Give Smart: Philanthropy that gets results

By: 

Dr Beth Breeze

publications editor

Thomas J. Tierney and Joel L. Fleishman, New York: Public Affairs, April 2011. 257pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-1-58648-895-6. £12.99 www.publicaffairsbooks.com

One of the perks of the role of publications editor of Philanthropy UK, is being asked to recommend good books about philanthropy. Since its publication in 2007, I have regularly named Joel Fleishman’s insightful and thought-provoking book ‘The Foundation: A Great American Secret’ in my ‘top 3 must-reads’ (the other two being ‘Strategic Giving’ by Peter Frumkin and  ‘Philanthrocapitalism’ by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green – though I always wince over the title of the latter and even more so over the truly dreadful subtitle of the first print run: ‘How the rich can save the world and why we should let them’, wince, wince).

So I approached Fleishman’s new book, co-authored with Thomas J. Tierney, with a dollop of enthusiasm and a side order of scepticism. Could the man who wrote such a comprehensive and knowledgeable analysis of the history of American philanthropy and its contemporary relevance, really be the right person to write an accessible ‘how to’ book for donors? Even the covers of each book speak to entirely different audiences and indicate dissimilar tones of voice – the older book bearing heavy font, dark colours and a gallery of black and white photographs of historic greats, whilst the new book jacket has clean lines, white space and a quirky design. Of course one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but it usually signals something about the sort of audience the author hopes to attract.

 Fortunately, ‘Give Smart’ proves that Fleishman is adept at addressing both types of audience: the heavier-weight intellectuals (unsurprising as he is a professor of law and public policy at Duke University) and the more thoughtful breed of modern philanthropists who hope to use their charitable donations to achieve maximum impact in their chosen sphere of concern. No doubt Tierney’s day-job as a non-profit advisor helps to counterbalance any potential ivory tower inclinations. Indeed, in the preface the authors express their wish “to bridge theory and practice” as well as to reconcile the similarly disparate worlds of “business and academia, grant making and grant receiving”.

Despite being a book aimed at helping donors with the “awesome responsibility” of giving money away, it begins with a rather disheartening statement that “philanthropy’s natural state is underperformance”. But this pessimistic pronouncement is there for a purpose: to remind readers that generosity alone is not enough because, “outstanding philanthropy is distinguished by what it achieves as well as by the act of charity itself”. Combining “heartfelt generosity” with a “rigorous approach” is, according to the authors, the secret to achieving the book’s title – ‘giving smart’.

 The hand of the academic is evident in the book’s welcome admission that there is nothing distinctively new about the desire to achieve tangible philanthropic success. Andrew Carnegie is rightly cited as an historic example of a donor whose philanthropic work cannot be castigated for careless giving, despite the many a-historical commentators who appear to believe that ‘new philanthropy’ has a monopoly on strategic thinking. However it is clearly true to note that societal changes since Carnegie’s time (not least the rapid spread of information technology) provides 21st century philanthropists with a wider array of tools to access information, process data and analyse impacts, which ought to enable a firmer grip on measuring and achieving results.

A stand-out section of the book describes and addresses the ‘non-profit starvation cycle’, which is said to occur when donors refuse to fund overheads and impose arbitrary conditions on those they support. Examples and consequence of these ‘costs on capital’ are worth quoting at length:

“The philanthropist who thinks he knows how to run an after-school programme better than the folks who have been doing just that for twenty-five years and insists on imposing his strategic ideas; the grant-maker who annually requires her grantees to fill out 50 page reports about how the grant was used and what results were achieved, but never acknowledges the reports – and probably never reads them in their entirety. The costs of such behaviour… are real, though rarely tabulated. And because of the enormous power imbalance between those with money and those who need to raise it, they can remain invisible and persist for years on end”.

These are brave words, stronger than anything I have heard in the UK context, and perhaps reflect the greater confidence of the US philanthropy advisory sector that there is a demand for their services which is willing to hear some hard home truths.

The larger part of the book takes readers on a journey to address a series of questions, covered in individual chapters, which will help them to ‘give smart’: ‘What are my values and beliefs?’, ‘What is ‘success’ and how can it be achieved?’, ‘What am I accountable for?’, ‘What will it take to get the job done?’, ‘How do I work with grantees?’ and ‘Am I getting better?’. Using real-life case studies, bullet-point lists and the type of jazzy charts popularised by management consultants, each chapter helps the donor to develop answers to the questions they will face on their philanthropic journeys.

Disappointingly, the authors omit a conclusion and go out with a whimper in a chapter called ‘Monday morning check list,’ which simply consists of a brief inventory of the book’s key points. However, the authors’ pedigrees and the intrinsic quality of the information contained in this book, make a second edition a sure bet. Perhaps time might be found to write some closing words that review the big themes discussed in earlier chapters and tie together the multiplicity of ideas and pragmatic advice, to give this useful book the final bang that it deserves.

Dr Beth Breeze, Philanthropy UK publications editor, is a researcher at Kent University and author of several reports on philanthropy