The culture has shifted, but the commitment is still there. You see a tremendous amount of activity online for advocacy and there is a major movement of social entrepreneurship.

Our job is to tap into this strong desire to make the world better in a way that fits with today’s culture. One thing we know is that young people want to do service. And so if you have a service program or are thinking about adding one, now might be the time to think big.

David Rosenn, the Executive Director of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corp sent me a note about Teach for America’s growth. The NY Times has it:

May 14, 2008
Teach for America Sees Surge in Popularity
By SAM DILLON
Teach for America, the program that recruits top college graduates to teach for two years in public schools that are difficult to staff, has experienced a year of prodigious growth and will place 3,700 new teachers this fall, up from 2,900 last year, a 28 percent increase.

That growth was outpaced, however, by a surge in applications from college seniors. About 24,700 applied this spring to be teachers, up from 18,000 last year, a 37 percent increase, according to figures released by the organization on Wednesday.

The nonprofit program sent its first 500 recruits into American public school classrooms in 1990. It has a large recruiting staff that visits campuses, contacting top prospects and recruiting aggressively. Founded by a Princeton graduate, it has always carefully sifted through applicants’ grade-point averages and other data in recruiting. But with the numbers of applicants increasing faster than the number of teachers placed, it was even more selective this year than before, the organization said.

About 11 percent of the graduating class at Yale applied, 10 percent at Georgetown and 9 percent at Harvard, said Amy Rabinowitz, a spokeswoman.

It was the No. 1 employer on many campuses, including at Duke, Emory, George Washington, Georgetown, New York University, and Spelman, Ms. Rabinowitz said. The campuses with the largest number of recruits, however, were large, prestigious public universities. About 90 recruits are from the University of Michigan, and about 60 from the University of Illinois, while Wisconsin, Berkeley and the University of Texas are each sending 50 recruits, Ms. Rabinowitz said.

The program will place teachers in 29 locations this fall. Those include many of the nation’s biggest cities and some largely rural states, like South Dakota, where about 50 recruits work on Indian reservations. About 1,000 recruits teach in New York City schools.

Teach for America’s budget is $110 million, up from $40 million in 2005.

“AJWS has been making grants focused on Burma since 2002 and has long-standing partnerships with grassroots organizations in the region. Through this network, AJWS is providing emergency support to local organizations that are responding to immediate needs. Funds donated to AJWS will allow these organizations to provide food, water, cooking equipment, shelter, clothing and health services to those most in need. Funds will also go to providing cremation and funeral services for the victims of Cyclone Nargis: this is essential to prevent the spread of disease and protect water supplies from further contamination.”

Click here to donate for Rapid Relief - Cyclone in Burma from the American Jewish World Service.

They received over 1,000 entries. Their members and the general public voted on the finalists, more than 5 million votes. And a panel of judges picked the overall winner.

Here’s the winner:

You can see other category winners here.

“Through Facebook Connect, members will be able to use their Facebook identities across the Web–profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook profile content, for example, could appear on other social sites, and Facebook event listings could theoretically connect with external event and invitation services.”

CNET’s News.com has what details there are at this point.

But last night, we took a break from all that and went to a private concert with Eric Clapton. Yes, a private concert with Eric Clapton. Me and 15,000 other guests went to the Amway Arena (I assume where the Orlando Magic play). We used our conference badges to get in and then once in all food and beer were free. Yup, they went all out.

Clapton totally lived up to his reputation. He was awesome. And he had a pretty great band with him as well, including a left-handed guitar player who wasn’t do bad himself. He played lots of hits and Cocaine — not my favorite song — rocked out. It was hot. He did a one song encore of Crossroads.

I had the pleasure of sitting with Shel Israel, who had joined my group earlier in the day and was part of the broadcast part of our discussion. (I will post a link to the first part of our session once I find it.) Shel said he has seen Clapton 4 times over 40 years. The first show he saw was in 1969 in the summer. Cool.

Of course I took a camera. Here’s some of the video. It’s not great quality (it was actually my daughter’s Kodak EasyShare digital camera), but you can get a hint of what you missed.

Clapton opened with Motherless Children

He played Little Wing!

Some acoustic action as well…

Wonderful Tonight… this one takes me back…

It’s being streamed live from the SAP website here, so if you have a minute (or an hour), check it out here. It’s on the right-hand side under LIVE WEBCASTS and we’re the 1:00pm session (that’s EST).

Hope to see you there.

Michael Hoffman with SAP co-CEO Leo Apotheker

If you don’t know SAP, they are the largest business software company in the world and the third largest independent software company in the world (behind Microsoft and Oracle).

So it is not everyday that I get the meet the CEO of a company that has more than $10 billion in annual sales. (Yes, that’s billion with a B. And, not that’s not market cap, that’s sales. Their market cap is about $63 billion.)

