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President of the International Skating Union
From Sonia Bianchetti Garbato
Figure skating is dying before our eyes. To say that the sport is sick and in need of emergency treatment before it's too late is as obvious as saying that when it rains, it is necessary to open an umbrella.
The unbelievably low standard of skating, with very few exceptions, at all the 2006 Grand Prix events, including the final in St. Petersburg, and at the European Championships last week in Warsaw, is an alert that can no longer be ignored by the International Skating Union. It is tough to watch the sport fall apart.
After the unfortunate scandal at the 2002 Olympic Games 2002 in Salt Lake City, a new judging system was adopted by the ISU. The intent was to fix up the judging, but the impact it had on skating went much farther than this.
Unfortunately, while the "prescription" did not solve any of the problems of judging (the judging
now is far from being satisfactory; I would say it is worse than ever both on the technical side -- Grade of Execution or GOE -- and the Program Components), it killed the beauty and the popularity of the sport. As we say in Italy, "la medicina è stata peggio del male" (the prescription was worse than the disease); it killed the patient.
By your own admission, Ottavio, you are not an expert in figure skating, but you have eyes and ears and I cannot believe that you do not see and realise what is happening on the ice and in the figure skating world.
Here are some objective facts that in my opinion generate great concern and deserve consideration.
The future of TV coverage is dim
The last television contract signed by the ISU in 2004, for all ISU Championships and the Grand Prix series, dropped from $22 million from ABC to $5 million from ESPN, the only network to make an offer. As reported by Philip Hersh in his article for the Chicago Tribune, Barry Frank, head of International Management Group's TV division who represented the ISU as its rights fee, declared: "I think they have a real problem. […] When the four-year deal expires after the 2008 season, the union could be out in the cold." The golden era of figure skating is going down the tubes and the days of earning big money and high TV ratings appear to be over.
It is time for the ISU leadership to start to analyze with an open mind what might be the reasons behind this disaster and, if possible, try to find a solution.
There is no doubt that part of the reason is the scandal at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, which destroyed the credibility of the sport, followed by a questionable investigation carried out by the ISU, and the soft policy adopted in punishing the crooks. But also secret judging, the abolition of the old 6.0 system, the introduction of the new complex system that people did not understand and still do not understand, the fact that the competitions have become boring and uninteresting with the programs looking like photocopies one of the other in all branches, played a role in this sad process.
On the other hand, many figure skating experts already in 2002 when the principles on which it was based were announced foresaw the impact that the new system could have had on the sport
Empty arenas
The audiences used to fill the arenas when Figure Skating events were being staged and the tickets were sold out months before the events, at least in the U.S. and Canada. This was no longer the case in 2006, neither for the World Championships held in Calgary nor for all the Grand Prix events.
After the poor attendance at 2006 Skate Canada 2006, in a much smaller arena than usual (only about 5,800 seats), David Dore, the ISU Figure Skating Vice President, declared: "We have to win back people, there's no question about that. It's not an easy process. There's no quick fix. Improved video presentations, autograph sessions with skaters in arena lobbies during competitions and giveaways are all part of the new marketing mode. We're trying to do a lot more of that. We were so involved in changing the judging system that we kind of missed the presentation part of the sport." How true, Mr. Dore! You did miss "the presentation part of the sport", the true "Presentation", now renamed "Program Components", involving the skaters' programs not the marketing.
Not extra entertainment, Mr. Dore, like 'dance team' girls shaking whatever they have to shake or maybe some strippers on the Zamboni during the resurfacing of the ice. The fans do not want entertainment. They want great skating with passion and feeling. They don't want to look at the same performance in a different costume or with different music over and over, they want artistry, creativity and originality.
Frankly speaking, the idea of having "diversions" to occupy the audience while nothing is happening on the ice makes me laugh. In my opinion it is rather misdirected, like treating the symptom instead of the disease! If more off-ice entertainment is now required in order to have larger audiences once again, this must be considered a failure of the NJS because of the monotonous and uninteresting programs performed and the inability for the audiences to understand the scoring system, unlike in the past.
One of the unique "features" of figure skating is that, although it is a very hard sport, it is also entertainment and it can be watched and enjoyed also by spectators who are not deeply involved in it or are not great experts in any of the four disciplines. This is what made it so popular in TV and in the arenas.
David Dore, after Skate Canada, also declared to the press that: "The programs are far harder now than they used to be, especially in men's skating. They're very, very exciting", and the skaters "are doing far more complicated stuff than people ever did before".
Are you sure you are talking of figure skating, David? I know you, you are an expert, and I cannot believe that you may truly believe that.
Try to remember, if you can, at least a couple of programs after 2003, which you could compare with the "Winter" by Bond or "The Man in the Iron Mask" of Yagudin, the "Carmen" of Plushenko or the "Love story" of Salé-Pelletier at the 2002 Olympic Games, the Violin Fantasy on Turandot of Shen-Zhao in Washington in 2003, or "The Song of the Black Swan" by H. Villa Lobos of Michelle Kwan or "Chaplin" of Berezhnaia-Sikharulidze in Vancouver in 2001.
Prior to the new system, the ladies did all the triple jumps including a triple axel performed many years ago by Midori Ito, plus several ladies executed triple-triple jumps combinations. Today, a few ladies attempt triple-triple combinations, and a few triple Axels have been landed. The level of difficulty is no greater than it was in the past.
The men executed all the triple jumps, and several men mastered quad toe loop and quad Salchow. Among the top men, it was the norm to do triple-triple combinations and even quad-triple combinations, and to successfully land nearly all of them. Now it has not improved; it is worse. Fewer men execute quads and fewer land them.
Previously in the ladies and the men's events, falls among the top skaters were rare, and the programs were beautifully presented. Now the results appear to be determined by who falls down the fewest times since skater after skater makes serious errors or are sprawled all over the ice. The system now requires too much content in the singles programs, which makes it so difficult on the skaters. There is nowhere they can rest anymore.
They cannot rest on a spin or in the footwork. They cannot even rest on the spiral sequences. This is much too demanding on their bodies.
According to experienced analysts, the skaters take around 2 minutes to do four spins and the step sequences. That leaves more or less 2 to 2 1/2 minutes to do 7-8 jump elements and all the connecting moves for 13-14 elements. With a few seconds spent on each jump element, that leaves about 8 to 10 seconds for connecting moves between each element.
They have to rush from one jump element to the next and this does not allow enough time to get ready both physically and mentally. This is even too obvious; no one could object to this.
Pair skating is no better. On the contrary, this discipline is also suffering! The new requirements have ruined even the death spirals! They are more like a pivot position now. No longer do we see the pure and beautiful move as was executed by the Protopopovs. The technical panel does not appreciate the correct execution any more, now the skaters have to have changes of position! As a result, the man is almost standing and the lady only half way down. More appropriate would be to call it the "upright spiral"! This is entirely regrettable.
One obvious change since the new system was introduced is that spins have become more complicated. But at what cost! They have become slower, travelling, and often very ugly positions are seen! But what is even worse is that they are repetitive, with the same "difficult feature" repeated in each spin by each skater in each program. All the four spins allowed have become more or less spin combinations, with the same variations of positions, directions, and edges. The spins are more difficult but not better than before. The quality has suffered, not to speak of the originality. A triple Axel with two fingers into the skater's nose would definitely be more difficult than the usual triple Axel, but could we consider that an improvement? So please give us back the old wonderful, simple basic camel, sit or layback spins, fast, well centered, in beautiful, original and aesthetically appealing positions.
And what to say about the step sequences. Some skaters are attempting more difficult steps, very often in slow motion while spasmodically screwing up every part of their body, throwing their arms up and down just to get that all important "use of the body" feature. The spiral step sequence, which was one of the most beautiful elements in the ladies' programs, has now become as ugly and unattractive as possible, with the girls turned into computers counting the number of seconds they hold the free leg in each position and on each edge. So it is no longer the music that dictates what to do, how and when, but arithmetic! This cannot work in figure skating.
I am more convinced than ever that a simple upright or cross-foot spin, with many rotations, at great speed and well centred, such as Stéphane Lambiel used to do, or a "simple" spiral sequence such as those of Michelle Kwan or Sasha Cohen, is by far more attractive and worthy than any of those crazy "beauty killers" we are seeing today.
Over ice dancing, I would like to draw a veil of mercy. The new requirements imposing lifts not higher than…. or no longer than …..or spins of less than so many revolutions, have turned the discipline into a painful imitation of pair skating with the lady carried around like a handbag in pornographic positions.
More injuries than ever
I won't list the names of the skaters who were injured this season, but the new system is surely to blame for these injuries as is it is more than just a coincidence. Too many skaters now are trying too hard to obtain the highest levels, hence the increase in injuries.
Dirty Ice
Many knowledgeable persons continue to stress that no transparency in the judging system is encouraging deals to be made, as now there is no fear of being discovered. Recent interviews of two top dance coaches, Zhulin and Platov, were more than explicit. Are you going to investigate, Ottavio?
There is a group of talented and promising young skaters knocking at the door. Let them grow free to express their talent as they like, free to exploit all their potential creativity, originality and passion. Only this can save our sport and may raise its popularity again. It will take time, unfortunately, but it must be done before it is too late.
