[Printer Friendly Version]

News for December 2004

30 December 2004

Tides Rapid Response Initiative
	My silence for the last few days is due in part to the holidays, but mostly it's due to my stunned grief at the immense Boxing Day disaster from the Indian Ocean tsunami. So, I will save my analysis for later. If you have an interest in progressive approaches to funding relief efforts, I recommend the Tides Foundation's Rapid Response Initiative. Posted: 12/30/04; 5:45:12 PM #

23 December 2004

Most Hated Advertising Techniques (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Nonprofits keep looking to the business world for inspiration, which sometimes reflects a sad (and inaccurate) elevation of businesses as the more sophisticated and professional sector. Jakob Neilsen gives us a great example from the world of online advertising, when he describes the Most Hated Advertising Techniques. I wish that fundraising professionals would stop looking for the immediate buck and pay more attention to things that don't undermine trust, as many of these loathsome advertising techniques do. After all, trust is our sector's most precious resource. Posted: 12/23/04; 11:28:20 AM #

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system

In the next few months, I will be exploring systems that nonprofits can use to protect their communication from the prying eyes of organizations and governments that oppose our work or are willing to have us be casualities in their quest for ever more power. One of those systems is Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system, which is being supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If one out of every ten nonprofits with a reliable Internet connection ran a Tor server, the sector would have a worldwide, secure communication network. Posted: 12/23/04; 11:18:05 AM #

New European Research Project in Software Development
	The European Union is taking a clear and tangible interest in tackling the opportunities presented by open source software. A new European research project in software development will look at some of the very same issues that have been facing U.S. funders of nonprofit open source efforts, such as the complexities of interdependence among projects. Posted: 12/23/04; 11:17:52 AM #

21 December 2004

Professional Briefings: Frictionless Fundraising Series

Our online workshops are working out really well for our readers, so we have gone ahead and scheduled the next set of Professional briefings on Frictionless Fundraising, on Feb. 1st, 2nd, & 3rd, 2005, Noon - 1:30 pm (PST). The topics include: (1) Save Money and Make Money by Converting your Donors to Email, (2) Ten Ways to Improve Cultivation and Stewardship of Donors, and (3) Effective Email Newsletters. Posted: 12/21/04; 3:58:23 PM #

20 December 2004

Twelve Myths about Direct Action
	A fascinating and wonderfully trangresive website called CrimethInc has published the Twelve Myths about Direct Action. While I think their concept of "direct action" is overly narrow, I do think that their critique of people's discomfort with more radical forms of nonviolent protest is important. Posted: 12/20/04; 5:41:30 PM #

Collaborative Inquiry among Grant Makers and Grantees
	I recently reacquainted myself with the resources available at Grantcraft, a project of the Ford Foundation in support of improving the knowledge and skills of grantmakers. They publish a great collection of carefully prepared guides on various topics. My favorite so far is Learning Together: Collaborative Inquiry among Grant Makers and Grantees. Posted: 12/20/04; 5:41:19 PM #

19 December 2004

Red Cross neutrality jeopardised by US action in Iraq
	From time to time I have written about how international NGOs are often tainted by their association with the United States. A powerful example of that is what is happening to the International Red Cross, whose chief executive says that their neutrality is jeopardised by US action in Iraq. Posted: 12/19/04; 4:51:13 PM #

2004 international grantmaking trends in the U.S.
	The Foundation Center has published highlights of its 2004 report on U.S. international grantmaking trends (4 page PDF). International grantmaking is up. Programmatic focus has been tightened. Posted: 12/19/04; 4:50:58 PM #

15 December 2004

Email Newsletters During Last Week of Presidential Campaign
	Jakob Nielsen contrasts Email Newsletters During Last Week of Presidential Campaign. It was interesting to learn that the majority of George Bush's content was about issues, while the majority of John Kerry's content was about asking for money. Posted: 12/15/04; 12:39:34 PM #

Amazon Hacks

I just finished reading Paul Bausch's Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tools. The reason I think this book may be of use to some of you is that it is a guide to the potential interoperability between your web site and another, in this case Amazon.com. Even if you don't link to Amazon the way we do, the examples can help inspire you to look for ways to leverage the content and services of other organizations for use by your organization. Posted: 12/15/04; 12:39:25 PM #

14 December 2004

ICTs and Social Capital in the Knowledge Society
	In ICTs and Social Capital in the Knowledge Society (114 page PDF by FTP), the European Commission takes an in depth look at the role of new communication technology in helping develop various forms of social capital, including virtual communities, the dissemination of knowledge within and between communities of practice, and the notion of networked social capital. Posted: 12/14/04; 11:27:12 AM #

