Tag Archives: philanthropy

The Power of One

Posted on January 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

One fairly influential individual

There are a lot of sort of pop psychology, bumper sticker motivationals out there about the difference that one individual can make…they all sort of run together for me, but you know what I mean, right?

Probably the best known is attributed to Helen Keller, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

Beautiful, right? And capable of making me feel guilty when I’m, say, on my way to the fabric store instead of a rally.

The belief in the power of the individual is very much rooted in our culture, but much less frequently seen in how we build capacity for advocacy and social change.

Bet you never thought about that while stopped behind someone at a red light, hunh?

See, when it comes to how we invest in building power to make a difference, we tend to focus almost exclusively on networks of people, on the connections that bind us together, and on how we create structures that leverage those relationships for power.

Sure, it’s obvious that no social movements are the sole work of any individual, even those that are commonly associated with one. But isn’t it also just as true that single individuals do, perhaps not as often as we would wish, change the course of history in amazing ways?

So why is the organization, or the community, most often our focal unit, when we think about what we need to develop in order to reach our goals? Why do we sometimes sort of gloss over the individuals who populate those entities, as though they are somehow replaceable, even when history so clearly teaches us otherwise?

I’ve been particularly thinking about this over the past couple of weeks because of the work that I do with The Sunflower Foundation and its Advocacy Fellows initiative. The initiative is somewhat distinct, particularly in the philanthropic world, because it revolves around advocacy, specifically, rather than a more diffuse sense of nonprofit leadership, and yet, unlike many other advocacy capacity-building efforts, individual advocates are clearly the emphasis.

The theory of change animating the Advocacy Fellowship is this: “the Sunflower Foundation believes that increasing the number of nonprofit health leaders who advocate on behalf of their constituents informs public policy and leads to real solutions for those in need. By becoming involved in advocacy, nonprofit leaders are advancing their causes, building public trust, and helping the people they serve.”

Notably missing, then, is discussion about the organizations in which these individuals work (indeed, they fairly frequently move organizations during the Fellowship or quickly following it) or about the sector as a whole. Instead, the idea is to find promising people, who happen to be working in nonprofit health organizations, and to work intensively with them to develop the knowledge, skills, and, yes, relationships they need to be effective advocates themselves. They are the ones held accountable for moving their work forward, and they are seen as the keys to advancing a vision of a healthy Kansas.

We’re still very much in the early stages of evaluation, but the indications at this point are, really, that the model works–that, no, their organizations do not necessarily greatly increase their advocacy capacity, but they as individuals do, and that that makes a difference. They are quoted more frequently in media accounts of related policy debates, they engage in those debates more often and with more influence, they are more respected by a larger circle of potential targets and allies, and they are increasingly sophisticated and outspoken in their advocacy.

It’s a bit of a gamble, this business of investing in individuals. We feel safer, sometimes, with organizations, because of the law of averages, but those same “averaging” tendencies can dilute and stall the radical message we want to convey: that, in the end, justice hinges on you (and me).

Here’s to sparking movements, one soul at a time.

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If we all gave like Sam…the abundance of a four-year-old

Posted on June 23, 2011 by | Leave a comment


This thing was pretty heavy when he turned it in!

First of all, a slight disclaimer: Sam would want everyone to know that he is actually four and a HALF years old, not four.

It just made the title a little unwieldy.

With the legislative session in Kansas (and many other states) pretty recently concluded, and the damage wrought by the devastating budget cuts only beginning to take hold, and nonprofit organizations around the country struggling with the combination of public cuts and declines in private donations, I was struck by my oldest son’s reaction to a recent giving campaign at our church.

After the pastor explained that we were raising money for community development activities that help families living in poverty in the U.S. and around the world gain the skills and assets they need to live healthy and sustainable lives (livestock, small business capital, clean drinking water, core health services), he carefully assembled his cardboard bank, like kids have been doing for decades in the developed world.

And then he proceeded to put all of his allowance, saved from the past few weeks (not in anticipation of this, but just because he hadn’t gotten around to spending it yet) in the bank.

