Social Entrepreneur blog for the world changers
Archive for May, 2010
Proven Strategies for Multiplying Profits
May 31st
Focusing on the '5 ways' can create a huge boost to your bottom line.
My Philosophy of Giving
May 31st
I received an email from a reader at Actually Giving few weeks ago and she mentioned how rarely, as fundraisers, we talk about our own personal giving. Today I want to talk a little about my theories as to why I give, and first thing next week I’ll post where and why I give money.
I prefer to give deeply instead of giving broadly. When I first started in fundraising, I was shocked at how little money people actually gave. I realized that, through my giving to church, I could actually be considered a major donor at most organizations. Giving is about choosing a couple of organizations and making a significant gift. I’m a big advocate for monthly giving as it allows someone to give small gifts throughout the year that add up to one big gift.
In the back of my head, I’ve convinced myself that I’m a great fundraiser. In order for an organization to get money from me, they have to do as good of a job in cultivating me as I think I’m doing with other people. For example I expect to get a thank you letter within a week, if it’s someone I know I appreciate a thank you call or email. I love when I get a thank you letter and it has a little note on it even when the note just says thank you. So I’ve created a bit of a high standard. Because of this I find that it can be difficult for a new organization to acquire me as a new donor.
On Wednesday I’ll give some more specifics about where I give to and why. What is your philosophy of giving? Do you believe that fundraisers should be philanthropists too?
Related posts:
- How I Give
- What Motivates Giving?
- Monthly Giving
- The Rich Young Ruler: Transformational Giving
- Endowment Giving
Social entrepreneur weekly wisdom: 8 quotes to ponder
May 28th
Been another busy week at SSE with little time for posts, although we have been adding a few articles of interest to the SSE del.icio.us bookmarks, and continuing to post on Facebook + Twitter. Just thought I'd share some things...
WordPress 3.0 Release Candidate
May 27th
As Matt teased earlier, the first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 3.0 is now available. What’s an RC? An RC comes after beta and before the final launch. It means we think we’ve got everything done: all features finished, all bugs squashed, and all potential issues addressed. But, then, with over 20 million people using WordPress with a wide variety of configurations and hosting setups, it’s entirely possible that we’ve missed something. So! For the brave of heart, please download the RC and test it out (but not on your live site unless you’re extra adventurous). Some things to know:
- Custom menus are finished! Yay!
- Multi-site is all set.
- The look of the WordPress admin has been lightened up a little bit, so you can focus more on your content.
- There are a ton of changes, so plugin authors, please test your plugins now, so that if there is a compatibility issue, we can figure it out before the final release.
- Plugin and theme *users* are also encouraged to test things out. If you find problems, let your plugin/theme authors know so they can figure out the cause.
- There are a couple of known issues.
If you are testing the RC and come across a bug, you can:
- Report it on the wp-testers mailing list
- Join the dev chat and tell us live at irc.freenode.net #wordpress-dev
- File a bug ticket on the WordPress Trac
We hope you enjoy playing with the 3.0 RC as much as we’ve enjoyed making it for you. Enjoy!
Lucky Seven
May 27th
Has it really been seven years since the first release of WordPress? It seems like just yesterday we were fresh to the world, a new entrant to a market everyone said was already saturated. (As a side note, if the common perception is that a market is finished and that everything interesting has been done already, it’s probably a really good time to enter it.)
The growth over the past year has blown me away. Since our last birthday we’ve doubled theme downloads to over 10 million, and doubled plugin downloads to 60 million. Most importantly, we continued to grow the development community to 1,528 people active on Trac and 13 committers, both numbers the highest in the history of WordPress.
That’s 1,528 people pouring their hearts and souls into GPL software we all own, we all build on, we can use as we please, we can all make better. We’ve evolved from a simple script to a web platform.
We’re on the cusp of version 3.0, with a release candidate coming out any minute now.
If you’d like to celebrate WordPress’s birthday with us — tell a friend! Help them upgrade their blog or find the perfect theme. Talk about how WordPress is built by and for a community. Drop in to help test 3.0, including all the plugins you use. Write something to take advantage of the new 3.0 features, or teach your friends how to. If you buy any themes or plugins, make sure they’re GPL or compatible just like WordPress. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, it’s important that we not forget that Open Source got us this far, and is the only way we’re going to get to the next level. The whole of what we can build together is far greater than the sum of our parts. Spread the good word. 
Loving the Luxuries
May 26th
Peter Singer encourages us in his book, The Life You Can Save
But to me, the larger concern is in our own perspective on our luxuries. These luxuries many times fuel the progress of mankind and advance a great deal of social good. Art is a perfect example. To me much of art is exhaustively financially overpriced. But it represents how much we as a culture can value beauty, ingenuity, and creativity.
