November 2008 Archives
As you know if I you read the first article linked up left, I've long been obsessed with getting nonprofits to pay more attention to design. To see how design can help make a positive difference, check out this killer article from Science News, which examines how Florence Nightengale developed cutting-edge information graphics for applied statistical modeling.
Sean at Tactical Philanthropy recently gave a nice shout-out to my Chronicle of Philanthropy op-ed, which he described as an example of my "anti-social entrepreneurship discourse."
Head on over there for my clarification as to why my critique is not, from my perspective, anti-, but part of a more up-with-people goal.
Above: My new favorite graffito in New York--happy toast on a doorway ramp leading into the Bleecker Street Theatre.
Andy Warhol's Empire consists of 8 hours and 5 minutes of continuous footage of the Empire State Building at night.
On Thanksgiving I went to the top of a local building and filmed an homage appropriate to an age of micro-chic: the ESB at night for 8:05 seconds.
Nothing profound to say about it; I just liked the title of this post. The following comment made me laugh too:
It’s very cute and clever. What it is not, and shouldn’t be called, is “ecoâ€. It’s plastic. It will eventually go into the landfill, where it will stay cute for millenia.
This is one of the coolest charity auctions I've seen--Russian Vogue is celebrating its 10th anniversary by auctioning off matrioshka dolls created by famous fashion designers. The beneficiary: Northern Crown, which provides care to orphaned children.
A sparkling clean home without labor--the cleanser as a means to rise above the mundane.
"A cool cocktail for the entire global village"
Marshall McLuhan's grandson-in-law is uploading memorabilia from the McLuhan archives on Flickr. Amazing stuff here--above, a family scrapbook from 1964, the beginning of his emergence as an internationally famous prophet of the electronic age.
The more you buy, the more you believe--Macy's offers a mercantile symbol of metrics and meaning.
The Chicago Cultural Center has eliminated its Volunteer Department, much to the dismay of this correspondent:
The Volunteer Department has been around for 12 years, organizing a force of more than 150 people willing to give their time and energy to make public programs happen, such as weekly concerts, weddings, annual holiday events, not to mention all the office tasks and mailings that have been expedited by these helping hands. You can imagine my surprise when I went into the volunteer office recently and found out that, come the end of November, it will be no longer. The director and the department -- gone.
I was stunned. Of all things to cut -- the hub, the person who has not only built this program from the ground up, but also motivates, manages and maintains hundreds of people willing to give their time and knowledge and energy free of charge.
This cut seems like it will lead to an inevitable dissolution of many of the cultural programs that characterize this wonderful city. How disheartening.
Or perhaps just more efficient?
The phrase "negative wallet biopsy" refers to a hospital refusing to provide charitable care because the prospective patient has an available credit-card balance or too high a credit score. This recent Business Week article provides the gruesome details.
I've mentioned this before, but my favorite book on the underlying issue raised by wallet biopsies--and one of my favorite courses in law school: Guido Calabresi's Tragic Choices.
The above chart overlays the NASDAQ since 1995 on the Dow from 1924. Historical recurrence or pattern recognition run amok?
Speaking of which, if you're into order and randomness in social systems, you might want to check out the complete Grant Morrison run on Batman, especially the storyline entitled Batman RIP. It is, as is typical of his work, a compelling metaphorical play on central themes in much less entertaining but no less important research--in fact, the above reference to apophenia is a nod to the most recent issue. If I can break away from my other work for more than a few minutes, I may write up my thoughts on that elsewhere.
henry chavarria,babyboy,dollarsandsense,hip hop,art,cute,sex symbol,fashion,designer,thug life,money,clothing,, originally uploaded by babyboy_designs.
Ludacris as curator of his own hip-hop museum:
But then came "I Do It for Hip Hop," a self-consciously lo-fi celebration of precapitalist creativity that on Ludacris's new album, features his fellow millionaires Jay-Z and Nas.
"I don't do it for the money/I do it from the heart," Ludacris rapped. "The van Gogh flow/Luda do it 'cause it's art."
Then, quite unexpectedly, all those faux-naïf rhymes came true. A cavalcade of guests emerged to take the stage for a few moments each, a showcase of New York hip-hop history with a devoted fan as curator. It turned this show on its ear.
L L Cool J's "Rock the Bells" was invigorating, and Jadakiss's "We Gon Make It" sounded like rolling thunder. When Jim Jones and Juelz Santana emerged to perform "Pop Champagne," the flamboyant hip-hop anthem of the moment, Ludacris felt comfortable enough to put art back aside for a second: "I made the Forbes list, yeah, I know you seen it/Eight figures so if I say it, you know I mean it."
For more about Dollars & Scholars, check out BabyBoy's Myspace.
This panel from Grant Morrison's Batman 679 illustrates the relation between the city and individuals that so fascinated Aristotle in The Politics--literally "Of the city." For an explanation, check out my explanation of what Aristotle described as "the partnership of the city"--what we now call "civil society"-as well as Rem Koolhaas' classic meditation on the generative dynamic of the city grid in Delirious New York.
