Home Page

Deeper into the Philanthropy Blogs

December 6, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

My intent yesterday was to report a bit further on some of the entries I caught a glance of while listing Philanthropy Blogs in Monday’s entry. For those who read such blogs regularly what I saw might seem mundane, but as a new reader I was excited and engaged by what I saw.

As I began to plumb a little deeper into the blogs I became convinced that the philanthropy industry blogs were the site of contentious debate. First was this entry on Gift Hub about the writer of Wealth Bondage calling philanthrophy bloggers Uncle Toms beholden to the wealthy.

I got so wrapped up in reading both sides of the story on the entry and learning about the Wealth Bondage blog that I found myself short on time to do an entry. White Courtesy Telephone notes that WB writer Happy Tutor styles himself as a modern day Diogenes challenging all who linger too close to the blog while on the information superhighway.

It wasn’t until I happened to go back and read the comments section on Gift Hub that I saw the author, Philip Cubeta, claim to be Happy Tutor. The satire tags on the entry seem to bear it out as far as that goes. Apparently he is a man at war against himself, casting aspersions at his alter egos. Or may be not.

I am still a little confused and unsure about the truth of the matter. It is intellectual elitism or intellectual rigor rarely seen in these days. Let’s just say I walked in a little late on a joke and caught the last line and punchline. I thought I would just shed a little light on the situation, as dim a bulb as I might be, in case others were exploring those blogs and were also taken in/confused.

Among the more interesting entries I came across during my explorations was this one on White Courtesy Telephone about Power and Powerlessness in Foundations. The entry was revelatory for me because it didn’t touch upon the relationship between grantors and grantees as I assumed it would, but rather on the internal power struggles of foundations.

Over time I came to believe that my colleagues and I acted out of a sense of powerlessness. Think about it. We start our foundation careers with a diminished sense of self-worth. Many of us … were lackluster community organizers or so-so [nonprofit executive directors]. We weren’t up for the challenge of real work 🙂 And for reasons that had little to do with actual talent, we found ourselves in foundation jobs that paid well and were very secure. We were fooling ourselves because as program officers, our jobs were never 100 percent secure. There were always a hundred other people out there ready to replace us.

There was also a great entry on Donor Power Blog- Marketing: No Longer A Department. Blog author Jeff Brooks points out that “It’s everyone’s job to tell the story [of the organization] in a motivating and exciting way.” Not only that, it is incumbent on the marketing department to let them rather than trying to wholly control the transmission of the message themselves.

Where Most Needed blog had two entries that really caught my eye. One on protecting against donors who renege on pledges. The other entry is on dealing with demanding donors.

The final blog entry I wanted to cite today is from Charity Governance where author Jack Siegel makes a case for why the Sarbanes-Oxley Act shouldn’t be applied to non-profits. His basic argument is that non-profits lack the monetary and personnel resources (as well as availability of external auditing firms) to comply. The entry is well written and cross-referenced with Security and Exchange Commission and Government Accounting Office publications. (Be warned, you can’t avoid finding out about the book he wrote.)

Terms and Ideas

No Comments

Philanthropy Blogs

December 4, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

The Chronicle of Philanthropy for this week features an article about non-profit blogging. The blogs it mentions aren’t on my favorites list (ones I read already) but might be of interest to you. Some of the blogs give tips about fundraising, others are more watchdog in nature and others are more general in focus.

I will list a couple of the ones mentioned since the article doesn’t provide links. Each blog has its own list of links so my small list will start you on your way to greater exploration. Some of the material is more appropriate for people running huge charities and foundations than for development staff of individual arts organizations. There is something for everyone in this little list-good ideas, thoughtful analysis, words to the wise and a couple chuckles.

I wanted to suggest taking a look at the story too as it discusses the different motivations people have for blogging. Some of the reasons might resonate with you and inspire you to blog. The field is pretty empty according the article. Only about 100 non-profit blogs in a sea of millions.

Watch Dog and Critical Eye Blogs

White Courtesy Telephone
Charity Governance Blog
Where Most Needed
Don’t Tell The Donor
(Not mentioned in the article. Came across via someone else recently. Can’t recall who or where.)
Trent Stamp’s Take (written by president of non-profit watchdog, Charity Navigator)

General Resource Blogs

Gift Hub
The Agitator -Written by Direct Mail Fundraisers
Donor InSite
Donor Power Blog – Just a caveat about the advice– it is written by a for profit consulting firm according to the article. That said, very interesting reading and I there doesn’t seem to be a hard sell for their services or areas only available to clients.

Featured

2 Comments

Shrinking The Universe

November 30, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

As you read or listen to the news you probably hear a lot about how MySpace.com is getting bigger and bigger and even bigger still. You may also hear about how the whole point of joining is to see how many friends you can accumulate.

It may come as a surprise to you that Six Apart, the folks who brought you the Typepad, Movable Type and LiveJournal are offering a new social network service intended to limit what you blog to a small number of people. (Though that was the intent of Myspace.com too)

It took me a few minutes to realize that Six Apart was doing the smart thing and not trying to compete with MySpace.com but rather was going after the market of people who didn’t want to be associated with MySpace’s size and controversies.

The new free service called Vox promises highly customizable privacy features which lets you set limits on specific entries, photos and videos or globally restrict everything you do.

If this is true, there are some great applications for arts organizations. It can be used for a members-only site to let subscribers know about specific specials offers coming up. Not that I would encourage any more appearances of stratified levels of elitism in the arts, you could also set different levels of access for different groups of people. One area for subscribers only, another for donors who subscriber perhaps. (Although it appears that the only categories you can use are the pre-set family and/or friend, I will bet future versions will have customizable categories if they are smart.)

