CharityFocus Can't Fit Into A Soundbyte
These days, a lot of people ask me the usual, "Oh, CharityFocus. What does it do?" It's a casual cocktail comment. Now-a-days, I've started being more honest -- "It's an experiment in service that can't be captured in a soundbyte. And what work are you involved with?" :)
This morning, for instance, I sent this paragraph to a bunch of visionaries:
"CharityFocus works at the intersection of volunteerism, technology, and gift-economy to support a culture of abundance and trust. Technically, it runs various commercial-free portals that don't have a business plan and don't charge for any of their services; their website attract millions of global viewers, their membership base is about 150K in size, and they will send 50MM solicited emails in the coming year. Unfortunately, the spirit of their work doesn't fit into a soundbyte and those seriously interested may like to spend half an hour in reading Tao of CharityFocus."And then, I ran into this word by Noam Chomsky called concision. He says, "The U. S. media are alone in that you must meet the condition of concision. You have to say things between two commercials or in 600 words, and that’s a very important fact because the beauty of concision is that you can only repeat conventional thoughts."
So ever wonder why the world's premier intellectual, Noam Chomsky, has never been on TV? Here it is, in his own words:
Posted by Nipun Mehta on Nov 14, 2007
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2 Past Reflections
On Nov 14, 2007 Mark wrote:
We disagree about whether the title of "the world's premier intellectual" is one that should be awarded; and disagree further that Mr. Chomsky, who I admire, would be anything but an also-ran.
More to your central point: I found myself just today writing, "CharityFocus...is difficult to explain other than to say that it is more an attitude — found at the intersection of idealism and groundedness — than a nonprofit organization." But again, it could just be that I'm lazy.
Cheers,
MBJ
More to your central point: I found myself just today writing, "CharityFocus...is difficult to explain other than to say that it is more an attitude — found at the intersection of idealism and groundedness — than a nonprofit organization." But again, it could just be that I'm lazy.
Cheers,
MBJ
On Nov 13, 2007 Birju wrote:
1-I as the listener am too dense to understand it without having it spelled out.
2-You as the speaker are unable to explain a complex idea in simple terminology.
When folks ask me about CharityFocus, I usually say something like 'it's a non-profit being run in a new way. we mostly leverage technology to serve in a 'bottom-up' sort of way, but we're not trying to change the world, only ourselves'
for conventional media, Mr. Chomsky seems very correct, but I remember a couple months ago Michael Moore was interviewed on CNN for Sicko. He proceeded to say equally controversial things, but managed to get his point across (and in fact referred people to his blog for info that backs up his claims).
I just think that we are slowly moving to an age where the consumer is moving from being passive (TV) to active (internet) and thus is savvy enough to learn more about ideas that are unfamiliar. If I ran CNN, i'd fight to get Mr. Chomsky on Larry King! [Hide Full Comment]
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