Venture Philanthropy

We examine the current ‘datafication’ process underway in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the power shifts it is creating in the field of international development. The use of new communications and database technologies in LMICs is generating ‘big data’ (for example from the use of mobile phones, mobile-based financial services and the internet) which is collected and processed by corporations. When shared, these data are also becoming a potentially valuable resource for development research and policy. With these new sources of data, new power structures are emerging within the field of development. We identify two trends in particular, illustrating them with examples: first, the empowerment of public-private partnerships around datafication in LMICs and the consequently growing agency of corporations as development actors. Second, the way commercially generated big data is becoming the foundation for country-level ‘data doubles’, i.e. digital representations of social phenomena and/or territories that are created in parallel with, and sometimes in lieu of, national data and statistics. We explore the resulting shift from legibility (Scott 1998) to visibility, and the implications of seeing development interventions as a byproduct of larger-scale processes of informational capitalism.

Philanthropic involvement in education politics has become bolder and more visible. Have foundations changed funding strategies to enhance their political influence? Using data from 2000, 2005, and 2010, we investigate giving patterns among the 15 largest education foundations. Our analyses show growing support for national-level advocacy organizations. Furthermore, we find that foundations increasingly fund organizations that operate as “jurisdictional challengers” by competing with traditional public sector institutions. We apply social network analysis to demonstrate the growing prevalence of convergent grant-making—multiple foundations supporting the same organizations. These results suggest that a sector once criticized for not leveraging its investments now increasingly seeks to maximize its impact by supporting alternative providers, investing concurrently, and supporting grantees to engage in policy debates.

This article examines the role of philanthropy in conservation as a way of exploring how and why conservation might be becoming more neoliberal. It describes how conservation philanthropy supports capitalism both discursively and in more practical ways. Philanthropy is examined in terms of the two forces considered to be driving the neoliberalization of conservationthe need for capitalism to find new ways of making money, and the desire of conservationists to engage with capitalism as the best way of getting things done. It demonstrates how philanthropy can speak to both of these logics simultaneously, particularly through emerging ideas of philanthrocapitalism, which may be enhancing the neoliberalization of both philanthropy and conservation.

This article about the convergence of media and education corporations details the tendencies of for-profit companies to standardize, homogenize, and automate knowledge, curriculum, and pedagogy. The first section reviews the policy trends that established the standards, standardization, and technology regime that created the conditions for the education
media/tech convergence and its consequences. The second section examines the economic interests driving the expansion of media and education companies with a particular look at the expansion of tablet products. The third section discusses the political and cultural implications of these trends.

This article analyses the processes of 'neoliberalisation' in education as directed by Teach For All. Specifically, we explore the case of Empieza por Educar, the Spanish policy network included in Teach For All. The first section seeks to clarify what we understand by the term neoliberalism, using a theoretical dimension through different perspectives. The second section explores the meaning of the new philanthropy. Methodologically, in the third section, the piece of research is categorised under what is defined as 'Network Ethnography', an approach which unifies social network analysis with some traditional ethnographic methods. The fourth section explores the meaning Teach For All and its foundation in Spain (Empieza por Educar) as a philanthropic foundation which is changing the political arena. The fifth section explores how Neoliberalism (with big 'N') is constructed by means of a complex interconnection of actors and policies that establish the policy network within the Spanish context. The sixth section analyses how neoliberalism (with small 'n') is implemented in the curriculum through three aspects: hegemonic truths; the conduct of the conduct (performativity culture); and the modes of formation of the subject with practices of oneself (entrepreneur of oneself).

Studies examining the role of philanthropic foundations in advancing social change have primarily focused on the impact of foundations' financial resources. Few scholars have analyzed how foundations also leverage social mechanisms to advance and legitimate desired change. We conceptualize philanthropic foundations as agents of change known as institutional entrepreneurs to illuminate the social mechanisms they employ in pursuit of institutional change. We study the case of charter schools within the field of U.S. public education, where foundations elevated a new organizational formthe charter management organization-by engaging in three social mechanisms: recombining cultural elements to establish the form, enforcing evaluative frameworks to assess the form, and sponsoring new professionals to populate the form with preferred expertise. We argue that foundations are distinctive due to their ability to simultaneously pursue social mechanisms that are often considered to be the realms of different types of institutional entrepreneurs.

