Recently, I got an email from Stephanie Gillis, Senior Advisor at the Raikes Foundation, wanting to “explore potential synergies” with the work we are doing at Philanthropy Women. Naturally, I was eager to do so, and soon learned about Givingcompass.org, a new team effort of several foundations and nonprofits, aimed at drawing on the chops of the tech sector in order to provide more resources for the philanthropy sector, particularly around how to assess the quality of philanthropy and get the most impact per philanthropy dollar.
What got me smiling right away as I got an inside tour of GivingCompass.org: It looks like they are going to do philanthropy news aggregation right. Inside the site, partners of great magnitude have already signed up to be part of the 12-16 “magazines” that will aggregate multiple areas of philanthropy, helping to feed donors and the nonprofit sector with a new source for matchmaking, as well as data, case examples, and strategy on how to give.
This could work out very well not only for Giving Compass, but also for Philanthropy Women, which, as a free and open news source, is already being aggregated by Giving Compass. That means more eyeballs for our work, as well as us being able to learn more from the other news and information sources participating there.
Giving Compass is being incubated by the Raikes Foundation, and supported by a group of partners including the Seattle Foundation, Social Venture Partners, Stanford PACS, Charity Navigator, and Global Giving. These partners are coming together out of an awareness that philanthropy needs to do more to help donors make informed decisions about giving with impact, and the resources available to help them in this process.
The soft launch is scheduled for June 12, and the site will be open in beta mode this summer. It would be a great time to get in on the ground floor of this new experiment.
Giving Compass will officially launch with lots of fanfare in September, but during the summer you can come on board and explore, and help the team learn and improve the site for September. Giving Compass aggregates top quality resources and information in response to donors’ interests, and is eager to get more community reactions.
Giving Compass is a free online platform, and has ambitions to become “the single online destination” for expertly curated information on how to give, who to partner with, where to meet, and where to give with better impact.
Who are the some of the masterminds behind this new philanthropy hub?
Jeff and Tricia Raikes recognized early the irony that 70-80% of giving in the US is directed by individuals, but most of the resources in the sector are designed to support professionals working in foundations. They partnered with other donors and began assembling a team to drive Giving Compass.
Stephanie Gillis is Senior Advisor for Impact-Driven Philanthropy at the Raikes Foundation and the General Manager for Giving Compass. She joined Raikes earlier this year, having been Managing Director of Arabella Advisors, where she focused on family and individual donors. Previously, Gillis was COO and Senior Consultant with Blueprint Research + Design, Inc., where she worked with philanthropy clients on strategy and evaluation.
Luis J. Salazar is the tech genius behind Giving Compass and board advisor to the Business School at the University of Washington Bothell. Previously, he co-founded Jobaline.com and before that, held high ranking positions for Yahoo, Microsoft (co-founding Office 365), and other big tech companies.
Paul Shoemaker is a Senior Consultant with Giving Compass, focused on content and partnerships. Shoemaker is also the Founding President of Social Venture Partners. In 2011 and 2012, Shoemaker was twice named one of the “Top 50 Most Influential People in the Nonprofit Sector” by The NonProfit Times (2011 and 2012). In 2015, Shoemaker received the Microsoft Alumni Integral Fellow Award. He is the author of Can’t Not Do: The Compelling Social Drive that Changes Our World .
Related:
New Hub Launches for Women of Color in Giving
Melinda Gates Wants Cities to Get Gender.Equality.Tech
