Friday, November 1, 2013
Lori Bezahler, President of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, wrote about the problems with adopting a "business planning" model for philanthropy in the latest issue of NCRP's Responsive Philanthropy.
This past August, William Schambra published a critique of strategic philanthropy, faulting its practitioners for inappropriately applying scientific methods to the remediation of social ills. While I found aspects of his analysis compelling, I would argue that there is a different and perhaps more pernicious problem with what has been come to be known as "strategic philanthropy." That is the imposition of the logic of business on charitable and social change efforts....