December 2, 2015
Zuckerberg May Have Learned Philanthropy Lessons from Newark
An Interview with Phil Buchanan
WYNC News
October 5, 2015
The Leaner-Is-Always-Better Myth: One Size Doesn’t Fill All Foundations
By: Phil Buchanan
To hear some tell it, big, heavily staffed foundations are on their way out. Like bookstores and taxis, they’ll soon be obsolete, if they’re not already.
Sean Parker, of Napster and Facebook fame, declared in an essay in The Wall Street Journal that “the executive directors of most major private foundations, endowments, and other nonprofit institutions are dedicated, first and foremost, to preserving the resources and reputations of the institutions they run. This is achieved by creating layers of bureaucracy to oversee the resources of the institution and prevent it from taking on too much risk.”
As a result, he writes, “many large private foundations become slow, conservative, and saddled with layers of permanent bureaucracy, essentially taking on the worst characteristics of government…”>read more.
July 6, 2015
In Search of the Magic Formula for Philanthropy
By: Phil Buchanan
Foundation staff and major donors may not hear much direct criticism of their foundations or giving, surrounded as they are by grantees and grant seekers. But it seems like everyone has a point of view on what philanthropists should be doing: You can’t flip through more than a few pages of The Chronicle of Philanthropy or Stanford Social Innovation Review — and recently The New York Times and Wall Street Journal — without finding an article with the words “foundations should” or “philanthropists should.”
Yes, I admit it. I have sometimes uttered — and written — those words. So have many inside and outside philanthropy — including Silicon Valley tycoons and consultants and foundation leaders seeking to influence the practices of their peers…>read more.
April 23, 2015
Why Philanthropy Should Push Back Against the Business Mindset
An Interview with Phil Buchanan
Giving more money to altruistic initiatives should make those programs stronger, right? Not necessarily. Even some of the most well-known, well-intentioned programs have fallen short of their promises, especially ones funded on hunches instead of data.
Take the anti-drug program D.A.R.E. and the anti-incarceration program Scared Straight.
“(Both) received lots and lots of funding without clarity about whether they work,” says our guest Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy…>read more.
January 20, 2015
Technology Start-Ups Don’t Hold All the Answers for ‘Broken’ Nonprofits
By: Phil Buchanan
