Gift Hub

The Internationale Owned By?

Actor whistles the Internationale for 7 seconds on camera and receives a bill for 1,000 euros for the use of copyrighted intellectual property. Fortunately, here in the US the former Russian National Anthem is in the public domain and you can whistle it for nothing.  (Thank you, Tom, for the link. What do I owe you?)

Tough Times Survey Results

From Bridgespan a telling graphic showing how badly nonprofits have suffered in the last 6 months. More detailed information here.

Private Money, Public Good

How Public is Private Philanthropy? by Evelyn Brody and John Tyler in pdf published by The Philanthropy Roundtable. The authors conclude that there is no basis in curent law for treating private foundations as public money to be controlled in their grants, say, by government action. The poor will have to look to the taxpayer, not the foundations for their entitlement programs.  As a practical matter, if the government begins to treat foundation money as their money, fewer foundations will be set up. A foundation, if controlled in its grants by government, would be just another, more elaborate way to pay taxes. Why bother?

To level society, NCRP, we need a bigger bulldozer.  Let's abolish, for example, intellectual property.

The Intellectual Property of the Holy Spirit

Improprieties:

We in the US and elsewhere have had the habit, for perhaps too long, of assuming that conversation can be bottled up inside a piece of thingliness - a vessel like a book, a CD, DVD, digital file, painting, etc. -- and presented as a self-sufficient, closed object which can then be sold. I don't think that's what "markets are conversations" was intended to mean, but the closing of the conversation, like the enclosure of the commons, leads to improper notions of something as "a property," and then, "intellectual property."

Stalin had Mandelstam tortured and shot for an aphorism, "Crag-dweller of the Kremlin." The image was so good the poet recited it to friends, and it spread to an informant, then passes down to us, immortal though the poet died miserably. Now, that Russia has become a market economy, I am sure Mandelstam's heir's intellectual property rights are protected. In that way, I guess, the poet is well compensated.

Vigilante Philanthropist Glorified on TV

Interesting response by Steve Gunderson of Council on Foundations to the NBC show, The Philanthropist. He quotes a friend as saying, "The Philanthropist is to philanthropy what the Pink Panther is to police work." The PR says it follows the heroic adventures of Teddy Rist, billionaire playboy-turned-vigilante philanthropist, taking him across the globe from Haiti to Myanmar, Kashmir to Paris, Kosovo to San Diego.” In the interest of setting the record staight, I do think we should encourage the Council on Foundations to offer a prize annually to the  playboy-billionaire-turned-vigilante-philanthropist" who really does do the most good in the world.  Success to significance gone wild. 

Foundations Dancing with Government

Lauren Foster in Prospect on how foundations are adapting to the Obama adminstration.  In that dance who leads and who follows?

Jolkona Foundation

Jolkona Foundation:

Jolkona Foundation makes it easy for you to make a difference by allowing you to make small donations to projects of your choice and to see the impact of every donation."

Web 2.0 microphilanthropy with an emphasis on interaction, human connection, and consideration of impact. The site does draw you in.  Doesn't feel like shopping, feels more like KIVA, though it fosters micro-philanthropy rather than loans.  As with Kiva, Jolkona "goes direct" to the end recipient, giving you a sense that your donation did something in particular for someone or something in particular. This disintermediation of nonprofits  is not so easy to bring off. When working with projects and people who are not within an existing nonprofit, the Foundation has to, presumably, exercise "expenditure responsibility," in providing due diligence and and ongoing supervision.  Apparently, Jolkona undertakes this.

Added Later: Adnan Azfar Mahmud of Jolkona Foundation answered specific questions by email. The Q & A is posted with her permission.

Q. You exercise expenditure responsibility over projects that are not under a nonprofit umbrella?

A.  Not quite. Our partners already have 501c3 status and run their own projects. Our goal is to bring together these projects in 1 place so that our users can easily pick projects to donate. The big difference is that our partners are committed to showing impact for every donation that they receive. For example, our partner – Children of Uganda – work with orphans in Uganda. With $25, a donor can feed 5 children for an entire week. In return Children of Uganda will send the donor list of the food items purchased for the $25. All of this is done over the web. Let me know if that answers your question.Q. How do you fund the site and the due diligence process? So far we have been finding partner organizations mostly through recommendations and Internet searches. We have an extensive selection process and you can find information about it here: http://www.jolkona.org/partnering-with-us.html

Q. Could not easily see the underlying financial stuff from your site. Might it be good to put the answer to the obvious question about costs and fees somewhere it can readily been seen?

         A. We transfer 100% of every gift to our partner. We have a separate fund – called Kona Fund – to help with our operations. We do separate fundraising for that account. Our users can also give to Kona Fund separately from the projects. You can find info on Kona Fund here: http://www.jolkona.org/kona-fund.html We also have a FAQ page here: http://www.jolkona.org/faq.html) which we hope answers most questions. We are continuing to look for ways to better expose these questions.

Quite responsive, to these queries, I would say. Thank you, Adnan.

MakeLuxuryCount.org

Luxury brand shopping initiatives for philanthropy.  The more luxuries you buy, the more you do for humanity.  If onlyTrimalchio could have made his lifestyle count.  Rome might never have fallen to the Barbarians.  

