What kind of Apps would your foundation build?

I admit it - I tossed the question out onto Twitter in a bit of a lark. I was preparing for a presentation to 50+ of America's largest community foundations and I've been thinking about Apps quite a bit (not only because of the new Apple Tablet due out tomorrow) because I was about to declare Apps as Buzzword 2010.1.

Most of what I will talk about has to do with ways that certain technologies (and the expectations/behavior they allow) are shifting philanthropy, the shifting sands of social businesses, policy opportunities, intersections with the public sector, new ways of organizing for change, Nonprofit Data Scorecards - the stuff I write about here.

As my plane landed I sent out this Tweet "What could a community foundation App do?

Whoa. The smarties of Twitter responded. A flood of ideas came along - tweeted, DM'd and on and on. Here are some of them:

• Maps of local grantees so I could give or volunteer when I was near them
• Outcome reporting
• App to manage my donor advised fund
• Create a "we have, we need" for donor advised funds
• Mix data on community needs with opportunities for me to take action
• Push out notices of funds available and deadline reminders
• Match grantees needs with volunteers - a community "Craigslist"
• Algorithmic review of the chances my proposal will meet the guidelines
• Find the nearest program officer
• Accept and immediately respond to micro proposals
• Map projects in community (not grantees) and allow grants to them
• Crowdsourced needs assessments and focus groups
  

Thanks to all of you who sent in ideas - I'll call you all out by name in next post. So, clearly I touched a nerve. Is anyone already doing this? Does The Extraordinaries want to set up a line of business building Apps for community foundations? (hint, hint). Can Community Foundations launch projects through The Extraordinaries? As usual, Beth Kanter has a great write up of "do good" apps and Britt Bravo provides another list.

I can't help but notice how many of the ideas suggested above use "place" as a key piece of data - leading me to believe that claims about "location" as the new platform, and apps like FourSquare as the new big thing - might be real. What Beth Kanter calls "Foot Traffic Philanthropy" - certainly

So - what kind of apps would (will) your foundation build? What kind of apps would (will) your foundation use? And, enjoy, the first new buzzword of the new decade, Buzzword 2010.1 - Apps.

Please keep the ideas coming - comments or twitter (@p2173). By the time you read this post I will have shared the ones above with the foundations already. I'll check back in here to let you know how they responded.

Tags: philanthropy, apps, buzzword2010, @kanter, @bbravo, community foundations, technology

Nonprofit Data Scorecard goes live

(Sorry folks - The first version of this post (January 25) somehow got corrupted/encoded. Lots of email readers received empty emails and/or gibberish. Hope this one posts better. Thanks for your patience.)

I've written about the Nonprofit Mapping effort before and am thrilled to say they've launched their test version. Go to the site, check out the data, check out the rankings, comment on the methods, improve the data, use the data, and consider the implications. For all of us as donors to nonprofits. For all of us as taxpayers who pay for the data. For people who use, enjoy, benefit from the work that nonprofits do. For regulators and watchdog organizations. For those of us who run nonprofits. For public agencies that partner with them. For social businesses trying to get into these spaces.

Now, let me tell you a story. Last year, two large foundations and a municipal government got together to discuss the challenges that their shared community would face if lots of nonprofits went out of business in the down economy. They hired a consulting firm. They commissioned a study. They involved the community in the study (kudos!) They shared the study (Yay!) They acted on the study (what?) No really, they put money aside to help the nonprofits address the challenges that were identified. (Really.) And they are continuing to do so. This is a good news story. It is - in my opinion - a good example of institutions, public and philanthropic, working with the community to help improve it. In tough times.

Let me tell you another story. Last year several donors and activists were discussing news reports about the effects of the economy on nonprofits. They wondered if the news was as bad as it sounded, with lots of organizations going out business, people losing services, jobs being lost. They wondered what they, as donors and activists, could do about this. So they tried to get some data on nonprofits in their community. And what they got was out of date. They asked around. They called. They searched online. They came up mostly empty. They took matters into their own hands. They built a website and a network of volunteers who could were good at online research. They divided up tasks. They developed transparency metrics about data. They talked on Skype, coordinated via online documents and email, texted, revised, iterated. They looked for free tools where ever they could - free hosting, free document services, free data visualization tools. They benefited from flex time policies provided by some of their employers. They found comparable sites on other issues, followed the trends in Open Data and Government 2.o. They went to CityCamp. And they built this beta site of the Nonprofit Data Scorecard to show what data are available on nonprofits, engage others in improving the data sources, and encourage state governments to collect, share and open up these data in ways that were useful.

The second story is also a good one. It shows several new ways of getting things done, highlights the power of free, and demonstrates how some technology approaches totally shift the sense of scale - what started as a local question resulted in a nationally-focused, regionally specific tool. And the whole process was public and open, while being led by a small committed group.

Both approaches matter. Both accomplished good things. But one assumed data were the beginning, not the end. And one relied on the same public it was designed to serve to build it.

I hope the protagonists of both stories will focus on how they can help each other, each playing to their strengths and learning from each other going forward. The ways in which the Nonprofit Mapping effort came to be - its tools, techniques, focus, and execution - are useful for all of us to consider. This is not the way change used to come about. And the changes it may unleash are also new.

What do you think of Nonprofit Mapping's work? Their goals, approach, and findings so far? Please let them know - they're on Twitter and Facebook and have a blog open for comments. Let me know also, please.

Tags: philanthropy, #nonprofitmap, innovation, #data

How technology is disrupting philanthropy

I hope readers in the SF Bay Area will join us at Stanford this Thursday, January 28 at 5 pm for a discussion with me, Sonal Shah, and Rob Reich on how technology is changing philanthropy.

For those on twitter, the hashtag for the conversation is #sempacs. The hashtag for the Disrupting Philanthropy paper is #disruptphil.

Tags: philanthropy, #sempacs, technology, #disruptphil

Random data bits about Haiti giving

Real(ish) time data sources
Paypal has emerged as a new source of data on giving - reporting $1.5 million processed in donations to #Haiti relief efforts. As for data sources, Google Checkout, Convio, Network for Good and the mGive Foundation (behind the text donations) have definitely claimed their place as providers of real-time data about giving. The Foundation Center launched this online map of foundation grants to disaster relief, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy was updating its giving totals about twice a day Weds-Fri of last week.

Where we get our news
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released some very interesting data on social networks, news sources, giving, and Haiti. The report is here. Their survey found that

"...18% report they or someone in their household made a donation to those affected by the earthquake, while another 30% say they plan to donate..... While 39% of those who gave made a donation in person, 23% gave on the internet and 14% gave via text message; by comparison, 12% gave by phone and just 5% made their donation through the mail."

The data above refer to Americans only.

Pew also asked questions about how people were getting their news about the earthquake. 31% said they were following online news sources. Thirteen percent of Americans, and 24% of those under age 30, received information about the quake on email or through social networks.

I wish they'd asked how many people FIRST heard about the quake through email, twitter or social networks. My sense is that these media spread the word faster than ever before and that tens of millions of people knew about the quake within an hour of it happening and without ever turning on the radio or TV.

Who reads what?
Stephanie Strom's NYT article about the blog Good Intentions are Not Enough also highlighted the role data are playing - as she showed how the blogger tracked readers from the White House and the State Department. Later on the same day that the Times piece ran, the blogger, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, announced via Twitter that more readers had come to her blog from another blog, Marginal Revolution, than had come from the Times story. I don't know if that will hold true over time, but it's an interesting tidbit about online readers, blogs, attention, and, yes, data.

Tags: philanthropy, haiti, disasters, data