Philanthropy has a little bit of this dynamic, but not much. For the most part, foundation annual reports are ignored and seen as a compliance or PR document, not a source of wisdom. This is understandable since foundations do not have “shareholders” to which they need to report. However, while foundation CEOs may not need to write robust letters, doing so may be an opportunity to communicate with and influence stakeholders and other grantmakers.

Bill Gates’ annual letter – which he started at the suggestion of Warren Buffett, whose own annual letter to investors is voraciously read and reported on by the media – seems to have emerged as a good example of how grantmakers can use the format to communicate with and influence stakeholders.

I first wrote about Bill Gates’ letter and the influence of Warren Buffett the day before his first letter came out in 2009. At the time I speculated that Gates’ letter might emerge over time as a new standard for philanthropic leaders. I don’t think that Gates’ letter yet ranks up with Buffett’s, but I do think it is evolving and hope to see others follow his lead.

This year’s letter focuses on the opportunity that Gates’ sees to eradicate polio worldwide. This would represent only the second time a disease had been totally erased (with smallpox being the other one). Instead of simply reviewing the Gates Foundation’s activities, the letter makes a case for governments and other funders to join the polio eradication cause. Rather than just viewing a “win” as limited to polio itself, Gates’ argues that beating polio will “energize the field of global health by showing that investments in health lead to amazing victories.”

In addition to the letter, the Gates Foundation website features a video of Gates discussing the points in the letter. However, it is a video found in a blog post written by Gates just before the letter came out that really steals the show.

From a communications standpoint, this video is a home run. In under four minutes, the core message of Gates’ 24 page letter is illustrated powerfully. If Gates is serious about using his letter to influence others (and I think he is), then moving beyond the print letter to videos like these, that are actually likely to be viewed by policymakers and other foundation leaders, should be core to his strategy.

The problem is that our ability to communicate the individual case (the robbery that happened in another state, the murder that happened in another country) is dramatically better than our ability to communicate the total picture (the fact that you had much higher chance of being robbed or murdered in 1990 than you do today.

That’s one of the reasons effective communications can be so powerful. Even when we are doing things right, if most people feel that things are going wrong then we have little chance of continuing the activities that are leading to positive change.

For an excellent example of powerful communication, see this short video of statistics professor Hans Rosling showing how global standards of living have changed over time (this video is new for those of you who have see Rosling’s videos in the past).

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What if every foundation created one video of this sort that powerfully communicated the most important information they knew of that was related to their mission? Image the power of a library of hundreds of evidence-based arguments or explanations of what actually works.

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Happy Holidays everyone and thanks for reading Tactical Philanthropy!

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For example Forbes columnist John Tamny writes:

“But while it’s exciting to contemplate the giving nature of Gates and Buffett, if their true desire is to help their fellow man, they should hoard every penny of their significant wealth…

Some will no doubt benefit in the near term, but the removal of limited capital from the productive parts of the economy will ultimately reduce our standard of living, drive up unemployment and make individuals more–as opposed to less–needful of charity.

Conversely, money saved and invested constitutes capital offered to today’s and tomorrow’s businesses. When individuals save, they’re by definition providing capital to entrepreneurs, and the capital formation that results from saving naturally stimulates job creation. Considered in this light, savers and investors are conferring the ultimate benefit on others by virtue of their financial means supporting individuals eager to work.”

Tamny’s underlying assumption is that nonprofits are not productive, that they don’t stimulate job creation and do not enhance the standard of living.

Tamny’s understanding of the nonprofit sector is so misinformed that it is difficult to understand how Forbes editors published his column. It isn’t that Tamny’s opinion isn’t valid, certainly there could be an argument that for-profits produce more value than nonprofits, it is that Tamny seems unaware of the fact that nonprofits are businesses.

Nonprofits employ people, nonprofits buy goods and services from for-profits, nonprofits are an important economic engine of the US economy. In fact, nonprofits are a bigger portion of the economy than many other industries.

Today, I’m happy to share an outstanding video that highlights just how significant the nonprofit economy is. Not many sectors of the economy book over a trillion dollars in revenue and employ 10% of all US workers!

