The Amazing Tactical Philanthropy Community

Wow! 61 minutes (on a Saturday night!) after I posted a half joking request for someone to tell me what I was quoted as saying in the La Vanguardia article, we get this response from reader Taylor:

Sean– I translated the paragraphs where you’re quoted. Good article!

From page 1:

Sean Stannard-Stockton advises wealthy and generous families. His firm, Ensemble Capital Management, helps those families create foundations or seek out possibilities to pay lower taxes. “That allows them to give more money,” particularly in California. Stannard-Stockton, columnist for the Financial Times and blogger, places the birth of the “second great wave of philanthropy” around the early 90s. The 90s were a decade of explosion of wealth. In 1997, Forbes magazine found 423 billionaires in the whole world. Today there are 1,125.

The technomillionaires of Silicon Valley are one league of Rockefellers. Every day there are more philanthropists with business experience. “Think about those who invest in the stock market. An unsophisticated investor will buy a stock because they like the product. A sophisticated investor will seek out companies that do good business. The available information in the financial market is more advanced than the philanthropic market,” says Stannard-Stockton.

on page 2:

“Sean Stannard-Stockton warns against the tendency to fully apply the methods of the business world: the effects of a donation can’t be measured like those of a business. According to Paul Schervish, who is convinced that new philanthropy is an engine for social change, those methods are only “one tool.” Some, like journalist Richard Morais, predict a “great financial scandal, just like Enron, in the nonprofit sector”

Thanks Taylor!