Last week, I attended the Larger Community Foundations meeting in Miami, Florida, which is the annual meeting of the 35 or so largest community foundations in the United States. One of our speakers was the very provocative Dr. Lucy Bernholz of Blueprint Research and Design. As usual, she challenged us by presenting her view of the changing landscape of philanthropy and the impact it will have on community foundations in particular.
One of the most dramatic changes has been the onset of social media, mobile technology, and applications (or “apps”) that allow you to do virtually anything through your mobile device. Dr. Bernholz provided the following example: before the news media had reported the earthquake in Haiti, Twitter was all aflutter with the news of the quake. And by now, everyone is aware of the many millions of dollars that have been raised to date for Haiti Relief efforts via text-messaging through that little mobile device. All you have to do is punch in a few numbers, and your charitable gift is made.
So, Dr. Bernholz reached out to her Twitter followers and asked a simple question: “What app would you like to see developed for use by community foundations?” Here is the link to her blog so that you can read the results:
http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-kind-of-apps-would-your-foundation.html#comments.
However, closer to home, I’d like to pose the question to each of you, our community of givers. What kind of app would you create for The Community Foundation?
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I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
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Read more stories by Terri Lee Freeman.