posted on: Thursday, August 05, 2010

by Aaron Dorfman

There’s never enough time to read all the great publications put out in our sector. Like many of you, the stack of things I should read never seems to get smaller.

But when our server in the NCRP office went down for several hours a couple of days ago, taking away access to the internet, email or documents on the server, I finally had the opportunity to catch up on some recent titles. I highly recommend two of them:

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) recently released Do Nothing About Me Without Me: An Action Guide for Engaging Stakeholders. Written by GEO’s director of programs, J. Courtney Bourns, the publication offers an overview of how grantmakers are reaching out to grantees, community members and other partners for smarter grantmaking. The guide offers a compelling reason why these efforts are important:

"Effective solutions require the engagement of those who are most affected by the problems a grantmaker is working to address. This engagement may take added time and effort, but by involving others in meaningful ways, a grantmaker can potentially save time and increase impact as a project or initiative moves forward."

Like most GEO publications, the guide is easy to read and accessible. Any grantmaker that wants to get better at engaging with the community would be wise to take a look.

My second recommendation is Disrupting Philanthropy: Technology and the Future of the Social Sector, by Lucy Bernholz with Edward Skloot and Barry Varela. Published by the Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, the piece thoughtfully explores the implications for philanthropy of networked digital technologies. It offers far more questions than answers, but it got me thinking about some issues I hadn’t previously considered. Will technology improve how donors, funders and nonprofits exchange information and ultimately help funds go to the groups making the biggest impacts? The authors seem to think so.

A pleasant surprise for me came near the end of the document, where the authors put forward the rather bold proposition that research, data and learning amassed by foundations really belongs to the public:

"Who ultimately owns social sector data is an unresolved issue for donors and enterprises. Voluntary efforts such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS) and Science Commons have laid the groundwork for sharing information in pursuit of common goals. In the public sector, research funded by the National Institutes of Health must be published in the openly accessible PubMed database within 12 months of work completion. In the case of philanthropy, because donors receive tax benefits—essentially, unrestricted grants from the government—foundations are quasi-public institutions. Data held by foundations would therefore seem to belong to the public."

I’m sure Bernholz, Skloot and Varela won’t be vilified the way NCRP has been for asserting that foundations are quasi-public institutions. In spite of the repeated protestations (see here, here and here) of the proponents of “philanthropic freedom” that foundation dollars are entirely private dollars—and, therefore, are off-limits to any notion that philanthropic institutions have the right and duty to uphold donors’ wishes and additional responsibilities to society—I think it’s clear that thinking of foundation dollars as partially public makes a whole lot more sense. It’s wonderful to have that thinking reinforced by thought leaders in our field like Bernholz, Skloot and Varela.

What other publications are in your “must read” pile?

Aaron Dorfman is executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP.)