Lucy Bernholz - Philanthropy2173 (Page 12)

Feedback - Driving Real Change in Philanthropy

(Crossposted from http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131018164855-121804-feedback-driving-real-change-in-philanthropy?trk=mp-reader-card) (photo: http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/11-user-feedback-post/) Feedback. If we can create real relationships between "donors" "doers" and "beneficiaries" we can reinvent philanthropy. Direct, credible, honest feedback - on what's working,

A few questions about the data

I heard some great presentations at a conference on crowdfunding today. Made me think about where the data come from. It wasn't scientific, but by my ear it seemed most of the researchers were using Kickstarter data. How did they get it? Under what terms of use? What

Designing Change from the Data Up

I'm excited to work with some great data innovators on this upcoming session for #AweSummit. You should be there if you can. Designing Change from the Data Up The act of giving generates a lot of data. Who’s collecting it, and who should have access to it?

Write the Future (Rockefeller Foundation will turn it into art)

This is a great centennial-celebrating project from The Rockefeller Foundation. Take a few minutes, add your thoughts about the future and meaning of philanthropy, and on October 14, 2013 the Rockefeller Foundation will unveil the artistic presentation of a globe's worth of ideas.

Good (and not so good?)

Huzzah to Brad Smith for this post on the Brave New World of Good. Stop. Go read it. Then come back here. (Please) Brad does an important job of describing the new "sandbox" of good. The tag line could read: "Good: It's not just nonprofits

Flu Near You

The effects of the government shutdown are not just short-term. Things not getting done this week may matter months, and years, from now. One government function not being met in the short term that we know will matter over time is tracking the spread of the influenza virus. Usually the

Digital Civil Society Research

Here are the four papers from the Digital Civil Society Lab. Read about the Lab here. Pdfs The Emergence of Digital Civil Society Social Economy Policy Forecast 2013 The Shifting Ground Beneath Us: Framing Nonprofit Policy for the Next Century Good Fences: The Importance of Institutional Boundaries in the New

Guess the next in the series

So....what color comes next....? ....Do you remember your color wheel from grade school?

Digital Civil Society Lab

We've reached a point where all of our civil society actions have digital components or counterparts. We can organize, petition, volunteer, donate, associate, raise funds, raise awareness, protest and serve our communities using digital tools. Some things we will do digitally and offline, other actions, such as creating

Act like an artist

Back in March of 2012 I commented on the similarities between artists and social enterpreneurs. Artists, it seems to me, have always walk the lines between commerce and nonprofit, between individuals and institutions, between forms. Artists will do whatever it takes to make their art, to have it seen or

990s one step closer to being useful

We're still waiting for the open data movement to take hold within the IRS and for the annual tax forms from nonprofits and foundations (known as 990s and 990PFs) to be made machine readable, searchable, and downloadable. Until we get there, The Foundation Center has given us a

SoCap and CoCap

By now you've heard of the SoCap conference. Started in 2008 (the very week Lehman Brothers went belly up) SoCAP is all about social finance, impact investing, social returns - everything related to social capital markets. From somewhat humble beginnings it's grown into pretty much a

Updates on Open Gov, Data Policies, Philanthropy and the Body, and Social Media

Open Government Data and Innovation 1. I wrote about Marc Joffe and his one-man effort to develop and map municipal credit ratings last week. It's a great example of what individuals can do with open data, and it also exemplifies the challenge of keeping something like this going

Can "open data" improve democratic governance?

On September 12th the Data and Democracy Initiative and Institute of Government Studies will host a one day conference on the relationships between data and governance at the University of California at Berkeley. The full program is here. Registration information is here. The conference features sessions on public/private sector

Book Review - Ethan Zuckerman's Rewire

Reprinted from Stanford Social Innovation Review. This review appears in the upcoming print issue (now online) Rewire Ethan Zuckerman Not many people who write about the future frame their argument in the context of rabbinical teachings from the first century AD. But in the closing pages of Rewire, Ethan Zuckerman

Trust and civil society

Nonprofits bank on trust. Private assets held on behalf of the public good are even said to be "held in trust" - land trusts, charitable trusts, etc. Over the weekend two providers of encrypted email services, Lavabit and Silent Circle, shut down. What does this have to do

Digital Humanitarian Network

I came across the Digital Humanitarian Network because of their fabulous hashtag #DigiHum - I saw it go by, was interested, and clicked on through. The network seems to be a coalition of organizations each of which has some role in deploying technology savvy individuals to social change situations. From

The Nonprofit Times 50 Top Influencers

I was just named one of The Nonprofit Times Top 50 Power and Influencer Honorees for 2013. The honor specifically calls out my use of "...social media to push out and gather thoughts on how to create, fund, and distribute shared social goods in the digital age. She writes

Crowdsourcing Patent Policy Reform

Trolling Effects is an interesting effort at using crowds to build a coalition of the willing to change federal policy. In this case the policies have to do with the patent system, the coalition to be built includes anyone receiving a demand letter from a "patent assertion entity"

Imagining a future with new rules

Orthodoxies are those behaviors we are so accustomed to that we barely think about them, let alone question them. There are many such assumptions that guide our daily lives - cars run on gasoline only, our phone calls are private, and civil society organizations are exempt from taxes. The moments

Freedom of Association and Digital Civil Society

"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." So reads the

Book review

Book Review: The Nature of the Future

Reposted from Stanford Social Innovation Review The Nature of the Future: Dispatches From the Socialstructed World by Marina Gorbis Near the end of the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) held this past March, I read this tweet: “Somewhere between Musk and Morozov is where the rest of us will find

Three ways we can reinvent philanthropy

This clip is from the video roundtable held last week on Reinventors Network. The conversation, facilitated by Pete Leydon and Katherine Fulton, included Jacob Harold of Guidestar, Mari Kurashi of GlobalGiving and Clara Miller of The F.B. Heron Foundation. The full conversation is online here. My comments are focused

Inventing Digital Civil Society

Here's the video of my TEDxGrandRapids talk on Inventing Digital Civil Society. This thinking is part of the #ReCoding Good Project and will be continued at the Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab. Sorry for all the pacing around. Nerves.

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Reinventing Philanthropy

Join me, Katherine Fulton, Jacob Harold, Mari Kurashi, Peter Leyden and Clara Miller in a Reinventors Network roundtable discussion on Reinventing Philanthropy. The conversation takes place as a Google+ Hangout, starting at 11:00 am PST, Thursday, June 27. We'll be discussing the potential of new rules, metrics,