White Courtesy Telephone

Philanthropy à la Sauce Béchamel: Predictions for 2013 and Beyond

There’s nothing like a perch plucked from the depths of Lake Como, poached by a master chef, and arranged in pastry shells covered with a well-seasoned sauce béchamel, yolk of one egg, and knob of butter to inspire new thinking about the economic insecurity of American workers.  I’ve not yet been invited to Bellagio or Davos, but I know it’s only a matter of time.

Scores of colleagues have made these pilgrimages, worrying about the state of the world as they take in the mountain air. My turn will come. I notice, however, that these colleagues tend not to insult their hosts by implicating them in petty shortcomings. Nor do they dwell on the spectacular failures of our field. Rather they conduct research and predict trends that are challenging and upbeat, enabling their patrons to strut, au courant, in front of restive board members. I am in their debt, being generally rather slow on the uptake.

Philanthropic Capital Markets, Impact Investing, Networked Nonprofits, Big Data! Critics call them passing fads hawked to insecure CEOs like me. I call them the Keys to the Kingdom, l'oca che spende tutta la notte da barba se stessa, e ancora non è stanco (the goose that spends all night shaving herself, and still is not tired).

Lest I be accused of being yet another leach on the body of American generosity, I hope you’ll marvel at my own well-researched predictions for future trends in the foundation field, available in TED Talk, Pecha Kucha, Ignite, and 140-character formats with speaker’s fees waived and optimized for alpine vistas:

Biggest Data Ever. Genetic engineering will create miniaturized monkeys who’ll be trained to type vigorously on specially designed keyboards. Their output will be mined for interesting patterns by highly compensated experts.

Voucher Philanthropy. Instead of making grants, foundations will award grant vouchers directly to the deserving poor, snapping a towel—with market force—on the buttocks of underperforming charities.

Nano-Lending. The gap between the haves and the have-nots will increase, and the number of poor grow so large, that micro-financing will become unobtainable by most. Instead, low-income people across the world will be offered nano-loans collateralized against small pieces of plastic and other debris.

The Wearable Foundation. This all-graphene suit will insulate the most sensitive among us from too much reality and provide extra headroom for personalized liberal echo chambers. Optional micro-hydraulics will provide a confident gait while spoken words are sifted through a Universal Scrambler™.

Quantum Grantmaking. Quantum theory tells us that Schrödinger’s cat  can be alive and dead at the same time, prompting physicists to posit parallel universes in which each possibility and everything in-between is simultaneously instantiated. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, evaluation-fixated foundations will soon require not only outputs and outcomes from their grantees, but hyper-outcomes as well—benefits to parallel universe denizens affected by real-world interventions.

Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) Market Efficiencies. In the United States, it’s considered at best impolite to kill the poor. As a nation with deep religious roots, we strongly prefer that the market do it for us. To increase the efficiency of market forces, the poor, who generally lay about listlessly, will be bled daily for valuable plasma and have their unused organs harvested for deserving job creators and their pets.

Dearest Western European Conference Organizer: I offer you a heady tour of poverty parks, genetically modified program officers, and more! A world in which the apple you’re saving for lunch is networked to implants in your salivary glands—ready to signal the optimal moment of ripeness. A world in which throngs of “network weavers” and nonprofit visionaries wander through your streets cataloging and creating connections between things real and imagined. Trust me: I can make you look good!  Hey, MacArthur, are you feeling me yet?

Two Social Media Technologies That Will Transform the Nonprofit World

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1. Content.Cloud.0

Problem:  In large metropolitan area X, each of three nonprofit organizations wants to create the online portal for neighborhood-level indicators.

Analysis:  The idea behind a portal is that you try to entice the online user to come to you.  Once at your site, she can benefit from your content and online tools.

The downside:  The user experience is unpleasant because she has to go to your site to find the most accurate data about poverty, another site to find the newest statistics on crime, and a third to track city investments in her neighborhood.

Solution: Content.Cloud.0 is a new social media technology that enables nonprofits to share their content with one another easily.  This new de-portalization tool can be implemented using existing MOU technologies and other B2B instruments.

Here’s how it works:  A group of content creators/providers working in a given area (e.g, neighborhood indicators) agrees to share online content and tools with one another.