I reminded him that he gets $1 each week specifically to “share”, and that he could use that money instead of his spending money. And then I realized what I was doing and stopped talking.

He hadn’t forgotten about his “sharing” money. He was simply recognizing this giving opportunity as a good way to spend his allowance, more worthy than any of the ideas for personal consumption that he might have had. He gave joyfully, and rather effortlessly, with no angst over what could have been or what might come, but with an uncomplicated embrace of this chance to be part of something bigger than he.

I’m not suggesting that state legislatures, or even individual adult donors, give exactly like a preschooler. I mean, Sam’s basic needs are obviously all taken care of, and he gave out of truly disposable income that’s admittedly limited in many households and state capitals.

Except there is something to learn from his approach to money. It reflects a philosophy of abundance that’s not, really, unrealistic at all, but rather a hope-filled and somewhat self-fulfilling attitude that treats money as a tool (which it is), rather than something to be revered in its own right. He knows that he’ll get more satisfaction from hearing those coins clink in the big jar at church, and from hearing the stories about communities his money has helped, than he does from seeing the money sit on his dresser. And he knows that, quite honestly, other people need and can use that money much more than he.

And he’s right.

It reminded me, in a perhaps odd way, of a legislative forum I attended early in this session, where one of my favorite Kansas Senators lamented how we’re approaching the whole budget quandry from the “wrong end”, asking not “what are the functions that state government should perform, in order to achieve the prosperity and health and security and quality of life we desire (and deserve)”, but, instead, “how much money can we rather painlessly come up with, and how should we divide those limited dollars?”

Which question we ask does matter, and which question we choose will determine the kind of state government we end up with. The first looks at outcomes and believes that investments create abundance, while the latter approaches governing from a scarcity mentality and likely sows more scarcity in exchange.

And a similar cycle plays out in nonprofit organizations, too, even those that don’t rely on government funding. As donors, we more often give from what we think is left over, rather than starting with a question about what we want our donations to accomplish and what support we think the organizations to which we give really deserve.

Nonprofit organizations that depend on our gifts know that this is the giving reality, and they respond in kind: figuring out what they can possibly do with the money they can find, rather than setting goals and pursuing revenue that makes those dreams possible.

None of this is designed to berate nonprofit administrators, who confront nearly impossible choices these days when they do their books. Or even state legislators, who receive scarcity messages as they door-knock in their campaigns and find it difficult to imagine operating from another perspective.

It’s just a reminder, that perhaps we could build a better world, the world we all imagine if we allow ourselves that luxury, the world we know that we really deserve, if we approached the prospect of sharing, whether our public funds or our charitable contributions, with the gleeful abundance of a four-and-a-HALF-year old, who seems to know instinctively that, indeed, much is possible.

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Yes, they can: Foundations and Movement-Building

Posted on June 9, 2011 by | Leave a comment

These are bleak times for many of us committed to progressive social change and a vision of social justice that includes an end to poverty, full protection of civil rights for citizens and for immigrants, real power for working people, universal health care, and a sustainable environment. The ongoing economic hardship that has plagued our country for all of my twins’ young lives, and a much more constrained understanding of the social contract among policymakers in our state and federal governments, can lead to despair and retrenchment.

Or

We can focus on building long-term movements for social change, the kind that, if we’re being honest with ourselves, are our only hope for bringing about the world as we wish it anyway. What the almost three years since the 2008 elections have taught us, or perhaps reminded us, is that there are no shortcuts, and that we can never, ever, ever stop organizing.

And that’s why, for me, it’s the perfect time for this Foundation Review article outlining how foundations can (and should!) support movement building. It begins with the obvious acknowledgement that philanthropy does not a movement make, and that successful movements must, by definition, be driven by those animating them with their own passions and pains (so foundations have to relinquish control over the ultimate (and even many of the interim) goals, as well as the timeline).

