I met Josh Becker in 2001 when he launched the Full Circle Fund, a giving circle for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. As a growing and succesful network of highly connected people, Full Circle provides as much knowledge capital as financial capital to its grantees. In many respects, Full Circle reflects much of Josh’s values.

I point to an article by Laura Efurd on media policy and the next Presidency over at Grantmaker’s for Film and Electronic Media’s website entitled Media Policy And The Next Presidency: The Time Is Now.

Here are her suggestions for funders:

• Support educational and informational activities related to media and technology policy issues throughout the electoral process, such as education forums.

I got a chance to go to the 4th session in BAVC's Innovation Salon series, where I got a chance to hear from some great panelists about the past, present, and future of digital rights. A couple of things that I walked away with:

Thanks to NCG, northern California grantmakers get a generous dose of social enterprise inspiration.

My sister recently left to study abroad for a semester in China, where she's getting to know millions of her closest fellow Chinese. She started to blog about her experiences but what really struck me were two comments: 1. it's the first time ever that she doesn't have access to specific sites (her high school wasn't that restrictive when she was younger) and 2. she can blog but she can't read her blog after it's posted.

In San Francisco, all residents of homeless shelters will get phone numbers and voicemail.

In New York, students that get “A” grade will receive cellphones and minutes.

Last year, with the help of the MacArthur Foundation, the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) launched the Producers Institute, an exciting

I don't remember much of my economics education but I did walk away with the idea that it usually wasn't a good idea of your supply outpaced your demand and vice versa. Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, recently wrote an article about the economics of "free" and how the combination of technology and "free" goods contradict some of the traditional economic models. You can find the article here (thanks Seth Godin).

One of the most enduring areas of conflict between community-based non-profit institutions and the foundations who fund them is that of the urgency of need versus the how and why of making funding availabile to address need.

This is why we do what we do.