Big Picture Thinking at Heart of New Publication

The Foundation Center celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2006. As part of its anniversary, it ran a series of interviews with leaders in the philanthropic arena. Now the Center has compiled those interviews into a book and is offering it free of charge as a download, or in print by mail.

Philanthropy in the 21st Century: The Foundation Center's 50th Anniversary Interviews features the musings of philanthropy news makers such as David Rockefeller, Vartan Gregorian, and Sally Osberg.

Reading through these interviews is a wonderful way to review philanthropy's past and present, but also to think out of the box about its future. It may be just the thing for your summer downtime reading. The interviews are bound to spark your curiosity and imagination about your own philanthropy or the direction of your nonprofit.

I was particularly taken with an interview with Daniel Ben-Horin, Founder and President of CompuMentor. You may know this organization as TechSoup.com, one of its websites. The article, Philanthropy and the Next-Generation Web, delves into how computer technology has and is transforming the nonprofit world. It also explores what the rise of what Ben-Horin terms "social media" has in store for us.

Many of us remember trying to grasp "virtual," "hot-link," and "HTML." Now, "social media" is breaking our brains even as our children and grandchildren surf the new terrain with ease.

The interview with Ben-Horin may help, and the other interviews in this excellent collection will challenge and enlighten you.