Blogs on the Rise

Online forums about charity offer advice and discuss controversies

Albert Ruesga is not being flip when he invokes images of torture to describe his blog, White Courtesy Telephone. He’s dead serious.

Mr. Ruesga, who started White Courtesy Telephone in March as an online forum about philanthropy, is a vice president at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, in Washington. But he is quick to point out that he does not represent his employer when he writes for his blog; instead, he is simply a concerned citizen with his own point of view.

That position enables Mr. Ruesga to attach a provocative tag line — “nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropy in the age of Abu Ghraib” — to his blog, and to post often-controversial views. The tag line is a stark contrast to the blog’s seemingly innocuous name, which is derived from announcements commonly heard at airports and which Mr. Ruesga chose because of its humorous sound. One example of the blog’s tone can be found in a post last month about many Americans’ dismay over the Iraq war and anti-terrorist practices, in which he wrote: “We were appalled at having become one of a family of nations that commits torture.”

‘How You Change a Field’

Mr. Ruesga also uses his blog to discuss issues such as foundations’ accountability, and to challenge readers to re-examine their professional practices and do more to protect democratic freedoms and help the poor. “This is how you change a field,” says Mr. Ruesga. He says he wants his blog to start a discussion, challenge convention, and, ultimately, change the way people in the nonprofit world act.

“Suppose there were five bloggers, or 10, in the foundation world who occasionally ‘spoke out of turn,’” Mr. Ruesga wrote in a recent post. “Would these voices wake us from our dogmatic slumber? Would they be able to decentralize and democratize intellectual and moral authority in philanthropy and thereby enrich the conversation in the field? Would this enriched conversation lead to better outcomes for this country’s low-income communities?”

Mr. Ruesga isn’t alone in hoping that blogs and the discussion they spark will help improve the work of charities and foundations.

But while he and others have high-minded goals for their blogs about nonprofit groups, it is still too early to tell whether the increasing number of such sites are leading an online movement or are merely faint voices in the vast Internet wilderness.

Some charity bloggers say that the online forums have yet to reach their full potential because few readers participate in a back-and-forth discussion by posting their own comments. For example, Mr. Ruesga’s blog attracts about 100 regular readers — a fraction of whom add their own comments or responses to his posts.

Nobody knows for sure how many blogs are devoted to nonprofit issues, but the best guess by people who write blogs is that about 100 are now in operation. That is an infinitesimal fraction of the estimated 12 million blogs available on the Internet, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, in Washington.

Practical and Promotional

Few people were writing blogs for and about nonprofit groups until 2004, when the medium began gaining mainstream attention for its key role in the campaign of then-Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean.

Since then, however, dozens of people have started blogs about philanthropy, covering topics that are practical, promotional, and philosophical.

A handful of other blogs — including the Charity Governance Blog and Where Most Needed — take a watchdog approach. These entries attempt to shed light on misdeeds, challenge actions, and spotlight questionable practices in the nonprofit world.

One of the more philosophical blog writers is Philip B. Cubeta, who created Gift Hub in 2004. Like Mr. Ruesga, Mr. Cubeta — who offers financial advice to charities as part of his work as a financial-services executive — says that blogs about nonprofit issues could ultimately lead to changes in the way people think about and perform their jobs. Both men see their blogs as tools to stimulate discussion about key philanthropic and societal issues.

“The thing that interests me the most is when people from different walks of life or different areas of expertise talk about topics in different ways; it’s the increasingly intellectual gene pool,” says Mr. Cubeta. “Most of us spend most of our professional time with a limited group of people.”

Blogs, he adds, “get you thinking again. It’s that diversity of opinion that I enjoy.”

Fund-Raising Advice

Other blogs, such as the Agitator, which is aimed at nonprofit advocacy groups, have more-modest goals of offering fund-raising tips and providing examples of effective solicitation strategies. Some, like Donor Power Blog, offer advice to people who work at nonprofit groups but are written under the banner of for-profit consulting firms.

And a few blogs are used by nonprofit leaders to rally their employees and others around key goals, projects, and other objectives — and to solicit their ideas.

Whatever their purpose, those who write philanthropy-related blogs share an optimism that the online forums will become a significant part of the nonprofit landscape. In particular, say some writers, they help nonprofit officials figure out how to convey messages and see how the public responds.

“If you’re blogging, you’re figuring out the next wave of marketing,” says Jeffrey Brooks, author of Donor Power Blog and a creative director for Merkle/Domain, a Seattle fund-raising consulting firm. “Blogs are still kind of primitive and esoteric, but they are going to turn into the way things are done. Eventually, it will be as mainstream as radio spots and direct mail or any of the normal ways of doing direct marketing. Those of us doing it now will understand it and be able to use it.”

Already Mainstream

For some in the nonprofit world, blogs are already a mainstream approach they use to communicate their message to employees, board members, and potential donors.

Diana Sieger, president of Grand Rapids Community Foundation, in Michigan, doesn’t expect to incite a debate when she sits down with a cup of coffee on Saturday mornings and begins tapping out her President’s POV blog. Instead, she simply wants to broaden her readers’ understanding and support of the foundation’s work.

“I want to get rid of the perception that foundation officials are sitting in ivory towers,” she says. “It’s my way of trying to humanize the foundation.”

Ms. Sieger is among a growing number of nonprofit leaders who embrace blogs as a simple, cost-effective communication device. She sees them as tools to further her organization’s goals rather than a way to revolutionize the nonprofit world, though she says she also tries to write something interesting, meaningful, and pointed every week.

