I’m going to admit it, this has been a difficult issue to edit, mainly because most of the articles in the special feature went through several iterations. Why was this? Was it because the contributors were somehow less competent than usual? Of course not! I think it was because they were trying to pin down what exactly distinguishes social justice philanthropy from ‘other’ philanthropy, and this is no easy task.

Why are we doing this? Does it matter whether a funder is or isn’t really practising social justice philanthropy as long as they are helping the poor and marginalized? The obvious answer relates to root causes: we could be funding soup kitchens for ever if we don’t tackle the underlying causes of poverty.