A GIVING GUY! [Another in my occasional series on friends in real life, #FriendsIRL who also happen to be #GreatIRL]. As my email inbox gets flooded by Giving Tuesday emails and Twitter and FB fills up with various suggestions, pleas for donations, etc, I wanted to salute my friend Henry Timms. He, along with a team of other social and digital media gurus (including Sharon Feder Hirsch, Adam Hirsch, Matthew Bishop and more - see full list in screenshots below) came up with and executed the idea of #GivingTuesday two years ago. A reaction to the insanity around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday is about helping nonprofit organizations raise much needed funding. As you can see below, Bill Gates tweeted about it back in 2012 itself and so many orgs are getting behind this - more than 140 emails in my Gmail inbox at last count (please help me tag GT orgs in the screenshot below!). [My own org, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is an avid participant and I hope youll consider supporting us: https://secure.metmuseum.org/secure/donation/donate ] Henry & Friends deserve every kudo for what theyve pulled off. If this is Year 3, imagine Year 5, Year 10. When asked about GT, I say its not the amount raised (though more money is always welcome), its about increasing the number of folks participating in the idea of digital giving. But theres another reason I want to salute Henry. Big ideas like this come from people who are good at executing lots of little ones along the way. They also have to be breakers of barriers & stereotypes. Henry, whose day job is Executive Director of the 92nd Street Y, one of NYCs most important and influential orgs, has broken at least two barriers when he became ED: He is the first non-American and non-Jewish person to run that storied, 140-year-old Jewish institution. Read his full set of achievements here from the April 2014 announcement of his ascension: 92y.org/ExecutiveAnnouncement.aspx You can get a sense of his thinking about big ideas in something I posted about two weeks ago. He and @jeremyheimans have written a major article for @Harvard Business Review, about Understanding New Power. I saw remarkably positive responses about it and its importance in understanding the new zeitgeist. Take a look: https://facebook/sreenet/posts/10101551572852362?pnref=story And, finally, a note about the role of chief digital officer, which is getting a lot of attention these days, along with titles like chief data officer. Even though Ive been privileged to hold the title in two awesome orgs, Columbia & the Met, I am not sure what the long-term prospects are for the role. Theres a good chance its a transitionary one that works at this moment in time, but will be made unnecessary as CEOs with real digital chops come up through various systems (Im not saying all CDOs will be CEOs one day; Im saying that CDOs will likely be unnecessary because CEOs will have all kinds of digital DNA they dont naturally have now). Once upon a time, major institutions had someone who role could be considered the Chief Telephone Operator; but as everyone learned to use the telephone, there was no need for someone in that kind of role. For the record, I think Chief Technology Officers (who run specialized things like IT, backend and infrastructure) will always be around. And Henry, it turns out is among the first of the kind of person I envision will be running all major institutions some day. He doesnt need a CDO as he is one himself. He knows digital better than any CDO, so why would he need one? Congrats on all your success, Henry, and Id like my inbox back, please. //Sree//
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:21:41 +0000
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