What’s on the Agenda?
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[Note: An edited version of this article appeared in Harvard Business Review on October 12, 2022.] If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it, well, a dozen times: “We almost never…
Read More The Rich (Organizations) Get Richer
The boarding school I attended recently announced a $25 million gift from one of its trustees. I don’t begrudge my alma mater its big gift. I’ll also note that the…
Read More Staff Salaries Matter
Everyone values the work that nonprofits do. But not everyone values the people at nonprofits who do the actual work. I’ve repeatedly encountered nonprofit boards that fail to invest appropriately…
Read More This Spin Won’t Wash
November marks the tenth anniversary of Professor Ray Madoff’s New York Times op-ed calling for new rules that would accelerate grantmaking from donor-advised funds. Over the years since, as the…
Read More Wealth and Charity
[Note: This article was also published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on May 19, 2021.] The rich are richer than ever before. We have to keep this in mind when we…
Read More Boom! MacKenzie Scott Brilliantly Disrupts the Philanthropic Status Quo
If you’re looking for one good thing to come out of 2020, I would nominate the remarkable philanthropy of MacKenzie Scott. Scott, a novelist, philanthropist, and former wife of Amazon…
Read More Smoke and Mirrors
[Note: This post was co-published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on July 22, 2020.] A great magician relies on diversion. The eyes of the audience go where the magician is drawing…
Read More Missing Information
[This article was co-published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy on June 15, 2020.] Our access to information is instantaneous. While having breakfast at 8:00 we know that thunderstorms will be rolling…
Read More Yes, It’s Political
“What can technologists do to fix the problems facing the nonprofit world?” The question hung in the air for a while. The setting was a recent “hackathon,” an on-line, national…
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