Philanthropy 2173 – Butts In the Seats

Foundation Data Wants To Be Set Free!

March 26, 2012 by Joe Patti

Last week Lucy Bernholz posted a collection of links on Philanthropy 2173. One of these was a video of a talk she gave last June on how the information foundations collect is as important to non-profits as the money they give.

She notes that foundations end up being huge repositories of information about successful activities in our communities and across the nation. In the best scenario, these projects get funded once and then filed away in the archives. In the worst scenario, they just get filed away.

As a result of their granting activities, Bernholz notes, the foundations know a whole lot about whatever their areas of interest are. But because the data hasn’t been aggregated into a usable form, even the foundation may not be aware of just how much they know. She advocates for making that data readily available so that groups can collate the information and make everyone aware of just what exactly is going on, what is needed and what the costs of delivering services are.

Bernholz uses the example of looking at all the requests made to Donors Choose, combined with what foundations are funding and the Race To The Top programs to learn exactly what is happening and needed in classrooms.

According to Bernholz’s post last week, there has been some progress since she gave her talk in using non profit data to help organizations.

To my mind, such transparency would probably also promote much more accurate reporting by non profits. It has been noted that grant reports have a tendency to be idealized. All the goals are met or exceeded and there are no challenges or unforeseen problems causing a deviation from the proposal. A system which files such information away and forgets it perpetuates this practice.

However, if the information is out there and circulating and people are repeatedly contacting you to find out how you designed your programs to achieve such wonderful success, there is greater pressure to have your results more closely reflect reality.

Cheating For Literacy

January 12, 2011 by Joe Patti

Hat tip to Philanthropy 2173 for calling attention to a wild fund raising event being sponsored by the San Francisco literacy organization, 826 Valencia, called A Spelling Bee for Cheaters. Essentially, you join or form a spelling bee team which raises money for an entrance fee and then uses additional money to do everything from getting hints, getting a do over, using a dictionary, skipping a round or skipping straight to the finals round. They are doing this in conjunction with the creators of the musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Though, alas, it doesn’t appear that they are performing the show, too. That would be a real event! Still, this sounds like a great idea for a fund raising event.
One can buy tickets to watch the fun. They are having some cool celebrities at their pre-event VIP reception it might be worth the price to attend.

One of the things I liked about the event set up is that they have a page which allows you to form your own team, join another team or sponsor a specific competitor after searching for them and viewing their personal fund raising page. (Actually, until I copied the link for the previous sentence, I didn’t realize I left their webpage and was on a page hosted by their donation processor, Gifttool.com.) Though not a lot of people availed themselves of the personal pages, yet.

Only 15 Minutes Of Fame For Tragedies?

January 19, 2010 by Joe Patti

Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173 makes some fascinating reflections on the impact of technology on giving vis a vis the Haitian earthquake relief efforts.

I confess a huge amount of skepticism when I had first heard that one could donate to the relief effort via text messaging on your cell phones. I wondered how much the phone companies were profiting off this and how big a cut the donation processors would be taking. Apparently I wasn’t the only one because according to Bernholz, the phone companies have waived the fees under pressure of public opinion.

She also talks about the possibility that those who received funds may be under greater scrutiny. I remember after Hurricane Katrina, many people were horrified to learn how great a percentage of their donations were going to administrative overhead at the Red Cross and similar organizations. The Red Cross has shown some transparency by tweeting near real time updates of the climbing donation totals. Bernholz suggests that Twitter may become the platform where this is not only reported–but where people also question what has been done with the money.

The suggestion that really grabbed my attention was her idea that technology might cause/allow people to acquire “Donor Attention Deficit Disorder”

That people all over the world can be so instantly engaged and moved to donate is certainly a good thing. But does it come with costs?

On Wednesday, January 13, #Haiti was a trending topic on Twitter all day (a measure of what the millions of tweets are discussing). By Thursday, January 14, it was gone. Does the ability to give instantly and painlessly (mobile donors won’t even see a charge for the gift until they get their next phone bill) make it extra easy to give and move on? Will “donor fatigue” be replaced by “donor A.D.D.?”

The concept that even tragedies have only 15 minutes of fame before people move on is pretty chilling. If the best tactic for successful fund raising is providing people with an opportunity to give at the point where the emotional appeal is greatest, it is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain any sort of long term support. And how long will it be before people become inured to solicitations of calculated to concentrate a great deal of emotional response in a short span. Such an approach might stunt efforts to gather support for true tragedies.

It probably doesn’t help that we are told to just give money. Granted, in this case, it just isn’t practical to become physically involved. Much less so that after Hurricane Katrina. There is also something of an underlying message that once you have given, you no longer need to be engaged with the problem. All you are being asked to do is just give money and you can accomplish that by doing something you enjoy doing everyday–text a number.