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		<title>The Philanthropic Enterprise Blog</title>
		<description>The Official Weblog of the Philanthropic Enterprise</description>
		<link>http://blog.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/</link>
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			<title>Fairfax County Bans Homemade Homeless Help</title>
			<description><![CDATA[The Washington Post reports that Fairfax County, Virginia has banned people from serving food to the homeless that has not been prepared in county-certified kitchens. This is justified, they claim, by the medical needs of the homeless:&quot;We're dealing with a medically fragile population... so they're more susceptible to food-borne illnesses than the general population,&quot; said Tom Crowe, the county Health Department's director of environmental health. &quot;We're trying to protect those people.&quot;Food poisoning from grandma's chicken casserole is probably the least health worry of most homless people, about a third of whom suffer from severe mental illness and who suffer from health problems at two to three times the general population.Of course, policy interventions tend to have adverse and unintended consequences, and this is unlikely to be any different. If individuals and small organizations are unable to provide home-cooked meals to the homeless, the likely result will be an increase in eating from trash cans or simply going hungry. Surely these are worse alternatives than eating a casserole made in a home that has not been inspected by the county.But the larger issue is a public policy which separates people from their philanthropy and sterilizes the philanthropic process. Helping others through giving time, treasure, and talent is at the root of philanthropy. Public policies such as Fairfax County's new ban seek to divorce donors from recipients, and make both poorer in the process.Of course, the county's motivation may be more cynical -- it may simply be NIMBYism. By making it more difficult to help homeless people in Fairfax County, it pushes them towards nearby Arlington and Prince William counties.Either way, it does little to help those who are most deserving of our compassion.
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			<pubDate>Wed, 29 Nov 2006 08:00:29 MST</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=19</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>Milton Friedman, R.I.P.</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Sadly, Milton Friedman passed away today, November 16, 2006.  Having had the honor and pleasure to work for the Friedman Foundation during its first year, I have struggled this afternoon with how best to articulate my appreciation to and for Dr. Friedman and his wife, Rose.  It put a smile on my face to come across this statement that Milton made during the Nobel Banquet which followed his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Stockholm in 1976.  In classic Friedman-esque manner, he suggested that even philanthropy has its costs and that it might benefit from the forces of competition:Delighted as I am with the award, I must confess that the past eight weeks have impressed on me that not only is there no free lunch, there is no free prize.  It is a tribute to the worldwide repute of the Nobel awards that the announcement of an award converts its recipient into an instant expert on all and sundry, and unleashes hordes of ravenous newsmen and photographers from journals and TV stations around the world.  I myself have been asked my opinion on everything from a cure for the common cold to the market value of a letter signed by John F. Kennedy.  Needless to say the attention is flattering, but also corrupting.  Somehow we badly need an antidote for both the inflated attention granted to a Nobel laureate in areas outside his competence and the inflated ego each of us is in danger of acquiring.  My own field suggests one obvious antidote:  competition through the establishment of many more awards.  But a product that has been so successful is not easy to displace.  Hence, I suspect that our inflated egos are safe for a good long time to come. (excerpted from Two Lucky People, 1998)I'm not sure about the ego challenges of other Nobel Laureates, but I know that Milton Friedman was one of the most genteel and humble teachers our world has known.  I had heard a story just last week of a friend who had spent time at the Hoover Institution, where during seminars and lectures Milton would regularly invite and respond to the questions of students before addressing those of his more statured colleagues.  This is the same spirit, I believe, that moved the Friedmans to direct their own philanthropic efforts to advancing the cause of parental choice in education across America (and other nations) so that all children might be better equipped through education to live meaningful and productive lives.  I hope that Milton Friedman's passion for liberty will continue to inspire us, whether we're promoting competition, and ultimately freedom, in philanthropy or through philanthropy. ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:33:36 MST</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=18</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>Philanthropy and Technology</title>
