When Dave and I moved back on Aotearoa New Zealand in 1990 from the San Fransisco Bay area, one reason for returning was that we felt uncomfortable that the US was so wealthy yet had so many homeless people begging on the streets. That sort of thing didn’t happen in NZ. That was then. This…
Continue reading →Philanthropy and I have been in the media lately: First out was an article in the April 2014 North and South magazine by Joanna Wane called Does money make you mean. (I am quoted on page 45, thankfully in a positive light). This was followed last month with Karle Du Fresne’s “And the Giver is”…
Continue reading →One of my board roles is for Conscious Consumers, a social enterprise which to date has accredited 175 cafes, restaurants and suppliers in twelve cities and towns across Aotearoa NZ according to twelve different ethical and sustainable practices. It’s been inspiring to watch a local, volunteer-led initiative idea grow into a nationwide organisation with smart…
Continue reading →Four experts share their approach and strategies Positive social change can start at the kitchen table – family by family, community by community. It can also start in the legislative chamber – law by law, policy by policy. Best of all is when they occur simultaneously, informing and reinforcing each other. At the Todd Foundation’s…
Continue reading →Here’s another voice urging funders to reduce our compliance costs and think differently about how we measure our performance – see what Caroline Fiennes in the Stanford Social Innovation Review has to say. She asks whether “a funder is essentially spending a grant on itself”. Good question Caroline!
Continue reading →(or: To get more impact from funding, first look in the mirror) In my last post, I explored how, once we factor in compliance costs to grantees, funders give considerably less than we think – and in fact some of our grant-making practices reduce the very impact we seek to make. So what can we…
Continue reading →(or why we give less than we think) As grant-makers we want to provide accessible funding, select grantees wisely and understand our impact. The way we usually go about this is through contestable funding and robust processes for selection, accountability and sometimes evaluation. All well and good – except for the compliance costs these processes…
Continue reading →Ten years ago, when I was focused on business rather than philanthropy, it occurred to me that business leadership requires a balance between a warm heart, a cool head and a hard nose. To test this concept, I interviewed three New Zealand business leaders – Hubbard Cereal’s founder Dick Hubbard, then Telecom NZ CE Theresa…
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