But it analyzes powerful movements from history to define their core elements, and then suggests activities in which foundations can invest in order to infuse social movements with essential resources. My own study of the civil rights movement (I finally accomplished my goal of reading all of Taylor Branch’s trilogy on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) shows the many points when donations, from individuals and from philanthropic and religious institutions, facilitated the next steps that, combined, built one of the greatest movements for social justice our world has known. The article also illustrates the role that foundations can play in very long-term movement building with a brief history of the conservative movement and the foundations that decided in the 1960s to systematically invest in building capacity–investments that began to pay real dividends with the election of Ronald Reagan and, certainly, is very much in play still today.

Bringing these ideas to our progressive work requires some shifting on the part of foundations, to be sure, so that they see themselves as movement strategists, more than as funders, with a commitment to changing the terms of the debate so that, ultimately, the kinds of policies we support are seen as “natural”, because we’ve framed them that way. If progressive foundations are to build the kind of world they seek, they’ll need movements to create it. And those movements will happen much more surely if they can hire the people they need, purchase the media to communicate, and conduct activities in pursuit of their vision.

And that means, yes, multi-year grants and general operating support and transparent, mutual relationships with those receiving investments. It means not expecting grantees to demonstrate their unique “niche”, but encouraging collaboration and even “duplication”, as reflecting convergence of focus and enhanced overall capacity. This report uses the term “advocacy infrastructure” to talk about these long-term investments that cross organizational and issue boundaries.

But putting all of this on foundations is unwise and unfair. Community organizers, direct service practitioners engaged in social change, and all of us who care about building movements need to think beyond single-issue campaigns, too, and develop relationships with philanthropists so that we can help them to see the future through our same vision.

We need to have clear strategies related to each of the components of successful movement building: base-building, research and framing, strategic power assessment, organizational management, engagement and networking, and leadership and vision development. We can’t expect foundations to invest in these activities if we continue to zero in on tactics immediately and populate our grant applications with detailed descriptions of what we’ll do, with little attention to the who, and, most importantly, the why.

One of my favorite parts of this discussion was the inclusion of direct service providers as a key avenue to base building. That thinking builds on foundations’ existing relationships with social service agencies and could leverage those considerable resources for real power building. It’s also significant that their discussion of leadership development transcends the intense “academies” that are fairly popular with foundations (and, absolutely, potentially very impactful), because they have a pretty high initial “cost” of entry, and we need leadership capacity development at all levels of engagement.

Of course, my interest in advocacy evaluation made me hone in on the discussion of outcomes and assessment, especially because it’s very true that our nascent field of policy and advocacy evaluation misses many of the elements of movement building that would need to be included in a more comprehensive evaluation. There’s a table at the end with the stages of movement building, the five core elements, and benchmarks for each that I’ve printed out to refer to for my evaluation practice; it’s only a beginning, but it’s a good place to start. This piece is critical not only because it will add to the field of knowledge about what works and increase our understanding about social movements, but also because speaking philanthropic language about accountability and measures can help us to bridge these gaps.

As the authors say, “Foundations do not make history. They fund it.”

And then I’ll have even more books on my nightstand, to retrace the victories and the roles that activists and the philanthropists who invested in them played in creating the victories that we can’t imagine living without.

Here’s to a brighter future and the movements that will bring it.

We’ve got long-term work to do.

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Glass Pockets–seeing your way to social change funding

Posted on September 20, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Back in February, The Foundation Center launched Glass Pockets, an online effort to provide greater transparency to the philanthropic sector. There was quite a bit of discussion about the initiative when it was launched, but, in my conversations with nonprofit folks on the ground, I haven’t found too many who know much about it, or, certainly, are using it in their resource development work.

So, albeit a bit belatedly, here’s a quick overview of what GlassPockets is, and, most importantly, how it could contribute to a successful strategy for fundraising advocacy dollars from foundations.

First, what it’s not: a major revolution in the information available about foundations and their activities–Glass Pockets is much more about compiling currently available information in one place, and making it accessible to grantseekers and interested folks in the general public than it is about really reaching into foundations’ secrets to share big new revelations with us.

Still, there are some tools here that can help to guide us as we’re navigating the foundation world, in search of those critical, unrestricted dollars for our social change work, and they’re especially valuable because most of the Foundation Center’s resources are only available if your organization has a paid subscription or you travel to one of the on-site locations for their database.

