In the wealth management business, many money managers write quarterly or annual letters to their investors. Far from simple boilerplate memos, these letters are read closely by investors and seen as important sources of knowledge. Philanthropy has a little bit of this dynamic, but not much. For the most part, foundation annual reports are ignored […]
Category Archives: Media
Communicating Evidence to Drive Social Change
December 28, 2010 – 7:53 am
Many people tend to have a sense that things were better in the past. Yet most all data of social welfare show a strong positive trend over time. Take crime rates. Most of us tend to feel that the world is a more dangerous place than it use to be. But actual crime statistic show […]
Billionaire: Pop Culture Aspirations & Philanthropy
November 19, 2010 – 9:22 am
Earlier this week I wrote about what web TV service Hulu tells us about changing demographic expectations around social engagement. So I thought I’d stay on the pop culture beat and talk about the hit song Billionaire. Earlier this week, Nathaniel Whittemore wrote about the changing meaning of “being cool”. His point was that while […]
The Hulu Generation
November 17, 2010 – 9:16 am
With the advent of streaming Netflix, Hulu, Google TV and Apple TV, the shift towards web delivered television is accelerating. In my home, we’re considering canceling cable now that 99% of what we watch is on Hulu or Netflix. Recently, I realized that my two young children didn’t have a concept of “live” TV. They’ve […]
Philanthropy Analysis in the Comics
March 30, 2010 – 8:43 am
You know something has gone mainstream when it becomes a punch line. So I was pleased to see philanthropy analysis being the butt of a joke in the Sunday comics this week.
BusinessWeek on Effective Philanthropy
January 14, 2010 – 12:16 pm
The Current edition of BusinessWeek includes a story on effective philanthropy that highlights Tactical Philanthropy Advisors and many of the charity evaluation groups that I write about regularly. Rethinking Ways to Give Wisely By Amy Feldman …At least a half-dozen groups have come up with different answers to the question of how to help donors […]
What’s News in the Social Sector?
December 14, 2009 – 9:04 am
An event isn’t newsworthy if it is widely expected to happen. The media doesn’t run news stories about the sun rising in the east for instance. But if one day the sun rose in the west or didn’t rise at all, you can bet that would be a huge news story. Unfortunately, the social sector […]
The “Best” Philanthropists
November 30, 2009 – 9:27 am
This is a difficult post to write. The cover story of this weekend’s edition of Barron’s (an important weekly Wall Street newspaper), is titled The 25 Best Givers and ranks the most effective philanthropists. First off, I’d like to commend Barron’s for putting philanthropy on their cover and focusing on effectiveness rather than the size […]
New York Times on Kiva Debate
November 9, 2009 – 12:25 am
A few weeks ago, we witnessed a debate about Kiva’s microfinance process and their transparency rev up after a series of blog posts discussed the issues and the newly potent philanthropy Twitterverse brought in readers from around the web. Now the New York Times’ Stephanie Strom has published coverage of the debate: Last month, David […]
Fox Business News on Charitable Giving
September 30, 2009 – 2:24 pm
This morning, Fox Business New featured a short discussion between Steve Goldberg, author of the excellent new philanthropy book Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets, Ken Berger of Charity Navigator and Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute. It was great to see a mainstream media outlet feature charitable giving outside of the traditional November […]