A vibrant literature has emerged in recent years exploring moves towards neoliberal forms of conservation, with a reduced role for the state and an enhanced role for markets and private and civil society actors. Yet there is a need for studies which explore how and why this trend has emerged, and what impact it has on both people and nature. The author provides a detailed examination of private protected areas, which are often associated with neoliberal approaches to conservation, in Chile—a country which has had a long and deep engagement with neoliberalism. It is found that private protected areas demonstrate a broad range of attitudes towards the use of markets in conservation, from enthusiasm to hostility. Yet all have been made possible, indeed incentivised, by Chile’s liberalised property markets and individualistic political culture—products of earlier neoliberal reforms within Chile’s society and economy. As such, they provide only a limited challenge to the social and environmental consequence of the integration of southern Chile’s natural resources into global neoliberal economic chains. The author emphasises the importance of considering how broader neoliberal economic, political, and social reforms have allowed certain forms of conservation to emerge and thrive

This paper frames social finance in its broadest terms as an alternative to traditional corporate responsible practice, highlighting the significance and potential of social finance in mobilising financial resources for global social development. This paper explains social finance as an approach employing financial resources drawn from "the market" to generate positive social impacts which can, depending on instruments, also deliver financial returns. Despite hitherto forms of capitalism generating economic asymmetry, there is an urgent need for a more equitable financial mobilisation through innovative finance. Such a need has generated a paradigm shift in the corporate sector where actors in the private sector are increasingly using a variety of instruments to utilise private money for public good - social finance. We have so far seen corporate responsible business practices, yet with innovation and multi-sectoral partnerships, it can potentially bring the most significant change that has yet to be witnessed globally.

First, the Social Business Initiative of the European Commission and then the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce: these are meaningful indicators of a novelty overlooking the scene of European public policies. While many advocate the numerous benefits that social finance, and especially Social Impact Bond (SIB), will bring in the welfare systems, it seems useful to point out a considerable and comprehensible confusion. The complexity of the instruments at issue and the difficulties arisen in the first trials, require designing a depth exploration, in particular with regard to SIBs. A SIB is a financial transaction that brings together seemingly contrary forces that turn out to be uniquely capable of producing new life forms when taking advantage of their interdependencies: through a complex partnership between investors, social service providers and public administrations, SIBs develop a contractual structure that provides reimbursement and remuneration of investments by virtue of potential savings related to the social outcomes reached by social service providers. Therefore, at the same time SIB may acts as leverage for social service providers, a tool for the sustainability of public spending and an asset class for investors. The implementation of these financial instruments raises a number of important challenges to deal with, both from the point of view of its economic features and the related legal issues. The main goals this paper aims to pursue are: (i) find the socio-economic rationale of SIBs, (ii) outline an introductory and theoretically acceptable framework for the study of SIBs, (iii) indicate a possible agenda of the crucial and outstanding problems to be addressed. In other words, the aim of this paper is to sketch a possible road map to meet the challenges that Europe is facing, in the belief that an essential contribution will come from socio-economic research.

Venture philanthropy is “a field of philanthropic activity where private equity/ venture capital models are applied in the non-profit and charitable sectors” with the overall objective to maximize social impact. It is characterized by six main features: engaged partnership; tailored financing; multi-year support; provision of non-financial services; assistance to build organizational-capacity; and performance measurement. Grounded in case study research of fifteen venture philanthropy organizations, this paper first sets out to describe the field of venture philanthropy and actors as conceived by this researcher: investors, incubators, allies, brokers, and nominators. Second, it reports on some of the main challenges and issues for venture philanthropists, in general, and more specifically, in developing countries. Two of these challenges are discussed in greater detail, with respect to the field of education: impact assessment and evaluating the context of venture philanthropy. In the final section, the paper outlines a new framework to address the second of these challenges: the evaluation and measurement of context.

Der Begriff Philanthrokapitalismus  verweist auf die Verschränkung philanthropischer und profitwirtschaftlicher Handlungslogiken. Im Philanthrokapitalismus soll die Effektivität des Stiftungshandelns erhöht und ggf. gleichzeitig Rendite erzielt werden. Der vorliegende Beitrag führt in das Konzept des Philanthrokapitalismus ein, grenzt ihn von herkömmlicher Philanthropie ab und diskutiert einige der ihm inhärenten Probleme. Diese ergeben sich etwa aus dem Fokus auf Effektivität, Unternehmertum und Wettbewerb sowie einer apolitischen Technisierung sozialer Probleme.

This commentary suggests that a countermovement for educational and social justice must learn from the dominant global neo-liberal movement and its successes in creating institutions and knowledge-making processes and networks. Local struggles for educational justice are important, but they need to be linked to a broader educational justice movement. Such a movement itself has to be seen as part of a struggle for genuine democracy.