The highlights, and their possible application for advocacy-focused grantseekers:

  • * Detailed case studies about grantmakers’ activities in targeted issue areas, including anti-poverty, climate change, economic crisis, health care, and education. While you may not find a funder here who is a good fit for your organization/grant, these examples may serve as inspiration for funders with whom you do have a relationship, as well as for your own thinking about how you might partner with philanthropy.
  • * Foundation profiles, which, again, are especially valuable if you don’t currently have easy access to Foundation Center resources. While not all foundations have submitted Glass Pockets profiles, and those that have are often not as complete here as they are in the other Foundation Center databases, it’s a good starting place for information about how a foundation invests, in which issue areas, and to what extent.
  • * Reports on trends and breakthroughs in philanthropy which, like the case studies, point to the ‘big picture’ in the funding world, and may provide a good starting point for your conversations with funders about how your work connects to their mission, or how they see that mission changing in the years to come.
  • * Perspectives directly from grantmakers–it seems to me that this section is targeted more directly at a grantmaker audience (peers talking to peers), but the blog links and commentary from those in the philanthropic community, as well as some ‘inside’ information on how foundations work (and give!), do provide some unique information that is difficult to access elsewhere on the web.

    The folks at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy recently had a great piece on the need for Glass Pockets to become more of a two-way conversation, with pressure from the public (including the grant-seeking kind) for the information that we want/need, whether or not foundations are naturally inclined to share it (such as, for example, perhaps some of the public policy priorities of the foundation’s staff, or the foundation’s investment practices?).

    That’s how I’d like to see Glass Pockets develop, so that we bring not only a measure of transparency but also increased engagement and accountability to philanthropy. And, I know just the people to raise those issues effectively–the same nonprofit advocates whose work can be furthered by strategic analysis of the information that foundations themselves are starting to reveal!

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    The Power of Half

    Posted on September 7, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    Note: If you like free stuff, you’ll want to make sure to read all the way to the bottom of this post! If, you know, you’re into that kind of thing.

    Last Thursday, I attended the kick-off campaign event for the United Way of Wyandotte County (you can take the girl out of the ‘Dotte’, but, you know…). The keynote speaker was the author of The Power of Half.

    It is really quite an inspiring book; the core message of the authors (Kevin, the father, who I heard speak last week, and his teenage daughter, who was really the impetus for the family’s decision to sell their extravagant house and give half the proceeds to fight poverty and hunger, which is obviously the theme of the book) is that we all can and should be doing more to create a just society for others, and I found quite a bit that relates to my own life.

    There are two pieces I found lacking, and I’ll get to those at the end, but, first, what I really like:

  • Commitment to involve children as equal partners in these family decisions: I’m always looking for more ways to empower my kids to see themselves, even at such young ages, as people who have a great deal to offer the world, but also a tremendous responsibility to serve it, and these parents’ journey to include their children in such critical family choices is truly admirable.
  • Emphasis on not just treasure, but also time and talents: Sometimes writing a check is the easiest thing we can do, when it may be our skills, or just our presence, that can have a greater impact. This family wanted to really transform their lives, and that meant changing how they lived, not just how they spent.
  • Recognition that giving sacrifically comes with a social price: The family related the chasms that opened, even among extended family, when they announced their plans. This reiterates the pull of our consumer culture but also speaks to how people can feel threatened when confronted with another’s decisions to relate very differently to injustice experienced all around us.
  • Careful research and discernment in the giving process: The family didn’t just check Guidestar to see which organization spends the highest percentage on direct services (although this criterion did figure more prominently into their decision than I would have liked–it’s outcomes that really matter). They interviewed organizations and, most importantly, tapped into their own passions and anger in order to best focus their efforts.
  • Celebration of the joys of connecting to the world: The book chronicles the family’s “sacrifices” and relates with real authenticity their surprise at not feeling them as such. We all know that we could be happier with less, and they really seem to have lived this.
  • Focus on process: They journal extensively, celebrate each step of their progress, and relate honestly how they’ve changed as individuals and as a family as a result of these decisions. For someone who tends to rush to the conclusion, this was an important reminder that how we get there does matter.
  • Realization that our moral witness matters most: The family is somewhat shocked to find that, when they get to Africa, they’re mostly wanted as supports to the local work going on, and as testimony to the power of the model being applied. They had hoped to build schools or…something. But this is empowerment, and it’s another example of how we gain so much by giving in the right ways.

