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FOX News on Radical Internet Assassins

Tom DeLay: “It just seems that the Left are never held accountable.”

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Communications Strategies: Coopting Deviance

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As I watch the video, I wonder if it might be the projectionist’s labor of love.  Did he cobble it together with his art school friends?  If so, it’s very well done.

There’s a whiff of subversion in it.

In a world that is bland, colorless, and cold
Where banality grows like a fungus or a mold
There live the boring Sheeple who look just like each other …

My mind conjures the usual suspects.  I think of the American polity (myself included), passively bleating while we join the family of nations that commit torture.  I think of how disconnected we are from the political process at all levels, where candidates are transformed by polls and big donors into nicely wrapped products we purchase at election time.  I think also of the market’s homogenizing influence, of the failure of our schools to produce engaged citizens equipped to think critically ...

Finally I realize what a jackass I am for reading so much into just another car ad …

In a process that’s familiar to historians, philosophers, and others, the outside becomes the inside.  Deviance here is identified with the purchasing of a trendy product, and the idea that “this is not your father’s Oldsmobile” is given a violent new spin for these darker, more nefarious times.  Ultimately, subversion is subverted.

Is nothing sacred?

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Image source: Tropist

The Rules of the Game

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The July 13, 2007 edition of the Wall Street Journal Online reported on a new video game called Karma Tycoon designed to teach kids about “fiscal responsibility and social entrepreneurship.”*  Web-based youth organization Do Something and JPMorgan Chase teamed up to bring us a game in which

The more good you do … the more Karma you get!  The more Karma you get, the more grants your not-for-profit is eligible for .... the more money you get, the more good you can do!  The more good you do … the more Karma you get!  The more Karma you have, the bigger of a Karma Tycoon you will be!!

Noimsayin?  Good, good.  Stay with me.  According to Do Something CEO Nancy Lublin, “Karma Tycoon is like a vitamin in a Twinkie.”

Twinkalicious!

Coming out at the end of this month is a new arcade-style game for inner-city kids that teaches them the rules of American civic life.  Playfully called Bootstraps by its creators, the main screen is tilted to suggest an uneven playing field.  On level one (“Mettle Detectors”), players use their joysticks to avoid falling fragments of decaying school buildings.  Intermediate levels challenge kids with monsters like the enchantress Mainstream Medea who attempts to demoralize players by flashing images of “illegals” and “welfare queens.”  Heavily armored Rightwingthink Tanks chase players down tracks that require them to execute dangerous, life-sapping, maneuvers called “Bell Curves.”  The game ends when a player reaches level ten with a few Dignity Points intact.

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* “‘Tis Not Simple to Give Gifts” by Christian C. Sahner

Foundation Boards Should Demand Failure, Expert Claims

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Joel Orosz, founder of the The Grantmaking School,* the first university-based training program for grantmaking professionals, has come out with an extraordinary new book titled, Effective Foundation Management: 14 Challenges of Philanthropic Leadership—And How to Outfox Them. What makes it extraordinary is the willingness of Dr. Orosz to speak with candor about the challenges, both ethical and practical, of working in a profession that “lacks a salutary external discipline.”  Even those who don’t work in philanthropy will benefit from his honest portrayals of foundation CEOs and program officers struggling against flattery and other forces to do good and meaningful work.

I found what Dr. Orosz wrote on the subject of foundation risk-taking especially revealing.  If foundations have the freedom to try pretty much anything to address society’s problems, he asserts, “if they are indeed boldly exercising [their freedom] to correct the failures of the market, the government, and the fundraisers, it would be virtually impossible to open a newspaper without reading of a groundbreaking social experiment fueled by their funding.”  Unfortunately, the newspapers are more likely to be filled with stories of foundation scandals than of foundations successes.

It’s true that a good scandal sells newspapers, and foundations as a class are not very good at communicating their good work.  But according to Dr. Orosz, there’s a hidden, perhaps more important, reason for the inability of many foundations to move the needle on some of our most pressing social problems.  That reason is embarrassment.  According to Orosz:

Since foundations are undisciplined by the market, electorate, or funders, their only impetus for improvement comes from their (generally) self-perpetuating board of trustees. If you are a foundation leader, your imperative thus is a simple one: keep the board happy, and you will keep your job. So, what makes a board happy? The answer is easy: pride-inducing success. What makes a board unhappy? The answer is equally easy: embarrassing failure. What does this mean for the CEO? As a practical matter, the answer to this question is also very simple: since any kind of success is preferable to any kind of failure, since embarrassing the board members is to be avoided at all costs, it is critically important that every project be a success. What is the best way to ensure that every project will be a success? The key to perpetual success is to keep every project uncomplicated and modest in its ambition. Thus, inexorably, in order to keep their boards happy, in order to assure that embarrassment never darkens the trustees’ doorsteps, CEOs tend to seek the cautious and incremental success. Paradoxically, the societal organization given the most freedom to act hobbles itself; it is as if a superb French chef, capable of creating any gastronomic delight, insisted on making nothing except the blandest of oatmeal.

