| You are invited to co-create the 4th Annual Chicago Conference for Good. PLEASE join us, bring friends and add spirit! Share this invitation with neighbors and colleagues, people you’d like to connect or reconnect with this July! | |||
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“…cuz people |
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Localizing Global Change:
Issues and Opportunities |
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What kind of stuff have we been doing?
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The momentum of community is rising. Please join us! …for More and More. More and more people. More and more resources. More and more easy. More and more connected. More and more green. More and more power to do good things, in more and more local neighborhoods and organizations.Three years ago, some of us convened a small but national conference on the future of philanthropy, technology and community action. Two years ago, more of us joined in to create a second and international conference which was also the first-ever omidyar.net members conference. Last year we did it again, and along the way these conversations have sparked half a dozen more conferences and action on at least four continents.All the while, you’ve been busy doing all the things you do to try make the world a better place, and you’ve been noticing that more and more people are getting together for global community good. This year’s global gathering in Chicago is going to focus on “doingâ€. All good work. All kinds of local action. We welcome good people from everywhere to join with people we are actively inviting who are “doing†in Chicago neighborhoods. Bring your own local doing to share. We want to do more and more in all localities, and to do it more together.This year’s conference will follow the same simple and active format as all the previous conferences. We’ll gather for one big opening, create a working agenda that includes all of our most important issues and questions, meet with friends and colleagues to actively address everything on the agenda, document and publish our notes online, and head back out into all the things we are doing with more energy, more clarity and more connections.
The momentum of community is rising. Please join us! WHEN? July 19-22, 2007 …music and barbecue on Thursday night, conference all day Friday and Saturday, finishing by noon on Sunday, with airport drop-offs or excursions for out-of-towners on Sunday afternoon. WHERE? General Robert E. Wood Boys & Girls Club, 2950 W. 25th Street, Chicago IL 60623 WHO SHOULD COME? Anyone who wants to get more and more into community, technology, environment, and other social justice kinds of work and practice. Anyone who wants to make more and more connections between all these sorts of things. And anyone who wants to have more and more fun and friends in the process of community leadership. WHAT TO BRING? Food to eat/share, materials to show/share, ideas and questions, issues and projects that you care about and want to inform and be informed by others AND a total of $40 (scholarships may be available) to pay for basic costs of site and materials for all three days of meetings. NOW WHAT? Send an email to register@globalchicago.net (or any other address we like), make a payment at paypal (details forthcoming), forward this invitation to friends and colleagues, people you work with — and people you want to work with. we’ll send you details about places and times and be glad to answer any other questions. Stay tuned to www.GlobalChicago.net for more information. CO-CONVENERS? Ted Ernst, Christina Jordan, Michael Maranda, Hermilo Hinojosa, Kachina Katrina Zavalney, Pierre Clark, Julie Peterson, Jean Russell, Dave Chakrabarti, and You… |
Archive for the ‘philanthropy’ Category
that sucking sound you hear
Saturday, June 9th, 2007While 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:Â http://nonprofiteer.typepad
.com/the_nonprofiteer/2007/06 /dear_nonprofite.html#comment -72142198 (thanks, Nonprofiteer, for the kind words).
The continuing debate lives here:Â http://www.tacticalphilanthropy
.com/2007/05/some_nonprofits .html#comment-71226258 and here:Â 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.Â
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.
