Crazy change from what I've seen before. First, a social media platform (Facebook) is openly getting involved in the academic research scene and, second, they're doing it through a competition for funding available directly to students, without the need to work for a particular institution. Support of knowledge and IP w/o an exclusive contract! Very, very cool. True innovation through collaboration (and between the worlds I work in, as a bonus). Can you tell I'm excited?? - M
PND - RFPs
Facebook Launches Fellowship Program To Promote Social Computing Research
Posted using ShareThis
Sunday, January 24, 2010
PND - RFPs Constellation Energy Announces New Clean Energy Grant Program
Something to pass on to emerging nonprofits in renewable energy. Likely an opportunity for corporate or university partnership.
May investigate further myself. - M
PND - RFPs
Constellation Energy Announces New Clean Energy Grant Program
Posted using ShareThis
May investigate further myself. - M
PND - RFPs
Constellation Energy Announces New Clean Energy Grant Program
Posted using ShareThis
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Communication, New Media, and NPs: The Year in Review from PND Online (Foundation Center)
Two large articles, maybe too long for a blog. But too much good information and too much to the point not to share. Might use some of these facts in my own work for 2010. Maybe you can too. Always credit your sources. :) Best, - M
:::::::::: CHARITY COMES TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA BALL :::::::::::
While early adopters and young adults have embraced online social
networks for years, 2009 was the year that celebrities, nonprofits,
and foundations got in on the act and began to experiment in earn-
est with social media tools and platforms to raise awareness for
their programs and causes.
According to a report issued early in the year by the Pew Inter-
net and American Life Project, 46 percent of American adults
online claimed to use a social networking site such as MySpace,
Facebook, or LinkedIn, up from 5 percent in early 2005, while
11 percent said they use Twitter or another "microblogging" ser-
vice. Facebook, the most popular of the social networking sites,
soared past the 200-million-user mark in the spring, while the
number of people who access Twitter, the new darling of the
social media world, spiked in February and March after the main-
stream media caught on to the fact that celebrities had become
regular users of the service.
Indeed, more than a few celebrities decided to leverage their
real-world popularity to champion charitable causes on Twitter.
In April, actor Hugh Jackman (@realhughjackman) challenged his
Twitter followers to explain (in 140 characters or less) why he
should support their favorite charity, with the most convincing
"tweet" winning $100,000 -- a prize that ultimately was shared
by two organizations, Operation of Hope and charity: water. Sim-
ilarly, Bob Woodruff (@bobwoodruff), the ABC News anchor who
sustained serious head and brain injuries in 2006 while covering
the war in Iraq, raised more than $75,000 through Twitter over
the Memorial Day weekend for his foundation, which aids injured
service members and veterans.
Many private foundations also embraced social media for the first
time in 2009, while a smaller number experimented with online
challenges that employed crowdsourcing techniques to generate
awareness for or solutions to a specific problem. In January, the
Peter G. Peterson Foundation, in partnership with mtvU, launched
the Indebted Digital Challenge to help raise awareness among col-
lege students about the nation's deepening fiscal crisis, while
a month later the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Ashoka's
Changemakers community unveiled Designing for Better Health, a
global online competition designed to identify "nudges" that can
help people make better health decisions.
Then there was the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
which in May created an "island" in Second Life, the popular
user-generated 3-D world, in partnership with the University of
Southern California and Global Kids. Part of the foundation's
$50 million digital media and learning initiative, MacArthur
Island was designed to be an online laboratory where, over the
next couple of years, the foundation can explore how virtual
spaces can be used for social good, grantees can showcase their
work, and the foundation and its partners could connect to new
audiences.
How to tap into virtual communities to promote a brand while do-
ing good was a challenge that a number of Fortune 500 companies
took up during the course of the year. In May, the Target Corpo-
ration launched a contest called Bullseye Gives in which visitors
to the mass-market retailer's Facebook page could decide how
$3 million should be allocated among ten large charities selected
by the company. And in November, JP Morgan Chase launched its own
Causes on Facebook application to crowdsource millions of dollars
in charitable giving to a hundred deserving nonprofits. While the
suggestion in a New York Times story that the bank had "disquali-
fied" three nonprofit groups -- two favoring reform of existing
drug laws and an anti-abortion group -- from the contest as their
vote totals mounted resulted in a flurry of critical blog posts,
online social media-based giving campaigns seemed to be here to
stay.
