May 05, 2009

Thoughts from Day One of Council on Foundations

by Tim Ogden

In her posts from the Global Philanthropy Forum last week, Laura noted the overwhelming prominence of “public-private partnerships”—surprising because, at least recently, high-net worth philanthropy has been thinking in terms of alternatives to government. Here at the Council on Foundations conference that trend is most definitely confirmed. Almost all of the plenaries have featured government figures—and that’s before Mike Bloomberg and former President Clinton speak tomorrow. Overall, it’s clear that mainstream philanthropy is not going to be willing to move without government. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised: $800 billion in extra spending will get everyone’s attention.

The big concern is not that partnering with government is a bad thing but that a sector that is notorious for chasing fads is just chasing the “new new” thing. That behavior doesn’t play to the potential strengths of philanthropy—taking risks and innovating. That was an important point made by David Douglas, Chief Sustainability Officer at Sun Microsystems in a session on the role for philanthropy in developing energy independence and sustainable energy (for more on philanthropy’s role in global warming, see the most recent issue of Alliance Magazine). According to Douglas, history shows us that government is typically quite poor at actively driving innovation unless it knows exactly what it wants. Government is much better at creating guaranteed markets for the outcomes of innovation, thereby stirring private investment in innovation. If philanthropy begins waiting for government to pave the way and then follow, we’re unlikely to get the kind of innovation in any area (energy, education, poverty) that most seem to agree that we need.

In fact, one of the common things said by government representatives is that they are looking to philanthropy to provide guidance on what to invest in and how to measure. This is perhaps the most discouraging thing that I heard because it at least superficially indicates that these government leaders don’t know how bad the philanthropy sector has been at creating and using measures that matter. The last thing we need is to replicate the last decade’s circular arguments about how to measure impact in the social sector.

On an encouraging note, the sessions related to international grantmaking were generally well attended. Curiously the session on philanthropy in the BRIC countries had probably three times as many people as the session on African grantmaking. Some great data was presented at the grantmaking in Africa session that we’ll publish in a separate post soon. Also in that session, Peter Laugharn, Executive Director of the Firelight Foundation, presented five lessons to improve grantmaking in Africa (to see the list, check out the new Philanthropy Action Twitterstream).