Philanthropy Daily Digest

July 9, 2009 – 6:03 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |
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  • Guest Post: Next Generation Philanthropy

    July 9, 2009 – 6:03 am | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    This is a guest post from Katherine Lorenz of The Philanthropy Institute. Katherine is the US Representative for the Institute, which is based in London.

    By Katherine Lorenz

    What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning? For most people, it’s a job, a means to an end, a way to pay the bills and survive. All you can hope for is that you don’t hate every minute of your work day and that you might actually find some sort of pleasure or meaning in what you do for a living.

    Well, how does that change if you don’t need the money? What gets you out of bed in the morning if you have every opportunity in the world, the best education money can buy, and endless possibilities but no need to earn a paycheck? If you don’t have to go to work every day, why would you? That is the challenge many young people with inherited wealth face.

    All of us have different ways of dealing with the wealth. Some of us hide and deny it, trying to fit in and be “normal.” Others flaunt it, focusing on social status, parties, and fancy clothes. And some of us see it as a responsibility, taking on some of the world’s biggest challenges head-on in an effort to create change.

    On a personal level, doing my best to make a difference in the world is what gets me out of bed in the morning.  Motivated by a sense of duty, I find that, along with peers from similar backgrounds, I am uniquely positioned to help confront some of the pressing issues of our time. From climate change to global health to social justice, the needs are endless, as are the possibilities to make a tangible difference. Like many others in my position, the difficult question has always been, “How?”

    In my own quest to do my part to improve the world, I found myself bouncing around Latin America trying to understand the endless cycle of poverty in rural villages around the world. This led to my co-founding a non-profit in Oaxaca, Mexico focusing on food sovereignty, nutrition, and economic opportunity by promoting the cultivation and consumption of a highly nutritious native grain. Living in the developing world helped me understand some of the complexities of poverty and the many causes and effects, while starting an NGO taught me many lessons in the realities of running an effective organization. And, of course, living abroad helped me flee my own background, establish an identity, and follow my own calling outside of my family.

    At the appropriate age, I was then invited to begin participating in my family’s foundation, the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, as we went through the process of establishing an effective governance structure and zeroing in on the key issue area we wanted to impact with our giving, environmental sustainability. As a part of this process, I also went through The Philanthropy Workshop (TPW), a donor education program helping philanthropists be more strategic and have more impact with their giving. Effective philanthropy is not as easy as one might think; while there are plenty of charities out there that need money, having true impact in the areas you care about is both difficult to do and difficult to measure. TPW helps donors learn hard skills to give more effectively while also providing a personally transformational experience.

    Like so many other TPW alumni, I was deeply moved by my TPW experience. It helped me narrow my focus and really think about how I could be most effective as a philanthropist. Upon completing the course, I realized that maybe the most influential place I could be to have real impact on people’s giving and leveraging their resources to create change was through working with The Philanthropy Workshop participants. I was then offered a job there. It is so deeply fulfilling to watch other donors figure out how to better invest their resources for social good.

    This fall, we will launch another program called Next Generation Philanthropy, similar to The Philanthropy Workshop but focused on inheritors age 18-30 looking to make change through their philanthropy. As a person who would have greatly benefited from such a program, I am thrilled to be a part of bringing this program to the US. There are so many needs in the world and so many young donors who want to make a difference but don’t know how. I hope more of them will put their minds to changing the world and seek out the tools they need to do that effectively. TPW and NGP are two of the many options; the important part is just to get started.

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  • Philanthropy Daily Digest

    July 8, 2009 – 6:04 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |
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  • Why the Social Innovation Fund Matters

    July 8, 2009 – 10:18 am | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    On his Facebook page, Brad Rourke has asked why the Social Innovation Fund (explained here) is such a big deal:

    [The Social Innovation Fund] makes the government basically a grantmaker, giving away $50 million per year (which is not much as funders go). Sean points out that the original idea was that the government would find these worthy nonprofits and give the money to other funders to then pass on, after a match.

    That’s definitely better, but still, either way, here’s my question: How is this in any way different than how things happen already?

    Every foundation in the United States is essentially already doing what the White House office will be doing: trying to find the most promising grant recipients.

    I do not understand what the fanfare is here, when what really appears to be happening is that a new funder is entering the mix. Yes, that’s good — but not shout-it-from-the-rooftops good.

    Brad’s not the only person asking this question. If it is done wrong, the Fund will likely be a bureaucratic nightmare as Jeff Trexler recently suggested. So here’s my argument for why the Social Innovation Fund is a big deal if it is done right.

