Reports from Alliance magazine

The Philanthropy UK Newsletter is grateful to Alliance magazine for its permission to reproduce the following summaries of its event reports. The full reports can be accessed at www.alliancemagazine.org.

4th Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

27-29 March 2007, Oxford

By Caroline Hartnell

Where is innovation happening and how do we get more of it, was the question this year's Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship aimed to answer. Held in Oxford in late March, it attracted nearly 700 people from more than 40 countries.

Does social entrepreneurship focus too much on individuals? Innovation comes from every quarter, Geoff Mulgan of the Young Foundation reminded us. Behind every individual is a team, and much social change is driven by movements. While Bill Drayton of Ashoka insisted that "everyone's a changemaker", John Elkington of SustainAbility cautioned against focusing too much on a "few heroic individuals".

There was much talk of a blurring of the sectors. Mark Kramer (FSG Social Impact Advisors) foresees a merging of the for-profit and non-profit sectors and suggests that social entrepreneurship is a first step towards this. But Lester Salamon (Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies) favours cooperation rather than merger and fears that the blurring of sector boundaries poses a threat to non-profit mission as organisations face decisions as to whether to pursue better-off paying customers or poor clients.

A similar blurring is taking place among donors, argued management guru Charles Handy. New philanthropists can be seen as "seedlings of a changing type of capitalism", happily combining self-interest and sympathy. Muhammad Yunus, too, spoke of the need for a "new kind of business", social business, citing Grameen Danone and the Aravind eye-care hospital as two examples. They will need new kinds of investors, happy to get back the money they have invested but to receive no dividends.

While the Forum highlighted the development of a range of new finance mechanisms, raising funds clearly remains a huge problem for social entrepreneurs. Whatever scale the new humanistic capitalism achieves, though, it will have its limitations. "The best way to design goods for poor people is to find out what they want and what they're prepared to pay," said Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund. But, she added, "'some may not be able to pay at all. We need philanthropic money still."

Caroline Hartnell is Editor of Alliance magazine.

6th Annual Global Philanthropy Forum

11-13 April 2007, Mountain View, California, USA

By Olga Alexeeva

This year's Global Philanthropy Forum in early April focused on financing social change and took place in the headquarters of Google. The location inspired keynote speaker Judith Rodin of the Rockefeller Foundation to describe the history of US philanthropy in dot.com terms, starting with Philanthropy 1.0.

This, she said, involved the 'fathers' of modern American philanthropy, Rockefeller, Mellon and Ford. Its focus was on literacy, health and the building of infrastructure, but it also looked outside the USA and thus had a global aspect.

Philanthropy 2.0 emerged after World War II. It developed and encouraged the non-profit sector and also focused on the emerging states of Africa, South America and Asia. With the end of the Cold War and the onset of globalisation, Philanthropy 3.0 began. It is characterized, she said, by new ideas and the greater involvement of donors and foundations in beneficiary projects.

Larry Brilliant, CEO of Google.org, highlighted two aspects of 'new' philanthropy - that it involves living benefactors and pays greater attention to topics such as climate change and global health. Philanthropy has broadened, he said, to include new forms of social investment and much greater collaboration across sectors. But he noted the continuing importance of policy, pointing out that not all problems can be solved through social investment.

In fact, the numerous presentations that showcased examples of blended private and social enterprises were not always as impressive in their results as their presenters claimed. But the audience, enchanted with 'new giving', did not pay attention to detail.

Disappointingly, the so-called global forum was not global at all. Only 40-50 out of the 600 guests came from outside the US, and these were mostly from Canada and Western Europe. Hopefully, Philanthropy 4.0 will have a global reach and a global face, and the next Global Philanthropy Forum will live up to its name.

Olga Alexeeva is Head of CAF Global Trustees.