June 2009 Archives
The tales of woe from charities bankrupted by Bernie Madoff has understandably been a focus of attention, but now that he's in prison questions are arising as to the ethical & legal obligations of charities that benefited from his fund.
This post & comment thread on the New York Times DealBook blog are must-reads for anyone in the charity biz. Given the symbiotic relationship between charities and people who obtained their wealth through questionable means, getting insurance to cover the risks inherent in large donations may not be a bad idea.
ClothingCollection.org is a website dedicated to exposing fake clothing donation charities. From a news article quoted on the site:
They claim to be supporting families living in poverty, but many so-called charities are collecting old clothes from households around the country before shipping them to Eastern Europe and Russia and selling them on for profit.
A Sunday Tribune investigation into leaflets and stickers that are left into people’s houses found the vast majority are not registered charities and don’t have waste collection permits. Each ‘charity’ consists of one or two individuals who are making vast profits out of the free goods and clothing received from home-owners. Meanwhile, legitimate charities are losing money as a result.
Forget The Philanthropist. This is where I go for hard-hitting depictions of how do-gooders save the world . . . by volunteering for the local senior center to help his buddy score!
UPDATE: Is Michael Jackson's charity a fake?
Originally posted on JustMeans:
I had at least three posts I was considering to put up today, but when I ducked into the nearest library while on a research quest the guards were heatedly discussing Michael Jackson. Their somber intonations that this is a historic day got me curious, so instead of jumping right to JustMeans--a great site, but like your typical social business hub admittedly not the best place to catch the latest celebrity gossip--I hit the usual suspects to discover that Michael Jackson had just died.
Since we live a culture pretty much defined by the cult of personality (Josef Stalin, social innovator!), I've decided to set aside my thoughts on The Philanthropist, American Apparel and social censorship for a day when most of us aren't fervently Twittering "Michael Jackson is dead" just in case someone hasn't noticed the other 50,000 tweets about the news.
Instead, I want to offer a few brief memorial reflections about Michael Jackson and social enterprise.
Jackson, as this book documents, was quite active in charity, at one point breaking the Guinness record for most charities supported by a pop star. And whatever one thinks of his various activities at Neverland Ranch, it's pretty clear that he saw his life there as a way of giving back to the community. Jackson also was involved in high profile benefit singles--and therein lies another less well known controversy.
As Jackson testified in a business-related trial, the donation of proceeds from the sale of a charity song did not mean, for Jackson, donating all of the profits. The money from the sale of CDs went to charity, but Jackson retained the song's copyright & personally kept the royalties. This caused a bit of dustup when the news media learned that a any time "We Are the World" or the 9/11 charity song "What More Can I Give?" get played on the radio, the proceeds go to not to charity but to the copyright holders, including Jackson himself.
The dustup over Jackson's alleged charitable profiteering provides an instructive example about social business for those of us in the social enterprise community. In our world, as in the music industry more generally, the idea of getting some personal returns from a charitable enterprise is not inherently problematic----musicians need to earn a living just like anyone else, even professional nonprofiteers. Besides Michael Jackson, John Lennon had some rather pointed things to say about this, astutely observing how various promoters & benefit workers profit from charitable work but expect musicians to give all their labor for free. Nonetheless, there's a popular impression that a charitable benefit should be wholly outside the realm of exchange, to the point that no one in the endeavor--not even the grunts--should get paid.
The fact that this expectation exists does not, of course, mean that we have abide by it, but for those of us who don't have the luxury of being international superstars this perspective can pose some difficult problems, from loss of needed donor support to the occasional legislative crackdown.
But more about that another day. For now, a moment of silence for a man who, like so many of us, gave as much as he felt that he could.
Tonight's the premier of NBC's The Philanthropist. Longtime readers of this site know how I react to do-gooder shots such as the one above--my mind whirls back through the 1960s into the late nineteenth century like some an imperialist version of Time Tunnel, swarming with images of white people bringing civilization and Pampers to the uncivilized primitives who desperately look to us to raise them from the depths of their corruption and incompetence.
Sure, as the New York Times reports the show reportedly includes the obligatory scene where The Philanthropist is chided for
playing the role of the charming rich businessman who travels the world, getting his hands just dirty enough to go back home and tell his American friends how meaningful his life is compared to theirs.
