News from the Case Foundation and what people are talking about this week in the world of giving, tech and everything in between.
Submit your nonprofit video to the DoGooder awards!We are excited to be a supporter of the DoGooder awards, presented by See3 Communications and YouTube, honoring the best nonprofit videos of the year. The Nonprofit Technology Network, Flip Video and Nomadsland.com are also supporters. You can read the press release announcing the awards here, and we thank the many supporters who helped us spread the word as the submissions process kicked off this week, including Jocelyn Harmon at Marketing for Nonprofits, Katya Andresen at her Nonprofit Marketing Blog, the Causecast Video Blog and Service Nation among others.
International Corporate Philanthropy DayOn Monday, major corporations around the world marked International Corporate Philanthropy Day (ICPD), organized by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) with several events, including a convening organized by CECP that gathered 50 leading CEOs for its Board of Boards event to talk about corporate philanthropy in a peer to peer setting and a bell-ringing by corporate foundation CEOs at the New York Stock Exchange. The Nonprofit Quarterly provided an overview of the day's activities. Several corporations also honored the day with their own philanthropic initiatives and announcements, including Bloomberg, which kicked off its 2010 "Employee Matching Dollars for Your Hours" program and State Farm, which announced its annual Youth Advisory Board grant recipients. You can read more about several companies' ICPD initiatives here.
As the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports, President Obama also marked the day with a letter to CECP, stating that:
Through their skills, ingenuity, financial support, and dedication, corporate philanthropists and their employees have answered the call to serve, giving back in meaningful ways that help those in need.
In addition, CECP partnered with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the UN Office for Partnerships to host a program focused on how philanthropy can help to advance the Millennium Development Goals, specifically focused on gender equality and women's empowerment. The Washington Post featured a nice roundup of the event, which featured actress Geena Davis as a speaker.
Finally, on our own blog, Charles Moore, executive director of CECP, challenges the organization's 150 corporate members to rethink the future of corporate philanthropy.
Pepsi responds to Refresh criticismLate this week, there was a bit of a stir over Pepsi's Refresh Project, the company's effort to give away $20 million in grants to help revamp communities by leveraging the crowdsourcing model. In today's New York Times, Stephanie Strom highlights a situation in which the organization currently leading this month's round of voting, founded by TV star Mariska Hargitay (of Law & Order: SVU fame), was able to submit material past the contest's deadline. She notes that this:
...upset some of the contestants who wondered whether Pepsi was doing favors for a celebrity. “I can’t edit my own submission, so how did she do it?” said one contestant...
In the article, Pepsi acknowledges the snafu as an honest mistake and announces that it will give away a third $250,000 grant on top of the two they had planned to give away in the current round, and also shared this information in a blog post.
Several bloggers praised Pepsi's response, including Nathaniel Whittemore who on his Social Entrepreneurship blog gives kudos to Pepsi for its efforts to address the issue head on:
To Pepsi's credit, though, the company has responded quickly, and with the sort of openness that's essential for success in the new social media sphere.
Beth Kanter also notes that Pepsi "has embraced a learning as you go approach when it comes to social media and the art of public learning," and shares additional thoughts on the contest design. (It's also worth checking out recent guest posts on her blog for more from Pepsi's director of global social media with an insider's view on the contest, and from Generations of Hope, one of the participants in the contest.)
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