Gift Hub

Why Is my tongue black?

I am told on good authority that the best wine auctions are now held in China. They are bidding the best vintages out of the reach of most Americans, even the richest. Fortunately, bum wines remain affordably priced, which is a mercy. I only wish they did not turn my tongue so black. Or, maybe that comes from licking my boss and generous patrons boots. Checking my peers tongues, I conclude that I must either be drinking more than they or licking more because my tongue is the blackest, or at least among the blackest, right up there with Dirk who just got promoted to Senior Morals Consultant II. Next year if my results are better, I may make Senior Consultant II myself. We are targeting the morals of the poor on a special grant from Rooster Foundation. I will get points for every poor person I reform after the first three thousand. We are working on the metrics with Bridgespan now so at least it will all be handled quite professionally. I would hate to reform thousands and not get extra. Paying for performance is only fair.

On "coercive metrics"

Metrics Mania by Alison Bernstein. http://www.nea.org/home/50022.htm

Work for Free to Keep Social Services Going

In the wake of munipal cutbacks, ordinary citizens work for free providing essential public services. I have long felt, reading Bill Schambra at Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, that government has been crowding out these unpaid do-gooders. Those who held the job of librarian for $35,000 a year were blocking those who would do it for zero.  By reducing taxes on the rich we not only create many new jobs, in China, and great wealth for entrepreneurs, and those who regulate them, but we also create new opportunities for the middle class to exhibit the moral heroism we once associated with the deserving poor. As a moralist, I applaud the rich for creating these opportunities for us to show our public spiritedness in the face of adversity.

Market Street, The Road to Serfdom

Now a reputable moralist (Michael Sandel) asks if there are moral limits to markets. "He thinks we’re in thrall to markets." Here at Wealth Bondage, we strongly disagree. I myself have never been freer than while serving my boss, consuming merchandise, or sitting in my cubicle awaiting further instructions. Out on the street now, able to advance my own highest aspirations, I drink bum wine, and offer free advice which goes unheeded. I miss my cubicle where I had that other kind of freedom, where I knew my efforts were making a real difference. Most people I know feel the same. You can't impose freedom on them. They have to choose it. And they have. Market Freedom. They know no other.

Who is Calling Whom Insane here?

Long time friend, and reader of (among others) Dante, Tom Matrullo, writes apropos of a recent Gifthub post,

How much longer will USians indulge the polite fiction that the wealthy -- who seize the best assets of nature, of art, of time -- make it all good by sending accountants, lawyers and pony boys to tend the altars of philanthropy.

So, why, Tom, my Learned Fellow Colleague in the Dumpster of History, did John Dryden, Poet Laureate, and also an extrordinary satirist, write such Panegryrics as, Astraea Redux?

Oh Happy Age!

Oh times like those alone

By Fate reserv'd for Great Augustus Throne!

When the joint growth of Armes and Arts foreshew T

he World a Monarch, and that Monarch You

Did he actually believe that the licentious King Charles II was another Augustus, a demi-god returned from heaven? I am more of the opinion that even in those days a poet, indeed all scribblers, best served Justice by serving those who could offer social order, and preferment up some kind of Great Chain of Being, whether secular, ecclesiastical, military, or corporate. My problem is that having served our nation's Wealthiest with countless free and unsolicited no obligation or your money back Morals Tutorials, based on all the best models, from Antquity to the present, I have nothing more to show for it than the friendship of a few men and women driven as insane as I have been. Or maybe we, Tom, are sane and the press, Congress, Council on Foundations, and Philanthropy Round Table, just to name a few are morally insane? Come, come, Tom! We are as mad Lear's Fool without even a pony's hay to butter. Our very lives point the proper moral: Respect your Betters or Live Precariously!

"Does this so-called wisdom you teach, Sir, pay?,I am often asked by my Philanthropy Advisory Students. To which I truthfully answer, "Nay, it is the pearl of great price for which you must suffer greatly strewing it before swine." To which they respond incredulously, What swine? Soon fisticuffs follow and my training in that field is limited to bleeding.

US Wealth Inequality in an International Perspective

The New York Times cites two highly respected economists who say that our wealth inequality is shocking and forebodes a society like OId Europe.

Is High Impact Philanthropy an Insult?

