Editorial - June 2002

Panacea or hype? As is so often the case, the truth about venture philanthropy is probably somewhere between the two. Much of the material in the venture philanthropy feature in this issue of Alliance comes from North America, because that is where the field has largely developed, but the aim is to look at what, if anything, the model has to offer to the rest of the world, especially developing countries.

I have been greatly helped with this feature by Nicole Etchart and Lee Davis of NESsT, who have acted as guest editors, along with Christopher Harris of the Ford Foundation, who has played the valuable role of sceptic. I plan to make guest editors a regular feature of Alliance from now on, enabling us to go more deeply into the special theme for each issue than we otherwise could.

One final word about this issue: with reports from Agra, Chicago, Heidelberg and Sydney, Alliance readers might be forgiven for feeling I have become something of an international conference junkie. Unfortunately conference organizers just don’t seem to take my publishing schedule into account! I have just one conference planned between now and September.