It was Longfellow who said that “Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.” Dr. Orosz appears to claim that our ambitions in philanthropy are almost criminally modest.  If the responsibility for this faintness of heart ultimately rests with a foundation’s leadership, i.e., its board of directors, how should it modify its practices?  Should boards, for example, demand failure?  Yes, answers Dr. Orosz:

Not sloppy failure, of course, for no one wants that. Boards, however, must demand a certain level of experimental failure, for that is the price of doing business in the nonprofit sector, the cost of true innovation, the payment for clearing the kudzu of modest, incremental, “so what?” success. By demanding occasional experimental failure, boards free foundation leaders from their self-imposed play-it-safe shackles. If not every meal has to be perfect, the French chefs can abandon oatmeal and experiment with exotic new dishes.

Compare Dr. Orosz’s call for “experimental failure” with the tried and true of supporting direct services.  Where should foundations place their bets?

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* Pause for disclosure: I will become a member of The Grantmaking School faculty starting this fall.  Apart from a small honorarium, I will receive no compensation for my services.  Nobody at The Grantmaking School has in any way censored what I write on this blog, nor have they suggested topics for my consideration.

Image source: magnamags.com

Why We Love Phil Cubeta

Because he writes like this:

I have an image so private, I hesitate to share it, but often when I hear someone talk to me about what they learned the prior evening on Fox News, what comes to mind is Berlin bombed flat, with a few old women moving about the rubble. That is what a propagandized population will endure, to the end, for its delusions and those of its leaders. Some will follow our leadership all the way. Others of us will dissent. How that plays out will be the existential crisis that will mark the meaning of our lives. Then the philanthropist and patriot will be one in sacrifice. Art or artfulness has never in my lifetime been more needful. Now we will relearn to read works of literature written in dark times, not as illuminating texts, but as models to imitate as best we can as we face crises no less daunting than those of a satirist, say, in Imperial Rome, or Augustan England, or as Loyal Subject of the Crown in Boston, circa 1775. We must learn to write better and read better if we are to hold the mirror up to nature, and remain free as writers, citizens, and a people. God Bless America.

God bless America.

Late Night Shots: How the Other One Percent Gives

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The July 13-19 issue of the Washington City Paper takes us inside Late Night Shots, an exclusive social networking club that helps DC’s well-heeled party animals connect on-line and off.  “Think of a new generation of young Republicans getting trashed at St. Elmo’s, hooking up, then writing about it at 3 in the morning,” writes City Paper reporter Angela Valdez.

It’s not every wannabe who can party with the GOP.  According to blogger Wonkette, the club maintains “that special mix of date rape, shitty beer, and racial homogeneity that is the Georgetown nightlife.”

The liquor flows—in great torrents, apparently—but so do the charitable dollars, providing a kind of fig leaf for the general debauchery.  This past June, for example, LNS member Andrea Rodgers

attracted a crowd to the Courage Cup, a polo match in Virginia that raises money to teach disadvantaged D.C. youths to play polo. Although the charity receives a fair amount of scorn (several posters asked why anyone would teach poor kids to play a game they can’t afford), it was one of the early summer’s most popular events.

You can imagine that the eleemosynary veneer might begin to crack after some time, and it does, as in this online exchange between two LNS members:

D.C. Charity Addiction
Posted By: [v—] on 04-11-2007 1:23 pm
Is there a city anywhere in the world that has more charities than D.C.? I moved here about 2 years ago, and at first it seemed nice that everyone was invovled with and supporting local charity events. However now I am beginning to question a number of the charitable causes and find it annoying to pay $10 to $20 just to step in somewhere for a drink with friends.

Am I being a cold-hearted miser?

RE: D.C. Charity Addiction
Posted By: [N—] on 04-11-2007 1:27 pm
I am 26 and DC wasn’t always like this. Most people just threw parties to throw parties. Now they feel compelled to do a charity or feel it makes them more sophisticated.

To responders: Don’t give me any bullshit response about wanting to help a charity because I know all of you and you’re not that decent (neither am I).

What would you call this?  Does this strange paroxysm of honesty represent a moment of grace, a door opening to the infinite?  Or is it simply a flash of existential clarity before this young man is hired by some conservative think tank to restore moral order to this country?