			<description><![CDATA[This is an interesting piece from Michael Gilbert about the potential of RSS technology in making grant information more &quot;real-time.&quot; It's interesting that it's not only grant recipients but also grant makers who have a strong interest in the possibilities of better aggregation of grant-making data. Michael Polanyi introduced us to the concept of &quot;polycentricity&quot; decades ago. Such aggregation capabilities would seem a positive way to counterbalance the likely gorilla-in-the-room influence on grantmaking trends of foundation giants such as Gates, Ford, Carnegie, Lilly, etc.. What do others think?Lenorehttp://news.gilbert.org/RSSGrantsSurvey2006 ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2006 08:59:44 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=17</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>Blogging Disasters</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Phil Cubeta wistfully asks &quot;where have all the bloggers gone?&quot;   I confess that I have been rather remiss in posting here these past few months.  I have invited Bill Schambra to consider this his blog home if he would like, but so far he's not nibbled.  I will try to be more diligent in the coming year about stepping up the pace here, meaning that I need to find a handful of others to join me in this space regularly.  I'll get on that!  Phil must really eat his Wheaties every day to keep up his pace.  He must certainly not a)work from a disastrous home office, b) have recently started a 501c3 disaster relief organization, and/or c) have a young child who tends to find the quickest path to disaster if unsupervised for very long.  I'm beginning to think that blogging is a more natural venue for 20-somethings without family or empty nesters who've already juggled the demands of family life!  I'll read a couple of &quot;time management&quot; books and see what might happen... no resolutions, though!  Happy New Year!  Let's pray for a comparatively disaster-lite year. ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:16:58 MST</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=16</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>Top Down, Bottom Up, OR.....</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Chris Corrigan asks some provocative questions about &quot;how we should do things.&quot;  He wonders whether the language of top-down versus bottom-up might help us recharacterize and reframe our political conversations and approaches to getting things done.I wonder, though, whether even the top-down or bottom-up paradigm isn't too polarizing.  It seems more productive to me in the end to think less about a universal prevailing rule--there are times when I think each approach may appropriately apply-- and to pose the question more flexible terms.What if in our political, social, commercial and philanthropic practices we asked the question for any given end:  what means of coordinating human action would yield the optimum outcomes while preserving conditions of human freedom, trust, intimacy and love?Politics, markets, voluntary association and philanthropy at bottom are all merely various modes of coordinating human ends and the means by which we pursue them.  As such, these modes entail various degrees of coercion, persuasion, and &quot;open&quot; engagement (by which I mean we choose to encounter others in a space of trust and mutual respect and expect that genuine two-way learning may occur).   A critical issue for me in most instances where the ends permit would be to discern which mode of coordination among people would best open space for mutual/open engagement to transpire and have generative effects. ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:42:15 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=15</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>Hitchhiker's Guide to Philanthropy Blogs</title>
			<description><![CDATA[In amost memorable passage of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, two would be philosophers, Vroomfondel and Majikthise, realize that the key to philosophical success is essentially mutual destruction...or, in the language of academia, building each other's scores in the citations indices.   Here's the passage:&quot;Yes,&quot; declaimed Deep Thought, &quot;I said I'd have to think about it, didn't I? And it occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourself? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?&quot;The two philosophers gaped at him.&quot;Bloody hell,&quot; said Majikthise, &quot;now that is what I call thinking. Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?&quot;&quot;Dunno,&quot; said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, &quot;think our brains must be too highly trained Majikthise.&quot;So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the door and into a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.(from Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chap 25)This whole blogging phenomenon strikes me as being in this sense quite Adamesque.  Phil Anthropoid suggests that philanthropy bloggers should be busy because ...tatata da!!!  the press may be watching!So, we find ourselves here even referenced by --&quot;GASP&quot;--the Council on Foundations, and I'm guessing the honorable thing to do among bloggers is to post their link here and drive up the link references as counted by those engines of web success such as Google and the like. But this little game of cross-referencing (cross-dressing?  at least the Council on Foundations Emerging Issues author doesn't know what to do with Wealth Bondage, either!  And I won't provide the link.. go look it up if you're into that sort of thing.) leaves me a bit sad.  Is it more important merely that we ARE, or that we have something interesting to say??  All this group hug among &quot;philanthropy bloggers&quot; and even the idea that we're readily classified as &quot;philanthropy blogs&quot; makes me shudder.  Are those of us interested in what is going to be the hottest issue of the 21st century too readily creating our own little ghetto out here?  Here's my general point of view about this site:We're principally about understanding the phenomenon of human action known as &quot;enterprise,&quot; both in its commercial and especially in its non-commercial (hence philanthropic) forms.  Enterprise--to under take something, to risk, to engage in a bit of arbitrage where we spot opportunity for value to be created--cannot be confined to the realm of purely private taking but should also be our first mode of action when we are also aiming to create value that accrues to the greater benefit of our communities, large and small.Are we a &quot;philanthropy blog?&quot;  To the extent that we may from time to time critique the current practices of the field,perhaps so.  