Driving social entrepreneurship and innovation
Last month, I wrote about the need to establish a culture of social entrepreneurship and social innovation in Baltimore. I was wrong; I misdiagnosed the problem. A culture and community focused on...
View ArticleHow Philanthropy Can Catalyze Social Impact
Robert Egger is a textbook example of how a pioneering entrepreneur can effect sustainable social change and impact. In the late eighties, Egger identified an innovation (food recovery) and launched a...
View ArticleKickstarting Social Change
The New Republic has a particularly harsh critique of Kickstarter, deriding it as the “world’s No. 1 [would-be] solver of First World problems.” I’ve my reservations about Kickstarter, but Noreen...
View ArticleSeth Godin and Non-profit Failure
Seth Godin believes the biggest, best-funded nonprofits have an obligation to be innovators. I agree. I quibble with how he arrives at this conclusion. Godin writes, The thing about most cause/welfare...
View ArticleMoney Matters in Nonprofit Failure
Mark makes an insightful comment to yesterday’s post on financial resources, nonprofit performance and innovation. He writes, Creating a culture of innovation where the focus is on doing more with less...
View Article“Scaling” for Social Impact
Kevin Starr, executive director at the Mulago Foundation, has sparked a fascinating conversation on the debate of for-profit versus nonprofit social enterprise. Here’s the crux of Starr’s position, If...
View ArticleBaltimore: A Startup Hotbed of Another Kind?
Andrew Zaleski has an excellent, sober commentary on Baltimore’s status as a “startup hotbed.” 410 Labs founder Dave Troy reminded me of Matt Yglesias’ three-month old post on local governments and...
View ArticleThe Futility of Philanthropy in the Face of Policy
The tenuous relationship between public policy and philanthropy is best personified in the form of billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, known as much for his charitable largesse as he is...
View ArticlePhilanthropy, Power and Race
Last week, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers’ Annual Meeting and 30 Year Anniversary, punctuated by a keynote from the brilliant Lucy Bernholz,...
View ArticleConfessions of an Angry Black Man
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” – James A. Baldwin Several years ago, when I was a lowly $10 an hour research assistant and...
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