This new technology enables online users to find whatever content they’re looking for at their favorite port of entry into the online space, avoiding the hassles of site specialization.  Content.Cloud.0 builds on late 20^th century “SharIng” technologies.

2. CLOUTsourcing

Problem:  During the great healthcare debates of 2009 and early 2010, political will from above met limited agitation from below, leading to legislation that fell short of many activists’ hopes for universal health coverage.

Analysis:  Many of us advocates for low-income communities were sitting on our hands, either because healthcare wasn’t our issue or because we were in the middle of some other campaign.  It was clear, however, that the ability to access quality healthcare would affect the destinies of low-income people for years to come.  The healthcare debate was happening nationally and legislation was being debated in Congress.  Reason dictated we drop whatever else we were doing and get behind this issue.

The downside:  This didn’t happen to any significant degree.

Solution: CLOUTsourcing is a new social media tool that enables advocates to coordinate their actions for greater effect and the greater good.  CloutScourcing can be implemented using existing P2P technologies such as Meetings, Electronic Mail, or Picking Up the Phone and Calling Someone.

Here’s how it works:  When an issue that deeply affects low-income communities is up for a vote in Congress or in the state legislature, and/or is being debated extensively in the media, all advocates get behind the issue instead of doing their own thing.  They offer to help the lead agencies involved by mobilizing their networks; educating their constituencies about the connections between the issue in question and the fate of low-income communities; writing op eds; etc.

The First-Ever Virtual Giving Circle

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On November 15th, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, in collaboration with four community partners,* will launch the first-ever, 100% online giving circle.  Dubbed “The Neutral Ground,” members of this giving circle will explore issues relating to race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation—and their intersections.

The twenty-five giving circle members will contribute $200 each, and these contributions will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Greater New Orleans Foundation to create a pooled fund of $10,000 from which giving circle members will award grants.

Members will meet, engage in intergroup dialogue, and discuss potential grantees on The Neutral Ground website. (To see a mockup of the site, click here.)  Topics explored will likely include immigration, gay/straight issues, the special multicultural character of New Orleans, black/brown issues, and race in the age of Barack Obama.

Non-New Orleanians and New Orleanians in the diaspora are welcome to participate!  If you’re interested in joining the giving circle, please e-mail [email protected].  The time commitment is November 15, 2010, through Cinco de Mayo, 2011.  This is a virtual giving circle, so members will meet online rather than in person.  Members of the public are welcome to participate in the online discussions.

For those of you wondering about the name of the initiative, in New Orleans the “neutral ground” is the broad strip of grass dividing the opposing lanes of any street or avenue.  The Neutral Ground giving circle is based on an idea originally conceived by Diana Campoamor, President of Hispanics in Philanthropy.

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* The Human Rights Campaign (New Orleans chapter), Puentes, VAYLA, and the Urban League.  Full disclosure: The author of this post is the President & CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

FOX News on Radical Internet Assassins

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

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

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.

New Solutions to Old Problems

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Responding to MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton’s call to create a network of people committed to “building more just virtual and real worlds,” Chicago homeless advocates are planning to open two new hypothermia shelters in Second Life and move their administrative offices to There.com.

I think it’s about time direct service providers started being more forward-thinking.  They haven’t improved on the meal-and-a-bed paradigm in years.

Second-Lifer Issues Fatwa on First-Lifer

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Some moll goes by the handle “Glitteractica_Cookie” put a contract on my good friend Albert’s bona fides, calling him “a voice of the anti-SL backlash” for his post on Second Life, that virtual world everyone’s talking about.

All right, all right, he brought this pile of bricks on himself.  Last time he went virtual, he was run out of the eleventh dimension for claiming a duck with wax lips was more whimsical than a goose in a bonnet. People who share personal reflections on their experiences in Second Life and are “very critical” deserve to get sapped, I say. Suck it up.

But I owe Albert a debt: he once gave my mudder a picture of Valentino in the altogether.  She died last year—very, very happy.  Mama mia!

If you wanna write Albert, he’s laying low.  Last I heard, he was in the Sims’ Virtual Witness Protection Program. 

Smoky Joe, Scruggs, you out there?

