Have a great idea but don’t know where to begin? Feel like you are on an island far, far away from the resources you need?
Or have you already started something, joined something or support something and just want to meet other like-minded people in the area?
Well, if you haven’t heard Craigslist Foundation is having their [...]

I have been reading a lot about “Project Streamline”, the proliferation of non-profit “labs”, and the recent announcement by Pew to rent office space to non-profits in the DC area. These developments, along with the increase of coworking spaces, beg the question, what would happen if a number of philanthropic foundations shared office space? [...]

OK, so I have iPhone envy. I admit it. I mean who doesn’t? It has 3G technology! (Never mind that I had to look up what exactly 3G technology meant). I’ll probably buy one when they become available next month. But this begs the question, what am I do to with my no longer as [...]

If you’re like any average New Yorker, you probably have a very small mailbox. And at the end of the day you probably check that very small mailbox to find it stuffed to the gills with unwanted junk mail. One of the biggest offenders of junk mail is those pesky catalogs that go directly from [...]

We’ve all been swamped with a million different threads pulling us in various directions and that is where I have been for the past couple of weeks – hence, no posts. My summer resolution is to pick up the slack and reinvigorate the blog. No more putting it off until tomorrow. With new vigor applied [...]

Recently, VPF members elected the environment as the topic we will focus on in 2008 – meaning that our Grants Committee team is currently hard at work developing an RFP to actively seek out New York City’s most innovative, emerging social entrepreneurs that are tackling local environmental issues.
Appropriately, I had a discussion this morning with [...]

Many of us are in the post-holiday, consumption-glut coma. Each year we swear that the next will be different. But each year we repeat a similar pattern:
Frantic buzzing from store to store via foot or finger (world wide web) searching for that perfect gift for each person on our list without busting our budget. Then [...]

Donors are increasingly skeptical of how their carefully placed contributions are used. It seems that across the board donors are fed up with the scandals, the misplaced money, or the unwillingness to disclose exact money allocation among some nonprofits.
A recent article, “Where does your money really go?“, takes a broad view of this issue.
Worth the [...]

As the first blog entry for NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund (VPF), I think it appropriate to talk about how we started and why. The ‘how’ and ‘why’ tend to be the most commonly asked questions so it seems a logical place to begin…
It all started as an article about giving circles in an airline magazine. [...]