My last couple points illustrated how charity can be subverted through the mindless repetition of pervasive memes. However, that doesn't mean that viral dissemination of ideas is inherently bad.
Consider the corporation. As I explain in my most recent article--especially in these sections on emergence--corporate form propagates a ratio of difference between whole and parts that provides the key to subverting the soulless conformity all too often associated with corporate life.
"Sustainopreneurship" is unsustainable, just another example of how do-gooders lacking self-awareness ride semantic waves.
Because that's what people want--monetized justice. As for bazaar-style negotiation, you do realize that there are imbalances in power, resources and knowledge that create systemic bias in the outcomes, right?
Cripes, people. Think about what you're saying.
Kenketsu-chan--"blood donation girl"--is the Japan's blood donation mascot, one of a stable of public mascots throughout the country. Pink Tentacle (via Animal) has more, including a link to the official Kenketsu-chan site:
From the site, we know that Kenketsu-chan’s ears shrink when she runs low on blood, but return to their original size when people donate. We also know that she comes from Tasuke Island (Help Island), which features a heart-shaped spring at its center. The spring shoots forth rainbows that carry Kenketsu-chan to wherever people need blood.
Below: "Cross Kid," a local Red Cross superhero.
"Duplex est hominis vita"--or at least that's what Thomas Aquinas says when discussing the organic link between charity and friendship. One aspect of our double life is corporeal, anchoring us to the mundane; the other, spiritual, that enables us to commune with angels. Charity, like friendship and the spiritual life, takes us beyond the limits of our natural existence into a higher realm.
Protesting the fur industry during Russian winter is a losing proposition. Stripping in the cold never fails to get attention, but if these activists really want to make a difference, they might want to spend their time developing synthetic materials that could provide the same amount of warmth for a lower price--in Russia, where fur coats are primarily functional as opposed to a status good, fur is a relatively cheap way to keep from freezing.
Also not helping the cause--the fact that these women are foreigners from the U.S. and Australia. Russians have had their fill of clueless Westerners telling them what to do.
It's on the social enterprise bubble, and you can read it here.
The above ad, in which a bunch of supporters say "Thank you, Sarah Palin!", has been making the political rounds.
Naturally, my first thought on seeing it went to tax law. Y'see, a political action committee is exempt from taxation to the extent that receives contributions and makes expenditures for exempt functions. An exempt function, sayeth Section 527(e)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code, means
the function of influencing or attempting to influence the selection, nomination, election, or appointment of any individual to any Federal, State, or local public office or office in a political organization, or the election of Presidential or Vice-Presidential electors, whether or not such individual or electors are selected, nominated, elected, or appointed.
All of which is to say, this ad isn't about thanking Sarah Palin at all. It's looking forward, not backward. You've just seen the first candidate campaign ad for the 2012 presidential election.
So I'm sitting here writing about how social enterprise is a means by which people fashion an identity defined by their own virtue, when what should pop on my TV background noise but an episode of Amazing Wedding Cakes.
A challenge this week: an anniversary cake to meet the client's brief for a "Green Cake" with the theme "love and renewable energy."
Above: a partial image of the resulting do-gooder cake wreck, featuring organic hearts, white chocolate windmills, green icing plants and the sugary inscription, "LOVE is the most Renewable ENERGY source of all!"
Blech.
Above: In 1976, legendary Soviet-era folk singer Vladimir Vysotsky travels to New York & is interviewed for 60 Minutes. Note Vysotsky's subtlety--he used the system to beat the system. His music did more to undermine Soviet authority than any number of protests, and it will continue to exert substantial influence whoever exerts political control.
The mobile MRI van was parked a few blocks up from Coney Island, so afterward I decided to take a walk around Brighton Beach, where I purchased this copy of Soviet Russia--"an independent national newspaper"--commemorating the 91st anniversary of the October Revolution.
The classic Norman Mailer article on the nomination of JFK for president is now online at Esquire.com.
"'The investment-banking industry is fucked,' Eisman told me a few weeks earlier. 'These guys are only beginning to understand how fucked they are. It's like being a Scholastic, prior to Newton. Newton comes along, and one morning you wake up: 'Holy shit, I'm wrong.''"
--from Michael Lewis, The End
If social entrepreneurs had that level of self-awareness, they might actually resemble the business world they claim to emulate.
. . . about nonprofits and charities that use Flickr. Archiving pictures of designs, projects, art, documents, events that convey a sense of fun and engagement--I get that. They're all extensions of the mediated self.
By why so many photos of people at meetings?
No, really, I want to know.
Today's Wall Street Journal casts a critical eye at an issue faced by several nonprofits recently: attempts to landmark a structure they want to replace.
In the WSJ story about the landmarking of the above church, described as an icon of Brutalism, this identity conflict stood out:
J. Darrow Kirkpatrick, the congregation's first lay reader, acknowledges that "what we have in this building is inwardness, brutalism, roughness," but he sees this as inimical to Christian Science. "Ours is not an inward-looking, secretive religion," he says. "This building does not represent our theology or our beliefs." As church member and George Washington University historian David Alan Grier says, "The building's bunker look suggests a congregation not trying to reach the outside."
