From the AmeriCorps Listserv:

Dear friends,

If you’re thinking about starting up your own social change organization
or have recently done so, I want to share an opportunity for seed
funding with you. Please review the information below to learn how the
Echoing Green Fellowship provides up to $90,000 in funding for new,
innovative organizations working to create social change.

In addition, even if you’re not interested in this fellowship yourself,
I ask that you please forward this message to friends or listservs that
would find it useful. Unlike other fellowships, you don’t need to be
nominated to apply - but the only way we can truly make it open to all
is through your support.

Just make sure to spread the word soon as our application deadline is
little more than a month away.

Much appreciated,
Jeremy

———————————–

VISIONARIES WANTED

* Do you have an incredible, new idea that could change your community,
country, or world?

* Are you an entrepreneur who won’t rest until your idea has been
brought to life? Or a leader who has recently started an organization to
do just that?

If so, apply for an Echoing Green Fellowship. You could receive up to
$90,000 in seed funding and support to launch a new organization that
turns your innovative idea for social change into action.

Follow in the footsteps of the founders of Teach For America, City Year,
and over 400 other social change organizations and apply online by
December 1, 2006.

Watch the video: http://www.echoinggreen.org/video

Find out whether you qualify: http://www.echoinggreen.org/shouldyouapply

Questions? Contact Jeremy Schifeling at jeremy@echoinggreen.org.

Here is a blog from Katya Andresen, a marketer for Network for Good, that I’m learning a lot from. Maybe, you will too.

Oh, and no I’m not dead - just working on my Masters, which is the closest thing to death you can get socially.

Negotiating When the Rules Suddenly Change — HBS Working Knowledge

Following the adoption of a collective bargaining agreement in 2005, National Hockey League GMs had one month to absorb the new rules and put a team together. How to best negotiate in an uncertain environment? Michael Wheeler advises looking to military science for winning strategies. Key concepts include:

* Traditional negotiation theory says little about crafting strategy in highly dynamic markets—but the military knows all about strategy and uncertainty.
* Make an informed bet on how you think events will unfold, but also identify the greatest threats to success.
* Prepare to make good decisions on the fly.
* Situational awareness and the ability to learn as you go are critical.

Another linkage leftover:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=5316&t=heskett&oid=5316&rid=-1&hid=-1&aid=-1

A link to an interesting article:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=5312&t=dispatch

I thought I would share another opportunity on a topic that I find important:

Hello, everyone.

Within the context of service-learning, “Social Franchise” is a concept
offering an opportunity to apply classroom learning while learning
self-reliance, selflessness, and sustainable solutions. I am hoping
to find professors of business, social work, urban planning, criminal
justice, the environmental sciences, engineering, etc., who would be interested
in having their students, through service-learning, do a much-needed
community
service.

The concept of Social Franchise (”SF”) differs signficantly from the
important effort of Community Wealth Ventures at
www.socialfranchise.com,
becasue SF is the identification of micro-businesses which

* need little preparatory time,
* necessitate little or no investment,
* have little or no risk,
* require relatively little time to operate,
* have green products or services,
* employ pioneering best practices.

These criteria are used to evaluate businesses and business ideas for
suitability for

(1) youth who wish to earn for college, develop leadership and / or
raise
money for causes;
(2) the disabled who are looking for a reliable and manageable business
opportunity;
(3) nonprofits which do not have large staff or income to dedicate to a
normal franchise;
(4) single parents who need to augment their income;
(5) those who are in transition from incarceration to society.

These evaluations are done by teams of university undergraduates and
graduates from different disciplines, augmented by alumni and retired
businesspeople if possible. Through service-learning the students
learn

(a) the abilities and needs of the aforementioned groups;
(b) the requirements of a successful business;
(c) the requirements of a successful social franchise; this is
noteworthy
when, for example, a student of environmental science tells fellow
evaluators why a business idea succeeds or fails in environmental
suitability;
(d) the usefulness of social franchises to fostering self-reliance,
selflessness, and sustainable solutions.

A directory of suitable businesses and business ideas then is posted, and
nonprofit organizations arrange for social franchises for youth, the
disabled, nonprofits, and single parents who are interested.
Understandably, everyone in the process makes a good-faith effort, but
assumes no liability when determining a business or business idea to be
suitable or unsuitable.

I believe that we, as a society, very much need Social Franchise. The
directory of suitable businesses and business ideas might have
application
domesticallly and abroad. I ask interested professors and university
service-learning staff to be in touch at this time. Please reply to my
e-mail address below.

