Author Archive:
Timothy Ogden
The rise and rise of billionaire philanthropy
As inequality continues to grow, problems with the power of elite philanthropy remain unresolved and evermore pertinent The question behind the Alliance issue in 2011 examining the influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation …
A conflict of interests: when foundations invest in arms and tobacco
How much good must a foundation do in order to justify investments in companies whose products cause harm? Take the Rockefeller Foundation, which invests some of its assets with Cerberus Capital Management, an American private …
Offshore philanthropy
Organized philanthropy exists because a few individuals are able to accumulate a vast surplus of resources. Given how much good is done with philanthropic donations, it seems ungrateful to look too closely at the source …
Should philanthropy help people leave?
Imagine a young woman with children in a dangerous domestic situation. Every moment she stays she risks further harm to herself and her children, harm that not even time can heal. Her abuser has promised …
When all else fails
The details of the Flint water crisis continue to shock: through a stunning sequence of incompetence and malfeasance from public officials in Michigan and the US Environmental Protection Agency, the people of Flint were poisoned …
The Syrian crisis: a challenge for philanthropy
It is a rare event that captures global philanthropy’s attention. The stream of refugees from Syria is one of them. There is a serious humanitarian crisis under way, and a rapid response is called for. …
Migration – the oldest and still best tool in the anti-poverty arsenal
The case for migration as an effective tool to combat poverty is more than 100,000 years old – and has yet to be contradicted. Migration is what early human hunter-gatherers did to survive. Migration took …
Are today’s donors different?
If you’ve heard it (or read it) once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: ‘Today’s donors are different.’ Left at that, the statement would be true, if innocuous and obvious. Every generation of donors will …
100 years of ‘caring about impact’: what’s changed?
Santayana’s famous dictum, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’, could have been made in direct reference to philanthropy. As Maribel Morey and Benjamin Soskis write introducing a new blog focused …
Where are the foundation chief information officers?
While there are plenty of celebrated examples of non-profits (usually new ones) using technology innovation exceedingly well (think of charity:water, Ushahidi, Donor’s Choose or GiveDirectly), foundations are not known as a hotbed of technological innovation. …
