Photo Credit: Pedro J. Ferreira, Creative Commons/Flickr

Happy Halloween! While today is a fun time to dress up and indulge in candy (no matter how old you are), there are still ways we make a difference in our communities.  Check out the resources below for ideas on how you get involved.

Attend a haunted house for charity

Many nonprofits put together haunted houses that give kids a chance to have fun while raising money for the organization. What Gives? and the Nonprofit Quarterly have put together a list of haunted houses taking place around the country. Don’t see one near you? Start thinking about your year-end plan to donate to an organization you love.

Volunteer

Many communities are using today to come together and help those affected by Hurricane Sandy. We’ve listed a few ways to get involved. If you live in New York City, check out the Brooklyn Community Foundation, NYC Service, and Time Out New York for ongoing opportunities. There are also a variety of Halloween focused volunteer opportunities on our website.

Dig into to smart candy

This Halloween, try making your own candy for homemade and healthy treats. Or purchase organic chocolate that’s earth-friendly and delicious. The Daily Green and Green Halloween have ideas and resource to explore to help you get started.

How else can we give back on Halloween? Feel free to share your ideas, resources, and tips in the comments!

Photo credit: jowiki, Creative Commons/Flickr

Although Hurricane Sandy is moving out of the Northeast, there is plenty of work to be done. Whether helping people rebuild their communities or sharing information, there are various ways we can get involved.

• Make a donation: Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, has generously offered to match up $25,000 in donations to Sandy relief efforts. Learn more and make a donation.
• Volunteer: The Red Cross needs volunteers to help at emergency shelters in New York. Read more about the opportunities.
• Stay informed: This is a confusing time for many people, so having the right information is key. The Huffington Post has shared a list of apps to help you keep track of the storm as well as additional resources so you stay informed.

If you have any other resources or opportunities to share, please include them in the comments.

To everyone who has been affected by the hurricane, including our neighbors in New York City, you are in our thoughts. Let us know how we can help.

Yesterday we talked about some of the big picture ideas for changing the way we support social change. One element was strengthening information sharing: with so many organizations wanting to create a better world, it’s important for us to access each other’s stories and resources. Here we explore how one organization could benefit from this concept.

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posted by Christine Egger

Photo credit: Sunshine Horses

Meet Sophie, an incredibly sweet pinto mare. The photo on the left was taken on the very day that Sophie was rescued and taken in by Sunshine Horses. The photograph on the right was taken just a few months later, well into the rehabilitation that would lead to her being adopted into a loving home. My heart breaks for Sophie in that first picture, and soars for her in the second.

Meet my mom, Jan Lower, the one bringing Sophie along in a trot in that second picture. She’s one of Sunshine Horses’ volunteer coordinators, helping more than 50 volunteers take care of over 20 horses at any one time. (I love the way the photographer captured my mom’s concentration and strength. Can you believe she just turned 70? I want to be like her when I grow up.)

I had a chance to visit Mom last week, and as usual we spent quite a bit of time talking about Sunshine. The conversation began with horses: who’s been taken in, how they’re coming along, who’s been adopted, how the follow-up visits are going. Then, as usual, the topic turned to people. Sunshine Horses has a dual mission: to help horses and people. They intentionally create opportunities for children and adults to realize their own potential as they help the horses along. These programs are central to what they do, and the stories are heartwarming.

Then, also as usual, we started to talk about the nonprofit itself; about the parts that don’t translate so easily into photographs: fundraising and event planning, filling volunteer shifts, communicating inside the organization, communicating with the public.

About being part of a team that’s learning how to do all of the above even as the landscape of horses and people and funds and other resources shifts around them.

I’d just returned from Social Capital Markets (#SOCAP12), a conference for people who share my mom’s passion for doing good well. A recurring suggestion throughout the conference was to think about business and financial models along an entire, single spectrum – from nonprofits at one end, to return-on-investment for profits on the other, and all kinds of newly developed and not-yet-experimented-with combinations in between.

In particular the Markets for Good campaign suggested that we not think just about types of funds along that spectrum, but about the entire information infrastructure that supports everyone along it:

Markets for Good: The Video from Markets for Good on Vimeo.

