- Paperback
- ISBN: 9780262532969
- Pub date: August 24, 2007
- Publisher: The MIT Press
- 424 pp., 6 x 9 inches
Effective Philanthropy
Organizational Success through Deep Diversity and Gender Equality
By Mary Ellen Capek and Molly Mead
Published by The MIT Press, funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
Winner of the 2007 Independent Sector/ARNOVA Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize for the best book on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector that informs policy and practice.
This book is about “organized” philanthropy in the United States, philanthropy by foundations: tax-exempt nonprofit, charitable organizations created by individuals, families, and corporations with gifts of money, stock, or other resources invested to generate income used to make grants. In 2004, more than 66,000 foundations with over $476.7 billion in assets gave an estimated $32.4 billion in grants to nonprofit organizations to support a variety of activities, including research, health, education, arts, and culture as well as both systemic and charitable efforts to alleviate poverty and improve people’s lives.
In Effective Philanthropy, Mary Ellen Capek and Molly Mead offer strategies for strengthening organizations through a commitment to diversity and gender equality. Capek and Mead’s research shows that institutionalizing a more nuanced understanding of what they call “deep diversity” allows organizations to make full use of all the resources they have available, both inside and outside their doors. The authors show how foundations have used “differences that divide us”—race, class, gender, sexual orientation, geography, age, religion, physical ability, and others–to become learning organizations, a proven strategy for organizational effectiveness.
By virtue of their “power of the purse” and more subtle forms of influence, foundations are key players in US social, economic, and public policy and are increasingly influential internationally. When foundations function effectively, there is potential for tremendous public benefit, and Capek and Mead argue that goals for equity in philanthropy are similar to goals for any effective organization. Offering demographics, case studies, strategic funding initiatives, theoretical analyses, and original research, Effective Philanthropy describes models for building effective foundations that can be applied to all kinds of institutions—large and small, public and private, national and regional, bureaucratic and entrepreneurial—including colleges and universities, nonprofits, government agencies, and multinational corporations.The diverse case studies and funding initiatives highlighted in the book include California Wellness, the Otto Bremer Foundation, the Philadelphia Foundation, the Ms. Foundation for Women’s Collaborative Fund for Women’s Economic Development, and programs for women and girls funded by the United Way of Massachusetts Bay.
”I am impressed with the authors’ ability to candidly bring to the surface the barriers that continue to exist in philanthropy, denying diversity and therefore denying reality and contemporary solutions. They captured this succinctly in their observation, ‘This is Norm at work, Norm overwhelming Norma.’ I hope the book will accelerate overdue and badly needed equity and balance.”—Brian O’Connell, co-founder and former President of the Independent Sector
”This is the strongest and best-organized argument I have seen for placing gender front and center in all considerations of diversity, for including the female half of humanity in policy decisions, for removing gender from ‘special interest’ analysis, and for funding women and girls.” —Mark Dowie, author of American Foundations: An Investigative History
”This book is an invaluable tool in making philanthropy more effective and making full empowerment more universal — for both women and men.” —Tori O’ Neal-McElrath, Principal, O’Neal Consulting Services
”This book will be significant in bringing the need for diversity and democratic grantmaking practices front and center. The scholarship is groundbreaking and thorough. Altogether, the book is creative, innovative, and in many ways unique.” —Teresa Odendahl, author of Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and Self-Interest among the Philanthropic Elite