Trends - - is philanthropy climbing up the list?

November 26^th, 2006

Lucy Bernholz is a scholar and well-known author and researcher from San Francisco who along with Katherine Fulton and Gabriel Kasper wrote a landmark publication entitled "On the Brink of New Promise: The Future of U.S. Community Foundations". As described on the website of the project - http://www.communityphilanthropy.org:
The Future of Community Philanthropy project was launched in the spring of 2004. Impetus for the research came from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation, who asked Blueprint Research & Design, Inc. and the Monitor Institute to provide U.S. community foundations with some advance warning about the world to come.

This research has had tremendous impact on this foundation and we have ceased going through the strain of strategic planning and have opted to do it all the time! This means that we need to track the trends and ensure that our organization is flexible to adapt and grow. Many thanks to Wendy Lewis Jackson on our staff who alerted me to the latest entry to Lucy's blog as we prepare for one our periodic strategy sessions this coming week.

Lucy also is the Founder and President of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc. and is a leader in the foundation and nonprofit world tracking trends in philanthropy. She commented in her blog on November 25th about a website that tracks trends created by the Nielsen folks http://www.blogpulse.com/trend- and she noted that there are no limits on how we can become linked regarding our collective interests in philanthropy and related topics! Lucy started her blog by the way in July 2002 which may make her one of the pioneers in our field commenting on a broad array of issues that help challenge thinking in many areas.

Lucy's blog can be found at http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/. Well worth tracking.