Thoughts on “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy”: Lessons from my Summer Internship

As the twenty or so regular readers of this blog will note, I debuted Createquity last October with a rather brash six-episode litany of “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy” in the realm of the arts. I say brash because, at the time, I had no experience running a philanthropic program; all I had were my outsiderRead More

Back in action

The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind as I traveled back to the East Coast and almost immediately started my second year of business school. This time around, my diet of classes consists entirely of electives, so I’ve been able to tailor my course schedule more closely to my oft-idiosyncraticRead More

Summer’s gone

I am now back on the East Coast after finishing up what turned out to be a great internship with the Hewlett Foundation‘s Performing Arts Program. In addition to developing a strategic plan for a cultural asset map of the Bay Area, I helped out with some more traditional program officer work and a Year-in-ReviewRead More

Asset management on $5 a day

I’ve been thinking lately about Sudhir Venkatesh’s experiment in extreme poverty immersion and the lessons it holds for grantmakers. As I mentioned in that post, I’ve known only a tight-budget existence in my personal life thus far, which has been reinforced by four years working for a nonprofit with annual expenses in the $1.5 millionRead More

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

This is amazing. Freakonomics guest blogger Sudhir Venkatesh has been working for the past few months with Michael, a trust-fund baby with $78 million to donate over the next few years. After paying 20 grand to a few consultants to help him direct his funds and getting a lot of hogwash about “embracing the innerRead More

Splashing Around the Pool

A roundup of tasty tidbits for your weekend: Adam Forest Huttler is really smart. The founder of Fractured Atlas delivers a very lengthy, but entirely worth reading analysis of what MBAs can bring to the nonprofit sector, and arts organizations in particular. I am by no means a card-carrying member of the “business skills canRead More

Knowledge, part II

I promised a month ago that I would share more cool links as I found them from my work-related research on cultural studies and online tools. Here’s a selection for you: HealthyCity. What Mapping Westchester County did for the tony suburbs of New York, HealthyCity does for Los Angeles. Click on “Advanced Mapping” to seeRead More

The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of GiveWell

When we last left GiveWell, the donor education startup was riding high on the strength of a successful media campaign resulting in a feature story and chat in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and later, coverage in the New York Times, New York Magazine, CNBC, NPR, and other outlets. The young organization, led by ex-hedge-fund twentysomethingsRead More

Art and politics

I mentioned how I was surprised that at the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, political speech at the plenary sessions was so openly embraced. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have been: according to the NEA’s Artists in the Workforce report (pdf), eight of the top ten states by number of artists per capita are blueRead More

Once more, with feeling

As a final epilogue on NPAC before it completely disappears from our memories (the official blog is already looking pretty dead), and in the spirit of contributing constructively to the discussion, I thought I’d share how I voted among the choices that were given to us at the final AmericaSpeaks town hall meeting/caucus session, andRead More