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Letters
What about ‘social profit’?
Non-profit should be non-existent – the term, not the type of organization. The time is right to insist on a term that focuses on the investment, risk taking, and entrepreneurial imagination that have always been …
Watch your language – Alliance editorial board responds to Bill Drayton
Bill Drayton’s opinion piece in the June edition of Alliance (‘Words matter’, p10) clearly touched a chord with members of the Alliance editorial board. Asked to respond, many did so promptly. What was the gist …
Forget feel-good philanthropy
Among the many interesting points that can be debated about the merits and demerits of ‘philanthrocapitalism’, the question of how giving makes the donor feel is not one of them. Thus, I believe Matthew Bishop …
Who counts?
The interplay between the articles in the March issue was particularly interesting. I think, for example, that Matthew Bishop genuinely misunderstands Bruce Sievers’ main point. I strongly suspect that Sievers did not mean to imply …
A limited idea of philanthropy?
The March edition of Alliance focused attention on the idea of philanthrocapitalism. To the extent that philanthrocapitalism represents a model of investing private capital for public purposes, and is sensitive to the system of global …
Transforming mindsets for the better
Your recent article in Alliance Online, ‘What Should Philanthropy Do?’ is an article that I feel has the potential to transform the mindset of all who would like to see the world we live in …
The cost of driving blind
The guest editor of the last issue of Alliance, Michael Lerner (‘Light and shadow in organized philanthropy’), has this to say about American philanthropy: ‘… if the institutions of philanthropy in the US were suddenly …
The time of the missionaries is already over
In his opinion piece ‘Steering clear of the missionaries’ in the last issue of Alliance, Michael Brophy longs for a time when European foundations can look US philanthropy in the eye and say ‘we are …
‘Positive’ feminism just too cosy?
Few would disagree that women bear the brunt of a vastly disproportionate share of global poverty. It is almost impossible for any development project to conceive of a strategy without considering the gender angle. As …
Trust and then conversation?
Thanks to Chet Tchozewski for his plea for more trust in our own judgment as funders and in the groups we support (‘Intuition, trust and a great river of money,’ Alliance, December 2006). As he …