    • The Social Innovation Fund is the first meaningful incentive for large foundations to provide growth capital to nonprofits.
    • It provides serious “carrots” to participating foundations, but also empowers itself to “rate” those foundations. This should create the first meaningful incentive for foundations to compete to be viewed as the “best” funders.
    • The Fund refocuses philanthropy from supporting programs to supporting nonprofit organizations.
    • The Fund explicitly makes clear the role of the government as an “exit strategy” for philanthropy.
    • The Fund offers meaningful incentives for the field of philanthropy to embrace a culture of knowledge sharing.

    If you read this blog regularly, you can see that the points above are pretty much my wish list for our sector. Here’s why I think each point is true as long as the Fund is run in accordance to the policy recommendations of America Forward and follows the letter and spirit of the bill authorizing the Fund.

    The Social Innovation Fund is the first meaningful incentive for large foundations to provide growth capital to nonprofits.

    The Fund is providing cash grants to grantmakers. Most grantmakers are stuck with the endowment they have and do not have access to additional funding. But the Fund requires that grantmakers use this money (plus matching funds from the foundation’s endowment) to provide growth capital and capacity building grants to nonprofits. In addition, the Fund sets the government up as a long term exit strategy so that the grantmakers do not need to support the grantee forever (see below on “exit strategy”.)

    It provides serious “carrots” to participating foundations, but also empowers itself to “rate” those foundations. This should create the first meaningful incentive for foundations to compete to be viewed as the “best” funders.

    While offering the “carrots” above, the Fund also requires that grantmakers make a compelling case that they have an evidence based decision making strategy and provide specific measureable outcomes related to the areas they seek to support. Since the Fund cannot make grants of less than $1 million and it only has $50 million, it cannot select more than 50 grantmakers to work with. Since it is allow to make grants as large as $10 million, the final list will be between 5 and 50 grantmakers. That’s a list that foundations are going to want to be on. Even those that historically have not focused on providing growth capital.

    The Fund refocuses philanthropy from supporting programs to supporting nonprofit organizations.

    The language of the bill authorizing the Fund presumes that the role of funders helping to support social innovation is to provide growth capital. This isn’t terribly surprising when you realize that America Forward was convened by New Profit, which is one of the leading growth capital funders. This shift from foundations as designers of programs who contract execution out to nonprofits to foundations as providers of growth capital to the performance driven nonprofits represents a fundamental shift in philanthropy and one that I am a big advocate for.

    The Fund explicitly makes clear the role of the government as an “exit strategy” for philanthropy.

    The Fund become the “venture philanthropy” arm of the US government. But in promoting the Fund, everyone from President Obama on down has referenced the successful scaling of Nurse-Family Partnerships. The government did not care so much about NFP when it was a small, local program. But now that it has gained scale via the intentional providing of philanthropic growth capital from foundations, the 2010 federal budget is calling for $8.5 billion over the next ten years to finance nurse-family visitation programs.

    So the Fund begins to make explicit the interest the government has in effective social innovations reaching a scale where the Federal government can step in to provide funding. This model wins with social liberals who love to see the government provide effective social benefits and it wins with social conservatives who love to see the government contract with privately developed and managed programs to execute social benefits. It also wins with foundations who can see that if they expend resources to scale effective programs, the government will step in to provide funding and the foundation can exit the relationship with the grantee. Is there an unlimited capacity for the government to provide funds? No. But government resources swamp private philanthropic resources and effective programs like NFP save the government money.

    The Fund offers meaningful incentives for the field of philanthropy to embrace a culture of knowledge sharing.

    The language of the bill authorizing the fund requires that nonprofits that receive subgrants from the grantmaking partners be committed to the use of data collection and evaluation and be important contributors to knowledge in their fields. It requires that when making grantmaking decisions the grantmakers consult with a diverse cross section of community representatives in the decisions, including individuals from the public, nonprofit, private, and for-profit private sectors. And it mandates that the Corporation for National & Community Service that will operate the Fund shall maintain a clearinghouse for information on best practices resulting from initiatives supported by the grantmakers and their grantees.

    This is important, heady stuff. If executed properly with vision and integrity, the Fund may mark a major turning point in the field of philanthropy. But it is easy to imagine that the fund will not live up to its potential. This is a big project and there are going to be many competing interests clamoring for attention. It could turn into a bureaucratic mess of grant dollars being handed out in a rote manner that relates more to political connections than anything else. This is the nightmare that Jeff Trexler worries we’ll see. I hope he’s wrong. I think the people running the Fund want to do the right thing and recognize the opportunity they have. Let’s all commit to support this important endeavor.

