Promoting Us Non-Essentials
After every crisis of the last 20 years, many organized funders shift their priorities to meet the immediate needs stemming from that crisis. Following the logic, the nature of a crisis is that it creates urgent needs, quite often outside of, or intensifying, the ongoing needs of society. So, it is understandable that more money would flow in those directions.
Philanthropic dollars are quite often a zero sum pie, this means that money is flowing away from those things the sector provides that are deemed less Read more
Consuming Data
If you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably figured out
that I love data. That includes turning students on to the value of data—of
collecting the right data so they actually use it; understanding how to read,
evaluate, consume and use, the data that others collect and report out; making
decisions based on data rather than feelings.
Students remind me constantly that too few are taught how to be good
consumers of data. Thus, I periodically
take it upon myself to share tidbits of interesting data that should inform our
work.
As the daughter Read more
Of Benefits, Entrepreneurs and Data and Wasted Opportunities
A recent Philadelphia Business Journal poll asked folks to name their favorite work benefit. The options included: flexibility, money, dress code, wellness, fun, and a “my work does not offer any of these.” (Sad, truly, for the 16% who had to had to select that option).
Coming in first with 30% of respondents was flexibility, with the annotation of “work times, teleworking options, extended or uncapped paid time off;” seven points behind in second place was “bonuses or financial incentives.” Rounding out the full picture: 11% Read more
Lucky Nonprofits
While many are chattering about Fidelity Charitable (which collected—don’t call it raised—philanthropic dollars totaling $4.6 billion last year) firmly bumping United Way (which only collected $3.7 billion) from the top of The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s newly released “Philanthropy 400” list, I’m having very different thoughts—though they are pretty much the same thoughts I have every year when I look at this list.
First, is there any real value in this list? Does it actually do some harm? To the extent that the American public learns about Read more
Tips from the Science of Charity
For the second consecutive week I’m blogging on research findings about money. Ever since the science of charity became popularized in the 1990s, the nonprofit sector has been interested in understanding the how, what and why of us, and that inevitably results in lots of research. Too bad, we don’t always pay attention to that research.
And that is a mistake—particularly when it comes to all of the research surrounding money: where it comes from, why we get it and why we don’t, and more. In Read more
