The Shadow Side of Philanthropy

From Alliance Magazine, a brisk and bracing online article by Michael Lerner, on the "shadow side" of philanthropy.  Michael knows whereof he speaks. He is president and founder of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, California. He is also President of the Jenifer Altman Foundation and the Barbara Smith Fund and author of A Gift Observed: Reflections on philanthropy and civilization. His remarks are not only wise and well-written, but embued with an educated, ethical sensibility.  He has seen the reality of grant-making and the real polik of strategic philanthropy, and reminds us that charity and philanthropy are rooted in caritas and philia - in disinterested love - filtered through our moral and religious traditions.