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  • Philanthropy Daily Digest

    July 7, 2009 – 6:02 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |
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  • What Exactly is the Social Innovation Fund?

    July 7, 2009 – 8:20 am | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    Having written about the Innovation Fund for the past few days, I thought it would be useful to explain exactly what the Fund actually is.

    The Social Innovation Fund (currently being referred to by the Administration as simply the Innovation Fund), was authorized in the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009. The Serve America Act came about from the policy recommendations of America Forward. America Forward is a nonpartisan coalition of more than 70 results-oriented, entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations. The group was organized by New Profit, a venture philanthropy funder.

    Among many other things, the Serve America Act calls for the creation of a Social Innovation Funds Pilot Program. Below I’ve bullet pointed out what the program entails:

    • Congress finds that “A network of Social Innovation Funds could leverage Federal investments to increase State, local, business, and philanthropic resources to replicate and expand proven solutions and invest in supporting new innovations to tackle specific identified community challenges.”
    • The Fund is currently waiting on congress to allocate it $50 million. The Act states that the Corporation for National & Community Service will manage the fund. The Fund will make grants to other grantmaking institutions in amounts not less than $1 million and not more than $10 million per year. The Fund may use up to 10% of its funds to award grants directly to nonprofits to enable them to replicate or expand proven initiatives or support new initiatives.
    • To be eligible to receive a grant, grantmaking organizations must propose to focus on improving measurable outcomes relating to: education for economically disadvantaged students, child and youth development, reductions in poverty, health, resource conservation and local environmental quality, energy efficiency, civic engagement, or reductions in crime.
    • In addition, eligible grantmaking institutions must have an evidence-based decision making strategy, which includes use of evidence produced by prior rigorous evaluations of program effectiveness including, where available, well-implemented randomized controlled trials and a well-articulated plan to replicate and expand research-proven initiatives that have been shown to produce sizeable, sustained benefits.
    • Or the grantmaker may propose to support new initiatives with a substantial likelihood of significant impact or partner with a research organization to carry out rigorous evaluations to assess the effectiveness of such initiatives.
    • The grantmakers must match grants from the Fund with their own internal resources and then must use the funds in order to make subgrants to community organizations that will use the funds to replicate or expand proven initiatives, or support new initiatives, in low-income communities. In making decisions about subgrants for communities, grantmakers must consult with a diverse cross section of community representatives in the decisions, including individuals from the public, nonprofit, private, and for-profit private sectors. These subgrants must be of a sufficient size and scope to enable the community organizations to build their capacity to manage initiatives, and sustain replication or expansion of the initiatives.
    • Grantmakers must provide the Fund information on the specific measurable outcomes related to the issue areas involved that the eligible entity will seek to improve.
    • To be eligible for a subgrant, nonprofits must; obtain a 1:1 matching funds from state, local, or private sources, demonstrate they can sustain the initiatives after the subgrant period concludes through reliable public revenues, earned income, or private sector funding, be committed to the use of data collection and evaluation for improvement of the initiatives, be important contributors to knowledge in their fields.
    • Subgrants made to nonprofits must be for at least 3 years and for at least $100,000.
    • The Fund may reserve up to 5% of funds to evaluate eligible grantmakers, community organizations receiving grants, and their programs.
    • The Corporation will post a list of all grantmakers receiving funds and community organizations receiving subgrants on the Corporation’s website.
    • Grantmakers will be selected by the Fund based on the quality of their selection process.
    • Eligible grantmakers must submit their plans for providing technical assistance to their grantees and the Corporation must provide technical assistance to both grantmakers and subgrant receiving community organizations.
    • The Corporation shall maintain a clearinghouse for information on best practices resulting from initiatives supported by the eligible entities and community organizations.

    That’s a very condensed version of what the Act actually calls for. I would summarize it further by saying that the Fund will provide grants to grantmakers who will use the funds to support increased capacity and growth of nonprofit initiatives and who will base their funding decisions on rigorous outcome measurement. The Act demands that participants in the program be dedicated collectors of data and that they share their knowledge of what works with the field.

    In my next post I’ll explain why I think this is all so important.

