Tuesday Roundup: A Food Bank That Operates Like a Grocery Store, a Look at the Social Innovation Fund, Plus More
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
August 4, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
- The Business of Giving blog, which The Seattle Times operates, looks at Hopelink, in Kirkland, Wash., a charity that puts a spin on the traditional food-bank approach by acting very much like a grocery store. It operates on set hours and lets people browse through the food products.
- The blog of the Foundation Center’s Washington office provides a list of resources for the Social Innovation Fund, the program established by President Obama to help effective charities grow.
- On his blog, Nicholas Kristof, a columnist at The New York Times, writes that the Obama administration’s unofficial choice of Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, to run the U.S. Agency for International Development is in trouble. He says that if Dr. Farmer, whom he describes as a “saint,” can’t pass the vetting process, then the vetting process is broken.
- The Tactical Philanthropy blog draws on the book The Warren Buffett Way to refine his definition of “high-performance” organizations.
- Tom Belford, a fund-raising consultant, looks at a study of online social media that could bode well for charities. According to the study by Anderson Analytics, people involved in an online social network are four times more vocal about products and services than those who are not. “Be assured, what social ‘netizens’ will do for commercial brands, they’ll do in spades for causes,” he writes on the blog the Agitator.
- Alanna Shaikh has some career advice for aspiring international aid workers in a series on Change.org’s humanitarian relief blog.
- V. Kasturi Rangan, a professor at Harvard Business School, discusses the role of corporate social responsibility in the economic downturn in an interview with HBS Working Knowledge.
- Phil Cubeta, a veteran financial adviser, describes two “cultures of philanthropy” on his Gift Hub blog, one that conceives of money going into a foundation or donor-advised fund as philanthropic and the other that views money leaving that foundation or fund as philanthropic.
