An Insider’s Guide to the Craiglist Foundation’s Nonprofit Boot Camp by Peter Kazarian

FLiP's new friend, Peter Kazarian, attended the recent Craigslist Foundation event in San Francisco. I was thrilled when he reached out to see if we wanted him to post on our site. Of course we do! We're always looking for new authors with interesting topics. Without further ado, Peter Kazarian's Craigslist Bootcamp review:

When Craig Newmark founded online-classifieds giant Craigslist.org out of his San Francisco apartment in 1995, his central idea was to “connect people.” The famous site grew out of a list of Bay Area events that Newmark would send out to his friends and family. It expanded quickly and is now the largest classified listing service of any kind, anywhere.

True to Craig’s original concept of “connecting people” for mutual benefit, part of the proceeds from Craigslist’s pay-to-publish job listings go towards funding the charitable Craigslist Foundation. The Craigslist Foundation’s mission is to serve nonprofits by connecting them with the resources and expertise they need to accomplish their goals. The motto of Craigslist is “people helping people,” whereas the motto of its charitable foundation is “helping people help.” To that end, they offer annual Nonprofit Boot Camp conferences in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. These conferences are a place for members of the social sector to exchange ideas, learn best practices, and network, with a goal of allowing hardworking 501(c)(3)s to better achieve their missions.

The San Francisco Bay Area conference took place last weekend in San Mateo, CA. The Foundation- subsidized tickets were a reasonable $80, within the budgetary reach of plenty of organizations. San Francisco-based youth nonprofit Loco Bloco led a drumline up to the stage as an opener, welcoming the Foundation’s Executive Director, Darian Rodriguez Heyman. He spent some time cheering the audience on, recognizing their devotion, albeit through varying causes, to positive social change. After speaking more about the Foundation’s goals and hope for Boot Camp, he introduced the keynote speaker: Emmet Carson Ph.D., President/CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Dr. Carson continued to celebrate us, the audience, for our vested interest in improving society. In his words, we were important to the democratic process. Who knew?

After a brief Q&A session, we were released to begin the day's activities. The main tent had exhibition booths where event sponsors could showcase their products and services for potential nonprofit clients. Vendors ranged from database and software vendors (Pledgemaker, Softrek, Convio) to local colleges with social enterprise-focused business schools (Stanford, UC Berkeley) to individual fundraising and grantwriting consultancies. One such vendor/sponsor, Consulting Within Reach, made career coaches available for one-on-one scheduled blocks of free career consulting.

After participants left the exhibition hall, the seminars soon started up. There were six distinct educational tracks available for attendees:

• Nonprofit Basics
• Big Ideas
• Technology
• Lobbying and Advocacy
• Fundraising
• Social Entrepreneurship

I chose Fundraising, because of its relevance to my job, but I kept wanting to run off to a speech by the President of Kiva.org (at the Social Enterprise tent), or a mini-panel on government-focused charitable fundraising (Lobbying & Advocacy). That’s not to say that there wasn’t plenty to do in Fundraising Boot Camp. There was so much going on that I didn’t really have a chance to sneak away!

The first session was titled “Reality Grantmaking”- exactly what it sounds like, minus tribal challenges and voting people off the island. Eligible nonprofits competed for mini-grants of $1000, submitting proposals which were then scored and awarded grants live, by a panel of experienced grantmakers. They would list their rationale for their scores and it did a lot to bring transparency to what sometimes seems to be the black box process of grantmaking.

The second session was about getting board members to participate in fundraising. A representative from Foundation Center spoke about his two decades of experience in gently pushing board members to take a larger and larger role in helping to ensure the financial viability of the organization.

Following an afternoon break and a second keynote by the Executive Director of nonprofit software consultancy Aspiration, we returned for the final seminar in the Fundraising track

“Dirty Sexy Money…Online.” - This suggestively named seminar was one of the most informative. The Vice President of email fundraising firm M+R Services took us through two of his company’s cause-related e-campaigns. We learned about the layout of electronic fundraising appeals and channeling a reader’s attention towards that “donate” button. He also focused on acquiring email addresses and mentioning the benefits of email as a medium, namely low costs and the ability to repeatedly solicit the same group of donors. He made one last, very interesting point: the recent growth of online, small donor fundraising we’ve seen in this year’s political arena comes more from campaigns adopting the best practices of internet fundraising on a large scale, than from any earth-shattering new innovations they’ve introduced.

And with that, the Boot Camp adjourned to a happy hour at a local lounge. There was definitely plenty of food for thought, and what I experienced was definitely at once an inspirational message to social sector devotees, and a meaty guide to work directed at those same nonprofit practitioners. I was surprised at the gender, age, and ethnic diversity of the crowd as well as the number of people in attendance, all of them willing to pay money to learn how to work better for their nonprofits. Not a bad bunch of people to spend a Saturday with.

Comments

[Davita]

Thanks Peter! This is a great summary. It sounds like the Nonprofit Boot Camp was well worth the visit!