Categories
Archive

Review of the Year

This time last year we stuck out our necks and made ten predictions for philanthrocapitalism in 2012. So how did we do? 1. Greater scrutiny of the 1%. We were right that the US presidential election would focus attention on the role of wealthy donors in shaping the political agenda through their cash donations to […]

Categories
Archive

The Fast Track Versus The Global Fund

Earlier this week former British prime minister Gordon Brown emerged from hibernation to lobby for a bold new plan to push education up the global agenda. The world has made progress in recent years but, Mr Brown reports, 68 million kids still get no education. Worse, he warns, cuts to aid budgets mean that we […]

Categories
Archive

King Bill

The leaders of the G20 major economies are going to have lots to talk about at their summit meeting in Cannes at the end of this week: saving the Euro, preventing a meltdown in the global economy and, at the request of summit host Nicolas Sarkozy, the thoughts of Bill Gates on how to finance […]

Categories
Archive

The Art of the Posse-able

If you want a model for how the world can solve its most pressing problems in the 21st Century, it is the posse. As governance systems go, the Wild West approach of rounding up a few available hands and driving the bad guy out of town is certainly messy, but, if our favourite westerns are […]

Categories
Archive

The Year of Fighting Over What Works

Last year we made a set of predictions for 2010. Some were satisfyingly prescient – the surge in mega-giving we predicted for 2010 became a reality through the Buffett-Gates Giving Pledge (even if we were off the mark in betting on Steve Jobs rather than Larry Ellison to be the Gates business rival who would step up to major philanthropy). […]

Categories
Archive

Books of the Year: Our Complete List

2010 has been a good year for books touching on philanthrocapitalism. In no particular order, here are our 15 favourites (not including our own “The Road From Ruin“): “The Power of Social Innovation“, by Stephen Goldsmith. This is a terrific look at some of the best examples of trying to take the ideas of social […]

Categories
Archive

Books of the Year, Part 3

2010 has been a good year for books touching on philanthrocapitalism. In no particular order, here is our final batch of favourites (not including our own “The Road From Ruin“). We will highlight our worst books of the year and remind you of some must-read classics in later posts. “Waiting for ‘Superman’,” by Karl Weber […]

Categories
Archive

Books of the Year, Part 2

2010 has been a good year for books touching on philanthrocapitalism. In no particular order, here is our second batch of favourites (not including our own “The Road From Ruin“). We will select five more of the best, highlight our worst books of the year and remind you of some must-read classics in later posts. […]

Categories
Archive

Good News

“The ‘oh, woe is me’ thing, we’ve just got to get over that. The world has changed. It’s happened.” So said Beth Frerking at a social entrepreneurship conference organised by students at Harvard Business School on February 27th-28th. The “it” in question is the shock to the news media caused by the combination of economic […]

Categories
Archive

Conservative Promises

David Cameron is widely expected to become Britain’s next prime minister. Plenty of people in the world of international development worry that a Conservative British government will be less committed to international aid than the current Labour government. So the surprise appearance that Cameron made last night at an event at the World Economic Forum […]