“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
I’m not really a big quote person, but I think this one deserves the deviation.
(via Mekaelia–YNPN-NYC Partnerships Chair)
Today the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance is collectively posting about the nonprofit sector’s response to Haiti’s disaster. Check out the list of bloggers for their posts.
I was on vacation with my family in Vermont on January 12th– mostly concerned with sledding as much as possible and eating buffalo wings and s’mores. So, upon my return to civilization I was caught off-guard by the whirlwind of the Haiti earthquake. I saw on CNN the announcement that 50,000 people were presumed dead. “What?! That cannot be right.” I could not comprehend the number of human lives lost or wrap my head around what was going on. But the number has only continued to rise and fatalities are now estimated at over 200,000. It is beyond staggering.
I find it very difficult to understand what it going on and so, I do what most people do when trying to comprehend a difficult situation: I try to empathize. Although, of course in this case that is impossible–I try my best.
I was 10 years old when Hurricane Andrew–a category 5 hurricane–hit South Florida in 1992. I remember the day before the hurricane hit: our house was boarded up with plywood, we brought all the backyard toys into the living room, I took breaks from pulling down grapefruits and avocados from our trees (so they wouldn’t break windows when the wind picked up) by jumping in the pool. We were in an evacuation zone, so we left in the early evening for my grandmother’s house. We passed the night 6 of us in my grandmother’s closet sitting on shoes.
And the next day our house–along with every other one in my neighborhood–was completely destroyed and uninhabitable.
We spent the next couple of months as vagabonds. I remember sleeping in sheets that were unknowingly covered in fiberglass and itching uncontrollably, moving from one person’s house to another, feeling lucky that my grandmother had a gas stove so we could cook and boil water. My mother, meanwhile, was literally excavating our home for anything she could find to salvage, trying to process our insurance (and document every single thing we lost) so we could have a place to live, and just making sure we had the basic necessities. Businesses and schools were closed for months–the economy obviously under duress–as residents tried to piece their lives together and make sense of a life-changing catastrophe.
Hurricane Andrew resulted in $40.7 billion (2008 USD) in property damage and 69 fatalities [Hurricane Katrina resulted in $89.6 billion (2008 USD) in property damage and 1,836 fatalities]. Fatalities from Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Katrina are each less than 1% of the current estimated fatalities in Haiti. These numbers only just begin to put the extreme devastation in Haiti into perspective. Wyclef Jean, who has been in Haiti recovering dead bodies, very appropriately describes it as the apocalypse:
What does this mean for aid? For disaster preparation? For emergency response? For sympathy? For empathy? But maybe more importantly, for collective action?
The truth of the matter is that it is impossible to understand what is happening in Haiti without being there–you can only imagine, and I know my imagination is not even scratching the surface despite my experience with a destructive natural disaster. But that doesn’t prevent action. Today the YNPN-NYC listserv has been full of benefit events from various nonprofit organizations to raise money for relief efforts in Haiti. The Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance committed to writing about the topic. Individuals around the world are donating money and raising awareness–text message donations alone have already raised USD$22 million in a week. Celebrities, including Sandra Bullock and Gisele Bundchen who have donated USD$1 million and USD$1.5 million respectively, are also making major financial contributions to the relief effort.
But perhaps the real action is a long-term commitment to relief, development, and moral support. It took South Florida years to fully recover Hurricane Andrew, New Orleans still continues to struggle post-Katrina–and this disaster is far, far worse. Young nonprofit leaders, get ready. Now is the time to step up.
Mark your calendars for Green Edge NYC’s 3rd Birthday Bash!
In celebration of the community-based organization’s third year of connecting “people with businesses, organizations and the resources they need to build a sustainable future” the group will be hosting a blow-out party at littlefield in Brooklyn.
Things you should know:
Tickets are $20 (and include raffle tickets! YESSSS! I am personally hoping to snag the Blades Natural Beauty item. )
The event runs from 7:00 pm-11:00 pm.
From 7:30-8:30 there will be representatives from Root for Trees, Tap It, Brooklyn Green Team, Rising Tide Initiative, and Solar 1 at the nonprofit booths. Now is your chance to meet other awesome environmentally-minded folks doing great things in NYC.
Hope to see you all there!
As I’ve spent the last year figuring out where I want to direct my career, I have come to the conclusion that social impact metrics and performance evaluation is the path I want to take. So I was very excited when I found out that my first post as part of the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance would be addressing just that.
I want to preface my answer by saying that I am a total nerd–so looking at numbers, evaluating statistical relationships, and quantifying values are all very exciting to me. But why do these things matter to nonprofit organizations which are providing social good? If Girls on the Run (GOTR)–”a nonprofit prevention program that encourages preteen girls to develop self-respect and healthy lifestyles through running”–provides a great after-school program, does it really matter what the impact is? Shouldn’t we just be glad that they are providing this service? Continue reading
I am very excited and honored to have become a member of the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance–a group of entrepreneurial young nonprofit professionals who are providing peer support and leveraging social media to further advance the nonprofit sector. Individually each of these men and women are inspiring and thoughtful movers-and-shakers….together the sky seems to be the limit. The Alliance (which is growing!) is currently includes the following Gen Y bloggers:
I encourage you to follow these great social change advocates on Twitter and read their fabulous and insightful blogs. You will not be disappointed! I promise!
