We’ve started discussions on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to collect your nominations for what should be included in the ultimate philanthropy bookshelf. We’ll collect those submissions and from them, we’ll create a new Web feature that spotlights your favorites.

To follow the conversation on Twitter, simply search for the hashtag #philanthropybooks.

If you don’t want to limit your submissions to 140 characters, please join The Chronicle‘s groups on Facebook and LinkedIn and participate in the conversation there.

In 2007, I asked for my readers’ and other bloggers’ favorite philanthropy books. The exercise resulted in this list, which is currently the #1 Google result for “best philanthropy books”.

Here’s my personal list of best philanthropy books. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments section or share them with the Chronicle of Philanthropy using one of the methods listed above.

Strategic Giving, Peter Frumkin

I reviewed this book in April 2009. At the time I said, “Strategic Giving is one of the best philanthropy books I’ve read… Unlike many philanthropy books that either examine recent trends in philanthropy or argue in favor of a certain approach, Strategic Giving is a lucid, compelling exploration of the art and science of philanthropy.” Frumkin advances a way of understanding philanthropy as being driven by five purposes, which I think helps the reader understand many of the big debates in philanthropy.

Grassroots Philanthropy, Bill Somerville

I reviewed this book for the Financial Times in May 2008. At the time I wrote, “In Grassroots Philanthropy, Somerville describes in engaging prose how to be an effective philanthropist. With no agenda other than his need to set things right in the world, he lays out a series of principles that can be adopted by both endowed national foundations and those with lesser means, providing they have an urge to use their wealth to improve the world. The philanthropy practiced by Somerville is energizing, creative and clearly effective to anyone who spends a day visiting the people he funds. In a philanthropic world being revolutionized by new approaches to giving, Somerville is both a throwback to simpler times and a leap forward towards high-impact, efficient giving that embraces imagination and risk-taking.”

Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets, Lucy Bernholz

Lucy’s book was foundational in creating my view of philanthropy. She is the most prescient observer of trends in philanthropy and while this book was published in 2004, it still as fresh as ever.

CauseWired, Tom Watson

I reviewed this book in January of last year writing, “Most people in philanthropy kind of get that the web and “social media” applications are having an important impact on the field, but they don’t really understand what it all means. If this describes you, you need to make it your New Year’s resolution to read the outstanding book. Writing in an ultra-readable style, Tom draws you into the strange, evolving world of social media. Unlike so many people who write about technology, Tom doesn’t geek out on the high-tech elements of the web. What he realizes and what he communicates so well to his readers is the idea that the social web is just a new tool set for impacting the cause.”

Forces for Good, Leslie Crutchfield & Heather McLeod Grant

Crutchfield and Grant used Jim Collins ground breaking Good to Great model for understanding organizational excellence to reverse engineer the practices of outstanding nonprofits. Heartily endorsed by Collins himself, this book offers excellent real world examples of what great nonprofits actually look like.

Philanthropy Reconsidered, George McCully

I unfortunately never got around to reviewing this book, but found it to be one of the most enlightening books about the fundamental issues that give rise to philanthropy. McCully works to explain what philanthropy actually is, shows how its meaning has shifted from the Greeks’ and Romans’ understanding to the early Christians and the role of philanthropy in the American Revolutions (did you know the founding fathers’ signed their letters “philanthropically yours”?)

Uncharitable, Dan Pallotta

I reviewed this book in December of 2008. At the time I wrote, “Readers of Uncharitable will find many things they disagree with. My friend Robert Egger is quoted in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy review of Uncharitable saying that “[Pallotta] strip-mined the cause. He did a tremendous disservice.” Another friend of mine who does charity evaluation work emailed me after reading Uncharitable (at my suggestion): “Oy vey!!!!!! I have gotten to page 10 and can not believe how much I disagree with the guy!”

I urge you to read Uncharitable not as a list of suggestions that I think you should agree with, but as a challenge to the assumptions you make about charity and social good. The benefit you should take from the book are not prescriptive actions but a cracking of dogmatic beliefs you don’t fully realize you hold.

Pallotta opens the book with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “All great truths begin as blasphemies,” and another from John Kenneth Galbraith, “All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.”

A Kid’s Guide to Giving, Freddi Zeiler

My wife saw this on the counter of our local bookstore and brought me home a copy. This amazing book was written by a 14-year-old who decided to donate the money from her piggy bank to charity, but couldn’t figure out where to begin. She ended up gathering so much information that, with the prompting of her mother, she wrote a book for other kids. This hugely accessible book is an excellent introductions to charitable giving for the everyday donor. I recommend it for adults as well as teenagers.

The plan today was to run a set of questions that Jeff and Charles pose in their book. But given the strong response, we’re calling an audible and the authors have written a new guest post especially for Tactical Philanthropy in which they ask a single important follow up question.