URL: Marketsforgood.org

Twitter: @MarketsforGood

Hashtag: #mkts4good

So in addition to thinking about what Mom was telling me, I started to think about the types of information that help Sunshine Horses do what it does. What’s required to find and retrieve each horse. To take care of and rehabilitate them. To find new homes. To find and schedule and listen to volunteers. To connect with and create programs for people who will heal right along with the horses they come in to take care of. To arrange for stalls and pastures and trailers and straw and sawdust. To find the funds for all of this. And to make sure people know about what they’re doing.

Mom told me there are about 1,800(!) horse rescue organizations in the U.S. About 90 in New York State alone. Each is unique. Not all of them have the same dual mission of Sunshine Horses. Some of them work exclusively with former race horses or another niche.

Still, I can’t help but think about how much they could learn from, or simply support, each other if it were easy for them to share more information, more seamlessly, with more people, around this shared work.

Helping nonprofits share information with each other is just a tiny piece of what the Markets for Good campaign is about. Its mission is incredibly broad, and the points of engagement with this conversation are many. They’re asking us to think about how we can best use and share information across the entire spectrum of business and financial models that can be employed to deliver social good.

Are there better ways we can collect, classify and exchange data?

Can we build more useful knowledge platforms for social sector information?

How can we access the best information to support our work?

The campaign’s mission is to catalyze those changes so that everyone – beneficiaries, service organizations, donors and investors, and entrepreneurs – are equally contributing to and benefiting from a virtuous cycle of information that improves services, meets needs, and informs smarter funding.

According to Lucy Bernholz , the initiative contains elements that promise to help the nonprofit sector fully realize data as an asset and resource. This sector, she says, lags behind government and for-profit commerce in using data as an asset and resource.

The Markets For Good initiative, with its recommendations on infrastructure, interoperability, and access is a great start. It details a platform and set of operating standards by which existing data sources – reports, compliance documents, grants, and due diligence reviews can be made visible and useful. It lays the groundwork for better mapping of issues, shared planning efforts, and potential new ways of working.

In all of this, what I appreciate most about the Markets for Good initiative is that it isn’t about reinventing (or dismissing) any of the wheels that are already out there (if it were, I wouldn’t be drawing attention to it). From their website:

Our goal is not to replicate or replace, but to connect, align, and accelerate works and ideas already in progress.

That means that, in the spirit of network weaving, this is about uncovering, strengthening, and amplifying the myriad info-sharing-and-accelerating platforms that already exist.

Or in my Mom’s case, it’s about being able to more easily reach, teach, and learn from those 1,800 organizations that share her passion for helping horses and people.

Won’t that be a wonderful thing to add to our conversations?

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Background: While this campaign is new, the Markets for Good initiative has been taking shape for some time. Sean Stannard-Stockton offered this post-SOCAP10 review on the Tactical Philanthropy blog and this 2010 Markets for Good presentation by Liquidnet (a financial firm co-sponsoring the campaign along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation). The initiative has been informed by the Money for Good initiative, a series of analyses prepared by Hope Consulting with funding from Markets for Good sponsors and others.

Disclosure: I’ve been part of an informal Markets for Good discussion forum since 2010.

Earlier this month, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, investors, and foundations convened at the Social Capital Markets conference (#SOCAP12) to discuss how to direct more capital towards social change. What emerged from the conversation were new ways to think about, fund, and inform social change so that organizations can increase their impact. Christine Egger attended the conference and shares the lessons she learned below.

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posted by Christine Egger

The Social Capital Markets conference brings together entrepreneurs, nonprofits, investors, and foundations to explore “the intersection of money and meaning.” Photo by @tipitai via SocialFinance.ca Storify

Until recently, the SOCAP conversation has focused almost exclusively on the kinds of capital that offer a return on investment: how do we bring market-based solutions to the task of addressing the problems of poverty? of environmental stewardship? of civic engagement? What do those success stories look like, and how do we replicate them or take them to scale?