Click here to see the video if you are viewing this post within an email. The video was produced by Philanthropy Reports

However, I believe that something new really is happening in philanthropy. But I think it can be better understood as a “remixing” of historical practices with a new attitude infused into the final output. The fact is, not much in the world is truly “new”. Most all inventions stand on the shoulders of those that came before. But that doesn’t mean that “new” philanthropy isn’t important. And it definitely doesn’t mean that “new” philanthropy should be dismissed.

Each generation tends to look upon the next generation, marveling at how much things have changed since they were young while simultaneously dismissing “new” ways of doing things as inferior to the way things “use to be”. We see this pattern at work in philanthropy and we see it at work in pop culture. Take for example the way each generation looks at the way their children dance as outrageous and somehow inferior to the way things use to be. But of course the more things change, the more they stay the same as we see in this fascinating video of musicians dancing The Charleston (hat tip” Andrew Zolli of PopTech).

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So what’s the takeaway? What does it mean that simply “remixing” the context can make an 80 year old dance look fresh and current? It means that life does change. “New” does exist. But those of us who strive to build a “new” philanthropy must fully recognize that the approaches of those who came before us are the fundamental building blocks of our own approaches.

It is a striking sign of immaturity to dismiss those that came before you as not “getting it”. It is time for “new” philanthropy to grow up and recognize the monumental importance of “old” philanthropy in giving birth to “new” philanthropy.

Growth and change are good. But good change takes the best of what came before and remixes it into something new, different and better.

It’s as if as a field we were saying our goal was to climb Mount Everest, but we went around living a normal life, doing normal things and simply hitting the gym every day.

Normal people don’t climb Mount Everest. You know who climbs Mount Everest? Crazy people.

So I think the field of philanthropy needs to start asking itself a new question.

Are we crazy enough to change the world?

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UK based New Philanthropy Capital, a nonprofit rating and philanthropy consulting organization, reflected on the results in a recent blog post:

“The results are confusing to say the least, and not particularly encouraging.

According to the survey, 68% of people would switch their donations to another charity if they found the one they were supporting was performing badly. So far, so logical. But only 40%—a substantial minority, but still a minority—are interested in a charity rating scheme to provide independent assessments of organisations.

Given this, it is hardly surprising to find that 68% of people think that an independent rating system would not affect their giving decisions… There is something strange in these figures. In particular, the fact that 68% say they would change the pattern of donations if they were given evidence of poor performance, and the same percentage saying they would not respond to independent evidence. Reconciling these is tricky.”

NPC goes on to speculate why donors might be indicating they are not interested in charity ratings, despite their insistence that they would stop giving if they found out an organization was performing badly. They suggest that it might be because donors think they already have the right information to determine how nonprofits are performing or it may be that donors are doing a poor job of predicting their own behavior and will in fact use charity rating systems as they become more prevalent.

I think the results of the survey show how critical it is for people who care about improving philanthropy to understand how ideas spread.

At Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, we know that donors are simply not interested in hiring someone to tell them where to give. That’s why we explicitly state in our marketing material that, “It is not our job to tell you where to give. Instead, we act as your personal philanthropic concierge, connecting you to the people, organizations, tools, and research that can help you achieve your philanthropic goals.” Yet, the #1 assumption people make about our services (and those of “philanthropy advisors” more generally) is that it is our job to tell people where to give.

What this means is that if you ask people if they are interested in hiring a philanthropy advisor, you’ll likely get a very low positive response. But if you ask people if they are interested in achieving their personal philanthropic goals, you’ll get a very high positive response.

I think a similar mismatch is going on in the YouGov data.

What this means is that the effective philanthropy movement needs to get much, much better at communicating what our efforts are all about. We need to get better at spreading the idea of effective philanthropy.

That’s why I so regularly point to books by Seth Godin, who literally focuses on “spreading ideas”, those of Chip & Dan Heath, which look at how to make ideas “sticky” and how to get people to change behaviors, the field of behavioral finance with books like Nudge that look at how people make decisions, the power of video and other visual media to affect social change, and the role of “storytelling” in the social sector.

It isn’t good enough to assume that if we build it, donors will come. As a movement, the effective philanthropy crowd needs to get much, much better at talking about what we do. If you care about a better philanthropy, it is just as important to spread the idea of better philanthropy as it is to build the tools to make it happen.

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The runner up was Lost Generation, submitted by a number of different Tactical Philanthropy readers independently of each other.

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Thanks everyone! Have a great weekend.

