Lucy Bernholz

Reading through a new lens

Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos are paying for and hosting parties for the incoming. Don't get worked up about that - you're not invited. DO get worked up about the fact that, starting a few weeks ago, you should NOT trust any information you see on Facebook,

Blueprint 2025!

#Blueprint 2025 is here Join us to discuss tomorrow January 16, 2025. My health is poor, and so the planning for future Blueprints (or whatever comes next) is in your hands. Help me work with you to co-create our collective next. The short survey is in the #Blueprint and here&

Philanthropy book club

Photo by rawkkim on unsplash There is so much uncertainty in my life right now. I've spent a lifetime reading fiction for joy and mental health, and reading nonfiction for work and an income (OK, I read some nonfiction for fun) and I've always read alone.

100 years too early

The 2173 in the name of this blog refers to the year, 2173. The year was 200 years in the future from 1973, when the futurist comedy "Sleeper"was made. Turns out, it's 100 years too late. There's a movie out (coming out) called

In Authoritarian America, first, they came for Wikipedia and the Wayback Machine

It's amazing to me, that a time when the nonprofit and philanthropic sector in the USA should be running around screaming "house on fire" (very bad metaphor for a Californian), most seem to to be just plodding along. I am hopeful that they're being

And so it begins

Remember this post - from a few days ago - about how I was marking a baseline for free speech in the USA? I'm still speaking my mind, but looks like the mainstream press is having a tougher time. Several senior editors and reporters have left the Washington

Bots v bots and public v private

Rob Reich, political scientist at Stanford, and colleagues Mehran Sahami and Jeremy Weinstein teach a class on ethics in computer science. One example they use in class is of an app fights parking tickets. A pretty basic AI system, the app helps drivers submit an appeal to the ticketing city.

How we receive now

In the fall of 2021 my book, How We Give Now, was published. Shortly thereafter I got covid, which turned into Long Covid. I've now been disabled since early 2022. I didn't get to tour with the book, missed out on lots of opportunities to share

Marking the baseline

Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That's

No anticipatory obedience

Illustration by Aarón Blanco Tejedor The popular vote differential between the Democratic and Republican candidates for US President was 1.7%. 49.9 percent of voters put a tyrant in the White House; 48.3 percent lost. The incoming administration (it does not have power, yet) is continuing the vitriolic

An AI experiment for writing the Blueprint - text without context

This is an excerpt from Blueprint2025, which will publish on January 15, 2025. When I was writing Blueprint 2025 I started out trying an experiment to review the last 15 years. First, I commissioned an independent reader to review and let me know what they learned. Second, I used a

Digital civil society and digital governance

Philadelphia, Independence Hall, photo by Miguel Angel Sanz from Unsplash I'm an historian. I used to sit in graduate seminars about the founding of the United States and wonder what these guys (all men, those founding fathers) were really thinking? Where did their ideas come from? There'

The Connective Tissue of Democracy

Photo by Bioscience Image Library by Fayette Reynolds on Unsplash The connective tissue of American civil society—the associations, clubs, congregations, and other spaces where people gather and experience collective life—has deteriorated significantly in recent decades, diminishing community resilience and jeopardizing the health of our democracy. While the roots

Fifteen years of Blueprints in 8:48

Thanks to Google's NotebookLM, here are two fake voices discussing 15 years of Blueprints. Let me know what you think. I'm playing around with this for #Blueprint25.

Civil society and AI Bots - part one of ?

Photo by Andy Kelly from Unsplash People are making bots of themselves.They're probably calling them AI assistants, and are making them DIY or by using sites such as Trint ot HappyScribe (for use on video conference meetings such as Zoom or Teams). Keith McNulty made a bot

New (nonacademic) books on philanthropy

Here are two new books - one by one of my favorite novelists - that I'll be reading in the next few weeks. Thoughts and feels will be noted in #Blueprint25 (Yes, I'm working on it. My health makes it harder. Stay tuned - doing my

The GOP threat to civil society

Photo by Richard Stovall on Unsplash Democracy in the USA is not "naturally" withering, it is under attack. And the call(s) are coming from both inside the house and outside, domestic and foreign. One source of attack is the Republican Party. Threats can't be beaten

What does open mean?

Photo by Enrique Macias on Unsplash Open source technology has a long history of being a counterbalancing force to closed, proprietary systems. For decades it was open source versus corporations. Then Microsoft (closed, proprietary) bought GitHub (most used repository of open source code). Today, in the AI battles, Facebook/Meta,

Maybe nonprofit governance aint what it needs to be?

M.C. Escher, Relativity Stairs Imagine a large - no, bigger, much bigger - nonprofit hospital, university, housing developer, or after school program. Bigger by assets than any other. Right now, there are 13 universities in the U.S.A. with more than $10 billion endowments (one of which is

Ideology, identity, and philanthropy (PLUS! bonus Blueprint 24 Buzzword)

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash Has a philanthropic strategy ever before become an identity? I'm confident that neither John D. Rockefeller nor Andrew Carnegie ever referred to themselves as scientific philanthropists - names which historians have applied to them. I've heard organizations tout their work

Civil society, polarization and pluralism

Photo by Ruy Reis on Unsplash A headline in today's Chronicle of Philanthropy, reads: "Philanthropy’s Job in Polarized America: Make Partners of Enemies, a New Poll Says" Which raises an obvious question, "Why do you think philanthropy is the solution and not part of

AI and the social sector

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash Ah, AI. Can't avoid it. I've been to the conferences and workshops, read the listservs, talked to the researchers and read some of the research, played with the public tools. The Blueprint 2024 lays out my thoughts on nonprofits, philanthropy

On tech and giving

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash I had a chance to speak on a zoom panel today. In the before times, this would not be worthy of a comment - it's what I did. Dozens in a year. However, since getting covid that became long covid, I haven&

Digital Civil Society Lab Speaker Series 2023-2024

I am so excited about this. Join us! The speaker series is open to anyone who wishes to engage with critical insights on the intersections and implications of digital dependencies with democratic norms and civil society values and actors. It is structured a as hybrid experience, allowing you to choose

If AI is so new, why does the message about it sound so familiar?

Photo by Jon Moore on Unsplash If you've been wondering why the rhetoric around AI sounds so familiar, I have some thoughts. If you read Nancy Maclean's 2017 bestseller, Democracy in Chains, and then pick up a newspaper (or open a news company's app)