I met Leo Apotheker last night at an event and got to speak to him for a minute and he came tonight to the communications event that I attended. He has been named co-CEO and will take over as full CEO when Henning Kagermann transitions out. It was a great event and I would like to give a shout-out to the folks at Burson-Marsteller who are working their butts off putting it all together.

I was invited by SAP to be part of a workshop tomorrow about Web 2.0 and corporate social responsibility. Our workshop is tomorrow and the session I am in now is a panel of global thought leaders on corporate accountability. [It’s a long session - 3 hours — so I will blog in and out.]

The panel has:

James Farrar VP for Global Citizenship with SAP

Steve Rochlin
Head of AccountAbility North America

Graham Baxter
Director, Responsible Business Solutions
International Business Leaders Forum

Diane Osgood, PhD
VP, Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy
Business for Social Responsibility

David Seals
Strategy, Planning and Architecture
Chevron Corporation

Steve Rochlin is kicking us off talking about how expectations in corporate social responsibility is changing. He told a story about how he was on a plane for a trans-Atlantic flight sitting next to a woman and her two kids. The kids were totally obnoxious. At the end of the flight the flight attendant came up to him and said, “If you were my husband I would divorce you. The way you left your wife to be with those kids is terrible.” When told they were not his kids and the woman was not his wife the flight attendant said, “I am so sorry, the whole plane is talking about what a terrible father you are.”

He then related this to companies who might not be related to whatever issue is taking people’s attention, but because they are in the right place (or wrong place) the expectation of people is that they will be involved.

He is now telling a story about being in Marks & Spencer in London where it seemed all the clothes had labels saying they were sustainable, or didn’t have child labor, etc. “We are starting to see the tipping point… of changing consumer attitudes after 30-40 years of activism. Businesses has tremendously complex business relationship and accountability demands on them. They have to know that their supply chain, going 1, 2, 3, 4 tiers into their supply chain and know that they are not harming the environment or animals… And if they are wrong, it will blow up for them… A complex information management system for them to track and verify the data. Prove it. Prove to me that you dealt with the complex issues.”
More to come…

Continued…

David Seals is talking about operated properties where oil companies control things and non-operated properties where a national oil company might control and where the company tends to have less control over standards. A 5-10 year investment in drilling where you don’t own. Some of the legacy properties are running on old systems which presents a challenge to tracking the thousands of regulations

“Sustainability 2.0 has to be at a business process level.” James Farrar.

Interesting conversation about BP and how they have withdrawn from the public conversation about climate change and there are people within BP who are saying all that branding around green issues was a mistake because of how their accidents and safety problems and leaks have basically destroyed all that investment.

“If you can control [your processes and supply chain] and manage in this space there are huge opportunities” Graham Baxter said, using Marks & Spencer as an example because of their positioning around organic foods and the like.

Continued…

Graham Baxter is talking about his experience at BP and talking about collaborative action between oil and gas companies, countries and civil society organizations focused on operating principles around local conflicts.

He is now talking about Angola and how corrupt it was and how the company believed that this was a matter of public domain about what it was paying for its leases. John Brown (former BP head) thought he could talk about the $4 million signature bonus on an international platform. The government was furious and BP was threated with expulsion from Angola and were told not to talk about these transactions. It hurt BP and out of that the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative which is trying to create a culture to make all legitimate payments public and create transparency in those industries. It is a voluntary framework to enable companies to operate in difficult places with *some* protections.

continued…

David Seals is talking about Chevron and how they are using SAP to deal with compliance and assurance.
62,000 employeed in 182 different countries. How do you do compliance across so many local and national communities across so many people and offices. Chevron, Texaco and CalTex brands.

They have nine different SAP systems. But also some in-country operations run JD Edwards/Oracle. When you have compliance and tracking you have to span across organizations. So they have to import data from all these things. Plant maintenance on IBM platforms, etc… [Wow! What a nightmare.] Fragmented system.

In studying enterprise risk management they found that one of their refineries in California does all their carbon tracking on Excel. A 37-year employee. What are they going to do longer term? Not that.

He is describing the huge planning, budgeting and implementation projects with an SAP product to consolidate all this data and consolidate reporting.

GRC - Governance Risk and Compliance. Each part of Chevron - extraction, refining and gas stations - are all run basically independently. But they have controls and compliance issues that cross these companies, so they have to pull in data from all over.

Environment, Health and Safety. They are looking for solutions to track emissions management controls. The technical solutions will allow a corporate conversation around emissions that hasn’t happened before.

Different compliance officers in different departments. So they are talking about “enterprise risk management solution” basically a holistic look at all these issues instead of silos of independent regulations and people and divisions. This issue is on the Board agenda for the company. They are asking the question, why can’t you see this across the company.

