Via https://ourworldindata.org/malaria/ Malaria is both preventable and treatable, at astonishingly low cost. That’s why it’s a global tragedy to see hundreds of thousands of people dying from this disease every year. Still, there’s good news here: The war against malaria is being fought successfully, with the help of billions of dollars from around the world,…
Unfucking the world
Month: June 2017
Jay Sekulow and the culture of non-profit impunity
Well, that didn’t take long. A quick timeline: June 18: Jay Sekulow emerges as a key Trump lawyer in the Russia investigation, appearing on a round of Sunday talk shows to defend his new client. June 27: The Guardian, with a big assist from a Law.com article dating back to 2005, publishes a brutal takedown…
Agnes Gund’s philanthropic innovations
In philanthropy, there’s often a tension between the glamorous causes which rich people support on the urging of their rich friends, on the one hand, and the really important if unglamorous causes which desperately need funding, on the other. For example: the social stratosphere that is the MoMA board, versus the grim nuts and bolts…
The obvious intersection of urgent need and lasting impact
I love the formula which Jeff Bezos uses to define where he’d like to focus his philanthropic efforts: “at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact”. His note arrives as Robert Frank, in the NYT, asks some pointed questions about Bezos’s philanthropy, and the fact that Bezos is by far the richest American not…
Syrian refugees vs Charity: Water
via charity: water Charles Duhigg has a piece today which asks why you don’t donate to Syrian refugees, while you do donate to Charity: Water. The headline: “Why Don’t You Donate for Syrian Refugees? Blame Bad Marketing”. The first thing worth noting, here, is that the premise of the article is simply factually false. Charity:…
Just give away your money, endowments. That is what it is for.
This pair of sentences from the Chronicle of Philanthropy neatly encapsulates everything that’s wrong in the world of foundations and endowments: Experts say the ambitious returns most nonprofit endowments seek — usually 7 to 8.5 percent may be difficult to sustain. If so, organizations might need to trim what they pay out in investment fees,…
The Manchester Emergency Fund: Why?
In the wake of today’s concert, the amount of money in the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund has risen to more than £10 million, nearly all of which will be used “to support those who have been injured or bereaved” in last month’s bombing at an Ariana Grande gig. Much of the money came from…