Underlying much of the recent discussion about whether donors care whether nonprofits are effective and how to build a more effective field of philanthropy, is a recurring focus on how philanthropy experts think donors should behave. I thought the New Philanthropy Capital blog captured the silliness of this approach most aptly in their recent post […]
Category Archives: Behavioral Economics
Do Donors Care Whether Nonprofits Are Any Good?
Early this month, the British research and consulting firm YouGov released the results of a study on whether donors are interested in charity ratings.The report was headlined, ““Mixed response towards grading system for charities.” UK based New Philanthropy Capital, a nonprofit rating and philanthropy consulting organization, reflected on the results in a recent blog post: […]
Kiva.org: Made to Stick
What if there was a way to trigger a $150 billion influx of new money into the social sector? Recently, in my public speaking, I’ve been talking about Kiva.org and why Kiva is like a “gateway drug to social investing”. The fact is, most people are not sitting around wishing that they could make high […]
Does Logic Impair Philanthropic Effectiveness?
One of my favorite new (to me) blogs is the fantastically named Full Contact Philanthropy, authored by David Henderson, CEO of Idealistics Inc. and social enterprise consultant Dan Elitzer. In the wake my back and forth with Martin Brookes over the role of guilt in social investing, Dan left a comment that I want to […]