I love how philanthropy is such an intimate expression of personal values. Donors give to causes that uniquely move their hearts and minds–what lawyers call “donor intent.” As I have worked with donors over the years, I have been inspired by the wide range of people’s charitable affections, and how that variety meets so many [...]

It is easy for major donors to lapse into “paratroop philanthropy”—dropping in with simple solutions for complex, deep-seated problems. That is why I constantly try to remind myself of one of the cardinal imperatives of philanthropy–to look beneath the surface before making major gifts. This is especially true when giving to areas or causes outside [...]

A few weeks ago I was in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. I had a rare opportunity, for a westerner, to visit the delta area slammed by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. Relief workers told us that as many as 300,000 lives were lost in Nargis, more than the total death toll of [...]

A friend of mine is a philosopher and seminary professor—a deep guy. When he’s at his best, he distills profound ideas into simple takeaways, and I’ve never forgotten what he told me several years ago. He recounted how he had interviewed older people about their secrets to living great lives. Their responses fell into four [...]

A 2008 article in Yale Economic Review (Steven Radelet and Ruth Levine (Summer, 2008) “Can We Build a Better Mousetrap? Three New Institutions Designed to Improve Aid Effectiveness” p. 42) cited seven common criticisms of foreign aid programs. I was struck by how perfectly that list aligns with the concerns of major donors and foundations [...]

At the end of 2008, I had the privilege of helping a client give away a very large sum of money to local charities. In choosing which charities to support, the donors didn’t want to require PhD-quality proposals, scientific measureable outcomes, or “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal”-type visions. They simply wanted to help front-line charities that [...]

It was when I ran the fundraising department at a university that I first developed a deep interest in people’s giving habits. Those of us in the fundraising world knew that Americans, especially people of faith, have long been the world’s gold standard for generosity. Lately, though, others have become interested: there is a spike [...]