Flow Funding website has just been launched. Behind it is Marion Weber Rockefeller.
In Flow Funding, donors entrust their money to social innovators and visionaries to give away. Flow Funding is a way to empower numerous new philanthropists to place strategic grants that are heartfelt and effective.
Marion has pioneered flow funding for nearly two decades. Some will say that the whole approach is too spiritual or humane, too trusting, too democratic, not closely enough managed, not businesslike enough, too personal. The contrast that comes to my mind is between Marion Weber Rockefeller and Richard Mellon Scaife. We will have dynastic families, an aristocracy, in America; we have them now. Some trusted advisors devote their lives to creating more. The question is only whether the aristrocratic families will model themselves on truly noble souls or on the (apparently) damned. A strictly businesslike approach is for beginners, for the first generation, the founders. When you get to dynastic wealth you had better look to the moral development and civic engagement of the heirs for they will rule us, whether by example, donation, lobbying, patronage, positions on corporate and charitable boards, public service, ownership of news media, funding of think tanks and astroturf organizations, or through surreptitious back-room skulduggery. The Rockefellers set a noble example. I don't mean to imply that Richard Mellon Scaithe is damned. Even on the cross, one of the thieves was saved. Richard might yet learn from Marion.
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