Socratic Leadership

My friend and former Do Good Well blogger, Nathaniel Whittemore, has added a great post over at Change.org, “How Your Leader’s Expertise Can Become your Company’s Biggest Weakness.” The gist is that there is a changing nature of leaders in organization. Success is dependent upon humble leaders, both self-starters and experts at delegating. Through his [...]

Should donors pay to learn to do good well?

Sean Stannard-Stockton initiated an interesting conversation on his blog Tactical Philanthropy (later picked up by the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give and Take blog) about the difference between “giving” and “investing” as a mental model for philanthropy. He notices a shift occurring in the way donors conceptualize their giving from a ’spending’ category to an ‘investment’ [...]

Platforms for giving are different than reasons for giving

Aaron Hurst of the Taproot Foundation wrote a post on their Pro Bono Junkie blog a few weeks ago provactively asking if Causes.com is actually Cost.com.
He had just seen a presentation by Sean Parker, who’s tech startup bedpost includes Napster, Facebook, and now Causes on Facebook. Parker told Hurst and the other audience members that [...]

WSJ article on e-philanthropy and social networks rubs up against a problem

A big ol’ article in today’s Wall Street Journal provides an overview of the world of online giving and social networking for philanthropy. It profiles SixDegrees.org, Kevin Bacon’s organization, Causes on Facebook, and references Social Actions (nice job guys!), but never really does more than provide an overview of the space until the end of [...]

CARE Connections: can individual humanitarian organizations create successful social networks?

CARE, one of the largest relief and development organizations in the world has just launched “CARE Connections,” a social network for CARE supporters to discuss relief and development issues. The email announcing the launch was inauspiciously titled “Move over Facebook, here comes CARE Connections.”
I think its a smart recognition on CARE’s part that there is [...]

Kristoff column on micro-giving

CX Chua, one of the students from the Northwestern University ENGAGE Uganda Program 2007, celebrates with his Global Youth Partnership for Africa soccer/peer mentor team after finishing a 5-week after school program in the Namuwongo slum of Kampala, Uganda.
Nick Kristoff’s column today, “The Luckiest Girl,” tells the story of Beatrice, a bright girl from Uganda [...]

Thank you from Assetmap.org/Uganda

From the Assetmap.org/Uganda team,
Thanks EVERYONE who supported the Assetmap.org/Uganda project. It was inspiring for us to see the number of people who were excited about tools that would let them support community-led development efforts in this remarkable region. With your support, we were among the top 20 vote getters and will head to California to [...]