Let’s start with a little exercise: pick three adjectives to describe a nonprofit that serves a good cause. You have 5 seconds – starting now.
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Time’s up, what did you come up with? Inspiring? Charitable?  Helpful? Nice?
How about sassy, business-savvy, and sexy?
That’s the image that charity : water has achieved, thanks to its founder Scott Harrison’s vision. If charity : water were to become a real life character – and it already has plenty of it – it would be sharp, posh, and undeniably sexy. Partnering with Hollywood celebrities and high-end fashion retailers, charity : …

Echoing a 2006 article by Slate, the future of philanthropy is coming to pass as a form of “venture philanthropy”. We even have the same familiar faces that drive the business world appearing on the non profit scene. Consultants, marketing specialists, etc. abound in start up organizations like PoP and other likeminded nonprofits.
Just got back from Building A Movement in An Interconnected World featuring the global philanthropist Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.
The talk …

UNESCO released a special edition of its publication last year that focused on the barriers that stand in the way of education.  Entitled “Education: roads closed”, it’s a meaty document that we highly recommend to anyone interested in the topic – so, most likely anyone reading this blog!
But for those who want the Reader’s Digest version, the document criticizes the lack of urgency governments have shown towards education, especially relative to their quick, decisive and large-scale response to the economic crisis.  The article highlights two interesting case studies, Ecuador and …

Nothing has brought the world together like the Internet. Just think about how many times you’ve logged on Facebook in the past 24 hours, and gchatted with a co-worker who’s moved to the other coast.  Even Obama used online social networking sites in his campaign for presidency, and it worked well - 42 percent of voters who looked to the Internet for information went to “social media” sites, such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. And the rest was history.
In this vast net, one trend we are (happily) seeing is that many creative Internet …