Today I took a moment to get a free brain scan at the Bobby Murcer Mobile MRI. Being in the machine is sublime--I could have spent the whole afternoon immersed in the sounds. For anyone who has ever wanted to get inside my head, I've placed the complete four series on Youtube.
A couple days ago I saw a van with a Make-a-Wish Foundation superhero ad on the back doors. Didn't snap a photo in time, but here's the original commercial, the story behind it and an update from the real-life kid whose wish inspired the PSA. Folks interested in nonprofits & intellectual property might noticed that the recreation in the ad does not include Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, who were part of the original granted wish.
The past few days have been network hell, as my old modem & Verizon Bluetooth connection both went south on me, and the cable company took days to register my new modem. I've been working mostly from home, so that meant occasional jaunts to Starbucks to get on the web. Still, some of what needed to be done got done, and now that I'm back online I'm really looking forward to immersion in what's up for the next couple weeks.
To see why the above XKCD map reminded me of a critical moment in my youth when I learned that plans aft gang agley, check out my comment in this Scarlett Lion post.
Trash cans branded with the GoRedForWomen.org campaign are out in full force at Grand Central Station.
I was going to offer a Freudian analysis of this campaign but thought better of it.
Social Finance Forum - Hybrid Structures: Lessons Learned, originally uploaded by mars_discovery_district.
Sure, it's not the most popular photo on Flickr, but it's interesting to me. For more on the Social Finance Forum in Toronto, click through or check out the conference site.
And for more Canadian goodness, What is the (Next) Message offers informative write-ups from the recent SustainabilityCamp.
Above: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel. Music would never be the same . . .
I'm focused on writing & class prep, but as usual my breaks have been equally rich with fascinating stuff. First, on my way back from the events yesterday morning I came across the autobiography of Grandmaster Flash at ye olde NYPL. Music, business, the public good and the higher self--his story brings 'em all together in a poignant and compelling mix.
Do-gooders who ridicule rap and hip hop really should pay more attention, because these communities have done more for social improvement than fifty social enterprise bakeries put together. Don't get me wrong--bakeries and such have their place, but to make such ventures the limit of social enterprise is just another way of saying "Let them eat cookies."
Ever since watching last week's Saturday Night Live, I've also been paying more attention to Beyonce's creation of an alter ego, Sasha Fierce. It's the latest in a long line of pop other selves, winding back through Prince, David Bowie and James Brown to--as this wonderful new bio notes--the pathbreaking professional wrestler Gorgeous George.
As with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five--along with a host of other noted rap, hip hop and pop artists--Beyonce's Sasha Fierce blends synchronized action with an ethical sense. Consider "Single Ladies," the video below, and how it links marriage and enlightened transformation. There's little sense of marriage as servitude evident in this nineteenth century folk song.
The scene above: Marianne Lydon, Patient Coordinator, at the opening of the Brain Tumor Foundation's new mobile MRI.
UPDATE: My brain scans from the mobile MRI.
Marianne, Jason Dolger of Alliance Imaging and the Foundation's Dmitry Shimelfarb were nice enough to include me in the press event this morning outside City Hall. They offered a number of interesting details about the Foundation and this new project, which provides free MRIs at various places throughout New York City.
A couple things particularly stand out. Providing the service costs about 1.5 million dollars a year, and while there are some major donors most of the amount is covered by small individual donors. With regard to legal issues, it turns out that providing MRI services is a relative piece of cake. What's really difficult: getting permits to park the truck!
If you're in NYC and are eager to get your free scan, you might want to register now--based on response to the word-of-mouth so far, folks were predicting that a flood of calls will follow an upcoming feature on The Today Show.
Above: the mechanization of the human spirit in the service of giving away free underwear. More about the event at Racked; here's my Flickr set of the box and what's inside, as well as the full thermal body scan revealing the coldest parts of my body:
In France, an annual charity auction serves as a leading indicator of the market price for the latest Burgundy vintage. Prices are down & the beneficiary hospital is not happy with the result, inasmuch as it is in the midst of an expensive expansion project. Read the whole Wine Spectator article for a fascinating look at a historic link between philanthropy and commerce.
I missed the fair trade tea tasting, but maybe if I'm not too swamped I can make it to the exploitive soul-crushing tea event next Monday night!
I'm immersed in another intense pre-Thanksgiving week, and this odd bit o' corporate culture from Weird Universe provided welcome comic relief.
Cascadian Farm sells frozen vegetables. As a way of maintaining good spirits within the company, the package design department has hidden in the veggie pics the faces of "friends and family" associated with the firm.
Apparently the notion of noshing on heads is garnering some unwanted attention, so the practice is about to be discontinued. Which I guess makes Cascadian Farm frozen foods just another cold-hearted corporation . . .