“I’ve been here almost 20 years and I know this community,” she says. “I wouldn’t put the foundation in a compromising position based on my own opinions. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Like Ms. Sieger, James Fruchterman, chief executive officer of Benetech, a Palo Alto, Calif., group that applies technology to charitable projects to improve literacy and other goals, writes a blog for the Web site of his organization that conforms to its mission and goals.

Mr. Fruchterman says he created the Beneblog more than three years ago because he wanted to provide content for Benetech’s Web site without having to pay an outsider to produce it.

The blog has since evolved into something more ambitious, he says. Today, it is sent via e-mail to employees and other supporters, and it has become a touchstone for those interested in using business principles to tackle societal issues.

“Once you’re doing it, you start seeing the unintended benefits,” he says. “At first, it was kind of the Benetech house organ. It would be ‘Hey, look, we have a new press release.’ Now, it’s kind of morphed to where it’s probably half Benetech and half stuff I find interesting. I’m increasing my role in trying to get Silicon Valley more engaged in the social sector.”

Drumming Up Business

Many of the nonprofit world’s most ardent bloggers are consultants who write for the dual purpose of sharing advice and generating business.

Duke Smith, vice president of the Canadian division of the Russ Reid Company, a fund-raising consulting company, spends about one hour each night writing Donor In Site, a blog offering fund-raising advice and news aimed at nonprofit development directors and board members. The blog gets about 1,000 hits monthly.

Mr. Smith says he started the blog in August with the idea that he could use his consulting experience to help charities run successful fund-raising campaigns while at the same time generating a civil discussion about solicitation practices and other topics.

“There are some principles I adhere to,” he says. “I don’t try to be negative. I don’t try to be controversial. I try to be something my own children would read and be proud of. I also put it through the sieve of ‘Will my clients and my company find interest in it?’”

Consultants who write blogs say they have to do much more than simply advertise their services. A blog that sounds like a commercial will become, quite simply, a blog with no readers, says Mr. Brooks, author of Donor Power Blog.

A key, says Jack B. Siegel, the author of the Charity Governance Blog, is to offer perspective and expertise that readers cannot find in other places.

Mr. Siegel — a lawyer, author, and consultant — typically links to journalistic reports about charitable issues, and offers his own analysis of what he is reading. Often, his posts amplify articles that have been covered by mainstream news organizations. Sometimes he challenges what he reads.

“I can’t beat the press. I’m not a reporter who goes out and gathers the facts,” Mr. Siegel says. “But I can look at the facts. I know the law and accounting. If you give me a story, I can find out where the tension parts are.”

In turn, his blog has helped Mr. Siegel become recognized as an expert in his field. His blog has been cited in publications such as The New York Times and Le Monde.

Seeking Original Ideas

The emergence of blogs written for companies hoping to bring in new clients, however, has some nonprofit bloggers worried that the medium will eventually overflow with bland postings that drown out the voices of writers interested in sparking thought and debate about philanthropy.

When Mr. Cubeta began writing Gift Hub, two years ago, it was one of the few blogs that discussed philanthropy. At the same time, he says, the blogosphere was like the Wild West — with few rules of engagement and lots of free fire.

“You could feel freer to be more outspoken and recognized,” Mr. Cubeta says. “Now I think people are being more proper and not quite as interesting.”

Mr. Ruesga shares a similar concern. With blogs, he says, it is getting harder to sift through the clutter to find original voices.

“Most fail to generate any real heat, and the demands of staying on message or the vanity of self-promotion ruin what otherwise might be a good read,” Mr. Ruesga says. “They are pseudo-blogs, really. They are Web content dressed like a blog to achieve a certain studied casualness. It’s kind of the way certain people wear a bow tie.”

But not everyone believes blogs need to be edgy to have value.

Suzanne Morse, president of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change and the author of the blog Smart Communities, says the audience for blogs has grown to include room for an array of voices.

Some of those voices are provocative, she says, while others provide meaningful content for charity officials who need common-sense advice on how to be effective on the job.

“Our sense is that people are looking for things that work,” Ms. Morse says. “Not so much good-news stories, but solutions they can apply. That’s where blogs have a real opportunity to be complementary to mainstream media.”

But most blogs about philanthropy remain anything but commonplace. Many nonprofit bloggers say they have seen a jump in readers, but they are disappointed that most people still are not posting their own comments.

The readership of Gift Hub, for example, has grown from about 250 subscribers in 2005 to 1,600 today, says Mr. Cubeta. But many have been unwilling to post comments. Their reluctance is surprising, he says, because blogs allow readers to post their views anonymously.

That reticence, he says, suggests that too many readers see blogs as one-way publications like newspapers or magazines. Without give-and-take discussions, Mr. Cubeta says, blogs could become glorified Web postings that fall far short of their potential.

Mr. Brooks says he is concerned by the lack of comments on hisDonor Power Blog, but that more people will participate as they become familiar with the medium.

More important, many nonprofit bloggers say, the number of their readers is steadily growing.

Roger Craver, an Arlington, Va., a fund-raising consultant and one of the authors of the Agitator blog for advocacy groups, says it gets nearly 700 visitors each day, a number he says is “pretty good traffic” for a specialty blog that went online in May.

Trent Stamp, president of Charity Navigator, a Mahwah, N.J., charity-watchdog group, is the author of Trent Stamp’s Take, a blog about what he calls the “inspiring, intriguing, and sometimes idiotic inner workings” of charities.

Mr. Stamp says his blog, written largely for donors rather than charity workers, draws more than 1,000 readers per day and more than 500,000 visitors annually.

“It’s more people than I thought we’d ever get,” he says. “That’s enough people to take it seriously, where there are consequences to your words.”