May 1, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Grassroots Philanthropy: Field Notes of a Maverick Grantmaker
by Bill Somerville with Fred Setterberg
Foundations in the United States collectively control billions of dollars and have almost unfettered freedom in how they spend their money, yet much grant making is timid, slow, and overly bureaucratized, argues Bill Somerville, founder of Philanthropic Ventures Foundation.
“How can the staff, directors, and trustees of philanthropic institutions apply the kind of energy, strategy, and creativity that will reap the most-significant results?” Mr. Somerville asks.
He suggests five principles that foundations can adopt to improve their grant making and describes each of them in detail: “Locate outstanding people doing important work; move quickly (and shred paper); embrace risk; focus on ideas instead of problems; and take initiative.”
Mr. Somerville encourages foundation officials to get out from behind their desks and take a close look at the people and organizations that need money. He also argues that philanthropies must take more risks and look at failure as a learning tool.
“When grant makers embrace risk, it’s because they perceive an opportunity to make changes that would otherwise prove impossible,” he writes. “Risk taking in philanthropy is chiefly a matter of summoning the courage to question the old ways and try something new.”
Publisher: Heyday Books, P.O. Box 9145, Berkeley, Calif. 94709; (510) 549-3564; fax (510) 549-1889; http://www.heydaybooks.com; 144 pages; $30; ISBN 978-1-59714-084-3.