If you were unfortunate enough to hear me give a talk over the past couple years, chances are at some point you heard me predict that when--not if--the latest market bubble collapsed, it would have serious implications for the social enterprise movement. Two things in particular: a resurgence of resistance to nonprofit business and a tightening of viable low-margin ventures.
Ta daaaaaaah!
A couple news stories that came across my virtual transom today illustrate the problems:
The first one is truly sad, as a jobs & socialization program for the mentally challenged loses its employment contract with a local warehouse, which decided to cut costs by taking the work in-house. If a replacement isn't found, the rehabilitation services charity may have to shut down. When social enterprise rah-rah types exult in how the economic crisis will lead to a boom in socially responsible business, remember this, will you?
And from the Pottstown, PA Mercury (Berks County represent!), an op-ed on why nonprofit hospitals aren't really nonprofit. Its point: that nonprofits use high salaries and expensive projects as an accounting trick to net out expenses and revenues. Lawyer types will say the writer gets the law wrong, but that misses the article's potential effect, particularly on legislators--critiques like this are what gets the law changed in ways that make it harder for nonprofits to survive.
I don't know if the words "social enterprise" or "charity" are mentioned in the series, but this Food Network show--in which six at-risk individuals work for scholarships to culinary school--is not only full of do-goodery goodness, but it highlights how the creative transformation of the mundane is central to human identity.
The New York Stock Exchange tries to cheer up trading by having clowns from the Big Apple Circus ring the bell.
The most telling response:
"It's like they're trying to be the Make-A-Wish Foundation, cheering up a terminally ill child," said Bill King, chief market strategist of M. Ramsey King Securities in Chicago. "It's a great metaphor for a financial system that has become a joke.
In connection with my MoCCA work I spent part of today at the Big Apple Comic Con. One of the most interesting moments came when a panel on Marvel Comics addressed the question of the esteemed guests' favorite work while at the company. Legendary artist John Romita cited his work on Spidey Super Stories, a joint venture between Marvel and the Children's Television Workshop. What particularly stood out for him was that all the artwork was planned in conjunction with research on how children read. The placement of each character, object and word balloons was designed to flow with the child's natural eye movements.
Now that's an Easy Reader!
Racked has the scoop on Housing Works' latest Fashion for Action sample sale and auction fundraiser. I'd say more, but I've been sternly admonished in no uncertain terms that social enterprise doesn't include eco-fashion, fashion-related charity and fashion fundraisers.
Who knew? Maybe one of you smart do-gooders out there can inform me why social entrepreneurship stops with selling cookies, mosquito nets, and t-shirts.
Heyyyyy, wait a minute . . .
One of the things I enjoy about taking breaks on this site is that way that serendipitous patterns tend to emerge. For example, the Alpha Mummy link & conversations at Yale Law yesterday tied together several random things I saw last week concerning costumes and charity.
Which reminds me of one of my all time favorite Marshall McLuhan quotes, memorialized on the McLuhan playing card above. I don't have time to recount the full story behind it & what it means, but here's a partial contemporaneous account of the time some folks took Marshall McLuhan to a topless bar. If you ever wonder why I have this ingrained habit of explaining the historic and linguistic roots of everything I encounter, consider this:
FLASH: In town is Prof. Marshall McLuhan, fabled, fabulous, revered, and even sainted by the New Intelligentsia, Director of the Center for Culture and Technology at University of Toronto, author of "The Mechanical Bride," "The Gutenburg Galaxy" and "Understanding Media," darling of the critics ("Compared to McLuhan, Spengler is cautious and Toynbee is positively pedantic" - New York Herald Tribune), the man who stands "at the frontier of post-Einsteinian mythologies."
Hot on the trail of this titan, I thought to myself, "Where is the last place in town you'd expect to see Marshall McLuhan?" and that's where I found him--at Off-Broadway in North Beach, lunching amid the topless waitresses with Writer Tom Wolfe, Adman Howard Gossage and Dr. Gerald Feigen.
* * *
A TOPLESS fashion show ensued, commentated by a young lady who was fully dressed and in good voice. "Now here, gentlemen," she said, "is the ideal opera gown for your wife." A gorgeously-endowed blonde appeared in a full-length gown open to the waist. The audience, composed mainly of Tuesday Downtown Operator-like types, gaped silently. "You're all dead out there," chided the commentator. "Where's the applause?"
"Now the word applause," interjected Dr. McLuhan, "comes from the Latin 'applaudere,' which means to explode. In early times, audiences applauded to show their disfavor; they clapped their hands literally to explode the performer off the stage. Hence you might say that the silence here is a form of approbation, at least in the classical sense."
After a busy day of excellent meetings and futile attempts to use my time on the train to catch up with my writing, I'm taking a moment to catch up with all things charity. First I took a moment to think about this article from Alpha Mummy (via the always informative Alanna Shaikh) concerning the frivolity of purchasing costumes for kids' charity events. It's a topic that I've puzzled over a bit myself for a while, from my times as a student sitting in on charity dinners whose cost was several multiples of the beneficiary's monthly budget to my periodic perusal of local charity events on New York Social Diary.
