NPQ discussed the potential value from the recently announced alliance between Guidestar and the Foundation Center. While some of the long-term strategies have yet to be announced, this partnership has the potential to provide tremendous value to nonprofits organizations and the companies, foundations, and individuals that support them.
In the article, NPQ touches on some of the things they would like to see come from this ‘Medium Data’ alliance. While there are many great items that may come from this alliance, there are a few items that are important to their ongoing collaboration.
Guidestar and the Foundation Center are both currently structured to provide free information to all and have more sophisticated information behind a paywall. Ensuring that organizations have access to data at no-cost is critical. While the need for both entities to make money is clearly important, hiding data behind a paywall will hurt smaller nonprofits that do not have the budget to gain access.
The partnership between these two entities provides an opportunity to create a better way for nonprofits to collaborate with other organizations. When digitizing information, there is an opportunity to create a database of nonprofits that can be organized by mission, goals, and intended outcomes. While digital communication has enabled like-minded organizations to find each other around the nation and world more easily, there is still greater room for growth in this area.
The Foundation Center does an excellent job of providing nonprofits the tools to seek out funding from corporations and foundations. As information continues to shift towards digital, funders can better understand options for their contributions. Potential funders are continually approached with funding requests from nonprofits, but many would love to have a better way to seek out information and organizations that are aligned with their own goals.
We’re excited about this collaboration and look forward to seeing the exciting programs that come from it.
The following are a few links from the week. As always – check out our Tumblr for additional stories.
- Vine rolled out a few more editing options! Mashable covers the new options and how they’re useful.
- Speaking of Vine, Philanthropy has launched a Six Second Appeal Challenge.
- Pew Research provides interesting data on how Facebook users consume news articles from Facebook.
- Claire Kerr shares some useful advice on mobile data and the growing need to build strategy around the two-screen audience.
- While this article is focused on marketing for small businesses, HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah’s thoughts on inbound marketing and how to better sell your company is very thoughtful and helpful for nonprofits.
Justin (he, him) is a Principal and Co-Founder of Social Change Consulting. He has over fifteen years of nonprofit experience, with expertise in online fundraising, digital communications, and data management. Justin helps organizations connect their communication strategy to their income development needs. When he’s not on the clock, Justin is exploring Berlin, running, listening to too many podcasts, and drinking too much coffee.