To the extent that we hope to reassess the conceptual foundations that shape today's philanthropy, perhaps so.  To the extent that we hope to begin to imagine and describe and defend new ways of thinking about and practicing the arts of giving and community enterprise and voluntary association with an eye to modes of thought and action compatible with the essentials of a free society, maybe.  But for now, go ahead and call us a philanthropy blog if needed--but don't spread the word too far.  It might simply convince someone interested in some of the ideas we might explore here turn instead to Marginal Revolution, and they've already got lots of traffic!]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:43:26 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=14</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>andquot;Searching for a language that describes the goals we all shareandquot;</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Phil Anthropoid wonders whether it's a good thing that we are scurrying to classify emerging philanthropy blogs according to tired &quot;Left/Right&quot; distinctions.  For the record:  This space seeks to foster conversation and build bridges rather to shore up a sclerotic version of what we believe about the world.In a network, each node must have some identity and personality to be distinguishable, but each node must also have facets that make it fairly simple to throw spans between nodes.  It's when we venture out onto these connecting bridges, sometimes seeming to hang with little support over deep chasms, that I believe we will find out whether we can talk to one another productively.It's in a spirit of reaching out, then, I believe that Phil A. suggests that there are goals we all share.  I suspect it's a testable point.  Are we on the verge of entering the model of the Areopagitica here?  Can conversation truly be our shared goal?  Or are there other agendas out there behind all the masks?]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 26 Aug 2005 21:59:05 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=13</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>Foster Friess "Networks" his Philanthropy</title>
			<description><![CDATA[ Investor and philanthropist Foster Friess is sharing his philanthropic efforts via a new website .  It's an interesting approach to testing the waters to find philanthropic allies--and a much simpler approach than the intriguing Omidyar Network site established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar several months ago.  Nevertheless this statement of principle from Foster's site-- This site operates under the premise that the vast, vast majority of Americans are not corrupt, nor vicious, and not in need of masters.  This is your website, and we have launched it prematurely, confident that we can count on your help to &quot;whip it into shape.&quot;  resonates with Omidyar's position statement-- We believe every individual has the power to make a difference.We exist for one single purpose:So that more and more people discover their ownpower to make good things happen. An important difference between the sites is that while Omidyar Network has fostered an experiment in self-organization, FosterFriess.com is advertising a mission and purposes around which people may self-select participation: By networking you with others who want to improve our nation's education, legal, health care, prison, regulatory and taxation systems, we can achieve Private Sector Solutions and begin the War on Bureaucracy. It will be interesting to see how each of these early models of networking for philanthropy will fare!]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:38:47 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=12</link>
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			<title>Please, Stop the Aid!</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Der Spiegel recently printed an interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati, who argues that most foreign aid to Africa does more harm than good.I watched the movie Hotel Rwanda tonight, which depicts the horror of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict of the mid 1990s and the failure of Western nations and the much-lauded UN to offer much in the way of help to victims of that slaughter.Why is it we in developed nations seem too often to offer the wrong sort of help at the wrong time?  This piece by Chuck Colson points out some difficult and unresolved tensions in our attitudes toward and practices of foreign aid of various sorts.  Colson's distinction between &quot;acts of God&quot; and &quot;acts of man,&quot; sheds light on the fact that we seem too often to treat human needs such as hunger as if they were natural disasters, forgetting that hunger on the scale such as that seen in Africa at times all too often stems from the corruption of men and the failure of human systems rather than simply from the consequences of natural conditions.  If Shikwati is right, our calls for philanthropic response and state-based foreign aid, fueled by our genuine compassion at the images of human suffering the media presents to us, should perhaps be replaced by a more thoughtful and consistent effort to understand how we might best use our resources to promote the development of human systems that pave the way for trust, communication, free exchange, and social learning. It is in societies where these and other related traits are healthiest where we find the most resistance to the corruption of men and their institutions and the most resilience in how people deal with disasters that do strike.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jul 2005 23:16:19 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=11</link>
