PACS post/November 14, 2017

Innovating Philanthropy

Innovating Philanthropy

A new generation of wealth is making a difference using powerful technology, inventing new financial models to better leverage capital, and rigorously focusing on getting proven results.

By Kathleen Kelly Janus Nov. 1, 2017

This article was originally published on Stanford Social Innovation Review’s website, ssir.org, on November 1, 2017.

As former Carnegie Corporation president John Gardner once said “Wealth is not new. Neither is charity. But the idea of using private wealth imaginatively, constructively and systematically to attack the fundamental problems of mankind is new.”

In the 20th century, titans of American industry including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller helped professionalize philanthropy, pioneering the creative use of wealth to solve social problems. Today, a new set of leaders are helping the field tackle social and environmental problems while pushing the limits of innovation, and often leveraging the very types of approaches that led to their financial success in the first place…