The Costs and Benefits of Pomposity

Euan on the price of pomposity.  I have found, though, that now that I have become an unarguably pompous ass that I do fit in better with my chosen field of moral tutoring. 

Philanthropic Planning for Dynastic Families

Actually, these families might better be described, maybe, as cultured, educated, civicly engaged, old money families, many of whom are limousine liberals.  Noblesse oblige bred in the bone. Aristocracy in all but name.  Often drive beat up old cars and live humbly. Good people who have lived beyond the crass concerns of the tax-centered advisors. May, in certain families, be progressive or radical. Liberally educated third and fourth generation heirs who draw their models from Greece and Rome and Augustan England filtered through good boarding schools.  They, unlike their culturally cretinous CPA,  read at age 15  Marcus Aurelius, Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, Dante, Chaucer. Anyway, here is a take on philanthropy for dynastic families from the AIPA Wealth Insider. 

Philanthropy When Kingdom Comes

Heaven on earth:

• Option A: The Banks hold $100 billion more money than is true today in accounts treated as philanthropic under the tax code, though little money leaks out into charitable projects. In the streets the hungry masses seethe.
• Option B: The Banks hold  $100 billion less money than is true today because the money was expended in charitable projects. In the streets hungry stock brokers seethe.

I work well under either option. Happy to help the brokers thrive. Happy to help the poor get fed. Philanthropy is a good friend of the rich and those who serve them; a good friend of the poor and those who feed them. It all works out if you are flexible.

The Fall of GM and the Rise of Socialism

Twitter contextualized in the history of socialism triumphant.  The end of history approaches.

Pre-Revolutionary Society Rooms

What moves worthwhile social change? I mean, like, sure, God. But how does He work through the likes of us? Wait for some philanthropist to fund it? Why does that seem unlikely, what with the Camel and all. More likely that if God wanted social change He would have the Holy Spirit call a few thinkers or people of conscience together, with a tongue of flame or some such sign.  Or maybe the eloquence of the voices that emerge from such conclaves would do it. I don't known. Ask Jeremy.

Who Owns The Cliches of which The Common Mind is Constituted?

Weinberger at JOHO:

Lewis Hyde is giving a Berkman talk about the book he’s working on. The book is about the ownership of art and ideas, and argues that they should lie in a cultual commons, rather than be treated as property.

The genius grant surely went to one genius when it fell on Hyde. He is one of the shamans of our time channeling poetry and wisdom that was once common knowledge, now quaint. 

Story Garden behind The Bunker

Stories are what leveled Berlin, and left the propangandist, his wife, and his children smouldering in the ashes of the city story destroyed. The garden first shaped by story was Eden, whose ashen fruit we eat yet.  He or she who shapes story shapes humanity and inhumanity. Who will cultivate, manage and optimize the stories that define our changing and emerging cultural identities? More to follow.

Doula to America's Stillborn Conscience

I call myself a Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, and journalists call me to inquire how it is going.  They are so used to talking with pious frauds, they mistake my conspicuous folly for routine opportunism. So, I am thinking of calling myself "The Doula to America's Unborn Conscience." Socrates made the same joke in Athens, saying that he was the midwife to the client's soul. But jokes live inside these jokes and some are not so funny.  The midwife ministering to the birth of a wealthy man's moral life - that is funny, given the client's straining face and cries of rage and pain. But the death of that man in childbirth so that what is best in him lives on - is that funny? What about a doula who dies in the botched, late term  birthing of the client's better self? That is the joke his ideal clients played on Socrates, making the doctor, who failed to cure their corruption, drink poison; getting a taste of his own life and death dealing medicine.  Much is made of Socrates' final moments, as the agonizing poison took hold, but none say he died laughing.  Still, his legacy lives on. So will yours when I am done with you.

The Rich Are God's Children Too

Last weekend at a conference hosted by Interfaith Worker Justice on organizing for unions and the poor, I gave a talk on major gift fundraising for grassroots organizations. To my left on the U shaped table were two African American men who worked on  the line butchering chickens in a plant in MS.  I got on a roll talking about how social justice means we are all equal, and the rich no less than the poor deserve to be treated with dignity, not as means to an end, but as ends in themselves.  The rich are human beings too. The two men to my left began swaying, and I heard a soft murmur, yes, o yes.  Today from another quarter, Jeremy Gregg, comes another response to the same message. We are all managed as means to another's ends. When we treat one another as members of the kingdom of ends (Kant covering Jesus) grace flows, bottom up, top down, side to side.  Martin Luther King said that too. O yes, O yes. 

Industrial Design for the World's Poor

Dien Yueng: Designing for the Poor.

Don't Give!

Don't give to Oakwood! Artful fundraising video, hilarious and telling.

Wealth For Common Good

How can you be pro-American and anti-American-Government? Along with philanthropy, arts, business, family values, and the media, government promotes the public good. We should pay taxes cheerfully in a spirit of civic pride.  The wealthiest should welcome higher taxes upon themselves as their way of promoting what has made this country great, and themselves rich. For more see wealth for the common good.  If you are good and rich, please sign their petition to have your taxes raised.