Why “Free” Isn’t Always a Good Thing
The charitable sector is going through a period of painful self-examination about the unintended side effects of well-intentioned philanthropic efforts. TOMS, the popular “profit for good” shoe company that donates a pair of shoes to a …
The Fourth Sector
The second flight of “Test Pilots” is winging their way through the CFM Digital Badging project. Besides helping the Alliance test the potential of this form of microcredentialing to serve our members, and providing some training on …
Who Makes the Best Advocate for the Future of Museum Funding?
Good futures scanning should include all the STEEP categories. As I’ve confessed before, I sometimes have trouble with the P—political/policy trends. Today, Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied, the Alliance’s vice president of government relations …
Museum Jobs That Didn’t Exist in 2003
(& what that says about the evolution of our field.) A couple weeks ago, I read a post on Coexist called “Eight New Jobs People will have in 2025,” projecting openings for Digital Death Managers, Un-Schooling Counselors, Digital Detox …
Flower Power: A Story of Organizational Re-Blossoming
A reporter recently asked me to name the biggest barrier standing in the way of museums adapting to the forces shaping the future. My reply was “ourselves—the funding and organizational structures that tether us to outdated models and …
TrendsWatch 2013 Mid-year Update: The (ever) Changing Shape of Giving
In the first half of 2013, we’re seeing a growing resentment on the part of nonprofits about the some of the expectations being projected on to them by funders, and the beginnings of concerted action to re-shape public expectations …
Futurist Friday: Nonprofit Apartheid and the Overhead Myth
I posted some brief musings this past Monday about the blurring boundaries between nonprofit and for profit options for young professionals seeking to do good in their careers. In the comment section, “Albert Nonymous” posted a …
Balancing the Equation
I had the pleasure, last month, of addressing attendees at the League of American Orchestra’s conference in St. Louis. They invited me to share some insights from the museum world about the forces shaping our shared future. As is often …
The Class System of the Future
In creating their scanning frameworks, many of the “test pilots” in the first flight of CFM’s Digital Badging Projects identified “wealth inequality,” “wealth gap” and other variations on these terms as being issues worth monitoring as …
Who is the Development Staff of the Future? Look in the Mirror
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