Giving Compass' Take:

• Katherine Fulton, writing for Medium, believes that we need to improve upon strategic philanthropy by incorporating a more diverse array of players and approaches in philanthropic giving. 

• What are the current limitations of strategic philanthropy, and how can donors address them? 

• Read more about the effectiveness of strategic philanthropy. 

We need to question the role of strategic philanthropy as it is practiced today. To create lasting change, philanthropy must move beyond business-like transactions and instead incorporate wisdom and practice from many players and approaches.

And strategic philanthropy’s norms are still gathering force — still promising to inspire and improve the good that philanthropy can do. However, what is also clear is that strategic philanthropy is in danger of becoming its own orthodoxy — a set of conventions that deserve to be questioned and are now being questioned by the next generation of innovators around the globe.

Philanthropy is about making choices, and there are many right answers. Nevertheless, in philanthropy’s long history, leaders regularly come along and ask: Can’t we do better? That’s what has been happening in recent years, as our generation asks the following kinds of questions: Can’t philanthropy be about making measurable progress toward clear definitions of success?

The mindset of strategic philanthropy has significant limitations. The disciplines and cultures of business and management are much better at creating wealth than at creating the large transformative changes that philanthropy seeks to catalyze.

At the heart of strategic philanthropy is an assumption that making a strategy is a rational process, controlled inside an organization or by a donor, to craft a unique philanthropic contribution.

What we need now is an integration, a new whole, that incorporates wisdom and practice from many approaches, choosing what is best for the situation at hand. We must accept the need to let go of control in the face of all we do not know and cannot know. And we must get better at building the necessary, trusting relationships that will bring out the best in people and enable us to co-create a better future.

Read the full article about strategic philanthropy by Katherine Fulton at Medium.