Commongood Careers is dedicated to
helping today's most effective social entrepreneurs hire the best talent. Founded
by nonprofit professionals, Commongood Careers offers personalized, engaged
services to job seekers and organizations throughout the hiring process, as well
as access to a wealth of knowledge about careers in the social sector.
Teaching the Importance of Voluntary Action
for the Common Good in a Democratic SocietyLearning to Give offers lesson plans, activities, and resources to educate youth about the power of philanthropy (sharing time, talent and treasure).Empower young people to make a difference in their school, their community and their world!
Effective Communities, LLC works with the gamut of civic, public, and philanthropic organizations – grassroots groups, donors, foundations, agencies, associations, networks, and systems – to help them achieve greater effectiveness consistent with their mission. We favor organizations that seek to level the playing field, reduce barriers, and otherwise improve conditions that support fair and equitable progress. See Current Major Projects (below), Services, and Articles.
Danny Siegel is one of the world's greatest experts on microphilanthropy. For more than 30 years he has lectured in hundreds of communities on the topic of personalized Tzedakah and Tikkun Olam (Fixing the World). He is the founder and chairman of Ziv Tzedakah Fund.
Draiman Consulting Group: see description below. I found Draiman via a comment left on Gifthub by Arnie Draiman. If you are a reader who would like a nod in your direction, please drop me a note or leave a comment with a link to your online presence. Let's see if we can become a community, as well as a place where people come to skim blurbs and links. Listening to me is the worst part of this site. The comments are the best part, and the social filtering, so that we might meet and converse with like-minded people towards, perhaps, some real world results.
DRAIMAN CONSULTING GROUP primarily serves individual donors and philanthropists, family foundations, Tzedakah funds - anyone interested in giving his or her money away wisely. We are directly responsible for doing the due diligence necessary and for maintaining constant contact with recipients. After due research and analysis, we will offer you a recommendation as to whether or not funding is appropriate.
We will work with you to make the absolutely most efficient and effective use of your Tzedakah money. It is your right and your responsiblity to insure that your Tzedakah money is doing the best Tikkun Olam (making the world a better place) that it can.
"How much better would the Jewish world be if we could apply the same obsessive-compulsiveness to tzedakah that we do to cleaning for Pesach?" -- BZ, "Mah Rabu" Blogspot.
Thank you, Arnie, for reading and commenting here. Glad to meet you. Your statement that, "It is your right and your responsibility to insure that your Tzedakah money is doing the best Tikkun Olam (making the world a better place) that it can" points towards metrics that matter, embedded not just in business protocols but also in spiritual and ethical traditions of obligation and care.
I had posted on Giving Anonymously awhile back. They offer donors a way to anonymously give money to specific named people in need, without going through any nonprofit intermediary. The President of Giving Anonymously, Lionel Thompson, wrote and we exchanged emails. I quote him with permission.
Phil,
Here is a brief synopsis of what Giving Anonymously (GA) does: Giving Anonymously is a very unique non-profit (we know of no otherorganization in the world operating in the way we do). The premise of our organization is to facilitate generosity between people by enabling anyone to be their own charity. We encourage people to look around their communities (their neighbors, family and friends) and to give directly to needs they see around them. In essence we are multiplying our ability to find and to give into needs by using the eyes and ears of communities themselves. GA provides a web-based platform for people to give that is fully anonymous, fun, and effective. In order for charities to give donors tax deductible receipts they have to themselves approve of needful situations. Therefore, a bigger staff (and thus overhead) is often required to find and then screen the needs in communities. This limits a charity's ability to find needs to the eyes and ears of its staff. GA does not qualify as a tax deductible organization for the very reason that we enlist anyone and everyone to find, screen and give into needs themselves. Therefore, gifts through GA are not tax deductible but our ability to facilitate giving into needs is limitless. The process of how our platform works can be seen on our website www.givanon.org. The site was launched in April 2006 and since then close to $20,000 in small gifts has been given through the site. We have not done any advertising and yet people throughout the USA and even Canada have found our website and begun using it to give to people around them in need.
The most moving thing about the way our site functions is that recipients call our toll free number to leave a message of thanks. These thank you messages are then emailed as a voice files to donors, who remain anonymous. Donors then hear their friends confirming the amount they received and then thanking them for their gift. It is a very personal and meaningful way to give. Two voice files of past thank you messages are posted on our homepage.
I'd love to know your thoughts and gain any feedback you might have.
Thank you again for linking to our site,
Lionel Thompson,
President
Giving Anonymously
The Giving Anonymously process struck me as close to Chritian alms, or the practice of giving anonymously recommended by Maimonides. Lionel, in an ensuing email, agreed. "I do indeed have roots in the Christian faith - in fact my wife and I worked in different parts of Africa and Switzerland as humanitarian Christian missionaries if you will."
Some may suggest that the flaw with Giving Anonymously is that the giver gets no deduction. To that two responses might be made: 1) for many donors who don't itemize the deduction may not do anything for them. 2) More importantly, giving direct to a person in need may eliminate 100% of the overhead and the dispersion of the gift among many recipients. With Giving Anionymously, every dime goes direct the person in need that the giver has specified. Compare that direct giving to taxes for social programs or gifts through nonprofit intermediaries. Which, even after taking account of the tax effects, is most efficient?.
From a humane perspective, or "neighborly" perspective, to give directly but anonymously saves the recipient the shame of personal gratitude, of behing beholden, and spares the donor the temptation of spiritual pride. Yet the donor has the gratification of hearing the recipient say in a voice clip that the gift has been meaningful. Thus, the giving maintains a living human bond of solidarity, disinterested love, and community, while preserving the dignity of the recipient. Maimonides would approve. See, if you have not read it, his "Ladder of Tzedakah."
Schelling Point offers a consulting process to bring common purpose and concerted action out of like-minded people who may not fall beneath a common command and control hierarchy. I have long been in love with the work of T.C. Schelling, and find this application of his ideas fascinating:
A Schelling Point is a point - physical or mental - that people will tend to converge on in the absence of communication, because it seems natural, special or relevant to them. The concept was introduced by the American economist and 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize recipient Thomas Schelling in his book "The Strategy of Conflict" (1960). Like-minded individuals easily generate strong Schelling Points around common themes.
We have adopted this concept of tacit coordination, or as we refer to it Coordinated Agility™. In Dr. Schelling's own words, "What is necessary is to coordinate predictions, to read the same message in the common situation, to identify the one course of action that their expectations of each other can converge on."
Can you imagine what kind of world we would live in, if our institutions were a Schelling point into which we had each had equal input? Instead, our Schelling points all to often are formed by propaganda, big lies, brands, think tanks, and blarney. To arrive at a societal Schelling point we need open and active conversation among citizens, as peers, to cut through the smoke of the smoke machines deployed to keep us moving unthinkingly or obediently within a system that may serve the privileged few better than it serves the many. Interesting to see that a firm has found a way to make a business out of this process of hashing out a common vision and direction among diverse stakeholders.
About On-Line Volunteering, Information Non-Profits Can Use: How to Exchange Files with On-Line Voluteers - Seventeen Free Web-based Services to Use. Lots of other useful information on this site about on-line volunteering and how to activate it with web-based tools.
Among the best articles I have seen on wealth, family, and society. These are from Kathryn Davison, at her Tonic Capital, under resources.
Few in the field reach this level of judgment, empathy, breadth of vision, tact, and clarity.
A fine set of free tools:
Phil Cubeta, Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families
Recent Comments