By Wailin Wong

Tribune reporter

April 30, 2008

Online social networks used to be just gathering places for friends and long-lost acquaintances. Then the marketers arrived, followed by politicians and job recruiters, all looking to tap into a growing mass of young people who are spending much of their time on the Web. Now, non-profit organizations are testing ways to raise money through these networks, betting that the Internet’s viral nature will open fresh avenues for fundraising and marketing.

It’s a big change for non-profits as they shift from direct-mail campaigns and relying on the checkbooks of older givers to the unpredictable whims of Web popularity. Though the transition is nascent, charities see potential in recruiting young activists who already use online networks to broadcast their identities and make connections.

Actress Cynthia Osuji of New York is a case in point. She became interested in a women’s health non-profit when she received a mass e-mail about auditions for a Circle of Health International-sponsored benefit production of Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer.” The group also was seeking board members to plan the show.

After Osuji, 26, won a spot in the cast and joined the board, she added a copy of the show poster to her MySpace profile. Out-of-town friends who couldn’t attend the show ended up making donations and two “Facebook friends,” casual acquaintances who learned of the benefit through the site, came to the March performance.

Osuji said the show brought her back into community service, an activity she hadn’t pursued since high school. “Violence against women and women in conflict [areas] is something that’s very personal to me,” she said.

Circle of Health International has its own Facebook page, and 26-year-old Matt Bieber clicked on an application called Causes that allowed him to invite more than 100 of his 200-plus contacts to publicize the non-profit on their profile pages. His recruitment effort was akin to distributing virtual bumper stickers with the option to donate through the site. Eleven of his friends added the non-profit to their profiles.

Sean Parker, who helped create Causes, said, “If you can activate a group of people and get some of those people to replicate the process … you’ve got the basis for a movement.”

Outside of general communities like Facebook and MySpace, there are also social networking sites dedicated to philanthropy such as YourCause.com, HopeEquity .org and actor Kevin Bacon’s SixDegrees.org.

Now established institutions like the MacArthur Foundation and the Case Foundation want to know more about the tie between digital life and philanthropy. They are funding studies of online social networks, civic engagement in the Millennial Generation and philanthropy in virtual worlds like Second Life.

“We’re not claiming [online networks are] the panacea for philanthropies,” said Ben Binswanger, the Case Foundation’s chief operating officer. “[But] we think it’s way too early to dismiss it as an Internet fad. … We’re going to keep pushing down this path because we see enough spark here to make it interesting.”

Power to engage

For non-profits, the power of social networks is engagement, not necessarily sheer dollar numbers.

“If you send out a direct-mail piece, you never know if people open it up or not, unless they mail a check back to you,” said Steve Byers, director of development and communications at Kansas-City based WaterPartners International, which promotes safe drinking water. “With the online community, we know which pages they’re clicking on. … They want to provide feedback and interact with the organization in ways that are very exciting and challenging.”

WaterPartners created three fictional characters from Ethiopia, India and Honduras and placed them in a virtual village on Second Life to illustrate the challenges of accessing potable water. The avatars also have profiles on MySpace and Facebook, and shots of their Second Life village are posted on photo-sharing site Flickr. While the amount of money raised so far is tiny, Byers said he could see online marketing and fundraising slowly displacing direct mail.

“I’ve been in fundraising for over 20 years, so this is really kind of a brave new world for me,” he said. “I’ve really had to rethink my whole approach to fundraising through the Internet.”

Clearly, online fundraising is in its infancy. A survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy showed that online giving for 187 large charities totaled $1.2 billion in 2006, up from $881 million in 2005. But of 147 organizations, 103 said online donations accounted for less than 1 percent of total contributions in 2006.

“There is no really large, significant fundraising happening on social networks, but there’s a sense in the non-profit community that that’s where the prospects come from,” said Michael Hoffman, chief executive of Chicago non-profit consulting firm See3 Communications.

Building relationships

Some non-profits that have a presence on social networking sites have discovered a new relationship with users.

Carie Lewis, the Humane Society’s Internet marketing manager, said she finds herself responding to lots of mundane questions on pet care as a result of maintaining a presence on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. More important, Lewis said she’s discovered supporters outside the organization’s traditional demographic of women in their 50s.

“It was a lot of work, but it really paid off for us,” Lewis said. The Humane Society has raised more than $33,000 on Facebook from users who have set up pages to protest everything from puppy mills to seal clubbing in Namibia. The amount of money raised is small, but convinced Lewis’ bosses that the online efforts have merit.

“Traditionally, I think non-profits focus on high-value donors, and what MySpace provides is an enormous network of people who are able to get involved through volunteering, offline events and donating in smaller amounts,” said Lee Brenner, who oversees activism-related content on MySpace.

Link [Chicago Tribune]

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

Link [Obama Ad on YouTube]