If philanthropy books are a bubble …

The downturn notwithstanding, another area that seems to be getting a huge amount of attention is using foundations’ data to serve other donors. New and old organizations in the US alone said to be knocking on doors in the foundation world seeking to set standards, extract expertise and information in some form, and identify ‘good’ non-profits include Newdea, Compass, Social Solutions, NKN, Root Cause, Grantsfire, Foundation Center, Folio, Great Nonprofits, GiveWell, Center for Effective Philanthropy, Center for What Works, Foundation Strategy Group, Acumen, Salesforce.com, Yahoo, and Google.org, to name just a few. Hopefully they’re not all asking the same questions of the same people. Click here to read ...

Rockefeller Foundation leads creation of Global Impact Investing Network

A growing number of global investors are seeking to put money in impact investments that will generate both social and/or environmental value and financial returns, at a minimum returning capital to investors and in many cases offering market-rate or even market-beating financial returns. This investment interest is sparking the emergence of a new industry that operates in the largely uncharted area between philanthropy and a singular focus on profit maximization.
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Objects or subjects?

I was struck by the similar use of the term 'beneficiary' in the letters from Felicitas von Peter and Theresa Lloyd in your September 2008 issue. While promoting different arguments to improve philanthropy, both letters betray a mental model of the world in which funders and 'beneficiaries' – meaning grant recipients – do the thinking. In their mental model, those whose lives are ultimately meant to benefit from the actions of the thinkers are more objects than subjects. Click here to read ...

Council on Foundations - Different responses to disaster in Myanmar and China

The Myanmar cyclone and the China earthquake in early May both triggered a strong humanitarian response from members of the Council on Foundations, but the level of response in each case differed significantly, the Council has found. Click here to read ...

Knowing what works is what matters

'Knowing what works is what matters,' said IFC Chief Economist and World Bank VP Michael Klein, summing up why it is so important to have a debate on the evaluation of donors' development projects. But there is a difficulty, warned Craig Kennedy, President of the German Marshall Fund of the US (GMF): 'Serious evaluations will show that some things do not work ... and this is not a message that can be conveyed easily to all our stakeholders.' Click here to read ...

From 'why' to 'how'

It is good to see that the debate is shifting away from ‘performance measurement is impossible’ (Alliance special feature on Measuring impact, December 2007) and that there is now wide acceptance of the value of measuring. It is good to see that most practitioners are thinking about outcomes and impacts, instead of ‘outputs’. So that’s the good part.
 
But the Alliance issue leaves me a little bit disappointed: concluding that ‘we need key performance indicators’ and ‘time and money’, that we need to be ‘clear about added value and the precise change we want to make in society’… that’s all not very new or helpful. Click here to read ...

Leading gently towards the big global tent

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, there was in the United States a philanthropic explosion. Vast sums of private wealth were directed to the establishment of private independent foundations. Fast forward 100 years and you see the same thing happening at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. This time, however, there are important differences. The phenomenon is global and it is not restricted to the single model of an independent foundation. In some parts of the world, corporate giving provides the philanthropic energy, in other parts of the world it is community philanthropy that looks much like a developing global movement, and everywhere new forms of philanthropy like venture funds are cropping up. Click here to read ...

Measuring the effect of a single rain cloud

I was delighted to see the reference to Mango's 'Who Counts?' in Alliance's special feature on measuring impact last December - though I would have liked to see more space given to some interesting initiatives that aim to find new ways to measure and report performance without trying to measure impact.

Last week, a senior UK politician told me that he wanted to reform aid to ensure that funding decisions were linked to proven impact. Our discussion exactly mirrored the issues discussed in Alliance. He and I agreed and disagreed in equal measure. We agreed that there was a real need to ensure that limited aid funds are used as effectively as possible. We disagreed that 'impact' was the right tool for the job. Click here to read ...

GiveWell in turmoil after 'horrible lapse of judgement' by founders

A charity evaluation agency founded by two former hedge fund analysts is creating something of a stir in the world of US philanthropy, not always for the reasons it would wish. Founded by two hedge fund analysts, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, GiveWell has been attracting attention both in the charity world and in the media for some time. Click here to read ...

Taking evaluation seriously – still a way to go

As is clear from this issue of Alliance, impact evaluation is a growing preoccupation in the non-profit world. To get a wider perspective on how it is viewed and how well it’s working, during September and October Alliance and Keystone conducted an online survey to get the opinions of those on both ends of evaluation, donors and grantees. The results suggest a broad acceptance of the importance of evaluation by donors and grantees alike, though neither group seems to feel it is contributing all that much to grantee effectiveness. This presents donors with a huge opportunity – to do it better and realize the full potential. If evaluation were properly funded, and if donors did more in terms of following up the findings, it could make all the difference. Click here to read ...