Ottavio, you are the only person who has the authority and the duty to impose upon the so-called "ISU experts" to reconsider the whole concept of the NJS, keeping the good aspects of it, which exist, but reducing the number of requirements and restrictions, abolishing anonymous judging and giving back to the judges their dignity, allowing them to mark the performances on the ice as they honestly and openly think the skaters deserve, without being restricted into the unfortunate "corridor" just to avoid "warnings".
I am sure you do not want to be remembered as the ISU President who killed figure skating and the ISU.
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Such is Lake Placid, as unpretentious and unprepossessing a little item as one could imagine. Among the names on its pedigree are TV writer extraordinaire DavidE. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope) and horror director not-so-extraordinaire Steve Miner, who brought us House, Halloween: H2O, and some of the early Friday the 13thepics.
The taxonomy of Lake Placid is equally clear-cut. Genus: horror. Subgenus: eco-weirdness. Class: reptilian. Species: crocodile. In short, this is Jaws with a big, thrashingtail.
The film starts out on a delightfully frothy note as a diver from the Bureau of Fish and Game gets chomped in half by an unseen, swimming something in a large, murky lake. In the aftermath of this lovingly rendered scene, a group of experts converges in the small Maine village near the lake. Jack Wells (Bill Pullman) is the Handsome Youngish Man, another Fish and Game ranger. Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda) is the Pretty Younger Woman, a prickly but oh-so-squeamish paleontologist whose presence never really makes sense, despite a brave attempt to justify it with a back-story about a broken relationship. Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt) is the Eccentric Comic Relief/Expository Device, a crocodile expert who shows up with a wisecracking mouth and a helicopter full of high-tech equipment.
The local who must keep the peace among these three is the long-suffering sheriff, Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson), who may be a rube but is a good man to have around when the giant mutant reptile shows up. Also on hand are Mrs.Bickerman(Betty White), the Crazy Old Lady, and a sexy deputy (Meredith Salenger -- my, how Natty Gann has grown up!) as the Romantic Interest For the Male SecondLead.
We don't have to wait as long as usual to glimpse the huge -- but frankly, lumbering -- 30-foot crocodile, which occasionally likes to pop up on land to snack on a large mammal. Despite the fact that, from the beginning, the beast just cries out to have a compressed air tank stuffed in his mouth and exploded, Scott and Cyr make the usual ideological arguments about the Importance of Preserving This Unique Specimen, even as he is chomping down their comrades in glorious Panavision. This leads to a bizarre scheme to capture the big guy, best characterized as "helicopter trawling."
Lake Placid is basically a modern studio version of the sort of thing Roger Corman used to knock out between breakfast and teatime, distinguished by a more upscale cast and fancier special effects. (Come to think of it, I've seen TV test patterns with fancier effects than the old Corman films.) Miner, as always, way overuses the shock-cut fake-out. ("Don't sneak up behind me like that! I thought you were the crocodile!") The only genuine surprises on hand are the few moments when the film defies the expectations that have been programmed into our collective neurons by the past 25 years of horror movies: After the story appears to be over, just when you're sure there's going to be one more scare scene, no matter how little sense it would make there isn'tone.
The filmmakers earn points for embracing brevity rather than padding the proceedings. The movie times out at about 75minutes from credit sequence to credit sequence. Miner really doesn't have much of a discernible touch, but at least Kelley has provided a good number of the smart quips at which he's so expert. Not surprisingly, Pullman and Fonda do a nice professional job without having much by way of characters with which to work with, though Fonda's screaming ninny act -- in contrast to all the stoic, get-the-job-done guys -- seems about 30 years out ofdate.
The love-hate interaction between Platt and Gleeson is far more interesting. The Irish Gleeson (The General, The Butcher Boy) seems perfectly comfortable with an American accent. Platt's character -- a conflation of the Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw characters from Jaws -- gets most of the good lines; and Platt once again -- as in the Impostors and Bulworth -- proves that he is a brilliantly resourceful comic actor.
You've certainly seen it before, and you've probably seen it better. But for quick, drive-in-style fun, Lake Placid is perfectly adequate.

subset: commoncrawl


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In Surah Al-A'raaf (196): Innaa waliyyiyAllah... hould I lengthen yi here for two harakats?
Assalamualaikum warahmatullah,
Thank you very much for this informative website.
I have one simple question regarding Mad Tamkin. In Surah Al-A'raaf (196): Innaa waliyyiyAllah...
Should I lengthen yi here for two harakats? Based on my understanding of your answer (6 Safar 1423/Apr. 19, 2002) , the lengthening is two vowels (two harakats) for Mad Tamkin. Is it right? I checked this by listening to some qaris but all of them recite yi with one harakat.
Would you please explain this to me?
JazakAllahhu khairan kathira. May Allah bless you.
Wassalam Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh,
The word in the phrase has two ya', the first ya' has a Shadda and a kasra and it is therefore required to give it the timing of a ya' saakinah then a vowel. The second Ya has a Fathah. If you look carefully at this example there is no medd tamkin or natural medd here because there is no letter of medd. Therefore the ya is only lengthened one vowel count (harakah) because of the ruling that all voweled letters are lengthened only one haraka. This is unlike the example of in which the first Ya occurs with a Shadda and a kasra while the second Ya has no vowel (meaning it is saakinah). This second Ya is therefore a letter of medd and should be lengthened two vowel counts which are the two counts of the natural medd.
The early scholars of tajweed did not use the term medd tamkin. The circumstances for the modern books in which the term medd tamkin is used are nothing more than the natural medd with an accent, or emphasis because of the shaddah on the ya'.
In the case of stopping on this same word, , we note that the first ya' is pronounced as stated above with a shadda and a kasra, but the second ya is now pronounced with a sukoon (because we always put a presented sukoon on the last letter of a word when stopping on it) and therefore this ya becomes a letter of medd which should be lengthened two vowlel counts, which are the counts of the natural medd.
Wa Jazakum Allahu Khairan. May Allah bless you also, and all Muslims.
Wassalam Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah
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Now, onto bigger and better things, at least more Christmasy things! Here are a couple cards from some of our Yahoo Group members.
Joyce made a 3D project--it's a Gingerbread House, lit from the inside by a flameless tea candle!!
Virginia M. developed this beautiful card for our SBP Challenge! Doesn't it look like perhaps a retro 50's card??
SO Happy St. Nick's Day--don't forget to put out your shoes for a treat (if you've been good). Check back next week for some more holiday inspiration!!


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Hello all
The federal agency potential shutdown should not affect on-going grants. It will probably affect issuing of any new awards, reviews or activities that involve federal workers. It also may affect proposal submissions.
Federal agencies are posting their individual policies but these seem to be changing frequently. We are monitoring the situation.
Have a good weekend!
Amy Lederberg, Albertha Barrett, Marca Gurule, and Robin Morris
Amy R. Lederberg, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President for Research & Professor of Educational Psychology and Special Education
University Research Services & Administration
Georgia State University
P. O. Box 3999
Atlanta, GA 30302-3999
Ph 404-413-3505; Fax 404-413-3504
In person: 218 Dahlberg Hall 30 Courtland Street


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In the beginning and continuing until not so long ago the Jesuit Community and Marquette University were nearly identical. The rector (superior) of the Community and the president of the university were the same person, and other officials and the teachers were all or in large part Jesuits. The Jesuits lived together in the same building that housed the offices, classrooms, library, and laboratories of the university.
When Marquette University began, of course, the numbers--both of Jesuits and of students--were small. The stately building located at 10th and State (where the new Wisconsin correctional facility now stands) was dedicated on August 28, 1881, and the first class of 35 students registered on September 5. At that time the Jesuit Community on hand to run the "college" and the church next door comprised 3 priests, 3 scholastics (young Jesuits not yet ordained) who were teachers, and 3 lay brothers (who took care of the Community's needs).
The university and the Community, during the twenty-five years on State Street, grew steadily, and when the institution moved in 1907 to 12th and Wisconsin Avenue next to the Gesu Church, the Community had been substantially augmented. But the organization and structure remained essentially the same. The new Johnston Hall was a self-contained unity. It housed the offices of the university, the library, the classrooms and laboratories, and a chapel--and in its south wing, the Jesuit Community. The president is reported to have said, when the capacious building was completed, "Thank God, we will never have to build again."
The Jesuit Community then numbered 24 priests, 7 scholastics, and 6 lay brothers, and it had become more diverse, a "mixed community." It included Jesuits who administered the university and the Gesu Church, who taught classes in the university and in the "Academy" (which remained at 10th and State), and some who did outside work. Three were shown in the official catalog as "missionaries to the Polish people" in Milwaukee. One poor father was too ill to have a regular assignment.
Marquette University continued to grow. Between 1907 and 1911, it added schools of medicine (including dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing), law, engineering, business, journalism, and music, often by merging or affiliating with existing institutions in the city. These schools were expensive, and the university had no endowment. What enabled it to survive were occasional gifts from benefactors and, especially, the presence of the Jesuits, who worked without salary, accepting only the cost of their simply living arrangements, thus furnishing what came to be known as a "living endowment."
But even though the community also grew, the Jesuit teachers were concentrated in the humanities, especially theology and philosophy, with a scattering of priests in other disciplines. The professional schools relied on lay persons with the necessary training in law and medicine and business. The Jesuit presence in the schools that did not have a Jesuit dean was an official called the regent. Those Jesuit regents were a kind of liaison between the school and the president of the university; they had few duties besides maintaining Jesuit ideals among the faculty and students. But after 1960 the office of regent quietly disappeared.
