As we prepare to close up shop at the Kapor Foundation and celebrate our debut in our new skin as the Kapor Center for Social Impact, we wanted to conduct a thorough analysis of what we’ve learned from the terrific community of organizations we’ve worked with since our program areas launched in 2007.

Attached please find our Green Access and VoICE retrospective papers. Many thanks to Judi Powell of Seven Hills Philanthropy for her meticulous work in shaping our learnings, which were gathered from final reports, internal analysis, and interviews with community leaders.  We are distributing the reports through our professional affinity associations: Funders Committee for Civic Participation, Bay Area Justice Funders Network, and Neighborhood Funders Group. We hope that you, as funder peers and community colleagues, will find them to be instructive and even inspiring!

Download the Green Access Program Retrospective here.

Download the Voting Integrity & Civic Engagement Program Retrospective here.

I’m pleased to announce that our very own Mitchell Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein will be the keynote speakers at the ‘resurrected’ Nonprofit Boot Camp that was previously produced by Craigslist Foundation.  On June 12, Nonprofit Boot Camp comes back to life in Silicon Valley.  Boot Camp will cover the spectrum of nonprofit management issues facing established organizations and will feature keynotes, interactive roundtables, educational tracks devoted to Fundraising, Social Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Nonprofit Basics, and an evening networking cocktail reception.

Save 25% if you also sign up to attend the Social Media for Nonprofits partner conference on June 13.  This conference is devoted to social media for social good, where seasoned professionals and practitioners will share practical tips and tools for fundraising, marketing, and advocacy.  Speakers will address a variety of topics in a series of short, TED-meets-Twitter style talks and interactive workshops.

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One of my favorite events in philanthropy concluded this past weekend – the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) Annual Conference. Several colleagues from the philanthropic and nonprofit sector, ABFE Fellows (I’m class of 2011), and allies from across the country converged in the city of Chicago to assess our call to action to improve conditions affecting black communities in America. This year’s theme  focused on coupling innovation with investment as a means to delivering greater impact through individual and collective efforts.

Chicago served as a fitting city to hold such a convening as its black community has been plagued by high unemployment rates (top five in the country), low high school graduation rates and highest dropout rates (55% and 42% respectively), and strings of highly publicized acts of violence among black men, women, young adults, and children. I think we can agree that blacks in Chicago are living with and experiencing trauma ad nauseum. (more…)

We’re excited to share our video summary of the 2012 year! Many thanks to everyone involved in making this happen – both the video and the accomplishments of the past year!

To view the list of 2012 grant recipients by program area, click here.
To view the video in our YouTube channel, click here.

This week the Kapor Center welcomed the President and CEO of the National Association for the  Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Benjamin Todd Jealous, to our Oakland diggs. Jealous is no stranger to the Bay Area.  He is a Monterey native and the former President of the Rosenberg Foundation, based in San Francisco.

Jealous was cool enough to take a quick break from his relentless pursuit of equity for all – not just black folks – and spoil us with an intimate conversation touching on the org’s 104 years of existence, expansion of social and racial justice issues – including marriage equality, and use of tech to accelerate its campaign and membership base.

Jealous credits Kapor Foundation founders, Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein, with helping him and his team think forwardly about tech and its potential to ignite membership engagement and accelerate national organizing efforts. For example, the NAACP utilized two of the most prolific social networking mediums – Twitter and Facebook – to galvanize communities across the country for its Save Troy Davis – Too Much Doubt campaign. That year #TooMuchDoubt was the second most trended hashtag in the twitterverse. (more…)

Just in case you missed this announcement on our home page, we’re excited to share news of our next iteration!

On a related note, we’ll continue sharing news here on the mkf.org site until our changeover officially happens on May 15th.

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Dear Community:

For the past year, we’ve been keeping you abreast of an ongoing strategic shift here at the Kapor Foundation. We’re very excited to announce that we’ve arrived. As of May 15, 2013, the Kapor Foundation will have a new public face, the Kapor Center for Social Impact. Through a shared vision, set of values, and program activities, we’ll work more closely with Kapor Capital, our sibling venture capital microfirm focused on seed-stage tech startups.

The Kapor Center’s working mission is to “relentlessly pursue  creative strategies that will leverage tech for positive social impact in underrepresented communities, primarily focusing on closing academic, political, health, and economic gaps.” This mission represents our deep belief in the power of information technology as a tool to accelerate social good, and fully aligns with the Kapors’ longtime involvement in the tech industry, stemming back to their days at Lotus Development Corporation in the early 1980s.

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Attention Salesforce Users!

Does your non-profit (501c3) use the Salesforce software? Are there aspects of it you would like to learn more about?

If so, then book a free spot at Community Technology Network‘s first Tech Teach-In on April 5. The event is co-sponsored by Salesforce Foundation.

Date: Friday, April 5th
Time: 9:00 am-12:00 pm
Location: Salesforce, 50 Fremont St, San Francisco

Nonprofit organizations are invited to attend a group session and a 50-minute one-on-one consultation to assist with Salesforce configuration, reporting and dashboards, and collaboration questions.

This event is for nonprofit organizations that have implemented Salesforce.com and are currently using a Salesforce Subscription.  This event would suit any nonprofit staff members who want to become a report and dashboard ninja or have questions about Salesforce.com’s collaboration capabilities.  This is not an event for individuals who are looking for a basic overview and are not currently using a Salesforce platform.

Click HERE for more detailed information and to register.

Last week, I joined my colleague at the Foundation, Justin Davis, as well as my colleague from Kapor Capital, Brian Dixon, and traveled down to Austin, TX, to take part, for the first time, in the week and a half  affair that is South by Southwest (SXSW). Specifically, I was there for SXSW’s Interactive Festival, with its focus on all things technology-related.

Like much of my travel for the Foundation, it was a privilege to attend. Particularly so this time because it was a new and unfamiliar setting, one in line though with the Foundation’s pivot. It’s been quite a few years  since I’ve attended a conference where social justice wasn’t in some way central to the gathering, and, quite a few years, probably not since the World Social Forum,  since attending a conference as large as this one.

There’s much I’m still processing from the trip and many folks to follow-up with. In the meantime, though, here are some early reflections: (more…)

After returning from my first SXSWedu experience – yes, I got digitized – I have now had enough time to digest the digital overload and make sense of all  that I experienced. See, I arrived the Lone Star State capital a SXSW newbie, not knowing what to expect or what exactly to look for. My ignorance soon became dwarfed by an eagerness to consume as much information, materials, and swag as possible.

Each day, I strolled through the wide hallways of the Austin Convention Center and neighboring Hilton with my head on a swivel and ears attuned to what I called “tech talk” – conversations among individuals who are either starting, securing funding for, investing in, or acquiring a startup. Believe you me, there was no other conversation happening unless it was regarding what food truck was worth paying a visit to. Being cognizant of the directional pivot that we as an organization have recently made, I naturally wiggled my way into these annular conversations to become more familiar with what innovators and technologists were thinking.

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Okay you techie/social media wizard with communications strategy chops, public relations poise,  and a social justice heart – we’re looking for you! This is a fantastic opportunity to help craft and implement a mostly-tech-driven media strategy for our evolving organization(s) based in Oakland. See the announcement at our search firm’s site: www.koyapartners.com/KC_SMCM.html. Please do not contact us directly without going through Koya. If you’re the “right one,” we looking forward to working with you!