A Philanthropic Craftsman
April 13, 2010 – 11:04 am
Tactical Philanthropy is currently covering the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations conference with the help of a blog team. This is a guest post by Jan Jaffe of GrantCraft.
By Jan Jaffe
Practice like a craftsman: I need frames to help me make sense of complex problems. Marilyn Darling (Signet Research and Consulting) suggested in her session today that when leaders approach learning they do it with the humility of a craftsman before the task. I could “see” the humility and the acquired skills and curiosity that craft requires. I like this metaphor for practice in philanthropy which is neither an art nor a science. It puts me in a good place to get to work. How about you?
One Comment
Jan, we enjoy “the practice of a craft” as a useful metaphor in guiding Social Actions’ work, too. It’s listed here as the 5th of 5 metaphors that guide our work, including permaculture, aikido practice, and others you may find useful:
http://wiki.socialactions.com/Visualizing-Social-Actions
Wonderful to learn from #2010GEO from a distance. Thank you for blogging and sharing from the conference ~