In Rebuilding Haiti, a Reminder to Avoid Past Mistakes; Plus More: Tuesday’s Roundup
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
January 19, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
- To rebuild Haiti and pull it out of its chronic poverty, philanthropists and aid organizations must learn from previous efforts to help the island country, efforts that were “not always honorable or effective,” says Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, in an opinion article in The Miami Herald.
- High nonprofit salaries are often tolerated in higher education and well-known arts institutions, but heavily scrutinized for charities that help impoverished people, writes Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable, on a Harvard Business Review blog. Mr. Pallotta argues the double standard hurts efforts to fight poverty or other social problems.
- Lucy Bernholz, an adviser to foundations, discusses the ways technology is aiding the Haiti relief effort. Among them: the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Family Finder tool, which helps people regain contact with missing family members; and the volunteer Open Street Maps’ iPhone application, which allows people to download maps and satellite images of the devastated area.
- “[W]hy not match what you’ve given to the Haiti appeals with a gift to help someone facing dire need away from camera lenses?” asks Matthew Bishop, an editor for The Economist, and Michael Green, his co-author on a book about philanthropy, on the Daily Beast.
- Research suggests that helping others may be a primal human pleasure like food or sex, says Nicholas D. Kristoff, a columnist for The New York Times. “Let’s remember that while charity has a mixed record helping others, it has an almost perfect record of helping ourselves,” he writes. Read The Chronicle’s article about such studies.
- The nonprofit world needs a new fund that will support charities’ efforts “to measure and analyze their own outcomes,” writes Tris Lumley, head of strategy at New Philanthropy Capital, a nonprofit research group in London. His views appear on the organization’s blog.
