Stanford Social Innovation Review

The Stanford Social Innovation Review recently posted their Top 5 blogs of 2007. Check out the links below.

Philanthropy Doesn’t Care About Black People
Rosetta Thurman on diversity (or lack therof) in philanthropy
The October 18 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy confirmed what we in the nonprofit sector already knew: the nonprofit and philanthropic sector doesn’t do a very good job at this thing called diversity. Though the foundation world would have us believe that much progress is being made with the emergence of giving circles and donor communities of color, the reality is that it’s high time for the nonprofit sector to put race on the table. In fact, I titled this post as such because the expanded, cop-out definitions of diversity that include gender, religion, disability, and sexual orientation allow organizations to avoid the topic of race and pay lip service to the issue instead of making real cultural changes.

Lose the Marketing Department
Jeff Brooks on the role of marketing departments in the social sector
The marketing department is destroying your organization. Not on purpose, but the very fact that marketing is segregated into a department is what’s doing the damage. It doesn’t matter how smart (or lacking in smarts) your marketing department is. If marketing isn’t built into your entire organization from top to bottom and side to side, you’re lost.

The Four Fundamental Questions of Philanthropy
Albert Ruesga on how to decide what to do with $600,000,000
The Ford Foundation, the second largest foundation on the planet, with assets of $12 billion, is about to hire a new CEO. What will the new CEO do with all that money? How, among all the possibilities available to her, will she decide to focus the foundation’s grantmaking? The new CEO will want to honor the foundation’s previous commitments. She won’t want to make any sudden moves. But having exercised the necessary prudence, and having consulted her board, toward what star will she steer her course?

Marketing to Donors
Perla Ni on incorporating marketing into nonprofit fundraising
Ideas that spread win. Period. This is true for nonprofits, politics, and business, said Seth Godin. Sliced bread was invented in 1913 by Otto Frederick Rohwedder. He took out a patent, built a factory, and waited for the orders to come in. Well, not many orders came in. It wasn’t until 1930 when Wonder Bread started packaging and marketing pre-sliced bread that it became a success, said Godin. This was one of the entertaining and enlightening examples of marketing successes and flops that Seth Godin presented at a fantastic one-day seminar that I recently attended. Seth Godin is a marketing guru, author of books like the Purple Cow and founder of www.squidoo.com, a Wikipedia-like community that raises money for charity. His seminars in New York are targeted at both for-profits and nonprofits.

The Patina of Philanthropy
Mark Rosenman on the costs of Product (RED)
The Product (RED) campaign tells us that by shopping, we can help Africa cope with HIV/AIDS. In reality, it’s just one more example of the corporate world aligning its operations with its central purpose of increasing shareholder profit, except this time it is being cloaked in the patina of philanthropy. Buy a (RED) product and a portion of the purchase price goes to charity. But there is a question about what charities will lose in the long term.

Submitted by Robin Lynn Grinnell