Making a Difference As a STEM Mentor

Philanthropy and Development: A New Paradigm?

Giving Compass' Take: • In this post from Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, the CEO of Emirates Foundation talks about her organization's efforts at creating sustainable progress through venture philanthropy. • Emirates Foundation focuses on youth development, but the lesson it has learned can apply to any number of areas. Among the key takeaways: Measurement is essential and a more hands-on approach to delivery is preferred. • Here's more on how venture philanthropy is bringing about social impact. Philanthropy is changing. Not in any radical or revolutionary way, but slowly, oil-tanker style. It is moving at a slow but steady pace, creating new structural trends, a new appreciation of learning through failure and a healthy opening up to the idea of collaboration. Some might call it a paradigm shift. Previously, foundations generally implemented time-bound, short-term projects, limited to a 12, 18 or 24-month timeframe, but today’s philanthropists are thinking much more systemically. The lexicon is changing as talk of long-term social investment programs and inter-generational change gains traction. The difficulty of creating sustainable social value through short-term interventions is being recognized. New entrepreneurial ways of thinking are giving rise to new mechanisms of delivery with social enterprises at the fore. This hybrid model combines business principles such as efficiency, accountability and value creation with the traditional focus of social organizations. Social enterprise is also capturing the imagination of younger philanthropists disillusioned with the pure profit mantra of big business but convinced that philanthropy should be more results-driven and more transparent. Accountability and transparency lie at the heart of this new sectoral change. A step-change in both is moving philanthropy very much in line with global trends and the global demands of a twenty-first century where connectivity and a digital revolution kill opacity. It could also render the social impact of philanthropy much greater and more sustainable. Read the full article about a new paradigm in philanthropy and development by Clare Woodcraft-Scott of Emirates Foundation at effectivecooperation.org.