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Matthew Gerken
Matthew Gerken joined American Philanthropic after serving as a program officer at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where he organized the Institute’s first-ever collegiate debating symposium. He studied intellectual history as an undergraduate at Yale, and has experience in education, event planning, and foundation research. An Illinois native, Matt lives in the Chicago area with his wife and sons.
While Giving USA’s annual reports fulfill a need for serious study of the charitable sector, fundraising professionals would do best to ignore all the buzz and focus on data that is more relevant to their specific organizations.
Like cats on the internet, fundraising fads can be fun to play with. But they ultimately harm your organization by fixating on lower return strategies, implicitly endorsing false premises, and misallocating precious resources.
For too long, direct mail companies have been taking advantage of nonprofit leaders with empty promises, underhanded tactics, and confusing contracts that serve their interests rather than the nonprofit’s.
Philanthropists should learn from the late John Bogle’s humility and localism. Because of his selfless business decisions, we had one less billionaire philanthropist and millions more middle-class givers spread throughout the world.