Asking questions and then listening–really listening–to the answers is a vital but underrated skill. That’s true in business. In nonprofits. And in life as well. The trouble is, soliciting, receiving and acting upon feedback is hard. In theory, we want to learn, grow and change. In practice, not so much. We want to be loved for …
Many years ago, as a Peace Corps volunteer in northern Thailand, Paul Strasburg met a young man who said he was a teacher and asked for help building a school in his village. Strasburg somehow found a small nonprofit in New York, led by high school students and teachers, that was willing to help, and …
If you’ve donated money to a water charity, congratulations. You’ve stepped up to try to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems–the fact that roughly 750 million people do not have access to clean water. Has your donation made a lasting difference? That’s hard to know. Big water charities point to numbers that, they …
KaBOOM! has a good thing going. Since 1996, KaBOOM! has built more than 2,500 playgrounds in low-income neighborhoods across America, most financed by FORTUNE 500 companies. It has helped communities build another 13,000 places to play. The DC-based nonprofit has attracted an avalanche of favorable attention, and it has won over high-profile supporters, including First Ladies Hilary …
My interview with Brian Walsh is over. He summons an Uber, and shows me his phone. The driver has a 4.7 rating. Reliable. Disruptive startups like Uber, AirBnB and TripAdvisor use technology to collect and share data about drivers, renters, hotels and their customers. If they use feedback loops to build trust, why can’t nonprofits? Is that …
GiveWell began with a simple question: where should I donate? Elie Hassenfeld and Holden Karnofsky (bios) were 20-something friends who worked at a Westport, CT, hedge fund called Bridgewater Associates. They made good money. They wanted to give some away. That was easy. They wanted their donations to help people–by reducing suffering or increasing opportunity–“as much as …
In the summer of 2013, in a remarkable development that was little noted outside of the world of philanthropy, Guidestar, Charity Navigator and BBB Wise Giving Alliance, the US’s three leading sources of information about nonprofits, together published a letter intended “to correct a misconception about what matters when deciding which charities to support.” “The …
Not long ago, I met Brett Jenks, the chief executive of a global conservation organization called Rare, over coffee at Peet’s, near my home in Bethesda, Md. We’d never met, and I knew little about Rare, which is based in Arlington, Va. Brett impressed me–since taking the top job at Rare in 2000, he had …
Nonprofit Chronicles 