Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong: This is a “must see” video. Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend — not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let’s change the way we think about changing the world.
Everything the donating public has been taught about giving is dysfunctional, says AIDS Ride founder Dan Pallotta. He aims to transform the way society thinks about charity and giving and change.
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New Study: Online giving is up; Email response is down: M+R Strategic Services &
NTEN just released their
annual online benchmark study for nonprofits, and they found
online fundraising continues to grow - as does the social network reach of nonprofits. (The
study is based on analysis of 55 large nonprofits, including the
American Red Cross, Sierra Club,
American Lung Association, AARP and Human Rights Campaign.) That’s the good news.
The bad news is that email response rates are declining.
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What Does Community, Network and Crowd Really Mean Anyhow? Why is it important to know the difference between your nonprofits community, network, and crowd? These are terms that we seem to throw around frequently but haven’t yet clearly defined. John Haydon recently had the opportunity to hangout with
Amy Sample Ward and Allyson Kapin who wrote
Social Change Anytime Everywhere to define and discuss community, network, and crowd. In this video they talked about how organizations use the network to engage the crowd. They also talk about the strengths and weaknesses of Facebook and
Twitter.
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RIP Google Reader: Don’t Scream Who Moved My Cheese, Pivot Your Reading: Recently
Google announced that it would close Google Reader on July 1st. This prompted a lot of angst for many who had grown dependent on this free software. More than 125,000 people signed this
online petition at Change.Org and lists of alternatives to Google Reader started popping up like this
one from Lifehacker and
list.ly. In online discussions with nonprofit techies, Megan Keane
pointed to the loss of an anti-censorship tool in places like Iran, and Nancy Schwartz noted in an online discussion, “this is a kick to independent content publishing, not just convenience on the readers side. It’s more corporate content control, but that’s what we get from relying on free (but privately held) tools.”
But is it really a big deal? When I thought about it, while I use RSS feeds daily, I myself had quit using Google Reader a while back.
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Are You Listening and Paying Attention to Your Constituents? If one of your constituents were standing right in front of you talking would you talk to them? If they were complaining about something you did or a service you provided them not working, would you listen?
What if they wrote you a letter? What if they called you on the phone? What if they sent you a fax? What if they sent you an email? What if they wrote a review online? What if they put something on your Facebook wall? What if they tweeted you the message?
The first few are obvious hopefully. Of course you would, should be the expected answer. What about the last ones? Are you listening to those channels for feedback in your nonprofit?
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