Stay tuned! As tomorrow is my innaugural Alliance post!
I recently had the opportunity to write a post on Triple Pundit about the NYWSE Emerging Sustainability Leaders (ESL) program. Here’s an excerpt:
The best kept secret in the world of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is that CSR is an inside job. Many people who are heading up CSR departments (or are the CSR department) at their companies, were once regular employees who one day decided to start recycling at the office or organize volunteer days. What resulted was a snowball effect. Management saw the benefits of sustainability, clients became interested and engaged, the company re-branded and marketed its efforts, and these employees continued to develop more and more socially responsible initiatives. A new way of doing business had been born and a new social champion had arrived: the social intrapreneur.
For the full article go here.
And a shout out to the members of the NYWSE crew (specifically Shari Aaron, Ashby Andrews, Natalia Oberti Noguera, & Stephanie Niloff) who are hard at work getting this amazing program off the ground!
When @jameselbaor tweeted that he was on his way to the Columbia Business School Social Enterprise Conference one Friday morning, I immediately sent him a message asking if he could take notes as I would be spending the day sitting in the office. And he did!There are many great conferences out there, probably even way more than I know of, but going to all of them is probably impossible–unless you are a social enterprise conference roadie. A great way to address this problem is to have friends who go to conferences too. James Elbaor is the Co-Founder and Executive Director at KR Student Loans–a peer-to-peer lending platform for students–and a member of the Nonprofit Millennial Blogging Alliance. Here are James’ two main takeaways from the Social Enterprise Conference: Continue reading
In response to some of the conversations I have been having lately—both virtually and in-person–regarding the role of competition, collaboration, and communication in the social sector, I have been trying to think about how and why these issues exist in the first place….and how they might be addressed. Now, we all know that generalizations can sometimes be unfair, but sometimes they can also be rather accurate….read on:
Competition: Nonprofits are constantly targeted by the business-minded as lacking efficiency due to the fact that NPOs are not competing in an open market. As a result, the need for innovation is removed. Which is not to say that innovation isn’t necessarily occurring in the nonprofit world, but it tends to be driven internally (as in, “Hey we feel like we want to do this”) rather than externally (as in, “Hey we have to do this if we want to survive”). The competition element is increasing, however, as nonprofit watchdogs, like Charity Navigator, and private foundations are relying on industry best-practices to evaluate the relative effectiveness of nonprofit organizations. This in turn is informing where foundations invest their funding and encourages individual donors to also do their research when giving. Continue reading
Last Thursday you could find me drooling in my seat at the all-day social enterprise conference phenomena known as The Feast . As Stacey Murphy of @bkfarmyards put it: “#Feastongood was pretty unforgettable. Only criticism is too many inspiring people to meet in too little time.” It was hard to meet someone who wasn’t incredibly interesting and taking their ideas of social innovation to the next level (I challenge you to try at The Feast 2010–tickets are already on sale.) I am still somewhat in a daze regarding all of the things that were discussed, opportunities to be seized, and the amazing people who were brought together.
There was, however, a recurring theme that I noticed in many of my conversations: franchising, financing, and technology.
But let me back up a bit…the night before I attended a panel discussion at The Foundation Center on donor management systems. As some of the organizations I am working with are revving up for full-on fund development, implementing an affordable donor management program seems like a good part of the plan. I was a little shocked when I arrived that probably 80% of the attendees were twice my age. I got up and asked a question regarding options for donor management systems that would work for organizations with staff who telecommute and lack a brick-and-mortar base of operations. The question was confused people–both in the audience and in the panel–but I got a helpful answer in the end. However, the answer suited my question by accident–these traditional programs aren’t being designed with 21st century social entrepreneurs in mind, they just may work out unintentionally. Continue reading
Monday evening I attended Net Impact NYC’s Womens Social Entrepreneurship Panel at The Feldenkrais Institute. The panel was moderated by Ann MacDougal, Chief Management Officer (New York) at Acumen Fund and featured:
Elizabeth Scharpf, Chief Instigating Officer at Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)
Katie Orenstein, Founder and Director at The Op-Ed Project
Amini Kajunju, CEO/COO at the and Executive Committee member at Angel Africa
They are the big-wigs at their respective organizations and have each made great strides in addressing social issues, but these three women were also honest, funny, and down-to-earth about life as a woman social entrepreneur. Elizabeth Scharpf spoke about her “tipping point” that guided her down a different path. She had been working at an INGO in Mozambique, and had spoken with some young children about what they wanted to be when the grew up. One child answered: “I want to work for a big international development organization, because I want to be rich.” Hmmm. That wasn’t exactly the motivation for involvement in the social sector that she (or really anyone else for that matter) wanted to hear. What resulted was Elizabeth’s pursuit of an alternative path that led her to start SHE. Continue reading
