Attention NYC-area FLiPs: New fundraising class at CUNY Graduate Center

Kim Enoch from the School of Professional Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center wrote us to introduce a timely educational opportunity to New York City-area FLiPs in the fundraising space.

The CUNY School of Professional Studies, in partnership with the Community Resource Exchange, is offering a non-credit course, Help In Hard Times – Raising Funds When Most Needed – starting September 8. The content of this course is especially relevant for students and organizations who are interested in learning ways of fundraising to survive the recession. Scholarships are available for eligible students. For more information, please visit the course website.

Young Professionals for Acumen Fund - NYC fundraiser Thursday night

FLiP friend Nina Sharma West writes to tell us that the Young Professionals for Acumen Fund is hosting its first big fundraiser in New York this Thursday, July 30th.

Acumen Fund is a nonprofit organization that exists to help end poverty by changing the way the world addresses it.  Acumen Fund invests in patient capital to identify, strengthen, and scale businesses that effectively serve the poor and they champion this approach as an effective complement to traditional aid.  
 
Click here to see all the details and to register (please note the $40 level ticket is sold out).  
 

Access for All

By Adrienne Villani

Re-posted with permission from http://beyondprofitmag.com/

Ed. Note: Today we bring you a post from Beyond Profit that focuses on a fantastic entrepreneurial enterprise to empower differently-abled people via web and mobile based services.  Right now it's India-based, but be on the lookout for global expansion, which is the ultimate goal!

Sachin Malhan has been an entrepreneur his entire life, or at least he has felt like one. In 2003, knowing that corporate law was not his cup of tea, he started his first venture, and then his second, and then his third. But, his latest venture is the one that brings us the greatest excitement!

In late 2008, Sachin co-founded Inclusive Planet (IP), an enterprise that creates innovative web and mobile based services designed for, and I emphasize the for, the differently-abled*. Never one to look at the small picture, Sachin dreams of IP becoming the definitive global online community and marketplace specifically designed for the differently-abled. His dreams stretch far beyond the boundaries of the Indian subcontinent, Sachin wants IP to be GLOBAL!

Just take a second to imagine being differently-abled in India. Imagine being blind. Imagine being in a wheelchair. Imagine crossing a Mumbai street either blind or in a wheelchair - motorbikes rushing at you, a stray cow standing in the median, a puddle disguising a huge pothole, a bus charging through that puddle. Now you’ve got the picture of what Sachin and his IP co-founders were up against when they decided to launch this venture.

Worldwide, the differently-abled lack access - access to learning and entertainment, access to places, access to people. Sachin and IP are setting out to change this.

Access to Learning and Entertainment
Their first foray into the space is Readable, a user-generated library of books accessible to the visually-impaired. The blind are automatically limited by what books are available in brail. For the blind, the internet has been a revolution, and now, it has subsequently become an addiction. Everything on the internet, or at least almost everything, is text to speech convertible. For this reason, the internet has quickly become the blind’s best friend. Readable harnesses this “addiction” for a positive good - by making accessible books and materials relevant to leisure as well as study.

Access to Places
Close on the heels of Readable are offerings that include Visitable, Matchable, and Thisability. Visitable is a community-driven (crowd-sourced) service that will index and rate urban locations and routes according to the level of their “accessibility,” a Burrp or Yelp for accessibility, if you may. If you want to go to a restaurant, you can check if the restaurant is accessible. If you want to go to the movies, the same holds true. The hope is that the differently-abled will WANT to participate in Visitable, they will WANT to build something like Visitable for their own community.

Access to People
We, as non differently-abled individuals, often take for granted that we have friends, go out, get married, etc. Often, this doesn’t happen in the case of the differently-abled. They are often marginalized and forced to stay at home, which results in tremendous loneliness. In fact, the differently-abled are often referred to as “the invisible minority.” Matchable - a social network designed to connect the differently-abled - and Thisability - an assessment, training, and job platform for the differently-abled - seek to alter these social stereotypes and grant the differently-abled access to the most important resource of all - people.

Since all services can be accessed through one Inclusive Planet profile and all members are part of one social network/community united across applications, Inclusive Planet lives up to its name. It is not a random network. It is actually one community.

Imagine this, a 500,000 social community of differently-abled individuals. They can campaign for all kinds of things. If 1,000 people say a mall or restaurant is inaccessible and send a petition to the management, maybe change will occur. We are certainly rooting for Sachin and his Inclusive Planet team to revolutionize both access for the differently-abled and the way they are treated by society!

You can follow Sachin on Twitter at @inclusiveplanet.

* According to the UN, 10% of the world is disabled, 5.5% is hearing and visually impaired.

