January 12, 2012 | Read Time: 1 minute
After a decade of gathering nonprofit leaders and helping charities connect online, the Craigslist Foundation is shutting down, its president Lynn Luckow announced Wednesday in an online letter.
The foundation was started by Craig Newmark, an Internet entrepreneur who created Craigslist, the popular but sometimes-controversial Web site that enables people around the world to buy, sell, and trade everything from electronics to furniture.
In his letter, Mr. Luckow said Craigslist will continue its philanthropy through a “charitable fund” but provided no further details. The foundation points people to Craigconnects, a Web site and blog that Mr. Newmark recently started to build support for nonprofit groups that he personally supports.
The foundation, best known for its annual Nonprofit Boot Camp, which trains new and aspiring charity leaders, has signaled that its ninth boot camp will still be held in San Francisco this spring. But it has yet to set the date for the daylong gathering.
Mr. Luckow’s letter said that the foundation’s staff of five is working “to find appropriate homes” for its programs, including the boot camp and LikeMinded, a nine-month-old social-media site where charities with similar causes can interact.
Some nonprofit leaders are glad the foundation is ending operations. Jan Masaoka, chief executive of the California Association of Nonprofits, said she was unhappy that organization competed with other nonprofit groups for donations. And while the boot-camp events were a good idea in theory, she said, “the content is very weak.”
Mr. Luckow said that the foundation planned to complete its “wind down” by the end of March, but it will keep podcasts, videos, and other online resources on its Web site through the end of this year.
Dig deeper: Read The Chronicle‘s cover article on Internet tycoons, including Mr. Newmark.
