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Letters
Climate change should be central to all philanthropy
As a participant in the Funders Initiative (run by the Environmental Grantmakers Association and the European Climate Foundation) at COP21, I found many points of agreement as I read the June issue of Alliance. It …
Act fast and fairly on climate
Alliance’s June 2016 issue highlighted the tiny amount of philanthropic funding directed towards climate change: just 2 per cent of total US and UK foundation spending. Yet it’s hard to imagine another philanthropic cause that …
Serbian philanthropy fosters solidarity with refugees
In the March issue of Alliance Boris Strečanský and Juraj Mesík reported negative attitudes to migrants in Poland and Slovakia. Our experience in Serbia has been a positive one. In the summer of 2015, refugee …
See yourself as others see you
Caroline Fiennes and Ken Berger’s opinion piece in the March issue raises important points about the value of independent specialists, feedback from beneficiaries and systemic reviews. I’ve seen firsthand the value of independent assessments, both …
Taking a pragmatic view of impact assessment
We recognize the challenges for impact measurement described in Caroline Fiennes and Ken Berger’s article in the March 2016 issue of Alliance. Adessium Foundation is focused on generating impact across a variety of issues and …
Time for European foundations to get on board with the SDGs
Vikki Spruill’s article on the relevance of the Sustainable Development Goals to US foundations working domestically gives food for thought for European foundation. In September 2015, the world’s governments adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable …
Where is the sense of urgency about climate change?
I found a sense of urgency missing in Matthieu Calame’s article, ‘The long march towards responsible money’, in the December issue of Alliance. As the mission commander famously stated on the Apollo 13 mission to …
Donor action to defend cross‑border philanthropy
Human rights defenders and other social change activists are seeing their access to foreign funding seriously affected by the growing threat to cross-border philanthropy that is a key feature of the closing down of civic …
A game‑changing moment
In Alliance’s September 2015 special feature, Atallah Kuttab, Natasha Matic and Noha El-Mikawy wrote that ‘private foundations, no matter how independent they are of the corporate business interests of the founder, tend to stick to …
Accountability boils down to beneficiaries
I found the recent conversation on foundation accountability between Buzz Schmidt and Rob Reich both timely and fascinating. It reached far beyond the usual debate on the to whom and the hows of accountability rituals. …