For an example of a charity benefit that has taken to heart the importance of not spending too much money on costumes for a fundraiser, via the decidedly NSFW--if not NSFHome--Fleshbot, we have Pants to Poverty, a charity that recently set the world's record for most people gathered together in their underwear.
Speaking of which, one of about 73 things I really enjoyed about today's YLS shindig was our discussion about what I'm up to here with all the stuff you don't typically see on social enterprise & charity sites. It's always refreshing to have those conversations (and comments and emails and tweets--thanks to all of you!), because beneath all my admitted goofiness this really is all part of a much bigger project, one that is heavily influenced by such childhood exemplars as McLuhan's inventory of effects and Andy Warhol's disconnected yet engaged watcher. Sometime when it's not 1:25 a.m. I'll explain more, but for now I sense the summons of the robe of not-quite-everlasting night.
Today I'm in New Haven, where, among other things, I'll be meeting with the Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs. As is inevitably the case, the students are most impressive--for example, one of the founders, Zachary Kaufman, edited After Genocide, a new book on law and justice issues arising from the Rwandan experience. True to do-gooder form, profits from the book are going to support Rwanda's first public library.
Much more entrepreneurial than what I did with my time there, which was mostly spent watching puppet shows!
An intriguing Ad Age podcast* on the marketing success of the Dos Equis promotion featuring a traveling freak show got me thinking about how charities use carnivals to raise funds. A post here a couple days ago noted that carnival events at ag fairs can be exempt from the unrelated business income tax. Above: The Burlesque Breast Fest, an upcoming "burlesque carnival event" to benefit breast cancer survivor programs. Featured dancers, an astrologer and psychic, circus performers--all in all, a night of "fun festive fundraising."
There's even an alcohol tie-in: sponsorship by P.I.N.K. Vodka, including an open bar!
Picture via Sucia @ Madame X
*If you're into social enterprisey things, the 3 Minute Ad Age podcasts are chock full of useful strategies and insights.
Read the whole uncensored story here.
Here's what's got me thinking as I write through today. Video experiments--more fun ones, less serious--will continue, but since I'm going to be away tomorrow, probably not until next week.
From WWD, one designer's thought about closing shop amidst a recession:
In New Scientist, re what the brain does when we're not consciously processing information:
Randy Buckner, a former colleague of Raichle's now at Harvard, agrees. To him the evidence paints a picture of a brain system involved in the quintessential acts of daydreaming: mulling over past experiences and speculating about the future (New Scientist, 24 March 2007, p 36). "We're very good at imagining possible worlds and thinking about them," says Bucker. "This may be the brain network that helps us to do that."
Fossil evidence of a positive correlation between evolving women's hip size and brain size:
To accommodate big-brained babies, humans must have developed larger and wider birth canals over time, but with few pelvic fossils, researchers had little idea when these changes began. The Busidima pelvis shows that a wide birth canal was already in place 1.2 million years ago. It underscores the importance of developing large brains in early human evolution, Simpson says.
"The most successful individuals in these populations will have positive selection for brains and larger pelvises," he says. "Brain size is driving the whole system here."
New speech recognition software reads brainwaves:
A 1979 Hulk story touts Greenpeace, with a bonus boost for using violent conflict to promote tolerance--see the whole thing on FLOG:
As we've noted here & on Blog@, charities have learned that superheroes are a good draw for fundraisers and exhibits. One interesting example of the trend just opened up in Idaho: the Sun Valley Center for the Arts' show on Superheroes and Secret Identities.
Below: the featured artists. Above: part of the fascinating portfolio of Dulce Pinzon.
Mark Newport knits superhero costumes to his own size. Hanging empty on the wall, these large disembodied costumes comment on traditional notions of masculine identity and our idealization of unattainable powers. He also photographs himself dressed in costume, prepared for disaster in mundane settings, and creates his own embroidered and illustrated comic book pages.
Dulce Pinzón photographs Mexican immigrants in popular U.S. and Mexican superhero costumes as they work at generally low-wage jobs. She captions each photo with a note about how much each worker sends home to his or her family each week, forcing us to reconsider our ideas of what a superhero really is. While super powers may be beyond our grasp in reality, the Internet has given all of us the chance to adopt alternate identities and extraordinary abilities in cyberspace.
Robbie Cooper has traveled the globe photographing computer gamers who spend hours each day in online worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft. He pairs his photographs with images of these gamers' online avatars, offering provocative insight into the online world of fantasy role-play.
OK, so maybe there isn't a direct causal connection, but at one of several recent charity & eco-fashion happenings here in NYC Secretary Rice did note that a childhood church habit still has a direct impact on her daily life. As WWD reports from the Glamour Women of the Year benefit:
Another interesting bit of info gleaned from the event:
This year, she started the $100 million One Woman Initiative, a public-private partnership that trains Muslim women for leadership. “The difference she’s made is immeasurable,†says Carly Fiorina, a cochair of One Woman. “She’s a visionary,†agrees Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. “She’s created innovative programs for women to serve in leadership roles, helping them to reform their governments.â€
It reflects a telling interesting shift in American culture--little more than just a century ago, a number of American political and educational leaders thought the key to global reform was to convert foreign boys to Christianity.
