A friend writes from Myanmar:

This is the worst disaster I have ever been in. The situation in Yangon is growing more desperate everyday as there is no electricity or water and food is getting very scarce. Just today, a women on our street came to us with here three young children. Her mother had been killed in the cyclone and the children had not eaten in two days.

We have made it to the only location in Yangon with an email connection tonight (tuesday).
We are save and fine… but the situation here is very, very grim. Tremendous devastation.

We have staff in practically all of the affected areas and are desperately trying to find out the condition of about 40 that are still unaccounted for.

Relief isn’t what we do, but we are being pressed into it given the circumstances.
If Global Giving could join an appeal that would be very much appreciated.

Will write as soon again as soon as we can. Thanks again for your concern.

I and many others are going to help Myanmar for Mothers Day. Nothing would make our own mothers happier. If you want to join us, please click here and do what you can.

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I ran across this blog post today on a new “high-tech restaurant concept” called uWink here: UWINK: A COLD GREASY PLATE OF FAIL

It is amazing, for us techies, we run across these types of things all the time… in stores, and in particular bad Web sites. We usually groan and find a work around. But its not that easy for the average consumer. Because of that we constantly try to make GlobalGiving easier to use. Even while adding more features to use, we always listen and try to make both new and old features better, easier, and above all, fool proof.

Let us know what else we should offer to make us a site you want to come back to!

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We’re big fans of green - the color and the lifestyle - at GlobalGiving, which is evidenced by our new bright green wall in our construction-laden headquarters.

It started off by being able to calculate your carbon footprint, and now in the trend of calulating your “green-ness”, you can find out if you are living a sustainable life.

This amusing quiz asks, “What would the world look like if everyone lived like me?”

I, for one, have often wondered that. 

If everyone lived like me, there wouldn’t be annoying commuters on the metro, milk and Hershey’s chocolate syrup would always be stocked in the fridge, Trident cinnamon gum would come out of retirement, and the Red Sox would be on regular TV, not just in the New England media market.

On the other hand, classic art would consist of hand-drawn stick figures and dishes would pile up in sinks around the world.

But that’s not what this quiz measures.  This quiz examines your lifestyle by your home, fuel consumption, trash production, use of public and personal transportation, what you eat and what you buy. 

Almost as fun as fun as making your Mii, you create a character to represent yourself, choose your location and you’re off to the races! 

Find out how many planets it would take to support your lifestyle.

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I have to say I love the diaper bag I got for my first Fathers Day. It’s a gray messenger style bag with a pocket for all essentials - sippy cup, emergency rations of Spaghetti-O’s and goldfish, wipes, diapers, changing pad, butt cream, and purel. It’s got room to spare for a change of clothes and a few books.

For gear heads, parenthood opens up a whole new world of possibilities - from the mundane details of which baby bottle works best for your infant, to the very important performance characteristics of a stroller, you can really go overboard on things. Still, with my Diaper Dude bag and my Bugaboo stroller (both provided through the unbelievable generosity of friends and family), my son and I are ready for just about anything.

Poop in a museum? No problem.

Haircut trauma? Got a music cube and lollipop for that.

Like a guy I used to wait tables with in grad school used to say, “Failing to prepare is like preparing to fail.”

I’ve been working closely with the great folks at JOHNSON’S® on the “Celebrity Hand-Me-Down Auction” that went live on eBay last night. Well known moms and a dad (Matt Damon) have donated baby gear for auction, with proceeds going to a selection of mom and baby-related projects on a GlobalGiving web site customized for JOHNSON’S®. The projects range from providing baby gear to families in the Bronx to helping teen moms in Kenya start small businesses.

Huge thanks to the celebrities who donated very nice gear, and a big thanks to JOHNSON’S® for choosing GlobalGiving as its charitable partner.

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I am an idiot, according to my colleagues here at GlobalGiving. That is because I am clueless about a lot of popular celebrities who are in the news these days.

But my cluelessness reached a new low (high?) this past week at the excellent Fortune Magazine “Brainstorm Green” conference, which was all about global warming. During a break between panels, I turned to introduce myself to the guy sitting next to me. He had been listening closely to the speakers and had been taking a lot of notes. Obviously a scientist type or policy wonk.

Me: Hi, I am Dennis Whittle. Nice to meet you.

Him: Hi, I am Chuck Leavell. Nice to meet you.

Me: What do you do?

Him: Oh, I grow trees in Georgia. I also play the piano a little bit. What about you?

Me: I work at GlobalGiving, which is sort of a marketplace for goodness. What kind of trees do you grow?

Him: I have been trying to create an approach to sustainable tree farming using native American species.

Me: Oh, very cool. And what kind of music do you play?