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  • Philanthropy Daily Digest

    July 2, 2009 – 6:03 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |
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  • America Forward Responds

    July 2, 2009 – 4:05 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    Kelly Ward, the director of America Forward has just submitted this response to my recent posts about the Innovation Fund (see posts here and here):

    Thanks Sean for both of your posts and for grounding this discussion in what’s written in the Serve America Act. As you say, the foundation for how the Fund will work is described in the bill. To add to the detail you give above, the Serve America Act requires the Corporation for National and Community Service to administer the Innovation Fund and determine which grantmaking intermediaries will receive money, and with government matching the investments made by the private-sector. (Note that the bill does allow the Corporation to use up to 10% of the money to fund nonprofit organizations directly without going through intermediaries, but that’s a small percentage of the total $50 million.)

    It’s truly astounding to have the President give a speech about the work of social entrepreneurs and how we can identify, invest in, and scale social sector solutions. His speech presented a new vision for the role of government in solving our nation’s social problems, including how government can more effectively partner with nonprofits, philanthropy, the private sector, and citizens. It’s exciting to have leadership for the Innovation Fund at the highest levels of our government, and for President Obama to recognize it not just as another program, but as a model for his vision of how government should partner with the nonprofit, philanthropic and private sectors. We certainly hope you’re right that this Fund ends up being a really big deal!

    I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that none of this will happen if Congress doesn’t appropriate the funding for the Innovation Fund. We hope that supporters of this idea will call the House and Senate appropriations committees to convey their support.

    Kelly Ward, Director of America Forward

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  • The Innovation Fund & The Serve America Act

    July 2, 2009 – 3:11 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    Yesterday I highlight the way that President Obama’s description of the Innovation Fund differed in fundamentally important ways from the policy recommendations of America Forward. The simplest way to understand the distinction is that the way Obama described the Fund would mean that it was making grants to nonprofits, while the American Forward policy recommendation has the Fund making grants to grantmaking organizations.

    My sense at this time is that the mismatch is based not on an intentional decision by the President to run the fund in a different way, but by a lack of understanding by the President of the role of the fund (which is understandable since the Innovation Fund can’t be very high on the President’s priority list).

    One reason for believing this to be true is that as I understand it, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act that authorizes the Social Innovation Fund requires grants from the Fund to go to grantmaking organizations. The bill clearly states that only “covered entities” may receive funds and it defines “covered entities” as “grantmaking institutions.” So as far as I can tell, the President’s description of how the Fund will be managed that he gave at Tuesday’s press conference runs counter to the bill that authorizes the fund.

    Look, just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that any fishy is going on. I’m not saying that the Obama administration is doing anything wrong. I think that we’re operating in a space that few people understand and which even people who understand have a hard time explaining well. I expect that over time administration will figure out how to describe the fund more clearly and accurately.

    I think this fund is going to be a big deal. It might end up being a really big deal.

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  • Philanthropy Daily Digest

    July 1, 2009 – 6:03 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |
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  • The Innovation Fund

    July 1, 2009 – 12:34 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    Yesterday, President Obama officially launched the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation and the Innovation Fund (whether it is now call the Social Innovation Fund or just the Innovation Fund is unclear). He also named Melody Barnes to run the Innovation Fund. You can see video of the event here.

    Interestingly, President Obama described how the fund would work in a way that I think would be a huge mistake and is not in line with indications we’ve had to date of the structure.

    President Obama said:

    “We’re going to use this fund to find the most promising non-profits in America.  We’ll examine their data and rigorously evaluate their outcomes.  We’ll invest in those with the best results that are most likely to provide a good return on our taxpayer dollars.  And we’ll require that they get matching investments from the private sector — from businesses and foundations and philanthropists — to make those taxpayer dollars go even further.”

    The implication in this statement is that the Innovation Fund, with just $50 million, is going to set out on their own to find promising nonprofits, evaluate them and then make restricted grants to these nonprofits that will only be given if the nonprofits can find matching grants from the private sector. In other words the government run fund would identify the innovative organizations and then demand that private philanthropic dollars are matched against the Innovation Fund decisions.

    This would be crazy.

    If this is what the Innovation Fund is, then it is just a small foundation that isn’t really doing anything special. But I think President Obama doesn’t really fully understand the Innovation Fund.

    Let’s instead look at what America Forward said about the announcement. America Forward is important because they are the group that made the policy recommendations that led to the Serve America Act, The Office of Social Innovation and the Innovation Fund. They have been the intellectual force behind these policy decisions.

    Note how America Forward presents the structure of the Innovation Fund differently than President Obama:

    “Administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Fund will provide grants to existing grantmaking institutions that will in turn invest in growing innovative, results-driven nonprofits. Both grantmaking institutions and the nonprofit grantees will match the Fund’s investment, generally resulting in a 2:1 match.”

