Lucy Bernholz

Trend Collision/Buzzword Smash

Consider this as a Hollywood pitch: "It's like Groupon + Hyperlocal + Crowdfunding. For Good" Here it is - GiveCorps. The irony? I was wasting my lunchtime on the brightest shiny object in today's tech skies (Google +) when this came through on that "old fashioned&

Buzzword 2011.1 - Social Impact Bond

It's June 30 - time to roll out some buzzwords. Social Impact Bonds - (SIBs) these are a new type of financing for nonprofits that comes to us from the UK. These "bonds' involve guarantees for payments for services delivered effectively. There is one being test

What I meant when I said "Data are new platform for change"

Four examples of what I meant when I said "data are new platform for change." 1. Safecast - a website populated with volunteer, crowdsourced data on radiation in Japan alongside data from official sources and experts. Started by a concered advertising executive in Denmark, this well-designed website is

Looking Anew at What We Know

I've been on planes with some time to catch up on my magazines. Two pieces I read, along with a walk in Cambridge, Mass, really got me thinking. George Soros, "My Philanthropy," The New York Review of Books, June 23, 2011. The financier and philanthropist discusses

The person's choice award for foundation data presentation...

I spend a lot of time pleading with and goading foundations to share their  data (see video). I'm delighted to be able to tip my hat to a job well done. The winner of the first ever "Person's* Choice Award for Foundation Data Presentation"

The new social economy

.prezi-player { width: 350px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; } Rob Reich-Stanford Class Day lecture-6.11.11 on Prezi Rob Reich, Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford, gave the "Class Day Last Lecture" to Stanford's Class of 2011 - a university tradition in which Maples Pavilion, home of the

Evaluating innovation is not an oxymoron

Evaluating Innovation is the fifth and final paper in the MacArthur Foundation Series on Field Building. All five papers are available here. If you are reading this on the blog, scroll down on the right side until you get to the "Scribd" widget - that has direct links

Open Philanthropy at #pdf11

Below is the text from my speech at Personal Democracy Forum - and here's the video. Watch live streaming video from pdf2011 at livestream.com ***  <!--  /* Font Definitions */ @font-face  {font-family:"Courier New";  panose-1:2 7 3 9 2 2 5 2 4 4;  mso-font-charset:0;

The value of human capital

Do you remember Richard Scarry's "Busy Busy World" books? These colorful children's books feature foxes, dogs, cats, rabbits, and worms doing the things that make cities and farms and offices and libraries and schools and firehouses and homes go. They cook food, care for

Endorsement philanthropy and sidecar funds

I've long encouraged donors who do good due diligence to share what they support. I was delighted to spend some time this week at the Omidyar Network Executive Forum (#ONEF on Twitter) - a 3 day, mini business school networking retreat for the many organizations (both nonprofit and

SSIR Webinar May 17, 2011

Please join me for this discussion on my annual industry forecast, Blueprint 2011: Philanthropy and Social Investing. Tuesday, May 17, 11:00-Noon PST, 2:00-3:00pm EST In addition to my consulting work I spend my time trying to understand how we create, fund, and distribute shared social goods in

New Rules for a New Age

Cross posted at Stanford Social Innovation Review Late in 2010, as I was writing Philanthropy and Social Investing: Blueprint 2011 I spent a lot of time talking about the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United vs The FEC. In this decision the Court

Four more short form ideas, mostly on crowdsourcing

Four more "short thoughts" - will be back with more. 1) Foundations and social media I'm participating in some very interesting discussions and watching some experiments on this. It's always important to stay up on what Beth Kanter is talking about in this regard,

Sharing Economy

I want to get some ideas up here in short form. I hope to add more thoughts on these next short form posts. Sharing Economy Number Six on 2010's Buzzword list was "co-" as in co-housing, co-working, co-car ownership. It was shorthand for the elements of

Apostrophes

(Cartoon by William Haefeli, May 2, 2011, The New Yorker) Regular readers of this blog know that I have a lifelong inability to correctly use the apostrophe* in the word "it's." Those who read my published work have no idea how much credit I owe to

2011 off to a bad start for nonprofit trust

UPDATED: May 9 2011 - a class action lawsuit alleging fraud has been filed against Greg Mortenson and CAI. UPDATED: May 6, 2011 - According to the LA Times, the IRS will investigate the Kabbalah Center, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit associated with pop singer Madonna, for tax evasion. It'

New News is Great News

And now, for a personal announcement: I’m delighted to share exciting news. Fourteen years after founding Blueprint Research + Design, I am selling the firm to Arabella Advisors. I will become a 1/2 time Managing Director at Arabella. The rest of the Blueprint team is also joining Arabella -

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Two big questions on the social economy

There are two overarching questions on my mind. * How can we take advantage of the vastly increasing social economy? In Philanthropy and Social Investing: Blueprint 2011 I point out the likelihood of tremendous growth in private resources for public good. I also point out some of the ways this could

Tea, lives, and trust

The Greg Mortenson/ 3 cups of Tea fabrication/fact story matters. It matters because we (try to) trust nonfiction authors, nonprofits, and ratings agencies to be truth tellers. It matters because we have several ratings agencies that came up with very different "ratings" of the Central Asia Institute

More giving indices

In the Blueprint 2011 report I noted that we are experiencing a rise in giving indices. These new, more frequent indices are made possible as online giving increases and ready streams of data become more available. They are also driven by the need for competing vendors to claim an expertise

MORE Tech for Good

(Promotional photo from DonorsChoose Hacking Education Contest) Here are some more amazing Tech for Good Projects: 1) Tech projects rely on people. The human infrastructure - skills, will, and connections - are as important (if not more) than the actual products and tools that they build. Some of the most

Craigslist Foundation launches LikeMinded

The Craigslist Foundation unveiled its LikeMinded network today - you can check it out here. This is the second launch from the Foundation in 2011 - they launched CraigConnects several weeks ago. LikeMinded, which is supported by the Knight Foundation and Craigslist Foundation, is a way for people to share

changing technologies + new enterprises = need for new rules

I had a chance last week to hear from two Egyptian political activists  and social sector leaders. They were talking about the need to build a whole new  civil society regulatory structure in their country. I think we're all going to be building new civil society laws in

My hybrid reality

I am so honored to join the Hybrid Reality Institute as a fellow. This is an exceptional group of people working on the intersections of technology and life. From cities to art to education to robots to augmented reality to the future of crime, I have so much to learn

Tech for Good

People often ask me how I keep up with all the  ways people are using technology for good. The answer is, I don't. There's no way (that I've been able to think of) to stay totally on the cutting edge of what folks are