Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog

I’m pleased to announce another great learning opportunity for nonprofits.  I have been collaborating with Darlene Hall, Ph.D., from Intersections Consulting to deliver hands-on program evaluation workshops to a few of our key partner organizations.  Darlene also delivers these workshops to the larger nonprofit community and recently announced new program evaluation workshop dates.

This is a two-part training designed for nonprofit leaders who want to strengthen their skills in understanding the role and purpose of evaluation.  Leaders will have a chance to identify obstacles to the evaluation process, and learn ways to create an evaluation culture inside their organization, and learn about methodology, data collection tools, and basic analysis.  The two-part training includes opportunities for hands-on work on logic models, developing a evaluation plan, including an outcomes-based evaluation plan, and question development.  In order to keep the trainings interactive, participants will learn in a small group setting.  Trainings are held in the community in public transit-accessible locations in downtown San Francisco and downtown Oakland.  In these economically challenging times, Darlene tries to keep registration costs reasonable and accessible for nonprofits.  So, it only costs $50 to attend one workshop and $90 to attend both.  Of course it’s recommended that you attend both in order to get as much as possible from the experience.  The dates, times, and locations of the workshops are listed below.

Workshop 1:

5/20/10 Camp Fire (405 14^th Street, # 204, Oakland) 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

5/21/10  The San Francisco Foundation (225 Bush Street, 5^th Floor, SF Room A, San Francisco) 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Workshop 2:

6/15/10 Camp Fire (405 14^th Street, # 204, Oakland) 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

6/23/10 The San Francisco Foundation (225 Bush Street, 5^th Floor, SF Room A, San Francisco) 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

To register, please use this form: PrgmEvalWkshpRegistration.

Image source: http://www.utexas.edu/academic/diia/assessment/iar/programs/

Last week we had the fortune to host the CiviCon, the first gathering of open source programmers working on CiviCRM, the free relationship management software. CiviCRM provides online fundraising and donor management, event registration, membership management, email blasts, newsletters, and report generation. All for free!

Check out this hella cool message that Mitch recorded (and our colleagues at Kapor Creative illustrated and energized) explaining the achievements and merits of CiviCRM.

I just found out about this opportunity today and wanted to get the word out to interested folks.  Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group is offering the webinar: Integrating Social Media Into Essential Organizational Functions.  If you’re available from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. tomorrow and you’re interested in using social media for your nonprofit, you should check out this opportunity.

Here’s the session description:

In this session, we will look at the old way of doing business, before social media, and the “new” way of doing business. We will look at concrete examples of how nonprofits (and a few businesses) are integrating social media into organizational functions to improve the bottom line. Specifically, this seminar will focus on ideas for integrating social media into the following organizational function areas: human resources, program development, internal communications, member services, training, fundraising, and stakeholder engagement.  This seminar is intended for the nonprofit organization (or business) that wants to utilize social media, and has a level of familiarity with it.

During the webinar, we’ll discuss:

• Issues of cultural adoptions of social media, and best practices for adoption
• How social media affects all organizational functions
• Examples of function integration with social media
• The ROI of integrating social media with each organizational function
• Examples of fully-integrated “social” organizations
• Questions and answers

Takeaways:

• Understand how organizations can utilize social media in the areas of internal communications, service/program development, human resources, fundraising, and stakeholder engagement.
• Best practices for social media cultural integration
• One idea that you will implement in your organization
• A list of resources for exploring social media integration

Image source: http://denniswolff.wordpress.com

The overwhelming number of African-American males who are performing below or far below basic academic levels has led to an epidemic of young men that eventually drop out, do not qualify to graduate, or graduate without taking/passing college required courses.   The unfortunate reality behind the quandary of young black males and their education development is that it has been in a state of crisis for years.

Although young black men have been provided more educational opportunity than ever before, they have yet, for various reasons, been able to capitalize off of it.  As a result, majority of black males perform far worst academically than any other ethnic group during their K-12 experience.  This unfortunate trend in academic achievement for black students continues to be an issue for black males in the Bay Area.  Black male  from San Francisco and Alameda County are the least prepared to pursue higher education when compared to other ethnic groups upon graduating high school.  In a post-Brown vs. Board of Education era, where educational access and equality has been a right for nearly 56 years, it is about time that research is done to find new and creative strategies that will ensure a much higher percentage of black males are graduating high school and, more importantly, college ready.

Preparing black youth for college takes a collaborative effort from various sectors.  Responsibility surely lies with the individual and parents as well, but there needs to be an even greater role from community centers, non-profit sector, teachers, and most importantly, schools and the state.  The onus of achieving academic success cannot be placed solely on black students when there are a multitude of systemic factors contributing to their academic state.  So before labeling black youth as failures with little interest in pursuing higher education, consider the social, economical, and educational conditions that have contributed to their situation.  It is not enough to be content with a landmark decision established over 50 years ago, especially when there are newer acts such as No Child Left Behind, which some argue do more harm than good for low achieving students, in place.  If research can be done to identify the problems, then let’s take it one giant step further and infuse these strategies and concepts into the black community, communal organizations, and the educational system.  The future welfare of black men depends on what we do for our black youth today.

