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News for August 2005

30 August 2005

There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

In today's feature article, There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, Putnam Barber takes a hard hitting look at the culture of entitlement that is so prevalent in our sector. Although I do believe that you can be a tax protester with integrity, I agree that far too often, nonprofits try to justify some pretty dreadful things by pleading neediness. If you work with a lot of nonprofits, I think you will nod with recognition at his observations. Posted: 8/30/05; 4:42:51 PM #

29 August 2005

Techniques of Structured Problem Solving

Arthur VanGundy's Techniques of Structured Problem Solving has been on or near my desk for more than fifteen years. It's an encyclopedia of tools for figuring things out, with a solid collection of both divergent tools (for generating ideas and being creative) and convergent tools (for selection and synthesis of ideas). As these tools have slowly migrated online, I have found the book even more relevant. Posted: 8/29/05; 10:35:00 AM #

Resource Manual for a Living Revolution

I don't believe this book is in print any more, but if you can find a copy, you should snatch it up. The Resource Manual for a Living Revolution is one of the most practical collections of skills and tools I have ever come across. It's a book for powerful peacemakers, straight out of the nonviolent activism of the Quakers. It has sections on decision making and conflict resolution, project management, community building, personal growth in the context of activism and more. It even has a section on cooking for large groups! Posted: 8/29/05; 10:29:58 AM #

26 August 2005

American Legion Declares War on Protestors -- Media Next?

Mostly I use this column to talk about the great things that nonprofits are doing or the great things they could be doing, with the right vision and strategy. But every now and then I have to talk about something reprehensible and now is such a time. It seems the American Legion, who last I checked use the First Amendment quite a bit, have declared a kind of war on protestors. They voted to use any means necessary to oppose public protests and media events that they deem to be in opposition to the war in Iraq. Posted: 8/26/05; 4:27:00 PM #

Utah Rave Bust

Experienced readers of mine will know that I believe civil liberties to be one of the essential pillars of civil society. Simply put, every single one of the U.S. nonprofits I have worked with in the last year have depended on their First Amendment right to assemble to get anything at all done. They should all be interested in knowing that in Utah, they use SWAT teams to shut down legal outdoor dances for crimes that might be committed at some point. It's an amazing and frightening story. Posted: 8/26/05; 4:14:03 PM #

24 August 2005

The Art of the Long View

Peter Schwartz's methods of scenario planning have become very popular in the last decade, based in part on the success of his consulting firm, Global Business Network. Personally, I find it to be a great implementation of a crucial insight: We don't really know what the future will bring. In practice, unfortunately, it often leads to an overly reactive model of strategic planning, but if you read Schwartz's book on the method, The Art of the Long View, you'll know that it's instead meant to encourage strategic flexibility. In a time when I see most nonprofit project plans embrace simple linear projections of the future, this is still a very valuable lesson. Posted: 8/24/05; 9:48:53 AM #

The Rights of Authors, Artists, and Other Creative People

Despite being terribly out of date when it comes to the Internet and some recent draconian changes in copyright law, from time to time I still turn to the basic ACLU guide to author and artist rights, The Rights of Authors, Artists, and Other Creative People. Unfortunately, this topic has been of some legal interest to me recently, but in a broader sense it's of relevance to any organization who is in the business of ideas. Posted: 8/24/05; 9:43:42 AM #

The Balanced Scorecard

Sometimes you need a compelling buzzword or phrase in order to help organizations do the obvious. In the Nineties, Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard did just that. They emphasized that there were four parts of an organization that required equal attention: financials, internal business processes, learning and growth, and stakeholder (or customer) relations. More importantly their book provided a method for scoring an organization's progress in those four areas, leading to a framework that is today very widely practices as a means of evaluation in both the for profit and nonprofit world. My major misgiving with the method is how it manages to leave out actual outcomes in the world. Posted: 8/24/05; 9:41:23 AM #

