Recently, I blogged about Jeff Jarvis’ book, “What Would Google Do?” as it relates to our work at the Council. Jarvis stresses the power of networks and the importance of sharing information quickly. He points to Internet powerhouses like Facebook and Amazon that successfully connect people to one another, allowing them to share needs, knowledge, and interests.

I promised in my entry to find ways to weave some of Jarvis’ insights into our work, here’s one:

While the Council has a long and distinguished history of service and leadership within the domestic philanthropic arena, we have not effectively communicated our global philanthropic work. We’re active on this front because this work is essential to many of our foundations and corporate grantmakers interested and involved in global giving.

During the first few weeks of this year, the Council:

• Collected and shared information on the Haitian disaster response to our members and all of philanthropy.
• Re-issued the Council and European Foundation Centre’s Principles of Accountability for International Philanthropy.
• Led efforts to convince the IRS to declare the earthquake in Haiti as a “qualified disaster”—this achieves two important things: allows individuals who receive qualified disaster relief payments to exclude those payments from income on their tax returns; and allows employer-sponsored private foundations to assist victims in areas affected by the earthquake without affecting their tax-exempt status.
• Hosted the European Foundation Centre and Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support (WINGS) meetings and a global conference call related to our Global Leadership Initiative.
• Continued to work with the administration on the Equivalency Determination Repository.
• Confirmed Helmo Hernandez of the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba as the keynote speaker for our International Dinner at the Council’s 2010 Annual Conference in Denver.
• Announced Eliana Vera as our new managing director of Global Philanthropy Services at the Council.

In addition, I had the honor to serve on the Advisory Board of the Hope for Haiti Now fundraising initiative.

Quite simply, we cannot advocate for effective philanthropic collaboration unless we are engaged in supporting cross-border giving. We cannot serve corporate grantmaking unless we help break down the barriers to place-based giving for international business. We cannot support disaster response for a tsunami or Haiti without constant leadership, expertise, and effective regulatory work.

We are proud of this work. But we’re even prouder to undertake it on behalf of philanthropy everywhere.