In a special (perhaps Very Special?) episode of Using the Whole Whale recorded live in Austin, Olivia Marlowe-Giovetti speaks with Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media.

If you’re using the Internet today (and you are if you’re listening to this podcast), you can thank Tim in at least some small part. He wrote the first popular book on the Internet in 1992. His site Global Network Navigator launched as the first web portal in 1993 (and sold to AOL in 1995). He’s been behind terms like “open source software,” “Web 2.0,” and is now looking at how AI and the on-demand economy are transforming the nature of work and the future shape of businesses. This is covered in his latest book, WTF: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us.

Not included on the recording: Olivia and Tim talking too loudly about data in the SXSW Press Lounge during the press interviews for Ready Player One and being asked to keep it down. #sorrynotsorry

In M+R’s 2017 Benchmarks Study, cultural nonprofits emerged as the MVP in several areas. Email list size growth was more than double the overall nonprofit average (21% compared to 10%). Website visitor signup rates were simiarly higher than average — 2.7% for cultural nonprofits versus the overall average of 1.1%. This sector also had the largest Twitter and Instagram audiences relative to email list size.

Rock on, culture!

With the arts making up a sizable portion of the nonprofit sphere, we sat down with 21C Media Group, a leading public relations, digital, and consulting firm specializing in the performing arts world whose roster of digital clients includes Plácido Domingo, Joshua Bell, and Yo-Yo Ma and on the institutional side they work with such nonprofit organizations as the Los Angeles Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and Music Academy of the West. (Also, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra? They had a hand in that.) One big question on our minds: How do you make classical music and the performing arts relevant in the digital age?

We pose the question Sean Michael Gross, 21C’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, who has been with the company since 2007 and founded 21C’s digital division in 2009. Fun fact: Sean was Account Strategist Whaler Olivia Marlowe-Giovetti‘s boss at 21C before she joined Whole Whale in 2017 (hashtag-battleofthebosses?).

 Workplace giving contributes roughly $4 billion to charities in the U.S. each year. As the data show, there is a burgeoning interest in the workforce of aligning with organizations that share their personal values, and that includes giving back either through monetary contributions or in-kind pro bono work.

There’s no organization better suited to talk about workplace giving than America’s Charities (though we may be biased — George chairs the board). We sat down with their Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Lindsay J.K. Nichols, to learn more about the ways companies are giving back to the causes that matter most to their employees. Lindsay also shares data from America’s Charities annual snapshot on workplace giving trends.

America’s Charities inspires employees and organizations to support causes they care about. A nonprofit itself, America’s Charities’ goal is to help other nonprofits through workplace giving. In 40 years as a leader in this space, they have raised over $700 million for more than 20,000 nonprofits in cause sectors such as education, human rights, hunger, poverty, research, animal welfare, veteran assistance, disaster relief, and health services.

Founded on the principle that charitable choice — the idea that employers and employees should be able to support the causes they choose, rather than feel coerced to support specific institutions — is imperative to social impact, America’s Charities has never wavered from its original purpose.

Since 1980, America’s Charities has been at the forefront of workplace giving’s transformation: from paper pledges to digital platforms, from giving to engagement, from traditional fall campaigns to year-round opportunities inside and outside the walls of the workplace.

Workplace giving is a corporate culture model that drives employees to support a cause, either with monetary contributions or in-kind pro bono work or volunteering. The difference between workplace giving and individual giving is that workplace giving typically happens via payroll: Employees contribute a small amount from their paycheck every month.

This is extremely valuable for nonprofits because it creates expected, automated, and sustainable revenue. It’s also easier to ask these donors to increase their monthly donation as they are already bought into the cause — thereby further down the