Disrupting Philanthropy
Finally - the "technology paper" I've been working on all year is ready to go live! (Draft 2.0, that is) Thanks for your patience. Those of you who requested copies should have received them via email over the weekend.
Anyone else who is interested can read the document (and download and print it) here and below. If you tweet about it please use hashtag #DisruptPhil (I forgot to add this at first, oops!)
For those of you just tuning in, the paper is about the following:
- The point: data are the new platform for change. They will continue to fundamentally alter how philanthropic capital flows.
- The changes are not about the digital technologies that allow access, or about the data themselves. They are about the expectations and behaviors they unleash.*
- These changes, coupled with changes in the public and private sectors, are pushing a transition to a "social economy" made up of interdependent public, private and philanthropic capital and creators of social goods.
- All of these changes are not an end of a story, they are simply the beginning.
- Philanthropy is an industry of passion and volunteerism in which collusion should be encouraged. It may not change in the same way, at the same speed, or driven by the same forces as the newspaper or music industries or the public sector.
Blog posts about it can be found (in order) here, here and here.
We'll be hosting an invitation-only seminar about the document in February and then revising and publishing a final(ish)* version. We don't have the budget to invite you all to the meeting, so my colleagues from Duke and I hope you will download, read, share, and comment on the paper.
Please do so in the comments below, via email to lucy [at] blueprintrd [dot] com, or on twitter at @p2173. All of the input is valued - those of you who read early, early drafts will notice (I hope) the depth and impact of your insights in this new version.
If you tweet about it please use hashtag #DisruptPhil (I forgot to add this at first, oops!)
*Does anything get finished anymore? In this age of crowdsourced rapid prototyping of ideas, it feels like writing has become a series of conversations - draft - conversation - draft. But we'll call the post - February version final. Ideas and improvements and iterations after that will have to take on a new name.
Tags: philanthropy, technology, disrupting, industry, future, nonprofits