Another use might be for inexpensive project management and information sharing. Directors and designers located around the world geographically could share information at initial stages of performance planning. Script revisions can be posted as they are produced. Design sketches can be shared. The light grid and stage dimensions and inventory lists can always be stored there for continual reference. A choreographer can film what he/she envisions for dance and fight scenes and post it for comments.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that something like what I proposed in my last entry can be viable. Whether it is something open to the whole world like Myspace, smaller like Vox or all the blogs and websites in between, people want to express themselves to others. It’s in the music collections on iPods, YouTube videos included on webpages, and lists of favorite everythings in the margins. People are curating what they like and want to show it off.

People may view a chance to do live collaborating with a noted arts group as an opportunity to have a little respectability rub off on them and may jump at the chance. Some may be a little more reticent to become involved. Just as there is a place on the web for people who want to boast about having lotsa friends, groups that tailor their interactive programs for the talented but shy can find interested audience-partners, too.

Arts in an Age of Technology

No Comments

Interactivity for the Future…

November 28, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

As I promised yesterday, I have a couple ideas about the direction things could go in terms of interactivity in the arts. As I had said, I think the format and perhaps physical environment in which new events might happen will have to change. I can see them happening in smaller theatres, but it is difficult to have a really interactive event in a huge hall seating 2400 people.

A couple years ago I did an entry where I imagined at one time we would be able to plug in and experience a performance from the point of view of the performer. Among the many alluring benefits might be experiencing the performance opposite an attractive romantic lead whereby you saw yourself being kissed by the person.

Since then I have come to see possibilities in other areas that are more immediately achievable. With the rise in iPod ownership these days as well as the ease of processing and projecting video on computers I don’t think it is beyond the realm of possibility that in the next few years we will see performances where people are encouraged to bring music, images and video to a show in the iPod in order to contribute to it.

It might start out simple and small with people encouraged to go online to read a single scene and then either send in music/images/video that are appropriate for that scene. At the performance the audience might see or hear the submitted material underscore the action.

In time, as technology improved and performance groups refined their technique for assessing and integrating donated material into the performance, we might see events where people enter the theatre, download their offerings at the door and see/hear material being added to the show on the fly throughout the performance.

A creative team for a theatrical work may not only include the director and choreographer but a new position of technology integrator-a person who chooses among multimedia materials within the director’s umbrella vision to support a performance with new music/images/video every night.

This is the sort of practice I think would get people deeply involved if they were excited by it. People might get enthusiastic enough to go online and read the script, check out the costume sketches, etc., in advance so they could review their iPod library and then submit something along with suggestions about where it might best be included in the show.

What would really be fabulous, given copyright restrictions which would necessitate having an ASCAP/BMI license to cover music, is if people started composing their own music or shooting photos and video to contribute to a performance. The way things are going the lines of intellectual property ownership are blurring. The idea of directors and designers owning their work is probably going to morph into a communal ownership. Might be better to tap into this energy and involve the community rather than to let them appropriate it for their own ends.

Yes, it would be labor intensive as all get out at first for all sides involved until the whole process essentially got invented. You can certainly see this type of thing coming out of the smaller experimental spaces and then going mainstream. But there is so much potential for really connecting back with audiences by giving them involvement and ownership that they may become highly interested in participating even if the final product is presented in the current passive viewing state. (Though I bet that situation evolves by itself as a by product of new efforts.)

One of the most exciting things about art of any kind is that different people see it from different perspectives. The problem we have run into of late is that the general message people get is that there is only way correct way to interpret the art you see. By involving the community you can acknowledge the validity of these different visions and even recognize that someone touched upon an option you had never considered. There are some visions you may never use like the suggestion of zombies in the graveyard scene of Hamlet.

Other things you will use and little by little people will feel they have the capacity to understand and participate in the arts. Initial contributions may contain more dross than gold but as people feel more comfortable and familiar with the way design concepts are generated they will chuckle about the zombie ideas and make suggestions with real promise. (Of course, same qualification as yesterday, those who feel motivated to improve will do so.)

Yesterday as I closing my entry and was thinking about my promise to talk about this idea for interactivity, I knew I wanted to talk about how the great thing about art is that different things jump out at people as significant/appealing about the work.

Imagine my delight then when I received an email this morning that illustrated just that. Michael Clark at ShowBizRadio.net which features internet reviews for Washington D.C. area read yesterday’s entry and latched on to the paragraph about “Blogging on the internet is opening up new opportunities. It is allowing educated people who have never been hired by a newspaper to speak.”

The general topic about that entry wasn’t really about internet reviews. I didn’t even know I was going to even reference internet reviews until shortly after I realized what the question “How do you remember all those lines?” was indicative of. When I did write about internet reviews I was actually imagining the reviews I have read that said the show sucked when it was pretty clear that the cause was a friend/significant other had dragged someone to a romance/action/foreign film/symphony/ballet… that the person didn’t want to see to begin with.

Right after giving me permission to quote his email, Michael wrote that I must be talking about his website among others. He then continued to write a fairly long email that I haven’t had time to fully digest yet. Later in the day he sent me a link from The Guardian Unlimited dealing with the issue of newspaper reviewers vs. internet reviewers. (Though mostly book reviewers.)

I am not saying Butts In The Seats is a work of art. But what I thought was a minor theme to support my larger argument appeared to be an important point for someone else. In the next few days I anticipate we will be interacting a bit more. See, it is working already! Just as I said!

Only downside is that by the very nature of this interaction, I don’t anticipate that it will lead to us getting away from the screens in our homes which was the ideal of yesterday’s entry. But you gotta start somewhere.

General Musings

No Comments