A broadside in the men's room at Grand Central Station manifests the metaphor of a "tattered Constitution."
My recent down time has consisted of deepening my Final Cut Pro Fu beyond rotate and crop. One focus of attention: chroma key strategies. Usually I do a nonsensical song and dance in front of the green screen, but today I decided to say a few Serious Thoughts about social enterprise prompted by a class where I'd just spoken. The video capture dropped a few frames, hence the occasional skipped word. My original thought had been to archive it in my personal video blog, but in the end I figured what the hey, might as well post it. So here ya go.
In this 1920 pic, a Broadway chorus girl faces the future.
What amazed me about this pic, besides her modern sensibility, is that there once was an amusement park in the Bronx. Now it's an expressway. Blah.
Via Shorpy.
Via a private Twitter message (Thanks!), the Consumerist has offers words of wisdom to nonprofits with investment assets:
A Goldman Sachs trader recently told me that he constantly rips off endowments, charities, and foundations when they would call up and want to invest. "Whenever I hear it's a non-prof, then you just ladle on the extra fees," he told me.
That's because he knew they were usually unsophisticated investors and wouldn't do comparison shopping or know how to properly analyze a fee schedule. He justified it by saying it was, "their fault... when you only call up one place, what do you expect?"
To some extent he's right. If you don't shop around for your investments or learn to how to make sure you're getting the best deal, you do set yourself up to be taken advantage of. If you're getting into an actively managed fund, you better learn all about fees, loads, 12b1 fees, marketing fees, transaction fees, all the fees in the fee rainbow. Don't think that because you're a non-profit all of a sudden everyone puts on their happy hats and kid gloves and is going to help you out.
Hey, it's just efficiency in action, charging what the market will bear!
So I'm a guest speaker in another professor's class today, which means I've been revising my guest-speaker-in-someone-else's-class slide deck. It's pretty familiar stuff about what people mean when they used the term "social enterprise"--the video above pretty much captures how I prepare.
Via Wil Wheaton, here's Spot.Us, a nonprofit website where you can commission journalists to write investigative reports.
Let's see, who don't I like . . .
Betty Boop may be going to live action on Broadway, but rotoscoping--Fleisher Studio's greatest legacy--has proven so successful for Charles Schwab that it may be the wave of the future in video advertising. Ad Age has a new podcast on the successful Schwab campaign. Note how abstracted form makes the ads more personal than more representative filmed images:
Charles Schwab CMO Becky Saeger said the company's long series of rotoscoped ads have drawn some of the strongest reactions she has ever seen. Speaking at the recent Association of National Advertisers conference, she recounted how many viewers would later repeat the scripts verbatim to her.
The International Organization for Animal Protection admonishes, "One of you betrays us 150,000 times a year."
Too bad I didn't see this 20 years ago, or I could have written my dissertation on how the canine Last Supper secularized into dogs playing poker.
Also seems to include a second amendment.
Baby-sitting to get into Yale.
A night at a charity benefit reveals a shocking secret.
A guerilla fashion show impresses everyone at the otherwise-routine charity event.
The latest episode of Gossip Girl--it's not just a TV show; it's, like, you know, my life!
Well, except for the baby-sitting, shocking secrets and impromptu pomo fashion shows at tightly-scripted benefits.
Other than that, though, it's like looking in a mirror.
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia--the fear of 666, the number of the Beast--isn't limited to math-obsessed Christians. A Youtube commenter posted what should have been comment #666 on a video for Reminiscing by the Little River Band.
However, when Youtube tallied the comment numbers, it skipped from 665 to 667.
I wonder if Godtube has the same policy . . .
People, don't you realize how empty this parroted biz-speak sounds after the crash?
That's a possibility. Bloomberg explains how the financial collapse led Lehman Brothers to cancel its annual 50K donation to fund free tickets for kids at the Big Apple Circus.
And that's not the only firm cutting back on charity.
Too bad Lehman's CEO didn't make enough money to make up for the lost contribution on his own.
Via Clusterstock.
For the past few years, the endowment managers at top universities have reported record returns--and making big bucks themselves. Turns out they invested in the stuff that's now tanking.
The above video, from Beyond Relevance via Brand Autopsy, imagines what Starbucks would be like if it patterned its branding after a church. This video parable is not just relevant to Christians or religion--any do-gooder can learn from it, especially folks who self-identify as social entrepreneurs.
Note in particular how a focus on gaining market share can actually lose customers. Charities that think they are being more effective by sounding more like businesses are actually a far cry from the most successful companies, which have learned how win people over by sounding like nonprofits.