Thank you.

Van Ajemian, J.D.
vanajemian@hotmail.com
323.720.1022, office, Pacific time
Optimizing National Education
Montebello, California 90640

The U.S. needs to support soccer in it urban communities if it is going to succeed. There is a value in finding players, expanding its fanbase, and showing that the league supports the social welfare of the country. The Guardian has an excellent article on the subject:

“In 2000, the Football Foundation was formed to invest in grassroots facilities and community projects. It receives 5% of the Premier League’s TV money, which, with matched funding from the government and the FA, makes it Britain’s largest sporting charity. The foundation has awarded £198m in grants, and attracted a further £179m in partnership funding. But having recognised the limitations of being a grant-approving body, it has committed itself to becoming more strategic.”

Sometimes changing the form that shapes your event can have a profound affect on the quality and depth of interactions for those attending. Try this:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

Here’s a request for presentations that might interest my long suffering readers:

DOORS OF PERCEPTION 9: JUICE: FOOD, FUEL, MEANING Food continuously circulates through the landscape into our homes and Bodies. It thereby organizes our calorific, symbolic and social energies. Juice, the essence of food, can also mean credit, electricity, access, flavor and love. The topic of food, as product as well as service, as metaphor as well as material, as energy as well as connectedness, will preoccupy us at Doors of Perception 9. The conference will be held in New Delhi from 28 February to 4 March 2007. Doors 9 begins with a two-day Project Leaders Round Table. This might involve you if your project is concerned with: - Innovative ways to share, prepare, cook and eat food - Urban farming, new links between producer and consumer - Practices that transform urban-countryside interactions - Sustainable packaging and distribution scenarios - Effective uses of new technologies in relation to food The deadline for receipt of proposals is Friday 8 September 2006. Projects should be informed by a real location or situation through multiple disciplines and dimensions. Hypothetical, conceptual, and unrealizable proposals are NOT encouraged. Proposals will be reviewed in September based on a concise project description. Send an email [ to: editor@doorsofperception.com] (Subject header: “juice project”) on these five points: a) title of your project b) 10 word description c) 100 word description d) name(s) of author(s) e) URL Your proposals will be reviewed by: Aditya Dev Sood, Centre for Knowledge Societies (CKS); Debra Solomon, culiblog.org; Juha Huuskonen, PixelAche; Amy Franseschini, futurefarmers; John Thackara, Doors of Perception. Notification of finalists will be by Friday 22 September. If invited, you will need to pay for your travel to India, but we will cover your accommodation, food, and basic event costs, as well as your registration fees for Doors 9.

This video called "Save The Farm" is about:

"Los Angeles set[ing] aside [a] 14-acre site for use as a community garden. In 1994, the City transferred title to the property by ordinance to its Harbor Department for $13 million. When it received title to the property, the Harbor Department contracted with the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank to operate the property as a community garden…"

For more informaiton go to the South Central Farmers website.

Where Most Needed looked at the Corporation for National Service Report on volunteerism, studied it sources, did some excellent analysis, and found:

"Taking some reasonable assumptions about the average time in each range, I calculated who is responsible for the most volunteer hours.  As is typical in this type of analysis, the third of volunteers that gave 100 hours or more accounted for something like 84% of the total volunteer hours.  Since about 30% of Americans volunteer, that means that the 10% of Americans who volunteer more than 100 hours a year do the vast majority of the volunteer work."

Demos' purpose is to help build a society where America can achieve its highest democratic ideals. We believe that requires a democracy that is robust and inclusive, with high levels of electoral participation and civic engagement, and an economy where prosperity and opportunity are broadly shared and disparity is reduced.

America's Promise has developed a great resource for those who seek federal funding for youth development programs. Many organizations shy away from attempting to apply, but if they can devote the time and resources to writing a good proposal, they can be just as successful as larger NPOs.

Finally, a newspaper that gets blogs and its value to them. Now we can get our New York political news from a news/blog: The Empire Zone. I love to read the comments after the articles. Man people are pissed at Patrick Healy for writing the State of the Clinton Marriage report. Whew! Now, they get to talk back to the reporter in a public forum. This is a great example of the power of the internet.

A management skill that cannot be overused and often underestimated:

Scanning 

Active scanning reflects intense curiosity and emphasizes the further-out and fuzzier edge of the periphery. For example, an advertising agency and its clients may passively scan results from television ad campaigns or trends in the industry. But managers could actively seek the answer to the question: "What are the consequences of more people surfing the Web and becoming increasingly skeptical of advertising?" Active scans often are hypothesis driven.