I hope you’ll consider offering your thoughts via a comment. New comments still qualify for the Picture Your Legacy toolkit from 21/64 (see this post for details) and as I understand it, Jeff and Charles are so impressed with the dynamic community here at Tactical Philanthropy they are considering how else they might say thank you to everyone who has participated in this conversation.

Like yesterday, comments on this post will be eligible to receive a set of the Picture Your Legacy tool from the Bronfman Philanthropies 21/64 group (see yesterday’s post for details).

Today, I’m going to be featuring a guest post from Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Solomon. Tomorrow, in cooperation with the publisher Jossey-Bass, I’m going to run a long excerpt from chapter one of the new book. On Friday, the authors will offer a set of questions that every donor should consider. My hope is that readers will take the opportunity to discuss WHY they give, a topic given top priority in The Art of Giving and a topic that rational, metric focused, impact maximizing donors sometimes forget to address.

As an added incentive to spur along the conversation, 21/64 a philanthropy consulting arm of the Bronfman Philanthropies that specializes in generational transition, will be giving away free sets of their Picture Your Legacy tool. The tool contains 52 colorful images designed to spark discussion among funders of any generation, facilitating greater understanding of an individual and groups’ philanthropic identity and aspirations. We’ll be giving away 25 free sets of the Picture Your Legacy tool to the first 25 readers who offer substantive responses to this three part series of posts via comments.

What motivates you to give?

By Charles Bronfman & Jeffrey Solomon

Philanthropy is often thought of as “Step 1” in the social benefit supply chain. Dollars help to fuel mission-driven nonprofits, which in turn provide aid and assistance to under-served and needy populations. In this model, funding is the primary input and social benefit is the primary output. One shortcoming with this model, however, is that the end-user is the primary beneficiary in the system. In the medium term, it does not capture the intrinsic return to the funders, organizations, volunteers, and many others players that make up the supply chain itself.

As philanthropists/donors/funders, we spend so much time thinking about how to maximize social benefit through our activities, that often we lose sight of the personal benefits that we experience from these endeavors. And let there be no doubt, giving can and should be a deeply rewarding experience. Ironically, the pleasure received through giving can be just as tangible, and arguably just as important to the overall success of the social sector as a 501(c)3’s ability to execute against its mission.

At face value, what we’re saying is not revolutionary. Obviously, the more rewarding philanthropy is for the donor, the more likely he/she is to do more of it. And even if this is a self-evident truth to folks within the Tactical Philanthropy community, it should not be minimized. However, we believe that understanding the WHY behind our respective giving decisions is critical in a much more literal sense – particularly in these depressed economic conditions when often we’re asked to decide between a multitude of worthy causes and grantees.

Whether you sit at the helm of a family foundation, are looking to invest with a donor-advised fund, or simply want to increase your annual giving percentage, it is essential to understand WHY you give. Only when we are equipped with such an understanding are we able to determine which deserving project is simply interesting as opposed to something that will resonate with us at a fundamental level. The WHY becomes our giving compass, which in turn informs our basic giving strategy (the vehicle, outlets, structures, and gift types that we use.).

Thinking about it in these terms, the donor who understands the WHY behind his or her giving will likely be more invested in their gift. They might become a passionate and outspoken advocate for the cause, or take a board seat. They will likely follow the philanthropic return on their gift and use this information to support specific gaps that have been shown to exist – capacity building, marketing, fundraising, and programs.

Another way of getting at the WHY is to ask what motivates you to give? Does your giving manifest as increased self-worth, or perhaps a boost in your social status? Does it feed your ego or provide you with a profound sense of purpose? Perhaps your giving is a tool for bringing your family together in a meaningful way. We think all of these are perfectly valid reasons for giving. However each indicates a drastically different approach to how you go about doing philanthropy.

From our perspective, all donors can and should find personal reward through the act of giving. But it’s not enough to have a vague sense of doing good … you should be able to articulate what you get clearly. Only by understanding what motivates you to give are you able to really nourish your soul, and in so doing, maximize the impact of your gifts for all of society.

What motivates you to give?

But what if intuition and emotions are not aspects of our humanity that we must learn to suppress less they interfere with our logical brains, but actually high performance decision making tools?

Today’s New York Times features an article about the value of “hunches” on the battlefield in Iraq:

The United States military has spent billions on hardware, like signal jamming technology, to detect and destroy what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, the roadside bombs that have proved to be the greatest threat in Iraq and now in Afghanistan…

Still, high-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties, remains a mere supplement to the most sensitive detection system of all — the human brain. Troops on the ground, using only their senses and experience, are responsible for foiling many I.E.D. attacks, and… they often cite a gut feeling or a hunch as their first clue.

