Should donors pay to learn to do good well?

Sean Stannard-Stockton initiated an interesting conversation on his blog Tactical Philanthropy (later picked up by the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give and Take blog) about the difference between “giving” and “investing” as a mental model for philanthropy. He notices a shift occurring in the way donors conceptualize their giving from a ’spending’ category to an ‘investment’ [...]

Betterplace.org – reducing philanthropic barriers?

One of the questions that the wave of new philanthropic marketplace tools is how to control quality and ensure donor confidence in the organizations in which they invest. While people tend to be comfortable with brand-name humanitarian organizations like CARE acting as stewards of their donations, its less clear how your average individual donor becomes [...]

Platforms for giving are different than reasons for giving

Aaron Hurst of the Taproot Foundation wrote a post on their Pro Bono Junkie blog a few weeks ago provactively asking if Causes.com is actually Cost.com.
He had just seen a presentation by Sean Parker, who’s tech startup bedpost includes Napster, Facebook, and now Causes on Facebook. Parker told Hurst and the other audience members that [...]

Who will take on donor education?

Sean Stannard-Stockton at Tactical Philanthropy has had a couple interesting posts in the last few weeks about the “low hanging fruit” in improving philanthropy. The argument is basically while there are big challenges and debates to be had (such as the questions of metrics, which we tend to come around to here on DGW quite [...]

Do good geezers

Nick Kristoff’s op-ed yesterday was all about the “encore career,” a growing phenomenon in which retiring baby boomers devote themselves to some philanthropic cause.
The interesting thing about the phenomenon is the increased recognition of these activities as actual vocations, as important to the participants as their former professional careers. Indeed, he notes that for many, [...]

Devastated socialites lose their philanthropic playground

It’s hard for me to make it through an article in the NYTimes today without choking on cynicism. “In Hamptons, Slump Means Less Glitz per Gala,” narrates the simply heart-breaking story of the devastating impact the economic downturn has had on the social life of the Wall Street philanthropic elite, so used to carefree summers [...]

Question of the week: is donating 1% of pre-tax revenue an appropriate baseline determinant of whether a company is socially responsible?

An article in BusinessWeek online this week posits that, despite PR to the contrary, corporate philanthropy is down from 25% ago, with companies donating just 0.7% of their pre-tax revenue to charitable organizations.
They suggest that:
Badly needed is a meaningful voluntary commitment by the business community to “ante up” a minimum budget for corporate philanthropy. A [...]

WSJ article on e-philanthropy and social networks rubs up against a problem

A big ol’ article in today’s Wall Street Journal provides an overview of the world of online giving and social networking for philanthropy. It profiles SixDegrees.org, Kevin Bacon’s organization, Causes on Facebook, and references Social Actions (nice job guys!), but never really does more than provide an overview of the space until the end of [...]

Question of the week: Should nonprofit salaries for middle and upper management mirror those in the for-profit sector?

The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “Give and Take” blog picked up today on a debate about compensation in the nonprofit sector. The Charlotte Observer recently reported that the president of United Way for the Central Carolinas received a $1.2 million salary and compensation package for the 2007 Fiscal year, including $822,000 in retirement benefits.
While the benefits [...]

Integration: the next philanthropic frontier?

In a really interesting article in the NYTimes on June 26, Heather Timmons profiles the Children’s Investment Fund (T.C.I.) hedge fund and its non-profit twin, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. The fund and the foundation are run by Christopher Cooper-Hohn and his wife, Jamie, respectively, and have grown into one of the largest, best performing [...]