I’m reminded of the story of a young girl who once murdered her twelve family members with an axe, and who immediately confessed her crime after the police arrived and made inquiries because she had always been taught that lying was a sin.

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Image source: Washington City Paper

Mr. Rumsfeld Insists on Giving Us More of Himself

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Via onPhilanthopy: AP News reports that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will be setting up a foundation to attract people to public service.  Here’s an excerpt from the foundation’s newly-published funding guidelines:

Projects that demonstrate that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to the Rumsfeld Foundation.  There are known knowns we’ll fund; there are things we know we know we’ll fund. We also know there are known unknowns we’ll fund; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know we’ll fund.  Please attach a Form 990 to your proposal.

Trained hermeneuticists are standing by.

Heartache at O’Hare

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You’re already tired from a brutal red-eye and you’re waiting for a connecting flight to nowhere.  You begin to hear angels.  Mr. Tarkovski, Mr. Alfred Tarkovski, please pick up the white courtesy telephone.  This one’s a million miles away.  Speaks like the Goddess Valium reclining on a gossamer bed.  Mr. Tarkovski.  She almost hums the name, all black keys, simple figure floating like a mote above the tarmac.  She’s a jazz singer from another planet.  She once fell to earth and was wounded in love.  So she retreated to a far, far place beyond any reach to call out the names at this airport, knowing that sooner or later he’d pass through and she’d have one last chance to beckon him to the white courtesy telephone …

Philanthropy's Killer Apps

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By my count there have been at least six killer apps* in American philanthropy since the founding of Jamestown:

1.  The not-for-profit corporation
2.  The foundation
3.  The donor-advised fund
4.  The Foundation Directory
5.  GuideStar
6.  The common grant application

I'm excluding from my list individual organizations, as well as innovations not specific to philanthropy (e.g., the Internet and QuickBooks).

Once the Foundation Center's PubHub becomes more robust, by adding, for example, user comments and ratings, I believe it will join the list.  Equally important to the field will be the curricula for program officers being developed by The Grantmaking School.

A more telling list, perhaps, would be "Philanthropy's World-Transforming Ideas." Would the list be embarrassingly short? self-promoting? Or would our laptops run out of power before we could finish typing it?

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* Used here in the sense of a great innovation that is used widely and adds enormous value to the field.

Image source: mediajunk

WCT Technology Roundup II: Business Booms in Second Life, Darfur Goes Digital, and Manhattan Goes to Seed

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Business Booms in Second Life   The July/August 2007 issue of Technology Review has a feature article on the “Metaverse,” a proposed melding of Second Life (the virtual world created by Linden Labs) with Google Earth.  Users or their avatars will be able to move seamlessly between the two worlds, touring virtual real estate one minute and zooming down to catch the destruction in Darfur the next (see below).

You’ve read in these pages about the nonprofit presence in Second Life, but, not surprisingly, for-profit companies are also very well represented:

Dozens of companies, including IBM, Sony Ericsson, and American Apparel, have bought land in the virtual world, and most have already built storefronts or headquarters where their employees’ avatars can do business. ... In 2006, Starwood Hotels used Second Life as a virtual testing ground for a new chain of real-world hotels, called Aloft.  The company constructed a prototype where visitors could walk the grounds, swim in the pool, relax in the lobby, and inspect the guest rooms.  It’s incorporating suggestions from Second Lifers into the design of the first real Aloft hotel, set to open in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, in 2008.

An interesting idea from our colleagues in the for-profit world.

According to a recent article in Advertising Age, “Everyone from Starwood Hotels to American Apparel angled to score bragging rights on being the firsts in their respective industries (‘First hotel in Second Life!’ ‘First clothing brand in Second Life!’), until there came a point when it seemed to be news if a company wasn’t considering jumping into Second Life.”

Darfur Goes Digital   The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has joined forces with Google in a special mapping initiative called Crisis in Darfur.  This initiative enables Google Earth users to better visualize and understand the genocide in Darfur:

Witness the destruction for yourself. Using coordinates provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google acquired high-resolution imagery over the region of Darfur and Eastern Chad. Now you can witness the destruction in Darfur via Google Earth. Zoom down and see what a burned village looks like from above, the vast tent cities of people displaced from their homes, and photographs on the ground of refugees struggling to survive. Read eyewitness testimony of atrocities in attacked villages.

“When it comes to responding to genocide, the world’s record is terrible,” says Museum director Sara J. Bloomfield.  “We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most.”

Manhattan Goes to Seed   The July 2007 issue of Scientific American interviews science writer Alan Weisman who has spent some time figuring out what would happen if all humans suddenly disappeared from the planet.  Without the constant intervention of human beings—street cleaners, road crews, pump operators, and others—our infrastructure would quickly crumble.  Water-logged foundations would corrode causing skyscrapers to fall, bringing other buildings down with them.  Rivers that once flowed through Manhattan would flow again, and the island would return to a state of nature in fairly short order.