But that's an old rhetorical ruse, at once allowing viewers to assure themselves that they are not That Guy while reinforcing the more systemic problem. See, the show tells us, you're not just a dilettante. You really are leading them out of darkness, you really are their savior--in short, you are the master on whom they depend.
It's empire. It's racial supremacy. And it's something we should not indulge.
I know the show hasn't aired yet, but you could write enough to get tenure at Duke based on just the scenes described in the reviews and the obligatory white-guy-gives-hope-to-black-children photos released to promote the show.
Unless, of course, the scene depicted in the above PR photo ends with The Philanthropist blown up by an old British landmine.
The teen room at the New York Public Library, Mulberry St. branch. in NoLita.
Empty.
Lots of adults in the grown-up room, though.
Perhaps it's just the summer, though in MY day, during school vacation I walked five miles through six feet of snow every day to read at the library. Even in July, because back then, things were so tough we had blizzards in 90 degree weather.
And let's face it--I had no life!
Iranians have reportedly starting protesting the Ahmadinejad regime by going to bazaars and not shopping.
However, that doesn't mean the rest of the revolution is noncommercial.
One popular item: t-shirts featuring Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian woman whose murder by Iranian security forces, caught on this YouTube video (more about which here), has made her an icon of the protest movement.
Pictured above: a Neda t-shirt sold on Facebook by an Iranian who pledges to give the proceeds to Neda's family if 400 shirts are sold, though judging from the comments not everyone is on board with this enterprise:
The CafePress blog has also noted Neda tee phenomenon, highlighting a link between commerce and political speech:
While the Iranian government prohibits Neda’s family and friends from having memorials in her honor and tries to locally silence the voices mourning her, the world is talking. And from our end, a T-shirt is worth 1,000 words.
In other words, let a thousand Neda t-shirts bloom!
And yes, the last one really is a "Remembering Neda (Iran) Dog T-Shirt." The photo proclaims "Made in the USA", and y'know, I don't doubt it.
UPDATE:
Here's the PrestijFashion shirt mentioned in the comments!
It's been a rather intense few days here at Chez Uncivil, as late-night translating on the latest Russian legal changes spun into a broader policy oriented piece for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. All rather fascinating, for me at least, and I'm already thinking about other possibilities. More on that when the CofP op-ed is up.
I've also been keeping up with regular social-enterprise-related reflections for JustMeans, the latest of which ties together some interesting articles on Iran, fashion & hybrid social ventures.
The photo above, by the by, is a cool bit of charitable ephemera from Iran that illustrates how protesting against the government did not just spring up fully formed ex nihilo. The sticker covers up the slot in a charity donation box--and I'll let Ahoura, an Iranian street artist, explain the rest:
These stickers are designed to be stuck on charity money boxes, which are somehow fake in IRAN, it means government takes the money and it wont be spent for homeless people or stuff, a tribute to the stupid government.
I regularly advise students and social entrepreneurs to think about trademark in relation to their ventures, and here's a good example why: Microsoft has just announced the formation of the Social Enterprise Alliance.
No, not that Social Enterprise Alliance, the organization that brings together social entrepreneurs. Microsoft's new Social Enterprise Alliance is a social networking "partnership centered on the customization and integration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007."
A search of the U.S. trademark database indicates that "social enterprise alliance" isn't registered yet to anyone, though SEA could try to assert common law trademark rights if it wanted to try to get Microsoft not to use the name.
Of course, SEA may be OK with another SEA roaming around, but if Microsoft successfully registers the mark things could eventually interesting. My personal favorite example in this regard is the original Burger King, which got a state trademark for its restaurant but failed to consider federal trademark until after the national Burger King chain had registered it. A judge carved out a 20-mile bubble for the original to operate free from competition from the federally trademarked Burger King, but the original cannot go to scale under its own name.
Microsoft's social enterprise announcements got me thinking about social enterprise & trademark more generally, and a federal trademark search reveals another interesting development: Live Elements, a Virginia technology firm, has recently filed to register "social enterprise" as a proprietary mark for its own online networking platform.
Last week on JustMeans I noted that the legal situation for nonprofits in Russia is more complex than the conventional wisdom would have us believe.
There was, of course, a method to my rhetorical madness. Here's an update on one important aspect of the Russian nonprofit world: reforms aimed at encouraging the formation of independent and financially sustainable nongovernmental NPOs.
