Should we invest in saving drowning babies one at a time, or should we look upstream for causes and invest in solutions – or both? Should we invest in social service, or social change, or […]
Sleuthing for Evidence If “making a difference” is my goal, where would I look for evidence of success? Well, it is easy to look in all the wrong places. My previous post, (Effective Philanthropy: Making […]
“We must reject the idea – well-intentioned but dead wrong – that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become ‘more like a business.’” This is Jim Collins’ opening statement in […]
Living in Minneapolis I’ve followed the life of our dearly beloved Prince perhaps more than others have. I’d heard nothing, though, about Prince’s philanthropy. So at his untimely death, I was very struck by Van […]
Since I made such a big thing about dignity in my last post, can we acknowledge something like a “dignity gap?” Not trying to introduce new jargon, but the notion is this: We’re familiar with […]
Highway markers, we’ve discovered, make great reading. Posted by state and regional historical societies all along State, US, and Federal highways, they provide lessons and insight into what happened right there, where you’re standing, in […]
Doubling down on Education has long been a favorite policy option when unrest brews and the people in charge realize there’s trouble ahead. “Something must be done.” Education is the time-honored ticket to the comfort […]
Can community foundations learn, if given the opportunity, to be effective vehicles for channeling support to low-income neighborhood organizations while increasing their own resources, grantmaking skills, and leadership role in the community? That was the […]
Dashboards for philanthropy are all the rage. Dashboards have taken over the corporate sector as part of the “business intelligence” movement. Websites such as Tableau or Phocas have sprung up offering displays of dials and […]
“Barriers to progress? Foundations should support solutions, not put up barriers to progress. Even foundations who claim to be in the business of tackling big systemic problems insist on funding short-term projects with easily countable […]
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