Giving Compass' Take:

• Digital consulting firm GrantBook discusses how the slow pace of many philanthropic endeavors doesn't necessarily mean that the sector is not embracing innovation: It just takes longer to realize.

• How can we make sure that new ideas are cultivated in philanthropy, while still acknowledging that true, lasting social progress will take time? GrantBook identifies two transformations (wealth transfer and participatory grantmaking) that should give us encouragement.

• Learn more about the role of participatory grantmaking in philanthropy and what it really means. 

Some sectors transform all at once and unexpectedly. Others take time and for those paying close attention, the transformation was a foregone conclusion.

Institutional philanthropy sits firmly in the second category. The philanthropic sector embraces new approaches and solutions at the speed of a three-toed sloth (the world’s slowest animal).

The GrantBook team knows this from experience. And yet, the reluctance to embrace innovative approaches and solutions does not mean change isn’t happening. It’s just happening over years and decades instead of weeks and months.

One of the future waves of innovation that we see coming is the byproduct of the massive wealth transfer and the emergence of participatory grantmaking as an organizing model for effective grantmaking.

Even if it takes ten to twenty years to fully play out, helping a sector that’s currently modeled off of nineteenth-century manufacturing principles to embrace the democratization, decentralization, and to some degree, automation of philanthropic decision-making would be an enormously transformational innovation to commit ourselves to as a company.

Read the full article about the long game in philanthropy by GrantBook at medium.com.