Another charity-studded week for comics, which, like fashion, has become a significant presence in do-gooder fundraising. Via the Beat, news of two worlds colliding in last night's superhero fashion event at this year's Chocolate Show.
Trade shows fascinate me, because in the nonprofit & tax-exempt world they illustrate how identity design can lead us to see business as something distinct from business. The effect becomes even more interesting when you compare nonprofit trade shows to their for-profit counterparts. The Chocolate Show is run by a for-profit PR firm, but are the exhibitors there any more businesslike than drug vendors at an AMA convention, the publishers & resellers at the San Diego Comic Con or the industry promotion at the Oscars?
And then there's my favorite tax-exempt activity--the freak shows, rigged games and rides at agricultural fairs. You may think they're an ordinary profit-making enterprise, but as we tax-savvy do-gooders know, they're one of us!
Facing pressure from state attorneys general, Craigslist has announced that it will no longer allow escorts to place ads for free. The company has responded to criticism that it would be profiting from sex by announcing that all the proceeds will go to charity.
Because as every professional do-gooder knows, giving the profits to charity makes everything OK.
I'd say more to say about this, but I have to go check out some property for my new social enterprise brothel!
UPDATE: Melissa Gira raises a key point about the ethics of charities accepting the money from these ads. Government crackdowns on sex work tend to have serious negative consequences for the health and safety of workers forced underground; enforcement efforts also tend to be discriminatory.
Should good causes benefit from harmful acts? The question is important, yet far less discussed than it should be, especially in social enterprise circles. Though occasionally it does bubble up, as in the EPA's recent decision to withdraw a proposal to allow cause marketing on pesticides.
I guess the issue is a lot more clear cut when we're dealing with insects and animals, as opposed to women who have sex with innocent men.
Every so often in NYC, a company sponsors a newspaper for a day. Free copies are handed out by high-traffic subway stops. Today at Union Square: Dragonball Z.
The Pen and Brush Club, a nonprofit for women in the arts that was founded by the journalist who exposed the corrupt business practices of Standard Oil, is selling its building on 10th Street due, in part, to the price of fuel to heat it. This observation from the New Yorker stings:
While the need for an insular club these days may be debatable, it’s a unique historic asset for women in arts and letters to lose, especially since the nonprofit organization owns the building outright, and whatever troubles it has appear to be more managerial than financial.
Via Jeremiah.
A poster in Los Angeles, via the New York Times
Available from StylinOnline
Sarah Gordon, a New York poll worker, was raised by her grandmother--born in 1862--and great-greatmother, who was born under slavery.
Coy about her exact age, Mrs. Gordon is in her 10th decade and came into the world before women could vote. After the early death of her mother, she was raised in rural North Carolina by her grandmother Mary Parker, born in 1862. She lived until she was 105. Grandmother Parker was born to a slave named Molly Sykes.
As a young girl, Sarah Gordon often sat in the lap of Great-Grandmother Sykes, who lived to be 106, long enough to tell her of life on a plantation as the property of whites.
On Tuesday, Mrs. Gordon sat in a chair behind a folding table in her polling place, helping to manage the surge of people who had lined up to cast a vote for the first black president.
“They were coming all morning,†Mrs. Gordon said. “It is because we will never see this again. The older people like myself, who always had the intention of seeing it, but didn’t think they would, they are coming to vote. They want to be part of something we never thought we would see.â€
AdFreak has links to what seems like a great resource for anyone--including charities--who is designing material aimed at kids: a three-part study of children's visual preferences for cartoon characters.
Dupont's cropped curved red logo hovering over the sustainable city in the above ad immediately reminded me of satanic horns, a la the looming demon in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Fantasia.
The Palm Springs Leather Order of the Desert is an association dedicated to promoting, preserving and raising money for the leather fetish lifestyle. Starting tomorrow: Leather Pride, a convention that brings together vendors, commercial sponsors and the leather community for four days of events, including the Mr. Palm Springs Leather Contest and a street fair.
Why do I mention this? Because, let's face it, a business-minded do-gooder can read only so many paeans to mosquito nets and baked goods.
And as one of the sponsors observes:
"With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, now is the time to do some pre-holiday shopping at the Sunny Dunes Street Fair. After all, who doesn't want leather and porn under their tree?"
From Brussels via Animal NY
At a time when we speak more of lengthening life than a life well lived, here's a reminder of how death can bring immortality.
Head over to Gothamist for more on the story of this marker and those who gave their lives so others could vote.
Now that he has won this historic election, Obama souvenirs are sure to be campaign collectors items for a long time to come. Here's a personal favorite: my very own Obamica!
Head over to Vanity Kippah for yours. Or if you're more Republican-minded, pick up a McCippah & its counterpart, the Vippah--the Sarah Palin Lipstick Kippah, which includes an apt Hebrew quote from Proverbs.
If you read the site yesterday, you saw pretty much the only coherent thoughts I had all day.
Try as I might, I couldn't string together anything more sustained.
In short, sheer exhaustion.
That rarely happens for me, but I guess after the past few weeks it was inevitable.
