This week I’m reviewing the history of Tactical Philanthropy and digging through the archives. You can see Monday’s post for more background.
One of the reasons I started Tactical Philanthropy was to have a platform to talk about philanthropy with other people. As a wealth manager, my professional network was not (prior to launching the blog) filled with people who were passionate about philanthropy. But blogs and other social media tools allow people of common interests to gather.
My first attempt to really get a cross-disciplinary conversation going was my Giving Carnival series. The first one is found below (published on January 23, 2007) and you can read the background here. Over time I replaced the Giving Carnival with my podcast series. You can see the way this format encouraged back and forth by visiting the comments section of my interview with Bill Schambra (got people a little riled up I’ll say!). The podcast series came to a peak when the United Way pitched me to interview their CEO Brian Gallagher. I’ve been thinking about my next step in facilitating cross-disciplinary debates about philanthropy and I’m currently strategizing an off-line event that I’ll be sharing here first in the coming weeks.
The Giving Carnival: Edition One
Welcome to the first edition of The Giving Carnival. The topic of this edition is the debate surrounding the LA Times coverage of The Gates Foundation investment policy (you can read the two part article here and here).
First up we have Phil Cubeta channeling Marxist Leon Trotsky in his post “Leon Trotsky on Socially Responsible Investing”.
Allison Fine calls The Gates Foundation “cowardly” in her post “Outrageous Behavior by The Gates Foundation”.
Lucy Bernholz reviews the various points of view on the topic of socially responsible investing and brings us a reader poll in her post “Foundations and Investing”.
Paul Botts brings us his thoughts with “A Thoughtful Response from Gates” and “More on Foundation Investment Practices”.
Carol Kirshner points out that “being a leader can suck at times” in her post “GatesGate: Conscious Spending and Investing”.
Holden Karnofsky says “I’m basically fine with investing in evil” and then adds “More Thoughts on Responsible Investing” and finally “One More Thing”.
I weigh in with “Private Foundation Investment Strategy” and a post I wrote before the discussion hit firestorm status “The Gates Foundation”.
And finally Jed Emerson (who doesn’t update his blog with the manic frequency of the other Carnival participants) points us to his Op-Ed on the subject in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Maximizing Our Missions”.
Thanks to everyone for sending in your submissions. The response was so positive that I’d like to make The Giving Carnival a bi-weekly event. This is going to be a traveling carnival meaning that future editions will be hosted by other Giving Blogs in addition to being hosted here.