Author Archive:
Timothy Ogden
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. …
The COF conference: a few thoughts not related to impact investing
A few closing thoughts from the 2015 Council of Foundations’ annual conference not related to impact investing: I came across a couple of intriguing ideas to solve vexing human capital problems in philanthropy and the …