Now that I'm up and working again, I'm reminded of an old interview with Harry Chapin, a musician who was a social entrepreneur long before folks today discovered blending charity with business.
My grandfather was a painter. He died at age 88. He illustrated Robert Frost's first two books of poetry. And he was looking at me and he said, "Harry, there's two kinds of tired. There's good tired and there's bad tired".
He said, "Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other people's agendas, other people's dreams, and when it's all over there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night somehow you toss and turn, you don't settle easy."
He said, "Good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you won't even have to tell yourself, because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say, "Take me away"."
He said, "Harry, all my life I've wanted to be a painter and I've painted. God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I've painted, and I've painted, and I am good tired, and they can take me away."
Now if there is a process in your and my lives in the insecurity that we have about a prior life or an afterlife, and God (I hope there is a god - if he does exist, he's got a rather weird sense of humour however)...
But if there is a process that will allow us to live our days, that will allow us that degree of equanimity towards the end, looking at that black implacable wall of death to allow us that degree of peace, that degree of non-fear, I want in!
Interesting: the Hanger Network distributes ad-infested cardboard eco-hangers to dry cleaners for free. Cultural critics would say that this is yet another example of how corporate social responsibility is merely a mask for corrosive commodification. My dry cleaner hangers are covered in paper with the company's logo so I don't think there's much of a difference, but I can say I'd be less likely to keep hangers with ads from other companies in my closet.
Unless they were ads for Doctor Who or something comics-related, in which case, they'd be collectibles!
Speaking of the relation between faith and markets, this book offers fascinating insight into how religion can shape commerce:
The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie -- The most outrageous and exuberant lingerie in the world comes from a place you’d probably never expect: Syria. Adorned with everything from faux fur, artificial flowers, and feathered birds to plastic toy cell phones, these intimates flash lights, play music, even vibrate. Well known across the Middle East—in Syria the lingerie forms an important part of the folk tradition around trousseaus and weddings—it is openly displayed in the markets and souks.
As Sadie Stein aptly observes, the thesis is even more interesting:
The authors find that the more religious the area — and correspondingly, conservative women's outerwear — "the more risqué the underwear."
Sigh:
On Saturday, August 15th, 2008 at 6:00 PM, the Gen Con Live Game Auction hosted their traditional charity auction. This year, the event was in honor of Gary Gygax. Originally the charity chosen for GenCon was Gary's favorite charity, the Christian Children's Fund. Unfortunately, when they found out that the money they would get came partially from sales of Dungeons and Dragons they decided not to be the sponsored charity.
Below: as part of the auction, GenCon sold a memorial 20-sided die.
Rob Walker's NYT column this past Sunday is a must-read for anyone in the charity biz.
From her recent interview in WWD:
WWD: What does that mean for the apparel business?
F.P.: They have to find a new benefit in clothing, besides being warm and protected of cover. I think the benefit will be how it makes you live your life better. We talk about goodness. Is this piece of clothing made from a good company? Is it made in a good way? Is it sold in an empathetic way? Does it improve your chances of doing well in the world?
What a company stands for is going to be almost more important than what the line of clothing is. Who am I buying from? Who’s the chairman? Who’s the designer? What kind of life does that person lead? I want that corporate logo stripped back; I want to know what I’m getting. It’s going to be much more raw and much more personal.
Megachurch pastors and televangelists aside, most pastors don't get paid $#!%. Small congregations setting a salary for something they think should be above material things is not a good combination if you're a spiritually minded teacher who wants to give your kids an XBOX.
Enter: The Wedding Income Toolkit for Ministers, which compiles techniques that pastors can use to make a bit of money on the side.
Just another reminder that long before social entrepreneurs got into the game, religious groups were rather clever at coming up with ways to blend business and charity.
Via MMI
Well, if you buy this from the Unique youth charity thrift shop, the children get a few bucks for educational programs.
Doesn't say what kind of education though . . .
(CIC means Community Interest Company, which is a legal entity for social enterprise in the UK)
Disney co-produces an animated Bollywood film in this Indian joint venture. Via FurryNews.
Gotta admit, it's funnier than Captain Planet. Although the good guy/bad guy trope unhelpfully over-simplifies a complex issue. Osocio.
Last night, Superman and two accomplices burglarized a Long Island home. He flew into the night after tying up the owner.
Above: a UK museum exhibit of police helmets inexplicably includes a Superman statue.
Straight out of 1971, a record album full of PSAs informing people about their eligibility for social security benefits.
I wonder if it's on The PIrate Bay . . .
Before slut-o-ween, stereotype-o-ween.
On my trip back from the office I encountered the expected range of Halloween costumes--about 79 Dark Knight Jokers, 35 Supergirls, a host of slut-o-ween angels and the occasional furry, including a giant bear.
Which reminds me: the Furry Sociological Survey was posted last week. (Via FurryNews)
Expressing a new identity through changing one's appearance used to be a relative novelty, now it's something we tend to do several times a day.