    So, really, there’s so much about which to rejoice here. But, of course, I have those two critiques:

  • First, I’m always disappointed to find that I’ve already “given up” most of what people consider to be the essentials that they’re sacrificing in order to give more. We already chose to have a smaller house, and we don’t have nice cars or even cable television. I know that we need to give more, but I’m a little lost about where to start, when accounts like these can’t totally be my guides.
  • And, finally, despite the experiences in Africa and the power of their accompaniment, despite writing about how local leaders are learning to insist that government be accountable for providing necessary services, there is no discussion about how the family could have used their considerable power within their own community to advocate for policy changes that could have had a much larger impact than even their substantial dollars. This is a missing piece, and part of what giving of our time and talents has to mean–using our relative positions of power in the world to advocate for changes in our government policy that will impact the problems that plague the globe.

    I want to know what you think, about your own efforts to do with less so that others can have more, about how families can be forces for social change, about the role that wealth accumulation plays in shaping how Americans see their place in the world…and I’m willing to give away something to make it happen, in the true Power of Half spirit.

    Here’s the deal: I got a free copy of the book for attending, but I already had it, so that I could read it in advance, which means that I now have a copy to give away.

    Leave a comment, either in response to this post, in response to my earlier post about The Life You Can Save, or about how you could change your life in order to create a more just society for others, and I’ll randomly choose someone to receive the book. I’ll even send it to you. How’s that for karma banking?

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    Beyond 3D: The Emerging Fourth Sector

    Posted on August 12, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    photo credit, JamesWatkins via Flickr

    Again this summer, I attended the United Community Services Human Services Summit here locally, a gathering of a couple hundred human services professionals, this time to talk about major trends in our communities that will impact the demand for and delivery of human services in the coming years.

    I participated in a discussion about rising poverty in the suburbs, which was certainly interesting (and, of course, gave me an opportunity to do my usual “solving poverty is a question of political courage, not technical ability” speech, so that’s always welcomed!), but I found it notable that one of the trends offered as a choice to participants failed to garner enough interest to be one of the areas of discussion for the breakout groups: the rise of alternative organizational models in human services.

    Now I am by no means one of the experts on social enterprises and other manifestations of these different approaches to organizational structure and governance in human services. But I have noticed the impact of this trend on my students, and, therefore, on my own thinking about organizational approaches to solving social problems, in a couple of significant ways:

  • While most of my students still go to work for “traditional” nonprofit organizations, I have had a few recent graduates find work in the for-profit sector, either in the realm of privatization or, more recently (and more importantly, for this discussion) in pretty straightforward for-profit companies that are developing new social benefit enterprises, and want social workers on board to help guide those.
  • Regardless of where they work, social work graduates, particularly those in administration, are called on to have more traditionally ‘corporate’ skills, related to financial management and articulation of impact, than in the past. Sometimes, social work education fails to adequately prepare students for these demands.
  • I’ve had several conversations lately with, in particular, some of my more recent social work graduates who are chafing at the confines of the divisions among types of organization and who find categorizing organizations based on their purpose, rather than their tax structure, a much more useful distinction.

    It was in light of these developments, and the apparent lack of much interest in them by these local leaders in social services, that I read with interest the report by the Fourth Sector Network, The Aspen Institute, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation–The Emerging Fourth Sector.

    Here, they’re defining this fourth sector, and the organizations that comprise it, as a new class of organizations focused on sustainability–”lasting economic prosperity, social equity, and environment wellbeing”, incredibly diverse in their structures and areas of emphasis, but united by their pursuit of social goals/purposes through the method of engagement in business activities. They might be nonprofit social service organizations developing businesses in order to fund their mission work, or for-profit companies committed to democratic governance, fair compensation, transparency, and social/environmental responsibility, or some sort of hybrid in between.

