I was on the train earlier this week on my way into Beautiful downtown Chicago and decided I wanted to catch up on some of my emails. I came across a blog post from one of my favorite angel investor/adviser, Jason Calacanis, founder of www.launch.co.

Are you looking for some free advertising for your cause? Google will give you $10,000 if you qualify for their grant program. To be eligible to enroll into the Google Grants program, you must first apply through Google for Nonprofits. Organizations must meet the Google for Nonprofits legal and policy guidelines and be headquartered in a country where Grants currently operates. Read more
By Gini Dietrich
You’ve likely heard by now that Google+ launched last week in super-secret beta form. They’ve twice, now, opened invites for a couple of hours and then closed them quickly because the demand is so high. So if you’re not in yet, don’t despair.
There are some things you need to be thinking about before you jump to the newest shiny penny.
The past couple of years have been focused on building community and engaging through Facebook and Twitter. But you don’t own those platforms, which means you don’t own your fans and followers.
This is why it’s so important to build community on a platform that you own. Sure, you need all the social tools and the content curation and the fun apps that make your stuff look cool, but they all should drive people back to something you own.
In this case: A database.
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