I'm sorry not to have posted for so long. I've been experiencing one of my intermittent periods of self-doubt - wondering whether the degree of interest shown justifies the effort, or whether I'm really writing to myself. There are a number of options -
- discontinue and do nothing
- carry on
- broaden the remit, and maybe therefore the interest
- discontinue and perhaps twitter instead
Anyway - I'm thinking....
Thursday 13 August 2009
Friday 15 May 2009
The Meaning of Long
Sorry for the long silence.
Actually it’s ‘long’ about which I want to ruminate in this post. I realise that I’ve become fascinated by all those projects which track people over a long period of time. Nowadays, many of them are film-based; the much-copied 7-Up series, which is following a group of children from the age of 7 starting in 1964 (the ‘children’ are now in their early 50s) is the benchmark. The whole series so far, up to and including 49 Up, is available on DVD, and watching them back-to-back, rather than with a 7-year gap, is an engrossing and moving experience. Give it someone you love and then borrow it from them, or watch it with them (56 Up is expected in late 2011 or early 2012). Beware imitations – from the brief extracts I’ve seen, the BBC’s Child of Our Time, for example, doesn’t come close. Channel 4 has been running an interesting variation focusing on a group of children with special needs, who it has followed for 10 years – Born to Be Different is a dignified and, again, very moving series lacking the voyeuristic tendencies of so much of that Channel’s recent output (How To Look Good Naked [ans: wear some clothes], Embarrassing Bodies etc etc ad nauseam).
When I was at JRCT we funded something called HighScope, founded by Dr David Weikart who, Google tells me, has since been called to higher service. He was a very engaging and challenging fellow, as I recall, but the point of mentioning him here is that in 1962 he set up something called the Perry Preschool Project which, as his New York Times obituary (2003) states -
…took 123 low-income 3- and 4-year-olds and placed 58 in a preschool with highly trained, well-paid teachers who made weekly visits to parents. The rest received no extra attention. He [Weikart] then followed the children through life, regularly checking on them…The results have been consistently impressive. The former preschoolers were more likely to own homes and earn more than $2,000 a month, less likely to receive welfare or be arrested for crimes. Mothers were more often married… He found that $15,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars was spent on each child, while the savings to schools, welfare, prisons and potential crime victims exceeded $145,000. These results were duplicated in studies in North Carolina and Chicago, and the findings became a major element in the national discussion about Head Start...
Weikart studied these children for 40 years, and the learning has informed the nature of pre-school provision in the US and the UK. But all this is by way of background. I’ve been moved to put finger to key on this subject now having just read an amazing article in The Atlantic (available on line here ) which describes what has emerged from a 72-year (sic) study of 268 men who entered Harvard in the late 1930s. I cannot begin to summarise it; it is a most extraordinary study (official name: the Harvard Study of Adult Development; unofficially known as the Grant Study, after its founder, W.T.Grant), and the person who has been responsible for it for the past 42 years is himself a fascinating person. The learning, the understanding about what makes us tick, the insight into the important questions, about how to live, and - the title of the article - 'what makes us happy?',is phenomenal.
All of which presents a real challenge to the foundation world, with its continued obsession with three year funding. Weikart was constantly having to pursue new sources of funding for his work (which continues today – see here). As the Atlantic article makes clear, funding was also an issue for the Grant Study:
Most longitudinal studies die on the vine because funders expect results quickly. W. T. Grant was no exception. He held on for about a decade—allowing the staff to keep sending detailed annual questionnaires to the men, hold regular case conferences, and publish a flurry of papers and several books—before he stopped sending checks. By the late 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation took an interest, funding a research anthropologist named Margaret Lantis, who visited every man she could track down (which was all but a few). But by the mid-1950s, the study was on life support.
We urgently need new models of foundation funding which provide a degree of assurance and encouragement for those embarked on long-term exercises, alongside the necessary mechanisms for accountability. If, despite market exigencies etc, endowed trusts continue to exist let some of them at least have the courage of their longevity – I long to see the announcement of the first 30 year grant… Meanwhile, if you read nothing else this week, do have a look at the Atlantic article. My guess is that at some point the good old Guardian will provide us with a shortened version, but you, being part of the small cultural elite which has the good taste to follow this blog, will surely want to read the whole thing (and - seriously - tell your friends; they will thank you for it).
