In the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, my CU Boulder bathroom donation (well – the gift I gave to CU Boulder that resulted in me getting to name a bathroom) made the TV news tonight in Boston on Fox 25. There’s apparently a new bathroom news cycle because of William Falik’s gift to Harvard Law School for the Falik Men’s Room at Harvard Law School. While my bathroom at CU Boulder doesn’t have the same elegant name (it’s known as RRM 209 in the ATLAS Building, or the Feld Mens Bathroom on Foursquare), I’ve got a better quote: ”“The Best Ideas Often Come At Inconvenient Times – Don’t Ever Close Your Mind To Them.”

The two minute news clip, along with a Skype interview I did this afternoon, follows. MIT – my offer is still open – don’t flush it.

Harvard Law School names restroom after generous alumni: MyFoxBOSTON.com

One of the great things about living in Eldorado Springs, Colorado is interacting with nature on a daily basis.

Protecting the environment has been a priority of mine for many years.  Every now and then I like to call out a non-profit organization that I support that I think does an excellent job of helping protect the environment.

Colorado Conservation Voters is one of these groups.  CCV works to turn conservation values into Colorado priorities by educating legislators and the public about important environmental issues, helping pro-conservation candidates win their elections, and then holding our elected officials accountable. Most importantly, they do it efficiently as they are a group that has influence and reach much larger than their budget would indicate.

In the past six years they have built and protected a conservation majority in the state House, Senate, and Governor’s office. These victories matter – Colorado is a better place for CCV spearheading these pro-environment victories.  For example:

• Colorado now requires that 20% of our electricity come from renewable sources like wind and solar;
• More water is kept in our rivers and streams when they need it most and in crucial areas for habitat protection, protecting the health of our rivers;
• We have the strongest protections in the nation for our drinking water, wildlife, and communities threatened by oil and gas drilling.

This is a group that understands how to make change happen.  They use their money strategically and efficiently.  If you are interested in conserving the environment in Colorado, I encourage you to take a look at the Colorado Conservation Voters website as well as considering making a gift or even becoming a monthly donor.

I think Boulder is one of the absolute best places to start a tech company. The depth of talent and overall strength of our tech community here is superb. It turns out that makes it a great place to start a community-based tech nonprofit startup, too. I’ve written before about SnapImpact’s great work in making doing good easy. Having already created the first volunteering app for the iPhone, they’re started taking on some additional challenges.

Specifically, their developers got the attention of All for Good, a Silicon Valley-based project that managed to make data-sharing agreements with all the major volunteer data providers in the US – not an easy feat. Over the past year, they’ve built the US’s biggest database of volunteer opportunities and are the back-end for the serve.gov website. The SnapImpact crew has been given the go-ahead to create All for Good version 2.0.

They’re kicking it off with SnapCamp on Feb 19-21, an intensive weekend event for non-profit stake-holders, developers, designers, marketing gurus, startup geeks, and anyone else who wants to make it easy for volunteers find ways to contribute. Of note to developers, v2.0 will be utilizing Scala/Lift – with full support of the Lift community and Dave Pollak, it’s creator.

SnapCamp is taking place in the TechStars Bunker and is being fully sponsored by All for Good. I encourage you to show up, have some geeky startup fun, and do something really big with your weekend. Sign up at Eventbrite: http://snapcamp.eventbrite.com.

As the co-founder of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, I’m a huge fan of what the Entrepreneurs Foundation is all about.  Two weeks ago, when I was in San Francisco at Cloud Engines’ offices (makers of the Pogoplug and one of our investments) I noticed their Entrepreneurs Foundation plaque signifying their membership in the bay area chapter.  I asked Dan Putterman – the CEO of Cloud Engines – if he’d write a guest post about why Cloud Engines joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation.  It follows.

