Slate Magazine - Philanthropy

What will the financial crisis mean for philanthropy?

Georgia Levenson Keohane — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:42:57 EST

Talk about unfortunate timing. With the global economy reeling from the excesses of Wall Street, Mathew Bishop and Michael Green give us the incredulously titled Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World. Bishop, the chief business editor at the Economist, first described how the barons of the new economy were revolutionizing philanthropy by applying their business principles—and sweeping ambition—to their charitable endeavors in 2006. Now he has teamed up with Green, an international development expert, to chronicle how this "movement" of philanthropists has "set out to change the world." The world is indeed changed: This gilded age has come to an abrupt and hard stop, and with it, perhaps, has come a tempering of irrational exuberance about the potential of outsized philanthropists to be, in Bishop's words, "superheroes for solving some of society's problems."

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The Google IPO event of the nonprofit world.

Georgia Levenson Keohane — Mon, 2 Jun 2008 15:23:46 EST

If any good comes out of the misguided farm bill passed last month, it will be the recognition that Americans are hungry. Amid the egregious agricultural subsidies, the bill earmarks billions of dollars to food banks, where demand is up 20 percent from a year ago, and to food stamps, which now help feed a record 28 million Americans. (According to the latest Department of Agriculture figures, more than 40 percent of people using food stamps live in working families, up nearly one-third in 10 years.)

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How much giving do online contests and networks really generate?

Georgia Levenson Keohane — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:33:50 EST

Can social networks and virtual communities revolutionize charitable giving? Many nonprofit organizations are counting on these online forces to expand their universe of donors. And a number of foundations are testing the potential by underwriting the launch of "social networking for social good" Web sites, and sponsoring online contests to encourage donations.

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How Google decided what to give to.

Larry Brilliant — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:33:23 EST

Benares is the holy Indian city where many sick pilgrims go to die, to be cremated in the burning ghats on the Ganges River. There is a story of a saint who went to Benares and encountered terrible suffering among these pilgrims. As he walked down the steps to the burning ghats, he saw beggars, lepers, men with one leg or no legs, and women with starving infants. The saint had a pocketful of rupees. What should he do—what should any moral person do—with his few coins? Give two coins to a leper? One to a man who'd lost one leg, two to a man who'd lost both? Is there a hierarchy of suffering?

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An underground classic about art explains philanthropy.

Lincoln Caplan — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:32:59 EST

Lewis Hyde's The Gift is about the challenge of being an artist in a world of commerce. In the quarter-century since the book was first published, it has been passed along among writers, musicians, painters, and sculptors struggling to make enough from their art to pay the rent—and trying to maintain a sense of self-worth when they can't.

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