Nonprofits, Virtual Worlds, and the Triumph of Ironic Distance

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I

I was constrained in my choice of body.  All the human avatars looked a little too perfect, in a distended, Giacometti kind of way.  So I chose one with a human body and the head and tail of a raccoon.  I chose the name Pfrank Pfeffer.  I wanted to go as Al@n T_ring, but to do so I would have had to pay for the privilege.

Buy and Sell Linden Dollars!

Own Virtual Land!

This focus on commerce, on the buying and selling of property, objects, and the tokens of identity, was one of the first things that struck me about Second Life.  “Your World.  Your imagination,” the tagline assures you.  But ultimately it’s your money that enables you to make a mark on this online virtual world of some 5.7 million souls. 

There are buildings in Second Life, and carefully rendered water and trees.  And there are fanciful objects that In-Worlders construct from “prims” (short for “primitives”):

A Prim is a cube or sphere or other shape that you create using the build tools, and which are combined together by linking to make much of what you see in Second Life—houses, vehicles, furniture and so on.

The number of prims you can use will depend on the amount of land you own in a region—simply put, more land equals more prims.

You mix your labor with prims and make yours the objects you produce thereby; you’re given prims in proportion to the amount of land you own; you take land out of the State of Virtual Nature by laying down cash on the nail.

Thus Second Life is reassuringly Lockean in every detail.

II

There’s a Nonprofit Commons under construction in Second Life, described as “breathtaking” on the Nonprofits in Second Life blog.  The virtual land was purchased and donated by Anshe Chung, the first “virtual world millionaire.”   The Commons will cost $200 a month to maintain.

TechSoup’s apologetics for the virtual world are compelling:

• The American Cancer Society raised more than $40,000 through its Second Life Relay for Life event. ...
• Educators are using Second Life to present seminars and stage performances and storytelling sessions designed to help youth learn about other cultures. …
• People with disabilities reportedly  have been using Second Life to explore environments where physical constraints are minimized and where they have almost absolute control over their avatars’ features and actions.

More money for cancer research, young minds expanded, people with disabilities free to roam at will, unfettered by crutches and wheelchairs.

I catch a glimpse of the New Eden when I arrive and find myself surrounded by handsome young avatars with perfect skin and teeth, flying above my head—the preferred method of In-World locomotion.  I see wonders on Help Island—a colourful, 700-pound parrot bending a telephone wire, a holographic news service, fantastic sculpture floating in mid-air.

The spell is broken the first time I open my mouth to speak.

A young man dressed in urban chic, with an unpronounceable name, sidles up to me and types into an invisible keyboard, “Are you from the United States?”  Chagrined that I’ve been so quickly found out, I respond, “Yes.  Was it my tail that gave me away?”  He says nothing.  After a long pause, he does the hula, one of the avatars’ pre-scripted “gestures.”  I reply in kind. 

Embarrassed perhaps by my boorishness, by my apparent lack of interest in his country of origin, he takes a few steps away and begins to examine a mechanical rat.

The biggest problem with Second Life, as I see it, is that we can’t help but bring our selves to it.  Our feeble turns of mind, our bad manners, our overweening concern for the effect of our tails.

How does the saying go?

Sow an act, reap a habit
Sow a habit, reap a character
Sow a character, reap a destiny

—for this life and the next, it appears.

III

I’m in my garden as I type this.  Nothing moves.  My strongest impression is the sun’s light on my skin.

My body pushes against the wooden bench on which I sit.  I sense the rough, weathered texture of an old pillow against the small of my back, the drip of sweat down the inside edge of my upper arm.  I feel the purple glow of the azaleas, the sticky green of new growth, the yellow-green of bamboo reborn.  I feel the heavy green of a tired hemlock.  I see—almost taste—the rust color of a young pine that didn’t survive the winter.  I smell grass and magnolia blossom mixed with the scent of my own body.

A sparrow’s chirrup announces the slightest breeze and suddenly I’m in the moving, indescribable Infinite.

Vote for THRONGZ and Support Your Local Blogger

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A good friend (Charles Forsythe) and I have been working on a project called Throngz to help social activists more readily connect with one another online.  Although we had nonprofit advocates in mind when we created it, Throngz can be used by any community of people.

Throngz is a web-based tool that calls people together for discussion from different parts of the Internet in real time.  Once they’re brought together into a single “cyber-salon,” they can discuss topics of mutual interest or simply shoot the cyber-breeze.  You can read more about Throngz by clicking here.

