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A call to alms

Matthew interviewed Bill Clinton before a packed house at New York’s 92nd Street Y on Sunday night. A video of the event will be available shortly here. President Clinton was on fine form in a discussion that ranged across the economy and the presidential race, as well as philanthropy. In response to Matthew’s question about how […]

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Profit: for and against

Matthew’s probing of Muhammad Yunus’s position on the role of profit in scaling up micro-finance at the World Business Forum seems to have irritated Felix Salmon, who blogs for Portfolio magazine in a post Philanthropy vs Profit. Felix puts forward two arguments: that for-profit microfinance has failed to help the poor, citing the example of […]

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Doing Well by Doing Good

Matthew chaired a panel discussion on employment and growth at the Clinton Global Initiative yesterday, including Hernando de Soto, one of the world’s greatest economic thinkers, and John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems. You can watch the full video here: Chambers talked about the way that Cisco’s investments a decade ago in what […]

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Profiting the Poor or Profiting from the Poor?

[Matthew interviewed Nobel prizewinner Muhammad Yunus at the World Business Forum, held in New York’s spectacular Radio City Music Hall.] Yunus has done incredible things for the poor since he started the micro-finance movement with his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh back in the 1970s. But the philanthrocapitalism revolution has created a schism in the microfinance […]

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Meet the Philanthrocapitalists

The Economist kindly threw us a book launch party in New York last night. We were honoured to be joined by so many people who are part of the philanthrocapitalism revolution. Guest of honour was President Bill Clinton (hear Matthew’s interview with him for the Economist about the impact of the economic downturn on philanthropy). […]

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Three Cheers for Harvard

As one of the many celebrations of its 100th birthday, the Harvard Business School hosted a summit in New York on social entrepreneurship. HBS has played an important role in the rise of social entrepreneurship, and indeed in the emergence of philanthrocapitalism – and many of its professors were there to share their insights from […]

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Philanthrocapitalism Gets Sexy

Participated in a panel discussion of philanthrocapitalism today at the Global Creative Leadership Summit. There was a lively debate, led by David Fenton, who advises non-profits on communications and PR, and Stephen Heintz of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, about whether the philanthrocapitalism revolution is good news for non-profits. Some people see philanthrocapitalism as a threat, […]

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When Markets Fail

The crisis of capitalism. These are clearly tough times for capitalism, what with some of the world’s leading financial institutions failing and the American government, with a Wall Street capitalist as its Treasury secretary, busily nationalising the commanding heights of the global economy as if he were an old-style socialist. But does a bad time […]

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Welcome

Welcome to Philanthrocapitalism week! As world leaders and corporate chiefs descend on New York, this is going to be a big week for philanthrocapitalism – not just because our book will finally be launched on the 30 September. Today, 120 of the world’s leading thinkers began three days of deliberation on global challenges such as […]