It’s a New Year and I hope to get a better handle on writing this very occasional, and purposely very short, column.
I may have been somewhat discouraged late last year after I drafted a rant about Facebook, and my editor said I sounded like a crank. Or was it a curmudgeon?
So we shelved that column. Good thing, too, because now it’s all sunshine and unicorns here at Mission Local. I could almost say that everything happens for a reason. (But I won’t.)
One of my early columns had complained about the lack of transparency at the San Francisco Foundation. “You are probably annoying people we want funding from,” Mission Local’s sage managing editor, Joe Eskenazi, advised before it went up. I doubted we would ever get any funding anyway, and I thought the column might put the Foundation on notice and at least help some other small nonprofits that might also be having trouble navigating their website. Besides, I was cranky.
But, lo and behold, the SFF has thick skin. Within the month, Eric Brown, the interim VP of marketing and communication, and Ling Woo Liu, the director of that department, visited us, asked great questions and seemed truly interested in our answers. They promised nothing but made some suggestions. In the end, we got a nice grant and the promise of help in guiding us through a future application process. Is the lesson here that it is worth annoying potential funders or simply that the SF Foundation is particularly gracious? I think it may be the latter.
Next week: More good news.