Report on Gathering of "America's Most Generous"
In November 2006 a group of about a hundred of “America’s most generous” got together at President Clinton’s library for several days to discuss the future of philanthropy at the Clinton/Slate Philanthropist Gathering in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Charles Maclean from Philanthropy Now was credentialed as a journalist to report on the gathering. His insights and summary highlights are invaluable reading for our community. It seems that many of the leaders in philanthropy are beginning to express similar thoughts about how philanthropy needs to be reshaped to meet current needs as we at the institute have been discussing with funders over the past few years.
Here are some of the central themes Dr Maclean took away from the gathering:
Shared Opportunities, Leveraging, Sustainability, Partners, Scalability, Investment, Take Risks, Measure the Right Results, Self-Sufficiency, Innovation, Long Term Commitment, Humanity
Dr Maclean noted, “There was general agreement on the panels that nonprofits must become increasingly self-sufficient and that scalability and sustainability were major factors in survival and success.”
One wonders what these panelists meant by these terms: self-sufficient, scalability, and sustainability in the context of the not for profit world. Does it mean developing their own funding sources? Or creating a for-profit component within their organizations?
Some of Dr Maclean’s other insights follow the jump. A really good read…
A sampling of comments:
Slate Magazine publisher Cliff Sloan set the tone of the private gathering alluding to an “explosion of creativity and innovation in approaches” to giving with “no one content to rest on past laurels” rather tapping the, “collective power to make this a better place”.
Bill Gates Sr. of the Gates Foundation was reflective in saying, “The greatest thing about this job is that you get to say yes”. Our foundation’s approach is to “Work with other organizations already doing it” with an emphasis on prevention of disease not cure of disease. He noted that, “To get government support you must first get widespread public support.”… He noted that he is a “. . . fan of the wealthy paying the estate tax. The world is not improved by the concept of inherited wealth . . . public policy should not be built around a policy of being able to pass billions to our kids.” He drew laughter saying, “Bill is not in my will.”
Read all of Dr Maclean’s comments here.
For audio and video of many of the conference presentations click here.