23 August 2005

The Hard Work of Failure Analysis
	Writing in the Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge newsletter, Amy Edmondson and Mark Cannon look at The Hard Work of Failure Analysis. Sadly, I think that many philanthropists and nonprofit leaders are better avoiders of failure than they are seekers of success. This leads to a great many lost lessons. Posted: 8/23/05; 3:12:33 PM #

A Subject for Those Who Want to Make a Difference
	In A Subject for Those Who Want to Make a Difference, Alan Finder of the New York Times looks at the growth of social entrepreneurship as an academic discipline over the last fifteen years, with a special focus on some new fellowships at Harvard University. Posted: 8/23/05; 3:09:41 PM #

Public Interest Registry eNewsletter

I'm delighted to see the Public Interest Registry launch an eNewsletter. It only comes out quarterly, so there's a good chance you'll forget you subscribed by the time the next issue makes it to your spam-choked inbox, but I have to say that I think PIR got their content right. I was worried that they would try to reproduce the work of various assistance providers, but instead they are focusing on their area of expertise and teaching readers about the technologies, programs and policies that affect how the Internet functions. The inaugural issue includes information about international domain names and an introduction to PIR's parent organization, the Internet Society. Posted: 8/23/05; 3:07:16 PM #

22 August 2005

Web 2.0 Collaboration

In Web 2.0 Collaboration, David Geilhufe does some of his best work to date on the topic of the framework for cooperative ventures created by emerging web services infrastructures. I was particularly pleased by his challenge to Compumentor and VolunteerMatch to open up their databases to outside development. I made several similar pleas a few years back, including asking tech grantmakers to focus on funding networks of innovation, rather than single providers. I didn't get much traction on that, to say the least. With new examples of innovation happening on top of the Google Maps APIs and well framed arguments such as David's, maybe now we can get somewhere. Posted: 8/22/05; 12:46:20 PM #

The IT Revolution & NP Organizations in Los Angeles

The Center for Nonprofit Management's recent report on The IT Revolution & NP Organizations in Los Angeles (41 page PDF) has much encouraging news about many nonprofits having gotten to a solid place around basic ICT systems and services. The reports most interesting implications include: Sporadic IT planning can lead to IT chaos. Budget size does not affect ICT usage so much as the kinds of challenges faced by the organization. And finally, funders should reconsider restrictions on grants that prevent spending on IT infrastructure. Posted: 8/22/05; 12:37:38 PM #

Five Reasons Social Networking Doesn't Work

As we witness the decline of sites like Friendster and the changing of sites like Linked In into classified ad servers, it's smart to ask what happened to all the hype about "social networking". In Five Reasons Social Networking Doesn't Work, Molly Wood does just that. Stating the desperately needed obvious, she says: (1) There's nothing to do there. (2) It takes too much time. (3) Traffic alone isn't enough. (4) Strangers kind of suck (or, put nicely, the social hierarchy is really not that attractive). (5) We already have the Internet. That last one is my favorite and is also one of the reasons why central bookmarking systems like del.icio.us will eventually have to give way to decentralized alternatives. Posted: 8/22/05; 12:26:33 PM #

15 Tips for Improved Subject Lines

The Subject line in a piece of email is second in importance only to the From line in terms of its impact on whether someone opens your email. Until just recently, Nonprofit Online News, for all its best practices, had terrible subject lines in its email versions. This was a source of some embarrassment to me when I would lecture on the subject and we finally changed our habits this year. If you publish an email newsletter or calls to action to your stakeholders, you might be interested in these 15 Tips for Improved Subject Lines from the folks at Email Labs. Posted: 8/22/05; 12:21:00 PM #

Secret and Enormous Costs of Fundraising

Aron Goldman hosts the Policy Portal at Social Edge. Yesterday, he posted some commentary about the Secret and Enormous Costs of Fundraising in which he takes foundations to task for the overhead that they impose on grantseekers, but which they are typically unwilling to fund. Giving away money costs money, for sure, but I share the author's frustration with how much of that cost has been put onto nonprofits. Posted: 8/22/05; 12:07:09 PM #

