philanthropyOz Blog

Philanthropy Blogs: Community Foundations and Council on Foundations Conference

Some interesting posts have come up on philanthropy-related blogs lately.

Lucy Bernholz of Philanthropy 2173 has some comments to make about community foundations and their leadership role, in “Community Foundations… Are We There Yet?” and summarises the changes she observed in this week’s Council On Foundations annual conference from the point of view of someone who has attended a dozen of their conferences in the past - in ‘Mistakes were made’ she talks about the presence of bloggers, for example.

Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy also has some interesting comments on some of the sessions from the conference, and in particular on the session post on the session Demonstrating Impact: Philanthropy’s Urgent Call to Action. Sean has drilled down to some of the key questions which reflect those we’ve been grappling with as a sector here in Australia:

The discussion was nominally about how foundations can do a better job letting influential Americans and the general public know about the good work they do. But at the root of this is a discussion about identifying and measuring the impact of foundation grantmaking. And at the root of that is a discussion about transparency and the sharing of information about what works AND what doesn’t work.

(More on this kind of issue and possible solutions, from an Australian perspective, will be here in coming months… stay tuned!)

The Stanford Social Innovation Review blog has some interesting commentary on several CoF sessions, including one on Program-Related Investments.

IT in the Nonprofit Sector

This year at Philanthropy Australia we’re making a concerted effort to step up to the plate of effective use of IT in the Australian nonprofit sector. As we say on our IT in the Nonprofit Sector resources page, we’re very conscious of the need for the Australian nonprofit sector to forge forward into making best use of the technology at hand to aid distribution to and communication with both the general public and the rest of the sector.

Already on a global scale the Australian nonprofit sector being left behind, as far as utilising IT goes, in comparison to the UK and USA. Wired.org was holding virtual Nonprofit Technology Conferences back in 2003, and the US Nonprofit Technology Network is already taking bookings for this year’s Conference.

Fortunately, the very benefit of this ‘new’ web technology being developed and utilised is that discussion and documentation of it is occuring online, that is to say - published to a global audience, including us!

So to help Australian readers in the nonprofit sector get into the headspace of our global peers, here are some links that you might like to check out. Though the nonprofit ‘blogosphere’ is frequently concerned with fundraising, and thus nonprofit website discussion focussed on securing donations and engaging donors, we’ve found that a lot of the guides and suggested rules posted by various bloggers are nonetheless relevant to those Philanthropy Australia Members who are reading - that is to say, philanthropic funders who are looking to build their own presence online, but aren’t sure where or how to proceed.

Continue reading IT in the Nonprofit Sector…

Recommended Reading

Here in the Philanthropy Australia office we’ve started putting our feelers out into the more informal online publishing done by nonprofits around the globe. The UK and the USA both have a number of philanthropy blogs - both professional and personal (and sometimes both!) - sharing opinions, information, and links to news and research that bloggers think their readers will be interested in.

Looking around, as far as we can tell we’re the first philanthropy blog on the Australian blogging scene. Instead of just sharing the interesting tidbits on philanathropy that we come up with with each other here in the office, we’re going to be posting links to them in this philanthropyOz Blog, and letting you know why we think you should read them.

If you find anything we’ve missed, please feel free to leave a comment here or drop us an email. If you’d like to subscribe to updates, check out our info page on how to do so.

This week we’ve come across the following:

Wealthy charity donor driven away
This article reports that charitable tax considerations may have influenced the decision of New Zealand’s richest woman, Jan Cameron, to move to Tasmania. The article discusses the limitations of the tax law on donations in New Zealand, and Philanthropy New Zealand’s push to reform the system and remove disincentives to donating large amounts of money.

Philanthropy detected in brain scans!
“ALTRUISM, one of the most difficult human behaviours to define, can be detected in brain scans, US researchers claim. They found that activity in a specific area of the brain could predict altruistic behaviour — and people’s own reports of how selfish or giving they are.”

The 59 Smartest NP Organisations Online (USA)
“These charities were chosen for their excellence in online storytelling and collaboration with their donors. We didn’t play favorites to one cause over another, nor did we look at their fundraising goals or number of members. Instead, these organizations are winners because of their web 2.0 smarts and a willingness to engage their constituents far beyond asking them to dig into their pockets.”

Blogs, Discussion and Charity
A response to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s article in their December edition on philanthropy blogs, posted on TheIncubator, a USA nonprofit blog. (If you’re a Member of Philanthropy Australia and would like a copy of that article, please contact Emily at the Resource Centre.)

Also check out our News page, and if you’re a Member, PRESSing Matters, our weekly Australian media alert service.