Scope/Terms of Reference:

Edit to reflect purpose

Definitions:

Current Trends:

• Current Trends:

<Per Jean Russell> -

1. Giving while living--a new generation involved in philanthropy doesn't want to hoard their money till death then leave a bequest. They plan to give most of their money away while alive. Further contributing to this is the belief that kids handed too much money will blow it (well founded, 70% of inheritances are blown in 3 years or less). If making your kids good people means giving them only a small portion of the family wealth, then where should the rest of the money go?
2. The internet connects us--we can find out about charities, nonprofits, and even how effective many of them are EASILY.
3. Socially Responsible Investing developed in the seventies, has mainstreamed. The followers of SRI now seek to work on another plane--Socially Responsible Venture Capital basically with the simple idea of "Hey wouldn't it be great if instead of handing out money that keeps people trapped in poverty by creating dependencies, we offer them an opportunity to help themselves become independent and contrubite to society?"

This was off the top of my head and is certainly not exhaustive. Any other trends you see?

Thoughts in Passing

<Per Tom Munnecke> - See Munnecke 2 - Uses the contagious impulsive response of The Wave.

• If we think of humanity itself as an "excitable medium," this brings up some interesting questions:

• Just what excites folks sufficiently to get them to trigger wave-like uplift activities?
• What would be the initial trigger points to such a thing?
• How would would we connect people and things to give them sufficient connectivity to allow the wave to flow?
• What feedback would be necessary to allow the wave participants to see and understand their own activities?
• How would we know that the wave would be used for benevolent activties? As we have seen with email and spam and other forms of "malware", creating large scale open networks is a two-sided sword.

<Anne Marie Bellavance>

• Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity change both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.

<Per Gerry Gleason>

• All the tools to embarque on ambitious projects are here, and all that is needed is for us to develop our leadership skills in the pursuit of collaborative goals. The first challenge of course it to develop some goals that can be achieved in a reasonable amount of time.

<Per Jean Russell>

• Wow, coaching is powerful. I read the statements written since my last post and see the shifting frames. One person sees the super big timeline of the world, another works within the year, some place o-net within their lives, and some see something beyond it.

I can't help but think we all agree when our frames are aligned.

Frames is jargonish, so simply imagine a picture frame in front of you, you only see through it not around it. How big is it and what is the focus

<Per Mark Grimes>

• Introducing Maimonides - Charity is the simplest form of generosity. The ultimate form of generosity is the investment in people, property and ideas. Maimonides wrote of the eight stages of Tsedakah (generosity that acknowledges the dignity of the receiver) that the lowest stage is to give as little, as infrequently, as publicly, and with as little regard to the recipient's feelings as the donor chooses. At least you are giving! Surprisingly enough, the highest stage is not to give as much as one can, as often, as modestly, and as respectful as possible. Such great goodness is only the seventh of eight stages. The highest level of Tsedakah is to enter into a partnership with the person in need so that he will become productive and eventually independent.

LINKS:

When placing links associated with posts in the thread, please also provide a link to the specific post to assist with context.

• http://www.indianagrantmakers.org/give/glossary.html - Defintion of philanthropy provided by Jean Russell - Jean Russell 1.
• http://givingspace.org/papers/initconcept.htm - Tom Munnecke's collected thoughts on philanthropy - Creating a Semantic Web for Philanthropy - see Munnecke 1.
• http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/871/10/ - Michael Laurealus brought articles on Omidyar and philanthropy
• http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/871/14/ - Gerry Gleason on Stewardship and the World We Want
• http://www.resourcegeneration.org/What/mmmc.html - Jean Russell, see Russell 2
• http://www.movementasnetwork.org/ - Michael Maranda referencing Gideon Rosenblatt, see Maranda 1
• http://www.brookings.edu/scholars/plight.htm - Jessica Margolin, see Margolin 1

Groups and Places on O-Net:

Revolutionary Philanthropic Actions, Experiments & Debates

• Other "Philanthropy" posts on O.net
• beta
• philo
• agenda
• money

Comment:

Feel free to add comment here or join the discussion at you say you want a revolution (in philanthropy)....