Him: Oh, all kinds, really.

Me: Do you ever play in public?

Him: Sometimes.

Me: What’s the name of your band?

Him: Well, I’ve been in different bands, but since 1982 it has been the Rolling Stones.

Me: Oh, yes, I have heard of that band.
* * *
(Chuck’s bio is here for any of you other clueless readers out there.)

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I have been fascinated with survey data my entire life. In 6^th grade, I polled my classmates on whether or not they liked my classmate Kenneth Klein, to this day one of the 3 funniest people I have ever known.

 I regularly watched Family Feud (I watched when Richard Dawson was the host.) As a political science undergraduate student I actually railed against “horserace” polls and their misuse in the media. Later after working for a few years, I decided to go back to school and had the great fortune to study survey research and work at the Center for Survey Research at The Ohio State University. While there, I read an article in the New York Times that rocked the foundation on which I had been working and studying. Here’s the segment of interest from the magazine article (free registration required) by Max Frankel, former executive editor at the New York Times, talking about how he was interrupted at dinner time by a telephone survey:

“…That telephone pollster called, naturally, in the middle of dinner. He asked what kind of car I dreamed of owning next. Fortunately, I was annoyed.

“Do you get paid for asking that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, how much will I get for my answer?”

“Why nothing, sir. We have selected you so that we can learn how to serve you better.”

With no thought at all, I heard myself inventing a doctrine that I have smugly invoked ever since: “No pay, no say.” …”

The cliched lightbulb went on for me. The entire discipline of survey research rested on the assumption that people would answer researcher’s questions for free. Max wrote that in 1995, at the dawn of the internet. Today, online survey practitioners consider incentives as a matter of course.

As did we when we surveyed GlobalGiving’s donors and newsletter subscribers recently. (If you replied, thank you!) We offered respondents the opportunity to enter into a drawing for ten $50 gift certificates, for a total cost of $500. We received over 1,200 responses, so each survey “cost us” a little more than $.40 in incentives.

So imagine my surprise, when performing one of my other duties here at GlobalGiving, analyzing site traffic that leads to donations, I saw this:

We actually received donations from people who had filled out the survey at surveymonkey.com. Sixteen separate donations, averaging just over $100, for a total of $1,647! No, we won’t be sending out surveys to collect donations. But yes, here is yet another data point showing how lucky we at GlobalGiving are to be bringing together our donors and projects, breaking rules left and right.

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Trimming the amount of meat Americans eat would not only help the planet - a mere 20 percent reduction is the equivalent of switching from a Camry to a Prius.

That is from The High Price of Beef in Sunday’s NY Times Magazine. By this measure, I have had a couple of Priuses in my garage since the late 1980s, when I reduced my beef consumption in half. I initially did this because the quality of beef was poor in Jakarta, where I lived for five years.

Around that time, a lot of research came out about the health effects of eating too much red meat, so when I returned to the US, I kept my red meat consumption low. I didn’t eliminate meat altogether (I like it too much), but I swapped quantity for quality - eating good cuts of meat fewer times per week.

More recently, I have begun eating mostly organic beef, again primarily for health reasons. I pay more for it, but eat even less of it. So my wallet wins, my health wins, and the global climate wins.

And I can tell my friends that I have not only one, but two Priuses…

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I looked at the hundred expectant faces staring curiously at the bright colors on the screen behind them. The stage was empty, with just a rostrum. This group of exceptionally talented, really energetic people had gathered into this auditorium this past Saturday afternoon, not really knowing what to expect. It was in fact, a meeting to celebrate Alfinio Flores, a past delegate from the 2007 Global Engagement Summit (GES) and a winner of last year’s GlobalGiving GES Project Challenge.  

In February 2007, GlobalGiving hosted the GES (then called IYVS) Project Challenge on our website (www.globalgiving.com), an outcome opportunity for all delegates to apply their learnings from the Summit and fundraise for their projects. Four were invited to become part of the GlobalGiving site. Alfinio’s award is a celebration of his impressive and compelling presentation of the challenges and accomplishment of the community in Jazmin, Costa Rica. His project has shared great stories that have engaged new donors and as a result have continued to raise funds.