This report summarizes a year of research on how funders can work more collaboratively to place longer-term, more adaptive resources with organizations to help them scale their impact. It includes findings from case studies of 25 funder collaboratives aimed at systems change.

This paper examines the particular role of  corporate business as provider of philanthropic capital – financial, human and intellectual.  As well as using traditional grant funding, we found that some corporations invest in early stage ventures that reach the poorest with affordable goods and services, or outsource their business processes to social enterprise vendors. Businesses increasingly see skilled volunteering or giving circles are new approaches to community engagement that motivate and retain employees.
The report illustrates these ways in which businesses engage with high-potential social organisations through twenty-three case studies drawn from Hong Kong, Australia, India, Singapore, Japan, China and the Philippines. We make recommendations for ways in which the corporation can creatively deploy its resources for public good in Asia.
(NOTE: An earlier version omitted one reference in the appendix; this has now been corrected)

The aim of this study is to reveal what the activities of airline organisations in Turkey are related to corporate social responsibility. Qualitative research method was used in order to achieve this aim.
The research area consists of 8 airline organisations. In the research, semi-structured interviews as the primary data source as data collection method; document analysis is also used as the secondary
data source. Participants in the interviews were selected by purposeful sampling method. In this context, managers of airline organizations on corporate social responsibility were interviewed. For document review, the information shared by airlines on websites, press releases, announcements and sustainability reports was used. The qualitative data collected in the research were analyzed inductively
by means of NVivo 12 program. As a result of the analysis, 4 themes, 12 categories and 11 sub-categories were reached. According to the results of the research, airline organizations carry out activities in four basic dimensions as economic, legal, ethical and philanthropical. Under these dimensions, it was determined that the practices directed towards the environment, customers, society, managers and employees were the majority.

This study examines media framing of philanthropy. It presents a new theoretical and methodological framework that combines and integrates theories and models from the fields of communication and philanthropy. The framework includes three communication components (media outlets, functions, and roles) and three philanthropy components (donors, donations, and recipients). The integration of these components yielded six frames: government substitution, individual, high-net-worth, consumer, corporate, and media driven, as well as a new framework for analysis. Content analysis of media coverage of philanthropy during two cases of warfare in Israel demonstrates examples of these frames. The findings and the framework for analysis have significant implications for the study of media-philanthropy relations.

Giving Circles are a significant part of the American philanthropy landscape and have been the subject of academic study since 2004.  They are important not only for raising funds for locally based, non-profit organisations, but also as a vehicle for donor education and socialisation.  We know that giving circles exist outside of the US and Canada but little has been written about them. We report on initiatives in collective philanthropy in 7 Asian countries, including India and China, and suggest an initial typology.  We profile examples of giving circles in 2 broad categories – models imported from the US and Europe; and indigenous models initiated within Asia.  Both categories exhibit a wide range of characteristics, e.g. circle size, organisational structure, strategic partnerships and level of personal engagement by members. We argue that giving circles will become an important phenomenon in the growth of philanthropy in Asia and make recommendations that would promote their number and quality of impact.
The paper is copyrighted and only available to subscribers of Foundation Review: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/tfr/vol6/iss4/9

Cet article défend la pertinence d’une approche sociopolitique de la philanthropie, à
travers cinq clés de lecture : 1) le recours à la science comme point d’appui externe ;
2) l’articulation entre le don et l’action collective ; 3) le lien entre la richesse, les inégalités
et la philanthropie financière ; 4) le rapport entre le don et l’impôt ; et 5) la relation
entre l’État et la philanthropie. Cette recherche, appuyée par un recul historique, invite
ainsi à analyser la philanthropie comme un phénomène politique, malgré son apparente
dépolitisation et sa distance du champ politique. Cette étude est donc également un défi
proposé à la science politique.

This article highlights the relevance of a sociopolitical approach of philanthropy, through
five crosscutting issues: 1) the use of science as an external point of view; 2) the links
between donation and collective action; 3) the relationship between wealth, inequalities
and financial philanthropy; 4) the relations between donation and taxes; and 5) the
relationship between government and philanthropy as a political act. This research is
based on a historical perspective and proposes to analyse philanthropy as a political
phenomenon despite its distance from the political field. This study is also a challenge to
political science.

This paper introduces Nesta Impact Investments Fund and the standards of evidence we’ll be using to ensure our investments make a positive social impact.