We submitted Throngz to the NetSquared Innovation Award competition, and we very much need your support.

Part of the competition involves a get-out-the-vote effort, so we’re asking White Courtesy Telephone readers and supporters to visit the Netsquared site and vote for Throngz.

Here’s how to do it:

1.  Please take a minute to visit the NetSquared site and register.  You’ll need to enter a valid e-mail address (this is where they’ll send your password).  You can go to the registration page by clicking here.

2.  Go to the e-mail account you gave when you registered and retrieve the password the NetSquared folks e-mailed to you.

3.  Next, go the Netsquared login page.  Enter your username and password to login to the NetSquared site.

4.  Finally (you’re almost finished!), go to your ballot (click here) and enter your choices.

Please, PLEASE for the love of God let one of those choices be THRONGZ: The Online Discussion Space That Comes And Gets You.

Please note that you’ll need to vote for a minimum of five projects for any of your votes to count.  Fellow blogger Sean Stannard-Stockton gives us his favorite picks here.  You can read about all the other projects by clicking here.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my blogger colleague Holden also submitted his GiveWell project to the competition.  Twenty projects will be chosen from around the world, so we both have a shot at the prize.*

This sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.  If I’ve made a hash of explaining this, you can review the voting instructions here.  If you get stuck, please send me an e-mail.

VOTING CLOSES ON MONDAY, APRIL 16, SO PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE TO CAST YOUR VOTE!

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After you’ve voted, please let your cyber-buddies know about Throngz.  You and they will be invited to a no-holds-barred, online party here at WCT.  The Countess Apraxina will distribute signed photographs; Chickpea will model the season’s latest bonnets; and Miss Dixie Moline will entertain us with her throaty rendition of Embraceable You .

As you might have already guessed, the motivation for Throngz came from my own experiences on the Internet.  The Story of Joe Sector has in many ways been my story.  My nonprofit colleagues and I have often just missed one another in cyberspace.  Like Joe, I’ve frequently squandered my time on the web in search of that perfect online discussion in real-time.

I realize there’s much more to building social change movements than simply facilitating discussion on the Internet.  As my colleague Sally mentioned in an earlier post, we bring to the Web all the deficits, all the bad habits of our lives offline.  How can we possibly make a good omelette out of bad eggs?

These themes have been picked up here and here.

Nevertheless I’m hopeful that, over time, all our Web exchanges— penetrating political analyses offered free of charge to all comers, the lessons from our contemporary mad Socrates, the younger voices gleefully shouting down the old—will dissuade us of the view that “humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.”

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* Winners will be flown to the NetSquared conference at the end of May where they’ll get a chance to pitch their projects to funders.  The top three projects will also get the lion’s share of a $100K kitty.  If my partner Charles and I are lucky enough to win, we’ll use our prize money to hire a Java programmer.

The Phenomenology of Blogging

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I am present to the blog.  Beneath its textual exterior, I sense the movement of its eidos.  But I don’t grasp it in its absolute essence, in its “flowing thisness,” as Husserl called it.  It’s a state of consciousness that appears to me: the state of a self-identical real ego-subject.

I’m so caught up in my present doing, in the writing of this post, that I fear the clear impression will slip away.

Stephan Bodian, Dharma teacher in the Zen tradition and the author of several books, including Meditation For Dummies, writes:

From the highest spiritual perspective, we can never lose our connection with being. In fact, the separation between being and doing is just another fabrication of the mind. No matter how still we try to become, doing is always happening …

Beyond the vivid intuition that it is there-for-me, what, then, is my blog doing?  It is …

Satisfying my need for self-expression.   Perhaps I demand freedom of speech as compensation for the freedom of thought I seldom exercise.  Dixi et animum levavi (I have spoken and given my soul rest).

Creating a space for the free exchange of ideas.   Let this blog be a lake in which elephants can wade and sheep can swim.  Let it play a role, if it can, in democratizing moral and intellectual authority.

Introducing and propagating memes.   Dawkins’s catch-phrases, beliefs, fashions, ways of making pots—they’re all here at White Courtesy Telephone.  In the days of Noah, some of these might have been called “ideas.”

Transforming a group of loosely associated individuals into a community with shared understandings about the world and how to change it.