NGO-In-A-Box

I have heard the phrase such and such "in-a-box" too many times to think of it as anything more than a cliche, but of course we live in the era of government by cliche, so I suppose I had better get used to it. Anyway, I have to say that Tactical Tech's NGO-in-a-box is a step in the right direction when it comes to the matter of ICT infrastructure in developing countries. It goes beyond the "shovel-ware" concept of so many collections of free software on CDs by choosing the right mix of software (including NGO specific tools) and most importantly, including documents to help with usage scenarios. But toolkits like this won't really live up to their label until they come with installation and setup wizards that allow an NGO to go through a comprehensive series of organizational questions, the answers to which culminate in a functioning nonprofit ICT system. Posted: 8/22/05; 11:56:51 AM #

19 August 2005

Rob Johnston on the Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award Finalists

Rob Johnston has some thoughtful remarks about the recent Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award finalists. He notices that all the organizations are relatively mature and I share his sense that innovation doesn't only occur in established groups. He's also not sure that the ability to raise money (which will determine the winner) is the way to select among them. I certainly don't see how it has much to do with how innovative they are. But like me, he thinks this is a step in the right direction for Amazon and encourages you to look over the finalists and consider making a donation. Posted: 8/19/05; 10:44:15 AM #

NPR's Podcast Strategy
	As fallout of the unfortunate tension between local public radio stations and content producers, it looks like National Public Radio will only podcast part of their programs. The Internet has brought an end to the broadcast monopoly of local stations and it's time for them to focus on the real strengths that derive from their geographical connections. Posted: 8/19/05; 10:37:35 AM #

18 August 2005

Inviting the World to Transform
	Back in 2002, the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society published Inviting the World to Transform (91 page PDF), a report on the powerful role that contemplative practice can play in nourishing social justice work. They also explore the challenges involved in creating organizations and movements that are open to contemplation. Posted: 8/18/05; 4:43:49 PM #

NPO FAQ: Recent Changes
	I'm pleased to see the Nonprofit FAQ doing so well in its new home at Idealist.org. The recent changes page is enough to tell me that it will be a vibrant resource for some time to come. Now, if they would only give me an RSS feed for it.... Posted: 8/18/05; 4:37:24 PM #

Social Source Software: The Big Idea

Back in June, I missed David Geilhufe's Big Idea for a different kind of software ecosystem for nonprofits. The key problem, as he sees it, is this: "Leading firms don't work with one another to build markets, but focus on building proprietary software platforms that seek to be all things to all people or focus on a small little niche." His solution is widespread adoption of the same open source technologies and standards. Frankly, I would settle for the standards alone. Posted: 8/18/05; 4:34:52 PM #

Why Should Intellectual Property Rights Matter to Civil Society?
	I know that sometimes I write about things here and I don't make clear their relevance to nonprofit organizations. Patent, copyright, and related issues are one example, so I was very pleased to read this accessible piece by Communications Rights in the Information Society on Why Should Intellectual Property Rights Matter to Civil Society? Posted: 8/18/05; 4:29:25 PM #

17 August 2005

Role Models of Rigor and Vision: Barbara Kibbe and The Skoll Foundation

One of the great rewards of my work is the people I get to meet. In Role Models of Rigor and Vision, I profile Barbara Kibbe and her current work. I have been an admirer of hers for nearly a decade now and I think she has found a great partnership in her new home at the Skoll Foundation, where she directs the Social Sector Program and initiatives related to the effectiveness of the foundation itself. Posted: 8/17/05; 4:44:00 PM #

