Why the SDGs matter

One of the most important shifts in international cooperation of the last 50 years will take place in January, as the 15-year-old Millennium Development Goals campaign comes to an end and a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comeRead more…

The laboratory for philanthropy

I am just back from the annual European Venture Philanthropy Associationconference, this year in Madrid. I have attended most of the organisation’s fifteen conferences – because venture philanthropy is at the cutting edge of all of Europe’s philanthropy. The conference isRead more…

U.S. Foundation Funding for Africa: 2015 Edition

U.S. foundations made grants totaling nearly $1.5 billion focused on Africa in 2012. This represented 25 percent of foundations’ international giving, up from 14 percent in 2002. Produced by Foundation Center in cooperation with Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group, this first-everRead more…

Innovating Times For Asian Philanthropy

Wealth is being created across Asia Pacific with unprecedented speed. There are now more high net worth individuals in Asia than in either North America or Europe. Economic development is creating huge middle classes in emerging economies like India, Indonesia,Read more…

Income Inequality Makes Rich People Stingier

A new study found wealthy people in states with skewed income scales were less generous. If Charles Dickens’s Victorian London had more income equality, Ebenezer Scrooge wouldn’t have been such a miser.  That’s the implication of new research that suggests inequality makes wealthyRead more…

Philanthropy’s New Frontier—Impact Investing

Impact investing, which promises both financial returns and intentional, measurable social returns, is attracting more and more money—most of it from private investors. Foundations are hard-wired for social purpose and would seem to be natural candidates for impact investing, butRead more…

Giving Back to India

On a September evening in 2014, more than 600 Americans of Indian origin gathered with friends at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for a gala to raise money for Pratham, one of the largest NGOs in India.Read more…

Impact India

The rise of India’s reputation as a center of technology innovation has in recent years been matched by the country’s growing reputation as a hub of social innovation, and now Indians living abroad are rising as a force for philanthropyRead more…

God Loves Rich People

Who among us wouldn’t enjoy a little bit more money? And yet when we come across people who have that little bit more, it can be far too easy for our hearts to whisper things like, “Well that’s not how IRead more…