The Philanthropy Network Blog

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...