16 August 2005

The Cluetrain Manifesto

I'm amazed that I haven't yet directly recommended that you buy The Cluetrain Manifesto in book form. In this book, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger expand on the ninety-five theses that they developed to help us understand what the Internet means for how organizations communicate. The book is a call for radical honesty and the empowerment of networks as a means to success. Posted: 8/16/05; 1:57:50 PM #

Rules for Radicals

Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is one of the most important books on practical social change and community building ever written and it's definitely one of the most influential. Written in the 1960s, its insights and methods are as relevant to today's modern world of online organizing and global movements as they were to the community organizers of Chicago. It is unapologetic in its understanding that organizing is about power and it is realistic in its approach to the challenge of fighting Machiavellian strategies with the ethics and methods of an open society. Posted: 8/16/05; 1:53:10 PM #

12 August 2005

SANGONeT Relaunches PRODDER

One of the things we take for granted in the United States is the ability to find local nonprofits, discover if an organization is actually a nonprofit, and so forth. This is due to a well developed regulatory framework and a great many databases that are maintained by governments and organizations. Such databases are an essential part of the empowering infrastructure for civil society. So, you will see why it's exciting news that SANGONeT has relaunched PRODDER, the definitive Southern African civil society organization database. Posted: 8/12/05; 12:35:44 PM #

Social Movements: A Summary of What Works
	Charles Dobson's summary of what works in social movements (10 page PDF) is a refreshing piece of work. If you're not familiar with the scholarly literature on effective social movements, then this would be a great place to start. He explores preconditions for success, individual inducements, the ingredients of micro-mobilization, and the maintenance of movements. Posted: 8/12/05; 12:35:35 PM #

Waking Up To Their Rights
	In Waking Up To Their Rights, Business Week looks at the growth of grassroots workers movements in China and India. These are brave pioneers, especially in China, where labor organizers can be imprisoned for "subversion". Posted: 8/12/05; 12:35:08 PM #

11 August 2005

The Rough Guide to a Better World

The Rough Guide to a Better World (112 page PDF) is a lay person's overview of global poverty and development work. It's not a radical book, by any means, but for a general audience interested in knowing more than just that periodically they hear about people starving in Africa, I think it's spot on. Plus, it has all the production values of the Rough Guide travel books, which makes it a pleasant ebook to read. Given the subject, that's a smart idea. Posted: 8/11/05; 5:33:40 PM #

Martus Human Rights Bulletin System

I have been following (and admiring) the evolution of the Martus Human Rights Bulletin System since before its first public release. In brief, Martus is a tool that allows people to document human rights abuses, transmit it in an encrypted form (to avoid the prying eyes of the institutions of abuse), and store the information in redundant servers around the world (to avoid the destruction of evidence through seizure of computers). It's evolved into quite the powerful communication platform. Posted: 8/11/05; 5:14:50 PM #

Bringing Evaluation to the Grassroots

Margo Menconi's paper on Bringing Evaluation to the Grassroots is an important case study of the Mobilization for Global Justice, a coalition that organized a week of actions in Washington DC in response to actions of the IMF and the World Bank. The conclusions are supportive of the application of evaluation methods, even in the most anarchic of strategies and movements. Posted: 8/11/05; 4:03:31 PM #

The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere
	One of the most interesting things about the New Politics Institute's recent report on The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere is the simple recognition that, with 80,000 new weblogs being launched every single day, there is no single cluster of blogs and voices. Just like any other network, there are many different interconnected communities of interest. Posted: 8/11/05; 3:50:05 PM #

10 August 2005

Upcoming Email Newsletter Marketing Briefing Sessions

We offer a growing range of online professional briefings, but our most popular remains our series on Email Newsletter Marketing, which will be delivered next on September 13 - 15, 2005. We have some surprises in store for this series related to forthcoming publications and tools. As we exit the American Summer doldrums, now would be a great time to take these workshops! Posted: 8/10/05; 5:43:42 PM #

