open Democracy News Analysis - Philanthropy and power, Geoff Mulgan - Comments

srheywood on "The new philanthropy: power, inequality, democracy"

srheywood — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:33:23 +0100

is exactly that it's a form of social engineering by the rich.

The risk with social entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurs are generally Alan Sugar Apprentice types who can easily foul up a charity or good cause or social activist project without even realising they're doing it. Some good causes just require you to commit time and money without looking for personal reward, and sooner or later anyone who's in it for the right reasons will face up to this fact.

dstoker on "The new philanthropy: power, inequality, democracy"

dstoker — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:21:10 +0100

I think this is a very interesting conversation Michael Edwards has started but I think a lot of the assumptions and sweeping generalizations miss the complexity and synergy of the various types of financing, philosophy, and implementation.

Consider Ashoka as an example, where I've been interning the last couple months: Ashoka is funded by numerous foundations and wide base of citizen support but has really exploded with the influx of funding from this new philanthrocapitalist money: Gates, Google, Skoll, etc. Ashoka takes that venture money and model and turns around and invests in grassroot, indigenous entrepreneurs, having a rigorous selection process of checks and balances to find those top tier social entrepreneurs that have the potential to cause systematic change, social movements, etc. Their latest evaluation showed that within 5 years of election as a fellow the idea or project has influenced change in national government policy or legislation. They also promote and hold up those grassroot efforts that rely on a strong citizen base of support (www.citizenbase.org) that inspires civic participation and ownership of problems. So it is not a issue of getting rid of foundations, turning everything over to the market, having no relationship with government and policy, all are players but their relationships to one another are changing.

Philanthropy and power, Geoff Mulgan

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:17:23 +0100

Philanthrocapitalism isn't yet a major force in Europe - but it could become so. For now, the hype is far in advance of the reality. It is clear though that Europe too is undergoing the type of economic transition that in the United States has been associated with very large-scale philanthropy, funded by temporary monopolies, often controlled by individuals. As mass production took shape these were the monopolies of Ford, Carnegie, JP Morgan - which then became "normalised" into more competitive markets, and more standard corporate governance, partly because of government and legal action.

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