Harnessing Technology for Change

Great post from Rahim Kanani of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard about the Global Philanthropy Forum: Just a few weeks ago, the 2010 Global Philanthropy Forum convened in San Francisco. The three-day forum highlighted a number of key international challenges and opportunities facing investors and grant makers, NGOs and civil society, and multi-sector partnerships both public and private, as the industry of giving and receiving enters the second decade of the 21st century. While the overarching themes of the conference were not explicitly related to technological advancements or solutions to the world's most pressing problems, having attended a variety of sessions over the course of the conference, one of the most prominent threads was exactly that: harnessing mobile and internet technology for change, social impact, and accountability.

Catalista, for example, has developed a mobile platform to connect individuals interested in timely volunteer work for local non-profits in need, whereas The Extraordinaries pioneered the field of micro-volunteering, which helps organizations and supporters turn spare time into social value from a bus stop, cubicle, or couch. To-date, micro-volunteers have completed over 300,000 tasks for more than 200 organizations. Similarly, but in a reversal of roles and in the space of economic development across the developing world, Samasource enables marginalized people, from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan, to receive life-changing work opportunities via the Internet. The core of this concept is microwork -- little bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere that add up to a real livelihood for their partners. Another example of mobile and social innovation in action is the work of FrontlineSMS, designed specifically to address a widespread communications problem facing grassroots NGOs working in developing countries. By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs -- computers and mobile phones -- FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. The uses for such technology spans monitoring human rights violations, disaster relief coordination, election monitoring, emergency alerts, health care information requests, mobile education, and more.

Read the rest here

Be Your Brand

As you probably know, I am pretty passionate about young professionals taking charge of their professional brand. It is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure a long and successful career, especially during a tough job market. Rosetta Thurman is my favorite example of someone who lives their brand online and offline. She have leveraged her blog into a full time consulting career, speaking engagements around the country, and is now teaching young professionals how to leverage their own brand to jumpstart their nonprofit career. A description of the program is below:

Join Rosetta for the Personal Branding Bootcamp, a crash course in today's most effective career tool for young professionals, personal branding! Starting May 22, you'll start a weeklong, intensive training program with other go-getters just like you. The entire program is virtual and you can participate from anywhere in the world.

There are two registration options:

1. Webinar Only: This registration level includes one ticket to the May 22 Personal Branding 101 Webinar, as well as access to the recording (audio & slides) after the live event. Webinar only registrants will not be able to participate in the intensive portion of the Personal Branding Boot Camp held from May 24-31 nor any of the associated forums. This option is good for those who just want to get their feet wet in learning more about personal branding and some quick, practical tips they can apply as part of their career planning.
2. All Access: This registration level includes full-access to the Personal Branding Boot Camp learning experience through May 31 as well as one ticket to the May 22 Personal Branding 101 Webinar and access to the recording (audio & slides) after the live event. This "deep dive" option is for those who are ready to go whole hog and set aside the time to implement social media tools or improve the ones they have in order to advance their careers.

Sign up for this Branding Boot Camp here!

A Key Fact the Current Illegal Immigration Debate Overlooks

Lost amidst the hubbub about Arizona's recent legislation to crack down on illegal immigration, is the simple fact that most baby boomers, approximately one-third of America's labor force, will reach the retirement age of 65 during the next two decades.

Leave aside, for a moment, the arguments about the legitimacy of being a legal citizen and human rights. Our country isn't producing enough new workers to replace those who retire: according to the US Census Bureau there are about 77 million baby boomers and only 46 million people in generation X and generation Y.

Where will the new workers come from? It's immigration, or else a miraculous breakthrough in robotics engineering.

In 2008, the first of the baby boomers hit the age of 62, which is significant because it's the age that the average worker retires. Although baby boomers will likely work longer than predicted because of extended life expectancies and over-extended retirement plans, health conditions and the effects of old age will prevent many from working full-time into their 70s and force others to retire much earlier.

By 2020, if not sooner, we'll be competing with countries in Western Europe, Japan, and elsewhere in the world to attract immigrants. If we're unsuccessful, much could change for the worse for our economies and in our lives:

• Of course, annual increases in social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and insurance payouts are already steep, and they will steepen even more sharply in the coming years.
• Home values may once again decline because many Baby Boomers will need to sell or downsize to cover their retirement expenses.
• For the same reason, savings rates are also likely to shrink because Baby Boomers will be cashing out their stocks and IRAs and won't be earning enough new income to continue their current rate of savings.
• Accordingly, interest rates would need to rise to encourage more savings. This could trigger a return of runaway inflation.
• Taxes are also likely to rise to pay for the needs of an aging population. This could also trigger more inflation.
• Employers will need to pay higher salaries as they compete for a dwindling supply of workers, especially for services that cater to seniors, like health care. The added inflationary pressure will likely cause the price of goods and services to rise.

Sound farfetched?

Not at all, according to forecasts from leading political scientists and economists, such as those printed in recent books from George Friedman and Jacques Attali, and from national and state demographers, such as Minnesota State Demographer Tom Gillaspy. In fact, the above scenario might be an understatement. Some observers expect a return to the stagflation that crippled the economy in the late 70s and early 80s, but for a more extended period of time.

One effective response that political scientists, economists, and demographers all agree on is to attract more, more, and more immigrant labor.

Immigrants can provide the specialized skills we need to replace retiring engineers and researchers, executives and managers. They can fill vacant positions for doctors, nurses, and aides in health care facilities and nursing homes. They can also provide the manual labor needed to harvest the fields and operate factories.

Like it or not, within the next 10 years we'll not only be begging immigrants, legal and possibly illegal, to stay, we'll be begging them to live here and help us keep the country's economy afloat.

If we keep passing laws like Arizona's, what kind message will this send?

Could it add up to a record of hostility that causes workers we need from India, from Eastern Europe, from Latin America, and from elsewhere to ignore the call to help us prop up our economy when it begins to sag beneath the sheer number of retiring Baby Boomers a few years from now?

(You can learn more about philanthropic communications consultant Paul Bachleitner at his website www.bachwriter.com.)