While you wouldn’t know it from their website, Andy Rappaport, a California venture capitalist, philanthropist and political funder, has pulled the plug on the New Progressive Coalition. Not to be confused with New Philanthropy Capital, this NPC aimed to identify effective advocacy organizations that pushed ‘progressive’ policy in the US and market them to others with similar goals. Just last autumn it launched three ‘mutual funds’ focused on electing Democratic candidates, changing American healthcare policy, and the environment. After investing millions in developing a tracking and ranking system, NPC was apparently only able to leverage around $300,000 from like-minded funders. So what went wrong? ‘New’ philanthropists talk a lot about measuring, but when it comes to it, it seems they weren’t that impressed with NPC’s state-of-the-art tracking and ranking system.

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