All posts by Cedric

We’re in the midst of making some major changes to the Kapor Foundation’s approach to social impact work, as I alluded to in a July 17th post. Last week we shared an update with our current grant partners that may be useful for others to know:

“The purpose of this email is to update you on our evolving strategy to meet our mission, which has not changed: ‘We support organizations that provoke social change in communities of color en route to equality.’

For the past five years, the Kapor Foundation has worked to support critical work that affects communities of color both nationally and here in the Bay Area. At the beginning of 2012, we shared our interest in learning more about how info tech can be mobilized in pursuit of positive social impacts. With the ever-growing presence of info tech in our everyday lives, we strongly believe that CBOs must harness technology to more effectively achieve their missions.
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Voter participation – making sure that everyone who is eligible CAN and DOES vote, and that those votes count – is a longstanding pillar belief of the Kapor Foundation. Since 2007, we’ve invested nearly $4 million in organizations working actively with communities to stimulate voter engagement, participation in elections, and protection of legal and physical access to the polls.

We’re excited to share resources to help individuals to register, ensure that they have the right forms of required identification, find polling places, and contact in case of problems at the polls.

It’s critical that potential voters receive accurate and up-to-date information.  Most of these organizations are/have been our grant partners, so we can vouch for them. Be sure to encourage others to use resources that come from credible sources! Double check!

Advancement Project
www.advancementproject.org/issues/voter-protection

ColorofChange.org
www.vote.colorofchange.org/

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law – OUR VOTE!
www.866ourvote.org/

NAACP
https://electionimpact3.votenet.com/naacp/voterreg2/index.cfm

Voto Latino
https://votolatino.turbovote.org/d

National Voter Registration Day
www.nationalvoterregistrationday.org/register-to-vote

Nonprofit Vote
www.nonprofitvote.org/

CA Secretary of State – Register to Vote Online!
www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vr.htm

Ella Baker Center – California Voter Guide
www.ellabakercenter.org/blog/2012/09/ella-baker-center-november-2012-voter-guide

NOTE: RegisterToVote.org has been designated as a fradulent site!!

Proud to have been a sponsor of this recent Code for Oakland hackathon, which has been profiled in Forbes and was picked up by SF Gate. We’re looking to increase our involvement in tech-for-social-impact convenings in the future; stay tuned!

From the Oakland Tribune:

Hmmm. This is interesting. The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP)  has just released a report, Grantees’ Limited Engagement with Foundations’ Social Media, saying that “only 16% of grantees surveyed report using social media created by funders or their staff.” Last year CEP surveyed more than 6,000 nonprofits about their experiences with one of the 34 foundations in this study. The top findings were:

• “The majority of foundations use social media tools in their work.
• Very few grantees use social media from their foundation funders or their funders’ staff.
• Grantees that do use foundations’ social media find those resources less helpful than other communication resources for learning about the foundation.”

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This opinion column, Virtual Becomes Personal, is hot off the press in the July 1 issue of The NonProfit Times. I think the last paragraph is particularly relevant to the Foundation’s future direction:

The nonprofit community would do well to pursue three recommendations toward a unified goal of strengthening advocacy campaigns. First, traditional and digital organizers need to emerge from their respective silos and come together in forums to learn from each other how to leverage both forms of advocacy. Second, nonprofits should incorporate both traditional and digital organizing within a coherent strategy to broaden and deepen public participation, either developing the capabilities themselves or negotiating partnerships with others. Third, private foundations and nonprofit research institutions can add value to the field by undertaking more systematic research around the possibilities of digital organizing and online advocacy.

Read the entire article here (pdf). More details about our development will be forthcoming in the fall.

I’m so excited to share that the Kapor Foundation, along with our sibling organizations, is moving to Oakland on August 1st!

2201 Broadway, Suite 727
Oakland, CA 94612
510-255-4650

Our email addresses will remain the same, of course.

*We’d hoped to begin construction on the building that we purchased at 2148 Broadway, but we’ve had to alter our original timeline for a move-in. We’re steadfastly working to address assorted development challenges so that we can move into our new home in the near future.

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Congrats to our own Justin Davis for being featured in this week’s Bay Citizen: “Former basketball pro urges teens to prepare for college.” Thanks to reporter Lousie Rafkin for the coverage. Not only can we use more “can do” messages to youth of color, we also need more stories that frame the tough realities (and remote possibilities) of a professional sports career. Stay tuned for more from Mr. Davis and the College Bound Brotherhood in 2012-13.

Photo by Sarah Rice for The Bay Citizen

Thanks to the organizers of the  AT&T Education Mobile App Hackathon for letting us observe, as well as to the great coders & biz developers who chatted with us today. Learned quite a bit; looking forward to putting this to use. (And pardon the bootleg sound doctoring on this video!)

Congratulations to *our* board chair and benefactor, Freada Kapor Klein, for being elected to the board of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC!

Former Congresswoman, Philanthropist Elected to Joint Center Board of Governors

WASHINGTON, DC – The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, one of the nation’s leading research and public policy institutions, has announced that former Michigan Congresswoman Carolyn C. Kilpatrick and Freada Kapor Klein, Ph.D., a philanthropist and an expert on issues of discrimination and diversity, have been elected to three-year terms on its board of governors.

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