Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog

Greetings from DC, where I’m finishing up an intense week-long program at the Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership at Georgetown University.  I just came across this editorial in yesterday’s SF Chronicle written by Emmett Carson, Ph.D., the CEO and President of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. This article, Remaking the Nonprofit Landscape, ties together a number of the issues that this Georgetown program addresses: planning, strengthening nonprofits and the sector as a whole, and capitalizing on opportunities afforded by the economic downturn and the responsive Recovery Act stimulus funds. In short, “allowing the market to work,”  Dr. Carson writes, “will be faster and more cost-effective than promoting mergers. In the long run, it will result in a healthier nonprofit system, one that can deliver effective services and be sustained with fewer resources.” Check it out. What do you think?

Photo of Emmet Carson from siliconvalleycf.org.

Craigslist Foundation’s Nonprofit Boot Camp is just around the corner: this Saturday, June 20th in Berkeley.  If you’re looking for some inexpensive professional development, Nonprofit Boot Camp is for you.  For $75, you get a day of great speakers (Arianna Huffington, Randi Zuckerberg, and Craig Newmark, to name a few), workshops, and networking opportunities.  Workshops address everything form web 2.0 to strategic planning, fundraising to cross-sector collaboration, and nonprofit governance to the pros and cons of applying for 501 (c)3 status.

I’ve been to this event, and while it is packed full of information, you’re sure to walk away having learned something or someone that can positively impact your work!  Plus, many of the sessions will be available via podcast later on, in case you missed something!  Check it out!

I’m so pleased to share that our College Bound Celebration was a fantastic gathering and recognition of the BBCBI organizations and participants, including 25 graduating seniors who are off to college in the fall!

The event made the front page of the Oakland Tribune and the evening news broadcasts on KTVU-2 and ABC-7.   There is also a wonderful article in the Oakland Globe. So rather than me recounting the event, I’ll let the press speak for us. LOL

This is just the beginning – if we have our way, next year’s event will be standing room only, full of young brothas who are proudly college bound, changing stats and stereotypes in the process. Stay tuned.

Photos by Hahn Nguyen

For the past six months, we’ve worked with Blueprint Research & Design, an independent consulting firm, to start shaping an evaluation of our grantmaking.  As part of this evaluation process, Blueprint will conduct phone interviews with a subset of current and past Kapor Foundation grantees.  Feedback from the interviews will help us to identify improvements we can make to our grantmaking process and to better understand the experience of our grantees.

In the next few weeks Blueprint will contact ten organizations, requesting to hear their reflections on the application process, interactions with Foundation staff, and the community impact of their work. Interview responses will be completely confidential and anonymous; Blueprint will only share the interview data with us in aggregate form and will not reveal to us specifically who said what. Blueprint will compete the evaluation in July.

We greatly appreciate the grantees who are selected by Blueprint to take part in this opportunity for us to hear more from our grantees and to improve our work going forward.