Nathan Washatka
Fred Rogers, host and star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, invited all of use to be his neighbor. But can we really be neighborly to everyone?
While Scrooge’s name has come to be associated with a joyless parsimoniousness, his transformation in A Christmas Carol actually demonstrates real philanthropy.
Door-to-door solicitations can promote neighborliness and serve as a valuable part of a healthy community.
Five prominent foundations recently pledged to support more overhead expenses. This is good news—but will it really be a radical shift in the landscape of fundraising?
“Stewardship,” traditionally, implies a hierarchy, a notion of subservience. Is it a fitting word for the fundraising profession today?
In a recent piece in the New Yorker, Nathan Heller worries that GoFundMe exacerbates the problem of using stories to exploit the emotions in order to generate donations—rather than relying on more data-driven giving.
Most of us have wrestled with the question of whether to support a panhandler. Does our lack of knowledge about how our gift will be used make us morally culpable?
Giridharadas prescribes the replacement of one center of power for another. Where does that leave civil society?
John Ruskin’s keen observations on living coherent and integrated lives sheds some light on our modern practice of “cause marketing” and “consumption philanthropy.”
Philanthropy is sometimes said to be “society’s risk capital.” But without market accountability, without consumers or competitors, we can’t properly speak of philanthropic grantmaking as “risk taking.”