On Tuesday, May 18, the Foundation Center will be hosting a free training on Proposal Writing Basics (2:30-4:00 pm) followed by another free session called “Meet the Grantmakers: Funding for Educational Technology” (4:30-6:00 pm).

The proposal writing session will cover the following topics and more:

• What are the key components of a proposal to a foundation or corporation?
• Who should sign a grant request?
• How should the proposal be packaged?
• Should you contact a funder if your proposal is turned down?
• Where can you find more information on proposal writing, including sample proposals?

At the Meet the Grantmakers session, you will learn about Silicon Valley-based grantmaking initiatives regarding innovative uses of technology for the success of students and teachers.  Some foundations provide cash grants, technology, equipment, and professional development training to a wide array of educational programs, including K-12, higher education, after-school programs, etc. Local funders are also investing to increase educational attainment and contribute to the development of a skilled, diverse technology savvy workforce in the future. Attend the session to learn all about it!  In addition, a Silicon Valley Community Foundation grant is sponsoring the provision of free copies of The Foundation Center’s Guide to Proposal Writing and refreshments to all attendees.

Panelists for Meet the Grantmakers will include Miguel Salinas, senior manager, Adobe Youth Voices, Adobe Systems Inc. with other panelists pending.

Event location:

Santa Clara County Office of Education
1290 Ridder Park Drive
Milpitas Room
San Jose, CA 95131-2304

Six months ago, Melanie Cervantes (Akonadi Foundation), Luke Newton (Common Counsel), Kazu Haga (Peace Development Fund), and I joined forces to establish a place for progressive funders to get together, talk about our work, and identify opportunities to collaborate in our grantmaking.  We are very excited to invite you to the launch of the Bay Area Justice Funders Network this Wednesday in Downtown Oakland!

Congrats to Demos, which was praised in last Friday’s New York Times for their critical public policy and advocacy work from a progressive perspective. Demos, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary next month, was one of our first grant recipients when we launched the civic engagement focus area in 2007. They remain one of our key grant partner organizations, mostly for their notable work on voter registration modernization and campaign reform.

Keep up the great work (we need it)!

If you haven’t already, it’s not too late to send in your census form and it’s not too late to remind your friends and family to do the same.

Do you already know how important it is for people of color and low-income communities to send back their census forms, but still need some talking points to convince everyone around you? Check-out Color of Change’s census website, www.colorofchange.org/census, to find out how much money each filled out and returned census form is worth to your community (for even more Census numbers, visit the Brookings Institution online).

Want to know what percentage of households where you live have already mailed back a form? See how your neighborhood, and every neighborhood in the United States, is doing at  www.CensusHardToCountMaps.org (courtesy of the Funders Census Initiative, CUNY and our colleagues at the Hagedorn Foundation) or 2010.census.gov/2010census/take10map/ (courtesy of the Census Bureau).

You only get one chance every ten years, so … fill it out, spread the word, claim the money, and build political power in your community!

Local update: Oakland physically divided in Census returns | National update: For all things census, see Terri Ann Lowenthal’s important, informative and entertaining Census Project Blog. And, the Ford Foundation’s Funder Census Toolkit.

I’m sure you’ve all read the articles, seen a bit of the video footage, or caught a blog or two on the linkage between racism and reform on the heels of the passage of the Health Care Bill last week. The shift from accusing President Obama of not being a U.S. citizen and forcing Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor to publicly apologize for describing herself as a “wise Latina” to spitting on Representative Emanuel Cleaver and screaming the ‘n-word’ at Representative John Lewis was seamless and to be expected. This hatred has been fostered and fomented by leaders in the Republican party, encouraged by the non-stop media coverage from all ends of the political spectrum, and driven by a fearful white mass who is nervous about the changing demographics in their communities.

Along with these clear links between Racism & Political Reform, this moment is also a clear example of the difference between the Law and Justice. I urge you to consider the following questions:

• What would happen if it were Black, Latino, Arab, Native American or Asian protesters waving guns at political events, spitting on elected officials, or yelling slurs at Representatives?
• What would happen if it were Black, Latino, Arab, Native American, or Asian elected officials screaming “No You Can’t”, “Liar”, or “Baby Killer” to their colleagues in public debate?
• What would happen if it were a Black, Latino, Arab, Native American, or Asian publicly stating their desire to kill the president?

You could be assured if any of the above scenarios was the case, the perpetrators would be incarcerated, ostracized, and placed on the fridge of public debate as opposed to the center. The law in the above cases would work to it’s fullest extent, but as the perpetrators of the crimes are white the threats and acts of extreme violence are transformed from ‘terrorist’ to ‘minor threats’. For example, the longest charge for plotting and publicly threatening to kill President Obama was one month. Justice would insure equal protection and punishment, but this debate about race and reform reveals that the Law is far from anything equal.