This year, though, the discussion broadened in ways that fully engaged with the philanthropic sector — not just as a resource to turn to when markets fail (or are nonexistent), or as a community of practice that could learn a few things about how to measure social impact, but as a valued partner in seeding and strengthening a social market that has yet to realize its full potential.

Working across sectors

The most common visual used to help attendees think about how the full range of philanthropic and non-philanthropic resources come together was a single line – a single spectrum with grants and donations (what I’ve come to think of as “no boomerang attached to those dollars”) at one end, risk-adjusted rates of return (think venture capital and traditional business loans) at the other, and zero-interest investments (like Kiva-type loans) in between. That single line served as a baseline for thinking more creatively about how to design and fund non- and for-profit businesses in new ways.

Graphic by the Omidyar Network

New ways to think about the entire social change market: The Omidyar Network presented three subsets of a “social good delivery” market, two of which include nonprofit activity: those building market infrastructure, aka new ways to combine social and financial returns; those creating market innovations, aka new enterprises based on those combinations; and those scaling the market, aka bringing proven enterprise combinations to new or expanded customer bases. They’ve outlined this in more detail in a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review blog series, calling specifically on the philanthropic sector to fund the market’s infrastructure builders and innovators.

I had a chance to attend a session that highlighted an example of a foundation and its grantees “playing” with these categories in new ways. The Knight Foundation’s John Bracken explained how they’re shifting their practices from a “funding only” paradigm to “financing, facilitating, and futurizing.” Two of their grantees, Zeega and Public Media X, talked about how that broader paradigm opened up a much broader range of business model options they could use to fulfill their mission. For example Zeega (an online platform for new forms of interactive storytelling) began as a 501c3 supported by grants and the founding team’s consulting services. With Knight’s support, they’ve transitioned to a C corporation supported by private investors (and, over time, revenue from subscription services). The 501c3 continues, having received preferred stock in exchange for the intellectual property it transferred to the C corp.

New roles for funding: The Monitor Institute spoke to the need for enterprise philanthropy, funding the impact investing infrastructure as well as early, high-risk enterprises that are innovating new ways to deliver market-based solutions. Impact investing, Katherine Fulton argued, simply cannot realize its potential – cannot address the world’s social needs at scale – without philanthropic capital. The Monitor Institute’s recent report, “From Blueprint to Scale: The Case for Philanthropy in Impact Investing,” goes into more detail on what foundations and donors can do, and on what early enterprise philanthropists have learned so far.

New attention to information sharing: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the financial firm LiquidNet announced a new campaign to improve the information infrastructure across the entire spectrum. Markets for Good aims to catalyze those improvements so that everyone – beneficiaries, service organizations, donors and investors, and entrepreneurs – are equally contributing to and benefiting from a virtuous cycle of information that improves services, meets needs, and informs smarter funding. The campaign will continue for at least a year or two, capturing and sharing ideas about what that robust information infrastructure looks like. I’ll have a chance to share more about Markets for Good in a second post here.

At heart

It’s important to note that equal measures of optimism and humility infused these and the other discussions that made up this year’s conference. There were constant reminders of how hard this work is, and of how important it is to hold at its heart – whether we come to it first from a non- or for-profit direction – the desire to better care for and about each other and the world we live in.

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More SOCAP video highlights:

• Paul Polak on creating markets to ethically serve 2.6 billion people living on less than $2/day
• Joy Anderson on changing the rules of the economic game
• Jackie VanderBrug on the value of bringing a gender lens to social change
• Sylvia Earle on protecting and learning from the world’s Blue Economy

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Christine Egger works at the intersection of mission-method alignment, enterprise design, open data, empathy, and learning (about what might be real, what might be known, and what might be done). She can be found online at cdegger.com and @cdegger.

Photo Credit: World Food Day US and Cananda, Flickr

Every night, 1 in 8 people goes to sleep hungry. To address this statistic, on Tuesday, October 16th, people around the world came together and participated in World Food Day, an annual event that since 1981 has encouraged people to take action to end hunger. While World Food Day has passed, if you’re interested in being part of this movement and changing that statistic for the better, there are plenty of jobs and internships on Idealist that focus on fighting hunger.

