Blog mob

Sean Stannard Stockton is organizing a team of bloggers to cover the Council on Foundations' upcoming conference. I think this is a great idea - well done, Sean.

It is a great example of crowdsourcing coverage, and I am particularly impressed that a blogger made this happen on his own. Given that COF only allowed bloggers for the first time in 2007 this is a good step forward. It all fits in with my ongoing interest in the changes in media - which I will indulge with a side trip to Newseum while I'm in DC. One thing about Newseum that I've started using from afar is its daily feed of newspaper front pages - a great way to scan headlines from hundreds of daily papers. Might there be an engineer out there interested in creating similar mashup coverage of philanthropic announcements? It would be like the Chronicle of Philanthropy's grant pages on web 2.0 steroids. (Sidebar - this week's Chronicle has interesting coverage of foundations' approaches to technology and communications (subscription required) and my former colleague Amy Luckey will be part of a conference session on this topic.)

The Blog Team gives us all one place to go for "coverage" of many sessions, from many perspectives. It is also an opportunity for those at the conference and those who miss it to participate in a conversation about the content. I'm assuming there will be a COF2008 tag so we can all follow the posts on del.ici.ous and COF has also put up a Facebook page. The next media uptakes will be video streaming, podcasts, and public access to conference materials - anyone know COF's plans regarding these tools? If there is video to be had we'll get it on the Giving Channel.

I will be blogging about the conference as well and posting those notes here, on SSIR and on Huffington Post. I'm participating in a Jewish Funders Network workshop called iJew on the Sunday before the Council conference, and will offer some thoughts on that full seminar and my panel on "measuring success." Here is the panel description:

"Can success in funding Jewish identity be measured, and should it be? How can we know if we are making a difference and achieving success? What does success look like? Among the issues the panel will address: long-term tracking, evaluating attitude verses behavior, questions to ask your grantees, and cost/benefit analysis. Hear from a variety of panelists who struggle with these questions as they develop high-impact funding strategies."

The panel is focused on Jewish identity but the questions about measurement are much broader - what matters? what can be measured? are the two one and the same or even in the same ballpark?

Tags: philanthropy, cof2008, ijew, jfn

Philanthropic gaming

Maybe the age of philanthropic reality shows is over. Why might I say this, other than wishful thinking? Because the age of philanthropic reality-based gaming is upon us. Per this announcement about an angel investment on TechCrunch (thanks Denise):

"Akoha, a startup working on a “new type of multiplayer online/offline social game”, has raised $1.9 Million in funding from angel investors. The company won’t release details about the exact nature of their game until this Fall, but they have stated that it was inspired by “elements of social entrepreneurship, massively multiplayer and reality-based games.” As far as we can tell, it will mix user-generated content with casual gaming elements, both online and in the real world (think geo-tagged photos taken on a cell phone). People will play for both fun and charity."

What is reality-based gaming? Well, it combines a game environment - clear goals, challenges that get harder as you get better, instant feedback, social interaction - with a virtual environment - an online world or a digital interface - and an offline world - like your neighborhood or community library.

Where does philanthropy fit in? As far as Akoha's model goes, I don't know. The tag lines on their website says "Play it forward" and "Karma's Kontagious" - which tell us nothing. Maybe you play the game for points and turn those into donations? Maybe you play at being good/doing good? Maybe the goal of the game is "systemic reform of institutionalized injustices" or "entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty" - but that seems likely only if the game is being created by the communications department of a major foundation.

This development is interesting beyond just the gaming of philanthropy. It may be another example of embedded giving. It shows significant interest ($1.9 million US worth of angel investment) in some kind of social-benefit oriented game, often called serious games or games for change.* There is growing philanthropic support for games as learning environments and/or as catalysts to action as seen in the program for the upcoming conference of Games For Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's investments in this area, the MacArthur Foundation's work on digital media and learning, and HopeLab's Ruckus Nation and Re:Mission.**

I'm particularly interested in how the commercial investments in Akoha's product might relate to /align with/ run counter to philanthropic investments in similar efforts. This is a confluence of funding streams - angel investment and charitable investment - that I believe we will see become more and more common. As the social enterprise movement and philanthropic endeavors have worked to define social return on investment and the balance between public purpose and private enterprise, so must we begin to look at how these various streams of capital - commercial, charitable, public - come together around issues and within certain enterprises. This is the essence of a philanthropic capital market - all of the various financial resources coming together in rational, related, and mutually reinforcing ways to advocate for and accelerate social solutions.


*, **Disclosures: I am on the board of Games4Change, which promotes the use of games for positive social good. My company advises the MacArthur initiative and I was a judge for Ruckus Nation.

Tags: philanthropy, socialchange, games, digitalmedia, macarthur, dml

Learning from our future

"How can I possibly keep up with all the blogs, tweets, texts, books, papers, and news I'm supposed to be following?" Every time I present at or sit in on a conference or workshop discussion about technology I hear this question. It is usually, though not always, posed by someone about my age or older, with a professional position, decision-making authority at work, and - given the kind of work that I do - an interest in how communities work, global events, policy and change, and social issues.

Here are some of the ways I try to learn how to keep up. Note, my requirement for these practices is that they may alter something I'm already doing, but not add to my to-do list. Why? Because that list is already too long and adding to it ensures that something won't get done.

1. Only join boards of directors on which you will be surrounded by people significantly younger than you;
2. Mimic your kids for a day and watch how they get their information. Then try it.
   
3. Arrange a meeting to happen at a local community college, high school, or university campus. Arrive 5 minutes early and stay 5 minutes late and watch what students do.
   
4. Next time you are stuck at the airport pick your face up from your laptop, look around for someone 10-20 years younger than you, and watch how they work.
   
