Working with the new generation of Philanthrocapitalits - Alliance and upcoming workshop in Bangladore

From latest news, Alliance Magazine:

The generation of new funders known as ‘philanthrocapitalists’, including not just Bill Gates but others such as Jeff Skoll and Rohini Nilekani and Jamie Cooper-Hohn of the UK’s Children’s Investment Fund Foundation are very big players on the funding scene. How important are they? What are the upsides and potential downsides of working with them? Alliance talked to Christine Edwards, Akwasi Aidoo and Lyndall Stein, who will be panellists at a session asking ‘Can philanthrocapitalism save the world?’ at the 9th International Workshop on Resource Mobilization, to be held 25-28 June in Bangalore, India.

Advocacy, or Direct Action (or both?)

Also in the latest issue of Alliance, there's a dialogue between George Polk, ED of the European Climate Foundation, and Peter Heller of Canopus Foundation.

"While addressing climate change is seemingly on everyone’s agenda, it is less clear what role philanthropy should play, given the vast amounts of money required to address the problem. . " read more:

http://www.alliancemagazine.org/en/content/climate-change

Measuring Impact - news from Alliance Magazine

Courtesy latest issue of "Alliance Magazine", a worthwhile interview to read - Paul Brest, Jed Emerson, Katherina Rosqueta, Brian Trelstad and Michael Weinstein
One of the most perennially vexing questions in philanthropy is how to assess the impact of funding, especially where there’s no obvious way of putting a price on the end product. A recently published paper on Measuring and/or Estimating Social Value Creation, written by Melinda Tuan and commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, features different models adopted for this purpose by a number of US foundations. Alliance talked to representatives of some of these foundations about the strengths and weaknesses of their approaches, what they had learned from the research, and what they see as the next steps for the field. Fay Twersky (Gates Foundation) comments.

Click here to read the interview: http://www.alliancemagazine.org

Mark your calendar - Green Economy dialogue takes place April 7th

Join us on April 7th in Vancouver for an innovative Green Economy conference.

http://greeneconomyconference.ca

A Dialogue to Build a Green Economy in BC.

This one day dialogue in Vancouver brings members of the public together with opinion leaders, decision makers, leading academics, and journalists for a rigorous, frank and engaging dialogue on building a low carbon green economy in British Columbia.

Participants will discuss the promise and challenges facing new green energy developments – run of river, siting windfarms, and scaling up other technologies, as well as economic policy – carbon tax, cap and trade and clean tech manufacturing.

Paul Brest blog on Huffington Post (President, Hewlett Foundation)

In an earlier post we mentioned the new book by Hal Harvey (ClimateWorks.org) and Paul Brest "Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy. Paul Brest has a blog at HuffPost:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-brest
He is president of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world.
In his blog Paul talks about "Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best: Benchmarks to Assess and Enhance Grantmaker Impact" just released by the National Ctee for Responsive Philanthropy
http://www.ncrp.org/paib
"The Criteria is the first ever set of measurable guidelines that will help foundations and other institutional grantmakers operate ethically and maximize the impact of their dollars".

March 12 - Bolder Giving update and QUIZ

Check out the latest updates on Bolder Giving
http://boldergiving.org/

"We live in a time of historic crisis and opportunity, when contributions of time and money could make a crucial difference. Yet most of us – even if well-off – give at a fraction of our capacity.

Bolder Giving's mission is to inspire us to give at our full potential by providing remarkable role models and practical support."

Take their quiz:
http://boldergiving.org/giving_potential/

February 23, 2009

Jonathon Porritt is Programme Director of UK-based Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. On his blog he recently posted an astute commentary which is very applicable to Canada as well:

commenting on Stephen Hale's new publication "The New Politics of Climate Change" (Green Alliance):

" "But people just don’t get how urgent it is, Jonathon!" This from a harassed Government Minister looking at the latest survey of public opinion on climate change, with all the usual disturbing data about people’s uncertainty, confusion, ambivalence (saying one thing and doing another) and continuing denial of the now incontrovertible fact that addressing climate change effectively will literally transform all our lives.

Tons of reasons for the continuing confusion, of course . .. an army of denialists filling the blogosphere with a combination of vitriol and errant rubbish; a tendency not to believe politicians on anything, let alone climate change, and so on.

But the upshot of all this is that politicians .. feel unable to intervene as decisively and substantively as they need to – for fear of getting punished electorally. The gap between the rhetoric on climate change (world class) and the programme of measures in place to address it (bog-standard) is still very large.

So it was good to see the latest publication from the Green Alliance on The New Politics of Climate Change. The basic thrust of it is that individual action by the "converted" is never going to be sufficient, and that we now need to mobilise the whole of the so-called Third Sector (voluntary organisations, local community groups, trade unions and co-ops, NGOs beyond the environment world, faith communities and so on) to enable a collective shift in both attitudes and actions. Without this, we will never generate a sufficient momentum to encourage/compel our politicians to do what they know they should be doing but still feel they can’t get away with.

"So the critical issue is not simply our behaviour, but the impact of our activism, behaviour and attitudes on political action. The political effect of this action depends not simply on the numbers of people involved but on who those people are and their political influence."

This makes a lot of sense to me. The Third Sector in the UK is hugely influential. Tot up the income of all those different groups and it exceeds £100 billion, with a massive multiplier effect throughout society. But in terms of climate change, it’s a great slumbering monster, largely sitting on the sidelines of the debate on the grounds that its "not my issue", leaving it to the transparently inadequate green groups to keep battling away on their behalf.

As Stephen Hale (the author of "The New Politics of Climate Change" and Director of Green Alliance) says: "we need to mobilise action networks that influence individual and community behaviour, and build the social foundations for success."

But how best to mobilise this slumbering monster? I think we will be seeing a lot more action on that front throughout 2009 from many different angles – hopefully with a correspondingly large impact on our political parties."

Give Climate editor's note: Here in Canada, the organization PowerUP Canada is an excellent example of how to achieve what Jonathon talks about: http://powerUPcanada.ca.

Above posting courtesy Jonathon Porritt's blog:

http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2009/01/
the_new_politics_of_climate_ch.html