Editor's note: We were humbled yesterday to read a message from Dan Pallotta identifying GuideStar as a nonprofit he loves. We're excited that he's excited about our mission and thank him for allowing us to share his kind words here.

Hi Everyone,

I have seen the future of philanthropy and it is GuideStar. They have the potential to transform the world’s relationship to giving.

December 31 is your final opportunity to make a 2016 tax-deductible contribution while making an impact on the individuals, communities, and organizations served by the nonprofit sector.

It's Giving Tuesday, and nonprofits are reaching out to donors to share their stories of mission and impact and celebrate and encourage philanthropic giving.

Below is a follow-up to the questions submitted during the June 7 webinar on motivating donors to take real action online with Spencer Whelan, Director of Marketing and Communications, KIMBIA. To view or hear a live recording of the presentation, please click here.

Below is a follow-up to the questions submitted during the May 24 webinar on corporate giving with Melissa Trumpower, EVP, Marketing, Communications, & Strategic Partnerships, Good360. To view or hear a live recording of the presentation, please click here.

It will take some time to learn if the recent issues concerning Greg Mortensen are the result of the failures of a charismatic founder or something worse. But this whole affair points out the difficulties – as well as the urgency – in finding better ways of understanding nonprofit performance and effectiveness.

Comments by Beth Kanter, Partner, Zoetica & Co-Author, The Networked Nonprofit (www.bethkanter.org)

We received some great questions on Wednesday during the Q&A Webinar with GuideStar. Below I’ve included some guidelines on developing a Social Media policy for your organization and links to resources on additional topics that were discussed during the conversation.

In my last blog post, I talked about the current controversy surrounding Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson and his organization, the Central Asia Institute (CAI). Is this a classic case of a charismatic founder engaging in hyperbole and not paying attention to the details of the organization or is there something worse going on? How do we as donors make judgments about nonprofit organizations?

One of my greatest frustrations in trying to build a sustainable nonprofit organization has been the difficulty in finding capital. GuideStar has been blessed with a consortium of foundations that have generously invested tens of millions of dollars in our early years. But as we have grown and reached mid-life in our maturation, foundation dollars for operations have been harder to raise. Several years ago we took on over $2 million in PRI’s as a way to bring in stable and reliable dollars that we could invest in product development, sales and marketing in order to continue our growth at a fast pace. We’re pleased to say that we ended 2010 with 90 percent of our operations covered by sales of products and services and we’re now to a point that increasingly we are relying on foundations for special projects and opportunities, but not support for direct operations. In general we’re now starting to see some attention given to the lack of nonprofit capital and there are a number of interesting developments going on in the nonprofit sector (a subject of another blog). I’ve often thought, though, that with easier access to capital, GuideStar could have grown much faster.