Wildwoman, drawing on her experiences in the slums of Jakarta, on High Impact Philanthropy,

So, it says that they try to educate themselves, but it’s basically a bunch of rich people sitting in a room deciding that the little nonprofits and the people they serve do not know how to solve their issues. So instead, people with no experience in the field will solve their problem for them. They will make “high impact” giving a priority, giving in one particular area, to solve something they deem a priority.

It occurs to me that instead of letting a bunch of people removed from the problem take their theory of giving into their own hands, we might be better served if people receiving services, nonprofits and government worked more hand in hand, forging collaborations and best practices across the nation, sharing ideas, and forging goals collectively, instead of donors forging the goals.

My sense, Wildwoman, is that it is better, from a major gift fundraising perspective, to insult the intelligence of the poor than to offend the amour propre of the rich. The poor will take what they get, and show their gratitude, and get "results," or they will be passed over in the next funding cycle for a higher performing group of poor people. The rich have options. As a donor centered philanthropic coach my role is to be of service to those who matter most. Through High Impact Philanthropy through High Performing Nonprofits, my Hyperagent clients can dramatize their genius, posit and create the world we want (according to them), and save capitalism. Who am I to begrudge them their obscene fantasy? I work in Wealth Bondage laundering whatever they tell me to launder. The things I have seen! As I often tell the girls (of all ages, races, creeds and genders) when they complain of the systemic and ongoing abuse of power, The customer is always right, Honey. They pay for High Performing, give them High Performing. Maybe it is demeaning, but it sure beats working on the Supreme Court, or in Congress, or for the Ford Foundation Project on Social Justice and World Peace. If we are going to save Capitalism, we all have to bend over, frontwards and backwards, or there's others who will.

Why Business Won't Save the World

 

Strategic philanthropy is the new colonialism

Into the conference room stride 18 hedge fund managers, ages 23-28. In the next 19 minutes they will collectively give away 45 million dollars - effectively, efficiently, on time, on task and on point. How is this possible? Each has sitting before him or her a one page summary of 47 charities, and a cover sheet where each charity is given a score of 1-10. The task of the brain trust in the room is to decide which of the 47 numbers is largest. How is this possible? In the background floor upon floor of low paid hacks arranged in cubicles, stacked one upon another in a hierarchy has done the research, built the spreadsheets, and processed the data. This is philanthropy getting results, not with heart or ethics or some airy fairy theory of justice but with cold hard logic. These men and women rule us for good reason. Given any two numbers they can assess the magnitude and make an informed decision.

Yes, my version is satirical, but the reality is not much different, as depicted by Bridgespan in a paper about Best Practices of Strategic Grantmaking.

In a 48th floor conference room on Park Avenue, an elite cadre of investors gathers. They greet each other, swap a few stories about recent deals, and take their seats around a large marble table. It is 5:30pm, and the location is the headquarters of Tiger Management. But the investors are not here to talk about an upcoming takeover; tonight’s agenda is about helping to break the cycle of poverty in New York City. These investors are trustees of Tiger Foundation.....

Is that not embarassing, even to read it, much less write or swallow? The Case Study (Tiger Foundation: Profile in Engaged Philanthropy)  is written by for and about those who rule us, and with wisdom, taste, and self knowledge held in abeyance. Through such high level rooms walks the clerk delivering papers. That would be me. In an earlier era I would have been the porter driving Young Master to the train, where he will depart for Africa, bringing civilization to the savages, dressing for dinner, and bringing results - ivory, profit, and trophies (heads of tigers, lions, elephants) home to the Manor. Strategic philanthropy is the new colonialism. That it is often revolting - why don't we say so? I guess Arundhati Roy did. I don't because these funders are my Ideal Clients and I want some of their money. After the epic scene above, I in that same conference room convened a class on The Heart of Darkness. No one showed except the janitor and he was just there to empty the trash and turn out the lights.

The Philanthropist Going Upriver in Search of Ivory and Results

H. Peter Karoff listens to Yo Yo Ma discuss Bach and is reminded of gifted donors.  I reread The Heart of Darkness and am reminded of how to get results. It is hard to be an artist and lack self awareness, or sensibility, but to be a philanthropist? All is takes is money.