wrythings

Nothing happening in the Midwest?

http://www.joinliveearth.org/

Via the Open Space listserv, courtesy Doug Germann:

Perhaps the earliest open space poet was Emily Dickinson. In 1858, she wrote:

In the name of the Bee–
And of the Butterfly–
And of the Breeze–Amen!

The long awaited report from the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide was released Friday June 15th at the Community Media Summit convened by the Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop under the title The City that NetWorks: Transforming Society and Economy Through Digital Excellence.

Digital Excellence is both means and end for Chicago as the City of Excellence. The Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA) had a large hand in bringing this vision into the public sphere. We’ll turn a critical eye to the details of the report, as is our duty, but for now we celebrate it’s release and the vision that has been established, and we offer our deepest gratitude to Julia M. Stasch for her service to our city in chairing the Mayor’s Advisory Council and shepherding this visionary and historical document.

Stay tuned for analysis and response.

While at NetSquared Y2 there was a tension between certain perspectives around profit, narrow-sense sustainability and the non-profit sector. Dave C. shared some links with his fellows in the grassroots and philanthropic sectors, asking for us to get to work on our language and conceptual schema to defend what is in fact different about what we do.

At the NetSquared conference recently, there was a comment made by a venture capitalist that “Some nonprofits just suck”.  This was partially attached to a discussion of nonprofit sustainability models, with a very large portion of participants taking it for granted that “sustainability” meant charging for services. There is an entrenched view that foundation grant funding and other donations can never be “sustainable”, and that there must be a return on services offered that eventually sustains the organization financially.

I responded to much of this. There’s a synopsis on the Nonprofiteer: http://nonprofiteer.typepad.com/the_nonprofiteer/2007/06/dear_nonprofite.html#comment-72142198

(thanks, Nonprofiteer, for the kind words).

The continuing debate lives here: http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/05/some_nonprofits.html#comment-71226258

and here: http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/06/philanthropic_c.html#comment-72140764

…and other comment threads on the Tactical Philanthropy site and elsewhere.

Coming under fire for offering services for free, by nonprofit funders who do not seem to understand the difference between “mission-driven” and “profit-driven”, forces me to suggest that we, as a sector, need to develop stronger language regarding these issues. Most of all, we need to work towards a different model of sustainability, so that we can pose alternate definitions when a potential funder equates “sustainability” with a system based on marginal returns for services offered. 

So my question is: “How do we measure sustainability if we’re mission-focused (nonprofit) instead of profit-focused (for profit)?”.

And related: “How do we communicate the difference to the venture capitalist, foundation, and other donor communities who we’re hoping will support our work?”.

In both cases, by “we” I mean all of us mailing list denizens, not our organization in particular.

Responses appreciated. Backup on Tactical Phil would be awesome (I think I’m outnumbered).

Dave.

Phil C. took up that flag long ago, but here’s a current link in response to this: Gift Hub: Something Here Certainly Does Suck

The key for me in the framing of these questions is whether one limits one’s view to the organizational boundary as one views each exchange or transmission of value, or whether one holds an ecological perspective on the flows and is able to see a variety of significant flows.

Would I have been happier with a fiddle than a violin?

Next up on my reading list is (Gore’s latest book) The Assault on Reason.

Gore has taken on the most important issues of the day: the environment, the politics of media, public life. These are grounded in the big questions of living together on this planet. His tone is measured. Had the Supreme Court handled the 2000 elections other than they did, would Gore be the Statesman he is now?