Weisman’s thought experiment provides a new way for environmental activists to understand and communicate our impact on the environment.

Class-Talk in the Third Sector

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Via Gift Hub : The American Ruling Class, a new documentary from Harper’s magazine editor Lewis Lapham, will air July 30 and 31 on the Sundance Channel.  What follows is a reworking of an earlier post on the subject.

Discussions of socioeconomic class are rare and fleeting in the nonprofit sector.*  This is a great shame.  Thirty years ago, the powerful images and texts of American Pictures taught me the meaning of the word “underclass.”  I didn’t hear the word used again with any frequency until Hurricane Katrina blew ashore.

Nobody talks about the underclass anymore.

Foundations are fortunate to do their work largely independent of government and corporations (including the media).  They have a good chance of introducing the topic of class and sustaining the conversation.  Yet despite continuing reminders about the myth of class mobility in this country, and an oft-stated concern for low-income communities, there are significant barriers to engaging the topic:

1.  Race, not class, structures the primary American narrative of oppression   In their book Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s,  Omi and Winant write that

Historically speaking, the call for “class” unity across racial lines has amounted in practice to an argument that non-whites give up their racially based demands in favor of “class” unity on white terms.  This will not be achieved by appeals to “class unity” or by reliance on “bargaining power theory,” which merely offer an abstraction to minorities confronted by racial inequities in the workplace.

Likewise in the nonprofit world, class-talk is sometimes seen as a distraction from issues that are more clearly rooted in racial antipathy.

2.  Class-talk produces in some a mental cramp   Paul Kingston and his intellectual heirs have argued that American society is essentially classless.  These authors don’t deny that sociologists, political scientists, and others can usefully divide the American public into various income categories.  What they deny is the notion that the members of these categories share “life-defining experiences” that license our referring to them as members of a distinct, coherent class.  Make of this kind of argument what you will.  It reminds me of Bill Clinton’s narrow definition of “sexual relations.”

3.  Class-talk is impolite   Few topics will more quickly cast a pall over middle class dinner parties than the history of class struggle in the United States.  In 2003, the President effectively silenced the critics of his tax cuts by accusing them of fomenting “class warfare.”

How do we incorporate class-talk into nonprofit work in a way that doesn’t elide hundreds of years of racial oppression?  How do we bring the lived experience of the poor and working poor into institutions governed by middle class values and norms?  How do we dispel the myth that America is essentially a classless society?

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* Based on recent data from the White Courtesy Telephone Department of Armchair Sociology that conducted a mental survey on this subject approximately 45 minutes ago.

Great Communications Disasters of Our Time: Like, Dude, That Wasn't Weed

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I was in a movie theater recently to watch a summer blockbuster when this public service ad appeared.  It was prepared for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a program of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.  It elicited snickering and hooting from the mostly young crowd.

Were these ads tested on focus groups?  If so, were they on drugs?

Lindsay: “Like, oh wow, a talking dog.”

Big Mac Attacks and Other Raids on Consciousness

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A young woman buys a pair of Calvin Kleins to shore up her sense of self worth. A middle-aged man who feels he’s trapped in a loveless marriage, spends an enormous sum on a wide-screen TV. “I really shot my wad that time!” he says, flushed with pleasure. All of us accept the intrusions of the market into our sense of meaning and identity. We’re strong enough, each of us reasons, to resist its effects.
	Before we know it, our ability to buy something—anything—at two for 79 cents becomes a measure of our civic health. There are no panicked crowds at the Wal-Mart, no looters carting away pieces of the central government.  We move effortlessly from bins of cut-rate flip flops to shelves of discounted ammo.  We needn’t be in any great hurry.  None of the true costs of our American way of life—e.g., environmental degradation, workers without decent pensions—are there to interfere with the pleasure of a low, low price.
To purchase is the verb into which every contemporary action resolves.
	It might have happened in your lifetime. Not long ago, in some nondescript boardroom in Milan or on Madison Avenue, a fashion executive rose from his seat to suggest that his company produce a line of clothing whose brand should no longer be confined to a discrete label attached to an inside seam. No, he said, the company’s brand should be printed in bold letters on the garment itself, essentially turning the wearer into a walking billboard. Moreover, he suggested, the customer should pay dearly for the privilege. Another executive, a small man with sloping shoulders, sneered at the idea, saying the public was too intelligent to be duped by such a clearly cynical product line.

Image sources: bus ad, McDonald’s ads, Chanel ad