In the search for the next bright idea towards a greener earth, together with some of the best-known venture capital firms, GE’s Ecomagination Challenge opens the floor for people to send in their innovative ideas for a smarter power grid. The contest is open to all businesses, innovators, entrepreneurs and students who can brew ideas for harnessing energy in a more efficient manner. GE and its partnerships have allocated $200 million for the innovations they choose to fund.

Ultimately, breakthrough ideas from the Ecomagination Challenge will be put to use to creating a cleaner, more efficient and economically viable power grid. Also, this would take grid technology a step closer towards a digital upgrade, as the system has long been aging and analog. Selected participants from the Ecomagination Challenge will be offered an opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through investments for promising start-ups and ideas and other benefits in connection with the company. Those who intend to participate in the challenge can enter as many ideas as they wish in three categories: Renewables, Grid Efficiency and Eco Homes/Eco Buildings.

Already, ideas have been flowing in not only from all over the nation, but from around the world as well. The ideas from the challenge will also be open for the general public to vote on for the first round, although ultimately, the final say is with the company and the panel of judges.

With the urging of a company as big as GE, I think that this challenge goes beyond solving a problem of the present. Perhaps it’s also a challenge to all of us to realize that just about anyone can make a difference with innovative ideas and a passion for the environment.

With a mission to “bring transparency to the world of philanthropy,” Glass Pockets offers reports on how transparent large, well-known foundations are. These reports rate the foundations across 28 elements of transparency and accountability such as whether they explain their grant making process, provide a public assessment of the foundation’s performance, and whether they offer a knowledge center that shares program evaluations and lessons learned.

Glass Pockets reports can be currently found for:

• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• The Ford Foundation
• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Most importantly, the Glass Pockets reports offer direct click-thru access to each element, as well as a fascinating Foundation Transparency 2.0 database that shows the social media tools being used by over 400 foundations. From the database you can directly access Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, blogs, e-newsletters, and other tools being used by some of the country’s largest funders.

Finally, the site offers a Google-based search tool that lets users search the websites of thousands of private foundations. For instance, a search for the term Haiti brings back The Boston Foundation’s Haiti Relief & Reconstruction Fund, The Gates Foundation’s statement on their response to the earthquake, and the Case Foundation’s blog post on ways that individual donors can support Haiti.

I think this is fascinating stuff. Not only is Glass Pockets suddenly the most important way to access information about foundations, but the reports begin to set a level of expectation for large, staffed foundations to share more about their activities and what they know with the public.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about philanthropy

Donors have already contributed more than $150 million to major U.S. relief groups for the catastrophe in Haiti. By comparison, such charities had only raised around 25 percent of that amount – $30 million – in the week following the 2004 Asian tsunamis, and $108 million in the week following Hurricane Katrina.

Many groups are raising large sums of money on the Web and through text messages. To date, the American Red Cross has received over $12 million through its campaign to encourage $10 gifts through texts. That’s a record for the group in terms of text messages; by contrast, it raised only $200,000 from texts after the 2008 hurricane season. Overall, the Red Cross has raised nearly $90 million to date.

But, due to the immense devastation caused by the earthquake, many nonprofit leaders fear the response will not be enough.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Gail McGovern, chief executive of the American Red Cross, said that while the current focus is on immediate needs, the organization expects that relief will be needed in Haiti for many years.

“Make no mistake,” she said. “This is going to be a massive long-term recovery.” McGovern said she would go to Haiti this week to work directly on the relief effort.

I am personally grateful for how generous Americans have been to the Haitian cause so far, especially given the economic stresses so many of us face because of the economic downturn. The aid pipeline is beginning to open up, and the Red Cross will be distributing large amounts of desperately needed food and other supplies beginning this week.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about philanthropy

We have gotten closer and closer to understanding the human genome in recent years, and that is in no small part due to improved cooperation in the international scientific community. This collaboration and information sharing has of course been facilitated by the ease of communication brought on by the internet. The field of biotechnology will certainly find new ways of treating these diseases along side these discoveries.

[image via Mira66]

Inspired by Cisco CEO John Chambers and to support this effort, Donahoe has been personally visiting many of eBay’s strongest sellers, interviewing them using little more than a Flip video camera and his own questions. He has called the process “eye-opening,” saying “it’s incredible how they make a business out of nothing, really. They find inefficiencies in the supply chain and are able to create businesses around them.”

