George Harrison’s “Bangladesh” is widely regarded as the first song written exclusively for charitable purposes.
Saturday linkage
From around the worldly web:
Impact Investing is the focus of a new book by those who do that sort of thing at Deutsche Bank and Bamboo Finance. The New York Times has a story. [More on this in a future blog post.]- President releases tax returns and you want to wake up this morning being the Fisher House Foundation.
- Pretty cool story from NPR [and a clever headline] about a nonprofit that “rescues” produce discarded at the U.S./Mexico border and distributes it to needy families.
- Waiting for the endless litany of nonprofit scandals in the state of New York to end? Keep waiting.
- You wouldn’t think to connect California skateboarding culture and women in Peru and Uganda. This guy did. He’s also got a pretty amazing mustache.
- Some Los Angeles nonprofits are caught between the proverbial rock and hard place when it comes boosting minimum wages.
Curious cat
The Economist reviews the latest book from the prolific Canadian [via Argentina] author Alberto Manguel. In the pages of Curiosity, Manguel ruminates on a variety of issues, asking a number of questions about how it is we come to the conclusions that we do:
The topics to which his big questions lead him include exile, illness, climate change, pets, cultural barriers, social identities, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, financial greed and death. Some of those topics are too modern for the ancients to have anything direct to say. Others are timeless. But to say much that is striking, new or true about those would take aphoristic gifts or an astringency of mind that Mr Manguel does not claim to possess. To call him today’s Montaigne, as one of the jacket quotes has it, is pure puffery, as he would be the first to acknowledge.
We Americans continue to erase the gray areas between right and wrong — not just on moral grounds — that leave open the spaces for curiosity; Susan Jacoby’s Age of American Unreason comes to mind. Perhaps the time is ripe to fell a few unhelpful dogmas, and expanding the depth and width of our sense of curiosity can reduce our fears of the purest forms of inquiry:
Think about how more curiosity would change our dialogue and eventual conclusions about religion, politics, education systems, society. In the third sector, where grantmakers and nonprofits roam, curiosity has always been in the currents: research, test, tweak, recalibrate, etc. The sector is not unique in that regard, but it does have less to lose.
That famous Catholic Graham Greene might have said it best: “When we are not sure we are alive.”
Good links
Interesting reads from around the Intertubes:
- The spring issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review, with a focus on women’s empowerment, is a thought-provoking read in its entirety but of note is Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen’s piece on how disruptive technology can both expand and sharpen the focus of philanthropy.
- Over at Nonprofit Quarterly Rick Cohen takes the Case Foundation to task for its “pitch competition” idea/fiasco at the recent Council on Foundations conference.
- In Crain’s Chicago Business, Terry Mazany of The Chicago Community Trust offers a slice of optimism, however small, about the challenges of the Windy City.
- An idea gaining traction in policy circles is that philanthropy can work alongside government to produce bold solutions to our problems. Cue Michael Bloomberg.
- New York’s Attorney General is about to bring the hammer down on nonprofit boards thanks to the board of trustees of the no-longer-tuition-free Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. The AG also doesn’t fear Oprah.
- Art lovers note: The New Yorker on why your new gallerist might have a youthful-sounding sales pitch.
Unsolicited PR advice for Governor Pence
Governor Mike Pence of Indiana is caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, in this case “freedom” and “discrimination.” In addition to watching his Presidential hopes float away, the governor can’t seem to open his mouth without incurring exponential growth in the number of people who despise him.
Not that his current predicament could have been avoided entirely, but he certainly could have employed one or two familiar PR devices to partly alleviate his public display of incompetence. So, without further ado, here’s some after-the-fact advice for the governor.
Know who you’re getting in bed with on any given piece of legislation and understand what the reaction from their opposition might be. In other words, you can’t invite representatives from virulently anti-gay organizations to your bill-signing party and expect them to have credibility when they go on television to explain the bill is not a license to discriminate.- As well-meaning as a group of “family values” leaders might be do not allow them to convince you they are in the mainstream when in fact they’re falling off the cliffs of the fringe.
- As the saying goes, one game at a time. Dithering due to Presidential ambitions makes you look decidedly unPresidential.
- On a related note, state clearly and unequivocally why you are making a particular decision and stick to your message.
- Don’t blame imaginary forces such as “perception problems” for your travails. It’s a clear sign you’re backpedaling to Kokomo.
Finally, understand your little moment of history. It never hurts to take stock in where we as a country are on the pendulum swinging toward equality.