Lucy Bernholz - Philanthropy2173 (Page 5)

Blueprint 2018 is live!

Blueprint 2018: Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society is now available for free download. Get yours here. And if you just want the buzzwords, the Chronicle of Philanthropy has them here. We'll be doing a free webinar discussion on the predictions in January - register here.

Does journalism's past hold clues to nonprofits' futures?

The last fifteen years have been hard on journalism. * Revenue models have been upended. * Readers rely on digital platforms that introduce a slew of liminal factors that shape how we see the news. * Public policy about media ownership has changed significantly. * Alternatives to expensive, well-sourced news, abound. While the entrants

Why history helps

I'm trained as an historian though I spend more time writing about the present and the future than I do in the archives (speaking of which, Blueprint 2018 will be live on December 13) Learning from the past is key. It's how I understand the present

Laundering away democracy

Representative Kevin Brady’s Amendment to the House’s tax bill is the charitable sector equivalent of military equipment that Congress insists on budgeting for even when the Pentagon says “No, thanks.” Brady’s Amendment allows nonprofit organizations to engage in political speech without penalty. This change in the rules

Civil society and disinformation

We live in an age of disinformation. Lies under oath, lies on line, bot-spread fake news, the inability to tell fact from advocacy, trolling, doxing,* online/offline harassment - this is the atmosphere in which civil society actors - organizations, activists, and individuals - operate. In many cases we perpetuate

Engine of Impact

Let me say, right up front, I am not a fan of business books. I find the genre stultifyingly dull. Often entire books are written from what was, at best, a very brief PowerPoint's worth of ideas. The authors often seem uninterested in, or incapable of, writing decent

Why nonprofits should not depend on any single tech provider

Free is good, right? It's certainly a very attractive price to nonprofit organizations, which are always, shall we say, "resource constrained." (read: broke) There are lots of reasons to be wary of free, but I'm not going to go into all of them here

What did silicon valley do to democracy and the media

I'm delighted to be moderating this conversation with Nate Persily and Franklin Foer. Join us - November 13, Stanford University. More information is here.

Ethical tech adoption in civil society

--> Most digital technologies are designed by, or at least brought to mass adoption by, commercial enterprises. This is often, but not always done, on the back of government funded infrastructure or research. Civil society, which exists as a counterbalance to and with some intended separation from, both markets

U.S. nonprofits under attack

Are you still trying to make sense of how digital tools facilitate efforts to shut down civil society? Read this for my quick primer on how this works. There will be a lot more in the Blueprint 2018 - coming on December 14. And here's a story from

Racism, white supremacy, and civil society

This letter, titled White People Show Us, from Angela Glover Blackwell and Michael McAfee of PolicyLink makes central what many would prefer to push aside. Racism is a problem created by white people. People of color suffer, but white people are the ones who created it, benefit from it, perpetuate

Aligning your tech with your mission (graphic)

Yesterday I wrote about aligning your organization's tech with your mission and values. This has to do with making sure that your organizational approaches to privacy, consent, sharing, data use, etc. carry through from your board through to your software licenses. Here's the "back of

Aligning organizational technology with mission

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Eight years of #blueprints

Hey, check this out - The full #blueprint series to-date - all eight years - all in one place - free for downloading. And yes, it's time to start thinking about number 9. I'll be working on #blueprint18 starting now. Please send buzzwords, trends, predictions etc.

closing civic space

How digital threatens civil society

(Photo: http://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-resources/op-eds/2640-the-civicus-monitor-informing-the-fightback-against-closing-civic-space) Governments around the world are shutting down civic space. They do this in a variety of ways for any number of reasons. Monitors of civil society have been documenting this for years, and attention and concern in the last few

Internet Health and Civil Society

(photo credit: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/internet-health/) Our behavior is changing the climate and our planet is in danger. Weather patterns are changing. Climate induced refugees are on the rise. We know this. Even those (the few, the short-term stakeholders, the ones with power and money and influence that

Refugee tech and a future of resilience

I'm just back from a series of Digital Impact events in Brussels, London and Berlin. This is part of a multi-country learning effort I'm leading through the Digital Civil Society Lab and with local partners in each host city. We're documenting that work here.

Assume digital - and question your tools

Assume digital. This is the first thing I say to people when doing presentations about Digital Civil Society. Digital data and infrastructure are here to stay and we have to learn how they work - and adapt our practices to protect our values - in order to really use "

When the government attacks nonprofits

Nonprofit organizations are institutional manifestations of the desire of a group of people coming together to use their private resources and address a problem or a need they care about. This is true if you are the world's biggest foundation, the neighborhood food bank, or a group of

Where and how do we give for good?

When we "assume digital," we recognize that the data sources for understanding how people use money to support change are quite numerous. In addition to making sense of formally reported information from organizations, we should look to the platforms that move the money to better understand how and

Strategic threats to the nonprofit and philanthropic sector in the USA

Civil society in the U.S. is being deliberately undermined. There are several federal and state level regulatory and legislative actions underway that aim to dismantle civil society as we know it. Just as current attacks on a free press are both deliberate and purpose-built, so, too, are these attacks.

It's a spied on, spied on, spied on world

One of the theses of the Digital Civil Society Lab is that digital policies matter to civil society. We've been working since 2013 to map and understand the intersections of laws and regulations on telecommunications, intellectual property, consumer privacy, digital rights and liberties, free speech, and privacy with

Not in my name (or my email or mobile number)

I will march, protest, call my representatives, vote, mobilize, and resist. As of Jan 3, 2017 the U.S. government - House, Senate and soon to be White House - is taking a broad swath of actions that I do not support and will not allow to happen in my

We the people who are the data

The instructions "do not fold, spindle or mutilate" used to accompany IBM punch cards, a ubiquitous technology for capturing and storing data for computational purposes up until the late 1980s. As colleges and universities began to computerize their student records many people experienced feeling like they'd

What are digital data?

This is a metaphysical question but one that may help you think about using digital data safely, ethically, and effectively at your organization. I've been mulling over this question for awhile and it seems there are many ways to conceive of the value and role of digital data