Jane Wales

Is Jane Wales the most powerful woman in global philanthropy? Ms Wales, a former official in both the Clinton and Carter administrations, now simultaneously holds four positions of considerable influence: CEO of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, President of the Global Philanthropy Forum, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy Program, and leader of the Clinton Global Initiative’s Poverty Alleviation track. Is there a massive shortage of leadership in international philanthropy or do these multiple appointments suggest an intention to create a network of some kind? Click here to read ...

Gates, philanthropy, and creative capitalism

While the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been making small grants to ‘improve’ the functioning of the philanthropy sector for some time, it seems they’ve finally got around to institutionalizing a programme. Rumour has it that Darin McKeever, a former fellow at both the Catherine B Reynolds Foundation and Echoing Green and founder of Heads Up, a tutoring programme in Washington DC, will take charge of the portfolio. We also hear that with Bill Gates’ arrival, the Foundation is preparing to ramp up efforts to push the ‘creative capitalism’ concept to business and the press … though Legatum may be beating them to it. Click here to read ...

Mysterious Legatum making waves

Legatum Group, the personal investment management vehicle for (until now) reclusive New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler, has quietly invested in, and made billions from, emerging markets for more than a decade. But it is now beginning to make waves in development circles. In the last 12 months it has undertaken several high-profile initiatives worth tens of millions of dollars all driven by the goal, it says, of promoting ‘global prosperity’. Click here to read ...

Plug pulled on NPC

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? Click here to read ...

Plug pulled on the Microfinance Management Institute?

Rappaport is not the only investor pulling the plug these days. It is rumoured that George Soros’ Open Society Institute is pulling funding to the Microfinance Management Institute, which to all the world looked like a successful programme. Created by OSI and the World Bank’s Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) in 2004, the Institute’s goal was to bring together organizations providing microfinance education to improve the quality of the curriculum and ultimately of MFIs. Both MFMI’s network and the curriculum resources grew very rapidly, but apparently OSI/CGAP define success differently. Click here to read ...