As a serial entrepreneur, it feels like there is always a reason to sacrifice; spending too much time at the office at the expense of one’s family, not getting enough exercise, eating poorly, and  certainly not taking enough (or any) time to give back to the community, environment or people in need. The rationale is that at some point there will be the ever elusive "exit" and things will 
change. The truth is that most of us perpetuate the circle by starting or getting involved in something new right afterwards (being an entrepreneur seems to be in one’s blood). Although guilt can be a great motivator of change, most entrepreneurs just lament amount their shortcomings and soldier forward (tenacity is also one of the traits that makes us successful).

I’ve been trying to break all of the rules at Pogoplug.  Yes, we work hard and pretty much live on email morning and night, but I encourage people to take care of themselves and their family. And I do my best to personally demonstrate this life balance through example. This time around, we joined a wonderful organization called Entrepreneur’s Foundation, a well-run group of high-tech focused philanthropists that help you allocate a little time to give back to your community through events and individual time contribution and actually run a foundation on your behalf based on equity that your company donates to it.

Here’s what’s so cool about this model: the more successful a company is, the more the foundation grows in value.  The team then gets to put the money to good use on a liquidation event. This way, if you selfishly work tons of hours one week, you can put the guilt aside knowing that the growing the value of your company is good for more than just you and your investors. During our last board meeting, I proposed that we put 1% of our company into the foundation.  Everyone unanimously and enthusiastically approved the motion.  With the "big picture" out of the way, we’ve also picked two awesome organizations in San Francisco, 826 Valencia and Homeless Prenatal Program. We’re going to do some group events and spend some personal time helping these organizations, including helping to purchase turkeys for hundreds of families who will prepare their first Thanks Giving meal.  EF takes care of all of the details so all we have to do is show up and get involved.

Thanks to EF, we are giving back and  feeling great about ourselves – and most importantly, we are breaking some outdated and dumb rules about entrepreneurship.

A month or so ago I got a voicemail from William Barrett at Forbes.  His message was something like “call me back – I want to talk to you about your bathroom.”  Now, I never view a phone call from one of the major business magazines as a good time.  I don’t have a publicist so most of the calls are about something negative – which is fine – but rarely something I’m looking for.

Barrett’s message intrigued me so I called him back.  We proceeded to have a hilarious conversation about my CU Bathroom gift along with a variety of other topics concerning charitable contributions.  I got off the phone thinking – if nothing else – this article will be funny.  The resulting article Cash Strapped Charities Put Donors’ Names On Just About Everything is everything you’d expect it to be.

But – it gets better.  On the call Barrett said he might want a picture of me in front of the bathroom.  I said “sure” expecting never to hear about it again.  A few days later I got a call to schedule a photo shoot at CU.  Here’s the result.

That’s my plaque on the left.  I haven’t seen the physical copy of the magazine yet (I’ve only seen it online) so I don’t know if the photo made the magazine, but if it did I now get to say that “the first time my picture was in Forbes was while I was standing in a bathroom.”

I love working with Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit.  Todd and I have been friends since I met him in 1997 when I was an investor in the seed round for Todd’s last company, Raindance (fka Evoke fka Vstream fka Something Data Something I can’t remember).  Todd’s a great example of an entrepreneur that you just can’t deny – he’s going to get it done no matter what.

Todd just posted Come to Puttin on the Leash 2009 – his plea for support and participation at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley annual event that is happening on Saturday, April 25th at 6pm at the Coors Event Center on the CU Boulder Campus.  The goal  for the event is to raise $300K for the programs and services that are provided straight back into the Boulder County Communities.

When Amy and I started ramping up our philanthropic activity a decade ago, we started out anonymously.  It felt weird and uncomfortable to talk about what we were supporting, but I soon found out that I was missing the point.  While some people talk publicly about the charitable organizations they support for ego purposes, many people are doing it to provide visibility to the organizations they support and leadership for the friends to encourage them to support the things they are interested in.  Over time, I’ve developed a deep respect for people putting their mouths where their money is with regard to their philanthropic activities.  Todd does this beautifully in his post, describing clearly what HSBV does:

1. The HSBV serves 8,000 animals annually.
2. The HSBV facilitates 5,300 adoptions annually.
3. 40% of the animals who come through the front doors of the HSBV need some type of medical attention through the shelter medicine program.
4. 150 Dogs received behavioral modification training last year, from food guarding to separation anxiety.
5. Average length of stay for dogs is 4 days, for cats 10, these are outstanding statistics!
6. Some of the services the HSBV provides include, Adoptions, lost and found, Veterinary Clinic, Behavior and Training Center, Humane Education, Pet Retail Supplies… 
7. The HSBV Live Release Rate, representing the percentage of animals who come through the door and are reunited with their guardians or placed with a new family is 89% – this is among the highest in the nation.