Actually it’s ‘long’ about which I want to ruminate in this post. I realise that I’ve become fascinated by all those projects which track people over a long period of time. Nowadays, many of them are film-based; the much-copied 7-Up series, which is following a group of children from the age of 7 starting in 1964 (the ‘children’ are now in their early 50s) is the benchmark. The whole series so far, up to and including 49 Up, is available on DVD, and watching them back-to-back, rather than with a 7-year gap, is an engrossing and moving experience. Give it someone you love and then borrow it from them, or watch it with them (56 Up is expected in late 2011 or early 2012). Beware imitations – from the brief extracts I’ve seen, the BBC’s Child of Our Time, for example, doesn’t come close. Channel 4 has been running an interesting variation focusing on a group of children with special needs, who it has followed for 10 years – Born to Be Different is a dignified and, again, very moving series lacking the voyeuristic tendencies of so much of that Channel’s recent output (How To Look Good Naked [ans: wear some clothes], Embarrassing Bodies etc etc ad nauseam).
When I was at JRCT we funded something called HighScope, founded by Dr David Weikart who, Google tells me, has since been called to higher service. He was a very engaging and challenging fellow, as I recall, but the point of mentioning him here is that in 1962 he set up something called the Perry Preschool Project which, as his New York Times obituary (2003) states -
…took 123 low-income 3- and 4-year-olds and placed 58 in a preschool with highly trained, well-paid teachers who made weekly visits to parents. The rest received no extra attention. He [Weikart] then followed the children through life, regularly checking on them…The results have been consistently impressive. The former preschoolers were more likely to own homes and earn more than $2,000 a month, less likely to receive welfare or be arrested for crimes. Mothers were more often married… He found that $15,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars was spent on each child, while the savings to schools, welfare, prisons and potential crime victims exceeded $145,000. These results were duplicated in studies in North Carolina and Chicago, and the findings became a major element in the national discussion about Head Start...
Weikart studied these children for 40 years, and the learning has informed the nature of pre-school provision in the US and the UK. But all this is by way of background. I’ve been moved to put finger to key on this subject now having just read an amazing article in The Atlantic (available on line here ) which describes what has emerged from a 72-year (sic) study of 268 men who entered Harvard in the late 1930s. I cannot begin to summarise it; it is a most extraordinary study (official name: the Harvard Study of Adult Development; unofficially known as the Grant Study, after its founder, W.T.Grant), and the person who has been responsible for it for the past 42 years is himself a fascinating person. The learning, the understanding about what makes us tick, the insight into the important questions, about how to live, and - the title of the article - 'what makes us happy?',is phenomenal.
All of which presents a real challenge to the foundation world, with its continued obsession with three year funding. Weikart was constantly having to pursue new sources of funding for his work (which continues today – see here). As the Atlantic article makes clear, funding was also an issue for the Grant Study:
Most longitudinal studies die on the vine because funders expect results quickly. W. T. Grant was no exception. He held on for about a decade—allowing the staff to keep sending detailed annual questionnaires to the men, hold regular case conferences, and publish a flurry of papers and several books—before he stopped sending checks. By the late 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation took an interest, funding a research anthropologist named Margaret Lantis, who visited every man she could track down (which was all but a few). But by the mid-1950s, the study was on life support.
We urgently need new models of foundation funding which provide a degree of assurance and encouragement for those embarked on long-term exercises, alongside the necessary mechanisms for accountability. If, despite market exigencies etc, endowed trusts continue to exist let some of them at least have the courage of their longevity – I long to see the announcement of the first 30 year grant… Meanwhile, if you read nothing else this week, do have a look at the Atlantic article. My guess is that at some point the good old Guardian will provide us with a shortened version, but you, being part of the small cultural elite which has the good taste to follow this blog, will surely want to read the whole thing (and - seriously - tell your friends; they will thank you for it).
Monday 6 April 2009
When you're in a hole, start digging.
As I was digging our little allotment over the weekend - well, it's actually a bit of someone else's, with their blessing of course - I was reflecting on the fact that people keep asking me how the credit crunch is affecting British foundations. Thinking about this sort of thing while digging is probably a sign of a sad mind, but, as we shall see in due course, there are connections….
