Gift Hub

Interra Project

The Goal of Interra

To facilitate a new economic infrastructure that engenders a virtuous circle of exchange among its participants citizen members, local businesses and social benefit organizations who agree to vote with their dollars, connect and support each other to grow a values-based economy.

Working group includes Dee Hock, the founder of Visa International and Greg Steltenpohl, founder of the Odwalla juice company. I first heard of this group at the Open Space Giving Conference from James Hung, who said he found them an excellent example of a social venture that just might prove that model works, doing well and doing good, by harnessing business methods to the goals of progressive social change.

The Ownership Society and Its Outcasts

The Happy Tutor on giving in an "ownership society." He certainly is smug for one who walks the streets. As poor as a Primitive Christian, no wonder he dismisses wealth as contemptuously as did Jesus. We in the wealth trades had better be more circumspect, else they will shut down our Think Tanks and Private Banks and turn us into the streets to scounge for scraps with the undeserving poor. Remember, Tutor, you gather more flies with honey than with vinegar. Or, maybe you like flies, living as you do in a public Dumpster?

The Big New Fundations, Their Leaders and Strategies

From Foundation Incubator (pdf):

Lew Coleman, President of The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation described the measurement-oriented, outcome-driven strategy that emerged from the values of his organization’s founders. Iqbal Paroo, President and COO of Omidyar Network, discussed Omidyar’s plans to develop a network of investments that promote “emergent” community-based solutions from the bottom up. And Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, detailed Skoll’s emphasis on people, with its focus on “investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs.”

I found the Omidyar "bottom up" approach an interesting new idea - not measuring results but creating a social matrix from which results can percolate up in unpredictable, self-organizing ways.

Evaluating Your Philanthropy

Making a Difference: Evaluating Your Philanthropy, from the The Philanthropic Initiative's Venturesome Donor Series. A refreshingly sane and balanced account of how a donor might evaluate the effectiveness of his or her gifts or grants. TPI leaves room for narrative, and personal engagement, for the smile on a child's face, as well as for MBA-style "metrics." They suggest an approach that is encouraging and appreciative of the grantee organizations efforts, not just a standoffish "accounting" and "reckoning." TPI seems more concerned to foster positive change, than, as Dr. Johnson put it, "to number the streaks on the tulip."

Life Cycle of a Public Charity

From the IRS comes this genuinely helpful information:

During its existence, a public charity has numerous interactions with the IRS – from filing an application for recognition of tax-exempt status, to filing the required annual information returns, to making changes in its mission and purpose. The IRS provides information, explanations, guides, forms and publications on all of these subjects – they are available through this IRS Web site. The illustration below provides an easy-to-use way of linking to the documents most charities will need as they proceed though the phases of their “life cycle."

Nonprofit Blogs - Chronicle of Philanthropy

Marty Kearns and I quoted on nonprofit blogs.

My Kingdom is Not of This Market

Many good things in life: love, kindness, free speech, private property, public goods, generosity, responsible and representative government, justice. A good theory starts with as few terms as possible and excogitates all others. We could start with private property and market freedom and go from there. Some do. But how does that sort with altruism? Beneficence? Caritas, or the teachings of Jesus? What are the obligations of wealth in a neoliberal economy? Bill Schambra, Dick Cornuelle and Lenore Ealy may help us articulate a new contempt for wealth and power, Contemptus Mundi. Once they clear it with Candidia Cruikshanks at Rooster Foundation. I hear she loves Jesus too.

Nation of Polarized Readers

Brad de Graef at MediaBurn Blog,

Interesting recent article in NY Times ( Study Finds a Nation of Polarized Readers) where Valdis Krebs analyzes bookbuying habits and networks thereof, and concludes that buyers of political books mainly buy those that reinforce their views (no big surprise) and that there are very few "bridge" books bought by both.

Fascinating graphic making the point jump off the page with almost no "bridge" between two dense clusters of works at polemecial odds. I acknowledge strong personal views, and enjoy polemic as sport, but we do so need to rebuild civic friendships, across divides, to remain one nation. Hope gifthub will be a "bridge blog," or a crossroads - perhaps despite my own partis pris. I am grateful for Lenore Ealy and Jeff Weissglass (of More than Money) among others for making that a real possibility.

Media Venture Collective

Via Tom Munnecke at his givingspace list serv, Media Venture Collective:

Media Venture Collective is fund of the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, focused on aggregating donations and grants, small and large, into "program-related investments" in high-impact, public-interest media enterprises. It is a new approach to financial mobilization, part venture fund, part community foundation, part social network, part collective intelligence, and 100% focused on supporting thriving public-benefit media enterprises that can be to monopoly media what Linux is to Microsoft....

If you care about fixing our seriously broken media systems, please don't leave here without supporting one of our great projects, and/or signing up for our (infrequent) newsletter. We can't afford to wait for our government-for-sale or the "free" market to reclaim the media for us. Fortunately, we don't have to.

By way of background, a program related investment allows a foundation to invest in for-profit businesses that advance that foundation's mission. Thus, the project is funded with tax deductible donations to the foundation, yet the foundation itself stands to get a positive financial return on its investment in the venture, cycling dollars back into the foundation so they can be used again and again. A very powerful model.