A few months ago the Russian government formed a working group with a stated goal of facilitating the formation of nongovernmental nonprofit associations, which became a particularly pressing issue after restrictive measures enacted under Vladimir Putin a few years ago. Anyone familiar with Soviet rhetoric knows that sometimes words can have two meanings, and a leading governmental official promised that we'll soon see "many truly innovative proposals" for liberalizing current law, there was ample reason to be skeptical.
However, the first proposed set of amendments to the Russian law "On Nonprofit Organizations" finally went live a few hours ago, and it actually does lighten the regulatory burden in several significant ways.
A major focus of the proposed reforms is to rein in what some see as the unbridled authority of the Ministry of Justice--the state body that incorporates nonprofit organizations--to obstruct the formation and activity of nonprofit NGOs. The bill seeks to accomplish this in several ways, such as
- limiting the organizational documents the Ministry has the right to request,
- limiting the number of audits to once in a three years (as opposed to annually),
- limiting the grounds for the denial of registration,
- adding the option of suspending registration (as opposed to merely providing for denial), and
- requiring the government to explain reasons for refusal within a specific period of time.
The bill also has provides for the publication--in the mass media or online--of an annual report, with a simplified statement of ongoing activity for smaller organizations. This is also in keeping with the bill's announced purpose of "lightening but not eliminating accountability for NPOs."
Although the proposed reforms apply for the most part to Russian nonprofits--a subsequent bill is reported to be in the works in regard to foreign groups--the bill does include a welcome amendment in regard to branch offices of foreign NGOs: it would eliminate the current prohibition on foreign affiliates or representative offices deemed to be a "threat . . . to national uniqueness and identity [or] to [Russia's] cultural heritage."
Moreover, in a separate and equally significant legal development, a Russian appeals court recently held that grants made by foreign organizations to Russian nonprofits are exempt from the profits tax. This precedent could, if not overturned, put an end to questions as to whether tax exemption for foreign grants is limited to grants received from just a few charities specified on a list issued by the Russian government.
As Human Rights Watch indicated when the scope of the proposed liberalizations was initially announced, additional changes would be useful, but the proposed bill, if enacted, appears to be a welcome "first step for reform."
In a post-9/11 compromise, the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority allows uniform workers to have religious headwear provided that it is colored blue and bears the MTA logo.
Despite a discrimination lawsuit brought against it by the U.S. government back in 2004, the MTA insists that the policy is appropriate, on the grounds that "standardized uniforms assist our customers in quickly identifying employees if they need emergency assistance or just travel directions." The department does not see any problem in requiring believers to brand their religious garb, so it continues to cite Sikh and Muslim employees for failing to follow the policy.
The Sikh Coalition has protested, and a majority of the New York City Council has come out in support of forcing the MTA to end what is truly a stunning example of bureaucratic ignorance.
What constitutes socially responsible search? Bing has segregated explicit images, and Google is under fire for generously giving artists the opportunity to have their work exploited for free. But for some groups, search raises even more pervasive value conflicts, such that working with the leading commercial search engines seems impracticable.
Case in point: Koogle, an Israeli start-up search engine designed for Orthodox Jews, though from the perspective of trademark law it is decidedly unorthodox:
The new site, named in a pun on Google and on a Jewish casserole pudding, is meant to let devout Jews search for things they need without encountering sexual material or breaking religious taboos. Even when filters are used on mainstream search sites, explicit results sometimes appear under subjects like “breast cancer” — as users of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) new Bing search service have discovered. (Microsoft took steps recently to make filtering more effective.)
Koogle will not only screen out sexual material or even images of women dressed provocatively, but it will also not offer things like television sets, which Orthodox families aren’t allowed to have in their homes.
Koogle will not permit any shopping on the Sabbath, from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday.
I posted this on JustMeans (along with some other interesting stuff), but for folks who've just been reading Uncivil, here it is:
Like many of you, I've been caught up in reading online reports about the Iranian election protests. Twitter, Facebook and blogs have gone from being a digital escape to real-world engagement, from the greening of avatars to the mobilization of a global proxy network.
Iran's mass mobilization in favor of democratic change brings to mind any number of people's revolutions of the past century, from the Hungarian and Czech uprisings against Soviet domination to Tiananmen Square, Solidarity, the Orange Revolution and Russian resistance to the August Coup. Whatever their relative success, such movements illustrate how in the age of mass communication, the society of the spectacle is more than just critical theory--creating an impression can be a powerful strategic tool for refashioning social design, especially for those lacking physical or institutional power.