Everyone has hunches — about friends’ motives, about the stock market, about when to fold a hand of poker and when to hold it. But United States troops are now at the center of a large effort to understand how it is that in a life-or-death situation, some people’s brains can sense danger and act on it well before others’ do…

The key quote in the article:

“Not long ago people thought of emotions as old stuff, as just feelings — feelings that had little to do with rational decision making, or that got in the way of it,” said Dr. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. “Now that position has reversed. We understand emotions as practical action programs that work to solve a problem, often before we’re conscious of it. These processes are at work continually, in pilots, leaders of expeditions, parents, all of us.”

When I first met my friend Bill Somerville of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, he talked extensively about the role of intuition in philanthropy. I ended up sending him a copy of the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, in which the author argues convincingly that in many circumstances, humans make better decisions when they rely on their first gut instinct rather than over thinking a situation.

What strikes me about the New York Times article, the position put forward by Somerville and the book Blink, is how radically they fly in the face of the celebrated core on which modern philanthropy is based: The Logic Model.

According to conventional wisdom in organized philanthropy, a well designed logic model that lays out why certain interventions will result in the intended outcomes is the mark of a disciplined funder. It is not just that this approach looks down at intuition and other “right brain” human tools. It is that conventional wisdom rejects “right brain” approaches as being a mark of lack of rigor and discipline. It rejects not just conclusions based on these tools, but the validity of the tools themselves.

Last October, in the thick of the financial crisis, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about the coming Behavioral Revolution:

Roughly speaking, there are four steps to every decision. First, you perceive a situation. Then you think of possible courses of action. Then you calculate which course is in your best interest. Then you take the action.

Over the past few centuries, public policy analysts have assumed that step three is the most important. Economic models and entire social science disciplines are premised on the assumption that people are mostly engaged in rationally calculating and maximizing their self-interest.

But during this financial crisis, that way of thinking has failed spectacularly.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’m wondering if the best selling book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, might just be required reading for the next generation of philanthropic leaders… or leaders in every field.

By Catherine England, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

I’ve been to a wide variety of conferences in all sorts of places during my career.  I’d like to take a moment to commend the Council on Foundations for incorporating local site visits into the agenda for those who are interested. Not only does it give local organizations an opportunity to showcase their good work, it also gives conference attendees the chance to get out and see something of the host city aside from the airport and the hotel. I’ve never attended another professional conference that does this and think it’s a brilliant idea.

Today I was able to tag along on the visit to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic District. It was an educational and inspirational afternoon. No trip to Atlanta is complete without a visit to the community that produced one of our nation’s greatest leaders.

The historic district runs along Auburn Avenue and includes the Ebenezer Baptist Church where both  MLK Jr. and his father served as  ministers. The family lived just down the street and the family home sat with traditional “shot gun” homes just across the street while next door and up the street were mostly larger homes of the more well-to-do families. On the other side of MLK Jr.’s childhood home was a fire department. Since the fire department would only hire white fire fighters at the time, it wasn’t uncommon for the King children to play basketball with the white firemen next door. The family house seemed to have been at a crossroads of economic and racial diversity – yet the neighborhood was peaceful and thriving.

Martin Luther King, Jr. often referred to the “beloved community” in his writings. King’s vision of a “beloved community” is a completely integrated community where love, justice and brotherhood are demonstrated in all aspects of social life. It sounds like, for at least a brief time, his childhood neighborhood personified the “beloved community.”

The King family and other organizations are working to preserve one of our true national treasures. If you missed the tour today, I hope you’ll have time to squeeze in a visit before leaving town.

Catherine England is the communications officer at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

But Strategic Giving is one of the best philanthropy books I’ve read.

I don’t usually take notes while I read, but my copy of Strategic Giving is now unfit to pass on to anyone else. Frumkin covers a lot of ground, including one of the most thoughtful, well reasoned critiques of venture philanthropy that I’ve seen. But it is Frumkin’s Five Elements of Philanthropy that lays down a framework useful to anyone interested in understanding philanthropy.

To Frumkin, there are five purposes that animate philanthropy:

• Change: Using private funds to create social and political change.
• Innovation: Locating and supporting important social innovations.
• Equity: Striving for economic equity through redistributive giving.
• Pluralism: Supporting the civic virtue of pluralism.
• Expression: Supporting the self-actualization of donors.

This framework is extremely helpful in putting into context many of the debates that rage in philanthropy. For instance, when Michael Edwards and Matthew Bishop debate the validity of Philanthrocapitalism, it is important to understand that Edwards sees Equity as the main purpose of philanthropy while Bishop is more strongly driven by the Innovation purpose.

In addition, the framework reconciles the public benefit of giving with the private benefit that donors get from using the Expression element in search of self-actualization (a purpose that I explored in the Stanford Social Innovation Review last year).

Unlike many philanthropy books that either examine recent trends in philanthropy or argue in favor of a certain approach, Strategic Giving is a lucid, compelling exploration of the art and science of philanthropy.

It is a must read book and it earns a place in the Tactical Philanthropy Bookstore.