• If you’ve always wanted to eliminate hunger while having a cool job title, check out the Director of CHOW position at the Broome County Council of Churches in Binghamton, NY. CHOW stands for the Community Hunger Outreach Warehouse, which distributes over 130,000 pounds of food every month through over 30 soup kitchens. Just think how snazzy your new business card would look.

• If you want to work in NYC,  take a look at the Development Associate position at Edible Schoolyard, an organization that helps teach healthy, organic eating habits to public school kids in New York City.

• Moving to the Midwest, we have a pair of Chicago-based organizations: Feeding America currently has two job openings, while the Greater Chicago Food Depository has five jobs listed on Idealist and one internship opportunity.

• For people interested in affecting the roots of the hunger problem, Just Harvest is a public policy advocacy group in based in Pittsburgh, PA. It works with a variety of public programs, from farmers markets to food stamps, and it currently has a bountiful autumn crop of jobs posted on Idealist.

• Of course, interesting jobs that fight hunger are not limited the the United States. You could be part of the effort to lessen dependence on food aid at the One Acre Fund in Kenya. Ten jobs were listed in October, so the Fund is serious about helping African farmers become more productive.

• If working in one country is too much of a commitment for you, check out Medair. It’s a relief organization that works across the world in conflict spots, natural disaster zones, and basically anyplace where hunger is a problem. You could work in Afghanistan, Madagascar, or Haiti, to name just a few of the available job opportunities.

Finally, if none of the above postings appeal to you, don’t lose hope. You can always apply to be a beekeeper in Cameroon.

The piece below was translated and edited from the original  Spanish version on the blog of our Spanish site Idealistas. The links below also go to Spanish websites. Check them out!

This week is banned books week in the US, where a variety of institutions like schools and libraries, come together to explore what books are challenged and why.

However, while we continue debate what to read, it’s still a great time to share the power and importance of reading. Around the world, communities are coming up with innovative ways to promote literacy.

Books by the pound in Madrid

Photo from “The Butcher Shop,” selling second-hand books by the pound in Madrid.

A former butcher shop now sells books for 10 euros per kilogram (about $6 per pound at the start of September 2012). It’s an ingenious way to keep second-hand books in circulation and brighten up an older city marketplace with the beauty of literature.

Mini libraries in Bogatá

Photo Credit: Fundalectura.org

In the capital of Colombia, Bus Stops for Books in Parks has operated for nearly 10 years with a clear mission: to encourage literacy for the entire nation. Every day, volunteers participate in staffing these miniature libraries where they lend books, read aloud, offer activities for children, and create opportunities for people to engage in conversation. There are 47 of these bookstops in the city of Bogotá and a total of 100 across the country.

Book exchanges in phone booths

Photo credit: Graceful Spoon

Thanks to the growth of cell phones, many of the phone booths in NYC go unused. New York City architect John Locke has found a creative opportunity to re-use these spaces as improvised book exchanges, where passers-by can leave or find books. New York follows Westbury-sub-Mendip in the UK, where a phone booth has served as a local site for exchanging books since 2009.

‘Bicicloteca’ in São Paulo

Photo Credit: Green Mobility, Creative Commons/Flickr

And lastly, from Brazil, this unusual library on wheels carries books to people who are unable to check them out, usually homeless people as they often lack the documents necessary for getting books from the library. Additionally, they use solar panels, which allows the Bicicloteca (a blend of Portuguese bicicleta + biblioteca) to access the Internet.

Do you know of another initiative where people are getting books to people who need or want them? Share in the comments below.

Earlier this week, two conferences — the Mashable Social Good Summit and the Clinton Global Initiative — took place here in New York, discussing how we can all come together to address pressing global problems like poverty.

Each day at Idealist, we see people working to address poverty as well; if you perform a search for the keyword “poverty” on Idealist, you’ll find more than 18,000 organizations and opportunities tackling this issue. In recognition of all the organizations fighting poverty across the world, we’ve decided to highlight a few nonprofits that caught our eye here at Idealist.

blueEnergy in San Francisco, CA

Turbine in action (Photo Credit: blueEnergy)

Poverty has many causes, but one of the most prominent is that some people simply don’t have access to resources that other people take for granted. blueEnergy works to provide renewable energy, water sanitation, and other green services to some of the poorest regions of the Western Hemisphere. Take a look at blueEnergy’s program page to see the specific types of gadgets they’re using.