Controversial U.S. Groups Operate Behind Scenes on Iraq Vote
	The New Standard (ad supported day pass required) takes a look at a couple of controverial NGOs working to influence the upcoming election in Iraq. Posted: 12/14/04; 11:27:02 AM #

The therapeutic activism of MoveOn.org
	Chris Suellentrop criticizes Moveon.org as being The Feel-Good Group of the Year. I'm a big believer in movement building and organizational development, but there is also something to be said for actual political outcomes. Posted: 12/14/04; 11:26:19 AM #

9 December 2004

Nonprofit Online News Journal - November 2004

Today we're publishing the November 2004 issue of our new Nonprofit Online News Journal (27 page PDF). This issue remains free to all subscribers. In addition to a Letter from the Editor, two articles, and all the news and classified ads, we are including a resource that is only available in the Journal: a one page Webcasting Quicksheet, designed to help you get up and running with the necessary software for webcasting as described in last month's article. Posted: 12/9/04; 6:35:39 PM #

Syllabus, HUM 202 -- Toward a Literacy of Cooperation
	Stanford University is offering a course called Toward a Literacy of Cooperation. Take a look at the syllabus and especially the second column, which lists the required reading. That reading list alone could form the bedrock of a program promoting community building and collaboration among nonprofit organizations. Posted: 12/9/04; 10:59:23 AM #

Outcome Based Arts Evaluation: Measuring Joy
	Deborah Bedwell of Clayworks wrote a nice little article entitled Measuring Joy, as a contribution to the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts web site on outcome based evaluation. Her conclusion is that you can indeed measure joy (in her case, the delight experienced by children in their programs) and apply logic models to arts organizations. Posted: 12/9/04; 10:59:14 AM #

Activists Dominate Content Complaints

This is a great example of how one small organization can have a huge impact on policy, when the the policy makers are sympathetic to your cause in the first place. It turns out that the supposedly enormous increase in "indecency" complaints to the U.S. Federal Communication Commission were actually the work of a single right wing organization. In 2003, for example, 99% of complaints came from Parent's Television Council. The insight here is how important it is to have allies on the inside, because in another context, say an environmental issue, this would play out very differently. Posted: 12/9/04; 10:59:04 AM #

Seattle at Five
	Mark Engler looks back at the state of global activism in the five years since the WTO protests in Seattle. He reminds us of what an amazing moment in history that was and how many of us have understandably been distracted by trying to organize a response to U.S. militarism. Posted: 12/9/04; 10:58:50 AM #

8 December 2004

Ten Essential Ingredients to Good Governance

The Foundation for Good Governance in the United Kingdom has produced a guide to Ten Essential Ingredients to Good Governance in Nonprofit Organizations (2 page PDF). In short, they are: (1) Read the governing documents. (2) Make sure that staff and board have read and understand the organization's business plans. (3) Devote care and attention to getting the right mix of people on the board. (4) Develop written policies and procedures, including a code of conduct. (5) Take meetings seriously. (6) Make sure board members are well informed. (7) Ensure that financial reporting is given due importance. (8) Spend time on building good relationships. (9) Ensure the Board understands that it is their role to manage the manager. (10) Focus on having the board provide direction and leadership. Posted: 12/8/04; 1:55:25 PM #

Contrarian finding: Computers are a drag on learning
	New large scale research by a team at the University of Munich has shown that too much computer use in school might be detrimental to learning. Some exposure was positively correlated with improvement, but after that it starts to get harmful. Posted: 12/8/04; 1:55:15 PM #

Site Diagrams: Mapping an Information Space
	In Site Diagrams: Mapping an Information Space, Jason Withrow describes a simple model for the visual presentation of the links and relationships between parts of a web site. This looks very handy. Posted: 12/8/04; 1:55:06 PM #

The Communication Initiative - PulseComments - Pulse #4 Comments - Internet & Diversity

Although it's just a collection of comments and thus rather hard to read, the insights collected by Drum Beat on whether the Internet is a force that destroys cultural diversity are really very thought provoking. My personal feeling is that it's better to ask about specific applications that reside on the Internet, because some are just like broadcast media and have a homogenizing effect and others allow unprecedented reinforcement of cultures, especially those separated by geography. Posted: 12/8/04; 1:54:56 PM #