Perhaps most of the time my blog is doing none of these things.  Let me remember, however, as it sits there on my screen, staring at me blankly with its reptilian eyes, that there’s a beating heart beneath its tightly stretched skin.

The Problem With The Internet, Part 2: The Internet and Social Change

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With all due respect to my WCT colleague, Albert Ruesga, I don’t believe the Internet is currently the best place to build a social change movement rooted in deliberation and consultation.

Deliberation leading to shared understandings that subsequently inform action; consultation broadening a social change community beyond a few committed elites—I’m convinced the brunt of this work can best happen offline.

I’m not denying that the Internet has provided communities of social activists new tools for collaboration.  It clearly has.

I’m saying there are many characteristics of the Internet and its use that get in the way of transforming a group of loosely associated individuals into a community with shared understandings about the world and how to change it.  The story of Joe Sector, described in an earlier post, begins to name some of these barriers, but there are others.

Consider the state of our critical thinking and reading skills; our general lack of media literacy; our inability or unwillingness to penetrate what some critics have called the Illusion of News.

We carry all of this baggage and more with us on our travels through Cyberspace, though we convince ourselves that we’re fleet of cyber-foot, dancing effortlessly from site to site and blog to blog.  We fill with frenzied points and clicks the time we might otherwise spend banging our collective heads against a shared problem.

The Problem With The Internet, Part 1: The Story of Joe Sector

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Joe Sector, an environmental activist, wants to develop an advocacy strategy for the upcoming presidential election season. He longs to engage other activists in an extended discussion of the candidates and their views; tactics for engaging the media; and other election season issues. Unfortunately, the next conference for environmental activists is months away.

Joe goes online to his favorite blogs, listservs, message boards, and networking sites in search of wisdom, but the results are less than satisfactory. Here are just some of the challenges he faces:

1. Light’s on but nobody’s home   Joe submits a question to a listserv here, a message board there, but can’t depend on getting a timely answer (or any answer at all). Sometimes it takes days to get a response. In any event, Joe wants something that feels more like a real discussion.

2. The wrong people at the right time   Joe has to contend with the usual trolls, flamers, and ninnies who throw discussions off-topic. He visits various chat rooms and networking sites for activists, but, as is often the case, few people are present and contributing, and the best minds and moderators are absent.

3. Drive-by commenting   Joe finds a few warm bodies willing to engage in a discussion of the upcoming election, but they keep straying off-topic. Because nobody really “owns” the discussion, it gets sidetracked easily.

4. A million vases for a thousand flowers   Nancy, a communications wizard, likes to hang out at Omidyar.net, but Mary, a master strategist, would never darken Omidyar’s cyber-door. She much prefers Change.org. And so it goes. Joe has to visit twenty sites to have a prayer of finding the best wisdom on the upcoming election.

What’s a wired, networked, discussion-starved social activist to do?

Coming up: The problem with the Internet, part 2

Cyber-Donors: If You Cut Them, Will They Not Leave?

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Because our online encounters are mediated by servers, cables and radio waves, and because they happen in a virtual space defined by 1s and 0s, they often have a gauzy, unreal quality.

We use pseudonyms to preserve our anonymity.  We leave drive-by comments on blogs and other online meeting places, seldom deepening our relationships beyond one or two exchanges.

We’re there one instant, gone the next.

Unfortunately, many of us who work at nonprofit organizations carry these same Internet habits to our encounters with online donors.

In a recent article titled “Cyber Journey: A real-world look at online fundraising,”* Tom Gaffny describes how he went online and donated $15 to each of the 66 largest charities in the United States.  He wanted to know how today’s charities are treating online donors, and his results were eye-popping and, frankly, heartbreaking.

Only nine of these charities saw Tom’s gift as an opportunity to establish and begin nurturing a relationship with a new donor:

While the “Yep, we got [your gift]” crowd dealt with me at arm’s length, and the “Thanks, we’re grateful” organizations reached out to shake my hand, this group [of organizations] wanted to give me a hug and a pretty big pat on the back.

I strongly recommend Tom’s article for some great tips on how to follow up on a gift from a cyber-donor.

It’s been well established that online donors tend to be more generous than their off-line counterparts.  Given the cold cyber-shoulder we so often present them, is it any wonder they’re also less likely to continue contributing after their initial gift?

