What is Philanthropy For?
Though imperfect and not without risks, we are better off with philanthropy than without it. Philanthropy is not undemocratic; extreme inequality is undemocratic.
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[Review] No Such Thing as a Free Gift
Talk about a well-timed release. Linsey McGoey’s No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy came out just weeks before Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announced the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and set off an Internet-wide...
Dear Fellow Program Officer, You are Not Alone
Working as a program officer at a private foundation can be a surprisingly lonely endeavor. But it doesn’t have to be.
The Future of Philanthropy
Somewhere between government, commerce and religion, philanthropy has emerged as an influential, global force. It increasingly shapes our policies, values, research agendas, business practices, and — more subtlety — the way we see the world. It’s time that we think critically about philanthropy and its role in society with the same rigor that we study the public and private sectors.
This Week in Civic Innovation: Philanthropy
Next week I’ll be completely offline in the middle of a desert. This Week in Civic Innovation will be back on September 6 with a look at how some organizations are using open data to improve school performance. Philanthropy While city governments talk about the...
Rebooting Investigative Journalism
This post is long and not every section is relevant to every reader. Please feel encouraged to skip to those sections that are most relevant. Opening Up Philanthropic Strategizing The Long View of Media Development A Survey of the Media Donor Landscape Media for...
El Coco is Gonna Get You
My problem is the following: I get to a point where I have 7 or 8 drafts of ambitious yet incomplete blog posts that, if my to-do list is to be believed, will ‘soon’ be published. But my to-do list is not to be believed, not ever. And so these drafts sit...The Market and Politics of Good Ideas at Private Foundations
I left Global Voices in May of last year and ever since have been cautiously dipping my toes in the world of philanthropy. For the past seven months I have been working as a full-time consultant for the Information and Latin America programs of Open Society...
Networks, Power, Philanthropy
Open Society Institute, the network of philanthropic foundations established by billionaire George Soros, has long promoted access to information because it understands that information is power and that people in positions of power often try to withhold information...[Development] Focusing on Metrics and Not People
Whew. I just published the third and final part of my “New Era of Media Development” series over at Idea Lab. I’m glad to have that out of the way. I know I’ve been whining quite a bit lately about the funding community, but that’s...Latest Photos