If you are a pet lover and live in Boulder, help put a leash on Todd by supporting the Humane Society of Boulder Valley and participating in Puttin on the Leash 2009.

I’ve never totally understood the "send out physical greeting cards" thing.  I get that it’s a "tradition", but it has always seemed like a waste of time, energy, and money to me.  Yes – I know I’ve signed my share of these cards – I’ve just played along, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about them.

I now get a flood of electronic cards (and birthday wishes – thanks everyone!)  These make me smile and often generate a response via email from me to people I haven’t talked to in a while.  I received very few physical birthday cards this year (which is good) since pretty much everyone that would send me a card sent me an electronic one.

I just received an email greeting card from my friends at KKO.  In it, they say "In lieu of mailing holiday cards we have made a charitable donation to Emergency Family Assistance Association."

As this is likely to be a horrible year for charitable giving (based on the downturn in the economy), I think this is a fantastic idea.  Even if it is a modest amount of money, I (a) got my greeting card from KKO and (b) the money they gave to EFFA is going to be put to good use.

Nicely done guys.

Thanks to Micah Baldwin, a bunch of Colorado bloggers (including me) are putting up DonorsChoose widgets on their blogs.  Our goal in Colorado is to displace Fred Wilson as king of last years DonorsChoose technology blog category.

We’ve already got a bunch of great Colorado projects up on the DonorsChoose website.  To start things off on my blog, I just gave $200 to the Return To Technology project for Ms. E’s Classroom.  Look for the sidebar on the right of my main page or click through on the DonorsChoose website link.  Any amount helps – give up Starbucks for a week and join in with $25.

I love Mental Floss (both the magazine and the books I refer to as "mental floss.")  I was proud to see that I’d made the list of 6 Curious College Donations.  My CU Boulder Bathroom joined Andrew Carnegie’s lake at Princeton, P.T. Barnum’s dead animals at Tufts, Frances Crick’s attempted brothel at Cambridge University, W.K. Kellogg’s horse shows at Cal-Poly Pomona, and Bob Gibson’s science fiction collection at the University of Calgary.

If you know me, you know that I have a weird obsession with bathrooms.  It goes back a long time and definitely has some strange psychologic underpinnings that I’m sure Dr. Freud would have fun discussing.  I don’t fight it – I just roll with it.

Several years ago, I had a discussion with Heidi Roizen about her failed attempt to get her name on a bathroom at Stanford during their fundraising drive for a new building on campus.  The rejection came with the admonishment that it wasn’t an appropriate thing to do.  I laughed and told Heidi – "no problem – I’m sure I can get one at MIT in no time – they are more flexible in their thinking about what is appropriate."  Boy was I wrong – I’ve written about the story before on this blog if you are interested.   The bottom line is the request apparently went around the system before being crushed by the bureaucracy somewhere at MIT.  Their loss.

No such challenge at CU Boulder.  I wrote about the immediate response of ATLAS’s director John Bennett to my Stanford / MIT bathroom story.  Following is the result a few months later.

That’s me standing in the doorway of the second floor men’s room at ATLAS next to my plaque which says "“The Best Ideas Often Come At Inconvenient Times – Don’t Ever Close Your Mind To Them.”

John – nicely done.  The Boulder Daily Camera interviewed me yesterday and wrote a fun story about it, including the punch line from John that ATLAS has seven other bathrooms that have the potential to be named. 

MIT – that could have been your money!