Anyway, when people ask me these things, I tell them I don't know because there have been no dramatic grants programme closures as far as I know, and some trusts have been saying that it's business as usual. ACF is surveying the scene and it will be interesting to see the outcome. Problems have been more severe elsewhere in the English-speaking world, I gather. A correspondent from New Zealand tells me that two trusts there – including the biggest by far – have suspended grant making. And in the US, the combination of the crunch and Madoff has led to severe difficulties for some foundations apparently. Speaking the other day with a charity auditor, I got a sense that many foundations may be in denial and that the real effects will be felt once dividends reflect the crunch -- in other words, this crisis has a long tail.
All of which might usefully cause foundations to reflect, first, on whether they could usefully work with others begin to share overheads in order to get more bang for their buck and second, whether they have assets beyond money which they could usefully exploit to the benefit of their hard-pressed applicants. I don't hold out much hope for the first option as it seems to me that some foundations would rather go down screaming "we've got to stay independent!" than prosper in combination with others.
But the second possibility is surely not beyond imagining. Foundations have offices, networks, skills, and sometimes even tangible valuable assets like land. This, then, might be the moment for them to think about how they can sweat these assets for the ultimate benefit of those who have traditionally needed their grants.
A rather extreme example of this cropped up some months ago when I was privileged to listen in on a conversation between a leading social entrepreneur who is well-known for his creative thinking and, even more important, his ability to make things happen, and the denizens of a British foundation. Said foundation has a chunk of land and is not sure what to do with it. Someone had had the excellent idea of inviting the social entrepreneur to walk round the land and to suggest a way forward. He took one look at it and said "you could fit a lot of allotments in here". He went on to imagine a place to which children would flock in order to learn about growing and preparing food. There could be greenhouses in which tropical fruits might be grown -- and places where they could be used as ingredients of ice cream. There would be places to learn to cook. This would be a kind of national food centre - all very much in the sprit of St Jamie, and linking with ideas about 'education with production' which have been much discussed and tried in parts of the developing world.
I don't know whether the foundation concerned decided to go ahead on these lines or not -- I hope they did. Meanwhile, I'll carry on with our little patch; nothing tropical there -- just a few lettuces, courgettes and – so appropriate to this blog (I told you there were connections) -- some rhubarb.
Anyway, when people ask me these things, I tell them I don't know because there have been no dramatic grants programme closures as far as I know, and some trusts have been saying that it's business as usual. ACF is surveying the scene and it will be interesting to see the outcome. Problems have been more severe elsewhere in the English-speaking world, I gather. A correspondent from New Zealand tells me that two trusts there – including the biggest by far – have suspended grant making. And in the US, the combination of the crunch and Madoff has led to severe difficulties for some foundations apparently. Speaking the other day with a charity auditor, I got a sense that many foundations may be in denial and that the real effects will be felt once dividends reflect the crunch -- in other words, this crisis has a long tail.
All of which might usefully cause foundations to reflect, first, on whether they could usefully work with others begin to share overheads in order to get more bang for their buck and second, whether they have assets beyond money which they could usefully exploit to the benefit of their hard-pressed applicants. I don't hold out much hope for the first option as it seems to me that some foundations would rather go down screaming "we've got to stay independent!" than prosper in combination with others.
But the second possibility is surely not beyond imagining. Foundations have offices, networks, skills, and sometimes even tangible valuable assets like land. This, then, might be the moment for them to think about how they can sweat these assets for the ultimate benefit of those who have traditionally needed their grants.
A rather extreme example of this cropped up some months ago when I was privileged to listen in on a conversation between a leading social entrepreneur who is well-known for his creative thinking and, even more important, his ability to make things happen, and the denizens of a British foundation. Said foundation has a chunk of land and is not sure what to do with it. Someone had had the excellent idea of inviting the social entrepreneur to walk round the land and to suggest a way forward. He took one look at it and said "you could fit a lot of allotments in here". He went on to imagine a place to which children would flock in order to learn about growing and preparing food. There could be greenhouses in which tropical fruits might be grown -- and places where they could be used as ingredients of ice cream. There would be places to learn to cook. This would be a kind of national food centre - all very much in the sprit of St Jamie, and linking with ideas about 'education with production' which have been much discussed and tried in parts of the developing world.
