Allison Jones, one of my favorite nonprofit bloggers has a great new post about six events that happened in 2010 that got people talking about nonprofits. From Allison:

Is it just me or were more people talking a lot about nonprofits this year? Not just from my fellow nonprofiteers; but also from folks who were interested in doing good or who were shocked/interested by some stuff they heard and wanted to learn more.

I decided to compile some events this year that I think made those of us working in the nonprofit sector think more critically about our work as well encouraged others to participate (or at least learn about) our role in this country.

The Earthquake in Haiti

From helphaitiearthquakevictims.com/

What happened: On Tuesday January 12th a catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti a few miles outside of the capital Port-au-Prince. The earthquake killed 230,000 people, injured 300,000, and left 1,000,000 homeless. The limited infrastructure Haiti had was severely damaged, making recovery efforts difficult.

How did this affect nonprofits? In addition to mobilizing communities to participate in relief efforts in a variety of ways, several organizations stole the spotlight because of their use of technology (good) and their questionable actions in times of crisis (bad).

The Red Cross made text message donations more mainstream and raised the most of any disaster relief organization responding to the earthquake; at the same time they, along with Wyclef Jean’s nonprofit Yele Haiti, faced harsh criticism for their handling of funds. By February, over $500 million raised for Haiti had not been spent leading many to question nonprofits ability to respond to disaster.

Read about the other five events that got people talking about nonprofits here.