As New Year predictions go, I have warmed to the ten made by Matthew Bishop of The Economist and Michael Green, his co-author of Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World in their blog The Year of Fighting Over What Works this week.
Incisive and helpful and what’s more, set up to challenge some existing notions– including mine – about whither the way of corporate giving that so many companies pin their CSR masts to.
Matthew and Michael foresee a growth in several areas: in “impact investing”; in the “privatisation of aid” from private donors and impact investors as government aid is curtailed; in the number of private donors – the “philanthrocapitalists” – but with strings attached as these “new super-donors put their money to work in a thoughtful, impactful way” putting as much emphasis on quality as on the quantity of their giving; and in celebrity philanthropy from the Hollywood, sports and music elite.
This has interesting implications for corporate philanthropy – especially in those companies which are publicly listed and where the founder is no longer in charge but free to go solo on whatever mission he or she aspires to or where they have set up corporate foundations to channel their giving.
Will we see more corporate foundations popping up from more Global Fortune 500 companies and more ex-CEOs and Chairmen setting up shop as “philanthrocapitalists”?.
Matthew and Michael predict that a key global target for philanthropists will be maternal and child health. This is consistent with the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health that came out of the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in September 2010, securing the UN US$ 40 billion in resources for a global effort aimed at 16 million women and children up to 2015.
The duo also predict a closer link between mass philanthrocapitalism and politics, where they suggest that entities such as Kiva which have built up a sizeable community of donors and micro-lenders will channel their collective power for political influence and policy shaping. This takes the impact we have seen of technology–particularly of mobile phones – to mobilize citizen power into yet another dimension.
But I reserve my most favourite prediction till the last – that “maybe, just maybe, 2011 will be the year when social enterprise jumps the shark”. It challenges my notion that social entrepreneurs , operating as speedboats to the super tankers that big business tends to be, stand a better chance of finding quicker solutions to development challenges.
Although Matthew and Michael acknowledge the impact of social entrepreneurs, they also voice the concern that some may not be effective and suggest that the wishy-washy language of social entrepreneurship does no good. So they are hoping that 2011 will yield a “much needed, more precise lexicon to describe what, in the world of social innovation, actually works”. Now this I go along with – as it echoes my concern over loose language slowing us up.
Tags: corporate philanthropy, impact investing, philanthrocapitalism, social entrepreneurs
