monitor institute - the changing context for philanthropy
TRANSCRIPT
THE WORLD AROUND PHILANTHROPY
GLOBALIZATION The growing scale and complexity of today’s
issues—from epidemics to human trafficking—seldom adhere to traditional geographic and programmatic boundaries. At the same time,
resources and ideas to address these problems are coming from all over the world, not just the West. Increasingly, the solutions of the future will need to match this global scope and scale,
and to cross old borders and boundaries.
PRIVATIZATION The power and wealth of private actors—
businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals—has grown dramatically, and now has greater potential than ever before to both
create and solve social problems. Private individuals such as President Clinton can lead
international efforts that once were the province of government. Although the importance and
power of governments has not necessarily diminished, the stage on which they work—and the actors with whom they must interact—has
been transformed.
CONNECTION New tools and technologies—from free
conference calls and emails to blogs, wikis, tags, texts, and twitters—are changing the way we
communicate and connect. These “social media” tools now allow more people to easily engage
and connect, irrespective of geographic distance; they let us access a greater diversity of
perspectives and expertise; and they can facilitate accelerated learning and on-demand access to information—all while reducing the
costs of participation and coordination. The tools are allowing us to re-imagine many of the social acts we already do—activities such as learning,
organizing people, generating ideas, sharing knowledge, and allocating resources—but with
the potential to do them bigger, better, faster, and cheaper than ever before.
ACCELERATION As the density, speed, and scope of connection has increased, our society has accelerated the
rate at which information is communicated, the rate at which it can be incorporated into other processes, and the number of people who can
use that information to create new ideas, synthesize new inventions, and make decisions.
One effect is that there is a new pressure on individuals and institutions at all levels—local, regional, national, and global—to respond more
rapidly to shifting external circumstances.
You and/or Your
Institution
Philanthropy
The World THE WORLD OF PHILANTHROPY
MULTIPLICATION Everything associated with the domain of
social benefit has grown significantly in the last 25 years, making it both a more active and more crowded environment. There are
more wealthy individuals able to give, more foundations, more donor-advised funds, more
giving circles, more philanthropy-related businesses, and more nonprofit organizations competing for funds. This increases the pool
of ideas, resources, and allies for anyone seeking to address an issue, but also could add to the fragmentation and duplication of
effort in the sector.
DIVERSIFICATION Not only is philanthropy growing in size, it is
diversifying by almost every measure. Today’s wealthy include growing numbers of women, Latinos, blacks, Asians, and others who bring their respective cultural traditions as well as their assets. Younger donors who
made their money in industries like IT, finance, and biotechnology bring new
assumptions about how to get things done and how active they want to be as living donors.
And philanthropy is no longer only the province of the rich, as new technologies
make it easier than ever before for people of all backgrounds and perspectives to give.
OBSERVATION The enormous growth in both the number of people engaged in the social sector and the
amount of money coursing through it is sufficient to attract attention. Add in the
increasing availability of information and the means to communicate it instantaneously and mounting scrutiny is inevitable. As the New
York Times has written, the public is now “asking do-gooders to prove they do good.” Both givers and grantees are being held to
rising standards of accountability and transparency by legislators, the media, and
the broader public.
REFLECTION In the last 30 years, people in the social sector
have benefited from enormous advances in their ability to reflect on and share their own
work and the work of others in the field. There is now a history to study and many
more institutions and vehicles through which one can learn it. What began as a relatively
small field with little information available is rapidly becoming a mature industry.
Philanthropists now operate in a context that is deeply different from the one in w h i c h m a n y o f t h e i r institutions, assumptions, and habits were formed. Funders sit in the middle of changes taking place in the broader world outside of philanthropy, and in the midst of irreversible changes within philanthropy itself.
The pressures of this new environment, and the need to respond to it, will shape both how philanthropy is practiced and the role and influence of large donors and foundations within the field for the next generation.
THE CHANGING CONTEXT FOR PHILANTHROPY
© Copyright 2009 Monitor Institute
Philanthropy by the Numbers Number of foundations in the U.S. in 1984: 24,859 Number of foundations in the U.S. in 2007: 75,187 Average number of new foundations created in the U.S. per day in 2007: 8
Number of foundations with assets over $1 billion (in 2007 dollars) in 1984: 11 Number of foundations with assets over $1 billion in 2007: 156 Portion of the field comprised by those billion-dollar foundations: 0.2% Fraction of all foundation assets they hold: 67% Portion of the field comprised by foundations under $1 million: 63%
Total charitable giving (from all sources) in 1984 (in 2007 dollars): $142 billion Total charitable giving (from all sources) in 2007: $314 billion Total foundation giving in 1984 (in 2007 dollars): $5 billion Total foundation giving in 2007: $44 billion
Privatization of Wealth
Of the world’s 100 largest revenue producers in 2007, only 33 were countries/governments (measured by budget revenue). The other 67 were corporations (measured by annual revenue).
Wal-Mart was the eleventh largest revenue-producing entity in the world, behind only the governments of the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Italy, China, Spain, Canada, and the Netherlands.
Bill Gates net worth in 2007, $59 billion, was larger than the GDP of many countries, including Croatia, Ecuador, and Bulgaria.
Cell Phone Growth Number of cell phones globally today: ~4 billion Number of years to sign up the first billion cell phone subscribers: 20 years
Number of years to sign up the second billion subscribers: 40 months Number of years to sign up the third billion subscribers: 24 months
Number of new cell phone customers around the world every minute: 1,000
A few facts and figures about philanthropy’s changing context
Number of High Net Worth and Ultra High Net Worth Individuals
Growth in the Number of U.S. Billionaires and U.S. Foundations
Web pages indexed by Google
© Copyright 2009 Monitor Institute
Number of Articles in All U.S. Newspapers and Wires with Philanthropy in the Headline or the Lead Paragraph
U.S. Billionaires
U.S. Foundations
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