Street Roots in Portland, OR

Nick Fish, Portland, Oregon Housing Commissioner at groundbreaking for homeless resource center on 11.20.09 (Photo Credit: Streetroots.org)

In recent years, Portland, Oregon, has become a nonprofit hotspot. This could have something to do with the fact that Idealist has an office in Portland, but that’s a free-range chicken or the egg type of problem. Regardless, one of the great nonprofits in Portland that focuses on poverty is Street Roots. Each year Street Roots offers over 250 homeless and low-income people jobs selling their eponymous newspaper. Beyond the newspaper, there is a resource guide for people experiencing homelessness and poverty which covers both Multnomah and Washington counties. If you live in Portland and don’t know about Street Roots, pick up a copy! If you live elsewhere you can still read the online newspaper, which has some great articles.

OpenTable in Concord and Maynard, Massachusetts

Serving all who come to OpenTable (Photo Credit: OpenTable)

The goal of ending poverty in general can seem a little daunting. However, if you focus on solving one of the many problems associated with poverty, even small organizations can make a difference. This is the case with Open Table, a nonprofit operating in Concord and Maynard, Massachusetts. Open Table offers free food to anyone who wants it, but it’s no ordinary food pantry. Once a week at each of its locations Open Table holds a community dinner with a main course, dessert, and coffee. In doing so, OpenTable is moving away from the traditional “soup kitchen” model (think long lines and silence) and replacing it with a more social form of eating is becoming increasingly popular.

Advocates for the Other America in Washington, DC

Finally, as Election Day draws closer and the mudslinging increases, you may be forgiven for thinking that the political landscape in the United States is a little rocky right now. In fact, you may be tempted to write off the entire city of Washington, D.C. Don’t despair! Besides hosting an awesome Idealist grad fair, Washington is also home to Advocates for The Other America. AFTOA is a lobbying firm which represents the interests of low-income Americans. If you’re concerned about the increasing gap between the haves and have-nots in the United States, check out AFTOA see what they’re doing to let politicians know that poverty needs to be a national priority.

How are YOU tackling poverty?

Welcome back! Is it time to explore a career in education? (Photo Credit: Charlottes Photo Gallery, Creative Commons/Flickr)

Hope you’ve been sharpening up your pencils and writing your name inside your textbooks, because it’s back-to-school season!

Okay, so most of us aren’t students anymore (though if you’re thinking about it, check out our Graduate School Fairs!), but there are still lots of ways to get back to school this September.

Roseville Community Charter School in Newark, New Jersey is looking for a First Grade Teacher. This kindergarten through second grade charter school focuses on college prep and their ideal candidate possesses an “unyielding belief in all students’ ability to achieve at high levels, demonstrated success in yielding high results, and experience teaching in urban school environments.” If that sounds like you, check out this great opportunity.

Being in front of the classroom isn’t the only way to help students. The DC Public School system’s Office of Human Capital is at the center of a series of reforms focused on having exceptionally effective teachers in every DC public school classroom. They’re seeking a Coordinator of Teacher Effectiveness Strategy, who will work on a range of innovative initiatives spanning teacher recruitment, selection, compensation, evaluation, recognition, and retention. Washington, DC is working hard to create the best educator force in the nation, and this is an awesome chance to join them.

If you’re just looking to get started in your education career, Harlem Village Academies, one of the highest performing urban school networks in the country and a national leader in the education reform movement, is seeking a Development Intern to support their development, fundraising, and administrative work. You’ll gain experience in urban education while making a valuable contribution to education reform. The internship is paid and offers school credit.

The Friends of PS169 in New York, are looking for tutors for special education students in grades 1 through 8. An educational background isn’t a requirement, but patience is. You’ll work one on one with students who who are on the autism spectrum, have significant cognitive delays, are severely emotionally challenged, sensory impaired or multiply disabled to close the achievement gap. The school year’s getting started, and they’re still in need of passionate tutors, so sign up soon!

