Ask Mazarine: Best Answers on LinkedIn

You’ve Got Answers!

According to LinkedIn, I’m an expert in Nonprofit Fundraising, Philanthropy, Work-life Balance, Non-profit Management, Social Enterpreneurship, and Public Relations.

Here are some questions where my answer got chosen as best answer:

“Facebook – serious concerns regarding privacy, where would all the ‘facebook’ users go? Plenty of the industry voices are calling for a ‘boycott.'”-Jonathan Evans of Cisco.

Great question.

I committed Facebook suicide and it is wonderful. I have saved so much time, I’ve written a book and started a business. Now I use phone, email, and letters to connect with others.

These articles about “Is there life after facebook” in the NYT are so funny. If there was life BEFORE Facebook, why wouldn’t there be life AFTER?

With all of these privacy concerns, where can facebook users go?

I talked about this in Twitter, use Twitpic if they want to share pictures. We can’t afford the risk of giving away our whole lives on there. I mean, just look at Failbook. Facebook gaffes are legendary.

As far as the friend-feed thing goes, I don’t think we need to hear about every hard boiled egg you ever ate.

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Where should a nonprofit look to obtain grant money to fund their organization’s strategic planning? -Tina Rust, Chief Operating Officer at Resume Your Life

Dear Tina,

Go to the foundation center database cooperating collection in your city.

If you can do a google search, you can find the grant for you. It’s really easy.

Once you’re there, ask someone to help you with finding a grant for strategic planning in your region and for your cause.

You can search by grantmaking institution, or by grants received. Looking at grants received is probably the best bet at first. Once you’re in there, go to Subject area, and find “Strategic Planning” and then put Nationwide and your state in region. Then take a note of each granting institution, their deadlines and guidelines. Put these in a spreadsheet, and apply! This should help you find the grant you want.

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“Imagine yourself having a considerable amount of money and time. Imagine you want to invest these goods in making the world better. What would be your priority? Would you focus on the environment, helping children, finding cures for diseases?” – Krzysztof Kolczyk, Team Leader/Designer at Motorola

When I lived in Indonesia for several months, I came in with ideas on what people there needed. I thought they needed condoms!

Imagine my surprise when I was in a mobile health clinic in Jakarta’s poorest slums, and what people came in with were all manner of skin diseases, and what they really needed was clean water. WATER was the key.

People in that community now have water filters and they sell water to neighboring slums. The kids now get to go to school, because they can afford uniforms and books, and people are getting healthier and richer by providing this service and the product of clean water.

You need to help people start small businesses around the world. The best way to do that is to think what the community needs (Clean water for example) and then help people in that community provide it.

Economic empowerment of women will help people stop rape, it will help jumpstart entire economies, and it will help get more of the children educated, which will cut down on overpopulation worries.

When giving things to other countries, we must realize that we can hurt more than we help if we just GIVE things that we think people need. We have to help empower people to offer these things to their communities for themselves. I’ve written a whole blog post about Toxic Giving here, would love to continue the conversation there!

Do you have any questions for me? Leave a comment or email me at info at wildwomanfundraising.com.