The end of World War II marked a new period of development of the university, for the school began to expand rapidly and to enhance its university character. In 1945 the community counted 48 priests, 12 scholastics, and 2 brothers, but 14 of the priests and all of the scholastics (while still living at 12th and Wisconsin) taught each day at Marquette University Jesuit High School, which had been built west on Wisconsin Avenue in 1925, replacing the old Academy on State Street. Not until the early '50s was a residence built for the Jesuits of the high school, and then they formed a new community separate and distinct from the mother community in Johnston Hall, where the traditional work of a university community continued.
Then, in 1970, the old arrangements between the Jesuit Community and the university were radically changed. At that time the single legal and canonical entity was split to form two distinct organizations. One of them was Marquette University, with its Jesuit president and a board of trustees who were responsible for the university. A majority of the trustees were lay persons, to who were added a smaller group of Jesuits from outside the Community. The other was the Marquette Jesuit Community, with its own rector and separate legal and canonical status. Its legal title, as it was incorporated under the laws of the state of Wisconsin, was Marquette Jesuit Associates, Inc.
This act of "separate incorporation" began a new era for the Community. The university continued to operate as it had before the split--with a large number of lay persons in teaching and in administrative positions. But the Community now received the salaries, comparable to those of the lay faculty, paid to individual Jesuits. Jesuits teach at the university at the time were tenured at their present rank, but new Jesuit faculty had to follow the university's regular processes for hiring and for gaining tenure. This meant that the Jesuit provincial superior no longer could arbitrarily assign Jesuits to teach at Marquette (although his permission to the individual Jesuit was still needed), and he and the Community's rector no longer had any authority within the university. This momentous change, fortunately, went smoothly enough, based as it was on a legal contract of rights and responsibilities and division of property drawn up and signed by the university president, the rector of the Community, and the provincial superior (who is the superior of all the Jesuits in the Wisconsin Province in which the Community and the university are located). The contract provided that the president of the university, although now chosen by the trustees rather than assigned by the provincial, had to be a Jesuit, and theology classes and a campus ministry were guaranteed. Henceforth, the Jesuits did not "own" or "control" the university, nor did they any longer from a "living endowment," thought the contract specified that the Community would donate its financial surplus to the university. The Jesuits' influence came now from the "presence" on campus of a few dedicated Jesuit teachers, administrators, and ministers; the authority of the Jesuit president in running the institution' and the pervasive Jesuit legacy of the school, which was an important factor in attracting students.
A symbolic as well as practical change, pressured by the large numbers of Jesuits, led to the move, in 1973, of the Community from its longtime home in Johnston Hall to a new Jesuit Residence at 1404 West Wisconsin Avenue, in the heart of the campus across from the Memorial Library. The pastors at Gesu, however, elected to remain in Johnston Hall, close to the church.
The venerable and highly visible building that the Jesuits acquired had been erected about the time of World War I as the Stratford Arms Hotel, a home for residential as well as transient patrons, with a restaurant and a popular bar. It had been used by naval enlistees during World War II and then continued its hotel existence until it was purchased by the university about 1960 for use as a women's residence hall (called Heraty Hall).
Heraty Hall had been partly renovated by the university for use of its students, and the Jesuit Community continued the renovation process. The Jesuits, for the most part, were pleased with the new quarters, which furnished unheard-of luxuries as private baths, private telephones, air conditioning, wall-to-wall carpeting, and laundry facilities. At the time of the move there were about ninety rooms available for Jesuit living quarters on the second, third, and fourth floors, while the first floor furnished space for a dining room and kitchen, a recreation room, a chapel, and offices and parlors. In the basement were storage spaces, maintenance shops, a snack room, TV rooms, an exercise room and a library. After the Alumni Memorial Union was built in 1990, the area between the Union and the Jesuit Residence was developed into a pleasant garden.
In 1974, the first year after the move, the Marquette Jesuit Community had 88 priests and 2 brothers listed in the province catalogue. But these summary figures do not present a complete profile of the Community, which, like other large Jesuit communities in the United States, was made up of Jesuits pursuing a great variety of ministries. The largest number of men, of course, were devoted to work in the university, as administrators and teachers (57), with five of them living in a small dependent community on Kilbourn Street. There were the provincial and his staff (7), who lived in the Community but worked in offices outside the university. The remainder were a mixed group: men who served the Community as assistants to the rector but did not work in the university; several young Jesuit priests studying a variety of subjects at the university; older men (some retired professors) who did pastoral work around the city; men assigned to the Community but living in nursing homes, and still others. The focus of the Community--which at one time had been almost exclusively apostolic ministry at the university--was now somewhat diffused. But the Residence at 1404 was full and vibrant. And there was continual change in membership as mean arrived and others left for new assignments.
After 1974 the numbers in the Community held steady for some years and then gradually declined. The decline was due in large part to the serious drop in the number of Jesuits in the United States. Vocations to the Society of Jesus--as to other religious orders and to the diocesan clergy--plummeted in the '80s and '90s and have not yet recovered. Few new Jesuits joined the Marquette staff, and the aging Jesuits who retired from the university ministry could not all be replaced.
In addition, new housing arrangements withdrew Jesuits from the Jesuit Residence at 1404 (popularly know as the Jes Res). In 1989 the Wisconsin Province opened a new residence, Arrupe House, at 831 North 13th Street, and a dozen or so of the men who lived at 1404 were assigned to the new house, including 7 Jesuits who worked at the university. Then in 1992 a community for older Jesuits, the St. Camillus Jesuit Community, was started in Wauwatosa, and a number of the men from the Marquette University Jesuit community were transferred to the new community, which also received men from other houses of the Province. Meanwhile the Kilbourn residence closed and a new dependent community, Miguel Pro Jesuit Community, appeared on Milwaukee's South Side, to minister to a growing Hispanic population in that part of the city. Jesuits took charge of St. Patrick's Parish (now heavily Hispanic) and developed at the same location a Nativity Middle School to teach Hispanic boys.
On the other hand, a sizable number of young Jesuit priests--from India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, and African nations joined the Community as students working for MAs and PhDs in a variety of disciplines, supported by the community and by the university. Non-Marquette Jesuits filled other vacant rooms. These men, retiring from their disparate ministries, were assigned to the Jes Res by the Provincial--sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily as they awaited new assignments. A large number of "guest rooms" remained, but they were constantly in use for individual visitors (who enjoyed the extensive hospitality of the resident Jesuits) and for various conferences of Jesuits from around the Province and the nation.
The catalog for 2001 listed 57 priests and 1 lay brother in the Jesuit Residence, plus 9 priests and 2 brothers at Miguel Pro. Of these only 30 worked at the university, including 10 administrators and 3 members of the university Ministry, but an additional 7 Jesuits living at Arrupe House did university-related work. Two men were Community officials, 3 were members of the provincial staff, 11 were international students, 2 were other students, and the remaining 11 were retired from teaching or engaged in non-university ministries. And the usual coming and going meant that the Community was always in flux.
With all the vicissitudes through the 120 years since the beginning of Marquette University in 1881, the Marquette University Jesuit Community has changed--in size and composition, in its relations with the university, and in its conditions of daily life. But the apostolic thrust of the Jesuits remains the same: to aid their fellow men and women spiritually and materially, primarily through the institutional ministry at Marquette University, but also through individual ministries, for the greater glory of God, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (AMDG).


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Thursday, January 23, 2014
Over the years, Google has used different crawlers to crawl and index content for feature phones and smartphones. These mobile-specific crawlers have all been referred to as Googlebot-Mobile. However, feature phones and smartphones have considerably different device capabilities, and we've seen cases where a webmaster inadvertently blocked smartphone crawling or indexing when they really meant to block just feature phone crawling or indexing. This ambiguity made it impossible for Google to index smartphone content of some sites, or for Google to recognize that these sites are smartphone-optimized.
A new Googlebot for smartphones
To clarify the situation and to give webmasters greater control, we'll be retiring
"Googlebot-Mobile" for smartphones as a user agent starting in 3-4 weeks' time. From then on, the
user agent for smartphones will identify itself simply as "Googlebot" but will still list
mobile elsewhere in the
user-agent string. Here are the
new and old
The new Googlebot for smartphones
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12F70 Safari/600.1.4 (compatible; Googlebot /2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
(updated August 2015)
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
The Googlebot-Mobile for smartphones
user-agent we will be retiring soon:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
This change affects only Googlebot-Mobile for smartphones. The user agent of the regular Googlebot
does not change, and the remaining two Googlebot-Mobile crawlers will continue to refer to feature
phone devices in their
user-agent strings; for reference, these are:
Regular Googlebot
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
The two Googlebot-Mobile user-agents for feature phones:
SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/184.108.40.206.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
DoCoMo/2.0 N905i(c100;TB;W24H16) (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +https://www.google.com/bot.html)
You can test your site using the Fetch as Google feature in Webmaster Tools, and you can see a full list of our existing crawlers in the Help Center.