    As this report defines it (and this is what really caught my eye, given some of the discussion on this blog about what we should call the organizations where we do this great work), this fourth sector is the “for-benefit” sector, which holds a lot of appeal for me, since, after all, what organizations do (and achieve) should matter a lot more than what their tax status is.

    So, what does this mean for social workers? There are two key pieces, I think:

  • This fourth sector currently lacks the infrastructure and regulatory environment needed to support this type of organization, and this kind of support will be essential if for-benefit organizations are to achieve their full potential. This means that we have to think about advocacy beyond on our issue areas (mental health, child welfare, poverty) to affect the tax, corporate, and nonprofit policies that provide the foundation (or fail to) for the kinds of strategies that we want to pursue in order to impact social problems in all of those fields.
  • Social workers (and others) will need to be able to cross sectors–with a common language and transferable skills–in order to flourish in the fourth sector. Given how hard we find it, sometimes, to work even with others, within our own profession and working in the same types of organizations, this won’t be an easy lift. We need to get comfortable working with for-profit organizations (which, obviously, doesn’t mean the same thing as blindly accepting their practices and objectives!). We need to think about cooperatives and social enterprises and civic initiatives, and how those structures might be good adjuncts, perhaps, to our more traditionally-structured 501(c)3 organization. This will require, of course, changes in social work education, and also an openness to change that, quite possibly, will be facilitated by the infusion of new nonprofit leadership (and the entrance of those Millennials) expected in the decade to come.

    At its heart, I think discussions like these, and like those I’ve been having with students and practitioners and (through social networks) “social enterprise thinkers” over the past several months, boil down to the truth that what we call ourselves, at the end of the day, doesn’t really matter.

    All that matters, or should, is what we can call our work.

    If that’s “good”, then the rest is just details.

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    Philanthropy and Government: Perfect Strangers or Bosom Buddies?

    Posted on August 9, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    So, yes, the title of this post does reveal the last decade in which I regularly watched television. Thank goodness for my students, who let me in on secrets of the modern world, like those Real Housewives shows that I first thought they were joking about!

    This week, while my students are keeping up with American Idol (is that even still on?) so that I don’t have to, I’m blogging about a somewhat random collection of reports and analyses about the worlds of philanthropy, advocacy, and social entrepreneurialism, I guess so that you don’t necessarily have to read them!

    Today’s report is from Grantcraft, and it relates to something that’s of significant interest to me–the “best” relationship between private philanthropy and government, in the pursuit of solutions to our most vexing social problems. Getting this right is tremendously important, because of what both philanthropy and government bring to the social problem-solving enterprise: the former innovation and a capacity for risk-taking, in particular; and the latter the fiscal resources and legislative authority to institutionalize the most promising strategies discovered in the philanthropic world.

    Or, at least, that’s how it could/should/WILL work!

    This particular survey solicited the insights from more than 1500 grantmakers, about not just how they’re currently working with government (or why they’re not) but about how they envision this relationship, and what they see as the best strategies for engagement without co-optation  and mutual challenge without devastation of the relationship.

    Some of they key findings, that I believe have implications for how we view philanthropy and government as complementary forces for good:

  • Foundations are working with governments on many levels; in at least some cases, this means building skills and relationships at more local levels first, the same way advocates can.
  • Foundations see advocacy as a critical piece of their relationship with government (in terms of providing information, informing policy debates, and trying to shape policy approaches). This is a critical insight both because it suggests that at least some foundations are committed to playing an advocacy role AND because it correctly characterizes advocacy as part of a partnership with government, rather than an inherently oppositional activity.
  • There is a distinction between collaboration and coordination: the latter seeks to build understanding on both sides about the other’s work, and to find ways to work together, while the former may increase the risk of co-optation. The respondent grantmakers emphasized their role in criticizing government, as a sort of “loyal opposition”, that, if more vigorously pursued, could, I believe, create more space for nonprofit organizations (dependent on both foundations and government for financial survival) to engage in such critique, too.
  • Perhaps the part that made me the most encouraged in the survey was the strong opinion, expressed by several respondents, that philanthropy has to be on guard against being used as “cover” for government’s abdication of its core responsibilities, as part of the social contract between a citizen and his/her state. A direct quote: “we need to be sure that we’re not being used to fund programs and activities that the government should do.”So nothing like kicking the week off with optimism, right? About the enthusiasm and acumen with which at least some grantmakers evidently approach their interface with the government, and about the potential that such a joining of forces has to provide some real momentum in our struggles for social justice.