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* The NonProfit Times, March 15, 2007, pp. 20-21.

WCT Technology Roundup: Squares, Globes, Webs, and (Pilotless) Drones

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NetSquared Innovation Award   There’s still time to submit your project for the second annual NetSquared Innovation Award.  This competition is open both to nonprofits and private sector projects that:

• Use the power of community and social networks to create change
• Use existing, or newly developed technology tools for social impact
• Have a plausible financial model
• Have a clear way to measure success
• Exhibit extraordinary leadership, passion and resourcefulness
• Exhibit a passion for social change

For project guidelines and application materials, click here.

Online Giving   Donors are increasingly learning to value the safety and convenience of online giving.  The GlobalGiving site enables donors to support grassroots charitable work around the world.  The site’s sponsors guarantee that “85-90 percent of your donation gets to local project leaders within 60 days” and that all supported organizations are US PATRIOT Act-compliant.  For giving in the United States, try visiting Network for Good.  The Network for Good site has some outstanding fundraising and communications resources for nonprofit organizations.

Web 3.0  In case you missed the ticker-tape parade, Web 2.0 is officially here.  It’s the Wikipedia web, the web of Flickr and Del.icio.us.  It’s characterized by greater interactivity and introduces features like tagging and social networking.  The wait is over.

There’s a nascent Web 3.0 that will look very much like the iWeb of Zerbina and Zork.  According to the March/April issue of Technology Review, Web 3.0 will be “a set of technologies that offer efficient new ways to help computers organize and draw conclusions from online data.”  Some identify it with the so-called Semantic Web.  You can read more about it here and here.

The Future of Audio Blogcasting   There will always be an audience for audio podcasts.  People with long commutes, for example, can use their podcatchers (a kind of media aggregator) to load up their .mp3 players with music, radio programming, and other content that will see them through many a long traffic backup.

It’s been my experience, however, that the audio podcast is not the best medium for blog content.  You can scan a written blog in seconds, skipping those passages in which the author indulges himself; but the consumption of an audio podcast is painfully linear.  If you hit the fast forward button, you run the risk of missing that one gem, that key idea that makes the whole podcast worth the investment of time.

An interesting 2006 study by TDG Research suggests that more than 80 percent of downloaded podcasts never make it to those .mp3 players.  They’re either consumed on the PC, deleted, or entirely forgotten.  You’ll notice that, music aside, very few audio files “make the rounds” of the Internet.

There are notable exceptions.

This January 29, 2007 posting by the San Francisco Chronicle titled “Correct Me If I’m Wrong” combined winning content and delivery with the irresistible conceit of listening in on a private telephone message.  It makes for an extraordinary listening experience and it spawned an entire industry of Internet commentary: “Never say ‘pilotless drone.’ Ever. There can be consequences,” wrote Mr. Johnson at Seeing the Forest; Stephen Dubner at Freakonomics wondered whether the irate message might be a hoax perpetrated by Simpsons creator Matt Groening;  Craig from Albany pointed out that the drone in question was not pilotless at all but rather a Remotely Piloted Vehicle.  Much ado.

Old schoolmarm that I am, I took issue with the irate caller’s claims about English usage.  I can write, for example, “The smooth-coated Pharaoh Hound is a good breed for people with allergies,” even though all Pharaoh Hounds are smooth-coated.  I would mention their smooth-coatedness if I suspected my audience wasn’t aware of this property of Pharaoh Hounds.  Likewise, because “drone” is a technical term used by the armed forces, I might choose to emphasize its pilotless-ness to a general readership.
 
Drone is a technical term, technical, TECHNICAL, get it Mr. Irate Caller? a technical term as in requiring that it be explained to a general audience, technical, technical, TECHNICAL, TECHNICAL …

The Young, The Generous, The Connected

Online giving represents only 2-3 percent of the $200 billion in charitable giving by individuals in the United States, but it’s expected to increase rapidly as more and more donors come to value the efficiency and security of online transactions.

It hasn’t grown faster, I believe, because a lot still stands between the initial motivation to give (that heartbreaking story on NPR about homeless children, for example) and the actual movement of charitable dollars.  A donor is required to fire up her computer, open her browser, do a Google search for the appropriate charity, click the “Donate Now” button on the charity’s website, wait until she’s transported to the appropriate giving page, fetch her credit card, fill in the required fields, and confirm her gift.  E-philanthropy in the 23rd century will almost certainly be a more spontaneous affair.