Crawling and indexing
Please note this important implication of the
user-agent update: The new
Googlebot for smartphones crawler will follow robots.txt, robots
meta tag, and HTTP header
rules for
Googlebot instead of
Googlebot-Mobile. For
example, when the new crawler is deployed, this robots.txt rule will block all crawling by
the new
Googlebot for smartphones
user-agent, and also the regular
User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /
This robots.txt rule will block crawling by Google's feature phone crawlers:
User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Disallow: /
Based on our internal analyses, this update affects less than 0.001% of URLs while giving webmasters greater control over the crawling and indexing of their content. As always, if you have any questions, you can:
- Read our recommendations for building smartphone-optimized sites
- Learn more about controlling Googlebot crawling and indexing
- Ask in our Webmaster help forums or visit one of our Webmaster Central office hours hangouts.


text:
NEWARK, N.J. – The NCAA and the four major professional sports leagues went to court Tuesday morning to try to stop New Jersey from allowing sports betting, saying it would violate federal law and would threaten the sanctity of the game.
Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, the National Football league and the NCAA filed a lawsuit in federal court in Trenton.
The leagues say that a 1992 federal law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, limits betting on collegiate and professional games to four states: Nevada, Delaware, Oregon and Montana. New Jersey was given a chance to become the fifth state, but declined to act during a window it was given in 1993-94.
In January, Gov. Chris Christie signed a law to allow sports betting at New Jersey's 12 casinos and four racetracks. In May, he said he would implement regulations without attempting to overturn the 1992 law. The regulations were published in July and are expected to become effective within the next two months.
Christie and legislative leaders have said they expected litigation challenging their betting plans. A spokesman for Christie had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.
The leagues claim in the lawsuit that sports gambling threatens the "character and integrity" of events and threatens the "reputations and goodwill" between fans and teams.
"The sponsorship, operation, advertising, promotion, licensure, and authorization of sports gambling in New Jersey," the lawsuit states, "would irreparably harm amateur and professional sports by fostering suspicion that individual plays and final scores of games may have been influenced by factors other than honest athletic competition."


text:
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Virtual conference on microfinance
Of alternative currencies, placeblogs, and mobile finance
Xigi and WorldChanging have been writing about alternative currencies, an important topic as we think about new forms of social capital. Many of the discussions around new currencies look at the macro level. For example, the global value of frequent flier miles (US$700 billion) is often cited, as is the successful transition to the euro.
But I think we should be looking local. The New York Times ran a story on February 25 about the town of Great Barrington, Massachussetts which has issued its own currency in denominations named for favorite local sons such as Normans (Rockwell) and Hermans (Melville). Local shoppers receive discounts from local merchants when they use the BerkShares. In Minneapolis, Minnesota an experiment in dollars with frequent flier miles/reward points has led to the Dual Currency Systems experiment. Local currencies have been promoted for a long time and can be found across the U.S. (BloomingHOURS in Bloomington, Indiana to Humboldt Community Currency in Arcata, California), in Canada (Calgary, Toronto, Salt Spring Island) and Mexico. And then, of course, there is interra.
These local currencies, and their ties to volunteer hours, local discounts, and circulating money and resources within a community, may have increasing vitality - even in the age of global - as the local grows more important. I attended a spring training game, Mets v Tigers, this afternoon. Between every inning, practically between every batter, the stadium announcer offered a prize, a coupon, a bonus meal, or something from the local insurance agents, restaurants, tire stores, and merchants whose ads filled the program, blanketed the walls, and dominated the jumbo score board.
I thought about this when I checked my rss feeds and saw that Steven Johnson was blogging again. He's been busy (and not blogging often enough, IMHO) as his post was all about the new investors in Outside.in - his placeblogging system that led me to declare hyperlocal this year's second buzz word. Johnson has attracted some big VCs and an impressive list of angel investors - they, at least, are convinced there is money to be made in helping people connect to their neighbors. What currency will these placeblogs use? Can they be a force to expand the reach of these currencies? Will they connect to virtual currencies (e.g. Linden Dollars in SecondLife).
What about placeblogging, local currencies, and mobile phone banking? Can neighbors come together around certain "barn raising," "block party," "food for the sick," or "worker co-op" projects, organize them through place blogs/text messages, and manage the contributions in a local currency that is debited/credited through mobile networks? And if they do so, how will measurers of mutual aid, local commerce, volunteer rates or philanthropy track them.
Give and Take
Really, books are wikis at a point in time
Here is my proof that we're headed in this direction. Check out Unconference book.
So what for philanthropy? The book's subtitle, "Because the audience is more intelligent than the speaker," says it all.
Travel For Good
carbon credits. Expedia, Travelocity's competition, has a program with TerraPass for this purpose.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Print is changing
The Futurist magazine ran a series of articles on post-print literacy. Since some of the futurists they quote have been calling for the "death of print" for 30 years, I take these predictions with a fat old chunk of salt. However, the ways that print is changing, and the new media literacies that will be needed, are fascinating to think about in a social change context.
For example, tracking data is a tough proposition when working in populations where illiteracy is the norm. However, mobile phones may change this. As mobile access increases, and as the handsets become useful for everything from video to banking, the need to read may morph into a need to "read" visually. Imagine you were distributing health products in rural parts of Africa. Rather than writing and counting and filing reports, you could use a cellphone camera, take a picture of a sale, send it to a protected website where a pre-loaded inventory of tagged "item photos" would check the items in the photo, deduct them from inventory, calculate the sale, register the prices, order new stock and so on.
Another way that print is changing, and media and media companies are changing, is in the way we think of books. I wrote earlier about a book 'being a wiki at a point in time' and plenty of folks quickly sent me examples. The Institute for the Future of the Book posts about major publishing houses, Random House and HarperCollins, letting browsers search backlists and the content of the books on the backlist. Random House also offers a widget that will let you put this search function for your favorite book on your website.
So what for philanthropy? This slices a couple of ways:
- What about making this kind of functionality available on research and data that foundations use?
- Or if nonprofits and/or donors posted their reviews of certain social issues, community needs, organizations, or evaluation studies?
- How about a complete rethink of what literacy means, who is and isn't literate in new media, how schools need to change?
- What about a new proposal process that isn't text-based, but multi-media, multi-literacy, and globally accessible?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Mobile remittances
This raises some incredibly interesting questions about telecoms and village co-ops as financial companies. Talk about a "virtual world" for considering the recrafting of philanthropy, finance, investment, mutual aid, and social enterprise. As we get used to the reality that financial currencies are increasingly digital and intangible, it creates room for 'social currency' - trust, peer support and pressure, and community credibility that form the basis of collateral in many successful microfinance efforts. Cell phones as banks might also open up opportunities where literacy rates are so low as to inhibit transaction processing, record tracking and other 'mundane details' that can derail worthwhile investments.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Nonprofits and social networking
Also Marnie Webb's presentation on using web 2.0 tools and Beth Kantor's remix are worth checking out.
Imagine all the people
I assume full risk and hope that Apple Records and/or Yoko Ono won't come after me for copyright infringement for the title of this post.
Social media and philanthropy part 3 (or 4)
One addition to the list would be the Sustainable Futures Foundation - social network for social investing. On this issue I encourage everyone to check out xigi.net.
Go2web20.net is the best resource I've found for tracking new tools and companies offering social media services. It can - of course - be searched by tag. Currently, there are no tags for philanthropy, nonprofits, donors, giving, etc. and sites like GiveWell or Smartocracy are not on there. (Go ahead, folks, suggest them - it is community media after all). As for blogs on web2.0 stuff, my regular reads are read/write web and the aggregator Web2.0 Workgroup. For blogs that look specifically at where web 2.0 meets nonprofit work, check out Beth's Blog, Marnie Webb's ext 337, Britt Bravo who blogs here, here and here ,and netsquared. And don't forget Allison Fine's old medium (its a book!), Momentum which you can find out about on her blog.
Community-based, collaborative decision making
Ashoka's Changemakers program has announced its Entrepreneuring Peace grant winners. Judges chose 11 finalists from the original 158 applications and then voters from around the world picked the 3 winners. Here they are:
- Learning Circles: education for displaced children in Colombia
- Participatory Theatre for Conflict Resolution, Democratic Republic of Congo
- Palestinian-Israeli Private Sector Dialogue
Ask an expert
Lets hope they make this a customer-feedback enabled site.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
A poem about what is (or might be) on our minds
Post colonics: A poem about what is on our minds
In Search of the First American Explorer
A Love Story
An American's Encounter with France, Her Father, and the Holocaust
How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction
Our Part in the Creation of the Universe
My Story of Growing up in America
The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times
to the Present
Bisexual Politics
Plunder, Racial Politics, and the Nazi Welfare State
Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History
How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate national Security Threats and Why
We Believe Them
Oxford Lectures
Why we must Embrace China as a Partner or Face it as an Enemy
The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz
So what for philanthropy? Well, other than my confidence that I won't be honored by the Ruth Lilly prize for poetry, I just think this little, odd look at book titles might say something about what is on our minds. There's a whole lot of nationalism on the list, among other things. Anyone else want to offer up some observations?
David Pogue on SecondLife
Pogue doesn't focus on the community/nonprofit/philanthropic side of 2L. At least, not intentionally. But his interview with Philip Rosedale, founder of LindenLab which makes 2L, is revealing in lots of ways regarding the development of an independent sector in the virtual world.