    And you can still check out the report for yourself, unless the title has you longing for some 1980s TV…

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    Philanthrocapitalism, Part II

    Posted on June 29, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    So you read yesterday that I might be coming around, at least a little, to this idea of the role that philanthropy, at least that which is strategic, focused on solving serious social problems, and embedded in a truly progressive tax code, can play in our quest for social justice.

    So you knew that there was a “but”. And here it is. The ironic thing, though, is that some of these very same ‘philanthrocapitalists’ are offering the same cautions, the same caveats, to which I now turn. Maybe there’s hope for me to be a billionaire someday after all. Or not.

    I love it that Bono told the authors of Philanthrocapitalism, “as great as some of the philanthropists in your book are, the real change comes from social movements” (p. 12). And it appears that he’s not alone. “A growing number of philanthrocapitalists are realizing that one of the most effective ways to leverage their money to change the world is to use it to shape how political power is exercised” (p. 240). Exactly. And that’s the point about this new emphasis on the new philanthropy that advocates of social justice cannot afford to forget; there is no way that people in poverty, those who have been excluded and marginalized around the world, will ever get what they truly deserve as a voluntary donation from those who have so much. AND, there’s no way that we’ll solve the serious social problems facing our planet (or even just our community) with just a collaboration between people in need and even the most enlightened rich person; we need the resources of our public structures on our side too.

    And only movements move those mountains. The kind of movements that a reliance on philanthropy will subvert.

    Social work has to acknowledge our own less than pristine history in this area: The Charity Organization Society, part of the heritage of our great profession, worked in Victorian England to keep government out of the business of helping the poor, arguing that such work was best done by philanthropy (and, of course, them). Even today, social workers can be guilty of that attitude–discouraging the kinds of universal approaches that seek to prevent social injustices because they may erode the need for our professional intervention. And we are willing to overlook the unscrupulous business practices of companies that write checks for our fundraisers, play up to the foundations who make us jump through unreasonable hoops, and rationalize spending way more time applying for grants than trying to change the world…because that’s the way that the system works now.

    So the part of the discussion about this new philanthropy that excites me the most is that, increasingly, philanthropists and foundations seem to get this, seem to know that they can’t do it alone, and seem willing to invest in trying to seed the kind of social change that can set the stage for real transformation. The Gates Foundation partnered with other donors to build the Ed in ’08 Campaign, an effort to put nationwide education reform at the center of the 2008 presidential campaign. They largely didn’t succeed, but, then, that’s sometimes how agenda setting starts. They’re not backing away from it, though, claiming that advocacy on several issues will be an increasingly critical part of their strategy in the coming years. The Omidyar Network’s (my husband thanks you for eBay, by the way) investment portfolio includes strengthening governments, in the belief that “effective government is crucial to social impact”. It even gave up tax advantages in exchange for the ability to engage in political campaigning to advance its goals. The Skoll Foundation has taken a more indirect route, making movies with a social message to change the public debate.

    I’m not worked up about this philanthropic engagement in politics and governmental reform being “an age of plutocracy”. Seriously–isn’t there ample evidence of the far more malicious role that money is playing in our political system today? It probably goes without saying, however, that this does not a movement make.

    An effort like DATA comes closer, since its work centers around using popular culture to bring people (mostly Millennials) to the anti-poverty cause. And it had significant impact, winning historic debt cancellation and raising the consciousness of a generation. After all, building a movement requires changing people’s hearts, and it’s indisputable that rock stars have easier initial access there than do social workers or community organizers or even charismatic politicians. They can put things on the agenda just by opening their mouths, and sometimes that’s an opening that can spark something far greater than they.

