Need Wider Feedback on Grant Proposals? Try Facebook

When Maine Health Access Foundation launched its Fund for the Future initiative in May it sent a request for proposals through its usual channels. Then it added a new twist. It launched a Facebook page to get  broader feedback into the process.

Program Officer Len Bartel (left) explains:

Mentor, Teacher, Role Model, Friend Passes Away

I’ve been thinking back through the stories I could tell about Frank Karel, who died on Saturday.

His obituary certainly captures his extraordinary contribution to philanthropy, but what I remember most was the man himself. It was Frank who hired me at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and I had the great privilege of working with him for six months before he moved on to a retirement that was as full as his worklife until he was slowed by the cancer that ultimately claimed him.

Knight Foundation Looking for Social Media Superstar

I noticed the other day that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami is looking for a community manager. There aren’t too many major private foundations that have embraced the need for a community manager, yet, so I gave their V.P. Communications Marc Fest (left) a quick call to find out more.

Go Ahead, Jump In Already

I’ll be the first to admit that when we launched a Twitter feed for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation last December, we had no strategy and little idea of what we were getting into. In the words of my Aunt Winnifred – the one with an unexplained scar from a knife fight on the side of her face—we had less sense of direction than a headless man on a Tilt-a-Whirl.