Key findings

We use a 1-5 scale; 1 = a clear articulation of why a product or service could have a positive impact; 5 = evidence that it can deliver impact at scale.
We recognise the need to ensure that demand for evidence is appropriate to different stages of development, and that it doesn’t hamper innovation.
The Standards of Evidence will be used to inform our future funding decisions.
Impact investing is gaining ground. The prospect of being able to tackle social challenges while making a profit is an attractive proposition. But too often evidence of impact is missing. We need evidence to establish whether a product or service is benefitting those it sets out to serve, and then to focus investment on products and services that can make the most difference. To help us achieve this we have developed a new approach, Standards of Evidence for Impact Investing.

We have developed this new approach to help guide the decisions made by Nesta Impact Investments. This fund will be investing in high-risk or earlier-stage innovations where we intend to create value, not only in financial terms but also in terms of impact.

This short discussion paper introduces Nesta Impact Investments Fund and the Standards of Evidence for impact investing. We discuss why the Standards of Evidence were developed and the implications we hope they will have for our fund.

- See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/standards-evidence-impact-investing#sthash.863GEGsj.dpuf

This is a section of my book The Swindle of Innovative Educational Finance.  It examines the case of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and its Summit personalized learning platform to argue that philanthrocapitalism is business rather than philanthropy that is seeking profits through data commodification and the usurping of teacher labor.  It criticizes the ways that adaptive learning technologies that purport to be "personalized" undermine approaches to teaching and learning that are attentive to experience and context.

Le rôle de la philanthropie se retrouve au coeur d'une multitude de débats soulevant des enjeux de fiscalité, de démocratie et d'autonomie de l'action communautaire. Quel portrait pouvons-nous dresser de la Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon ? Quelle place occupe cette fondation dans ce secteur en émergence qu'est celui de la philanthropie au Québec ? Participe-t-elle ou contribue-t-elle au retrait de l'État des affaires sociales ? Et quel est l'impact de son soutien sur l'action communautaire ? C'est à ces questions que cette note socio-économique entend répondre.

ABSTRACT: Calls for greater transparency among corporations and social institutions continue to grow in the literature. Many contend that greater transparency is needed to reduce potential for wrong doing and enhance the capacity of interested outsiders to protect the public’s interests. Yet, transparency is not a cost free objective, there are consequences to imposed transparency. This research contributes to the opacity and transparency literature by probing for a deeper understanding of organizational and environmental factors that lead to opaque practices, exploring both negative and positive outcomes of opacity and investigating practices that can help reduce adverse effects of opacity between collaborating entities. Private philanthropy presented an interesting sector for studying opacity and its potential consequences, including potential for public benefits. Researchers have expressed concerns about private philanthropy’s systematic lack of transparency and external accountability, which is further exacerbated by effects of disparate power. The private foundation literature is critical of private philanthropy conducting its affairs as an unchecked, but powerful secret society. Concerns expressed about a lack of transparency and disparate power among private foundations seem understandable given that they have private control over large sums of tax-advantaged funds. However, researchers have neither explored nor defined the nature of opaqueness in private philanthropy. The privacy and transparency literature suggests that transparency can impose additional costs, impede productivity and stymie innovation. This research resulted in a deeper understanding of the nature of opaque foundation practices, discovered that opacity can result in beneficial outcomes and identified strategies foundations and grantees successfully use in overcoming challenges related to opacity and coexisting disparate power.

Business Angels are typically high-net-worth individuals who invest their money and time into the early stage businesses of others with the objective of a financial return. They do so by acting either alone or in formal or informal syndicates called angel groups or networks. While angel investing in purely commercial ventures is widespread in countries with strong enterprise cultures, relatively little has been reported on the practice of angel investing for impact, i.e., providing capital and advice to social businesses whose intentional purpose is to create social value profitably.
We report here 13 impact angel investment initiatives in Hong Kong, India, Pakistan and Taiwan, and offer a tentative typology. New forms of enterprise, which address social problems or provide goods and services to low income communities, are gaining traction in Asia. We suggest that angel investing offers a useful model for the financing of start-up and early stage social enterprises in Asia.

In recent years, a model of 'managed social innovation' seems to be emerging in China where local governments take the lead in generating and implementing new citizen-oriented products, processes, and services; the central government has embraced such local innovative activities as part of its high profile 'harmonious society' strategy. The aim is to not only accommodate but also promote and craft civil society initiatives. However, questions remain as to why governments have actively engineered such social innovations and how and to what extent they can be successful in balancing potential conflicts between their own pursuits and those initiated by citizens. In this article, we examine a hybrid form of social innovation combining government engineering and citizen participation as the Chinese government's most recent strategy to cope with the rise of nonprofit organisations. Empirically, we focus on a case of social innovation, the government-sponsored venture philanthropy program in Shanghai. We argue that managed social innovation may create mixed results. It deviates from a genuine citizen-empowered process due to the imposed regulatory hurdles, and the lack of significant citizen-based inputs. On the other hand, it may still provide space and resources for new social ideas, strategies, and organisations. The Chinese government has demonstrated some success in managing these social innovations but faces dilemmas in managing government-nonprofit relations because of embedded institutional requirements.

