For my third reflection paper I discussed Dan Pallotta’s view of philanthropy and the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “10 Trade-offs Donors Face That Make Philanthropy Tough but Rewarding”, focusing mostly on how they were similar. The Chronicle of Philanthropy lists various situations that all philanthropists are faced with when giving, one of which being “speed vs. thoroughness.” This made me really think about philanthropy in general, but also Dan Pallotta’s opinion that no real change seems to be happening in the nonprofit sector. I think that real change can be made if more organizations were focused on long term goals that will make a lasting impact rather than solutions that solve the problem only temporarily.
An organization that I feel is doing a wonderful job of addressing important issues in a very thorough manner is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We discussed this foundation briefly in class, but I think that they deserve a bit more attention. As we all know, Bill Gates has a lot of money. He does spend some of his money on rare cars, a very expensive house, or lavish vacations, but most of his money is going to charity. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focuses on various areas of society that need help, including education, health, and empowering women. It’s the way that they go about their work that I find most important. They are using their money and resources to target the roots of the issue. They are dedicated to finding immediate solutions to problems, but also in the long-term solutions. For example, to achieve their goal of ensuring all women and children have the nutrition they need to live a healthy life, they focus on the 1,000 day window after child birth to make sure the child is healthy, but they are also developing new solutions to address malnutrition since previous methods are not working. For women and family planning, their short-term goal is to access to high quality contraceptive information, services, and supplies to women and girls in the poorest countries, while having a long-term goal of universal access to voluntary family planning through policy changes and new development of contraceptive technologies. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does so much more, which you can find in an article that will be linked below, but these two examples show how they immediately solve a problem but then continue to find ways to make to problems hopefully go away. They prefer to be thorough, rather than speedy.
I feel that a lot of organizations and philanthropists can learn from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Instead of providing an immediate solution that will not last very long, and then having to go back and try and fix it again, we should be looking at what is really causing the problems. Creating policy changes and furthering old ideas or coming up with new ones is will hopefully lead to real change. I think Dan Pallotta would also support this approach to philanthropy, because if it starts to show results maybe more people will start donating to the nonprofit sector. I have decided to write my blog post on this topic because when we are choosing our finalist organizations, we should take into consideration whether they are trying to solve the problem, or just fix it temporarily.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Jillian,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, allow me to congratulate you on a very well written, thorough, and thought-provoking blog post. Although I did my reflection paper on a different topic, I feel your post has helped me understand your topic very well. I suppose this topic relates to a sort of impulse decision versus a research led decision. Similar to how some people are prone to impulse-buying, some people can be prone to impulse-donating. I feel that sometimes the mission statement of a charity or the work they propose seems to tug at the heartstrings to the point where people don’t even think, they just donate because they want to support the cause. This can obviously be rather dangerous and can indeed lead to a lack of change in the nonprofit sector.
In class, we have learned about how effective a thoughtful donation can be, no matter how small. It is clearly very important to do research on the charity you really want to give to in order to find the most effective and satisfying way to be a philanthropist.
I believe that this philosophy should be followed by all those who are aspiring philanthropists, including people like Bill Gates who are extremely wealthy. All people, especially those with that much money who could make a massive amount of change, should work to be thorough, not speedy. This can even still be related to a debate we had in class about whether or not the common people should have a say where the wealthy’s money goes, since they might have a better idea where it would make the most difference. Personally I don’t think other people should tell someone how to spend their money, but it is definitely a good idea to listen to their opinions in order to make an informed decision. This would contribute to fixing the problem the first time and not having to go back and fix it over and over.
Great work!
-Thomas Houghton
Jillian,
ReplyDeleteYour post made me realize a key point I need to take into consideration when casting my vote for which organization we, as a class, should support with our grant money. We should be using this chance to permanently solve a problem in Binghamton, not just treat the symptoms. And luckily, with our finalists I think this is possible. All of them seem to want to use the money we’ve been given to make themselves more capable, impactful, and long-lasting. For example, Meals on Wheels wants to use the money to hire a dietician to teach their staff about healthy nutrition. This move shows that the charity not only thinking about improving the quality of their services but is trying to directly tackle the problem of poor, physical health in Binghamton, which, if you recall from the town assessment, is quite prominent. They are not trying to do a patchwork job. They are trying to permanently tackle the issue of poor, elderly nutrition. All of the charities we are considering, I feel, are trying to be as impactful as possible. They don’t just want to throw a few coins at the issues they are taking on, but rather dedicate themselves wholly to solving the problem. Because of this, I know they will use the class’s grant money wisely and meaningfully.