Here's what Pogue and Rosedale said:
Here's my interpretation of this. In other words, when you enter 2L as a 'newbie' people will voluntarily help you. They'll show you around, answer your questions, help clothe and shelter you, give you money. Now, remember what's going on here - behind every avatar is a human being. Spending his/her time hanging out in 2L. So people are allocating their discretionary time to this virtual world, and when they get there what do they do? They help people they don't know - they VOLUNTEER.
DP: The first time I tried Second Life, I must admit I was a little bewildered. I was a little bored, because I couldn't find anyplace to go to find people. Do you have any advice for newcomers?
PR: Second Life is a little bit like being dropped from a helicopter into New York City, and all you have is sort of a tattered bus map. You have to ask other people.
The biggest piece of advice is to find friends. Go and say hi and ask someone for help. And what you'll find is that because the environment is a little tricky to get around in, people are eager to help teach newcomers those skills.
Here's more from DP and PR:
Here's my interpretation. There isn't much of a government in 2L. Some community rules and community enforcement, but no overarching governing structure.
DP: Have you ever had to punish a member?
PR: We have banned people for repeatedly violating the sort of high-level rules of just basic tolerance and non-harassment, yes.
DP: And you banished them to The Cornfield?
PR: (LAUGHS) We're always doing experiments. And there was a period of time where we would give people suspensions rather than kicking them out of Second Life altogether. And one of the funny things that somebody here at the office came up with was the idea that you'd be incarcerated. You could log in, so you could use Second Life, but you'd always be placed in this strange cornfield that had this old tractor. There was nothing in it– it was a corn field, and then this old tractor. And then a television that sat there incessantly and played these 1950s "Be a Good Citizen" kind of movies. Great stuff.
And finally, from Pogue and Rosedale:
"PR: When you watch people in Second Life, there's initially a desire to just have everything that you've ever wanted: to be very beautiful, to be very sociable, and to be very engaged in a kind of fast-forward version of consumption as we know it in the real world.
But that's the first couple of months. And then after that you've almost reached a Zen-like state where you can say, "Well, I've done everything, but what more is there? Then you start to ask questions like, "Well, maybe I just want to build a temple on a hill and meditate. Or I want to contribute to a community in a way that's not something that was obvious when I came in."
My interpretation - given free reign over what to do, people serve themselves first and then others. They make things. Some they give away (time, help, objects) and some they sell (hence the growing market economy in 2L which has received so much attention).So what does it mean? Well, it makes it interesting to think about what philanthropy/social good/community action is and how it acts in an environment with an economy, no government, and community-enforced codes of conduct. If you really wanted to redefine philanthropy, a virtual world seems like a good place to do it (or, to watch it happen).
If you do want to see some of the cooler nonprofit stuff going on in 2l check out these links, kindly sent to me by Susan Tenby of TechSoup and TechSoup SecondLife. In world, she is known as Glitteractica Cookie, if you're already in 2L and want to find out more.
# We have ongoing weekly Friday meetings where we discuss our various projects in the TechSoup space in Second Life. These meetings occur at 8:30-10am PST.
# We had an exciting mixed-reality event, and you can read all about it here http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2006/07/reflections_on_.html
You can see some video (unedited) of it here:
(When we get it edited, I will give you the link to that more easy-to-watch formatted piece)
# We are working on an FAQ for Nonprofits in Second Life with tricks, tips and freebies for new residents. This will be for the Nonprofit Commons residents, and it will be an office in a box for NPOs in SL.
# We have a Nonprofit Directory that will teleport you around to visit other nonprofit organizations in Second Life
# We have a google discussion group for our ideas here:
# We have our bookmarks and inages saved under the Del.icio.us/technorati/flickr tag NPSL:
# To see the images of what this all looks like, check out the flickr tag NPSL, secondlife or techsoup.
Please see the FAQ on what nonprofits can do in SL here:
Please see my interview of a few orgs that are doing good work in-world:http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page5902.cfm
Global Philanthropy Forum, April 11 -13, 2007
Since 2001 the Global Philanthropy Forum annual gathering has been one of the best conferences on philanthropy. It has sold out every year (2007 included).
This year (April 11 -13, 2007 at Google in Mountain View, CA) the conference theme is "Financing Social Change: Leveraging Markets and Entrepreneurship." You can read the conference program here. The Forum makes an edited transcript of each annual conference available on its web site - previous conference transcripts are archived here. The 2006 transcript will be available closer to April, 2007.
The Forum also posts video of its plenary sessions within a few days of the speeches so be sure to check the website during and shortly after the conference. This year, I have the honor of 'live blogging' the sessions, and I'll do my best to make you feel like you're right there learning alongside me. Join me, here and on the GPF site, April 11 - 13, 2007, live from the Googleplex.
Its a must read
Thanks also to the good folks at xigi.net who gave me the inaugural "map of the week" award. The network mapping tool on the site is very cool (as is the whole site) and everyone interested in social finance should check it out.
Thankfully, these sites require even shorter thank you speeches than the Academy Awards so thats it, enough horn-tootin. Cue the music.....
Talk amongst ... everybody
So now there is debatepedia. Where strong arguments are cooperatively produced - or as the Future of the Book project calls it, "an encyclopedia of arguments." Want to know the arguments for and against the repeal of the U.S. Estate Tax? Here you go. Have some information or analysis to add to a debate on abolishing intellectual property rights - add them here.
What a wonderful tool for drawing in collective intelligence on the challenges and opportunities that philanthropy aims to address. Have information on building sustainable social justice enterprises? Strategies to better educate children? Delivery mechanisms for health care in rural communities? Looking at data from different vantage points, encouraging debate and considering alternative explanations should be a key part of making decisions about billions of dollars. Debatepedia shows that it can be done in an informed and gracious way (sort of like the debate on the Stern Review that the NY Times covered on Wednesday in the Economix column.)
Outline your argument, define success, encourage alternative view points to be aired and shared, and inform your decision and grant making. Cool.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Open Research for Giving (ORG)
Reviews are public. Revisions are public. Resubmissions are public. You can see raw data. You can reach your own conclusions. You can disagree, agree, push for more research.
NPR's blog on Rough Cuts is another good example. The behind-the-scenes look at making a new radio program - go ahead, tell 'em what you think.
We're getting there - close to a place where real analysis, research and data that can inform giving (ahem, please note the acronym in this post's title) might fly. And let me know if you hate the acronym (I do).
More on marketplaces and magic
"53% of our donors do not have children. Of those with children, 73% attend or attended public schools. When asked "What about the DonorsChoose mission most inspired you to give?" only 25% cited education ("supporting teachers" or "supporting students") while 67% cited our giving platform ("Directing my dollars to exactly where I want to help," "Level of choice DC offers," "Level of accountability DC offers," and "Ease of giving via the Internet.") The remaining 8% said "Other".
So, my guess that having school-age children was a motivating factor for donors was wrong. However, the data above don't discount my point that donors can relate to the opportunities presented because they themselves went to school. Is it fair to assert that some significant percent of DC donors graduated from high school - thereby experiencing the full realm of K-12 experiences that the DC grant opportunities represent? Does DC have data on the educational attainment level of their donors?
The data above do point to the power of the platform itself as a tool - and DC is (and has been) roundly congratulated for that. I don't - and didn't - disagree with Alter on the effectiveness of the tool. My point is more fundamental, and I'm clearly not convinced that I'm wrong (yet). Donors motivations are not rational. Emotion, empathy, history, personal experience are all factors in what donors support. Technology can help increase their generosity, or direct gifts in ways that might otherwise not be feasible. I don't think technology is going to foster or create motivation where it isn't already present.
Parsing the data above a little more closely actually seems to support this point (of course, I'm good at convincing myself). As the data suggest, donors who use DC don't see themselves as driven by a desire to support education. Their interests in:
- "Directing my dollars to exactly where I want to help,"
- "Level of choice DC offers,"
- "Level of accountability DC offers," and
- "Ease of giving via the Internet."
If this same system were set up to try to attract donors to support other issues - as Alter proposed in his Slate article - how would the technology facilitate that personal connection, the basic understanding and empathy that motivates donors?
There are experts in facilitating this more distant 'empathetic and quantifiable giving.' They include organizations such as GlobalGiving, SavetheChildren, and Heifer International. Online giving to disaster relief - the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and Pakistan earthquake all come to mind - also show that this can be done.
The experiences and success of these tools show how wonderful they are for episodic, event-specific, or one-time giving. Especially when hearts strings can be tugged. But there is nothing technologically magic here - those old magazine ads with Sally Struthers and a forlorn child, that we in the west could support for $12 /year - did the same thing. The technology saves us from having to clip the coupon out of the magazine. It makes the giving faster and more efficient, and in the case of directed options such as DonorsChoose or Heifer International, allows us to know exactly what percentage of a teacher's video camera or a milk-producing heifer we are paying for.
Technology is great - it facilitates, accelerates, and expands existing giving behaviors. What remains to be seen is what needs to happen with and to technology to change those behaviors.
21st Century Foundations
Transparent and Accountable: A Vision for 21st-Century Foundations
Friday, March 2, 2007More information is here. Featured panelists include Joel Fleishman, Eugene Steuerle, Elizabeth Boris, and Marcus Owens. These folks are all important thinkers and writers in the field, and what they have to say matters. But it is striking to me that there is not a "21st Century philanthropist" among them. Or even someone who might be considered a "new" voice on the subject. How about the Alex Steffen from WorldChanging.org? Or Peter Deitz of the First of its Kind Network? Or Susan Tenby of the Second Life Nonprofit Commons? Or..? (who would you like to hear from about 21st C foundations?)
