Tag: philanthropy

I’d Build a Constellation of Philanthropies

milky way

While I know some things about some things, everyone seems to think starting their own philanthropy is the answer. I think about it differently.

Instead of having a multitude of smart, dedicated people working on the same problem from a million different places, what might happen if that multitude of people (and perspectives) was asked to work together to consider a problem? A charitable DARPA.

Instead of starting a philanthropy, I’d try to use that sum of money to entice existing, similarly-aligned philanthropies to join forces and work to solve a given problem together.

Homelessness, unemployment, hunger, education, nutrition – all pieces of poverty – I’d find the leading organizations and minds and say, “I’ll fund a coalition if you choose to work together.” As the work progressed, we’d keep our doors open to other organizations that felt common cause while holding different views as to the solutions.

As I’d argue is endemic to our culture when people disagree, it has become too difficult to take our toys and go play somewhere else. This isn’t conducive to a rich debate, collaborative effort, or deep exchange of ideas. We don’t need more philanthropies, we need more efficient philanthropies.

How Can We Help Right Now?

You may remember November and December. The year doesn’t matter, because the story is the same, no matter the year. Giving.

The winter holiday season rolls around and we start to remember “’tis better to give than to receive.” And, that is good.

Perhaps, though, we could think about giving right now?

Below are three possibilities for charitable giving that insure as direct a line to those in need as I can fathom other than walking around your neighborhood handing out donations.

A $25 donation for any of these orgs can make an amazing difference locally or around the world.

Kiva – Founded 10 years ago, this micro-lending organization allows contributors to search and select which efforts around the world they would like to fund. Over the life of your loans, you receive updates on the status of the projects you’ve funded. When the money is returned, you can withdraw it from Kiva or do what I do and put it back to work on another worthy project.

DonorsChoose – Oprah and Stephen Colbert love this educational granting site. You can search for teacher’s grant proposals by location, grade level, discipline and a number of other factors. While I wish this org didn’t need to exist, I can speak from personal experience that it can make a direct impact on classroom supplies.

HandUp – Somewhere between Kiva and DonorsChoose, HandUp helps connect donors with those in need to fund needed purchases. Funds are distributed to HandUp’s partner organizations. Those partners then help connect the applicants to their funds. While only serving the SF Bay area, Oregon, and Detroit, it turned out I don’t care where people are, so long as they are being helped.

Things I Know 342 of 365: I’d assign these books to inspire thinking about philanthropy in education

My theme for philanthropy is the same approach I used with technology: to find a need and fill it.

– An Wang

A few years ago, before actually reading Paul Tough’s profile of Goeffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone, I read a blurb on the dusk jacket from Ira Glass contending that the book had taught him more about poverty than any other text.

I had a similar experience.

I recommend Tough’s Whatever It Takes. Were I designing an ED school unit around non-traditional philanthropic interventions in urban education, I’d assign it and three other texts as well.

The first is a recent series from the Washington Post profiling this history and legacy of the Dreamers, a group of Seat Pleasant, MD students adopted by two D.C.-area businessmen who pledged to pay the students’ college tuition two decades ago.

The 3-part series and it’s ancillary coverage do well to paint a picture of the program and its place within other Dreamer initiatives across the country connected to the “I Have A Dream” Foundation.

I’d also assign The Boys of Baraka, a documentary about 12 at-risk Baltimore, MD boys sent to live and attend school in Kenya as part of an experimental program. It’s as worthy of the descriptor “compelling” as anything I’ve ever watched.

The third text is Ruth Wright Hayre and Alexis Moore’s (auto)biographical book Tell Them We Are Rising. Hayre and Moore provide a historical perspective of one African American family’s experiences with schooling across 3 generations and Hayre’s legacy when she promised college tuition to 116 sixth graders from Philadelphia. For me, the book provided a portrait of the history of Philadelphia schools few people had the time or memory to bring up. I understood where I was teaching because I understood how schools changed in Philadelphia.

While these four texts don’t provide a comprehensive list, they do provide much food for thought on the roles and possibilities for third-party stakeholders in education.