Also, I would like to make a quick comment regarding the article’s and Dan Pallotta’s views on philanthropy. I found both to be ringing with truth. That truth being is that philanthropy is riddled with choices and those choices will impact how successful a charity is. Pallotta focused on how our perception of the choice’s that philanthropist organizations make, impact how they function and how successful they are. The article wrote about how a philanthropist will always have to sacrifice something to accomplish something else. I wonder if you agree with my analysis. You did great by the way.
- Anthony
Hi Jillian, I also did my reflection paper on Dan Pallotta’s view of philanthropy and the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “10 Trade-offs Donors Face That Make Philanthropy Tough but Rewarding”. I really enjoyed doing my paper on this because it opened my eyes to issues and trade-offs that philanthropists face when making decisions. It was also very helpful because we are technically philanthropists facing trade-offs. I think one of the problems alot of philanthropists and donors face is that we/they give non-profit organizations these non-human expectations. They are not expected to fail and if they do "why support an organization that is failing" they are obviously not capable of handling the money we give them. Which brings me to the point you brought up "Speed v throughness" It is better to be thorough than to be speedy. We can not put a clock on effectiveness. I dont think its fair to these organizations to rush on proving they are making change and being effective but, also it is not fair to us for them to feel like they need to rush to prove they were "worthy" of recieving our money.
DeleteI think another thing to negate from is ensuring that organizations feel comfortable with being innovative. As mentioned by Pallota, alot of organizations do not feel the need to be creative or innovative because they are scared to fail. We live in 2019, there are always technological and societal advances so organizations should be on that same type of time in regards to improving how they function and maintain their organization. I think reducing the stigma for non-profits and realizing ourselves that again these organizations are ran by human beings and sometimes things do not go the way we would like it to.We should not feel entitled to see every move of the organization because we choose them to give the money to.
Thomas and Jillian,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your blog posts. I think that as a class the best way to make sure our grant will be most influential for the Binghamton community is to make sure it will be used for a cause that can have the largest short and long term impact. Thankfully, this grant is flexible and can be split into an operating grant and a programming grant. For short term impacts I think we would have to consider which organization will use the operating grant most effectively. For long term impacts we would have to consider which organization will use the programming grant most effectively. Jillian, I'm glad you mentioned the Bill and & Melinda Gates foundation because that is an organization that does both. I believe, if it is possible, more organizations should be doing that.
So when it comes to "Speed vs. Thoroughness" we will be accomplishing both in my opinion. I did my 3rd reflection paper on Dan Pallotta’s view of philanthropy and the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “10 Trade-offs Donors Face That Make Philanthropy Tough but Rewarding” as well. I chose this assignment because I believed it would help me the most when it came to giving me more insight on how to decide on an organization to give our money to. It made me realize that it is more than just comparing the different organizations, but also considering which trade-offs align with our core values.
Regarding Pallota's view on philanthropy, I am very glad you brought that up. His view made me have to take a step back and realize I was being very unrealistic towards my expectations for nonprofit organizations. Part of that has to do with hearing how some nonprofit organizations have not done the most they can with the resources they were provided. Therefore, I began to limit my trust in the bigger organizations that did not use almost all of their income towards helping the cause. Pallotta made me realize that sometimes letting an organization grow can be much better long term than just having them have the same impact for such a long time with not much growth; because they are not using their funds to the best of their ability.
Hey Jillian,
ReplyDeleteI wrote my very own reflection essay on Dan Pallota and The Chronicle of Philanthropy's views as well. I enjoyed reading your post because we can to slightly different conclusions about how different or similar the two views of philanthropy are. You allowed me to see more similarities between the two, which was different of my own opinion since I considered them relatively different. I appreciate this chance to look at it from a different perspective, which I wouldn't have gotten to do without your post :)
I do however at the end of the day agree with you that philanthropists and the non-profit sector needs to adapt a more long term approach to ensure the best results of the goals they wish to achieve. It's interesting how we could have two different perspective about the details but then agree for the overall picture. Thank you for sharing your views with the class and helping me to look at things from a different view!
Hana Makota