    Whew! That’s much better. Under this model, the Innovation Fund is simply identifying smart private sector funders, making grants to the funders, who would then pick which nonprofits were innovative, effective and ready to scale. The government gets to put money to work via smart funders focused on effective solutions. They also get to watch the development of the grantees as they scale and will be in a great position to make significant funding decisions once some of the effective organizations have gone national. The case study for this is the successful scaling of Nurse Family Partnerships (by private sector funders) and the $8.5 billion that the 2010 federal budget calls for to fund these types of activities.

    I think this is all really exciting. I think that the Innovation Fund is on the right track. It is great to see Melody Barnes assigned to run it. I believe that structurally the Innovation Fund will represent something new and serve as a conduit that helps start to streamline the capitalization of of effective organizations as they grow. I highlight President Obama’s (hopefully) incorrect description of the Fund to highlight 1) that the structure of the Fund is what makes it important, not the $50 million which frankly is not much money to start something like this and 2) to point out that as much as there are a lot of forces moving in the right direction to create more effective social capital markets, we’re still in the confusing market creation period. We’re going to get some things wrong. I hope we get the Innovation Fund right.

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  • Philanthropy Daily Digest

    June 30, 2009 – 6:02 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |
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  • Philanthropy’s Trifecta: Information, Wisdom & Relationships

    June 29, 2009 – 10:49 am | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    My most recent column for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, appearing in this week’s issue. You can find an archive of past columns here.

    Data Don’t Tell the Whole Story of Charities’ Impact
    July 2, 2009 | Link to Chronicle of Philanthropy

    A week’s worth of The New York Times includes more information than the average American living in the 18th century would have encountered in his or her lifetime, according to the book Information Anxiety 2 by Richard Wurman.

    As grant makers demand more data on which to base their philanthropic decisions, let’s remember that information by itself is not useful unless it is filtered using wisdom and relationships.

    Philanthropy has entered an age in which information, especially quantitative data, is prized by foundations and other donors.

    Many people believe that data can help us identify great nonprofit groups and effective programs.

    Just as the global economy is operating in an Information Age, "knowledge workers" who seek to make available new types of information for the public good now populate philanthropy. However, information is a necessary but not sufficient condition for robust philanthropy.

    That’s why it’s great that philanthropy leaders are starting to show their thought processes in regular Internet postings available for everyone to see. For example, Paul Brest, of the Hewlett Foundation, uses his blog for a rolling conversation about what makes for good philanthropy. So does Carla Javits of REDF, a group that uses innovative approaches to train needy people for jobs.

    Adding to the store of knowledge through online postings are people such as Ken Berger, head of the Charity Navigator watchdog group, and Bob Ottenhoff of GuideStar, the repository of information from nonprofit tax forms.

    As the amount of available information explodes, the wisdom to process it and put it in context becomes exponentially more valuable. In this environment, information becomes a resource that is valuable only when we place it in context. Access to information is no longer a competitive advantage. It is the ability to filter and process the flood of information that sets effective people apart. That is why the decision by a prominent foundation leader like Paul Brest to start a blog is so important.

    No matter how wise someone like Mr. Brest is, each person has a limited capacity to understand the world around him or her.

    That is why relationships are the third core element of a philanthropic trifecta — information, wisdom, relationships. Relationships, especially those with other wise people, allow grant makers to filter the information they receive through a network of expertise and place the information in context.

    Wisdom allows an individual to place new information in the appropriate context and use it to make better decisions. But when wise people connect their ideas together, a communal understanding of philanthropy will sprout, and individuals can benefit from experience far beyond their own.

    While these relationships are rooted in human connections, online tools like blogs and Twitter are allowing those networks to flourish without regard to geography.

    Philanthropic leaders have long gathered to communicate among themselves, but the power of relationship-based networks is now being supercharged by the inclusion of people from all walks of life and geographic locations.

    When I wrote recently in The Chronicle about the "Googlization" of philanthropy (Opinion, April 23), I argued that it would enable "collaboration and participation by unbundling the process of creating information from its distribution.

    Since philanthropy is improved exponentially as more information is shared about which social-benefit efforts work — and which ones fail — this is a big moment for philanthropy."

    But Pat Nichols, a management consultant to nonprofit groups, worried about the implications of my suggestion, and in a comment on my blog, he wrote, "It struck me that the capacity to Googlize philanthropy doesn’t improve philanthropy by itself. There are at least two sets of interwoven criteria at work — the criteria by which information is deemed important and, thus, selected or organized, and the criteria by which the reorganized information is applied in making giving decisions."

