Lucy Bernholz

grant makers

Social media and grantmaking: resources

I'm building a list for philanthropic foundations - please add your recommendations in the comments. Thanks. Social Media Resources for Grantmakers ReportsAlliance for Justice, Influencing Public Policy in the Digital Age: The Law of Online Lobbying and Election-related Activities, pdfCommunications Network, “Come on in, the water’s fine:

apophenia

Digital information news

A couple of items of interest regarding the need for foundations and nonprofits to deepen their thinking about digital information: The Center for Digital Information, on whose Advisory Board I am proud to serve, has announced funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a partnership with the Annenberg School

Sharing Economy and Open Government

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Fleishman

Give Smart comes to Stanford

This Thursday, September 15, the PACS Center at Stanford is delighted to host Tom Tierney and Joel Fleishman in conversation with Bill Meehan. They be talking about Tierney and Fleishman's book Give Smart. My review of the book is here. Information and registration for the event is here.

bugg-levine

Almost everything you ever wanted to know about Impact Investing

The best teachers are those who understand their subjects so thoroughly they can focus on the learners, not on the material. When it comes to the topics of impact investing and blended value, Antony Bugg-Levine and Jed Emerson can be called good teachers. Both men are intricately linked with this

Induction, deduction, upduction, downduction

This blog is named after the year 2173, the year in which we realize that everything we thought we knew was wrong. (at least on Woody Allen's timeline) I love examples of how we learn new things and in new ways. I am especially fascinated by how our

Ten Tactics for Engagement

(thumbnail of pullout section, The Nonprofit Quarterly) There is a great pullout section from the Summer 2011 issue of The Nonprofit Quarterly on 10 tactics for public engagement. It breaks the tactics down into collaboration, surveying attitudes, and prioritizing options. The list was put together by Matt Leighninger of the

Back to School Philanthropy Reading

(from Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine) I'm currently reading two books (review copies) that are scheduled for publication this Fall. Both are worth picking up when they come out. Laura Arrillaga Andreessen, Giving 2.0. This is the first of several books currently out on giving that speaks to the

Digital Humanities - Or more on Stories and Data

I'm thinking again about stories and data. Among other places, I've written on these themes here, here, here and here. When I read Steven Berlin Johnson's incredible book, The Invention of Air, I was struck by his depiction of the 18th century coffeehouses as

Why would a foundation tweet - 6 month reflections

Back in February I stumbled into a twitter conversation from staff at The James Irvine Foundation. It turns out they were having a foundation-wide training on using social media. That led me to ask Jim Canales, CEO, why would a foundation tweet? His February responses to that question are here.

Morals and Money - Part Three

(Everyone else is talking about Jumo and GOOD. You can read about that here, here, here, and here.) Less than twenty four hours after @jonathanscard closed up shop I was alerted to two other similar "money sharing," pay-it-forward efforts. I've posted about this online experiment in

Online experiments in money and morals

I was really interested in the @jonathanscard experiment. Jonathan Stark started this as an experiment that allowed strangers to share cups of coffee via a single Starbucks card. I wrote about it here. Well, it's come to an end. Starbucks shut it down, citing fear of fraud. Apparently,

Buzzword 2011.4 - Charitable Tax Reform

2011 has seen some wild political fights, "debacles," "spectacles" and other ponderous legislative wrangling. Since we are only in the warm up rounds till the 2012 Presidential election I'd say this has all only just begun. Real discussions of charitable tax reform have been

Buzzword 2011.3 - Storytelling

Even as technology becomes ubiquitous, embedded, and smart we still need stories. In fact, we need them more than ever. The more data we get, the better we get at data visualization, the more we are swamped with numbers and graphs and information in general, the more we need stories.

Data Without Borders

I spent a brief period in the 1990s serving as a part time tech support provider working on behalf of the organization then known as CompuMentor (now TechSoup Global). I vividly remember crawling under a desk in Redwood City to help (what was then known as) the Bay Area Coalition

Broadcasting Money

(image from jonathanstark.com/card) I find out about some of the most interesting things I know through Twitter. That in itself is worth noting. Lots of people complain about information overload in our digital networked age. I'm marvelling in how much I know that I wouldn'

Buzzword 2011.2 - Collective Impact

The idea of government, nonprofits, the public, and commercial businesses working together is not new. A useful term for this - collective impact - was coined by FSG in an article published early in 2011 in SSIR and has helped raise the idea to prominence. Our growing realization that "

Stories and data in our times

Lately I've been thinking about how massive databases might change how we think about "anecdotal" evidence. You know the old trope, "The plural of anecdote is not data." But maybe it could become so. With the advent of tools like Google's Ngram

Institutions by and for their users

On Thursday, New York City will host "The Nexus: Global Youth Summit on innovative Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship." The meeting was organized by a group called Search for Common Ground and the Young Donor Network. The conference is partly a result of previous networking events led by the

Innovation for the public good

A few resources on innovation that you may find useful: Two papers on funding innovation in public schooling, looking at the US Department of Ed's experience with the I3 Fund: * Innovation for the Public Good: A Case Study of US Education * Supporting and Scaling Change: Lessons from the

Information - "the single best basis for improvement"

Mario Morino's book, Leap of Reason, is the clearest articulation of how and why we should be thinking hard about data, information and learning in order to do what we do. Take 6 minutes and listen to Mario himself: I think we're beginning to reinvent the

The new social economy

My colleague at Stanford, Rob Reich, coined a phrase, the New Social Economy, that I find very useful. I define this economy as "Organizations and financial structures that deploy private resources for shared social benefits." Shorthand - the sector formally known as nonprofit and philanthropy. Why do we

Olga Alexeeva

We talk a lot about measuring success in philanthropy - have we made a difference with our efforts? How do we know if we've made a difference in our own lives, as people? Are we doing our best? What metrics matter to us? Friends, family, health, material wealth,

Failing forward

(cross posted on Alliance Magazine's Blog) Thomas Edison is supposed to have said, "I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 things that don't work." Failure of this form is a popular topic of conversation among philanthropists these days. It fits

Data visualization more common, more important

I've written a lot about data and data visualization. A few weeks ago I even awarded "The Person's Choice Award for Foundation Data Presentation" to the Knight Foundation for their great work on interpreting and sharing what they've learned from their Knight