Reviewers also post "unanswered questions" and a list of the sources they used to create their ratings. A more complete description of the process is found here. GiveWell maintains a blog here.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Marketplace "magic"?
I think he's a tad...hyperbolic. DonorsChoose is very cool and works really well. Alter makes an important observation that 93% of the donors who use the site voluntarily add 15% to their gifts to cover the operating costs. This is important not only because it proved several HBS consultants wrong, but because it may show the value of transparency. The willingness of donors to 'opt in' to pay operational costs may be worth watching. Other sites also provide this functionality - making transparent and optional the operating costs - Network for Good does it online and the Vermont Community Foundation is trying it in the offline realm. Tell people what it costs to provide the service you provide - you may be surprised at how willing they are to pay it.
But beyond the observation about operating costs, I think Alter is wrong. In addition to the disagreements about the role of the market in providing social goods that has been bandied about here and elsewhere, Alter is overlooking a basic fact about the users who choose DonorsChoose. They went to school. They remember what it was like. There is some amount of empathy for the plight of the teachers and the opportunities for the kids. This influences their willingness to give. And would also influence the transferability of the platform to funding other - more remote, less personal - social goods.
I don't know anything about DonorsChoose's donors but am confident in my 'guess' about their educational histories. I'd also posit that there is a good chance many of them have or have had school-age children. And an equally good chance that very few of the site's users have ever had malaria, lived a subsistence life in Sub-Saharan Africa, or bought art of museum quality.* Technology and transparency are good additions to the practice of philanthropy. But they don't replace basic human values and behaviors, like empathy and motivation. What would be interesting to know is what other causes - besides education - does the DC model serve? And where does it not fit.
A final note on funding teachers' classrooms needs. Today's SF Chronicle's gossip columnist, Leah Garchik, ran this little item in her Public Eavesdropping sidebar:
"A private school you have to pay for, a public school you have to fund-raise for.''
Alison Zilversmit, 10, to her 6-year-old brother Jacob Zilversmit, overheard by car pool-driving Marc Zilversmit.
Its rare that a gossip column speaks such truth. Of course, you can always count on 6 year olds to speak truth to power. The comment above speaks volumes about what we value as a society, what we have chosen to provide as a public good, and the endless blurring of public and private in American daily life.
(*By the way, I'd be happy to be proven wrong here, if DonorsChoose wants to share its users' data. New tools are, no doubt, changing how donors act on their motivations. But whether it changes their actual motivations remains to be seen.)
Chronicle of Philanthropy on Aligned Investing
Collaborative giving
Collaborative giving is the Wall Street Journal's (subscription required) term for donors working together. Unleashed by Warren Buffet's gift to the Gates Foundation the trend (with an "n" of 2) was created when The John and Mary Cain Foundation made a by a $100 million gift to the John Motley Morehead Foundation to expand the scholarship program it runs at the University of North Carolina.
This is the kind of leveraged philanthropy I wrote about in Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets. The idea is simple - one set of staff researchers develops strategy, builds relationships, does due diligence, and monitors progress. Their analysis and research are then available to many donors (or to inform larger endowments, as in the Buffett/Gates and Cain/Morehead cases). Here's how it works now. In any specific area you have, say, 20 program officers each analyzing the same organization for 20 different grants. In a leveraged structure, you would have one set of research that would be available to inform 20X the funds it would otherwise have advised. Its less work for the grant recipient, lower cost for the grant makers, and makes more efficient use of the information. Optimistically, there is a potential increase in grant funds available if duplicative costs (staff, research) are eliminated.
Does it lead to group think? Not if criteria and strategy are available for review - donors can "buy in" or not to certain standards, goals, and review processes. Think of it as akin to the industry and company research that independent firms sell to investment banks (and, ultimately, investors). Quality and credibility distinguish good work from bad, strategic from sloppy.
Grantmaking through existing private foundations is one way to do this. Pooled funding through community foundations or federations is another. Global Giving, Network for Good, or Give2Asia, which provide online marketplaces of nonprofit organizations, vetted for donor interest and compliance, represent a third way. Global Greengrants represents another structure - freelance, local advisers identify and monitor organizations that donors from other parts of the world can support. GiveWell, which just launched, is a new approach - community-driven, transparent analysis for donors by donors.
Its exciting to see these kinds of developments, which I've been writing about since 1995, becoming viable through advances in technology, changing donor markets, and entrepreneurial approaches to information sharing. They are a critical step toward creating more efficient and transparent philanthropic capital markets.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Nothing happens if nothing happens
The Agitator poses this question a slightly different way - How do you know if a nonprofit is not good enough? Tom asks:
"But how is performance by a nonprofit's leadership team generally appraised? What questions get asked, and by whom?Its hard for those who do the work - even harder to know if those who are funding some of it are performing. Some foundation executives have performance measures that hold them accountable for leverage - attracting "other people's money" to the work they support. Others set performance benchmarks for each portfolio. For the most part, endowed foundations have only one real measure - payout. Did the funds get out the door, credibly and legitimately. Its a measure, but not one that requires anyone to actually accomplish much.
Have you eradicated cancer yet? Stopped global warming? Saved all the children? Ended domestic violence? Eliminated hunger? Produced more literate students?"
What are the best performance measures for foundations? And how do they translate to staff, board, and organizational practice?
OK, annoying derivative name aside, Peter Deitz is doing us all a favor by tracking these developments and how they are assisted by the web. Check out the First-of-its-Kind site, particularly the "what it is" page. He's tracking weekly top ten campaigns - check them out here. Thanks to Beth Kanter for pointing me to this.
At least its not called microphilanthropyr, googl-anthropy, e-lanthropy, iphilanthropy, or some other such nonsense.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Prizes rising
What are prizes good for? The Times article presents the point that they are good at providing incentive to innovation, though not necessarily the right tool to find sustainable businesses. It quotes Paul Kedroskey:
Prizes also favor entrants who can pay the costs of participating themselves - as prizes are awarded after something is created and no capital is provided to prototype or try something.
"There's no market merit to any of this," said Paul S. Kedrosky, executive director of the William J. von Liebig Center, which studies venture capital trends. He argues that the prizes might be good for generating press, or buttressing the egos of donors and winners, but not particularly valuable at leading to profit-capable companies.
"It's a naive assumption that good science is good business," he said.
The Times has run other articles on prizes as ways to foster innovation. The X Prize is certainly an interesting blend of philanthropy and venture finance. It is one more sign of how the traditional divides between market and social solutions are blurring and is itself a compelling example of new social finance tools. But prizes are not the answer to every challenge. Just as Kedroskey argues they may not find good businesses, prizes also won't find solutions from those who cannot afford to participate in the contests.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
New definition of a book
At least that's how I see it. And how I'm hoping my publishers see it. Maybe I'm just trying to justify my short(ened) attention span, my desire to share ideas and gain input as I go along, and/or my fascination with writing on the web. But it seems to me - as I distract myself from book manuscripts to blog and build a wiki - that books (nonfiction, contemporary) should be supported by conversations and exchange like that which can occur through a wiki. I, the "author" frames the subject, posts the pages and sections (chapters), makes the argument(s), presents the evidence, draws conclusion(s). Others participate, re-frame, add, subtract, take issue with, counter-argue. We all learn. Some of us may change our minds. The work is strengthened. STOP. PRINT. BIND. SHIP. Return to wiki.
I thought it was just me but then I checked back in over at the Future of the Book and a colleague pointed me to this experiment - a million penguins - the novel as wiki.
Don't get me wrong. The bound, portable, long lasting, no electricity or wireless connection needed, feels good in the hand and looks great on a shelf, book is a favorite of mine. I won't contribute to the death of the book. I think the 'conversational media' like blogs and wikis can improve the ways we exchange ideas, the ways we think, and, I hope, the ways we write. But, heck, what do I know? I still read newspapers.
So what for philanthropy? You mean besides the fact that the books I'm procrastinating from writing and the blogs/wiki I am working on are about philanthropy? Oh, I don't know. Its just interesting, that's all.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Aligned Investing - the whole discussion
Recognizing the limits of markets
"...the real tragedy is that those deaths don't disturb the economy, the social fabric of society or any other lever that might cause a change. ... The market has clear and persistent failures. Malaria is one of them. Donations, grants and more awareness are needed and will continue to be needed. The market solves some things. Not all things by a long shot. It takes a mix, a blend of all kinds of capital and other support and energy to build the world we want, imho. ... Market based solutions are just one tool... but other efforts, community organizing, grass roots efforts in Africa and awareness of the problem through church, ngo and other means are the way to address malaria."This rings true with me for several reasons. I agree that markets fail (I certainly hope my skepticism came through in my earlier posts about when do markets make sense - sometimes irony doesn't fully translate). I fully agree that we need 'other efforts' to address our complex social challenges. As I've said many times, no single sector is responsible for creating hunger, injustice, illness, cultural degradation or environmental damage - no single sector is going to solve them either.
What I find striking about Kevin's comment is its failure to mention the public sector. Now, I'm not an expert on malaria in Africa, and maybe Kevin's omission of the government is due to his specific experiences in Africa around malaria. But - more generally - the omission of the government, the public sector - as an actor on major public health issue is striking.
