Tag: Donor

The Art & Practice of Global Philanthropy Workshop

Navigating the field of global philanthropy can be challenging, especially when you are an individual donor or working for a small foundation. Barriers such as identifying partners, setting clear expectations, performing due diligence and reporting, transferring funds, geography, lack of on-the-ground relationships, unstable legal and governmental structures, and the U.S. regulatory environment can stymie even the most sophisticated donor. Despite this complexity, international giving from US-based foundations, corporations and individuals is on the rise, and it is having a significant impact in reducing poverty, securing human rights, empowering communities and providing humanitarian relief. This growth requires donors to rapidly develop new skills and knowledge in order to engage in global work in a relevant, well-informed and culturally sensitive way.

Please join Philanthropy Northwest, Pangea Giving and the Northwest Global Donors Exchange for a full-day, interactive workshop that will examine key issues and considerations related to global giving. Participants will learn from philanthropic and nonprofit leaders alike and will come away with new connections with peers and a deeper understanding of the:

Evolving landscape of international giving with the context of overall philanthropic giving;
Alignment of mission, personal motivations and the intended impact of your giving;
Technical and legal differences between various pathways to give abroad; and
Strategies for identifying and vetting potential grantees.

FACILITATORS:

John Harvey holds more than 20 years’ professional experience in global philanthropy and is an acknowledged and respected leader in its advancement. As Founding Principal of Global Philanthropy Services, LLC, John offers strategic, programmatic, and talent management support to foundations and philanthropic support organizations globally. From 2011 to 2013, John served as Managing Director for Global Philanthropy at the Council on Foundations. Prior, John served for 10 years as founding Executive Director of Grantmakers Without Borders (now called EDGE Funders Alliance), a funder affinity group whose members fund social change programs globally.
When:
Thu, April 7, 2016, 9:00am to 3:30pm
PDT
Where:
Seattle, WA
Location:
2101 Fourth Avenue Suite 650 Seattle, WA 98121

Bill Gates and the 3-Story-High Philanthropic “Selfie”

Linsey McGoey wonders aloud in the Guardian whether philanthropy is better off once the major donor has died—or, as she puts it, “Is the most effective philanthropist a dead one?”

McGoey seems to believe that the celebrity status of some billionaire donors gets in the way of necessary critiques of their financially backed influence. She uses as an example of that blinding celebrity halo a bizarre scene that played out when Bill Gates turned 60.

To mark the occasion, more than 1,000 schoolchildren in Chennai, India, were photographed in the courtyard of their school holding life-sized cutouts of Gates’s face, raised above their heads in military salute. A three-story-high image of Gates beams from the rear of the configuration, featuring an upbeat slogan: “Grow rich. Help others.”

She contrasts this to the understated approach of the Wellcome Foundation which “creates about the same ‘good,’ measured in financial contributions, many members of the public haven’t even heard of it—let alone praise the charity in the same way that the Gates Foundation is lauded.”

“Most organizations on a par with the Gates Foundation are fair game for academic and journalistic investigation,” she writes:

When a health catastrophe strikes, many governments and UN organizations such as the World Health Organization are subjected to sustained internal and external review. The Gates Foundation, while as powerful, rarely faces the same scrutiny.

We need to challenge this silence. We need loudly to ask an uncomfortable question: do foundations narrow wealth inequalities or simply preserve them? Are foundations at their most radical when they exist to serve a benefactor’s hopes and whims—or when they’re emancipated from such an obligation?

McGooey generally believes that it is hard to be clearheaded about social inequities when that is the way that you, personally, have made your money. She posits that the “big three” U.S. foundations—Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie—only began to sympathize with labor and civil rights movements after their founders were dead, and that Ford’s grandson Henry actually resigned from the foundation in in 1977, writing that “a system that makes the foundation possible very probably is worth preserving.”—Ruth McCambridge