philanthropy

I first joined ZeroDivide (then the Community Technology Foundation of California--whew, what a mouthful!) as a program officer over eight years ago. I have no formal education or training in program officiating. (But I should ask: who does? Those of us in the field, we're all accidental philanthropists for the most part.) There's no certification per se, no accreditation, no good housekeeping seal of approval for the philanthropy sector.

Ruth Williams and I are at the "Hewlett Foundation":http://www.hewlett.org for a Northern California Grantmakers briefing entitled "Web & Where 2.0+":http://www.ncg.org/events/events20080214.html There is also a "webcast":http://www.ncg.org/events/reg_free.php.

Marc Fest, over at "Knight Foundation":http://www.knightfdn.org, pinged me about a new digital media partnership that they have launched with "MTV":http://www.mtv.com/thinkmtv/. I've been "impressed":http://www.zerodivide.org/tags/knight_foundation with the way the Knight Foundation is catalyzing innovation and entrepreneurial thinking through their philanthropy.

I've blogged more about technology in the nonprofit space than about the philanthropy space, but I've been avidly reading philanthropy bloggers such as "Tactical Philanthropy":http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com/, "Philanthropy 2173":http://philanthropy.blogspot.com, and the "White Courtesy Telephone":http://postcards.typepad.com/white_telephone/.

!http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1211/1197746281_ff6cb76bdc_t.jpg!:http://... I read with great interest Amy Luckey's (of "Blueprint R+D":http://www.blueprintrd.com) article, "Grantmaking 2.0: Using New Technology to Enhance Grantmaker Practices":http://urltea.com/1a5x, published this month on the "Grantmaker's for Effective Organization's":http://www.geofunders.org website. And not just because I am one of the experts she interviewed--I admit to being in good company and, as usual, feeling like I learn more from our interaction than I contributed.