|
CONTRIBUTE BLOGS
04/02/2009 18:22
by Marcia Stepanek
When in Britain last week at
the Skoll World Forum, I was
referred to a recent article
in The Observer written by
Joss Garman, the 24-year-...
03/02/2009 22:35
by Marcia Stepanek
As the recent copyright woes
of Obama poster artist Shepard
Fairey show, there's a war
raging over what some now are
calling a new art form in ...
02/16/2009 07:24
by Marcia Stepanek
I just finished reading an
advance copy of "The Blue
Sweater: Bridging the Gap
Between Rich and Poor in an
Interconnected World,&qu...
| |
Top Stories:Trends
Art in the Fast Lane (hide me)
 If art moves you, you’ll have
your fill through December:
thousands of New York taxis
are covering their quotidian shells
with profusions of multicolored
flowers hand-painted on vinyl —
750,000 square feet of it — by some
23,000 New York City residents
who range in age from preschool
through their 80s. The brainchild of
brothers Ed and Bernie Massey,
Californians who founded an
umbrella organization, Portraits of
Hope, in 1995, the project seeks to
adapt visual imagery for large-scale
projects of social consequence.
Like Christo’s Central Park gates,
this project, called Garden in Transit,
is one of the city’s largest-scale
public art projects, a one-time effort
that culminates years of lobbying
the city. Unlike The Gates, the art is
designed to come to you. “Taxis are
the most ubiquitous surface in New
York and the one visual everyone
has access to,” says project director
Kyla Fullenwider. “It’s the best canvas
because it’s everywhere.”
Garden in Transit is the largest
art-therapy program in the city’s history —
and its kick-off coincides
with the sixth anniversary of 9/11
and the 100th anniversary of the
taxicab in New York City.
$70
million
The amount the
Rockefeller
Foundation in New
York has pledged
to help cities and
towns around
the world prepare
for the potentially
damaging effects
of global climate
change.
Chronicle of
Philanthropy,
August 10, 2007
Participants, recruited from
schools, hospitals, and after-school
programs, spent half of each threehour
collaborative session this past
summer learning about current
affairs, community issues, individual
and social responsibilities, and the
power of teamwork. They spent the
rest of the time painting the taxi
panels. Disabled painters were given
specially adapted brushes. The decorated
taxis, Fullenwider says, “become
vehicles for change.”
And when the exhibition stops
rolling after the holidays this year,
taxi owners and drivers, as well
as participating communities and
institutions, will be able to keep
pieces of these populist murals-inmotion.
Says Fullenwider: “Art can
be therapeutic for a city.”
— Carol Lippert Gray
Benefit Blogs
Whether blogs for the wealthy or
social networking sites for nonprofit
entrepreneurs, the Web features
dozens of new conversations about
how to make a difference. In this
issue, we focus on technology. Watch
this space for new sitings.
MICHAEL STEIN’S BLOG
michaelstein.typepad.com
San Francisco tech consultant Stein scans
about 60 blogs daily to track new nonprofit
strategies, chiefly those geared toward using
Web and mobile Internet technologies to
raise funds for a cause. Recent posts alerted
readers to ChipIn, a fundraising application
available to people using Facebook and
MySpace. Stein regularly riffs on software
innovations useful to social change groups —
a feat eased by his membership on the board
of IdealWare (think CNET for the nonprofit
software set).
NONPROFIT OPEN SOURCE
INITIATIVE
nosi.net
Started as a discussion space for open source
software advocates, NOSI seeks to help the
tech-challenged by asking — and answering —
questions such as, “How does open-source
software help our nonprofit organization?”
and “What’s the difference between free and
open source?” The result is a nonprofit
geek’s dream: informed comparisons of database
applications and the latest fundraising
management applications. Best of all? Case
studies showing how groups like Greenpeace
International made good use of open source.
TECHSOUP
blog.techsoup.org
TechSoup is best-known for linking corporate
tech donations with needy nonprofits, but it’s
also the force behind NetSquared, the nonprofit
online community networking site. For
a steady stream of tech tips and tricks to fill
out nonprofit strategies, TechSoup’s blog is
the place to go — and is especially helpful for
smaller nonprofits that don’t have a tech person
on the payroll. TechSoup trolls some of
the more obscure sites to bring readers all
the basics, from “Tips for Extending the Life
of Your Lithium Batteries” to “20 Search
Engine Optimization Mistakes” — enough to
keep even the most sophisticated advo-geek
in clover.
— Tracie McMillan
What’s Hot/What’s Not
Percentages by which donor giving changed in 2006
over the previous year, according to Giving USA’s
annual giving report, released in July.
Cause & Cash Parties
Last year, staff at the nonprofit YouthNoise decided to revamp
its Web site for socially conscious youth into an online networking
space (think MySpace meets Idealist.org) for teens.
