It’s an old adage: who pays the piper, calls the tune. In other words, if it’s your money, you get to choose. In general, it might be a good rule, but there are times when it’s worth reconsidering. Towards the end of last year, PSJP published a paper based on conversations with 14 civil society…
A new paper by PSJP, Understanding Sustainability puts some substance to the concept of sustainability by talking to a group of diverse organizations from the fields of development and philanthropy about what they mean by it. It’s a worthwhile and timely exercise because, as the paper points out in its introduction, sustainability has become a…
In the last post on leadership, we saw how much importance all the organizations attached to encouraging and developing leadership among their constituencies. How do they apply that precept to themselves? Is it different from encouraging and developing leadership among the communities they serve? And how do they run or guide an organization, yet pay…
‘The happiness and sorrow; hope and despair and sense of fair treatment versus injustice in public life in any society is associated directly in part, if not whole with the culture and quality of public leadership.’ As Martin Macwan’s words indicate, few concepts are so important. But what is it? How is it practised in…
In a remote time and place – it might have been anywhere – there was a village. The villagers cultivated their fields, harvested their crops and suffered the usual pains and pleasures people do. Then one day, a giant came. ‘This village belongs to me now,’ said the giant. ‘You must pay tribute to me…
Most of us (by ‘us’ I loosely mean those who are steadily employed in the philanthropy sector) are not poor, but we write and talk about poverty. Many of us are middle-aged or beyond, but we write and talk about young people. We cudgel our brains to understand social movements and how to reach them,…
Rawa, a philanthropic fund rooted in participatory community decision-making, has been launched in Palestine to promote community development and the mobilisation of local resources. Following an exploration period, supported by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Open Society Foundations, The Middle East Children’s Alliance, Global Fund for Community Foundations, Al-Maamal Foundation and the Ford Foundation, Rawa will support initiatives…
By Andrew Milner This blog is the second in a series of four drawing on the initial findings of a new study of philanthropy initiated by the Working Group on Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace. These will be published in the run-up to next week’s WINGS Forum in Mexico City, where Philanthropy for Social…