Did Charities’ Risky Investments Worsen the Economic Crisis? Plus More: Tuesday’s Roundup
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
June 8, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
- John D. Colombo, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, writes on the Nonprofit Law blog about a new study that suggests risky investments by nonprofit groups made the economic crisis worse.
- Another reason charities should keep an eye on their Wikipedia page: Facebook’s Community pages have a tab that pulls information about an organization directly from Wikipedia, Heather Mansfield, a nonprofit communications consultant, writes on Nonprofit Tech 2.0.
- Fund-raising appeals without a so-called teaser on the envelope bring in more money than solicitations that have one, Jeff Brooks, a nonprofit consultant, writes on Future Fundraising Now. But he doubts the reason is aesthetic. “I have seldom seen a nicer, more classy, more professional piece of direct mail outperform a more junky piece,” he writes. “Time after time, junk beats class.”
- Clara Miller, chief executive of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, talks about changes in the way charities think about and gain access to growth capital in an interview on Social Velocity.
- On her About.com blog, Joanne Fritz, a former nonprofit manager, writes about “positive deviance” and how it has been successfully used to create social change. Ms. Fritz says that positive deviancy is a fresh solution for aid groups and maybe even for business.
- On Care2’s blog, Frogloop, nonprofit professionals offer key takeaways from last week’s Personal Democracy Forum in New York. Liza Pike, a nonprofit consultant, writes that when it comes to online fund raising, if you give people too many choices, they will choose nothing. She says that nonprofit organizations need to limit the number of clicks between “ask” and “action.”
- “If every board in the world is a candidate for board development work, we don’t have a board problem,” writes Hildy Gottlieb. “We have a system problem.” Ms. Gottlieb is president of the Community-Driven Institute and produces a podcast for The Chronicle.
- Writing on the Forbes magazine Web site, Oren Harman, author of a new book called The Price of Altruism, discusses the riddle of where altruism and giving originate.