    We still have the make the road by walking. There are no real shortcuts that I’ve ever seen. But if philanthropy is increasingly willing to stock the rest stops along the way, and pack our backpacks with some of the provisions we’ll need, and buy us a really good map, well, then, we just might get there a little more quickly.

    Or, what, am I just going soft?

    photo credit, wobblycity, via Flickr

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    Philanthrocapitalism, Part I

    Posted on June 28, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    I’m a social justice gal. That means I don’t really do “charity”. I have one of those, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for today. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Until the waters are polluted and the fish all die. Help him to organize with his peers, and he’ll demand all the justice, and fish, they deserve” posters. Yes, the print has to be small.

    So while I monitor philanthropy, because I know that most nonprofits and the jobs of many social workers depend on it, and, while I celebrate advances in philanthropy in the spirit of “something is better than nothing“, and while I’ve certainly interacted with philanthropists as a grantee, I tend to look askance at any thought that reforming philanthropy is the way to change the world. And really rich people kind of freak me out.

    So, that’s why I was really surprised to find myself pulling out tons of sticky notes when I read the book with the rather dubious title of Philanthrocapitalism. But there I was, on page 10, totally agreeing with, “if philanthrocapitalists are to be a legitimate part of the solution to the world’s problems, a new “social contract” is needed to spell out what it means to be a good billionaire, in terms of how much is given and in what way, how much tax is paid, whether the money has been made in a legitimate way, and what the rich can expect from everyone else in return.”

    That obviously raises a lot of questions:

  • What to do about foundations based on money that was not raised in an entirely ‘legitimate’ way (there’s a difference, obviously, in the business philosophy of Rockefeller v. Google)? How do I deal with the reality that it’s hard to be as outraged about how the eBay guy made his billions as Carnegie’s violent repression of the Homestead Strike? And what about holding foundations accountable for their investments today, and the impact those investments may have on the perpetuation of social injustice?
  • How to set tax rates that will compel giving to the public good (one way or another!), because, as generous as some of these billionaires are, does anyone really need $100 million houses? And, connected to below, just because giving to Carnegie Hall may be better than buying another yacht, we shouldn’t settle for that choice–we know how to set tax rates so that really rich people will have to give money away voluntarily or see it taken on Tax Day.
  • How to reform our nonprofit code so that only institutions that truly serve the ‘public good’ warrant deductions? The U.K. is addressing this one with a 2006 Charities Act that may disqualify some of its prestigious schools from tax-privileged status, but we’ve got to ask ourselves whether someone giving to his or her own already well-endowed alma mater or prestigious cultural institution deserves the same tax benefit as someone providing clean drinking water or solving malaria (or funding a local arts institution or providing college scholarships to low-income students).
  • How to harness the entrepreneurial, can-do spirit of some of these philanthropists without riding roughshod over the grassroots leaders and nonprofit professionals whose lives have been wrapped up in these problems for years? For that matter, does every billionaire really need his (or her, but they’re mostly his) own foundation? I’m all for a race to see who can save the world faster, but is some of that overlap overkill?
  • How to bridge the gap that persists, on the ground if not in the minds of these philanthropists, between social enterprise and traditional nonprofit work? How to bring the best that the social entrepreneurs offer–a sharp focus on outcomes and transparency and flexibility and accountability–to the world of social change work, which sometimes is fuzzy and stop-and-go and even obscure, without diluting the former or denigrating the latter?
  • How to build a strong commitment to social justice among these kinds of ‘influencers’ in society, even before they become philanthropists, since that’s what would really begin to change the way that business gets done and governments function? I know, today that sounds crazy, but it’s not without precedent. Changing the rules of that game could go a long way.
  • Instead of turning to philanthropy because innovation is easier there than in government, or because there is a perception of greater accountability or better results, why don’t we pour resources into reforming those aspects of government service provision and social problem solving that we feel aren’t living up to their potential? Why can’t we learn from more of the innovations happening outside of government and seek to institutionalize them so that they’re more broadly available?

    I don’t have any of the answers to these questions. It’s a testament to the rather amazing work that a lot of money is doing around the world that I’m much more willing to listen.

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