The Permeable Nonprofit

By Michael C. Gilbert, February 2006

from Nonprofit Online News <http://news.gilbert.org/>

(This is a timely article considering our workshop on Wednesday)

There is a set of related pressures and ideas converging on nonprofits, including collaboration and mergers, ASPs, Web 2.0, network centric advocacy, blogging, social bookmarking, and so on. Although mainstream commentators of the sector are not on this yet, this convergence foretells a radical restructuring of the nonprofit sector. Read this article for the big picture and consider our upcoming online seminar, of the same name, that will dive into the immediate and useful implications for nonprofits today.



The boundaries of traditional nonprofit organizations are under relentless assault by new patterns of communication and association that are stronger than the corporate model of governance and stronger than nonprofit brands. The media of this assault are social software and the network on which such software flourishes. The assault is fueled by the very passions and people from which the organizations themselves once emerged. Ironically, although it threatens to dissolve their boundaries, this assault is very much on the same side as most of the organizations themselves.

Unless the neutral, end-to-end nature of the Internet is destroyed -- which is hardly an idle threat, given the current political alliance of the venal and the clueless -- the network assault on nonprofit boundaries will fundamentally change the form and function of our organizations.

How nonprofits choose to respond to these forces is profoundly important. Changes are going to happen. Nonprofits can deny them, resist them, be damaged by them, embrace them foolishly, or embrace them wisely. We may look back on the coming ten years and see them as a period of evolution in the structure of civil society organizations matched only by the rise of the corporate model itself. It's incumbent on the leaders of every organization to make the most of these years.

full article >>

Golbal Microbrand by hugh macleod

Here is a very timely posting from gapingvoid by hugh macleod

October 11, 2005
the global microbrand rant



Since I first used the term here in December of last year, I have been totally besotted with the idea of "The Global Microbrand".

A small, tiny brand, that "sells" all over the world.

With the internet, of course, a global microbrand is easier to create than ever before. But they've existed for a while. Imagine a well-known author or painter, selling his work all over the world. Or a small whisky distillery in Scotland. Or a small cheese maker in rural France, whose produce is exported to Paris, London, Tokyo etc. Ditto with a violin maker in Italy. A classical guitar maker in Spain. A commercial sign maker in New England. Or a sheet metal entrepreneur in the U.K.

And with the advent of blogs this was no longer just limited to people who made products. We saw that any service professional with a bit of talent and something to say could spread their message far and wide beyond their immediate client base and local market, without needing a high-profile name or the goodwill of the mainstream media. People like Jennifer Rice, Johnnie Moore and Evelyn Rodriguez come to mind.