Philanthropy and Social Investing: BLUEPRINT 2012
The Annual Industry Forecast
by Lucy Bernholz
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Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Lucy Bernholz.
All rights reserved.
License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
http://www.philanthropy2173.com
For more information contact lucy@lucybernholz.com
Ordering information for all formats can be found at http://www.lucybernholz.com/wp/books/
Special thanks to Anne Focke, editor, and Jeffrey Whitten, graphic design, http://www.logomantotherescue.com
Table of Contents
2. Insight: Big Shifts that Matter
The Social Economy: An Expanded Frame
Components of the Social Economy
Technology: Big Data for Social Good
3. Foresight: Predictions for 2012
4. Hindsight: Renovations to Previous Forecasts
Appendix: Details of the Social Economy
What Is this Monograph?
Philanthropy and Social Investing: Blueprint 2012 is an annual industry forecast about the social economy - private capital used for public good. Each year it provides an overview of the current landscape, points to major trends, and directs your attention to horizons where you can expect some important breakthroughs in the coming year.
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Why is it called a blueprint?
A blueprint is a guide for things to come as well as a storage device for decisions already made. Good blueprints, like good buildings, fit their environment, reflect a thoughtful regard for resources, and are carefully engineered and aesthetically pleasing. Blueprints guide the work of masters and are informed by craftsmen. Blueprints can be adjusted as work proceeds and they offer a starting point for future improvements. Good blueprints require a commitment to listen to those for whom they are drawn and to use a common grammar to communicate the results of countless sketches and discarded first drafts. Blueprints are perfect metaphors for philanthropic planning. This document will help you plan for the coming year.
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Who wrote this document?
I’m Lucy Bernholz and I am a philanthropy wonk. I’ve been working in, consulting to, and writing about philanthropy and the social economy since 1990. The Huffington Post calls me a “philanthropy game changer” and Fast Company Magazine named my blog www.philanthropy2173.com “Best in Class.” I’m a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and a frequent conference speaker and media source on the intersections of philanthropy, policy, and technology. On Twitter I’m known as @p2173 and I post most of my articles, speeches, and presentations online at www.lucybernholz.com. I earned a B.A. from Yale University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
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How frequently is the Blueprint updated?
Blueprints are produced annually and published in December of each year.
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Where is more information available on the topics discussed?
The best way to keep up with my thinking on these issues is on my blog, Philanthropy2173. You can subscribe to it for free at www.philanthropy2173.com. Please send media inquiries, conference speaking opportunities, and other requests via email to lucy@lucybernholz.com.
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Ordering information
Bulk orders for twenty or more copies can be placed using the form on www.lucybernholz.com. Smaller orders and single copies can be purchased online at www.Lulu.com.
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There are two things we can be sure will happen in 2012. First, hundreds of millions, probably billions, of dollars will be raised by newly created, issue-specific nonprofit organizations in the United States. Second, that money will be used for political advertising in the American presidential campaign.
An opening statement about political giving might seem out of place in a monograph on philanthropy. It should make you say, “what?” The key challenge for philanthropists going forward will be to understand and adapt to the actual landscape of funding in which they now work. Today this is as much a landscape shaped by the dynamics of political giving and impact investing as it is by charitable giving. It is the gravitational pulls and pushes, the choices made between and among these resources and the enterprises that they fund that matter.
In the first section of this Blueprint 2012, Big Shifts that Matter, I highlight the broad nature of this new landscape - the new social economy - in which we now operate, and I explain why this new terminology is needed. Next I look at how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is influencing nonprofit activities, organizational structure, and revenue sources. The role of “big data” in the social economy today and our responsibilities for considering its role in the future are the final trend in this opening section. These three have something in common - each one is both enormous and emergent. In combination they require us to reconsider several of our core assumptions about what philanthropy is and does.
While the first three trends are significant, their cumulative effects won’t materialize overnight. Noting the nature of the unexpected, I first call out some likely 2012 wildcards and then I make several specific observations in the section, Predictions for 2012. As I do every year, I also note what
I got wrong (and right) in the past, not to keep score but to keep us all honest about the unpredictable nature of predictions, Renovations to Previous Forecasts.
Finally, I present Glimpses of the Future in which I speculate about two shifts currently on the horizon for most philanthropists but that I see as harbingers of (still more) change to come.
Blueprint 2012 is written as a frame within which you can craft a plan for your own goals in the coming year. I welcome your feedback. Please contact me at 2012@lucybernholz.com with questions, suggestions, or examples of how you used it.
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Big Shifts that Matter
Changes in the world around us require us to shift our perspective from the interactions between nonprofits and donors to a much broader frame that can encompass all of the ways we now use private resources for public good. These changes are as broad as globalization and as specific as social enterprise. Some of these changes have been building gradually, such as the rise of big data. Others, such as the scope of a single United States Supreme Court decision, seemed to come on suddenly and caught many of us by surprise.
Amidst headlines of global job market rebalancing, political stasis in the face of crisis, and multi-billion dollar natural disasters, the shifts outlined below may seem rather myopic. On the contrary, I believe that the choices we make about using private resources for public good both reflect these broader challenges and are critical parts of our responses to them.
In the next year we must consider the following three shifts:
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The Social Economy: An Expanded Frame
For decades we have thought of nonprofits and philanthropy as filling the space between government and commerce. The social economy expands this frame to include all of the ways we use private resources to create, fund, and distribute public goods. Shifting our frame is especially important now, as regulatory reform of corporate governance, taxes, political engagement, and digital data all lie ahead.
Life under Citizens United
2012 brings us the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court changed the rules about corporations (nonprofit and commercial) and political spending (Citizens United v. FEC, 2010). In 2012 we will see the impact on revenue flow, on the practical behavior of nonprofit organizations, and on the public’s perception of them.