That view was echoed by Case Foundation CEO Jean Case, whose
foundation, in partnership with Parade magazine, helped pioneer
the social media giving campaign. "From our very first experi-
ences with social media prior to the launch [of America's Giving
Challenge on Facebook], we recognized the powerful potential to
bring communities together around issues for which they shared a
passion," said Case. "[W]e believe that the prospects for robust
participation by nonprofits are better today than they were in
the first challenge, and we are heartened to see that nonprofits
have embraced the rapid growth in social media with enthusiasm."
RELATED NEWS:
MacArthur Foundation Announces Winners of 2009 Digital Media and
Learning Competition (4/17/09)
Online Contests Represent Potential 'Jackpots' for Charities
(5/13/09)
MacArthur Foundation Launches Virtual Island in Second Life
(5/24/09)
US Twitter Usage Surpasses Earlier Estimates (9/14/09)
Case Foundation Launches Initiative to Help Nonprofits Leverage
Social Media (9/6/09)
2009 America's Giving Challenge Winners Announced (11/26/09)
:::::::: PHILANTHROPY AND THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM ::::::::
Of all the economy-driven stories of the year, the near death --
or, as some would have it, suicide -- of the newspaper industry
may have been the most avidly followed and hotly debated. Need-
less to say, it was a dismal year for all but a few papers.
By the end of the first quarter, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago
Tribune, and Philadelphia Inquirer had sought Chapter 11 bank-
ruptcy protection, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had stopped
publishing a print edition, and the Rocky Mountain News, Colo-
rado's oldest newspaper, had closed its doors entirely. As the
recession dragged on and circulation and advertising revenues
continued to fall, other newspapers across the country were
forced to make layoffs, scale back home delivery, and scramble
to find cost-saving measures.
But as bad as it was, media experts seemed to agree that the
industry had not bottomed out. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics data published in Editor & Publisher magazine -- which
was shuttered at the end of the year by its parent the Nielsen
Co. after 108 years as a going concern -- the industry will lose
nearly 25 percent of its jobs by 2018.
Such dire projections made it clear that journalism, in order to
thrive in the twenty-first century, needs a new business model
-- and one of the options most frequently mentioned was the non-
profit model. In March, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) introduced legis-
lation (S. 673) that would allow newspapers to become tax-exempt,
nonprofit organizations and operate in a manner similar to public
broadcasting stations; in September, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
offered a companion bill (H.R. 3602) in the House, saying that
"Unless something is done, and done fast, it's likely that many
metropolitan areas may soon have no local daily newspapers --
and that would damage our democracy."
Foundations also were looked to in some quarters to provide a
solution to the industry's plight -- and a number responded. In
May, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation president Alberto
Ibargüen was one of six media thought leaders to testify before
Congress about the future of journalism and how government can
help ensure that communities' information needs are met during
the transition to new models and platforms. Knight, which under
Ibargüen's leadership has invested more than $100 million in
projects that could help shape journalism in the digital age,
wasn't alone. In June, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation an-
nounced the launch of a nonprofit news service dedicated to major
health policy issues in the United States; in August, the Chicago
Community Trust announced the creation of Community News Matters,
an initiative designed to spur the growth of new sources of qual-
ity local news and information about the Chicago region; and in
September, the California HealthCare Foundation and Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Southern California
in Los Angeles announced a partnership to provide in-depth, im-
partial reporting on health policy issues in the state.
Still, while it was clear that foundations could only be part of
the solution to the industry's problems -- the Nieman Journalism
Lab at Harvard estimated that the cost of endowing every news-
paper in the country could run as high as $114 billion -- a July
report from the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy at
USC Annenberg agreed that foundations were likely to continue
their support for journalism and journalism-related experiments.
As Center for Public Integrity founder Charles Lewis put it, the
future of good journalism may depend on whether "the philanthrop-
ic community steps up and embraces this civic moment and crisis
and tries to solve it. This is a failure of the market. The mar-
ket can no longer support news substantially."
RELATED NEWS:
As Troubles Mount, Newspaper Industry Reconsiders Business Model
(3/05/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=245100043
Senator Proposes Bill to Allow Newspapers to Become Nonprofits
(3/27/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=247500026
Kaiser Family Foundation Launches Nonprofit Health Policy News
Service (6/06/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=253800033
Foundations Increasingly Support Journalism, Report Finds
(7/07/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=257000008
Chicago Community Trust Launches Community News Initiative
(8/19/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=262900012
California HealthCare Foundation, Annenberg School for
Communication to Partner on New Healthcare Journalism Venture
(9/27/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=266800043
:::::::::: CHARITY COMES TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA BALL :::::::::::
While early adopters and young adults have embraced online social
networks for years, 2009 was the year that celebrities, nonprofits,
and foundations got in on the act and began to experiment in earn-
est with social media tools and platforms to raise awareness for
their programs and causes.