How Citizens' Groups Destroy Themselves

Charles Dobson's take on How Citizens' Groups Destroy Themselves accurately reflects my own experience with dysfunctional organizations over the years. His key contributors to organizational demise are: (1) too little fun, (2) too much of an inward focus, (3) too many people (interesting one), (4) the wrong people, (5) too little contact, and (6) objectives outmatch resources. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:04:03 PM #

Data, Information, Knowledge, & Wisdom
	The distinctions between Data, Information, Knowledge, & Wisdom are often useless cliches. So I was very pleased to run across Bellinger, Castro, and Mills practical and pithy explanation of the differences. Best of all, these are distinctions that you can apply. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:54 PM #

Build Your Business With Open Source

Infoworld has compiled a truly daunting special report entitled Build your Business with Open Source. If you harbor doubts about the viability of non-proprietary platforms for your work, I highly recommend that you take a look at this report. Rather than touch on only a single issue or skim the surface with an optimistic overview, this report goes into useful detail in several areas, including: constituency relationship management, resource and business process management, telephony, content management, and much more. There is also a "buyers" guide and links to a huge array of resources. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:46 PM #

How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces
	Last year, Roland Tanglao wrote a short piece on How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces. If the mechanics, vocabulary, or the information flows of the world of weblogs are at all unclear to you, I recommend this piece. It takes the form of an excellent content flow diagram that's well annotated and explained. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:36 PM #

Craigslist Nonprofit Boot Camp
	The Craigslist Foundation's Nonprofit Boot Camp looks like a great event for people looking to start an organization. It has an engaging attitude and a wide range of very practical sessions. It's only $50 and it looks like a lot of fun. It's on October 8, 2005 in San Francisco. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:03:19 PM #

Ten Things That Every Nonprofit Executive Needs to Know About Information Technology

Deborah Elizabeth Finn has listed Ten Things That Every Nonprofit Executive Needs to Know About Information Technology: (1) Very little technical knowledge is required of you. (2) Your board of directors should participate in your technology planning. (3) High-quality planning resources are available at no charge. (4) You can follow innovations in IT, without a technical background. (5) IT will probably never save your nonprofit organization any money. (6) You need an in-house IT committee. (7) Administrative staff should be the lynchpins of your IT infrastructure. (8) In the long run, IT training and support will make up about 70% of your IT budget. (9) Donated hardware, software, and services can cost a nonprofit more than purchased products or services in the long run. (10) Most strategic IT problems are actually organizational development problems. I don't entirely agree with #4 (I have plenty of cost savings examples) or #8 (I believe that planning and evaluation should have a meaningful chunk of the tech budget), but this is still a list worth talking about. Posted: 8/10/05; 2:02:20 PM #

9 August 2005

Nonprofit Online News Journal, August 2005

The August 2005 issue of Nonprofit Online News Journal is out and its contents are in keeping with my general preference for thinkers and writers who synthesize depth and practicality. As usual, there are the online resources (34 of them) and the book reviews (six of those). There is a new article by me on Nonprofits and Weblogs, a great guide to branding your organization through your web site, a ten year review of the state of online fundraising, and some fantastic thinking from a team at the Institute for the Future on cooperation between organizations. Posted: 8/9/05; 5:37:56 PM #

The Enduring Power of “The Gilbert Email Manifesto”

I seem to be a popular interview subject recently. Michael Stein of GetActive just published a conversation we had about The Enduring Power of “The Gilbert Email Manifesto”. We talked about putting strategy before tools and how email thinking can help you do that. I also laid out three recommendations for vendors who want to help nonprofits think critically about online communication. Posted: 8/9/05; 11:55:16 AM #