I recently ran across this same set of beliefs in conversation with another friend of mine. He also felt the market could do many things (in this case we were speaking specifically of microfinance), and that to the degree that commercial microfinance efforts reached the "poor but not destitute" it would make the pool of "truly poor" much smaller, and therefore government would have fewer to care for. I wish I believed this. But, as American experience shows on every issue from public education to public health to infrastructure bonds and affordable housing - the government can't raise revenue to serve "only the poor." Since we must tax ourselves to provide government services, we the people keep insisting that services to assist the poor not be only for the poor. Look at Head Start, school bonds, and housing bills for proof. To get the money from those who have to provide for those who don't, governments typically have to create programs that serve more than just the truly poor.
Which begs the question about the role of "other efforts", as Kevin calls them. I believe we need more than markets, and that community activism and NGOs can (and do) do amazing things. But we also need public supports - private (be they voluntary or market-based) solutions alone will not succeed.
What I really believe is that we need to create our solutions with more complete, complex input and coordination across sectors. Social enterprise is good, and should be developed, implemented and expanded with specific input and understanding about what the public and NGO sectors are also doing (or could do) in an area on an issue. We need cross-sector entrepreneurs, I believe. Leaders and doers and thinkers who can build effective enterprises that are developed with a clear understanding of these other forces, an ability to try to influence them, and a recognition of who is really serving whom.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Philanthropy as business
Sean Stannard-Stockton over at tacticalphilanthropy.com notes the creation of disparate business - tourism, media, and investment management - all with a focus on philanthropists as customers. He should add in there the rise of advisory firms, technology companies, and multi-family offices that target philanthropic individuals as clients.
Over in the UK, on the other hand, the issue of philanthropy as business is raised to make a very different point. Michael Schrage, writing in the Financial Times, discusses the difference between corporate social responsibility (in which good works are secondary to the institution's role as a business) and philanthropy, in which the organizations are in the business of good works. His point - that the standards of transparency and accountability to which we hold businesses that do "good works" is surprisingly higher than that to which we hold the "good works" businesses. Schrage goes on to point out the differences in how this is being regulated between the UK and the US.
Which brings me to the third post - started by a comment on this blog and shifted over to xigi.net where Kevin Jones correctly notes that the lack of structural incentives to transparency are the real issue for philanthropy, and good ideas, bold media investigations, and technology are not enough to change those structural issues.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
More ideas, more flagpoles
6. Re-package the best information that foundations, public agencies, and investment analysts collect on vertical segments of the social sector - education, smart growth, agricultural innovation, health outcomes - into usable, donor friendly resources that others providers of philanthropic capital (donors, lenders, social investors) could use.
This idea is presented in some depth in Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets: The Deliberate Evolution
6b. For foundations: Develop analytic connections between industry sector analysis on investment side of foundation house and social sector analysis on grantmaking side of house. For example, use knowledge and expertise on health care industries and investment possibilities to inform analysis of health care structures on grant side. See Foreign Affairs article and roundtable on Challenges of Global Health.
7. Help donors and foundations with similar interests find each other. Take advantage of common technology platforms (MicroEdge, FoundationSource) to build shared data sources that funders can use to help find other partners.
8. Provide high quality, data/analysis snapshots to donors, boards of directors, foundation execs, social investors in the forms they need it, when they need it - create a subscription service for research briefs on issues of interest. See, for example, Geneva Global Reports, the Grantmakers in Education cases on grantmaking principles, and the education futures map from the KnowledgeWorks Foundation.
9 a. Develop sector specific indices (see globalgiving index for a start) on revenue and investments in certain sectors. Use CSR indices and AccountAbility Keystone Project as starting points.
9 b. Provide data and analysis that will help social investors and philanthropists track revenue flows by market segment, issue, geography. (start with something like xigi)
10. Encourage experimentation in organizational form as well as in capital markets to encourage cross-sector solutions. See, for example, Community Interest Companies in the UK and ideas for "for-profit" charities.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Old ideas, new flagpoles
However, some of them resonated with him. We covered topics from changing consumer expectations, new abilities to share data, the changing scale of philanthropic dollars, the new dynamics of global economies, shifting sectoral relationships, the opportunities for product/service businesses, the best delivery mechanisms for certain social goods, and the role of public and private - and how all of the above relate to options for activists and donors. (Typical lunch time banter)
So here are some of the old ideas. By old I mean within the last decade. Do any of these resonate with you?
1. Philanthropy needs more efficient ways of sharing content and analysis on social issues and solutions.
2. Leveraging other resources (attracting "other people's money") to issues of concern and strategies that work should matter to philanthropists - and they might be interested in tools/resources to do this.
3. There are roles to play in addressing global social issues for all sectors - commercial enterprise, independent organizations, individual activists, and the public sector - but all too often 'solutions' are developed within one sector without adequate/meaningful connections to or leverage on the others.
4. Metrics and benchmarks that help donors develop a portfolio of giving options would be useful. Knowing how to develop strategy that considers the effectiveness of different philanthropic vehicles (social enterprise, foundations, DAFs, shareholder activism, investing strategies, volunteer time, etc.) requires metrics that get at commitment and impact, not just costs or ROI.
5. We are hopeful.
I'm going to go back through the files and dig up some of my old work on giving portfolios, social investment reports, and metrics. Maybe the time has come.
Aligned Investing: Tools for Philanthropic Success
If you'd like a copy of this in pdf , send me an email and I'll send it along.
Remarks prepared for the Hudson Institute Panel
Copyright Lucy Bernholz. 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Tools for Philanthropic Success
Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.
My goal, my work, is all about helping philanthropic individuals and institutions do their work better. We bring data, research, analysis, strategy, and measurement tools to people who have put their resources where their personal interests and passions are.
The American philanthropic industry is one of this nation's greatest inventions. Its diversity, freedom, and scope are unmatched. The system allows all of us to make decisions about how we want our charitable funds to be used. It requires only that the funds be accounted for, used ethically, and for legitimate charitable purpose.
I frame the issues this way because philanthropy is an odd beast – it is personal, fragmented, and anonymous. It is also strategic, brand-oriented, and – in the aggregate – enormous. Its most generous participants – as measured by percent of net worth given – tend to be the poor, not the rich.
I also believe that whatever causes individual or institutional philanthropists choose to support, they do so because they really want to make those things better. The definitions of "problems" and "better" range across the full spectrum of American diversity – political, racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, and geographic. A foundation for free market education is as legitimate as one for the preservation of Marxist theory. Foundations can support pro-life organizations and they can support pro-choice organizations. Though you probably can't find one that is working on both side of that issue.
While the range of issues they can support is almost limitless; the number of tools that philanthropists have at their disposal is rather small. They have really 7 things to bring to the table: money, knowledge, time, expertise, connections, patience, and independence. Using each of these tools well, and making the most of them in combination, is the challenge for successful philanthropists.
Endowed foundations are usually thought of in terms of only one of these tools – their money. So far everyone on this panel has noted the size of certain foundations as being relevant to the reasons they should do one thing or another. I'm much less of a size freak than others – I don't equate bigness with effectiveness.
I do equate strategy, knowledge, and alignment with effectiveness. Which is why it makes sense that you won't find one foundation supporting both pro-life and pro-choice activities with its grant funds. Similarly, it makes sense that a funder wouldn't support a set of organizations with its right hand – (its grant dollars) – while investing in other organizations with its left hand – (its endowed dollars) – that are odds with the first.
When I consider the chance to use 100% of my resources to accomplish my goals versus using 5% the smarter choice is to use more of what I have available.
When I consider the opportunity to apply effective management principles to both the selection of grant investments and the selection of asset investment choices it makes sense to do both.
And when I consider that endowed foundations are essentially in the business of choosing management teams and making investments in them – on both the grants side and the investment side – it is clear that what foundations need are clear, consistent principles of good management and wise investing on both sides of the house.
Actually, I stole that last idea from a certain investor named Warren Buffet. Buffett has often said, "I never made a good investment in a company with bad management." He has practiced this for decades at Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett also use these principles to explain his choice to invest his philanthropic dollars in an established foundation. Management matters.
So what does using endowment dollars to advance a social mission have to do with "good investments and good managers?" Just about everything.
There are more than 38,000 public companies in which you can invest your money. Obviously, we need some kinds of screens to whittle this number down to a manageable portfolio. Many of the screens investors use are quantitative. But businesses are creatures of context and leadership – and quantitative measurements are not all that good at measuring either of those variables.
Qualitative management screens are what help at this stage. How to find the leaders to back, the external conditions that will force change or require innovation, or understand customer trends – these are what hedge fund managers, angel investors, venture capitalists, industry analysts, and, yes, Warren Buffett, use when making qualitative judgments about management.
There is a set of these qualitative management measures that look at how a company will succeed given the limits of our environmental resources – what economists call a "carbon constrained economy" and what the rest of us –Jon and his AEI colleagues notwithstanding - call global warming. These measures have actually served as "searchlights" in finding companies that are leading the way on alternative fuels, clean technology, and sustainable business practices. The result – Toyota ROI is 10:1, Ford is flat, GM, hmm, not so good. The result – a better bottom-line for the companies, a better return for investors.