    Mr. Nichols is exactly right and his comment gets to the core of the issue. Information is the raw material of effective philanthropy, but without the skilled processing of wise individuals and their extended relationship networks, information isn’t worth very much at all.

    Gathering, filtering, and processing information is essential to great philanthropy. But this is a human-powered activity.

    Computers can slice and dice the raw material of information. The Internet can provide access to the information to more people in new ways. But it is only through the skilled application of the uniquely human aspects of wisdom and relationships that we can use the information to make philanthropy more effective.

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  • Philanthropy Daily Digest

    June 25, 2009 – 5:03 pm | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |
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  • The Philanthropist

    June 25, 2009 – 7:23 am | By Sean Stannard-Stockton |

    The new NBC drama, The Philanthropist is… really quite good! Now look, it is easy to criticize the show. It isn’t perfect. But this is prime time entertainment, not a documentary. I’ll probably lose a little street cred in professional philanthropy circles, but gosh darn it I really enjoyed it!

    There are two keys to understanding the show 1) At this point, the protagonist is focused on the self expressive element of philanthropy (just like most individual donors are, as I wrote in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy column) and 2) The show makes clear that the protagonist is a novice, who really doesn’t know what he’s doing.

    During the intro voice over, Teddy Rist (the lead character) says, “I know a lot of people who are living well, but aren’t happy. But I’m happy. Sometimes my demons chase me. Sometimes I chase them.” Rist’s focus during the show is on delivering vaccines to a village cut off due to a flood. He is particularly focused on one boy who he helped save from drowning early in the show. But Rist doesn’t risk his life out of a pure Mother Theresa-like focus on others. He is “chasing his demons” as the show makes clear when Rist dreams of his own son as he searches for the boy he is trying to save. On the other hand, Rist is not simply motivated to make himself feel good either. He is honestly trying to help. Is he naive? Of course! So are all donors when they first get serious about giving!

    The self-expressive element of giving is defined by Peter Frumkin as “supporting the self actualization of the donor.” In his book Strategic Giving, Frumkin argues that this element of philanthropy is routinely looked down upon or dismissed as selfish by institutional philanthropy, but in fact it is a positive self reinforcing cycle that leads to philanthropy benefiting donors and the public. It is a positive thing that philanthropy is beneficial to the donor, not something we should frown upon as if our own giving is somehow more purely sacrificial.

    But Rist does so many things wrong! Shouldn’t we criticize the show for all the flaws in how Rist attempts to do good? Of course he makes mistakes. He has no idea what he’s doing and the show knows this. When Rist requires hot coffee before he can evacuate during the flood, the show is making fun of him. When the vaccine is stuck in customs, Rist assumes throwing money at any problem will fix it and so he bribes the customs agent. But the show knows it isn’t that simple and Rist’s plan fails.

    Does the show suggest that philanthropy is fun and easy as Council on Foundation CEO Steve Gunderson said in an official statement yesterday? The poor guy manages to do nothing more than move a small bag of vaccines from the airport to a village! He spends $250,000 on a plane ride alone (which gets him dumped by himself in the jungle). He gets bit by a snake. He wanders barefoot in the jungle. Fun and easy? Rist doesn’t solve any huge problems in the show. The show doesn’t suggest that everything is OK now that Rist’s on the scene. He’s one man, naively trying to help, who through force of will and a lot of money manages to score a small victory.

    One thing to remember about the show is that because of its title, we view everything through a different lens. But what if we just think about the show as a prime time summer TV show that is trying to pick up an audience bored with reruns? When Rist let’s the boy take his spot on the raft and then dives in the water to save him from drowning, the show is not suggesting that he is some sort of do gooder superhero. James Bond, Indiana Jones, or any other hero of an action flick would have done the same thing.

    Are their problems with the show? Definitely. Jeff Trexler criticizes the show for promoting neocolonialism and he makes very good points. Was the fact that Rist sleeps with the local doctor who he brings the vaccines to bizarre and unsettling? Definitely.

    Somehow I keep imaging a group from the American Medical Association sitting around watching the first episode of ER and complaining. It’s not realistic! That’s not how an ER room works! Why are those doctors sleeping with each other?!

    Come on! It’s a fun TV show. Let’s enjoy it and be glad that once a week American TV audiences will hear the voice over proclaim “The Philanthropist!” as if that’s actually something fun and exciting instead of the idea of philanthropy as a boring, stuffy, serious thing that no sane person would want to be involved in.

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