Lucy Bernholz

Big News in Data

I just got the word - SubsidyScope - an incredibly important project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has just launched its site on the nonprofit sector. As the site describes it: "Subsidyscope presents government data and summary statistics on federal  spending and subsidies in the nonprofit sector. Our work is organized

"Oprah Closes Charity and Opens Store"

"Oprah Closes Charity and Opens Store" That headline, from Examiner.com, sums up so much about this moment. As part of my New America Foundation Fellowship I'm writing a book about the changing nature of our social sector. Technology, which I've published about at

Beyond open data

I'm in the basement of The World Bank building in DC, listening to Beth Noveck and Hans Rosling talk about #opendata and "Mindset Upgrades for a Multipolar World." One slide from Rosling shows a sideview of a garden. Underneath the ground surface are "root balls&

Apps, Games, Challenges and all that

(Note to email readers - there is a photo and slidedeck in this post. May need to read on the site. Thanks) For the last several months I've been starting my presentations or speeches with a plea for folks to turn ON their cell phones. First, I bet folks

Recoding the public good

Flickr Creative Commons, JeromeLeslie I have been on the road and in all day meetings for three days. I now have a 6 hour flight (minus my much needed 3 hour "nap") to try to get to inbox zero. This post will wander through the themes and ideas

Ozone of Information

Here's the intro video to the DataJam that the Chronicle of Philanthropy produced. If you're reading this in email, or want to see the story the Chronicle included on their site, please click here. Thanks to everyone who made it to the Philanthropy  DataJam, virtually and

Disrupting Philanthropy: The Data Jam

Thanks to everyone who made it to the Philanthropy DataJam, virtually and in person. The video of the event is available here. There were about 1500 of you on and off the livestream over the course of the meeting - wow! Here's the intro video that the Chronicle of

Data deficits and surfeits

(Photo courtesy of LogoMan at logomorphosis) This morning I heard this (totally typical) set of reports on the radio about the doings in financial markets: Around 6 am pdt: "The Dow is up 42 points, on news of a report that the Eurozone economy is still expected to expand

Disrupting Philanthropy: Changing the Rules

I'm thrilled to announce this upcoming conversation in New York City on May 11 about the changing policy, technology, and data landscape for philanthropy. Changing the rules to change the world As part of the seminar series hosted by the Stanford University Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society,

Who is in, who is out?

Crowdsourcing changes the lines that define the "inside" and "outside" of an organization. This is the real revolution of Ushahidi and similar tools - the awareness that the people in the situation are a source of information about the situation, whether it be a snowstorm in the

Philanthropy DataJam!

"What would you do  with philanthropic grants data if you could get it easily, mash it up with  other sources, and build apps or other tools that could help you make sense of  it?" That is the  question for this event at The New America Foundation on May

What Should the Secretary of State Ask?

The Chronicle of Philanthropy flagged this story from Hattiesburg, Mississippi yesterday about a plan by the Secretary of State to review the 38000 nonprofits registered in the State. The headline and story made me think about Rob Reich's "Anything Goes" research on the rate (98+ %) at

Considering assumptions

Cartoon by Joel Pett (http://www.kentucky.com/2010/04/10/1218472/100411pett.html) I had a chance to meet some of the folks from Sana, one of the winners of the Vodafone Wireless Innovation Challenge that were announced yesterday at the Global Philanthropy Forum. Sana, formerly known as MocaMobile,

Conference confluence update

The great volcanic disruption continues - with impact on millions of people's lives. It has also accelerated a lot of well-planned conferences into even better, more integrated use of livestreaming, twitter, etc.. The funniest new media comment on the volcano? Those following updates on Twitter are urged to

A confluence of conferences

I made it out of the UK on the last plane to leave Heathrow before all air space was shut down. Having had the honor of being in Oxford during the Oxford Internet Institute's Unleashing Philanthropy conference (slides and speech here, tweets at #oiiphil), OxfordJam and the Skoll

Data are the new platform for change

I had the great honor of spending a day learning with several Internet entrepreneurs, leading online giving marketplace managers in the UK, Dame Stephanie Shirley - the UK Ambassador for Philanthropy, and several scholars at the Oxford Internet Institute on Wednesday, 14 April. You can find the slides from the presentation

April in Oxford

Here's what is happening this week in the not-so-sleepy little town of Oxford, England. Skoll World Forum 2010. Since 2004 the Forum has brought together the many worlds of  social entrepreneurs. Running from April 14-16, by invitation only, the Forum includes widely recognized speakers, selected

Executive choices and nonprofit ratings

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the "right ways" to review, rate, measure, and analyze nonprofit organizations. In the aftermath of January's devastating earthquake in Haiti both trade and mainstream blogs and the press were full of recommendations of nonprofits for donors'

cloud

Clouds and Infostructure*

I'm not a professional techie, so I was honored to be asked for my  thoughts on "clouds" and the social sector by the tech-smarties over at  NTEN. Here's the piece  they recently ran - alongside insights from folks at Microsoft  and NetSquared - real techies.

manifesto

More on the manifesto

Thanks to everyone who has added to and improved (and voted on) ideas in my "Modest Manifesto for Open Philanthropy." A few more thoughts from me (which I also will go back and post into original) * Data on embedded giving (affiliate marketing, cause-related giving - whatever you want

The Public Online Information Act

Yesterday I blogged a "Modest Manifesto for Open Philanthropy." As I mentioned in the post, I actually hit the "post" button sooner than I intended (fate?) and so a draft went live - I've refined it since then, so you might take another look. More

Open Philanthropy: A Modest Manifesto

I've been reading Beth Simone Noveck's book, Wiki Government, which is one outcome of a "modest proposal" for peer-to-patent that Noveck posted to her blog back when she was a law professor at New York Law School. Now she is the Deputy

What matters about mobile?

(Photo by nedrichards. Flickr, Creative Commons) So here we are, several weeks after text donations crossed from cutting edge to common place. I've been interviewed more times than I can count on what matters about text giving, and the real experts on social media and social good (Beth

Industry Forecast: Philanthropy and Social Investing: Blueprint 2010

Blueprint Research & Design, the company I founded, is thrilled to release the first ever independent annual industry analysis for philanthropy and social investing. "Philanthropy and Social Investing: Blueprint 2010" was distributed in partnership with SSIR starting in December 2009 through national donor advised funds, private banks, wealth

Buzzword 2010.2 "Sector Agnostic"

I declared Apps the first buzzword of 2010 a few weeks ago. Now we've got buzzword 2010.2 - sector agnostic. I didn't coin this one. I give Ralph Smith of the Annie E. Casey Foundation credit for that, and it seems this blogger agrees. Smith used