Defending Profit-Minded Corporate Philanthropy, Plus More: Friday’s Roundup
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
November 13, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
- There’s nothing wrong with companies wanting to help their business through their philanthropy and socially-responsible activities, says Jessica Stannard-Friel, a student at Harvard Business School. Corporate giving will be more sustainable if businesses do find it beneficial for their bottom lines, says Ms. Stannard-Friel, in response to a New York Times article that raised questions about Goldman Sach’s giving.
- The New York Times’s 2009 Giving section failed to provide a fresh look at the nonprofit world and offered incomplete coverage of new trends affecting philanthropy, argues Brian Reich, a media and technology expert, on his blog.
- Marc A. Pitman shows how one hospital has adopted an unusual alternative to passing the hat to raise money for its United Way fund-raising drive on The Fundraising Coach. He also encouraged Twitter and Facebook users to chime in with their humorous tag lines for the effort.
- The phrase “social change” is becoming more widely used, perhaps overly so, with foundations and other donors adopting the term as a stand-in for philanthropy, writes Colleen Dilenschneider, a graduate student in public administration and nonprofit management at the University of Southern California, on her blog.
- Nathaniel Whittemore, director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, calls Kiva’s role in helping to promote the myth that the Web site directly links lenders with business owners a “huge goof,” but argues that people should “unequivocally” support the group anyway.
- To succeed during the tough economic times, Jewish nonprofit groups must listen more to young people and use new tools to communicate with them, writes Jerry Silverman, chief executive of the Jewish Federations of North America, in an opinion article in The Forward.
