The Blog Stump

Josh Goodwin, from our DonorTec technology donation program in Australia www.donortec.com.au, recently asked our nonprofit organisation donation recipients to send in photos that captured what their organisation is about and he made it into a competition called ‘A Jpeg’s worth a thousand words’, for which entries are still pouring in. You can see some of them that Josh inserted into MS Movie Maker on YouTube at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Baa6mKletKg&feature=youtube_gdata .

I just thought you might like to share in the experience.

It’s been fascinating watching the various reactions to the launch of All For Good , a nonprofit sector initiative that seems to closely parallel the Obama adminstrations’s United We Serve program. It’s attracted some very heavy hitters, including Google, Facebook, Craig’s List and many more. The intention is that: “All for Good helps people instantly find simple ways to get involved in their community, from being a mentor to helping design a website for a nonprofit. The platform also lets people sign in with services like Facebook or Google to share volunteer activities with friends across social networking services such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others. “

Now who could possibly want to criticise something as wholesome as that? Well, quite a few people actually, including Peter Deitz from Social Actions, who addressed Connecting Up 09 recently, and Volunteer Match.

It’s not the first, or last, time a seemingly well-intentioned initiative has rolled over the top of existing services, especially when the initiators have broader agendas. Stand by for the launch of ROSTI (’Round Object to Support Transport’ Initiative), aka the re-invention of the wheel.

It’s always good to see the rise of another media outlet for our sector and we wish the Third Sector Magazine well, especially when they give us this wonderful coverage.

http://www.thirdsectormagazine.com.au/editions/tsm_jan09_web.pdf

At a time when we are already seeing people laid off around the country, it has struck me as bizarre that this also includes those in nonprofits and charities. If ever there was a time to be stimulating this sector, it is now. Having no sooner thought that than I came across a recent article from the Brookings Institute, ‘Don’t Forget the Human Infrastructure’, which urges President-elect Obama to include the sector in any economic stimulus package. Sure, it’s American in its focus but the essential arguments are sound and I hope Kevin and Wayne get the message.

On 4 December 2008 the Senate Standing Committee on Economics published its report on Disclosure regimes for charities and not-for-profit organisations .  I believe that on the whole the recommendations are sound, with the two key recommendations being:

Recommendation 2

The committee recommends that the Government establish a unit within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet specifically to manage issues arising for Not-For-Profit Organisations. The unit should report to a Minister for the Third Sector.

Recommendation 3

The committee recommends that there be a single independent national regulator for Not-For-Profit Organisations.

As always the devel will be in the detail and the Government is yet to announce its response to the Report. However one area that will bear watching closely is Recommendation 14:  The committee recommends that the national regulator investigate the cost vs benefit of a GuideStar-type system (a website portal that publishes information on the aims and activities of Not-For-Profit Organisations) in Australia to encompass all Not-For-Profit Organisations.

This article from The Chronicle of Philanthropy http://philanthropy.com/news/prospecting/index.php?id=4493 supports what we are finding more and more frequently and when combined with spam filters (and who checks those regularly), getting through the email message at all, let alone to the person in that organisation its aimed at, is getting harder and harder. Perhaps returning to the ‘novelty’ of the old (if more expensive) technologies of fax and post are the answer for truly important messages. The bottom line is that what you have to say has to be more and more personally relevant and continuously of interest to the recipient drowning in unsolicited e-correspondence.