I don't know whether the foundation concerned decided to go ahead on these lines or not -- I hope they did. Meanwhile, I'll carry on with our little patch; nothing tropical there -- just a few lettuces, courgettes and – so appropriate to this blog (I told you there were connections) -- some rhubarb.
Thursday 12 March 2009
Arrested Philanthropy
Another birthday, another boxed set...thankfully, because a carefully chosen one is an excellent gift (if you haven't started to plough your way through The West Wing, The Wire etc, well, there are much worse ways to waste your life...). My first comedic venture into the boxed set world is Arrested Development, in which, to my delight, there is a character called Lindsay Fünke, a member of a dysfunctional and wealthy family, who gets into charity, but lacks consistency or commitment (another week, another cause...). The very first episode shows her declining a canapé at a party, saying she's absolutely stuffed, and above her head is a banner – Stop the Hunger. Another party is in aid of HOOP, an anti-circumcision charity (HOOP, in case you haven't worked it out, stands for Hands Off Our Penises). In a later episode she says – “I care deeply for nature”. To which her brother points out that “You're wearing ostrich-skin boots”. Lindsay’s response: “Well, I don't care about ostriches”. Lindsay has also spoken out against cattle ranching and fish farming, and was on the committee to improve school lunches with more meat and fish.
All this gives an excellent excuse to quote yet again Mordecai Richler’s book, Barney’s Version, in which Duddy Kravitz, a rich and successful hustler, yearns for social respectability. In pursuit of it, he has a brainwave – he’s looking to start a foundation in aid of some disease or other. Problem is, most of the big ones have gone. As he says –
.. it’s a tough call. Don’t tell me. I know. Multiple sclerosis has already been nabbed. So has cancer. Parkinson’s. Alzheimer’s. Liver and heart diseases. Arthritis. You name it, it’s gone. So what I need is some disease still out there, something sexy I could start a charity for, and appoint the governor general, or some other prick, honorary patron …… Polio was terrific. Something kids get tugs at the heartstrings. People are suckers for it.
Now, the eponymous hero – Barney – eventually suggests Crohn’s Disease, an unpleasant disease affecting a significant number of people. He explains it to Duddy –
It leads to gas, diarrhoea, rectal bleeding, fever, weight loss. You suffer from it you could have fifteen bowel movements a day
Who responds –
Oh, great! Wonderful!…. I say, how would you like to be a patron for a charity for farters? Mr. Trudeau, this is DK speaking, and I’ve got just the thing to improve your image. How would you like to join the board of a charity my wife is organising for people who shit day and night? Hey there everybody, you are invited to my wife’s annual Diarrhoea Ball. Listen, for my wife it has to have some class. I want you to come up with a winner by nine o’clock tomorrow morning….
And then there’s Renu Mehta and the Fortune Forum. Oh, but I forgot, that’s real.
Sunday 22 February 2009
They don't know it all
There’s a website – www.ohnothereisnt.com – where the world of UK philanthropy offers itself up for real debate about strategies, issues, directions. Here, the really controversial issues are debated – currently, for example, the role of philanthrocapitalism. It’s a place where there are links to the really interesting stuff from the broadsheet press (such as the excellent piece by Marina Hyde in the Guardian recently (sample: Charity may begin at home, but philanthropy begins with paying tax…Even a man of Stanford's preposterous bluster would struggle to explain how enabling tax dodging has anything to do with giving a toss about other people. He and his ilk are fauxlanthropists. ). This site is very much in the spirit of open debate so fully embraced by the UK foundations. The Association of Charitable Foundations now has a section (ohnoitdoesnt.com) of its much-improved website where the public, and especially grant seekers, are encouraged to submit their views about organised philanthropy, and to debate these with each other and with the trustees and directors of the foundations – and a very lively debate it is too. What’s also very encouraging is how many of the progressive foundations have themselves opened their websites to 2-way traffic (e.g. www.ohnotheyhavent.com ); instead of just using them to provide information and guidance for potential applicants, or even allowing applications via their websites, an increasing number invite comment on their policies in an attempt to shape them with the benefit of the insights of those actually doing the hard work out there in the field. The world of philanthropy is clearly not afraid of open debate.
OK, I lied. And I’m sorry if anyone wasted time following those dummy links (the Guardian one is for real, and the article to which it links is, in my view, spot-on). But you get my point.
