I'm a principal and director of Tactical Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital Management in Burlingame, CA, midway between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Ensemble Capital provides families both traditional investment management and a unique, specialized approach to advancing their philanthropic interests. I work with philanthropic families to help them integrate the personal and financial implications of their giving.

Recently I began writing the column On Philanthropy for the Financial Times. The columnist job grew out of my blog Tactical Philanthropy.

Mike Brown, a venture capitalist, moderating an Economic Sustainability track:

Some nonprofits just suck!

He got some hesitant applause and a few nervous laughs. But why is that such a shocking statement? Doesn’t everyone agree that some for-profit companies “just suck”? Why should nonprofits be any different? In a world with limited resources, we need to get comfortable with the idea that nonprofits that are trying hard and have lots of passion -- but aren’t cutting it -- don’t need a pat on the back. They need to be ignored and we need to let them go out of business.

“I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in those places.”

Anne Fadiman
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Why am I at NetSquared? I provide wealth management services for philanthropic families.

Why is Chris DeCardy here? He is director of communications for The David and Lucile Packard Foundation President.

Why is Anurag Nigam here? He is a member of Sand Hill Angels.

Why is Amy Lesnick here? She is executive director of Full Circle Fund.

Why is Cisco Systems sponsoring this conference?

Because interesting things are happening “where the edges meet”. Something’s happening here. I don’t think that anyone knows for sure what it is. Usually when you go to a conference, everyone is in the same line of work. At NetSquared, everyone I meet comes from a totally different background. There are “interesting frictions and incongruities” between us. But that’s why all of this is so exciting.

This is an excerpt from a longer post on my blog, Tactical Philanthropy, about Day One of NetSquared:

What I’ve found interesting so far is the humbleness with which most of the projects present themselves. If you’ve ever seen for-profit companies pitch for funding, humble isn’t the word that comes to mind. But I’m not so sure that if I’m a funder who is thinking about making large grants to a startup, that I want “humble” to be how I describe the entrepreneurs. If you think that you have a transformational idea that will help with a significant social problem, it’s OK to have some self-confidence or even a little arrogance.

“Doing good” isn’t enough, funders want to know who is doing the “most good”. In a world with scarce philanthropic dollars, creating competitive environments is one way to allocate those dollars effectively. NetSquared is a good step in that direction and nonprofits need to prepare themselves to compete. So my advice to the projects for day two is don’t apologize for what you don’t know yet, tell us what makes you great. If you don’t think you and your project is an outstanding use of philanthropic dollars, better than all the other projects, you might want to consider a different conference to attend.

Boy it’s great to be heading back to the Cisco campus for N2Y2! I’m Sean Stannard-Stockton, author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog and director of tactical philanthropy at Ensemble Capital. You can get a sense for who I am from reading my bio. But I’m more interested in giving you all a chance to hear directly from Daniel Ben-Horin. To that end, I just posted a podcast I recorded with Daniel last week. We talk about the vision behind NetSquared and the usefulness of “wisdom of crowd” techniques for nonprofits and philanthropy.

I’m also the project champion for Innovatorz. They have an awesome storytelling model. Since I first took on the project, I’ve introduced them to a former president of Community Foundations of America, head of media relations for Council on Foundations and the executive director of a foundation communications firm. They were universally impressed with the Innovatorz model. I’m sure that whether Innovatorz wins or not, you’ll be seeing their work a lot in the coming year.

The goal of NetSquared in my mind is not to demonstrate a Web 2.0 process, rather the goal is to:

Accelerating 20 great projects that utilize the technologies, tools and communities of the social web to create societal impact in a sustainable fashion. We will accelerate these projects by providing cash awards from the newly created Technology Innovation Fund and by connecting them with funders, developers, ntaps, and other people and organizations that can help the projects attain the next level.

Phil Cubeta, who blogs at Gift Hub, was the first philanthropy blogger and is still the dean of the group. Phil would not consider himself "inside the tent" when it comes to Web 2.0 or even technology in general. And yet today he declared this NetSquared conference a "Watershed Event", declaring that it marks the "moving beyond The Age of Cluetrain".

My name is Sean Stannard-Stockton and I blog at TacticalPhilanthropy.com.

When Daniel asked me to sign on to N2Y2 as an advocate I had no idea I was going to have 150 projects to review. But I've put in the grunt work and come up with my Top Ten Hot Projects to Keep Your Eye On (listed in reverse alphabetical order):

I attended NetSquared as a representative of the philanthropic, rather than the nonprofit, industry. I had a great time at the conference and it stimulated my interest in social networking tools. I've been impressed with the vigor with which nonprofits have taken to the social networking paradigm and I look forward to more tools being developed for donors, rather than just as ways for nonprofits to reach out to donors.

I recently launched a blog called Tactical Philanthropy. I'd like to invite all of you to visit and more importantly give my thanks to the NetSquared community. I'd especially like to single out Britt Bravo, Elisa Camahort, Beth Kanter and Seth Mazow for the helpful conversations I had with each of them and to Daniel Ben-Horin for inviting me to the conference in the first place.

While all of us attendees explore the possible applications of Web 2.0 technology I believe it is important that we remember the profound applications of older (Web 1.0) technology that literally is creating a new class of philanthropists, some of whom might even be interested in funding new Web 2.0 social ventures.

New applications of old technology are still extremely valuable in generating massive cultural change. An analogy: Hip Hop DJs still love vinyl because it complements and extends the creative possibilities of the newest digital technologies. Similarly, Web 1.0 enables the new philanthropists to create whole new pools of money -- and social self-expression -- that can fund the next wave of initiatives and their supporting technologies.