The kind of business 101 that you wouldn’t expect a successful CEO to need, but this feedback has taught him how to make improvements in the eBay operation. Insights that he has gladly shared with his own employees. While he might not be the first corporate decision maker to undertake this kind of first person fieldwork, it’s still stands as a powerful example of what getting back to your roots can bring to your company at any stage.

[image via Aaron Escobar]

Regardless, of the how the foundation moves forward, the potential benefits for Microsoft are numerous, given that many of the early projects will likely focus on the their product ecosystem, despite claims that the foundation will be platform agnostic. Ultimately, the possibility of delivering a better product to consumers was perhaps too good to pass up, in spite of the financial outlay. Think of it as money invested in R&D with greater leverage. Depending on the spin, this announcement can also go far in bolstering Microsoft’s standing in the eyes of the general public as well, the very same people that could be buying their software down the road.

Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server, explained the decision on his blog:

“The perspectives on OSS at Microsoft have evolved to the point where Microsoft’s open source strategy is no longer just locked in a single ‘lab’ on campus – now OSS is an important part of many product groups and strategies across the company. We have become increasingly clear on where we work with open source – development methodologies, projects, partners, products and communities – and where our products compete with commercial open source companies or platforms. Today, there are engineering and business leaders across the company, myself included, looking at how to drive interoperability for customers and as a lever for new growth.”

[image via schoschie]

At a time when our country’s economy is struggling to find innovation and get consumers spending again, it’s these same small businesses that we need to rely upon to provide the necessary boost. In an attempt to remain open and continue serving as a valuable community resource, many of these centers have themselves needed to innovate, diversifying their funding efforts and looking for new ways to bring corporations and banks on board.

Given that there is little to no return on investment for providing such backing, these centers have to add value to these business relationships through other means. Whether that takes the form of branded sponsorship, shared community support (in the form of volunteering etc.), opensource collaboration or some other form, I think this could present a real opportunity to rethink the role of these centers not only within the business community, but the community at large as well.

[image via wonderlane]

Having an identifiable and vocal face of a company has been a very successful strategy for many companies – Richard Branson of Virgin and Jeff Bezos of Amazon readily come to mind – but it becomes problematic when the opinions of a business leader fail to match up with the perceived message and values of their companies and/or brands, as noted above. Now imagine that situation amplified throughout the entire culture of a company. Social media is doing just that.

As this shift towards openness takes place on both an individual and organizational level, aided by the emergence of social technologies, the feedback loop is getting shorter and shorter. This can be a boon to corporations looking to connect with consumers in an effort to build meaningful relationships and communities around their brands, but it can also backfire. While there’s little doubt that social tools are an effective means of communicating to and reaching out to customers, how much sharing is too much? After all, bad press arguably travels faster than the positive kind, particularly in a culture of almost real time.

While it’s easy to place the onus on our employees and consumers to know the difference between business and personal, these lines are blurring more and more every day so we need to be extremely mindful of how we approach these interactions. There may be no single answer that is applicable for all situations, but leading by example is good place to start.

[image via markus941]

Affiinity marketing allows an NPO to partner with for-profit organizations which, through their own business models, provide a “give-back” on the proceeds of every purchase made by the organization’s membership base. Even everyday items like wireless phone service and insurance can generate a significant amount of revenue.

So why is this market so untapped?

Non-profits have misconstrued the platform and its effects. Affinity marketing is a viable tool, as long as its best uses are understood and implemented. For example, NPOs must take an active role in communicating any new marketing program to its constituents. After all, the last thing one would want is to alienate supporters when trying to alleviate their financial pressure.

Whatever role affinity marketing takes, it should of course tie into an organization’s mission, and that message should be clearly communicated in the quality and widespread appeal of the chosen product or service. With broad appeal to a large cross-section of their membership, the marketed product both makes sense and creates a built-in test audience. And most importantly, while this type of marketing may seem like an easy solution, it can never completely replace other methods of fundraising like capital campaigns, annual pledge drives, and fundraising galas. Instead, it complements them in a results-driven manner that has potentially long-lasting effects on the fiscal health of a non-profit organization.

In speaking on “The Importance of Art,” I offer my thoughts from the standpoint of an appreciator, an investor and a philanthropist. The art world represents a rare opportunity to combine many of my passions into a singular endeavor and it’s vital that we continue to support the institutions that make it possible.