The Realist Idealist

This six part series by Richard Behar of Fast Company entitled “China in Africa” is the single best piece of investigative journalism I’ve read in months. Maybe years. Maybe ever.

Behar breaks down and brilliantly weaves the geo-political, business, governmental, community, historical, and personality issues that plague a handful of resource-rich countries across the sub-Saharan [...]

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My friend Asheen - who I’ve never met in person, but whom I respect greatly through a list-serve on which we both engage - sent this photo out today. His title: “An alternate universe.”

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Making good things (actually) happen is hard.
On any large scale, trying to make the world a bit better place is messy and complicated and almost always full of the same back-room shenanigans chronicled throughout the political, business, and tech sectors, but with one not-so-small difference: everyone involved acts like it’s not, and almost no one [...]

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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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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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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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After being on the road for a week or more I always return home (wherever that may be in a given year) with a wealth of new ideas on my mind.  It’s a timeless tradition for the weary traveler as the myriad airports and jets provide plenty of time (usually more than we’d like) for [...]

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At the end of the day, fundraising is the engine that drives the nonprofit sector. In general, if you’re running any organization - for-profit or non - and you’re not thinking about money, you’re wrong. With the overwhelmingly vast majority of nonprofits, if you’re not thinking about fundraising, you’re wrong.

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