Why the hell wasn't this distributed when he was running?! He would have won the hearts of the American people without mainstream media's help. What a waste! Politicians do not get the power of the internet. You can bypass mainstream media and speak directly to them. 

If you wish you had a calendar that:

• worked over a network
• was cross-platform
• could let you type things like, "12pm lunch with my friend" and it would make the appointment
• shares information and events amongst a group
• let's you invite people to an appointment
• sends reminders to your cell phone

Then Google Calendar is for you.

Global Rich List:

"Every year we gaze enviously at the lists of the richest people in world. Wondering what it would be like to have that sort of cash. But where would you sit on one of those lists? Here’s your chance to find out."

Update: I posted this not to make people feel guilty, but to put our values into perspective. Also, its a very interesting way to change American minds about donating to a cause. Often, people believe that they don't have enough money, but it's not true. This web site makes that case very effectively. 

IT Conversations:

The discussion starts there — reviewing some of the very advanced projects that American Cancer Society and other non-profits, such as the March of Dimes, have conducted using blogs. The three then discuss the growing adoption of blogs and other social media, as well as coming features planned for the two technology companies’ products.

Stanford Social Innovation Review has an excellent case study on Aspire, which is the U.K.’s first social business to expand through franchisement. “Aspire employed homeless people in a door-to-door catalog business that sold fairtrade products.” Download the article.

Leader to Leader:

To find out, we carried out a careful study of individuals who conform to our conception of social entrepreneurs. They have formed a wide array of organizations: one lends money to small businesses in South America, a second is dedicated to urban education, a third started a for-profit Web development company that hires extensively in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. We chose two other groups with whom to compare them: a group of business entrepreneurs (to control for entrepreneurial talent and dedication) and a group of young service professionals working in the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Program (to control for a commitment to social missions). Individuals were selected on the basis of recommendations of experts in the three fields. We discovered that social entrepreneurs are more like the Schweitzer service professionals, but they act more like business entrepreneurs.

As I posted previously, you can create social software applications with help from Ning. So the question you must be asking is “What is a Ning?” Wired magazine answers that question with help on creating your first application using it.

Now’s your chance to put your brilliant ideas in front of a web-hungry world without the bother of looking for investors, designing shoddy classes and whatever else typically goes into making a hot-shot social web application.

Maybe the many social apps that exist just don’t fit your needs. Try making your own online.

Ning

Ning is the new free and easy way for you to create your own Social Web Apps - so let the fun begin!

Computer programmers are not thought of as possible volunteers, which is a loss for nonprofits everywhere. There is a web site that can help NPOs connect with software developers.

Code for a Cause 

Grassroots Fundraising Journal

Do you need help

*Creating a fundraising plan?

*Organizing an individual donor campaign?

*Improving the fundraising skills of your staff and board?

*Producing an event that will reach a new audience of potential donors?

Google Page Creator:

Google Page Creator is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just minutes.

• No technical knowledge required.
  Build high-quality web pages without having to learn HTML or use complex software.

• What you see is what you’ll get.
  Edit your pages right in your browser, seeing exactly how your finished product will look every step along the way.

• Don’t worry about hosting.
  Your web pages will live on your own site at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com

From the Nonprofit Leadership League

A 360º Assessment is a useful tool for delivering powerful insights to guide
management decision and action. It can be used in almost any circumstance to gather just about any information from almost anybody. They range from the simple survey to the complex organization-wide assessments that gather information relating performance, employee competencies, customer relations, market reactions to new product launch, leadership impact, and more. 360 Degree Assessment (PDF)

Nonprofit Online News

Mixed messages are inevitable, but some are more damaging than others. It’s less harmful when the consumption end of the knowledge management workflows are undermined, such as when someone looks something up in a paper directory, rather than in the new, up-to-date online directory. But it’s much more harmful when a high leverage component of the production end of the workflow is undermined, such as whether communication is digitally documented in the first place or whether key metadata is added.

Value of Volunteer Time 2005

“The estimated dollar value of volunteer time is $18.04 per hour for 2005.”

An interesting way to increase the reach of your organization and in turn increase your funding.
Google Grants

“The Google Grants program supports organizations sharing our philosophy of community service, and with a strong mission to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.”
“Google Grant recipients use their award of free AdWords advertising on Google.com to raise awareness and increase traffic.”