Funders, both government and philanthropic, often have a strong focus on measuring the outcomes, impact and effectiveness of the initiatives they fund. Which is great – but is that focus equally directed at measuring the outcomes, impact and effectiveness of ourselves as funders? Often the answer is no – and there’s some good reasons for…
Continue reading →Community funding often isn’t as transparent as it should be; games get played and thorny issues are sometimes unacknowledged and often unaddressed. I explored some of this recently at a breakfast meeting with the Fundraising Institute in Auckland: – here is my presentation: “Beyond the game, through the thorny issues and towards thriving communities.” The…
Continue reading →I have never had to walk 10 kilometres then catch a train in order to work at a minimum wage job. I haven’t gone hungry so I can feed my kids like Tina, nor have I been one of a family of eight in a cold, damp, two-bedroom flat like Helen. Instead I have led…
Continue reading →I was part of a story on TV1’s Seven Sharp programme today asking “are kiwis givers?” See the clip here. Journalist Emma Keeling did a very nice job of talking about philanthropy and the Todd Foundation funded Y-men project, (which gets unemployed young men into work and training as ECE teachers in kindergartens), was inspiring. …
Continue reading →The relationship between funders, not-for-profit organisations and the people and communities served tends to look like this: FUNDERS (government and non-government)… decide funding (which, when and how much) for: NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANISATIONS, who… decide services (to whom, when and how much) for: PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES In other words we have something of a hierarchy. I am…
Continue reading →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 →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…
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