Nonprofit Online News (Gilbert Center)

In the Nonprofit Quarterly, Rick Cohen offers Seven Predictions for Philanthropy in 2012, and I was fascinated to see him predict an enormous shaping influence of the Occupy Movement and its issues. In brief, his predictions are as follows: (1) The movement itself and the wellspring of discontent that it has tapped will drive requests to grantmakers in the direction of advocacy and distribution of wealth. (2) The prevailing language of theOccupy Movement, concerning the power of the 1% and of the 99%, will put some foundations in an uncomfortable position, given their relationship to wealth. (3) There will be more programmatic related investment. (4) Shifts in federal money will be an issue, but programs with social enterprise language may do well. (5) Foundations will be looked at to help with the slashing of humanitarian aid from government sources. (6) Nothing will change when it comes to the charitable tax deduction. (7) There will continue to be a growing class divide in the nonprofit sector, with the sector itself moving more and more in the direction of its own 1% and 99% divisions.

Since 2001, United for a Fair Economy has done an assessment of the conditions in the United States as measured against the vision of equality articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birth and life we honor today in the U.S. Their most recent report, State of the Dream 2012: The Emerging Majority (cover page for executive summary, 42 page PDF, and links to past reports) is a stunning portrayal of a shift from a relatively egalitarian, middle class society to a society of rich and poor, resembling many third world countries, with people of color dominating the underclass. I can think of no other more compelling evidence that the Occupy Movement is the popular vehicle most aligned with King's vision. I encourage you to use this report, in the context of memorializing Dr. King and his work, to see where you and your organization fits in this movement.

We're counting the weeks until the publication of one of our most substantial reports in years: Does Evidence Matter to Grantmakers? Data, Logic, and the Lack thereof in the Largest U.S. Foundations. Leading up to that date, we're offering a series of discounts for anyone who pre-orders the report. The price on publication will be $249. With the current discount, you can lock it in at $189, if you order now.

One of the weightiest reports we've published in years is now on a countdown to publication. Does Evidence Matter to Grantmakers? Data, Logic, and the Lack thereof in the Largest U.S. Foundations will be published on January 31, 2012. You can place a pre-order today for over one third off the final price. This report is the culmination of a year's worth of research on the role of evidence-based practice in the grantmaking of the largest foundations in the United States. We wanted to open new doors in this field, including the use of modern techniques such as data mining and semantic analysis. We were similarly interested in a focus on behavioral (rather than self-reported) data, such as published documents and grantmaking decisions. These are methods that we've applied for years in other fields and we felt that their application to this particular field was long overdue. The report itself includes analyses of each of the individual foundations in our sample, as well as in-depth exploration of the field as a whole. It includes comprehensive descriptions of our methods, to help hold us accountable and to help empower other practitioners. It will be of value to grantmakers themselves, of course, but it will also be of value to those who want to understand those grantmakers, whether for writing grants or deepening our knowledge of the field. We look forward to seeing what you think and discovering what you're able to do with this work.

The Newhouse School partnered with the Cision software and online PR firm to survey commercial content creators on their perceptions of social media. The results are summarized in How Online Content Creators Use, Engage In, and Perceive Social Media (6 page PDF). I applaud the researchers and authors for trying to narrow their conclusions down to such things as may reliably be assessed through a survey, but if you read their press release elsewhere you'll get an amazing bit of spin. The story they present is how important Twitter and Facebook are to these professionals (neatly aligning with the services provided by Cision), but when you look at the report itself (even the summary) you'll find that their medium of choice (while certainly still a social medium) is neither of those: It's email.

Tali Sharot's Time Magazine article entitled Optimism Bias: Human Brain May Be Hardwired for Hope, is a surprisingly good overview of a very important piece of science. In my judgement, this research has negative implications for as much as 80% of all nonprofit research and evaluation. As the Gerry McGovern article we've linked to elsewhere shows, one obvious implication of this bias is how worthless it makes most website satisfaction surveys. And yet we keep doing them! Maybe that's because they keep telling us what a good job we're doing?

In their paper on Stimulating Reflection through Engagement in Social Relationships (10 page PDF), the four authors open with these statements:

Reflection on one's own practice is an important aspect of lifelong learning. For professional lifelong learners, this means questioning their professional practice (way of working), the self-created and organizationally-imposed structures they operate in, and the processes they use in their daily professional life. However, such practice and the underlying principles are often hidden from the surface, and therefore, difficult to evaluate. They then go on to explore how social interactions (and by implication social media, professional relationships, and even consulting engagements) can be structured to encourage the sort of reflection that leads to ongoing learning. They present a particular tool (for assessing intercultural competence) as part of the exploration, but the implications extend well beyond that.

The research staff of The Gilbert Center have spent much of the last year investigating the language and practices of the largest foundations in the U.S. in regard to this question: How do grantmakers expect their grantees to prove the effectiveness of their programs? We realized that, if we combined those very specific insights with the planning and evaluation framework we've developed over the last fifteen years, we could offer a fundraising seminar that could really change things for the people who participated. We're now ready to announce that seminar. How to Win the Grantwriting Game: Mastering Standards of Evidence in these Demanding Times will be held online on Wednesday, January 18, 2012. We'll teach you how to inoculate yourself against hidden "gotchas", how to set up a framework for writing multiple grants, how to make rigorous grantwriting less of a burden, and most importantly, how to use the knowledge that we're sharing to write proposals that are genuinely hard to resist. We're limiting registration so that we have a chance of handling Q & A, so register early. Also, we've priced the seminar very aggressively for multiple participants. It will make a huge difference for you if you send at least two people.

I'm not the only one who's been thinking about the relationship between civil society organizations and the Occupy Wall Street movement. One of the easiest and most poignant questions to ask is this: What If They Sent in Social Services to Help Occupations Instead of Riot Cops to Bust Heads? Joshua Holland of Alternet notes that, as of a week ago, at least $13 million had been spent by city governments to try to evict groups assembling to speak and petition for the redress of grievances. If there were any honesty to the concerns expressed by these municipalities (sanitation and other such excuses), they would long ago have spent money on things other than people wielding pepper spray and batons. On the other hand, do you think maybe they really do want to help build the movement? Responding with compassion might not have worked so well.

The three partners in the Bellagio Initiative have commissioned and published a paper by Michael Edwards entitled The Role and Limitations of Philanthropy (17 page PDF). Like the Initiative, the paper concerns the future of philanthropy and development in the pursuit of human well being. You might think this to be a hopelessly vague topic, but if you look carefully at their definitions and interests, you'll find it quite fascinating. Of greatest interest to me is the paper's section on "Some Ways Forward: Maintaining Diversity and Strengthening Accountability". Although neither of them are well-developed, Edwards puts forward two important ideas: First, he envisions the emergence of an "ecosystem" of philanthropy. This is critical because an ecological metaphor is valuable to encouraging a philanthropic community that is simultaneously integrated and diverse. Second, he proposes a voluntary, but nonetheless vibrant, environment of accountability of foundations. He sees special promise in the role of collaborative funding structures. Edwards -- the author of Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World -- is a critical thinker who is helping move us closer and closer to a "social science of philanthropy". I encourage you to take a close look at this paper. It's not long, but if you mine the references then you're in for quite a ride.