1. "The goal is to integrate public policy and charitable giving."2. "Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen."
3. "“He’ll do something that will have political impact. He’s not going to
just hide in the back room and dole out the money with a shade over his
head.” (In this case you have to match the quote to its subject - the "He" - to get points. Double credit if you ID the speaker)
4. "We take a lot of cues from the business world. We have very entrepreneurial people and a very entrepreneurial process. We identify a problem, we analyze it, and we move."
A. Bill Clinton
B. Michael Bloomberg
C. Peter Peterson
D. Bill Gates
And, yes, I am aware that all of the choices are white American men over 50 years old. I didn't say anything (yet) about what the collection of quotes or speakers might indicate. I simply pulled them together from my notes.
"At its best public television adds a little grace note to our lives, but public radio fills a void."
"The study finds that online philanthropy markets are relentless innovators."
"It's a large and diverse universe. Nonprofits have many different network structures and properties depending on the function they serve. It's the classic case of form follows function. A local direct service nonprofit like Glide Memorial Church will have a different network structure than a global movement-based nonprofit like ForestEthics. And if we think in terms of nonprofit production cycle, a research nonprofit like the Institute for Politics and Democracy on the Internet (IPDI) is going to have a different network than an advocacy organization like NRDC that might use IPDI's findings to sharpen it's online advocacy work.
The one thing that I would say in general is that because it is a large and diverse universe, and one where nonprofits are fairly evenly distributed geographically, that the links within and between sectors are limited in their number (low link density) and in their function (low multiplexity). This leads to higher search and collaboration costs. This makes it tough for players to see what is being done elsewhere in the sector and find collaborators. This leads to low innovation, duplication of effort, and stranded local innovation, among other things.
I think this is partly to be expected given that the dramatic growth of the sector since the 1950s. In the United States alone, we have gone from tens of thousands of nonprofits to around 1.5 millions in about 50 years. We need to think of the nonprofit sector in terms of an evolutionary lifecycle. We may still be in the primordial soup. My sense is that the larger, more complex, collaborative structures are yet emerge.
This, however, begs the question, "what can we do to speed up the sector's development?" Our world needs a powerful social sector right now. Do we need more connections? Not necessarily. A large number of indiscriminate new connections can lead to network congestion. That means things slow down. You have to be strategic about how you link resources.
Our work in researching technology clusters is instructive. Tech clusters like Silicon Valley create tremendous value because they optimally link diverse resources in pursuit of a shared goal. And this is key, participants in this ecosystem are…drum roll…clustered! They're close to each other both geographically and socially. And equally, if not more importantly, they're also linked in the right pattern. The research, development, production, and distribution functions of the system are distinct and robust, but optimally linked to create and spread technology innovation. The universities, VCs, entrepreneurs, and professional services in Silicon Valley are linked in what can be described as an autocatalytic set - a technical name for a virtuous circle. This means that the outputs of each entity are a useful inputs for other entities and that as a set, they catalyze their own production. They have other properties too. Like a rainforest, they tend to cycle energy with increasing rapidity through the system as the system evolves creating increasing numbers of niches and innovation. Think of the rapid escalation in VC investment and the increasing diversity of tech investments available. In other words, the system scales. And once one is set in motion, it can be difficult to stop since each participant gets increasing rewards for being part of the set. Think of the incredible personal wealth that has been created in Silicon Valley.
Another way to look at it is that participants experience self-sustaining growth through collaboration with other dissimilar entities. OK, there must be something to this because it sounds like a paradox!
From my experience, there's no structures even remotely like tech clusters in the nonprofit world. One mistake I see over and over is that when folks organize nonprofit networking events with an eye to strengthen a specific sector, they make the mistake of mainly inviting nonprofits. ... What does this suggest about how foundations work in the sector and what they could do differently?"
"To assist E-Democracy.Org's grant prospecting efforts I put together aHere's that link again:
little (big actually) Google Custom Search covering foundations, some
government funding sites, and sites with fund raising advice for
non-profits.
Why not share it with the world?
Try it out from:
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008992915104785064737%3Aq7jehshqp3g
Google Custom Search has a nifty option where you can say search all of
the sites or partial sites to which a certain pages links. The main area
where the search can be improved is by adding pages with links to
smaller community foundations. I've opened up the search engine to
volunteer contributions."
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008992915104785064737%3Aq7jehshqp3g
I remember several years ago being asked by a 20-something nonprofit executive why anyone would need the Foundation Center. "Can't I just Google everything I need to know?" he asked. The question, and the search engine above, reveal a lot about how things have changed. There is such experienced-based assurance among Internet users that they can find what they need to know, by themselves. There is good reason to believe that many relevant funders can be found on the Web - though I don't know if anyone has counted foundation websites (which would be found by Google) and compared it to the 10,000 foundation database maintained by the Foundation Center or the larger universe of grants and funders catalogued by FoundationSearch. Savvy users of any search engine must always wonder what they are not finding, but so should users of industry sources such as the Foundation Center.
This wasn't the post I was planning (am working on more posts on networks and philanthropy) but this caught my eye - it speaks to the power of networks and a spirit of cooperation in the sector, even with the very competitive domain of funding.