But to stay current with the social networking craze, YouthNoise
knew it had to change the way it raised money; it no longer had the
time to write customized grant proposals and then wait for weeks,
if not months, for the money to trickle in.
The solution? Stage an offline “infomercial” — in a conference room
at a local hotel. Then, invite donors and prospects to attend, trumpet
the cause, and hope for the best. No way, you say? Guess again.
After a three-hour meeting in Silicon Valley with nearly 40
prospective donors earlier this year, YouthNoise CEO Ginger
Thomson raised about $750,000 on the spot — and then another
$750,000 in the months that followed, from people who had attended
the event but didn’t give at the time. Though more common to the
for-profit world, such dog-and-pony-show marketing tactics represent
a trend by online nonprofits seeking fast cash to ramp up.
The draw for donors? Cash parties can serve as a pep rally for a
cause; nonprofits can appear more dynamic when touting their missions
in person. Another plus? Online advocacy groups are able to
reach tens of thousands of new donors with the click of a mouse, and
at no additional cost to the organization. Says nonprofit strategist
George Overholser, founder of Manhattan-based Nonprofit Finance
Fund’s Capital Partners division, the infomercial strategy puts online
charities in the driver’s seat. “We come with a single story and we ask
all the donors to sign on. It’s a way of saying, ‘It’s more important that
you back this plan than I do what you tell me to do.’”
Jason Willett of Volunteer Match, which connects volunteers to
nonprofits, says any group with a broad mission and reach should
give it a try. “Invite funders and potential funders to a party,” he says.
“See where it goes.” — Kendra Hurley
With the simple query, “Hey, would you like to make a suggestion?” Illegal Art, an initiative of New York City nonprofit Stay Free Magazine, Inc.,
has been collecting hundreds of handwritten responses from people in every borough. Above, a selection from Suggestion Box — a compilation in
book form. Illegal Art, founded in the summer of 2001, seeks to create interactive public art to inspire self-reflection and human connection.
The Whole World Is Watching Satellite map of
mountaintop
strip mining that
the nonprofit
Appalachian
Voices Project is
working to halt.
Google is offering its satellite
technology, Google Earth, to a
growing roster of nonprofits
seeking to increase awareness of
large-scale regional problems around
the world — from the crisis in Darfur
to stripmining in the Appalachian
Mountains. The satellite technology,
part of a mapping project Google
completed in July with NASA, lets
people “fly” to any location on the
planet and explore it from above in
3D on their computer screens.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
is using a combination of highresolution
satellite images of Darfur
and photographs of people on the
ground to raise awareness of genocide
around the globe: the museum’s site,
ushmm.org/googleearth, allows users
to download a free application to survey
the Darfur region and to identify
which villages have been destroyed
and which are under attack. “With
satellite mapping, you can experience
actions as they are occurring,” says
Michael Graham, coordinator of the
museum’s genocide mapping project.“He definitely has enough
things.”
Shelley Brown, referring
to her son, Gavin, 4, who
had a “present-free”
birthday party, where
guests were asked to give
to charity in lieu of
gifts to Gavin.
The New York Times,
July 27, 2007
Other causes cite similar advantages.
According to Mary Anne Hitt,
executive director of the Appalachian
Voices Project, a Boone, N.C.-based
nonprofit fighting mountaintop removal,
a form of stripmining that is
displacing families in the area, traditional
media loses its impact; satellite
mapping spurs awareness and action.
Since starting the satellite project 11
months ago, Hitt says, more than
20,000 people have signed up to support
the group’s anti-stripmining initiative.
Hitt also reports a new roster of
donors and foundation support. “We
used to take reporters and decision
makers on day-long tours, flying over
the coalfields and then driving through
coalfield communities to hear from local
residents,” says Hitt. Now, she says,
“a good approximation of that tour is accessible
to anyone with a computer and
a speedy Internet connection.”
Others using the technology to
scope out embattled environments
include the Sierra Club and its Alaska
habitat refuge project (sierraclub.org/
arctic/maps/); Neighbors Against Irresponsible
Logging and its Redwoods
conservation project in California
(google.com/earth/outreach/cs_nail.
html), and the Jane Goodall Institute
and chimpanzee conservation work in
the Gombe region of Africa ( janegoodall.
org/Gombe-Chimp-Blog).
— Patricia Youngquist
“Aftermath of Atrophy,” by Alena Drayton, 17,
of Rockford, Mich., one of 1,100 young artists
recognized at Carnegie Hall in June as winners
of this year’s national Scholastic Art & Writing
Awards, administered by the nonprofit Alliance for
Young Artists & Writers, Inc. The 84-year-old
awards program works to present outstanding visual
art and writing created by teenagers (grades 7-12) to
a national audience. Past winners have included Richard
Avedon, John Lithgow, Joyce Maynard, Bernard Malamud,
Joyce Carol Oates, Andy Warhol, and Robert Redford. artandwriting.org
|
