The Realist Idealist

No matter how much I try not to have the conversations about online fundraising - mostly because others who know much more about it than I should be having them - I sure do end up talking about it an awful lot.
Along those lines one of my colleagues at Idealist just sent me a link [...]

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Anyone who saw my twitter feed last night could likely recognize how frustrated I was with the democratic debate on ABC between Obama and Clinton (through mostly not-worth-reading sarcasm).
Today my friend Adam Green at MoveOn.org sent this email to their members, and though I don’t support all petitions, their suggested petition is the only kind [...]

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To be perfectly honest, as much as I love the products that come out, I get a little tired of writing and talking about Google and Salesforce. I really wish some other companies would develop and innovate on the same level and provide some new tools to the folks out there trying to [...]

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In early October YouTube announced the YouTube for Nonprofits Program and a special site for them that would allow them to have full branding of a page and free processing of donations for Google Checkout.
Since then, hundreds of nonprofits from the ONE Campaign to the Clinton Foundation to PlayPumps International have launched pages and raised [...]

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I’m in London this week for the kick off of the Webby’s People’s Voice Awards sponsored by .Org.
www.thewebbys.org
Almost every time I’ve said “.Org” someone has responded, “Oh great, which one?” The answer is the interesting thing; the “.Org” I mean, and the one making this event happen, is actually an “org”anization unto itself as a [...]

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And maybe sooner than we think.
Just about the time the entire world is starting to get access, the internet could possibly be made obsolete by a new “grid” system which is 10,000 times faster than broadband connections.
The Telegraph reported this morning on the new network designed by scientists in Switzerland.
Without an equivalent TCP/IP system for [...]

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My programmatic highlight of SXSW Interactive a few weeks ago, by far, was the keynote address given by Jane McGonigal - a noted game designer and games researcher, specializing in pervasive games and alternate reality games.
In all honesty, before the speech, I wasn’t in any way interested in games or what Jane had to say. [...]

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On December 5th, I was at a White House gathering for International Volunteer Day where Global Giving and Volunteers for Prosperity announced a public-private partnership that creates an incentive (by providing matching grants) to those Americans who want to volunteer abroad. It was exciting then to be sure, but like most things, we knew [...]

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http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html
As we all know Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So in true realist-idealist fashion Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first [...]

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I’ve often felt strongly that the requirement of businesspersons, nonprofit and NGO staff, and others in the field to write an email or produce other work on time is one of the larger problems our society faces. There is simply not enough time in the day. There aren’t enough neurological connections upstairs to [...]

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