5. Same as above but watch someone 10-20 years older than you. Compare with what you saw in number four above.
   
6. Walk somewhere everyday and think about what you've done or learned that day.

OK, since this is not a blog about time management you may now fairly ask me, So what? Well, the next generation of technology users, the next generation of information producers and consumers, and the next generation of our work colleagues are all now one and the same. I want to be able to keep up with them, know where they look for information, how they expect to receive information, and with whom and how they build working relationships.

For some expert information on this, I I highly recommend checking out this panel from the recent discussion "From MySpace to HipHop: New Media in the Everyday Lives of Youth." Produced in line with the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative the panel featured Mimi Ito, danah boyd, Heather Horst, and Dilan Mahendran discussing three years of ethnographic research about young people and media.

Don't let the fact that you missed the actual panel stop you - this is one of the first things to realize about learning and these media. The event is online here, it took place in SecondLife, and you can cruise around the web to find out more. Remember this next time you are organizing something - people will come to your event, and expect it to be captured and saved for them to consume whenever they want.

Disclosure: My company works with the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative

Tags: philanthropy, macarthur, dml

The price of trust

I have a much longer post on health disparities, race, and insidious marketing techniques that mis-appropriate people's trust people, but I'm still working on it. However, this evening, I heard this story on the radio (KQED, broadcast of All Things Considered) and had to get this down now.

In the story (transcript pending) Douglas Kamerow comments on the news that Merck pharmaceuticals may have written stories about VIOXX and then published those stories in medical journals under the names of medical doctors and researchers who the drug company has paid. The practice is politely called guest authorship - doctors and scientists are paid to lend their names to studies. Some call it by the more devious name ghost authorship - in which the company pays for the research and hires ghostwriters - masking its own involvement in the research but making sure it gets into the medical journals and literature that matter most to your doctor and mine.


Kamerow's commentary tells of articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine that discussed the benefits of a lung cancer screening tool. "On investigation" (Kamerow's words) the study was found to have been paid for by foundation funds. A foundation set up entirely by tobacco industry money. Five words in a Google search revealed this (from the New England Journal of Medicine):

"The Lung Cancer Screening Group's research was funded by 32 different entities, one of which was the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention and Treatment. It has not been our practice to inquire about the specific sources of funding of foundations such as this. We recently learned, however, that this foundation was headed by the principal investigator of the 2006 study, that it was housed at her academic institution, and that the only contributor during most of its existence was the Vector Group, the parent company of Liggett, a major tobacco company. We and our readers were surprised to learn that the source of the funding of the charitable foundation was, in fact, a large corporation that could have an interest in the study results."

SourceWatch had this to say about the event:

Vector claims it exerted no control or influence over the research, but some tobacco control advocates believe Liggett funded the study to show that lung cancer is not as bad as many have long believed since such a high proportion of people who get lung cancer, a disease closely associated with cigarette smoke exposure, can be saved by screening.

Henschke's study, and her Foundation, also raised questions about the use of foundations to shield information about funders -- and particularly corporate donors -- from publishers and the public.

And here is what is posted on the Weill Cornell Medical College site, where the doctor behind the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention and Treatment and the study in NEJM are located.

The Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention and Treatment received an unrestricted gift of $3.6 million from the Vector Group, the holding company for Liggett Tobacco, in a series of payments, from July 2000 to June 2003. The gift was used appropriately for the public good -- to support Weill Cornell Medical College's highly regarded, multi-institutional, international I-ELCAP [International-Early Lung Cancer Action Program], whose objective is to perform CT screening research for lung cancer in order to determine whether such screening improves cure rates for persons at risk.

The original $2.4 million pledge to the Foundation -- and the work funded by the Foundation at Weill Cornell -- was fully and publicly disclosed at the time through a press release, and was substantially covered in the lay media. It was discussed and disclosed in the academic community at conferences, which were widely attended by advocacy groups, agencies, and by investigators from around the world interested in lung cancer screening. It was also fully disclosed to other foundations and groups wishing to contribute funds to I-ELCAP.

The other post I am working on involves a letter from a major labor union encouraging its members to ask their doctors for a certain drug prescription. This is well-covered on the HealthBeat blog here. The title of the post, "Pfizer enlists a Labor Union (SEIU) to Promote the "Cholesterol Con"" gets to the heart of the matter - after all, why would a labor union be recommending drugs to its members?

These are troublesome practices. For (at least) the last seven years the public trust in nonprofits - be they universities, foundations, labor unions, social service organizations, publishers, health providers, or any other kind of organization in the sector - has been on the decline. Confidence in the sector hovers in the mid 60th percentile.

And here's the irony - these kind of marketing shenanigans involve a lot of players - corporate interests, individuals (the doctors), nonprofits, the media, and the public. Yet at the end of the day only one of these - the nonprofits - will pay the highest cost in terms of trust and confidence. Why is that ironic? Because these organizations have the most riding on keeping that trust and confidence.

In other words, these schemes in which the funders of research or opinions are paying others to serve as a mask for their vested interests will destroy the "reputational capital" of the others, be they medical journals or labor unions. But at the end of the day, the effect that they have on on the original vested interests will be minor and fleeting.

As a society we're likely to "pooh pooh" the bad behavior of tobacco or drug companies, or shake our heads in disgust and then move on. But somewhere in our minds, when we remember the story of the doctors and the lung cancer study, what we'll remember most accurately is that there was a nonprofit somewhere in the mix in that story. And later, when we are asked whether or not we trust nonprofits we'll think back to these stories. We won't remember the details (like how the nonprofit medical journal uncovered the funding coverup) but we'll remember there was something fishy in there. And we'll cast our doubt on the nonprofits. Our confidence will slip. Our trust diminish.

That is a high price to pay.

Tags: philanthropy, nonprofits, trust