Giving Compass' Take:

• In this Medium post, writer Thomas McMullan examines the new generation of philanthropists that originate from the tech world — while their methods can be effective, accountability is often in short supply.

• This isn't a takedown of Silicon Valley's "disruptive" thinking. Rather McMullan explores how nonprofits can transform and improve over the years, bringing Elon Musk-esque innovation, with more transparency.

• Here's why venture philanthropy is a good source for start-up funding.


When a young soccer team was trapped in a cave in Thailand, Silicon Valley wasn’t the most obvious source of help. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk directed a team of engineers to solve the problem and eventually sent a miniature submarine to Thailand. Some modest praise and a significant amount of mockery followed, and the sub wasn’t used. Yet Musk was one of many trying to do something to help, so why was there so much backlash?

Writing in the New York Times, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci contrasted what she called the Silicon Valley model of “can-do optimism” and “a preference for rapid, flashy, high-profile action” with the “slower, more methodical, more narrowly specialized approach to problems” that underpinned the successful rescue mission. There had been a clash of sensibilities: between the tech industry’s tendency toward engineering-led intervention and the established practices of the divers, between disruption and continuance.

As easy as it may have been to delight in the schadenfreude of Musk’s ego being pricked — here was a man, after all, who had recently shot one of his own cars into orbit — the entrepreneur’s approach says more about the shifting relationship between technology, money, and social good than it does about one man’s hubris. Musk’s submarine may not have been used, but it spoke to powerful forces rippling beneath modern philanthropy, steadily transforming how the nonprofit sector works.

Read the full article about Silicon Valley's business of giving by Thomas McMullan at medium.com.