I’ve long advocated for foundations to embrace impact focused transparency. While many people want foundations to be more transparent for the sake of accountability, I just think that foundations should share more as a way to achieve impact. In the wake of the Japanese disaster, charity rating organization GiveWell is demonstrating how impact focused transparency […]
Category Archives: Transparency
Speaking at New Profit’s Gathering of Leaders
February 2, 2011 – 9:29 am
Next week I’ll be in Miami speaking at New Profit’s Gathering of Leaders. While I’ve often focused on New Profit’s “investing in nonprofits” approach to grantmaking, they also have an “Action Tank” that works to strengthen the ecosystem for social entrepreneurs and the environment in which nonprofit capital markets are being created. In 2007, New […]
An Important New Foundation Blog
January 4, 2011 – 9:31 am
(Disclosure: The Peery Family are clients of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors. We advise on a portion of their overall philanthropic activity and offered only limited input on their new blog.) This is the first time I’ve written a blog post about the activities of a client. But the Peery Foundation’s experimentation with Twitter was featured as […]
Philanthropy’s Period of Rapid Innovation
November 30, 2010 – 9:47 am
One of the defining characteristics of a blog, that sets it apart from historical publishing models, is the conversational focus of the medium. If a “blog” just publishes items that talk about the author or their organization each day, that’s really just a newsletter. But when blog authors write about what other authors are discussing, […]
Social Innovation Fund Released Additional Details
September 20, 2010 – 8:15 am
The Social Innovation Fund announced on Friday that they are releasing additional details in response to the debate that broke out in late August on this blog and around the web. The Fund’s press release said: “The grant announcement also generated a healthy debate about openness and transparency during the Social Innovation Fund process. We […]
Nonprofit Shares Failure & Looks Great
September 9, 2010 – 8:51 am
No company, nonprofit or for-profit, likes to tell customers and investors when they’ve screwed up. The natural instinct is to hide failures. But research shows that when people and organizations admit mistakes people trust them more. Talking candidly about challenges increases the listener’s trust that positive statements are true. One of the reasons that the […]
Why Every Social Entrepreneur Should Be Paying Attention to SKS & Unitus
July 29, 2010 – 10:05 am
This is a guest post from Tim Ogden. Tim is Editor-in-Chief of Philanthropy Action, a journal for donors, and Executive Partner of Sona Partners, a thought-leadership communications firm. Follow him on Twitter: @philaction and @timothyogden. By Tim Ogden Today, the world’s second microfinance IPO happened: SKS shares went on the market in India. All expectations […]
Audacious Ideas: Jim Canales
July 19, 2010 – 6:03 am
This guest post from Jim Canales, CEO of the James Irvine Foundation, is part of the ongoing Audacious Ideas series. By Jim Canales Bill and Melinda Gates along with Warren Buffett recently announced their commitment to devote the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Perhaps more notably, they are encouraging other billionaires to pledge a […]
Audacious Ideas
July 16, 2010 – 11:52 am
Starting on Monday, we’re launching a new series on the Tactical Philanthropy blog called Audacious Ideas. The series will consist of regular guest posts from leading thinkers in philanthropy who are willing to step forward and propose an Audacious Idea… and sometimes announce an Audacious Action. We’ll be publishing the first Audacious Idea on Monday […]
Unitus Update
July 16, 2010 – 8:33 am
Unitus has sent out an email to supporter that helps clarify their reasons for exiting microfinance. I may have more to say about the topic later, but today I want to give Unitus the opportunity to tell their side of the story. Dear Unitus Donors: On July 2, having accomplished our initial core mission, […]