The scene in Iran holds other useful lessons for Western social enterprise. There's a natural temptation simply to baptize the Iranian protesters as social entrepreneurs, much as we tend to do with people that we like. However self-affirming that can be, it also has an unfortunate tendency to blind us to aspects of social movements that challenge how we see ourselves.
In recent years, social enterprise experts have clustered around the theory that social entrepreneurs are special, creating the disruptive social innovations that break down suboptimal social equilibria. It's an inspiring definition to be sure, one that no doubt is a boost to the self-esteem of anyone in the movement. Yet if we look carefully at real-world movements for change, most of it has reflects the work of people who do not self-identify as social entrepreneurs.
For example, consider how the protest movement is mobilizing. The core communications media--Twitter, Facebook, blogs, SMS, mobile phones, computers, even the rooftops on which protesters stood to shout--may be tools that social entrepreneurs use, but we did not create them. The social benefit resulting from social media is at best a positive externality, a second-order consequence derived from someone else's disruptive innovations.
It is also useful to reflect upon the protesters' organizational tactics. They are not starting social businesses, extending microloans, holding pitch contests or making social investments. Instead, they are taking to the streets and telling anyone who will listen or watch what they want. It is a classic display of political force. Each compelling image from Iran--every impassioned Tweet--is an implicit critique of our naive bubble world where the price of progress is merely a monetary value.
If social enterprise is to mature as a movement, we can't afford to believe our own hype. The more we insist that social entrepreneurship is a unique agent of historic social change, the less effective--and less credible--we become.
An Iranian woman in Austin, Texas embodies the role of communications media in mobilizing protests against the hijacked election.
From today's PostSecret
Via the ever-enlightening Hijab Style, here's a fascinating account of Kath Fry's journey from the Australian surf scene & Catholicism to becoming an Islamic convert & fashion designer.
Ms Fry met her business partner Eisha Saleh, 32, of Chester Hill, when she was studying Islam during her conversion from Catholicism three years ago. She discovered her new faith while working as a garment technician at the clothing chain David Lawrence.
"I had been working in the fashion industry for seven years and I was thinking, 'What is this life about?' " said Ms Fry, who now lives in Roselands.
"I went on a real spiritual journey. I found [Islam] very intriguing. I grew up a little surfer girl, always at the beach. I did not know Islam existed."
But when she looked for clothes to suit her new lifestyle, she was frustrated. So last year the friends created their own women's fashion line Baraka, Arabic for "blessing".
In keeping with its spiritual design philosophy, Baraka also has a distinct social ethic:
We as women, were also concerned for other women around the world suffering hunger, oppression and limited opportunities. baraka was created ultimately to help these women achieve independence and sustainability. This is how ‘Project Women was born.
The project’s philosophy is to help all women of the world with no discrimination on race, religion or colour. This unique concept is to involve women from around the world to participate in the making of the baraka label, earn a living and start to make lasting changes to their communities.
In a world without sexual harassment law, Auctioning Charity uses a charity auction as the launching point for reflection on the tension between commerce and human dignity--well, that and the fulfillment of a boss's fantasy to dominate Charity, his female VP. An excerpt:
“It’s about the executive auction,” she said. . . .
“The image of the female on the auction block,” she said now, evidently deciding on the direct approach, “is rather repugnant, don’t you think?”
He narrowed his gaze. “As opposed to a male being sold?”
Her full lips formed into a pouty, irritated frown. Oh, how he would like to explore the full range of her emotions, putting her under absolute control, manipulating her pleasure and her pain, her agony and ecstasy, for endless hours.
To begin, he would like to take her in his arms and overpower her with a kiss, reducing all her arguments to a single, panting, breathing motion, only one word left in her vocabulary—Yes.
Correction—two. Yes, Master.
“You know what I mean, Roger. There are a preponderance of images and cultural metaphors surrounding the exploitation of the female body.”
Roger snorted. “Good heavens, woman, it’s a charity dinner. I have no intention of selling you into white slavery.”
No, he just intends to buy her.
Sad to say, I've met executives just like Roger.
Blah.
