Philanthropy 4.0: What Form of Giving Enables Transformative Change?

If philanthropy is pluralistic – and, like any idea marketplace, that is one of its virtues – then there is no single school of thought that can “solve” complex social questions, because everyone has a different vision for the world. If you’re pro-pluralism in startups, you should also be pro-pluralism in philanthropy.

Investors and funders must abandon the idea that capital alone is sufficient to transform inequitable systems. They must interrogate the power dynamics underlying their decisions and operations to meet the complex challenges of racial, gender, and economic inequality, moving from a “power over” to a “power with” approach. Failure to integrate this ... See more

To keep you focused on the big picture, Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer describe problems as embodying three types of complexity:

• Dynamic Complexity. Where cause and effect are distant in time and space. When it is high, you need to take a systems approach that deals with all the interdependencies. When it is low, you can do a piece by piece approach

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These bedazzled methods fall under the category that Futurist Ilkka Tuomi labels as Epistemic Uncertainty , and the argument goes something like this:

“I’m unsure about the answer to this problem, but I can solve it by gathering more data. Once I gather more data related to the problem, I will be able to devise a solution.”

However, as Tuomi astutely... See more