When President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was tasked with handling the shortage of engineers in the U.S., they turned to interns. Using a tradition with its roots in the master-apprentice relationship, the Council is relying on industry to start earlier in training its next generation of workers. In...

As a rule, organizations work toward the goals they set. When these goals have numbers attached to them, the work focuses on what drives these numbers to improve. Unfortunately if these numbers are based on vanity metrics, an organization is bound to get sick. Vanity metrics, a term...

There is an old joke about an optimistic kid that is left in a room full to the brim with horse shit. The people who left him there return about an hour later, and to their surprise, they find the boy happily digging through the shit and ask "Hey Boy!...

It is 1995 and a clothing store owner is proudly placing a 'now open for business' sign by the front door to attract customers. The front of the store is adorned with the best-looking mannequins sporting the latest in hip 90's grunge. Customers file in the front door because they...

"Have you heard? Susie Cooper is running for High School class president -- and she's giving out free cupcakes in the hall!". A winning strategy for any campaign in a closed community is to give away the most free stuff in order to curry votes and support. The classic popularity...

Bottle rockets are a lot of fun. You set them up on the ground, propped inside of a bottle, light the fuse and run. The firework takes off, curving and spinning through the air, whistling until... POP! Repeat for the rest of the pack of 50 they came in and...

DoSomething.org loves interns. During the summer we have almost the same number of staff as interns running around the office (we have 20 college interns this summer!). Interns are our No. 1 source for recruiting full-time staff, and they bring an awesome energy into the office (we've hired 9 interns...

One of the featured keynotes at South By South West Interactive (#SXSWi) was Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja of SCVNGR who announced that we have moved from the decade of the social layer to the decade of the game layer. As the conference continued, games,...

On May 10, 1940, Germany launched a blitzkrieg campaign against France. Less than five weeks later the French surrendered when the Maginot Line was outflanked by German Panzer tanks. The blitzkrieg, or lightning war tactics, relied on a fast moving tank army networked together with radios that provided real time...

Alaska was a cold, harsh place for the Inuit people 7,000 years ago. When a whale was caught, the Inuit held a huge party to celebrate their hunt and would utilize every part of whale -- to waste anything was a religious taboo. In their resource constrained environment, the Inuit...

Al Davis, the owner of 1970s Raiders was willing to do anything and everything to win. He (allegedly) bugged the visiting team's locker room, watered the field to slow faster teams down, spied by helicopter, and used dirty pile tactics. The Raiders dirty reputation inspired Glenn Dickey to write

Over the last 10 years the web and our personal identifiable data has grown up. It has gone from an awkward middle school dance -- boys on one side girls the other. To a wedding crasher style dance party where friends, family and work all grind up on the dance...

Like a bull through a china shop, Malcolm Gladwell's recent article, "Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted" plows through social media enabled activism, dismissing its past and future potential as a tool for impact. Full disclosure, I am a huge fan of Malcolm's work and...

The bar at the W Hotel Hollywood has a line to get in starting at 6pm. It's not because the bar is full, in fact there is more than enough room for everyone at this point in the night, but they don't want just anyone.

In high school I decided that I didn't want my career to be focused on making rich people richer or even to make myself rich, I wanted to focus on having a positive impact on the world in some way. I thought this was a simple enough goal to guide...

You walk into a Starbucks and ask for a small coffee, the barista looks at you bewildered and replies, "sorry, small coffee not found." This conversation would never happen for two reasons: 1. Starbucks has small coffee up the yingyang 2. The barista would translate your request to Starbuck's terminology,...

"Please vote for us even though this is the fifth contest we've tried to win in the last year. This time we really need it!" - Not-for-profit Communications Team

'Crowd sourced philanthropy' is a hot trend in the for-profit marketing world. Nearly every 501(c)3 has been eligible -- and tempted...

In the year 1066, King William the Conqueror had a problem; he could not take care of all of England. There were too many uprisings for one centralized power to manage.

Enter feudalism, a system that divided the land into fiefdoms led by lords in exchange for...

"Your org doesn't have mobile giving!!?? How are you supposed to collect the thousands of dollars people could be texting you right now? All you need is a mobile donation short code, that's all the Red Cross did and look how well they're doing." -- Someone you probably know

Cow Path Theory
If you drop a cow in a random field it will eventually find its way to water or die trying. Though it may not be the fastest way, cows will do their best to reach their goal, and will continue to use the same trail leaving a...