Myths About Online Volunteering

The very thoughtful Jayne Cravens has documented the twelve Myths About Online Volunteering, which are (in brief): Online volunteering is great for people who don't have time to volunteer! People who volunteer online don't volunteer face-to-face. People who volunteer online do so for organizations that are geographically far from them. People who volunteer online are mostly young, affluent and living in the USA. People who volunteer online are very shy and have trouble interacting with others. Online volunteers engage primarily in technology-related tasks. Online volunteering is impersonal. Interviewing potential volunteers face-to-face is much more reliable than interviewing people online. The Internet Is Dangerous and, therefore, online volunteering opens an organization and its clients up to many risks. The biggest obstacle to online volunteering is lack of Internet access. Much more needs to be done to get people to volunteer online. Online volunteering is a very new concept. Posted: 8/9/05; 11:50:01 AM #

Tzedakah

I have been recently charmed by the wisdom of Maimonides, especially the eight levels of Jewish charity called Tzedakah. It intrigues me first of all that while tzedakah is often translated as "charity", it's based on a root meaning "justice". I firmly believe it is critical to make that connection. The eight levels themselves are also interesting, ranging from unwilling giving at the bottom to empowering someone to become free of charity at the top. Posted: 8/9/05; 11:44:29 AM #

ICT and Training: A Proposal for an Ecological Model of Innovation
	Arthur Tatnall and Bill Davey have developed A Proposal for an Ecological Model of Innovation in the context of training in ICTs. They take a hard look at the social systems inside most organizations and propose some methods for improving the rate of adoption of new innovations and tools. Posted: 8/9/05; 11:38:28 AM #

7 August 2005

Amazon Nonprofit Innovation Award Finalists 2005

Amazon has announced their 2005 Nonprofit Innovation Award Finalists. I'm not sure what this says about the awards, but the panel of judges includes such people as Muhammed Ali and actress Tea Leoni. One thing I can say for the judges: They were consistent, in at least two ways. As best as I can tell, there is not a single activist organization among the finalists. And every single one of the organizations takes an economic empowerment approach to social service. I like that approach, but I thought there were more innovations out there than that. Posted: 8/7/05; 11:32:54 PM #

Guidelines for Measuring Trust in Organizations
	The Institute for Public Relations has published a set of Guidelines for Measuring Trust in Organizations (17 page PDF). It might offer some insight to those of you who are into measuring things, as I sometimes can be. But it might just be an odd exercise, when looked at from the nonprofit perspective, where trust is the very currency of our existence. Posted: 8/7/05; 11:31:29 PM #

Audio Activism - Citizen Journalism Tech Kit 001
	Brian Russell of Audio Activism offers the first in a series of Citizen Journalism Tech Kits. It's a combination of a podcast, a step by step guide, and annotated links on how to do very cheap recording and broadcasting of interviews and the like. Posted: 8/7/05; 11:31:19 PM #

3 August 2005

Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think

I have been wallowing joyfully in the theoretical and practical insights that I'm finding in a massive anthology entitled Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. I'm someone who often takes important phone calls while pacing in front of a white board, where I will draw diagrams and conceptual maps for my own benefit during conversations. There are roughly 50 different articles in this tome, organized into sections on topics such as the creative tension between focus and context, data mapping, and information workspaces. This is a treasure trove of research and inspiration for anyone who likes to think about thinking or wants to build tools to help people be smarter. I highly recommend it. Just don't drop it on your foot. Posted: 8/3/05; 4:54:57 PM #

The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Trick, & Hacks

For the last year, we have been working quietly on a series of upgrades to Nonprofit Online News and our other web sites. As pioneers, it's always interesting to watch the trains pull in next to you, when it seems like only yesterday you were breaking new ground in your covered wagon. In that light, one of the themes of our upgrades is modernization of our HTML, which includes migrating to the use of Style Sheets. We have a library of manuals on CSS, but it turns out that one of the handiest has been Rachel Andrew's The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Trick, & Hacks. Often, books are given titles like that as a poor excuse for sloppy thinking. This author is not afraid to make strong recommendations on the best way to solve a particular problem and that's been very helpful indeed. Posted: 8/3/05; 12:22:46 PM #