Charitable-Giving Advice to Billionaires; Plus More: Monday’s Roundup
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
July 12, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
- Writing on Change.org, Ryan Allis, founder of iContact, an e-mail marketing company, provides advice on how billionaires inspired by the Giving Pledge can have the most impact. The Giving Pledge was put forth recently by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage billionaires to give away 50 percent ore more of their wealth to charity.
- Charitable contributions to nonprofit groups responding to the drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are necessary to ensure that there are independent voices monitoring the clean-up, Penny Fujiko Willgerodt, executive director of the Prospect Hill Foundation, writes on Smart Assets. The blog is run by Philanthropy New York. “It is inherently impossible for the perpetrator to monitor itself,” she writes. “It is inherently impossible for the government to monitor itself.”
- Sherine Jayawickrama, of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, discusses an essay by the former U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Andrew Natsios in which he says that too much bureacracy at USAID and similar institutions hinders global antipoverty work.
- Organizational growth is largely the result of building and expanding a group’s relationships, Rohit Menezes, a manager at the Bridgespan Group, writes on the Case Foundation’s blog. “In the for-profit world, customer relationships are paramount,” he writes. “In the nonprofit sector, relationships with funders, stakeholders, and political champions can make the difference for organizations.”
- On his blog, Transformational Giving, Eric Foley, chief executive officer of Seoul U.S.A., writes about how crowdsourcing is becoming a growing trend among nonprofit organizations. He discusses its effectiveness in encouraging people to donate money and get involved in particular causes.
- On her blog, Joanne Fritz, a former nonprofit manager, offers a list of articles on the six-month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti and what charities and nonprofit groups are doing to continue providing aid to the country.
- On Future Fundraising Now, Jeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing, suggests five elements — including envelope teasers and a summary first paragraph — that charities should remove from their direct-mail appeals to make them more successful.
