By Cynthia M. Adams, President and CEO, GrantStation

Before you begin reading this blog post, let me throw in a disclaimer. Our researchers at GrantStation are incredibly good at their jobs. They all have strong research and writing skills, and a loyalty to finding the right information for our Members that is sort of stunning. So, everything I have to say about trends in technology grantmaking is based on subjective observations made by those people who spend their days researching grantmakers.

So, what sorts of changes are we seeing in grantmaking due to the rapid growth and ever changing landscape we call technology?

Is the web -- many small pieces loosely joined - making old grantmaking practices in advocacy and democratic engagement obsolete? What does grantmaking in an interactive world look like? The rise of collective knowledge, organizing networks, and the transparency that millions of eyes and voices generate is changing politics (remember Macaca?), economic paradigms, how corporations conduct business, and yet has made precious few inroads into how we, as a third sector, operate -- and that is especially true for funders.

In a world more connected than ever, we are already seeing the next big social transformation - as messy and as iterative and lose as all the movements in history, with strong and persuasive visions but at best highly informal plans. 'Social change' in a connected world is based on an entirely different paradigm than that of the 'strategic plan' and clear 'year-end metrics' that funders demand. In a highly fluid, networked, and iterative world, funding by 'blueprint' becomes meaningless. Read more.