7 December 2004

Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing

Readers of Nonprofit Online News will be aware of my longstanding interest in open source software. If you share that interest or if you or your organization have any kind of intellectual property whose value to your community you want to enhance through licensing, then I highly recommend that you buy Andrew M. St Laurent's book Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing. The book is very clearly and engagingly written. It provides political, economic, and social contexts for each of the licenses that it describes and thus gives very solid advice about when you might want to use which license. It covers all the prominent licensing models (including BSD, GPL, and Creative Commons) as well as a number that you probably haven't come across. As a nice touch, the book itself is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Posted: 12/7/04; 5:49:05 PM #

Benchmarking for Nonprofits: How To Measure, Manage, And Improve Performance

Jason Saul likes numbers even more than I do. He's been working in the field of benchmarking nonprofit performance for years and has finally written a book about it: Benchmarking for Nonprofits: How To Measure, Manage, And Improve Performance. As befits something published by Wilder, the book is very practical in nature, with step by step instructions on how to move your organization toward better measurements of success and better processes for learning from those measurements. As much as I'm an advocate for good metrics, I have my worries that we often end up giving more weight to the things we can easily measure, rather than working to measure those things that truly have the greatest weight. But aside from that caveat, this book is a great place to start. Posted: 12/7/04; 5:48:09 PM #

6 December 2004

85% of E-Government Projects Fail

World Bank research shows that 85% of e-government projects fail. Vendors are perfectly willing to pocket millions of dollars for each project, even when the requirements are poorly designed, there are shifting targets, and there is the neverending expectation that technology, rather than communication, be the focus. I did a lecture tour on this very subject a few years ago and the problem, as far as I can tell, just gets worse. Posted: 12/6/04; 10:50:37 AM #

Communication for Peace: Contrasting Approaches
	In Communication for Peace: Contrasting Approaches, Clemencia Rodriguez compares the typical top-down broadcasting approach (which she calls "epidemiological" for some idiosyncratic reasons) with network centric and grassroots organizing, which she gives the compelling name of "social fabric" organizing. Posted: 12/6/04; 10:50:28 AM #

USA For UNHCR

Rick Christ recently recommended that we take time to send out thanks to the people working around the world with the United Nations Refugee Agency. Considering the growing number of refugees produced by our war in Iraq and the mind boggling numbers in Africa, I have to say that they deserve our thanks. This site is putting together the "world's largest holiday card". We should note that this is also a gentle and compelling list building tool. Posted: 12/6/04; 10:50:13 AM #

5 December 2004

FBI Spies on Various Nonprofits

Although most of my readers can clearly see the connection between civil liberties issues and the health of civil society organizations, I do get a fair amount of email arguing that these have nothing to do with each other and I should restrict myself to covering the latter. Well, this news should make the connection pretty obvious. The American Civil Liberties Union has evidence that the FBI and local police, working through a so-called Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are spying on environmental, anti-war, political, and faith-based groups. If you haven't already answered this question, it might be time to decide what your organization is doing to protect itself and its partners. Posted: 12/5/04; 6:19:36 PM #

2 December 2004

Executive Briefings: Nonprofits & Technology Series

The last few years of technological change have brought nonprofit leaders enormous opportunities and challenges and the pace of change shows no sign of slowing. The potential to make the same mistakes over and over continues to be an issue for many organizations. On January 11, 12, & 13, 2005, I'll be teaching a series of live, online Executive Briefings on Nonprofits & Technology. I'll be delivering a set of solid tools and guidelines tailored for needs of organizational decision makers. Posted: 12/2/04; 6:18:09 PM #

Counter-inaugural 2005

The Counter-Inaugural 2005 project is a coalition of organizations coordinating a week of action during the week of January 15 - 20, 2005, in response to the second George Bush inauguration. We shouldn't count on the mainstream media letting the rest of the country know about this though, since pretty much nobody knows that Bush was prevented from taking the traditional route to the White House by massive protests at his first inauguration. Posted: 12/2/04; 1:45:43 PM #

Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle U.S. Secrecy
	In Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle U.S. Secrecy, William Fisher offers a nice survey of the organizations, web resources, and tactics being used to address issues in a time of extreme control of information by the U.S. government. Posted: 12/2/04; 1:45:31 PM #

1 December 2004

Anti-globalization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
	It was five years ago that the police rioted outside my home in Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests. That day was a turning point in the Alternative (sometimes called Anti-) Globalization Movement, a movement that has since become, from my perspective, the most important global movement of our time. Posted: 12/1/04; 10:49:03 AM #

Networks refuse ad from UCC about inclusiveness

In a move that bodes ill for any nonprofit buying advertising time on any issue where an organization disagrees with George W. Bush, it seems that CBS and NBC have refused to accept ads from the United Church of Christ, in which the denomination tries to demonstrate its inclusiveness. The reason cited by CBS: "the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast." Posted: 12/1/04; 10:48:53 AM #