Why Charities Should Embrace Many Types of Donors, Plus More: Tuesday’s Roundup
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
June 15, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
- “It sometimes seems like the effective-philanthropy movement is trying to make all donors change their motivations for giving,” writes Tris Lumley, of the nonprofit-evaluation group New Philanthropy Capital. Her comments are part of a continuing debate about how much donors care about charity performance. Sean Stannard-Stockton, a Chronicle contributor and an adviser to donors, discusses a recent report on donor behavior by the research group Hope Consulting and talks about what it would take to build a “more effective philanthropy designed for real life, human donors.”
- Mark Horvath, creator of InvisiblePeople.tv, says that there is still a significant amount of donor fatigue in the nonprofit world and that charities today do not make it easy for donors to give money. During an interview, Mr. Horvath and Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs, discuss how nonprofit organizations can use social media to promote their causes.
- Bob Ottenhoff, chief executive of GuideStar, reviews a new documentary about the charity Doctors Without Borders and says it highlights a “terrible choice” nonprofit groups sometimes have to make between providing short-term medical aid and long-term health care.
- With technology becoming a part of almost everything charities do, nonprofit technology workers need to take a new approach to their work and start thinking and acting as leaders, Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network, writes on the group’s blog.
- Nonprofit organizations should approach social media the same way that Thomas Edison approached his inventions, conducting many experiments and learning from those that fail, writes social-media expert Beth Kanter.
- Celeste Wroblewski, vice president of external relations at Donors Forum, in Illinois, writes on the Getting Attention blog that less is more when it comes to social media.
- Matthew Bishop, of the Economist magazine, and Michael Green, Mr. Bishop’s co-author on a book about philanthropy, discuss the implications of philanthropy merging into politics.
