GUEST SIDEKICK: Invest in innovation http://blogs.jta.org/ENTRY_PERMALINK_HERE/guest-op-ed-invest-in-innovation/ The Fundermentalist welcomes Dana Raucher, the executive director of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, and Felicia Herman, the executive director of the Natan Fund. The duo argues that in tight times the key is fostering the growth of small innovative nonprofits, not cutting them off in the name of streamlining.  en-us hermanraucher@jta.org Copyright 2009 2009-04-27T;18:59:00-05:00 Comment by Daniel Bassill tutormentor1@earthlink.net Thanks for sharing this article. I think you’re right on target about the “cultural transformation that is eroding the power of top-down, one-size-fits-all, large-scale companies and organizations”.  I also appreciate your recognition that “Nearly every young organization we have funded over the past few years has been challenged to find the resources to deal with an ever-increasing demand for their programs and services.” I lead the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago and maintain a database of more than 200 organizations offering various forms of volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring in the city. My goal is to help each group have a more consistent flow of needed resources by coaching people in business, religion, philanthropy, etc. to use my database, and poverty maps of Chicago, to choose which program(s) they want to help with donations of time, talent or money. If such a database were used to create a library of Jewish serving organizations, the same benefits would accrue if leaders like yourselves were pointing donors to that library on a regular basis.  We need more people to take this role, including the President, if we are to support all of these small innovators the ways they need to be supported. Thanks for sharing this article. I think you’re right on target about the “cultural transformation that is eroding the power of top-down, one-size-fits-all, large-scale companies and organizations”. 

I also appreciate your recognition that “Nearly every young organization we have funded over the past few years has been challenged to find the resources to deal with an ever-increasing demand for their programs and services.”

I lead the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago and maintain a database of more than 200 organizations offering various forms of volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring in the city. My goal is to help each group have a more consistent flow of needed resources by coaching people in business, religion, philanthropy, etc. to use my database, and poverty maps of Chicago, to choose which program(s) they want to help with donations of time, talent or money.

If such a database were used to create a library of Jewish serving organizations, the same benefits would accrue if leaders like yourselves were pointing donors to that library on a regular basis.  We need more people to take this role, including the President, if we are to support all of these small innovators the ways they need to be supported.

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