Lucy Bernholz

Big Philanthropy and Democracy

(photo from http://www.bostonreview.net/) My Stanford colleague and #ReCodingGood project partner, Rob Reich, wrote the cover article for the latest issue of Boston Review. Rob's article interrogates the role of large foundations in a democracy, a political system that pays inherent homage to some degree of

hbr

Changing our data defaults

I was thrilled to contribute to the series now running on the Harvard Business Review blog about scaling social impact. Here's a reposting of the article: Social sector organizations are in the business of changing the world, and the information they collect and use should be the catalyst

Recommended Reading

Information for Impact The possibilities for change that opening 990 data would unleash. This in-depth report from The Aspen Institute, written by Beth Noveck and Danny Goroff, puts forth numerous possibilities if we had machine-readable, open access to 990 data. It moves the social sector out of its old discussion

Connecting NGOs, Data, and Data Experts

Here are some interesting developments on the "data and NGO" front: I've written about DataKind before - a new nonprofit that facilitates connections between data scientists and nonprofits. Check here for upcoming events.* Here's an event hosted by NESTA in the UK - doing

The Grand Challenge of Data Interoperability

(Photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALego_Color_Bricks.jpg) I love LEGOs. Even before the fancy, pre-ordained kits with round wheels, the simple clicking together of those "posts" and "holes" allowed you to build castles, race cars, space ships, people, animals, monsters, anything you

Charity, Pornography, and the Press

In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography, "I know it when I see it” (Jacobellis v. Ohio). What does that have to do with charity?  As it turns out, we have the same definition of charity. We seem to know it when we see it.

Donating to the homeless with a credit card

This scenario - using plastic (or soon, the NFC chip in your phone) to help out a homeless person - is the standard thought experiment when talking about mobile payments, a cashless society, and charity. So, it comes to pass today in none other than Harvard Square - where a

Creative and Effective

What does an open source text message system have in common with a forum for policy wonks and academics to meet? How about an organization that stops destructive river dams from being built and a documentary film company? One answer to what they have in common is that these are

Data privacy and public trust

(Photo from /content/images/2010/07/mozilla-privacy-icons.jpg) The distinguishing factor of nonprofits, legally, is not that they don't take in more revenue than they pay out in expenses, it's that they don't distribute those excesses (the profits) to any individual. This is the

Rules: then and now

My observation on "then" and "now": When we last wrote our rules about philanthropy and nonprofits, the most important asset was money and the places we assembled were publicly owned (schools, town halls, community centers). Today, the asset that matters is data, and the places we

Reality revealed by a scorecard

I highly recommend reading Mark Rosenman's opinion piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy about the new College Scorecard. He argues that the scorecard is bad for all nonprofits because it represents an individualistic definition of value, not a societal one. As he writes: "We seem to be

Philanthropy and Democracy

What role does philanthropy play in a democracy? Democratic values of pluralism provide both a practical and theoretical home for the associational and expressive role played by nonprofits and the participatory nature of small giving.  But the concentration of voice and influence held in large foundations - how does that

2013 philanthropy buzzword predictions

I have a half-drafted post on 3D printing - which I was going to upload as the first Philanthropy Buzzword of the year. President Obama's mention of the technology in his #SOTU certainly caught my attention. But I think privacy is actually going to be the bigger theme

Transparency. Sounds real good if you say it real fast.

I had a colleague years ago who used to respond to every new big idea in school reform with "Sounds real good if you say it real fast." The point being that the devil is in the details on doing anything new. I have a feeling a few

The #SOTU and measuring the marigolds

Listening to President Obama's State of the Union (#SOTU in twitterese) address last night, I had several reactions. I won't share most of them with you, though as someone who has played an insignificant role - mostly as a learner - as foundations in California and

DEclarationInitative

The people affected by the problem have to help define the solution

I posted earlier this week about the Hewlett Foundation's report and Seven Principles of Evaluation. (Check out comments to that post for another foundation report on evaluation, that one from the Gates Foundation) Since then, I've had several conversations and given a few speeches to groups

990 data

Liberating 990 Data

How do I know I'm a philanthropy wonk? The title of this post thrills me, that's how I know. I'm crossposting what follows from Beth Noveck, co-author of the Aspen Institute paper on Liberating 990 data. I'm tuning in to the live

evaluation

Evaluation at The Hewlett Foundation

The Hewlett Foundation has just posted an internal working paper on evaluation on its website. I love this - an internal working paper posted on an external website (helloo, sharing!) The paper is well worth a read. The link is a bit buried on the site, deep into an interview

The fight over the charitable tax deduction is a red herring

The following post went "live" on December 17, 2012 by accident, because I had mistakenly mis-set the posting function from "Draft" to "Post." I took it down because what went live really was a draft - I spent several days rewriting it. I'

b13

Data for us all

The 2013 Blueprint relied on a number of data sources, including the fourth annual Nonprofit Finance Fund's survey. That survey relies on you - please take 10 minutes between now and February 15 to fill out the survey for this year. (View previous year’s findings and media

Aaronswartz

The ground beneath philanthropy

I've been reading a lot about Aaron Swartz. He's a young man, 26, who helped build several of the online tools we use today (RSS, Reddit, OpenLibrary) when he was still in his teens. A polymath, history was a passion of his. Learning was a passion.

Blueprint 2013 Now Available!

My fourth annual industry forecast, Philanthropy and the New Social Economy: Blueprint 2013, is now available from GrantCraft, an initiative of The Foundation Center and the European Foundation Centre. And for the first time, it's free for download. This is made possible by GrantCraft which has committed to

Philanthropy Buzzword 2012.10 X

Here's the full list of Philanthropy Buzzwords for 2012 as reported in The Chronicle of Philanthropy (Headline from The New York Times, November 30, 2012) X is a great buzzword. In its algebraic context it means "unknown" as in 3X + 59 = 1217. In its arithmetic context

anonymity

Philanthropy thought experiment

I had a great preview of the Blueprint 2013 yesterday with the staffs of the Stanford Social Innovation Review and the PACS Center. Among other things, we "crowdsourced" some ideas: * The majority of the group thinks that the charitable tax deduction rules will change in 2013, * They agreed

global

Global #philanthropy #buzzwords

A reader from Berlin (@Steph_Reuter) noted that my buzzword list from 2009 had some entries on it that were just peaking in Germany this year. Similarly, several ideas that have peaked elsewhere are just making their way to me now. What's buzzy in one place at one