Nonprofits have long understood that without political will, policies, and public weigh-in and buy-in, the most well-intentioned initiatives open themselves up to criticism and disregard the political support needed to ensure that what’s proposed is feasible and successful beyond the pilot phase.

Even before the financial crisis began to unfold, the Hawaii Community Foundation realized that it had lapsed into philanthropic habits that might be counterproductive. So it opted to try a different way. The attached interview describes its experiment -- which is still ongoing -- in building grantmaking from the collective intelligence of community activists.

Nonprofits whose work focuses on communities need to recognize that they are the keepers of knowledge and wisdom about community engagement and community development, the very skills most needed today. And community is the crucible of our major challenges—job loss, failing schools, home foreclosures, violence, fear—as well as where the answers for the future will be found.

In such challenging times, nonprofits need to identify the most cutting edge organizational tools, technologies, and behaviors that engage constituents and achieve results. To that end, I would draw our attention to the campaign organization built by President-elect Barack Obama.

During these troubled times, what lies in store for the nonprofit sector, and what do we need to do about it? Along with every family in America, the nonprofit sector is wondering about its future. Will we miraculously survive as we largely do today? Will we starve our organizations to the core or emerge from the current economic calamity mostly intact? Will we fight the prevailing downturn on behalf of our individual institutions and leave others to defend themselves, or instead will we join fo

Advocacy suffers from an inadequate conceptual frame and inconsistent messages. We are mired in the same old debates about what constitutes advocacy, where the line is drawn between advocacy and civic engagement, and whether we should proudly proclaim lobbying as our constitutionally given right “to petition government” and our public-interest responsibility or should instead avoid the L word for fear of scaring nonprofits and funders away.