posted on: Friday, October 21, 2011

This is a guest blog post by Bill Somerville, executive director of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation.

By Bill Somerville

1.    The philanthropic dollar will become the entrepreneurial dollar of society.

• Philanthropy will involve more risk taking.
• There will be more tolerance for an occasional failure.

2.    Philanthropy will focus more on outstanding individuals and organizations.

• There will be less reliance on extensive paper and electronic applications as due diligence.
• Philanthropy will refine ways of finding people and nonprofits of potential.

3.    Philanthropy will embrace the concept of trust in all its dimensions.

• Trust between applicant and foundation staff.
• Trust between foundation staff and foundation board.
• Trust between the executive and foundation staff.
• As a result, there will be more discretionary grantmaking.
• The Board will allow the executive to make grants.
• The Executive will allow program staff to make grants.
• Consequently, the grantmaking process will speed up.

4.    More grants to programs will be for discretionary use on the grassroots level.

5.    Interactions between applicants and foundation staff will move in the direction of a collegial relationship.

6.    More young people will be in philanthropic work.

• Many are members of donor families.
• Some are recent graduates who were introduced to philanthropy in college.

Why these predictions? The present course of philanthropy is such that change is inevitable. For example, paperwork in professional philanthropy is becoming such a burden on the applicant and foundation staff that it will hit a critical point where evaluation will bring reform.

What do you think of these predictions? Do you anticipate other changes in the way philanthropy operates?