Aspiring business owners got a high-profile boost Thursday as designer Tory Burch and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled the Tory Burch Foundation at Burch’s store on Robertson Boulevard. The foundation will support small businesses by making loans to aspiring entrepreneurs who don’t qualify for bank credit and is being launched in partnership with Accion, the largest micro lender in the United States. Burch gave an unspecified sum of money to the nonprofit to get things started, and said she’ll fund her namesake foundation through corporate partnerships and sales of goods such as tote bags and T-shirts.
Martina Fugazzotto is the award-winning author of comics aimed at giving teens an educational & entertaining introduction to sexuality. Below: her table at this weekend's MoCCA Art Fest.
A fascinating architectural statement in the East Village, as the owner of Sustainable NYC converts a former synagogue into a transparent penthouse using eco-friendly design:
“I was captivated by the history and grandeur of the facade,” said Ms. Camacho, 40, an entrepreneur who operated a T-shirt boutique on Avenue A before opening Sustainable NYC, an eco-friendly store, last year. “Sometimes I’d pause, walk up the synagogue steps and touch the door.”
Click through for a slideshow.
You don't have to understand Russian to understand what's going on in these Russian PSAs aimed, respectively, and male and female beer drinkers. Each starts with a archetypical beer commercial scene celebrating the pleasure of having a beer with one's friends . . . then the ad uses a Greek statue to illustrate the effects of beer drinking on one's body. The ads are part of the Russian "Be careful" PSA series, which you can see on the invaluable adme.ru, which actually has a dedicated social ad section.
It would be interesting to see the reaction to these ads in the U.S.
My name was accidentally left off the trustee list for the MoCCA Art Fest, so I said I'd be happy with just an empty badge holder. Our inspired volunteers took it one better, giving me an official green placard artfully inscribed with a question mark.
Coolest badge I've ever worn.
Via Copyranter, a classic example of a sexist ad promoting the interests of a trade association. Don't want to be turned down? Be like rice, which "never intrudes. Never gets in the way."
Also worth checking out for folks interested in sexist ads, this blog dedicated to sexist marketing--and, of course, Sarah Haskins' Target Women.
Below: UK candy bar Yorkie--"IT'S NOT FOR GIRLS!"
That's the theme of my latest post over on JustMeans.
By Michael Linser for Our Gods Wear Spandex
The Dieline is a killer packaging design site that offers a wealth of useful examples for social-enterprise-types who want to learn about effective branding. Case in point: this behind-the-scenes look at how White Space came up with the bottle design for Thatcher's Organic Artisan Liqueurs, "handmade liqueurs distilled in small batches from sustainably farmed organic ingredients to create honestly great cocktails." Check out The Dieline post for the scoop.
Via the always illuminating Alanna Shaykh, here's a site that's chock full of social enterprise goodness: HijabMan, "the leading Muslim shirt company with a message."
A grassroots Muslim PR campaign, with thousands of people as walking billboards, wearing shirts with messages that make people laugh and frown. But most importantly they make people think. They destroy the messages we receive on a daily basis from mainstream media outlets and even our own religious leaders.
Be sure to check out the entire site--besides the store and blog, the site also features HijabMan's compelling photography, such as this image aptly titled "Allah in the Background."
Christianity Today is a "not-for-profit communications ministry." You wouldn't know that, however, from their coverage of the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller by a right-to-life evangelical--i.e., a core part of Christianity Today's demographic. Since the news broke I've been tracking the home page, and the image you see above shows how Christianity Today has chosen to fulfill its mission to help Christians "make sense of the world"--
Namely, opining on the need for Jon & Kate of +8 fame "to confess their sins" . . .
And, of course, the pressing issue of John Calvin's critique of medieval indulgences:
I understand that this must be a rather difficult situation for an evangelical nonprofit such as CT to address, but if communication is your business you only undermine your reputation by burying your head in the digital sand when some kills in the name of the very movement that you claim to represent.
PSYCHO KILLER QU'EST QUE C'EST EXTRA:
If you think the above isn't fair, just be glad I didn't lead with the following alternate frame:
Do do-gooders have a responsibility not to grab free content from commercial providers? Just a question that popped up after I read this comment on a post about circumventing the WSJ's firewall:
My father was laid off from the WSJ 4 months ago, we've moved from our modest 3 bedroom home to small 2 room place, and my parents are always fighting now.
Let businesses try to figure their model out without helping the general public steal from them. In the end, it hurts real people no matter how harmless you think your post may be.