Apr 23, 2009

Global Philanthropy Forum: Are Partnerships the Only Answer?

Some of the touchy issues of public-private partnership were taken up during a well-conceived health infrastructure break-out at the Global Philanthropy Forum.

Apr 06, 2009

Moratorium on Moyo Mumbling

Both those who have praised or condemned Dambisa Moyo’s new book seem to have lost touch—as they fine-tune the language of their point-counterpoint—with an inexorable reality: there is zero chance that Western governments will cut off aid flows to Africa within five years. Is there any practical advice on offer anywhere?

Mar 25, 2009

Boldness and Social Return

Mar 20, 2009

AIDS Prevention Doesn’t Increase High-Risk Behavior

Mar 06, 2009

Stimulus Funding for Effectiveness Research Worth Following

One part of the Obama administration’s proposed budget provides an example worth following for private philanthropy—investing in effectiveness research. Questions abound in nearly every social area, from education to health to economic development. Behavioral economics is also at work on donors and funders as they make choices about what to invest in. The impulse—as with that cookie—is to earmark money directly for recipients, because the gain seems immediate. But absent any evidence that programs work, it is a false gain. Instead, we should remember to support the research projects that can tell us for sure whether the gain is sustaining or not, and be willing to act on the evidence, even if we don’t like it.

Mar 04, 2009

An Era of Either/Or Choices

One of the results of the global recession will be a new era in philanthropy. The last decade has been marked by philanthropic abundance. The number of foundations and foundation endowments grew rapidly. Flush with cash, many donors were able to avoid difficult choices—they had the means to fund lots of organizations and lots of different approaches to the issues they cared about.
Clearly, the era of abundance is over. With diminished resources donors will have to choose what causes matter most to them and what approaches and organizations they truly believe in. Put another way, donors are now faced with either/or choices rather than both/and options.

Feb 10, 2009

When It Pays to Pay

In contrast to studies that have shown a benefit to asking aid recipients to pay a nominal cost for items they receive, an RCT in Western Kenya found that cost-sharing could reduce use of malaria bed nets by 75 percent versus a free-distribution effort. These results provide a lesson to those of us (myself included) who are often tempted to extrapolate. Context is everything in poverty interventions, and this study provides not only insight into what could work to stem malaria infection in Western Kenya, but a reminder that we have to test and re-test our assumptions in the real world. 

Dec 11, 2008

When Is A Cow Not A Cow?

Nov 03, 2008

Can Food Solve Everything?

Given the high-stakes now attached to agriculture in the form of both food inflation and global warming, China’s evolving agricultural policy will prove to be as crucial to the globe as America’s broken system has been over the last 25 years.

Oct 24, 2008

HIV Discoverer Advocates More Science for AIDS Eradication

Even the most optimistic concede that continued complacency toward the rash of new infections that occur every year will cause the worldwide disease burden to far outweigh the treatment possibilities for the foreseeable future.