Whether you’re working in a classroom, supporting people who do, or giving students that extra push outside of class, there are lots of ways to get some school spirit. Are you working in education? Tell us about it!

How can we work together to create strong workplaces? (Photo credit: kathera, Creative Commons/Flickr)

Labor Day’s not just the day we stop wearing white pants. Since 1894, it’s been the official day that we take a load off to celebrate the contributions of all workers. And in today’s spotlight, we celebrate organizations that support workers as well as job and internship opportunities within these organizations.

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United works on behalf of restaurant employees nationwide. Through advocacy, organization, research, and policy work, they aim to improve the wages and working conditions of over 10 million people in the restaurant industry. They’re currently seeking a part time Office Manager in New York, NY, so if you’ve got some administrative chops and you’re passionate about community and labor organizing, check out this great opportunity to get involved.

If direct organizing is more your style, sign on as Lead Organizer for Warehouse Workers for Justice in Joliet, IL. United Electrical Workers is seeking someone to develop and lead workplace justice campaigns for warehouse workers in Chicago’s logistics hub. You’ll be leading a team of organizers, providing education on workplace rights, training long-term community leaders, and developing innovative tactics to tackle workplace justice issues.

Just getting your feet wet in workplace organizing? Get a Union Organizer internship with UNITE HERE! in Boston, MA. You’ll be working locally on national campaigns to motivate service workers to stand up for their rights.

And take a look at some other workforce development organizations that joined the site this week, like the Newark Workforce Investment Board, New York’s Workforce Opportunity Services, and Philadelphia’s Opportunities Industrialization Center. These organizations build up employee skills and connect them with employers who need these skills to build healthy communities that benefit everyone.

Hats off to you all workers of America! And a special high five to all the organizations working on their behalf.

What are you doing to celebrate workers this Labor Day?

Cozy up with a book this fall (Photo Credit: Madeline Tosh, Creative Commons/Flickr)

Didn’t get the chance to dive into your summer reading list? No problem; it’s already back-to-school season, making now the perfect time to get back into the habit of curling up with a good book. For those who may need a few simple suggestions or inspiration to get started, I’ve gathered a few non-fiction titles that sparked my interest as educational reads.

From tips on how to leverage social media to change the world, to a simple feel good tale mixed with important life lessons, here are a handful of books I plan on checking out:

GirlDrive: Criss-crossing America, Redefining Feminism by Emma Bee Bernstein and Nona Willis Aronowitz

Two women, Emma Bee Bernstein and Nona Willis Aronowitz, hit the road in 2007 with an important question to ask young women: what matters to them the most. The authors describe the book as a focus on “how young women grapple with the concepts of freedom, equality, joy, ambition, sex, and love—whether they call it “feminism” or not.” GirlDrive shares the stories of 127 very diverse women through vivid photos, profiles, and diary entries, who all have more in common than expected.

You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets to Happiness by Julie Klam

Julie was thirty, single, and working part-time as an insurance clerk, wondering if she would ever meet the man of her dreams. Then she met Otto, her Boston Terrier. Even though she has made a few additions in her life — her husband and daughter –  she was surprised and delighted to find that her dogs had more wisdom to convey to her than she had ever dreamed. And caring for them has made her a better person-and completely opened her heart. You Had Me at Woof is a humorous account of how one woman discovered life’s most important lessons from her canine companions.

The Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms by Nicolette Niman

Accepting an offer to head an environmental organizations “hog campaign” took Nicolette on a odyssey into the inner workings of the factory farm industry and helped mold her transformation into a environmental lawyer who takes on the big business farming establishment. The book dives into the an industry gone awry and offers a bit of romance when she’s swept off her feet by a cattle rancher.

Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet at a Time by Claire Diaz-Ortiz

In this book, Twitter’s head of corporate innovation and philanthropy, Claire Diaz-Ortiz, shares the same strategies she offers to organizations launching cause-based campaigns through Twitter. Twitter for Good is filled with dynamic examples from initiatives around the world and practical guidelines for harnessing individual activism via Twitter as a force for social change.

Have you read any of these? What other books would you recommend?