According to a report issued early in the year by the Pew Inter-
net and American Life Project, 46 percent of American adults
online claimed to use a social networking site such as MySpace,
Facebook, or LinkedIn, up from 5 percent in early 2005, while
11 percent said they use Twitter or another "microblogging" ser-
vice. Facebook, the most popular of the social networking sites,
soared past the 200-million-user mark in the spring, while the
number of people who access Twitter, the new darling of the
social media world, spiked in February and March after the main-
stream media caught on to the fact that celebrities had become
regular users of the service.
Indeed, more than a few celebrities decided to leverage their
real-world popularity to champion charitable causes on Twitter.
In April, actor Hugh Jackman (@realhughjackman) challenged his
Twitter followers to explain (in 140 characters or less) why he
should support their favorite charity, with the most convincing
"tweet" winning $100,000 -- a prize that ultimately was shared
by two organizations, Operation of Hope and charity: water. Sim-
ilarly, Bob Woodruff (@bobwoodruff), the ABC News anchor who
sustained serious head and brain injuries in 2006 while covering
the war in Iraq, raised more than $75,000 through Twitter over
the Memorial Day weekend for his foundation, which aids injured
service members and veterans.
Many private foundations also embraced social media for the first
time in 2009, while a smaller number experimented with online
challenges that employed crowdsourcing techniques to generate
awareness for or solutions to a specific problem. In January, the
Peter G. Peterson Foundation, in partnership with mtvU, launched
the Indebted Digital Challenge to help raise awareness among col-
lege students about the nation's deepening fiscal crisis, while
a month later the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Ashoka's
Changemakers community unveiled Designing for Better Health, a
global online competition designed to identify "nudges" that can
help people make better health decisions.
Then there was the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
which in May created an "island" in Second Life, the popular
user-generated 3-D world, in partnership with the University of
Southern California and Global Kids. Part of the foundation's
$50 million digital media and learning initiative, MacArthur
Island was designed to be an online laboratory where, over the
next couple of years, the foundation can explore how virtual
spaces can be used for social good, grantees can showcase their
work, and the foundation and its partners could connect to new
audiences.
How to tap into virtual communities to promote a brand while do-
ing good was a challenge that a number of Fortune 500 companies
took up during the course of the year. In May, the Target Corpo-
ration launched a contest called Bullseye Gives in which visitors
to the mass-market retailer's Facebook page could decide how
$3 million should be allocated among ten large charities selected
by the company. And in November, JP Morgan Chase launched its own
Causes on Facebook application to crowdsource millions of dollars
in charitable giving to a hundred deserving nonprofits. While the
suggestion in a New York Times story that the bank had "disquali-
fied" three nonprofit groups -- two favoring reform of existing
drug laws and an anti-abortion group -- from the contest as their
vote totals mounted resulted in a flurry of critical blog posts,
online social media-based giving campaigns seemed to be here to
stay.
That view was echoed by Case Foundation CEO Jean Case, whose
foundation, in partnership with Parade magazine, helped pioneer
the social media giving campaign. "From our very first experi-
ences with social media prior to the launch [of America's Giving
Challenge on Facebook], we recognized the powerful potential to
bring communities together around issues for which they shared a
passion," said Case. "[W]e believe that the prospects for robust
participation by nonprofits are better today than they were in
the first challenge, and we are heartened to see that nonprofits
have embraced the rapid growth in social media with enthusiasm."
RELATED NEWS:
MacArthur Foundation Announces Winners of 2009 Digital Media and
Learning Competition (4/17/09)
Online Contests Represent Potential 'Jackpots' for Charities
(5/13/09)
MacArthur Foundation Launches Virtual Island in Second Life
(5/24/09)
US Twitter Usage Surpasses Earlier Estimates (9/14/09)
Case Foundation Launches Initiative to Help Nonprofits Leverage
Social Media (9/6/09)
2009 America's Giving Challenge Winners Announced (11/26/09)
:::::::: PHILANTHROPY AND THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM ::::::::
Of all the economy-driven stories of the year, the near death --
or, as some would have it, suicide -- of the newspaper industry
may have been the most avidly followed and hotly debated. Need-
less to say, it was a dismal year for all but a few papers.
