10 Great Social Innovation Reads: August 2013

It becomes increasingly obvious to me the longer I am in this space that philanthropy must change just as much, if not more, than nonprofits. And perhaps change is on the horizon, particularly with some key debates happening in the philanthropic world lately.

The biggest of which this month was the showdown between Bill Schambra and Paul Brest (among others) about whether philanthropy should be “strategic.” Add to that the on-going discussion Peter Buffett started last month about philanthropy as “conscience laundering,” and the growing drum beat against the nonprofit overhead ratio, and August was a mind-opening (I hope) month in the world of social innovation.

Below is my list of the 10 best reads in the world of social innovation in August. But please add to the list in the comments.

And you can see an expanded list by following me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.

As always, the 10 Great Reads lists from past months are here.

1. First up, Crystal Hayling offers some great advice for new philanthropists, but I would say her advice translates to experienced philanthropists as well. If we want to get better at solving social problems, we have to raise the bar on philanthropy.
2. The big debate this month was about how “strategic” philanthropy should be, whether the best philanthropy comes from a community or scientific approach. Bill Schambra, from the Hudson Institute, and Hewlett folk Paul Brest and Larry Kramer went back and forth and back, and of course others chimed in. For me, the most thoughtful response was from  Scott Walter. It was an interesting debate, but I think at the end of the day they are saying roughly the same thing, with which I heartily agree, philanthropy has to get better at actually solving problems.
3. As I mentioned last month, Peter Buffett wrote a highly provocative rant against philanthropy in July. And this month the debate raged on with some very interesting counterpoints from nonprofit leader Dan Cardinali here and from Nandita Batheja on the Idealist blog here. Buffett’s piece is certainly doing what any good writing should, provoking people to question their assumptions and think in new ways, even if they don’t fully agree.
4. Adding to his growing opus, Bill Shore again argues that nonprofits must get bolder in their social change goals. This time Darell Hammond from KaBOOM! and Amy Celep from Community Wealth Partners join in.  But Phil Buchanan at the Center for Effective Philathropy doesn’t heartily agree.
5. More and more data points to the fact that women are becoming a major philanthropic force. It will be interesting to see how they change the face of philanthropy as we know it.
6. It’s always important to get a different perspective, and Brian Mittendorf at the Counting Charity blog provides a really interesting counterpoint analysis to recent concerns about the Clinton Foundation’s financial management.
7. I have to admit it, I LOVE a good contrarian, and Arik Hesseldahl is one this month with his great post suggesting that there may be too much hype around Big Data (the idea that the enormous amount of data now available could yield tremendous improvements to the world as we know it). Although he is talking about Big Data’s promise for business and government, there is an equal amount of hype around what Big Data can do to solve social problems. As with everything, there is no magic bullet, so we would do well to understand Big Data’s limitations.
8. There is much work to be done bringing the “old” world of philanthropy together with the “new” world of impact investing, so I love to see the two at work together, like Nonprofit Finance Fund’s new project helping the Maine Community Foundation launch an impact investing program.
9. And then there was something completely different. If we are to ensure that the next generation cares as much, if not more, about fixing social issues, we must raise compassionate children, which gets harder to do in an increasingly segmented society. Perla Ni offers 5 ways to Raise a Compassionate Child In the Age of Entitlement.
10. And lest we forget why we do this social change work, April Greene from Idealist reminds us.

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