07 Jan What, me blog?

With apologies to Alfred E. Neuman of MAD Magazine, whose face and catch phrase, “What, me worry?” are embedded in the psyche of many of us baby boomers, I feel that the title is fitting for my first blog entry. I’m sure those with whom I have worked for many years are surprised to see I have decided to write a blog, because while I am far from a Luddite, I have never exactly embraced the social networking, constantly connected, always-on gestalt. I don’t have a Facebook account (I joke that I would be first to enroll in “Eraserbook,” if it existed), I am not on LinkedIn or any of those other similar sites, and I don’t believe that I am missing out on anything as a result.

I do follow several bloggers, and find their posts often interesting, sometimes informative and occasionally thought provoking. And that is what we hope this blog will do for those who read it. We plan to weigh in on various topics of interest (or at least of interest to me, and hopefully to you) ranging from philanthropy, to health care, investing, what’s going on in our community – whatever seems to be timely and well… topical.

Which brings me to our “topical” paragraph. I am pleased to announce that the Board of Directors of the Irvine Health Foundation has approved the IHF Impact Fund, designed to support capacity building activities and needs of critical nonprofit organizations seeking to support the health and well‐being of the residents of Orange County, California. IHF will solicit capacity requests related to a) Information Technology, b) Finance, c) Governance and Operations, and d) Marketing and Evaluation. Our foundation believes very strongly in the nonprofit sector in Orange County and the newly launched Impact Fund furthers IHF’s commitment to help local organizations build the capacity necessary to meet future needs. We hope the IHF Impact Fund will ultimately enhance and strengthen service providers in Orange County, and we believe the business areas identified above are areas of vital importance to many nonprofit organizations, that in many cases go unfunded. More information on the IHF Impact fund is available here.

I look forward to continuing the dialogue in general as well as on the issues and challenges that face our provider community, and on what community investors can do to help – all comments are welcome (note that this is a moderated blog, so comments are vetted before being posted).

Be well,

Ed