Opinion

 

Investors’ Perspectives - Matching investments with mission
Ise Bosch

Investors’ Perspectives - Matching investments with mission

Ise Bosch
1 September 2010
Alliance magazine

A ‘unified investment strategy’ aligns a fund’s grantmaking programmes and financial investments with its mission to increase its social impact. How does this work for a medium-sized, private funding organization with a mission that is out of the mainstream? Dreilinden Gesellschaft für gemeinnütziges Privatkapital mbH had the chance to address this question with great freedom when we started in 2006.

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You can’t ‘retrofit’ scale
Chris West

You can’t ‘retrofit’ scale

Chris West
1 September 2010
Alliance magazine

When Shell Foundation was established in 2000, we had ambitious objectives to catalyse scalable and sustainable solutions to key global development challenges. We set about doing this by pioneering an ‘enterprise-based approach’ and focusing on a range of social and environmental issues in which the energy industry has a particular responsibility. Scale has always been critical to our mission so we were particularly encouraged by the recent issue of Alliance dedicated to the subject.

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Investors' Perspectives - Is more debt the answer?
Clara Miller

Investors' Perspectives - Is more debt the answer?

Clara Miller
1 June 2010
Alliance magazine

The social capital market is revving up in the wake of the spectacular nosedive of the global capital market. In the US, a number of foundations are exploring philanthropic debt for the first time, providing PRIs (programme-related investments, generally loans made from the grant budget) and MDIs (mission-driven investments, including loans and equity investments in both for-profits and non-profits, sometimes from the endowment itself).

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Advisers’ Perspectives - What is success for a philanthropy adviser?
Felicitas von Peter

Advisers’ Perspectives - What is success for a philanthropy adviser?

Felicitas von Peter and Michael Alberg-Seberich
1 June 2010
Alliance magazine

In the business world, defining success is often the first step when developing a strategy or defining a new opportunity. In our field, trying to answer the question ‘what is success’ is key to how we work with donors. It brings us closer to the core of what philanthropy advice is and what dilemmas it faces.  

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Can we do better in Haiti?
Nicolas Borsinger

Can we do better in Haiti?

Nicolas Borsinger
1 June 2010
Alliance magazine

If you look at some of the key figures for the Asian tsunami and the Haiti earthquake, orders of magnitude are surprisingly similar: around 300,000 dead or missing; 1.8 million and 1 million (respectively) displaced or homeless; $11 billion and $9 billion pledged. But what is the single most significant predictable difference in the response to these disasters? I suggest it is ‘density of aid agencies’ and (worse) its ripple effects. This means that lack of coordination, low absorptive capacity and turf wars among aid agencies will all be even more problematic in Haiti.

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Do people value what they receive for free?
Kerry Brennan

Do people value what they receive for free?

Kerry Brennan and Daniel Tello
1 March 2010
Alliance magazine

If you’ve ever sat through to the end of a bad movie simply because you didn’t want to ‘waste’ the money you spent on the ticket, you’re not alone. Many people assume that paying for something will make you more likely to use it, while items given away for free are undervalued and less likely to be used. These seemingly harmless assumptions have a big impact on current debates over how health products should be delivered to the poor.

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Investors' perspectives - Connecting mission and investment policy
Boudewijn de Blij

Investors' perspectives - Connecting mission and investment policy

Boudewijn de Blij
1 March 2010
Alliance magazine

In March 2007, a Dutch TV programme revealed that the Dutch Cancer Foundation had some of its capital invested in cigarette companies and that quite a few pension funds were invested in companies manufacturing landmines and cluster bombs. These revelations spurred a heated debate in many quarters, including the boardroom of Fund 1818, about where the funds of charitable institutions and pension funds should be invested.

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Beyond hero worship – a Stranglers’ theme tune for Skoll
Tommy Hutchinson

Beyond hero worship – a Stranglers’ theme tune for Skoll

Tommy Hutchinson
1 March 2010
Alliance magazine

The Skoll Forum is the time of year when half the world – the world of social enterprise, that is – seems to descend on England and for a few days everyone marvels at the wonderful social businesses on show and finds a host of new heroes to champion. Click here to read ...


Advisers’ Perspectives - A nascent field but growing
Betsy Brill

Advisers’ Perspectives - A nascent field but growing

Betsy Brill and Hilda Vega
1 March 2010
Alliance magazine

For those of us in the field of philanthropic advice, it is exciting to see the growth in attention that the topic is receiving.[1] However, this area is still not widely recognized or well understood, so it seems appropriate for the first instalment of a column on philanthropic advice to provide an overview (by no means comprehensive) of the general landscape of the field.   

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The holy grail of ‘impact’
Bruce Sievers

The holy grail of ‘impact’

Bruce Sievers
1 March 2010
Alliance magazine

‘With money tight, top philanthropists insist on more bang for the buck’ reads a recent headline in Barron’s business magazine.[1] These days, to read Barron’s and many other business publications, one would think that at last the key to great philanthropy had been found.  

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