Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.
Something pretty interesting is happening in the world of modern philanthropy. Anand Giridharadas, journalist and former Aspen Institute fellow, has just written a pretty major indictment of modern philanthropy in his new book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. Giridharadas takes big philanthropists to task for reinforcing the social problems they claim […]
One of the Giving Pledge philanthropists and co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, recently died. But at his death he was worth more than he was when he signed the Giving Pledge, a pledge that 186 of the wealthiest philanthropists have made to give away half of their net worth before they die. This inspired Alana […]
The Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ (GEO) conference wrapped up last week leaving participants with much to ponder. (If you missed the three guest posts in the GEO conference blog series, you can still read Kathy Reich’s post, Sean Thomas-Breitfeld’s post, and Pia Infante’s post.) Over the course of the three days of the conference, I […]
In today’s Social Velocity blog interview, I’m talking with Grant Oliphant, president of The Heinz Endowments (and frequent contributor to their excellent blog). Prior to running The Heinz Endowments, Grant was president and chief executive officer of The Pittsburgh Foundation for six years. Before that, he served as press secretary to the late U.S. Sen. John Heinz […]
Last week I was in Boston for the Center for Effective Philanthropy conference. It was an amazing gathering of leaders talking about how philanthropy should respond in these difficult times. If you couldn’t make the conference and want a run down of the three days, CEP’s Ethan McCoy recapped Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 […]
These are difficult days. This past week I have felt incredibly lost. I have been thinking a lot, trying to understand what is happening in our country, in our communities, to and with our people. And I have been grappling, as I know you all have been, with how we move forward from here. I have struggled […]
A lot of the conversation in September centered around inequality, philanthropy and data. When do data and philanthropy address inequality and when do they actually reinforce it? And if you add to that discussion about whether donors really care about impact; concern about the distracting, addicting influence of social media; and a call for philanthropists to be more supportive of nonprofit […]
Since I was on vacation in late July and early August, I’m combining the last two months of great reads into one. The summer of 2016 certainly was a dark one. From continuing police violence against black men, to the shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, it seemed we were becoming a […]
From an historic blizzard that blanketed the country, to tackling poverty, to the leadership of Black Lives Matter, to technology in the new year, to using social media to stop ISIS, to advice for Charity Navigator, January was an interesting month in the world of social change. Here is my pick of the 10 best reads […]
January was all about wealth inequality, all the time. The 50th anniversary of President Johnson’s War on Poverty was an appropriate backdrop to growing unease about the fact that the rich are getting exceedingly richer. But there is much debate about what the solution is and even how to frame the problem. And where do […]
In my eyes, December was about three main things: the After the Leap conference about moving nonprofits to manage to outcomes, predictions about how the social sector will evolve in 2014, and the impact of the second annual Giving Tuesday. Added to the mix were some demonstrations of the growing wealth inequality (a prediction for […]