Nathaniel Whittemore, the co-founder of GES introduced the first-ever GlobalGiving Achievement Award, Alfinio and GlobalGiving. He talked about our personal ” moments of obligation - moments when we can longer do nothing”. Recounting the story of William Wilberforce and Britain’s abolitionist movement, he, in fact, told the story of the GES delegates in that room gathered from nearly 40 countries.  Profound change is driven by these very moments of truth. His words resonated within me. This is also the story of GlobalGiving which began with one such moment for its co-founders Mari Kuraishi and Dennis Whittle. It led to the creation of Development Marketplace at the World Bank and then GlobalGiving. In the true spirit of  social entrepreneurship, GlobalGiving isn’t the perpetuation of an individual’s sense of obligation to social change, but a living commitment to inspiring people towards another realization - not just that we can be connected into something larger but more importantly, we can influence it. This is the mission of GlobalGiving - to provide a space to realize these moments of truth and to borrow Nathaniel’s words – moments in which we can no longer do nothing whether we are a donor or a social entrepreneur.

GlobalGiving celebrates Alfinio, Liz, Caitlin and Daniel — the GES alumni on GlobalGiving– and their passion, energy and commitment to leading social change. We’re very excited to continue working with the amazing young entrepreneurs that attend the Summit each year. This year’s GES Project Challenge will run from April 24th to May 13th. You can track it by visiting the GlobalGiving website during those dates. We’re very privileged to be able to support them as they realise that they can no longer do nothing.

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Recently, the GlobalGiving blog has been moonlighting over at eBay’s What Gives!? blog.  So when my friend, Roman from eBay, emailed me yesterday with a link asking me to write a post about it, I could hardly say no.  Frequent readers of this blog will know that I never pass up a legitimate excuse to blog about the Red Sox.

A quick recap of JerseyGate 08 for anyone not as thoroughly engaged with New England sports: The Yankees are building a new stadium, and one of the workers on the concrete crew - a diehard Red Sox fan - decided to “curse the new stadium by burying David Ortiz’s jersey in the brand new foundation of the new park. This is humorous at the very least, but after an 86-year World Series drought in Boston, AL East fans take even the vaguest semblence of a curse seriously (even if they won’t admit it). So seriously, in fact, they dug up the jersey.

But there’s a point beyond good old Red Sox/Yankees trivia.

The jersey is being auctioned off on eBay. They’re using this latest incident in the long-time Red Sox/Yankees rivalry to raise money for cancer research.

The jersey is being auctioned in its current condition (”It still has some cement on it!”, the auction page boasts) as part of a larger package that includes tickets to an upcoming Red Sox game at Fenway Park. All proceeds (over $30,000 at the time of publication) are going to the Jimmy Fund, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

I’ve written here before about this concept: Sometimes the best approach isn’t to try to get people excited about what you’re doing, but find out what they’re already excited about and get involved.

What started off as a funny prank and baseball folklore for years to come has ended up as a generous windfall for the Jimmy Fund and cancer research. (Construction) hats off to you, Gino Castignoli, Randy Levine, Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber.

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We probably don’t say as much as we should about the people and organizations who have directly supported building the GlobalGiving marketplace. It’s a pretty amazing group of funders - Omidyar Network, Skoll Foundation, John and Ginger Sall, and the Hewlett Foundation - and a couple of anonymous donors - have all contributed significantly. We are both humbled and inspired by their confidence in GG’s vision, and our ability to execute against that vision. A few years back the Kellogg Foundation provided a small grant that was very timely. And we are about to work with them on some innovative ways to leverage online giving tools to support their grantees.

Two reasons for this post:  First, as a shout out to Kellogg for being a strong and innovative funder in the philanthropy space. They have consistently supported anchor organizations in the philanthropic sector (e.g, Independent Sector and Guidestar), and made important investments in emerging and innovative organizations like Kiva, Network for Good and the Women’s Funding Network. We’re glad to count ourselves among that latter group.

Second, on Monday the Chronicle of Philanthropy ran an article about WKKF’s revitalized mission - focusing on vulnerable children. Since the Chronicle has a subscription-only block on the article, (if you have a subscription, can be found here) here are the opening paragraphs:

In May 2007, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation gathered its more than 200 staff members for a three-day discussion and brainstorming session. It was the start of a soul-searching process that has led to a new mission statement and, for the foundation’s program staff, a new organizational structure that goes into effect this week.The changes are designed to break down divisions among departments within the organization, seek multifaceted approaches to solving problems, and sharpen the organization’s focus on the vision of its founder, W.K. Kellogg, the breakfast-cereal magnate.

All of the foundation’s grant-making staff members will be assigned to interdisciplinary teams in an organizational system that is rare among foundations but common in large companies.

Sterling Speirn, president of the foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., describes the overhaul as “starting the next generation of our work.”

Speirn most recently led the Peninsula Community Foundation, so he’s lived in the most innovative valley in the country. He has brought on a new crop of leaders, to augment the strong leadership team already there. WKKF is taking on its own culture and norms by structuring itself in a very “matrix-y” fashion - and sharpening the focus of its grantmaking. And they are committing an initial $100 million to a new