There has to be a balance between minimalism and extravagance that allows our donors, and the everyday American, to feel okay about having money. Fundraising exists because many Americans have disposable income. I don’t agree with Peter Singer when he talks about giving up a cup of coffee to help someone in need. We will always view our gift from the perspective of what we gave up to give it. Most giving comes after we’ve paid our bills and set our budgets. What if it came before? What if we included charitable giving when we sat down at the table to figure out what we could spend this month? Instead of giving up coffee, what if we took a real look at what we wanted to accomplish and gave to bring about that outcome? People will respond more positively and generously when they have an opportunity to understand what their giving can mean.
Related posts:
The Older Entrepreneur’s Guide to Success
May 25th
4 tips to help you start a business later in life
Who is Doing the Most Good
May 24th
I recently read a book by Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save
An unspoken ranking system that I’ve seen developing is: global poverty, global health, local poverty, then education and healthcare, then the arts. This kind of unspoken ranking concerns me, and I am really curious what you think. From a purely financial perspective, I can understand the cost benefit of saving the most lives with the least amount of dollars, but that line of thinking would make me believe that the value of life is based only on how much it costs to live. It might cost $15,000 to save someone in a local hospital, or $5,000 to keep a homeless person off the streets. Should these people be forgotten because we could save 100 people in another country for the same amount of money? I guess I would say no, as a fundraiser. I hope we can raise money to help people locally and globally, and I’m glad that there are organizations and donors in both groups.
I believe that the world of fundraising is big enough for us all, and I am glad that there are a number of different kinds of organizations that can reach out to donors’ individual passions. The pull to save the most lives or make the “biggest difference” does speak to me in a unique way. How can nonprofits that do not serve the poorest of the poor make their message just as powerful? This brings us back to why we give. The power to address needs in your own community will often trump the needs of those we don’t know or to whom we feel no connection. Nonprofits need to be able to do a good job reaching out to the donors in their backyard, so to speak.
Do you think that one sector of nonprofit work deserves money more than another? Is there an unspoken ranking of nonprofits with your donors or in your community?
Related posts:
2010 Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey Results
May 21st
Over the past five months I served as the team leader for the 2010 Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey, a research project of the Caster Family Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research.
Nonprofit HR Solutions (a Washington DC based nonprofit human resources consulting firm) approached us to work on this national survey of nonprofit employment practices. I am happy to report that the data we collected is representative of organizations across the nonprofit sector by size, subsector, and location!!
The Caster Center will be hosting a Nonprofit Human Resource Management Symposium to discuss the key findings and implications this data on San Diego area nonprofits. I would like to highlight a few of these key findings here along with my commentary.
1. The nonprofit job market appears to be stabilizing. Nonprofits are starting to recover from the economic downturn and they are planning to hire new staff in the latter part of 2010 into 2011.
2. Nonprofits are doing more with less. As the demand for nonprofit services increases, nonprofits are turning to current employees to get the work done rather than hiring new employees. This is especially the case with smaller organizations. This staffing strategy has potential negative consequences of employee burnout and voluntary turnover.
3. Succession planning continues to be a problem for organizations. For senior and executive level positions, nonprofits are hiring from outside of the organization. This is especially disconcerting for emerging leaders. There are few opportunities for upward mobility within nonprofit organizations and the move out to move up mentality still rings true. (This finding mirrors the NP2020 research)
Click here to access the full report.
Nonprofit HR Solutions (a Washington DC based nonprofit human resources consulting firm) approached us to work on this national survey of nonprofit employment practices. I am happy to report that the data we collected is representative of organizations across the nonprofit sector by size, subsector, and location!!
The Caster Center will be hosting a Nonprofit Human Resource Management Symposium to discuss the key findings and implications this data on San Diego area nonprofits. I would like to highlight a few of these key findings here along with my commentary.
1. The nonprofit job market appears to be stabilizing. Nonprofits are starting to recover from the economic downturn and they are planning to hire new staff in the latter part of 2010 into 2011.
2. Nonprofits are doing more with less. As the demand for nonprofit services increases, nonprofits are turning to current employees to get the work done rather than hiring new employees. This is especially the case with smaller organizations. This staffing strategy has potential negative consequences of employee burnout and voluntary turnover.
3. Succession planning continues to be a problem for organizations. For senior and executive level positions, nonprofits are hiring from outside of the organization. This is especially disconcerting for emerging leaders. There are few opportunities for upward mobility within nonprofit organizations and the move out to move up mentality still rings true. (This finding mirrors the NP2020 research)
Click here to access the full report.
Entrepreneur Learns to Say No
May 20th
Baby Einstein founder and cancer survivor Aigner Clark no longer sweats the small stuff.
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