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			<title>Compel them to Pay Up</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Laurie Morrow, the voice of True North Radio and contributor to The Democracy Project explores with her usual panache whether giving is necessarily a virtue.  Laurie suggests that the effects of giving are often far from what the giver may intend.  Much of the time we discuss this as a challenge in philanthropy--how difficult it is for donors to evaluate the outcomes of their gifts.  Laurie turns things upside down by reminding us that even when people give with quite ambiguous motivations--how rare is any act of pure altruism--the unintended consequences are often net positive.To those who believe that we can elevate public virtue by increasing the amount taxed from the citizens' pockets, Laurie presents the answer of a truly liberal soul:... I think it a futile exercise to worry much about improving the quality or quantity of others' virtue (unless they're one's children). It's a sufficient challenge, for me anyways, to nudge along my own small and unreliable supply. And what makes me want to be more good and generous are the quiet acts of generosity in matters large and small by family and friends, acts often unnoticed by and unknown to others. It's these--the very antithesis of compulsion--that make me most conscious of my own shortcomings in charity and most eager to develop a more expansive soul. ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 13 Jun 2005 19:27:20 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=10</link>
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			<title>Philanthropy as Interest</title>
			<description><![CDATA[In his book on Shakespeare's economics, Fred Turner observes that  &quot;As Shakespeare describes it so movingly in the Sonnets, we, and the physical world around us, wear out over time. The order that we inherit is a loan, which not only must be repaid, but also carries with it a finance charge; the repayment is death, and the finance charge is aging.&quot;Perhaps philanthropy is in part something that emerges as part of the finance charge that accompanies a capitalist way of ordering our social and economic exchanges? It &quot;gives something back&quot; to sustain the seed from which it was born? Peter Drucker observed recently that &quot;Fundamentally, a developed society is one in which business is sufficiently productive to enable the resources of society to be devoted to nonprofit ends. The more developed the society, the more prevalent the nonprofits.&quot;In this case, the philanthropic paradigm which focuses on philanthropy primarily as a means of ameliorating the &quot;destruction&quot; and &quot;inequity&quot; wrought by the market would lower our horizons and perhaps take our eye off the higher aspirations we might pursue if we could look with clear-headed gratitude at what our capitalist society has accomplished thus far--all the while allowing that we can and should continue to expand our recognition of the dignity of all persons and take more seriously our responsibility to husband well what the earth loans us for our short time on it.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2005 21:58:35 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=9</link>
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			<title>Technology Revolution</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Just came across this Business Week article from 2003 that describes some ways that technology is addressing social problems. The article suggests the emergence of a new era of philanthropic enterprise sporting new business models that will impact both the not-for-profit and commercial sectors. ]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2005 20:43:01 MDT</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=8</link>
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			<title>Strengthen the Good</title>
			<description><![CDATA[ 'Strengthen the Good'  is the nexus of a network of bloggers committed to raising awareness for small charities around the world. Every three weeks this space highlights a new “micro-charity”—a small, inspiring charity, one with a real face and where $1 makes a difference—and the bloggers in the network link to that post, sending traffic, and awareness, the charity’s way.

This is an intriguing new glimmer of the potential of technology to foster a renaissance of voluntary social action.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 17 Nov 2004 20:11:39 MST</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=6</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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			<title>Street Saints</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Barbara Elliott, president of the Center for Renewal in Houston, has published Street Saints, which takes the reader through the streets of America’s cities to meet people of faith who are renewing America, one heart at a time. These unsung heroes are putting an arm around abused grade schoolers and teaching them to read, facing down drug dealers, and giving hope to bullet-pocked neighborhoods. They are working creatively as social entrepreneurs, turning gang members into computer programmers, and equipping former drug addicts with job and life skills. They are touching the least, the last, and the lost with love. And they are discovering that the transformation is mutual

Equipping the Saints: A Guide to Giving to Faith-Based Organizations is a companion volume to Street Saints.

For more information visit www.streetsaints.com]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 05 Nov 2004 17:53:34 MST</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=5</link>
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			<title>Welcome</title>
			<description><![CDATA[Welcome to The Philanthropic Enterprise Blog!  Our purpose here is to provide a space for conversation about new ideas and developments in philanthropy.  We hope you will check in frequently!]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 05 Nov 2004 13:59:30 MST</pubDate>
			<link>http://www.thephilanthropicenterprise.org/blog/main/post.php?post_id=4</link>
			<category>Blog Entries</category>
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