Madera Group

This month, the Madera Group continues our work with Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, launching a new “campaign within a campaign” to help increase enrollment in their program, Make Mine a Million $ Business. Founded by social entrepreneur and author Nell Merlino (who created “Take your Daughter to Work Day”), Count Me In helps women entrepreneurs grow their businesses by providing (for free or at very low cost) a suite of online tools, webinars, national and regional events, and access to business development experts.

I am in San Francisco for the national conference of WBENC, the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, giving the keynote address at lunch today.  As I prepare to speak I am overwhelmed with the importance of women getting together, reaching out and venturing out to talk with other business owners about how they are handling the dramatic changes in the marketplace, the economy and their family lives.

Change.org has launched 

a new career service and online marketplace for social change jobs called Jobs for Change.  They’ve created the site in partnership with more than a dozen nonprofits, including Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, AmeriCorps Alums, Echoing Green, Network for Good, and Encore Careers.

The Clinton Foundation and Madera Group launched a new video about the Clinton Foundation Millennium Network’s work to inspire young philanthropists to become the “How Generation.”

In January of 2009, the two founders of the Diabetes Hands Foundation, Manny Hernandez and Andreina Davila, asked the Madera Group to help them envision and execute the next steps in their organizational growth.

The gala opening of the David Brower Center this Sunday in downtown Berkeley is, literally, a dream come true. I say this because I sat down four years ago with the founder and chief visionary of Berkeley’s showcase green office building, Peter Buckley, and the renowned UC Berkeley cognitive scientist, George Lakoff, to talk about what it means to create a place for good people to work, live, play, and help make the world a better place.

Here’s a recent example of a fundraising video appeal from the William J. Clinton Foundation which Madera Group produced for the Foundation. The appeal features former President Bill Clinton speaking about why giving to others is critical in hard economic times.

My friend and online alter ego Michael Stein (yes, there is another!) offered a useful write-up way back in July 2008 about The Nature Conservancy’s use of Facebook for fundraising. Michael writes:

There’s been a lot of excitement in the last year about social networking in general, and about Facebook in particular.

For the last year, Madera Group has had the honor to work in online messaging and fundraising with a major foundation that works to solve pressing global challenges. We are attaining the highest click-through rates (three times normal) through the use of video.

Last week I attended the Online Giving Marketplace Conference at Stanford University sponsored by the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) with Madera Group founder Kath Delaney. The following 5 key takeaways stood out for me:

1. Optimize operations and resource allocation: Kiva President Premal Shah is focusing on “mind blowing efficiency” in his organization.