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This frank look at New York Times digital strategy is brimming with insights for NGOs. Required read for all Executive Directors.
Twitter  16 May 2014 | LINK | Filed in ,
“If you don’t understand capitalism’s role in contributing to a problem, you probably won’t be able to rely on capitalism to chart a path to the solution.”

What Capitalism Can’t Fix, Harvard Business Review on public works and a concise teardown of some of the “social innovation” rhetoric.
Twitter  5 February 2013 | LINK | Filed in

Non-Profit Design

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How does one make design for social change sustainable and scalable? To build a replicable model and an enduring momentum?

As someone who’s worked with non-profits for many years, I’ve occasionally thought about perhaps starting one of my own as a way of institutionalizing some of my activism and work, ideas, research and outreach.

You might be surprised to learn that the largest charity in the world is not run by Bill and Melinda Gates, but is one that promotes and supports innovation in the field of architectural and interior design. That’s the Stichting INGKA Foundation, the Dutch Foundation that owns IKEA.

I have more modest ambitions and checking out the prior art, I found there’s no shortage of design-driven non-profit organizations. A search on GuideStar, a database of non-profit organizations, turns up over 5,000 search results matching the term “design.” In my survey of design-centric non-profit organizations here are some I thought were notable. This list is not exhaustive (for instance, it does not include some amazing educational institutions, museums, or documentary projects) and the examples here are all US-based, but take a look.

Continue reading "Non-Profit Design" »

>  12 February 2010 | LINK | Filed in , ,

International Year of Cooperatives

Get ready! The United Nations General Assembly just declared 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives. A cooperative is an organization owned and governed by its workers or members. The Assembly noted that cooperatives impact poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration. The brief press release includes some amazing statistics: agricultural cooperatives account for 80 to 99 per cent of milk production in Norway, New Zealand and the United States; 71 per cent of fishery production in the Republic of Korea; and 40 per cent of agriculture in Brazil.

In case you missed it, check out my article on design cooperatives that ran in the September 2005 Communication Arts.

>  1 January 2010 | LINK | Filed in , ,
Melting Men. To highlight global warming, artist Nele Azevedo installed 1,000 ice sculptures of sitting men on the steps of Berlin’s concert hall. Since 2005, she has assembled the work in six cities around the world. Though each installation lives for only 30 minutes, images on the internet have circulated widely. The Berlin installation was sponsored by the WWF and coincided with the release of their report on Arctic warming.
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>  2 October 2009 | LINK | Filed in



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