Philanthropy Sherpas Blog

Charity vs. philanthropy

12/17/2009

There has been a lot of controversy about the recent Barron’s list of the “25 Most Effective Givers”, and a column by Cindy Gibson in The Nonprofit Quarterly gave me something to ponder. I’ve used the terms ‘philanthropy’ and ‘charity’ to indicate different strategies of giving – not to disparage one over the other, since both are needed – but to clarify what I was talking about. Gibson made a simple but convincing argument that charity IS philanthropy.

One of the online comments (by Rachel F.) also made a particularly useful point about logic models and their place in helping charity become more effective:

"Logic models meet real needs in real communities every day. Consider this simple model used by soup kitchens everywhere:

We feed folks in our community who are hungry [action], when & where they are hungry [strategy], so that we meet even a part of this community's day-to-day hunger needs [goal], thus improving the lives of folks in our community as a whole [meta-goal].

Add in relevant performance indicators (Are there more people who are less hungry in our community? Are there people still going hungry day-to-day that we can reach?) and you're working toward real effectiveness."

Charity is not only of value but can be effective. I’ll attempt not to use the word in a way that infers that ‘charity’ is something less-than philanthropy in the future.

—Julia

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Oops.

12/11/2009

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I have harped virtually all through this Blog on making mistakes. A 27-minute video made by the Communications Network showcases Susan Herr, president of PhilanthroMedia talking to Grant Olphant, president of the Pittsburgh Foundation in a conversation called 'What's the Upside of Failure?' It is worth a listen. Grant talks about specific 'mistakes' in his past and why saying "oops" is worthwhile.

Susan also mentioned a new article, Philanthropy and Mistakes:An untapped resource by Robert Giloth and Susan Gerwirtz of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

It identified several types of common mistakes:

the hubris of acting alone, taking on challenges beyond the scope of any one investor
'groupthink'
losing focus and ignoring routine tasks
trial and error mistakes
unintended consequences

The article also briefly describes a few case studies about foundation failures, one that discusses the "dangers of outcome measures".

Cheers to oops!

—Julia

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