Lucy Bernholz

#DetroitWater - Part Two

A few days ago I posted about #DetroitWater. I had sent off an email to the creators before posting, and when I didn't hear back in a day I went ahead and posted the blog with the questions.   I think my emails got buried in the flood of

#DetroitWater - a sign of things to come?

Here's a website that allows anyone to pay the water bill (or part of the bill) owed by someone in Detroit. Lest we grow complacent, allow me to point out several noteworthy - dare I say, almost astonishing - things about this from the perspective of (what else)

Digital Civil Society - Infographic (take 2)

Thanks for feedback on yesterday's attempt at visual representation of digital civil society. Here's an updated graphic thanks to your input. More feedback welcome. (And to those who wanted it to be a spinning, multi-colored GIF, I say - go for it! Make it happen, make

Digital civil society - the infographic

I spend a lot of time trying to explain what I mean by digital civil society. Does this help?

What are nonprofits for?

What are nonprofits for? This seems like a question that used to have an easy answer - they are tax-exempt organizations that provide services, from education to art to meals; they offer a place for ideological, ethnic or other minority groups to express their ideas and serve their communities; they

Five notes on digital social activism

I'm running faster than I can (I broke my foot and am in a boot, so actually I can't run very fast right now). I just realized with all the writing I've been doing, I haven't been blogging. So - a few

Data, digital, and change - four items of note

I've been either head down or on the run so I haven't blogged much in the last few weeks. Here are a few things of note: 1. New Markets for Good website - worth checking out the new column from Beth Kanter, some posts which will

Foreword to Building a Beloved Community

The Funders for Black Male Achievement's new report, Building a Beloved Community, is an inspiring, thoughtful, and strategic piece that applies to a much broader array of funders than might see it. I'm taking this opportunity to highlight it again - reposting the Foreword to the

Sharing Data

I wrote this about the SHARE Conference. Here's Beth Kanter's on the same conference, and here's a great post from TechSoup. Here's part of a twitter exchange Beth and I had across the plenary sessions: I wrote my post in the middle

SHARE 2014

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week saw 400 folks crammed into San Francisco's Marine Memorial Auditorium for the first (and I'm sure it won't be the last) SHARE Conference - focused on catalyzing the sharing economy. It was co-hosted by Peers.org and SOCAP

Building a Beloved Community

There's a new report out from the funders focusing on black male achievement - it's called Building a Beloved Community. (pdf) It presents valuable strategic options that should matter to all funders, including: * Now is the time to focus on changing narratives that have been built

Civil society is missing the boat on the issues that matter

(Note added as I finished drafting this: it feels like groundhog day. How many times have I written a version of this?) For years now, I've been reading articles and books on the transformative effects of digital on business and on government. In almost everyone of these, just

Talent for good

Last year the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and White House Office of Social Innovation, with help from LinkedIn, GuideStar, the Foundation Center and Palantir, hosted a GoodJobs CodeJam, where we supported student teams in using open data to create technological tools that would help students build careers

A practical and existential challenge to nonprofits

Thanks to those who chimed in on my post about Digital Data and Blurring Boundaries. To summarize - I note that digital data don't naturally respect boundaries between public, private and independent sectors, and that nonprofits/philanthropy and other civil society organization need to think hard about how

Digital data further blurs boundaries between sectors

The White House released its report, Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values, yesterday. The only place the word "nonprofit" appears in the report is in the appendix explaining where public comments to the process came from. The report focuses on the collection, use, sharing, storing, mining, retention, and

Funding digital civil society

Since September of last year I've had the honor of being a Visiting Scholar at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. One of the things I've been doing there is working closely with staff from across the Foundation as they make sense of the emerging landscape

Thinking today like an historian of tomorrow

I had an interesting conversation with folks at the Atlantic Philanthropies the other day. Atlantic has announced it will spend out its endowment and close up shop - something it is working on quite publicly. One of its concerns is how to make sure that the work it has funded

In search of digital civil society around the world

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the role of digital data and my ideas about digital civil society in Beijing, China and São Paolo, Brazil. Some reflections: Beijing - the day before this photo was taken I joined Maria Rendon, of USAID and Bin Pei of the Gates Foundation

Future of Museums 2014 - always worth a read

The 2014 version of the Center for the Future of Museums report, TrendsWatch, is out and it's always worth a read. The big 2014 trends they see? * The Sharing Economy * Robots * Privacy * Data * Social entrepreneurship * Multisensory experiences You can download it here (PDF). The Center for the Future

Is this the #crowdfunding scandal I predicted?

There are lots of headlines today about Facebook's decision to buy Oculus VR for $2 billion. This is a big payout for a company (Oculus) that got its product launched with Kickstarter support. And now those Kickstarter supporters are wondering why they're not getting any return

We, the data...

Our work at the Digital Civil Society Lab is about figuring out the norms and rules for a thriving civil society in the digital age. This livestreamed discussion from the New America Foundation and The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Big Data is right in our sweet spot. The

The cosmology of private resources for public benefit

Neil deGrasse Tyson has brought back Carl Sagan's Cosmos. When this television show first aired 30 years ago, most people knew nothing about space and the images shown had never been seen before. It's a different task to bring this program back today. Everyone on earth

More of everything except foundations and credit unions

There are 31 subsections of the 501 (c) section of the U.S. tax code. This is the section, and its many subsections, that categorize tax exempt organizations - usually described as nonprofits. The largest subsection (by far) is 501 (c) (3) - which includes "religious, charitable, and similar

ManyLabs: one example of a digital nonprofit

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#NewsChallenge on Internet Freedom

The next #Knight Foundation #Newschallenge (in partnership with Mozilla Foundation and the Ford Foundation) will focus on internet freedom and privacy. I'm going to take this as a sign of recognition of digital civil society. After all, we're interested in all the ways our digital environment