La philanthropie a le vent en poupe. Serait-elle aux riches et aux puissants ce que la manifestation est aux pauvres et aux ouvriers ? Telle est l'audacieuse thèse défendue par Alexandre Lambelet dans un ouvrage incisif. Au delà d'une analogie stimulante, la démonstration se heurte cependant à certaines limites empiriques.

Invertire il paradigma della filantropia in venture philanthropy passando da una logica di grant a "fondo perduto" ad una di investimento  richiede che venga messo a punto un sistema di valutazione e misurazione dell'impatto per orientare gli investimenti.
Si propone qui una definizione e i maggiori strumenti utilizzati per la misurazione dell'impatto sociale

"So Much for Philanthropy: the Marciano and 'All the Usual Suspects'," shows how the current US tax code gives philanthropists a combination of exaggerated tax subsidies and concrete control over policy and civil society, the combination of which results in an undemocratic institutional reality. When it comes to art, advantages to the wealthy are exacerbated since the status of art as an asset, or as the euphemism goes: “passion asset,” distinguishes collecting institutions (or shell institutions serving collectors), from all other types of nonprofits. Donors to hospitals, universities, think tanks, or other nonprofits providing social services, do not share financial interests in the same assets owned by the institution they serve. But Eli Broad and the Marciano brothers privately own works that can appreciate at public expense. The article further argues that philanthropy ultimately gives back the surplus it siphoned from labor and also from externalities paid for by society’s taxes.

Eurosif and the Bellagio Forum have developed PRIME Toolkit, the Primer for Responsible Investment Management of Endowments, in order to meet the growing needs of foundations.

This toolkit is designed to help foundations trustees better understand Responsible Investment practices and equip them with the key factors they need to know in order to integrate Social/Environmental/Ethical (SEE) issues into the long-term management of their endowments.

In her book Policy Patrons. Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence, Megan Tompkins-Stange, assistant professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, examines the recent commitment of philanthropic foundations to educational policy reform in the United States. She analyzes how these organizations use the returns from the investment of their endowment on the financial markets to finance other organizations, research and various activities related to the advancement of their mission (lobbying, coalition building, media presence, etc.). By providing access to the decision- making and communication processes as well as the investment strategies of four of the twenty largest foundations working in the US education field—Ford Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation—the author makes an original contribution to the age-old debate about the role which philanthropic foundations can play in public policy reform in a liberal democracy. Rather than starting with a political- philosophical discussion on the expected role of the private sector in solving a public problem, the author begins with a field investigation to determine precisely how these foundations deploy their influence.

Cosa significa la parola filantropia? E' possibile darne una definizione univoca nel tempo?
Le pratiche della cosiddetta “nuova filantropia” vanno oltre la donazione piani- ficata, monitorata e sistematica, orientan- dosi ai risultati, non solo sociali ma anche economici che porteranno i progetti e le organizzazioni non-profit alla sostenibilità, richiamando il concetto di venture capital e declinandolo in venture philanthropy.

Abstract
This paper discusses various issues and challenges facing philanthropy and nonprofit organizations in the United States of America. The writer believes that effective grant writing abilities are necessary for leaders in higher education and those who posses these skills will be able to lead more efficiently. The paper will present effective fundraising strategies and discuss management techniques employed by veterans in the nonprofit sector. Additionally, descriptions of each of the nine major areas associated with foundation funding are summarized, and certain grantsmanship practices are highlighted. Finally, this paper will discuss seven basic components necessary for writing a successful grant proposal.

This paper is a bibliography of press releases from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about charter school corruption and fraud from 2009 to 2016 across the United States. Both references and the actual press releases obtained from the FBI databases are included.

by Georg von Schnurbein -DRAFT VERSIONdo not cite without the authors permission Philanthropic acts aim at a change in habits or situation in the life of others. The current debate on performance measurement and professionalization of the philanthropic sector leads -despite the altruistic tenor of the acts -to the question, which consequences the beneficence has and to what extent a philanthropist has to take them into account in advance. Based on risk-ethical decision approaches this paper discusses several risks for the philanthropist and others. Practical examples and theoretical considerations are used to elaborate specific risks of philanthropy. Afterwards three elementary parameters are presented that a philanthropist may use in order to reduce the probability of the aforementioned risks.