NPQ’s Week in Review

 

Good Morning! We hope you enjoyed the weekend. At NPQ, what moves you is what moves us. The Week in Review highlights what our readers nominate as their favorite content and what they share with us and the community in the form of tweets, comments, contributed articles, and newswires.

But first, take a look at what you might have missed last week in some of the major news stories covered in NPQ.

GOLDMAN SACHS DOESN’T MIX WELL WITH OCCUPY WALL STREET: When Goldman Sachs heard that the 25th anniversary dinner of the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union was honoring Occupy Wall Street, it didn’t take them very long to withdraw their sponsorship. Goldman Sachs has been a longtime supporter of LESPFCU, but considering the message of Occupy Wall Street it isn’t very surprising that they decided to bow out of this one.

ATHEIST DONATION REJECTED BY AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY:Looks like the theme for the week is denying donations for negative affiliation, only this time it’s the organization that’s rejecting the donation. The American Cancer Society turned down a donation from the Foundation Beyond Belief because of their past support of atheist causes. This seems like a bit much, giving up potentially half a million dollars that could go to cancer research. . . . Since when has the American Cancer Society been in strong opposition of “non-believers”?

DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP ABOUT 2012 PAY RAISES: We all know the economy hasn’t been booming lately. In case you though we would be getting a break soon, think again. The indications of pay raise prospects for 2012 from outside the nonprofit sector don’t look hopeful. With government budget cuts and shortfalls in charitable contributions, we shouldn’t be expecting booming salary raises anytime soon. So get comfortable where you are, folks.

OCCUPY WALL STREET—WHY NOW? Some individuals look at the Occupy Wall Street and wonder how this movement suddenly emerged. But NYU psychologist John Jost instead asks why it took three years after the bank bailouts for people to rise up and take action. Jost saw two factors stand out: more patriotic people realizing there’s little left to defend about “crony capitalism,” and increasing media coverage of protests around the world. Meanwhile, last week saw many more developments on the OWS front. It may have taken awhile for it to emerge, but now it has a raw momentum we may never have previously seen globally.”It may have taken awhile for it to emerge, but now it has a raw momentum we may never have previously seen globally outside of the Arab Spring” maybe?

 Readers’ Pick: THE Hottest article OF THE WEEK

Pinch Me I Must Be Dreaming: Is This The Future of Philanthropy?

NPQ’s newswire on Bill Somerville’s predictions of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation philanthropy trends for 2014 got a large readership this week because, according to Somerville, the traditional practices of philanthropy may be going the way of the dodo. Somerville’s musings elicited a huge number of responses from people who wanted to say, ”Well, sir, that would be just great!”

 Conversation OF THE WEEK

altInnovation and Impact: Enough Talk, More Do

Cynthia Gibson sparked a social media storm this week by challenging the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the current philanthropic conversations and practices related to innovation and impact. Is much of what philanthropy dubs innovative old wine in new bottles? Is funding of so-called innovation based more on social relationships than a real understanding and survey of the fields in which the innovations are being tried? These and many more challenging questions are the meat Gibson invites us to chew on. Take the time to read this article, as well as the comments that make us proud to have the readers we do.

 Trending Tweets of the week

alt

Thanks to all you tweeters out there. You help us spread the NPQ word and we’re grateful for your engagement. Rick Cohen’s piece on Wikileak’s donors leaving and it’s implications on the nonprofit sector ignited some intriguing tweets along with NPQ’s timely article on protesters in Egypt supporting Occupy Oakland. Thanks to our community for surfacing and circulating what interests you! And if you don’t already, follow us on Twitter at @npquarterly.

BiancaJaggerOct 31, 6:15 am via Hootesuite

 

RT @npquarterly Most donation processors have cut WikiLeaks off – raising interesting questions 4 the non-profit sector owl.li/7c6Jf

Nidhi_COct 28, 1:15pm via Hootsuite

 

RT @npquarterly: #India has increasing #’s of “super rich” – why is #philanthropylagging behind wealth accumulation?

FunFinancialsOct 28, 5:34pm via Hootsuite

RT @npquarterly: The “occupy” movement expands as protestors in Egypt march to express solidarity with Occupy Oakland

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respendentlymeOct 27, 3:41pm via TweetDeck

 

For those donating to Occupy Wall Street there is no tax deduction—but is that what is important? owl.li/7b6Sd@npquarterly

UnSectoredOct 27, 1:20pm via Hootsuite

 

Tweeting this again because it is so right. When innovation isn’t innovative frm @npquarterly owl.li/7aYPTvia @adincmiller

 

  NPQ’s READER Contributor of the week

Prentice Zinn

Prentice Zinn, of Grants Management Associates, is our contributor of the week. His response to Cindy Gibson’s article “Innovation and Impact: Less Talk, More Do” had us all in stitches.

 

This is heresy.

Do you realize how destabilizing your radical notions could be?

We philanthropy professionals might be rendered speechless and resort to communicating by grunts and primitive gestures if we can’t use the words “impact”, “strategic”, and “innovation” every other sentence.

Hotel ballrooms will empty the world over with no keynotes and panel discussions about impact metrics and the market-based impact whatsis. Chicken and rice pilaf suppliers would go out of business and the entire global tote bag market would collapse.

Packs of consultants, knowledge officers, and innovation directors might find themselves jobless and roam the streets like wild dogs looking for outcomes to measure and vainly searching for the high they got when they first mainlined a PowerPoint slide.

Thousands drafts of academic papers about new funding frameworks and social media tools for strategically-leveraging-collective-something-or-other may never see the light of day. How will anyone get tenure?

And without the nonprofit sector to beat on or markets to mythologize what will we all Tweet about?

You are a danger to civil society.

Fortunately our philanthropic force fields are stronger than ever and we will deflect your critique like a bug on a windshield.

Nice try.

 

 NOW IT’S YOUR TURN! GIVE IT TO US.

Got a Tip for Us? We Need Your Voice Here

Did we miss something this week? What do you want to see us cover next week? Be our eyes and ears on the ground. Don’t hold back. Let us have it. And we’ll put it right here. Just let us know if you want it to be confidential.