The good news is that the Chronicle of Philanthropy is now covering nonprofit blogs. It's an official news beat for the leading journal of the philanthropic sector!
I'm delighted to see that several colleagues whose blogs that I esteem highly are now being quoted in the new "Give and Take" column. They have important points to make, and if those points are communicated to donors and foundation officers, it will serve everyone's longterm interests.
The bad news is that, as nonprofit bloggers, we are not just talking among (or to) ourselves. Good heavens - the people who give us money may start taking notice of what we're blogging! If they do, it probably won't be just the noble and uplifting blog articles that come to their attention, but articles that are snarky, sloppy, inaccurate, or full of potentially embarassing personal information.
In fact, this has been the bottom line all along. The vast majority of blogs are accessible to anyone who cares to read them.* And now, even the least tech-savvy philanthropists can read a summary (on paper, believe it or not) of dispatches from the nonprofit blogosphere.
As I've pointed out before, I think that in the long run transparency and accountability are good things for our sector, but we need to consider that we have been duly warned about possible consequences.
The more I think about, the more I think that this isn't an issue about blogging at all - it's about the difficulties and benefits of candid communication between nonprofit professionals and those who provide financial support to their organizations. It's a potentially difficult power relationship and however much we may want to control what they know and what they think, we can't do it. The Chronicle of Philanthropy's coverage of nonprofit blogs merely reminds us of what was true all along.
* Hi, Mom and Dad! I never publish a blog article without bearing in mind that you two could Google it up and read every word.
