‘Caroline, I think you missed a couple of things in your last working paper …’ ‘Oh, did I? Good, excellent opportunity for you to address it – like, in a blog post!’ ‘Oh dear, what did I get myself into …’ That is more or less how this post was born. Leonardo was savouring Caroline…
India’s middle classes and donations from them have been growing at a rapid pace. According to PSJP’s report on Philanthropy in India, published in October 2017, ‘this may be the biggest story in Indian philanthropy, and the area with the greatest potential’.This growth in funds being raised has been fuelled by international and Indian NGOs…
Many working in the ‘development set’ have been grappling with the failure of philanthropy and development to have any significant impact on the most pressing problems facing the world including inequality and poverty. In this article Gerry Salole analyses some of the ‘conscious and unconscious vested interests in the development and philanthropic sectors’ that cause him to…
The Philanthropy in India report by Caroline Hartnell, published in October 2017, notes that the most promising aspect of new philanthropy in the country is the rise of giving by middle-class individual donors. However, the report also notes the lack of philanthropy infrastructure is hindering the growth of philanthropy in India. While ‘large philanthropists are supported by…
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,…
It is good to see that the Alliance Special Feature on ‘Philanthropy’s Developers’ pays homage to some of the pioneers of philanthropy infrastructure. To my mind, one of these – Barry Gaberman – merits special mention. When he was Senior Vice President at the Ford Foundation, he saw the importance of the unglamorous backroom role played by…
‘Every year billions of dollars are spent in aid to help the poor, the vulnerable, the excluded. But how much really changes?’ This animated film by the Global Fund for Community Foundations talks about ‘new paths’, alternative ways of doing things, i.e. the growing community philanthropy movement that challenges traditional development approaches (that often undermine the agency of…
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…
Recent books by Barry Knight and by Alan Marsh and colleagues have shown that efforts to end poverty in low-income neighbourhoods in the UK have failed to make much progress. Darren McGarvey, or Rapper Loki, in his book Poverty Safari criticises the well-meaning but fundamentally misguided behaviour of the poverty industry which behaves ‘much like an imperial power’ and is not tuned into what…
While mainstream development practices are failing and problems of poverty, conflict and inequality endure, what alternatives are there that work? In this article on IDR Anshu Gupta talks about the importance of leveraging local agency in social change processes. By Anshu Gupta There’s a recent image that will remain etched in our collective memory for…