All posts in Communications

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.

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.

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!

Just wanted to loop back around with everyone; we’ve received a few eager inquiries about our2013 grantmaking priorities. As we’ve mentioned before, we’re in store for some major changes as we shift our focus to tech-driven strategies and tools that further social justice/social impact. Once ready, we’ll announce the changes here on our website and Twitter account, so please check back with us in mid-February for updates.

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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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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In an ever growing high-tech world, many nonprofits are making it a priority to incorporate new technologies as best they can with the resources that are available to them. A new article in the Nonprofit Quarterly recently discussed how organizations are increasingly developing the new job role of Social Media Manager or “Publisher”. This person takes on the responsibility of creating content across various communications channels, including e-mail newsletters, blogs, Facebook, video, etc.

In my work with social media and nonprofits, I have found a few overarching trends that nonprofits face in terms of new technologies and incorporating them in a way that is most suitable to their work. Here I have compiled a few tips to help your organization stay up-to-date, build more effectively with online communities, as well as gain more visibility.
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Happy to share that the California Civic Participation Funders Collaborative, of which we played a minor advisory role, has come out with a great case study of how funders can come together – as we often encourage our nonprofit partners to do – around a common vision and goals. As shared by the collaborative:

“How can foundations help build movements for opportunity and social change…and win? This is the question we set out to address as part of the California Civic Participation Funders collaborative. This group of ten funders, large and small, working on a wide range of progressive policy issues, came together in early 2010 with the shared goal of increasing civic participation among underrepresented populations.  Now we’re releasing the first case study of our work, published by the Haas, Jr. Fund.

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Looking for an alternative to the traditional annual report? Wondering how you can create an engaging report that showcases your yearly accomplishments and can be distributed widely with no printing costs? Video is the way to go these days. Our own Cedric Brown recently discussed the process of creating the Kapor Foundation’s 2011 video report as part of the Foundation Center’s Glasspockets blog. He spotlights some key points to pay attention to in creating a compelling piece that will inform others of your organization’s mission, work, and achievements. Some suggestions include:
1. Tell your organization’s story; highlighting your voice, values, style, and approach to work
2. Be clear and easy to understand
3. Be neat in your aesthetics
4. Use compelling images. Catchy music doesn’t hurt either.
5. Do not worry if you do not have the resources for an expensive video–flip cameras and free editing software can do the job!

To read more from Cedric’s blog piece, click here.

I’m pleased to officially introduce Tamara Orozco, who has been working with the Foundation over the past few months as a social media specialist. Tamara’s part-time role is to help build our blog and Twitter presence and content, spreading the word about our efforts and our partners’ work.

In addition to working with us, Tamara is a social media and communications consultant with the Women’s Building, as well as a wonderful photographer (see her online portfolio here). And she’s a Cal Bear too, with a graduate degree in Ethnic Studies.

Do let us know if you have story ideas for Tamara to explore – we’re always looking to lift up the great work of our community partners and funder peers.