Off the Mat, Into the World

In Uganda, one million children between the ages of 6-12 are not in school.  Women are passing HIV/AIDS to their children due to unsafe birthing practices.  Families are traveling 5 miles or more to gather fresh water.

Nothing a little yoga can’t solve.

Yes, yoga.  As a big fan (my Monday night Vinyasa classes are a weekly highlight!) I took particular notice of a note from FLiP Megan Ridge.  Megan teaches yoga in Bethlehem, PA, and she’s engaged in a fundraising campaign to support an innovative nonprofit, Off the Mat, Into the World.  The organization, formed by yogis Seane Corn, Suzanne Sterling, and Hala Khouri, was designed to create a forum for other yogis to come together and brainstorm projects in support of conscious activism.  Their annual seva (service) challenge asks individuals to go out into their local and global communities to raise $20,000 for countries that need assistance.  This year’s spotlight is Uganda, a country that has been plagued by civil war for more than 23 years.  Off the Mat is partnering with three nonprofits – Shanti Uganda, Building Tomorrow, and YouthAids – to bring an eco birthing center, sustainable farms, and a seven room schoolhouse to Uganda. 

Megan has raised $10,000 of her $20,000 goal and has until December 15th to raise the rest.  If she does, she’ll travel with the Off the Mat team to Uganda in February 2010 to help lay the brick and dig the wells for the supported projects.  It’s a big undertaking – so the team will start their workdays with 2 hours of morning yoga.  How great is that?

To make a tax deductible donation or learn more, contact Megan at meganaridge@gmail.com or visit http://www.meganridge.com/UGANDA 

Namaste, FLiPs!

Promoting Good Works on the Internet

By Shikha Dalal 

With the continuing rise of Facebook, the number of internet-dwellers is steadily climbing.  And as I noted in an onPhilanthropy article on the impact of social media, we are seeing that growth translate in the world of philanthropy now more than ever; what’s fascinating to me is that we’re experiencing a new period of creativity, which is inspiring philanthropy professionals to alter their corporate giving strategies.  Take a look at a couple of recent examples:

CITGO recently launched a new program, FuelingGood, that rewards local heroes doing good deeds with…fuel!  With the launch of this program, CITGO has creatively targeted its philanthropic efforts to promote the spirit of helping others.  At a time when the recession has generated a decrease in donations to charities, the amount of volunteer time spent at nonprofits has notably been on an increase.  CITGO took note of this and innovatively used the internet idea to leverage communications about their program.  Here’s how it works:

CITGO has asked individuals in the community doing good works to submit their stories online.  Each person whose story is selected to appear on the site (from monthly voting) will receive a $50 CITGO gift card.  The person whose story receives the most points each month will receive a CITGO gift card good for a one-year supply of fuel.  

 Another example of promoting good works online is that of Gap, Inc.; the company recently implemented a video project called The Ultimate Happy Hour which inspired their employees worldwide to film a service project happening in the local community.  Videos were then posted online, and the entire employee network as well as customers, friends and family were invited to participate in the voting process.  The winners were recently announced online – check them out on the site:
• 1st Place: “Lively Pearls,” Gap International Sourcing India
• 2nd Place: “Terre Haute Old Navy,” Old Navy Store #6431 in Terre Haute, Ind.
• 3rd Place: “I Have a Dream,” Gap International Sourcing India

What can young FLiPs take away from the CITGO and Gap, Inc. projects?  Let them serve as a reminder that more and more, companies are utilizing social media outlets to create social impact.  We encourage you to use them as inspiration, and keep thinking creatively about using these media for the greater good.  We also encourage you to share your success stories with us!

New Fundraising Resource for Community Organizers

Community organizing is certainly a popular career path right now, and I know quite a number of FLiPs are pursuing it!  Marjorie Fine, Project Director for the Linchpin Campaign at the Center for Community Change here in New York, wrote in recommending a free new resource that will be of interest to those of you in that camp.  UNTAPPED: How Community Organizers Can Develop and Deepen Relationships with Major Donors And Raise Big Money, is a great addition to community organizing’s fund development toolbox, and is full of insights and specific how-tos to engage long-term supporters.

Linchpin is a project of the Center for Community Change (CCC), which seeks to expand the resources available to community organizing efforts in the United States. Linchpin aims to persuade a wider range of donors and funders to support organizing and assists community organizing groups in effectively communicating the impact of community organizing.

The mission of the Center for Community Change is to develop the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change their communities and public policies for the better. Founded in 1968 to honor Robert F. Kennedy, CCC strengthens community organizing groups and helps them unite across the dividing lines of race, geography, organizational affiliation, and issue priority to advance progressive public policy change. CCC generates new ideas and voices to energize the progressive movement and to increase civic engagement among low-income people and people of color.

Let Margie Fine know what you think by emailing her at mfine@communitychange.org.