During the conversations about what to measure in philanthropy, a dominate theme has been that no universal metric will ever work (although some participants do not agree).

This is a big deal. If you go to Google Finance, you can now search for charities by name and pull up data about them, news stories, blog posts and leave comments in a discussion forum (hat tip to “a fundraiser”).

Social Venture Partners has been publishing a list of 10 Things We’d Like to Tell Every New Philanthropist on the SVP Blog. With permission from Paul Shoemaker, I’m republishing the lessons here.

Lauren Foster is my editor at the Financial Times (I write a monthly column about philanthropy for her). I think that Lauren is building the philanthropic coverage at the Financial Times to a level that is going to make it a must read paper for the philanthropic field.