Fluxx |Philanthropy and nonprofit technology news.

Summary:  

Have you recently wondered how to scale to support a new infusion of funding? Started issuing new types of grants or investments? Onboarding more people or new departments to collaborate on your grantmaking process? 

Feminist movements are under immense pressure. On June 24th, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the right to an abortion that had been upheld for decades.
Many advocates and feminist leaders weren’t surprised by the decision and have warned that additional restrictive policies and laws will likely be passed. These restrictive laws threatening the health and safety of birthing people correspond with a spike in misogynistic content distributed across TikTok and other social platforms. The superior algorithms of these platforms compiled with a younger, more digitally savvy audience has made it possible for these videos to spread (billions of views within days) at an alarmingly fast rate.

But this rise in hateful vitriol has led to pushback and progress as well. Self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate was recently banned from Meta platforms, Twitter, and TikTok. Scotland became the first country to offer feminine sanitary products for free nationwide. According to NPR, “New Zealand and Kenya distribute products for free in public schools” as well.

What’s #FixtheForm? And why did this international Grant Advisor campaign gain so much traction in a few short months? All this and more is revealed in this month's Untapped Philanthropy episode!

Untapped Philanthropy Season 2, Episode 6: What can we do to Fix the Form?

It’s no secret that millions of mission-related hours are lost every year navigating cumbersome grant application processes. To identify the needed top changes, a survey was launched by Laura Solomons, a fundraiser for a social mobility charity and former Trustee and Chair of a grant-giving foundation, and Kari Aanestad, the Co-Director of GrantAdvisor.org and the Associate Director at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. In less than four weeks it received 500 responses from grantseekers across nine countries, “representing every shape, size, and activity area of the nonprofit sector.”

The Human Genome Project was an international scientific research project working to determine the base pairs that make up human DNA in order to sequence all of the human genome. And no, Untapped Philanthropy hasn’t suddenly pivoted from discussions on philanthropy to science. But we thought it might be helpful to remind you of the famous Human Genome Project because this week’s philanthropy guest is taking a similarly scientific approach to philanthropy.

The Impact Genome Project has taken a similar approach to philanthropy by analyzing the DNA of impact programs to determine what is and isn't working.

This week we are thrilled to have the Executive Director of the Center of Impact Sciences at the University of Chicago and the co-founder of the Impact Genome Project, Jason Saul on the podcast to tell us about his work, and most importantly — share more about the Project’s integration with Fluxx!

More than a decade into helping philanthropic organizations improve their operations, build mutually beneficial relationships with grantees, drive social impact, we, at Fluxx, recognize that we are a part of an ecosystem of communities and technologies.

As such we strive to support and honor initiatives that further the collective endeavors to connect efforts, amplify outcomes, and forge new ways of collaborating.

To collaborate effectively, we have to create common denominators across our programs, organizations, and industry --- Impact Genome is the most interesting example of how this can happen for impact tracking.

We listened to the building groundswell of interest from our customer to tie into these efforts. Today we are honored to announce a new partnership between Fluxx the team at Mission Measurement and Impact Genome.

The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project is a five-year peer-to-peer funder initiative designed to address the inherent power imbalances between foundations and nonprofits. It’s an initiative built around action and immediacy. A quick perusal of the team’s website will immediately bring you to the six practices of trust-based grantmaking which the team hopes will not only break down the buzz-y term of trust-based philanthropy into actionable steps, but also encourage funders to make immediate equitable changes.

The work of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project is aligned with our work and mission here at Fluxx. We believe that it’s not only possible — but also essential — for technologists to partner with philanthropists in order to build pathways to deeper and more trusting partnerships between funders and grantees.

That’s why we are especially thrilled to share more about this week’s Untapped Philanthropy podcast featuring a conversation between Fluxx co-founder, Kerrin Mitchell, and Executive Director, Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, Shaady Salehi.

Imagine a world in which the toughest multi-decade long problems; whether it's racial injustice, poverty, or the preservation of democracy, were resourced in the same manner as a legacy institution. It’s a radical idea that would rely on what many would consider a “stodgy” grantmaking practice. We’re talking about endowments.

Untapped Philanthropy Season 2, Episode 3: Which nonprofits would benefit from endowments?

“You think about endowments as something that happens for the biggest established organizations like universities, art museums, or medical research,” said this week’s Untapped Philanthropy guest, The Bridgespan Group's Managing Partner William Foster. “But it's radical because there is nothing more clean and complete in the trust-based philanthropy world than creating endowments, right? It's the ultimate shift. Dollars and assets are power.”

It’s not often that you hear cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, or Ethereum uttered in the same sentence as philanthropy. Most nonprofits (and funders for that matter) aren’t equipped to accept or distribute a crypto donation. And let’s be honest, the philanthropic sector isn’t known for its early tech adopters, and certainly not crypto geeks.

Mentioning DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and technology in the same sentence can go one of two ways:

“Well, turns out the recruiting software we used to hire at our multi-national nonprofit is showing signs of unconscious bias.”

Or…

“Our new grantmaking technology has allowed us to implement trust-based philanthropy and fairly distribute funds out to the communities that need it most. We’re now able to prioritize more diverse needs and initiatives.”