By the end of the first quarter, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago
Tribune, and Philadelphia Inquirer had sought Chapter 11 bank-
ruptcy protection, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had stopped
publishing a print edition, and the Rocky Mountain News, Colo-
rado's oldest newspaper, had closed its doors entirely. As the
recession dragged on and circulation and advertising revenues
continued to fall, other newspapers across the country were
forced to make layoffs, scale back home delivery, and scramble
to find cost-saving measures.
But as bad as it was, media experts seemed to agree that the
industry had not bottomed out. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics data published in Editor & Publisher magazine -- which
was shuttered at the end of the year by its parent the Nielsen
Co. after 108 years as a going concern -- the industry will lose
nearly 25 percent of its jobs by 2018.
Such dire projections made it clear that journalism, in order to
thrive in the twenty-first century, needs a new business model
-- and one of the options most frequently mentioned was the non-
profit model. In March, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) introduced legis-
lation (S. 673) that would allow newspapers to become tax-exempt,
nonprofit organizations and operate in a manner similar to public
broadcasting stations; in September, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
offered a companion bill (H.R. 3602) in the House, saying that
"Unless something is done, and done fast, it's likely that many
metropolitan areas may soon have no local daily newspapers --
and that would damage our democracy."
Foundations also were looked to in some quarters to provide a
solution to the industry's plight -- and a number responded. In
May, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation president Alberto
Ibargüen was one of six media thought leaders to testify before
Congress about the future of journalism and how government can
help ensure that communities' information needs are met during
the transition to new models and platforms. Knight, which under
Ibargüen's leadership has invested more than $100 million in
projects that could help shape journalism in the digital age,
wasn't alone. In June, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation an-
nounced the launch of a nonprofit news service dedicated to major
health policy issues in the United States; in August, the Chicago
Community Trust announced the creation of Community News Matters,
an initiative designed to spur the growth of new sources of qual-
ity local news and information about the Chicago region; and in
September, the California HealthCare Foundation and Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Southern California
in Los Angeles announced a partnership to provide in-depth, im-
partial reporting on health policy issues in the state.
Still, while it was clear that foundations could only be part of
the solution to the industry's problems -- the Nieman Journalism
Lab at Harvard estimated that the cost of endowing every news-
paper in the country could run as high as $114 billion -- a July
report from the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy at
USC Annenberg agreed that foundations were likely to continue
their support for journalism and journalism-related experiments.
As Center for Public Integrity founder Charles Lewis put it, the
future of good journalism may depend on whether "the philanthrop-
ic community steps up and embraces this civic moment and crisis
and tries to solve it. This is a failure of the market. The mar-
ket can no longer support news substantially."
RELATED NEWS:
As Troubles Mount, Newspaper Industry Reconsiders Business Model
(3/05/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=245100043
Senator Proposes Bill to Allow Newspapers to Become Nonprofits
(3/27/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=247500026
Kaiser Family Foundation Launches Nonprofit Health Policy News
Service (6/06/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=253800033
Foundations Increasingly Support Journalism, Report Finds
(7/07/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=257000008
Chicago Community Trust Launches Community News Initiative
(8/19/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=262900012
California HealthCare Foundation, Annenberg School for
Communication to Partner on New Healthcare Journalism Venture
(9/27/09)
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=266800043
Thursday, January 14, 2010
More Money Added! 1/14/10 PND - News - White House Launches $250 Million Public-Private STEM Initiative
Shared this before, but more money added! Very important for STEM educators... - M
PND - News -
White House Launches $250 Million Public-Private STEM Initiative
Posted using ShareThis
PND - News -
White House Launches $250 Million Public-Private STEM Initiative
Posted using ShareThis
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
PND - News - - Gund Foundation Awards $4.9 Million in Fourth-Quarter Grants
See who and what the Gund Foundation recently funded. Considering the size and influence of Gund in the area, it seemed like good information to share. A very interesting mix of projects. - M
PND - News -
- Gund Foundation Awards $4.9 Million in Fourth-Quarter Grants
Posted using ShareThis
PND - News -
- Gund Foundation Awards $4.9 Million in Fourth-Quarter Grants
Posted using ShareThis
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