The Philanthropy Network Blog

Coursera, EdX, Kahn Academy, Saylor.org, OpenCourseWare. All are infinitely scalable, infinitely deployable, and infinitely cheaper alternatives to the bricks-and-mortar learning experience. How, where and who consumes a heretofore inelastic product - education - is being reshaped, unwrung, and disruptively transformed in ways not seen since the invention of the printing press. Today's world needs a highly educated, adaptable, technical workforce, capable of being retrained and redeployed from less productive to more productive industries. The prohibitively expensive (and slow!) 4-year residential education model is no longer suited to the modern, global economy. Thus it is this blogger's belief that we are about to witness the beginning of a Cat 5 university endgame: the emerging on-line learning colossus spawns a legitimate credentialing industry leading to collapsing tuition revenue from decreased enrollment, leading ultimately to many under-capitalized colleges and uni...

Myriad academic studies and citizen speculation have been devoted to the rising cost of college tuition, which is a blame shifting, blame assigning exercise of the 1st magnitude, and which unfortunately ignores the asymptotic demand curve for the product (in that demand should decrease for education as the price goes up, but the opposite seems to happen - people need more training, not less, for a 21st century career and are willing to pay (handsomely, I might add) for the privilege of operating in the modern world). And frankly, the cost of Harvard ($54,496) has always been about the same as a top of the line Buick (which I found to be the Buick Enclave at $53,775), and I have never heard a person complain about the rising cost of a Buick. But the cost of education is less of a concern to me than the problem of giving anybody with talent and drive level access to the product. University fundraisers and agencies dedicated to the advancement of one ethnicity or another have been sub...

Today I read an article by XConomy's Wade Roush, who attended a conference hosted by Kleiner Perkins and featured a presentation by famed Internet analyst Mary Meeker (the presentation can be found here: http://www.kpcb.com/file/kpcb-internet-trends-2012), which covered how mobile telephony and smart phones have begun to impact nearly every aspect of the human experience. The most ubiquitous omission seems to be Philanthropy, at least in my mind, but how can a decidedly human engagement experience (giving support for and volunteering time for causes greater than one's self) be mobilized - in the technical sense? Can philanthropy go truly mobile? And I am not necessarily talking about giving in the $10s or $100s of dollars, what I am talking about is mega philanthropy, in that: How can mega philanthropists immerse themselves where their donations, grants or in-kind support is provided? How can organizations that attract that level of philanthropy be expected to deliver a tru...

For those of us working for organizations with July-June fiscal year calendars, mid-May through June 30 can be one of the most misunderstood times of the year. One the one hand its time to confirm participatory gifts and remind our most generous donors of their outstanding fiscal year pledges, but its also one of the best times to conduct thoughtful, personalized stewardship, and remind those existing donors - you know, those who give during the other 46 weeks of the year - how important they are to your organization's success. I imagine that a fundraiser who's giving 110% to secure fiscal year end gifts finds significantly decreased marginal production for each additional 1% beyond (say) 85% effort. Reallocating some fraction of the day (perhaps as much as 20%) to pure stewardship, calling existing donors to say thank you for making the fiscal year a success, and engaging them in conversations about their next gift, the year ahead for the organization, summer events, etc.,...

Today, Facebook goes public. And the impact of its meteoric rise, and the enormous wealth it will (and already has) created, will become more apparent after the share lock-up period expires later this year, the social media juggernaut will profoundly impact the charitable landscape. Let's just start with the first employees and founders of Facebook. At 11am today Mark Zuckerberg will become one of the richest people in the world. Zuckerberg is introverted, focused, data driven and judgmental, and is known to have a high need for control. The causes and that he ultimately embraces and the organizations that he decides to charitably support, will need to adapt to Mr. Zuckerberg's view of how the world should work, rather than how it actually does work. This could be a good thing. He has paradigm shifting resources, has already influenced (for the worse, in this author's mind) the evolutionary trajectory of mankind (more on that later), and he could do the same for phil...

If you follow Dallas Maverick's owner Marc Cuban's blog, you probably know that he is something of a near futurist, but he's rarely off the mark analytically, and his latest entry on The Coming Meltdown in Higher Education is precision laser guided ( Check out the article here . Easy credit in the student loan markets has artificially subsidized the four-year degree granting market for three decades, and for many students college has become a four-year reality detour before embarking on the real work of real life. Student loan indebtedness exceeds consumer debt, and with an exceedingly competitive global marketplace where the best career options require more technical and intensive training and work ethic, those who are left behind (or who fail to prepare) will face a mountain too steep to climb. And fundamentally, the underwriting assumptions of student loans are similar to those of subprime mortgages, and the collapse of the market will put student borrowers onto unstabl...

I read a Forbes article recently about the demise of the Venture Capital Industry, which as you know has invested in, incubated and launched some of the most valuable products, businesses and services we enjoy and take very much for granted today.   What was most shocking about the article is that the prime reason cited for the demise of Venture capital is that the industry has become too good at raising money, and they are having problems putting $30B to productive use each year. Yes, too much money is a problem for the venture capital industry. As a non-profit professional I could not imagine a better problem to have.  The magnitude of the assets at their disposal is just short of overwhelming. $30B dollars is 10% of the entire Charitable Giving industry. Its equivalent to 90 American Cancer Societies; 50 Nature Conservancies; or 300 ACLUs. But the industry chases investment returns, different than the aims of most charitable organizations. However there may be a...

To celebrate the 8,000th member of The Philanthropy Network on LinkedIn, it seemed only appropriate to create an open forum for long-form opinions and analysis about the future of Philanthropy, trends in the non-profit sector, and ground shaking ideas designed to transform the way societal services are delivered. The foundational belief of the Philanthropy Network blog (and this blogger) is that altruism is an underrated and under-publicized virtue, and that today's non-profit leaders have the potential to be transformative forces for good in the world. So, welcome to the Philanthropy Network Blog, I hope this becomes a valuable content destination for you, as well as a forum within which you can share your best ideas about the future of our industry. Sincerely yours, Brad Smith Founder, Philanthropy Network