There are sets of these qualitative management measures that look at social issues – how the company values a diverse management team, how it treats its employees, how it seeks a workforce that represents and reflects the demographics of its desired customer base. Once again, these measures are helping investors identify companies with lower employee turnover, greater innovation, and more profitable R & D. The result - a better bottom-line for the company, a better return for investors.
Finally, excellent companies need both top-notch management and high quality governance. The qualitative management measures that screen for governance standards help investors spot problems before they show up on the P & L statement, or worse, with board members doing the "perp walk" on the evening news. The result – a better bottom-line for the company, a better return for investors.
These are predictive measures. They are tried and tested that help investors select the best performing companies in their classes.
There are also opportunities for investors to use their role as shareholders to effect change at companies that might meet some, but not all, of the management standards. While we think of recycled paper as a standard option nowadays, available at any office supply store, it was shareholder activism that led places like Office Depot and Staples to stock these options. It was shareholder activism that moved HP and Apple to adopt goals for use of recycled products, Time Warner to change the paper it prints on, and Coke and Pepsi to source recyclables for their soda bottles. The results –better bottom lines for the companies, better returns for investors, foundation missions supported.
Finally, when resources are limited its always good to find a way to use them once, get 'em back, and use 'em again. Taking a lesson from community banks, credit unions, and even microfinance mavens, more and more endowments are discovering the ROI they can achieve by making some of their assets available to communities in the form of low-interest loans and program related investments. The money is invested directly in communities or enterprises that further the foundation's mission. The investment/loan is paid back and the foundation does it again. These activities truly bring both sides of a foundation house together – the grant side and the investment side – in pursuit of the organization's missions. The result – a better bottom line and social goals supported.
There are tools, indices, investment advisors, peer organizations, and research available to help endowment managers do this. The industry of social responsible investing – which support the development of the ESG management screens, shareholder activism, and community investing – currently manages 1 in every 10 dollars managed professionally. More than $2.29 trillion dollars of the $24 trillion in managed assets in 2005 were in SRI investments. Historic trend data showing that the indices built around these kinds of investments outperform other major indices – the Domini 400 has bested the S & P 500 over the last 15 years, and foundations with actively managed SRI portfolios have beat the S & P at 1, 3, 5, and 10 year intervals – in both real and risk adjusted returns. There is no tradeoff between investing in line with an organization's mission and reaping strong returns. Doing the former may even improve the latter.
And this is what finally matters. Endowment directors have a fiduciary responsibility to use the resources under their management for the public good. Not 5% of the resources, all of the resources. The tools of aligned investing – the use of qualitative management screens, shareholder activism, and community investing – allow philanthropists to develop strategies that use everything the foundation has to achieve its goals. Whatever those goals might be.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Wiser Earth
Paul Hawken and the Natural Capital Institute are setting out to apply good old fashioned crowd-sourced and open-sourced technologies to bring together what he calls the largest movement ever on earth - the sustainability movement. This will happen through WiserEarth. The lead technologist on the project (Oz Basarir) will be speaking in San Francisco on Tuesday Feb 13th - information is here. Or here. WISER stands for World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility. There will also be a WiserBusiness to share information on sustainable business practices and a WiserGovernment to create public goods for public use.
This ties in nicely with the cross-sector theme and model I'm developing over at Wikia. More to come.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Banks do it. Multilaterals do it. Pension funds do it.
The Equator Principles come out of the World Bank and its International Finance Corporation, which makes the business case for global sustainability efforts here.
So what for philanthropy? This is all about making investments that adhere to certain principles and/or advance a mission, while also meeting fiduciary responsibilities (read: making a profit). Some may think that aligned investing is a passing fad or empty rhetoric, but it currently accounts for 1 in every 10 dollars under professional asset management. The rate of growth for SRI funds is faster than the rate for managed assets in general, and the funds have outperformed standard fund indices over the last 15 years.
Who's funding whom?
OneWorldHealth pioneered one way of doing this. The activism by 'disease-specific' nonprofits, the intersections with university offices of technology transfer, the role of federal regulators, and the market opportunities that exist for entities much smaller than the mega-pharm companies just go to show how multi-sector and multi-directional real change can be.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Talk to your neighbors
The old town square has been recreated for two communities that desperately need to better understand each other - English and Arabic speakers. The technology isn't ready yet, but go ahead, get ready to talk to your neighbor.
Random digital news related to philanthropy
1. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed and is pursuing city-wide wifi. The San Francisco Foundation and Community Technology Foundation of California are hosting a funders briefing to meet with representatives of the city, Google, and Earthlink. Information on open community meetings is here.
2. A new report finds that seniors, women, and people of color in San Francisco have less access to the Internet than their counterparts in other cities. An excerpt from the report,
"While the total population of San Francisco ranks in the middle ofcomparison city rankings, all of the at-risk socio-economic groups in San Francisco are below average, lagging at or near the bottom of the comparison city rankings in terms of absolute percentage with access to technology at home."
Thanks to Katrin Veclas of NTEN for bringing it to my attention. The report is online here.
3. Nonprofits in SecondLife now have a blog - find it here. This is not strictly San Francisco news, though TechSoup - which coordinates the nonprofit commons in 2L - is HQ'd in SF (and I proudly serve on its board of directors).


text: CAMILO JOSE VERGARAPhotographer and writer. Subjects: time-lapse photography of urban spaces; ghettos in the U.S.; ruins; housing; American popular email@example.com of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, BA in Sociology, 5/68 Columbia University, New York, MA in Sociology, 5/77SELECTED PUBLICATIONSHow the Other Half Worships, Rutgers University Press, 2005 Subway Memories, The Monacelli Press, 2005 Unexpected Chicagoland (with Timothy J. Samuelson), The New Press, 2001 Twin Towers Remembered, Princeton Architectural Press, 2001 American Ruins, The Monacelli Press, 1999 The New American Ghetto, Rutgers University Press, 1995 Silent Cities (with Kenneth T. Jackson), Princeton Architectural Press, 1989FORTHCOMING BOOKSHarlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto, University of Chicago Press, Fall, 2013 Detroit: A Progress ReportSELECTED EXHIBITIONS"The Dream Continues: Photographs of Martin Luther King Murals," New York Historical Society, Jan. 18, 2013-May 5, 2013 "Detroit is No Dry Bones," National Building Museum, Washington D. C., Sept. 2012-Feb. 2013 "Tiny Towers: 1970-2011," Museum of the City of New York, Aug. 2011- Jan. 2012 "How the Other Half Worships," National Building Museum, Washington DC, June-Nov. 2009 "Harlem: Photographs of Camilo José Vergara, 1970-2009," New York Historical Society, April 30, 2009-July 12, 2009 "Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection," J. Paul Getty Museum, Oct. 24, 2006-Feb. 25, 2007 "Subway Memories," Museum of the City of New York, Fall-Winter 2004-2005 "Twin Towers Remembered," National Building Museum, Nov. 2001-March 2002 "El Nuevo Mundo: The Landscape of Latino Los Angeles," at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, 1999; Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 2000; and two other venues "Vergara's Chicago," Chicago Historical Society, June-Sept. 1999 "L'America dei Perdenti," Triennale, Milan, June 23- July 25, 1999; Vienna, Jan., 2000; Museu D'Arte Contemporaneu (MACBA); Barcelona, March 2000 under the title, "The New American Ghetto." Kwang-Ju Bienniale, South Korea, Sept.-Dec., 1997 "They saw a very great future here: Photographs from Central Los Angeles by Camilo José Vergara," Getty Research Institute, Santa Monica, Nov. 4, 1996-May 2, 1997 "The New American Ghetto: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara," National Building Museum, Washington, D C, Jan. 26-May 5, 1996; Urban Center of the Municipal Art Society, New York, June 1996- Sept.1996 "City Speculations" (group exhibition), Queens Museum of Art, Nov. 17, 1995-March 10, 1996 "Temporarily Possessed: Semi Permanent Collection" (group exhibition), New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, Sept. 15-Dec. 30, 1995 "The New American Ghetto Revisited," Brussels, Belgium, May 1995 "In Transit" (group show), The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1993 "The New American Ghetto," Columbia University School of Architecture, New York, Oct., 1992; and Yale University School of Architecture, Oct., 1993 "Silent Cities," New York State Museum, Albany, Oct.1992- March 1993OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE1976-present. Photographer and writer for "The New American Ghetto Archive," a collection of more than 14,000 color slides documenting poor, minority communities throughout the United States. The archive is being catalogued, digitized, and stored for use by scholars. 1970-present. Organizing and photographing "Invincible Cities," a website for the cities of Camden, NJ and Richmond, California in collaboration with Prof. Howard Gillette (Rutgers University) http://invinciblecities.camden.rutgers.edu/intro.htmlAWARDSBerlin Prize, Fellow at The American Academy in Berlin, Spring 2010 Individual Grant, Architecture, Planning and Design Program, New York State Council for the Arts, 2008 Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library, 2007-2008 MacArthur Fellow, 2003-2007 Visiting Scholar, Getty Research Institute, Oct. 1996- Dec. 1996 Individual Grant, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, 1987, 1996, 1999 Individual Grant, Design Arts Program, New York State Council for the Arts, 1990, 2001 Robert E. Park Award of the American Sociological Association, for The New American Ghetto, 1997 Revson Fellowship at Columbia University, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation 1986-87 Fellow, Design Arts Program, National Endowment for the Arts, 1983, 1985, 1988