reading
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