To be fair, Philanthropy UK – and a real link is coming up – does at least seek to cover the controversies in its quarterly newsletter but unless I've missed something, even P-UK is one-way traffic. So why isn't all that stuff above true? What kind of insecurity is it that makes UK philanthropy afraid of real debate? This isn't just a matter of responding to the zeitgeist. By saying, in effect, “we don't know it all and we value the views and ideas of others”, the field would also be doing just a little about the unequal power relationship between grant seekers and grant makers. I’m not sure whether they do this kind of thing better in the USA – I surfed a bit but with no great discoveries. Hey, we could be first!
OK, I lied. And I’m sorry if anyone wasted time following those dummy links (the Guardian one is for real, and the article to which it links is, in my view, spot-on). But you get my point.
To be fair, Philanthropy UK – and a real link is coming up – does at least seek to cover the controversies in its quarterly newsletter but unless I've missed something, even P-UK is one-way traffic. So why isn't all that stuff above true? What kind of insecurity is it that makes UK philanthropy afraid of real debate? This isn't just a matter of responding to the zeitgeist. By saying, in effect, “we don't know it all and we value the views and ideas of others”, the field would also be doing just a little about the unequal power relationship between grant seekers and grant makers. I’m not sure whether they do this kind of thing better in the USA – I surfed a bit but with no great discoveries. Hey, we could be first!
Tuesday 3 February 2009
I merely ask
As I write, the nation’s power stations are being hit by what are described, quaintly, as ‘wildcat’ strikes. These are the result of a free market in labour in Europe, which, at a time of sharply rising unemployment, has led many working people to resent jobs going to foreigners (in this instance, Italians). While the employers and those who let the contracts stoutly deny that this is about cheap labour leading to reduced costs, the widespread suspicion remains that this is exactly what it’s about. The fact that the issue arises at all leads me to wonder where the trade unions have been all these years while the world has been globalising. In the very week that the Guardian has shown us, in some detail, how big British companies play the global market so as to minimise the amount of tax they have to pay, it seems that the unions have yet to respond in like manner – to organise internationally, at the very least on a pan-European basis so as to ensure that you have to pay workers their market rate, wherever they come from and wherever they’re working. Why isn't the Italian branch of Unite bringing its people out in sympathy with those British workers in Lincoln? And what about the foundations? It’s my contention that in a very difficult economic situation, people who so far haven’t, will begin to notice these very few largely unaccountable agglomerations of wealth and to ask themselves “What’s that for then? Can’t we have some of that?” Those asking the question may be politicians, taxpayers, local authorities, or hard-pressed service providers. And how, then, will the UK foundations answer? Will they be sufficiently internationalised to make common cause with analogous organisations elsewhere in the world – and especially in the European Union? Or will they be picked off, nibbled at, and over time find their autonomy eroded? Will the combination of the ACF and the EFC be strong enough to defend them? I merely ask.
Monday 19 January 2009
A Pub Bore at the Movies
This is the time of year when it’s a challenge to fit in all the great movies which come out to line up with the awards season. I have therefore been given permission to divert from my main themes in this posting, in order to chunter about what I've seen recently. This isn't Peter Bradshaw, btw; no, this is the cyber-equivalent of the bore in the corner of the pub who just needs to tell you what he’s been up to recently.
First, Frost/Nixon, which we saw followed by a live Q&A by satellite (well, you can’t expect these busy people to come all the way to York, for heaven’s sake) with the writer, Peter Morgan, and Michael Sheen, who features in a lead role in most of Morgan’s oeuvre (irrelevant fact: Sheen's dad is a semi-professional Jack Nicholson lookalike). I haven’t seen the play, and someone who’s seen and liked both tells me that there is some good stuff in the play which isn't in the film – nevertheless, when, in the film, Frost asks Nixon “And the American people?”, you sit there waiting for Nixon to acknowledge the extent of his crime in one of the most tense silences I’ve known in the cinema. The film reignites an old debate about the permissible limits of fiction in the context of historical events – one of the key episodes in the film never happened. It took a question from an audience member to elicit this from Peter Morgan – which emphasised the foolishness of the interlocutor, Jason Solomons, an Observer film critic, in dominating the questions himself and only allowing a few minutes for the ordinary punters to have a go. Oh, I almost forgot - Peter Morgan dropped in the slightly amusing fact that the Broadway production of the play was called 'Nixon/Frost', because no-one in the US can recall who Frost was.
