Alliance magazine

•    According to an article published on 23 March by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the board of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the US’s fourth-wealthiest grantmaker, last week voted to phase out an eight-year, $20-million effort to finance work by Charity Navigator, GiveWell, GuideStar and other groups that provide in-depth information about non-profits’ performance. The reason is that it wasn’t doing enough to persuade donors to give solely because a group is worthy and not for emotional reasons. Instead, Hewlett will try to improve philanthropy by ‘shifting to a strategy to foster openness and transparency and collaboration’ among foundations and non-profits, said Larry Kramer, Hewlett’s president.
•    He says the foundation is also supporting work designed to break the political system get over the gridlock that has stymied policymaking and to find new ways to deal with cybersecurity threats.

To find out more about the Hewlett Foundation’s current philanthropy programme, click here>

Transparency has recently been in the spotlight in the UK too, where an initiative to promote transparency in the UK philanthropy sector has just been launched. See Fran Perrin’s article, ‘Foundation transparency: why it matters’, in the March issue of Alliance for more about the thinking behind Three Sixty Degree Giving.