Until then, those of you who’ve used online giving sites like TouchDC.org should consider yourselves trailblazers.  A recent survey by the good people at Network for Good informs us that you’re also to be celebrated for your extraordinary generosity.  According to this survey:

• Online donors give significantly more than offline donors.
• Online givers are young, with men and women giving in equal numbers.
• Donors are not new to giving, but they tend to be new to giving online.
• Disaster relief is the leading category of giving and ranks among top searches; other leading giving categories are international causes, animal-related causes, human services and education.
• Donors turn to the Internet at times of disaster and for year-end giving.
• People seem to be at their most generous on weekdays, not weekends.
• The number one reason donors say they give online is convenience: it is easier than writing a check.

A nonprofit organization’s Web presence becomes more and more critical as more donors go online to learn about the causes they care about.  It’s also possible that this increasing traffic in cyberdonors will someday drive the development of new kinds of online networks for those committed to strenghtening civil society.  I know this has long been the dream of my colleague at Gift Hub.

E-Philanthropy’s Brave New World

The year: 2235.  Zerbina, a successful interplanetary trader, and her holohusband Zork, are waking up to their first cup of Andromedan coffee.  They have their central communications unit tuned to Intergalactic Public Radio, and host Robert Siegel-backslash-12 is relating the top news story of the day.  An extended Martian drought has left tens of thousands of poor migrant settler families with diminishing supplies of food and water, he reports.  One of their spokesmen urges legislators to pass the Emergency Relocation Bill that has been stalled in the World Senate for weeks.

Zerbina is moved to take action.  “Computer,” she says softly, “Who’s helping the Martian settler families?”  Instantly her hyperbrowser searches the iWeb for nonprofit organizations that are providing relief to the beleaguered families, displaying a list of names and profiles on the smartsurfaces of her apartment.  She scrutinizes the list: there are 690 different organizations headquartered on six planets and three moons.

“Which of these organizations has the strongest advocacy record?” Zerbina asks thoughtfully.

Her hyperbrowser once again springs into action, instantly sorting through and interpreting tens of thousands of press releases that have been posted to the iWeb.  The Intergalactic Immigration Forum jumps to the top of the list.

Zerbina smiles: she knows this organization well.  Responding to a small donation she had made to them a while back, they had been sending her holographic newsletters for several months, keeping her apprised of their work.  The Forum had long ago applied for and received iWeb Charity Accreditation, enabling the organization to accept secure subspace money transfers.

“Computer,” she says, “Transfer twenty gigacredits to the Intergalactic Immigration Forum.  Mark the transfer ‘for support of the Martian migrant families.’”

“Transfer confirmed,” replies the machine, in a soothing, albeit somewhat metallic, voice.

We’re not quite there yet, but a number of initiatives are giving us glimpses of the future of web-based philanthropy.  To paraphrase George Burns, we should look to the future because that’s where we’re going to spend the rest of our lives …

According to a press release I received from a company representative, PRODEGE is helping nonprofit organizations raise funds by giving them their own private-label search engines.  A nonprofit simply signs up with PRODEGE and encourages its supporters to do web searches on its dedicated search engine.  Each search generates revenues for the organization.  PRODEGE automatically tracks, reports, and distributes proceeds to its nonprofit partners on a monthly basis.  (If any WCT readers have used this product, please let me know.)

Our brilliant colleagues in the UK have dreamed up the One Million Masterpiece website.  The site invites visitors to use their mouses to paint or draw pictures while onsite.  Each visitor-artist is then asked to contribute £3.50 to have his or her masterpiece become part of a giant canvas that will be unveiled at a major London landmark (the birthplace of Jennifer Saunders?) in July 2007.  The group hopes to raise £3.5 million for a number of UK-registered charities including Oxfam, Save the Children, and the World Wildlife Federation.  Visitors can also use the site’s tools to create and post videos.  Pneumatic!

TouchDC introduces the people of Greater Washington to outstanding charities they might otherwise never hear about.  Powered by Network for Good, TouchDC enables donors to search for giving and volunteering opportunities by neighborhood and by program area.  The site provides donors a safe and convenient way to donate funds online.