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I’ve culled the list down to my favorite ten videos. Now I’d like to ask the Tactical Philanthropy community to vote for which three of these video’s should be shown at the inVision 2010 conference after the attendees have spent the day learning about how to use visual media to create social impact. Please vote via the comments section to this post!

• Mr. W from the German Ministry for the Environment. Can you guess who he is?
• Charity:Water’s video showing what lack of access to clean water really means. Starring Jennifer Connelly.
• An award winning ad about the effects of global warming.
• The mind blowing Lost Generation video (which you must watch to the halfway point to see the amazing twist)..
• Piano Stairs, changing behavior by making things fun. I want these in my house!
• Choose a Different Ending, an interactive video that lets the viewer decide what happens next.
• Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy.
• The Magic of Giving from the Peruvian Cancer Foundation.
• The Girl Effect inspired Tipping Point Community video.
• The MasterCard Foundation’s video telling the story of their grant to Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance provider.

Here’s what’s happening. First we are getting a strong response with videos of all sorts coming in from readers. You can find links to what we’ve collected below. In addition, the organizers of inVision 2010 a conference being held on Thursday and Friday in San Francisco that will focus on “tapping the power of visual media in the social sector” have reached out to me and asked to feature some of the videos during their closing plenary. I’ll be publishing a finalist pool of videos on Wednesday and the attendees of inVision 2010 will vote on their favorite to pick a sort of “jury prize” selection. The Tactical Philanthropy community will have the opportunity to vote as well and then on Friday I’ll publish the results and feature the best videos.

So here’s the list of submitted videos so far. You can submit your video to the collection by posting a link in the comments section of this post, emailing me or tweeting me at @tactphil. The deadline for submissions is 7:30am pacific time tomorrow.

City Harvest’s clever video about how we waste food (note: no apples were harmed in the making of this film. Seriously. Note the comments).

Mr. W from the German Ministry for the Environment.

The Free Hugs Campaign video.

Charity:Water’s video showing what lack of access to clean water really means.

StoryTellers for Good’s video about random acts of kindness.

An award winning ad about the effects of global warming.

A video from Healthy City showing how maps and data can be used to improve communities.

The MasterCard Foundation’s video telling the story of their grant to Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance provider.

The mind blowing Lost Generation video (which you must watch to the halfway point to see the amazing twist)..

Piano Stairs, changing behavior by making things fun.

Choose a Different Ending, an interactive video that lets the viewer decide what happens next.

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy.

The Nike Foundation’s classic Girl Effect Video.

The Magic of Giving from the Peruvian Cancer Foundation.

The Girl Effect inspired Tipping Point Community video.

San Diego Social Venture Partners introduction video.

A one-year retrospective on the progress (and goofy fun) of Tashi, a paraplegic kitten, by Tabby’s Place.

The Rainforest Action Network’s video protesting the unsustainable use of palm oil by Cargill.

MoveSmart.org’s overview video.

Hero’s of Hope’s overview video.

A video about Hewlett Foundation’s grantee African Population and Health Research Center.

A public service announcement from Camfed.

What if African villagers raised money to support high society arts organizations? The video is here.

I Am Jane public service announcement.

A video about Cesar E. Chavez Service Clubs.

I’m looking for gripping, funny, moving, enlightening videos that communicate ideas that are related to philanthropy and social change. They can either be focused on a specific idea related to the social sector or they can demonstrate a particularly good use of video by a nonprofit or foundation.

I’ll collect the entries, publish a bunch of the best ones and announce a winner on Friday. The person who submits the winning entry will get the adoring love of the Tactical Philanthropy community and the video will be featured in my upcoming speeches. I’m also almost sure to use a number of the runner up entries in my presentations.

So send me links to your favorite videos. You can leave the link as a comment to this post, email it to me or tweet the link to @tactphil.

Here’s a few videos that capture what I’m looking for:

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Today I want to share a remarkable video of bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin talking about the Empathetic Civilization. Importantly, Rifkin argues that an empathetic civilization is not a utopian vision, but instead that empathy is rooted in an acknowledgement of our mortality and the imperfections and difficulties of human life. Rifkin traces the way our spheres of empathy have increased as civilization has grown. While humans once had empathy only for family members, Rifkin shows how the circle of people we consider “us” has grown and foresees a time when it expands to include all life.

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