To Slumdog Millionaire: it’s very violent in parts, and has a visual scatological bit near the beginning which had the whole audience groaning out loud - definitely one to see with a crowd in the cinema. I gather that some in the Indian film business don't like the film, because unlike the generality of Bollywood films, it doesn’t try to sanitise the reality of life on the streets in Mumbai. Nevertheless, there’s a wonderful Bollywood ending over the titles – someone sitting in front of me tried to get up as soon as the first title appeared; he sat down again very quickly.
If you go to see Slumdog having read on the side of a London bus (those that aren’t advising you of the probable non-existence of an omnipotent deity, that is) that it’s a ‘feel good movie’, you may be in for a shock. Particularly if – like me - the last feel good movie you saw was Mamma Mia. Slumdog is to Mamma Mia as a bike is to a Rolls Royce. Both will get you there, and leave you pleased at having accomplished the journey. But you will feel much more battered by the elements at the end of the bike journey, yet also more profoundly satisfied at your achievement. They also have something in common – both stories are ludicrously improbable, but I doubt that anyone who sees them will care about that. The songs are better in Mamma Mia, even if they have to be shoe horned uncomfortably into the story (and if those takes were the best they could get from Piers Brosnan by way of a singing voice, then can we please be spared the ones on the cutting room floor, if they have such things in this digital age?). My daughter gave us the Mamma Mia DVD for Xmas, knowing that her mother had much enjoyed it on a girly trip to the cinema. This meant that I could watch it in the privacy of our home. (I am a devoted Abba fan. If the original recordings pall after a bit, try mezzo soprano Ann Sofie von Otter singing Like an Angel Passing Through My Room. Have a Kleenex to hand).
Films are much more fun than philanthropy; discuss.
First, Frost/Nixon, which we saw followed by a live Q&A by satellite (well, you can’t expect these busy people to come all the way to York, for heaven’s sake) with the writer, Peter Morgan, and Michael Sheen, who features in a lead role in most of Morgan’s oeuvre (irrelevant fact: Sheen's dad is a semi-professional Jack Nicholson lookalike). I haven’t seen the play, and someone who’s seen and liked both tells me that there is some good stuff in the play which isn't in the film – nevertheless, when, in the film, Frost asks Nixon “And the American people?”, you sit there waiting for Nixon to acknowledge the extent of his crime in one of the most tense silences I’ve known in the cinema. The film reignites an old debate about the permissible limits of fiction in the context of historical events – one of the key episodes in the film never happened. It took a question from an audience member to elicit this from Peter Morgan – which emphasised the foolishness of the interlocutor, Jason Solomons, an Observer film critic, in dominating the questions himself and only allowing a few minutes for the ordinary punters to have a go. Oh, I almost forgot - Peter Morgan dropped in the slightly amusing fact that the Broadway production of the play was called 'Nixon/Frost', because no-one in the US can recall who Frost was.
To Slumdog Millionaire: it’s very violent in parts, and has a visual scatological bit near the beginning which had the whole audience groaning out loud - definitely one to see with a crowd in the cinema. I gather that some in the Indian film business don't like the film, because unlike the generality of Bollywood films, it doesn’t try to sanitise the reality of life on the streets in Mumbai. Nevertheless, there’s a wonderful Bollywood ending over the titles – someone sitting in front of me tried to get up as soon as the first title appeared; he sat down again very quickly.
If you go to see Slumdog having read on the side of a London bus (those that aren’t advising you of the probable non-existence of an omnipotent deity, that is) that it’s a ‘feel good movie’, you may be in for a shock. Particularly if – like me - the last feel good movie you saw was Mamma Mia. Slumdog is to Mamma Mia as a bike is to a Rolls Royce. Both will get you there, and leave you pleased at having accomplished the journey. But you will feel much more battered by the elements at the end of the bike journey, yet also more profoundly satisfied at your achievement. They also have something in common – both stories are ludicrously improbable, but I doubt that anyone who sees them will care about that. The songs are better in Mamma Mia, even if they have to be shoe horned uncomfortably into the story (and if those takes were the best they could get from Piers Brosnan by way of a singing voice, then can we please be spared the ones on the cutting room floor, if they have such things in this digital age?). My daughter gave us the Mamma Mia DVD for Xmas, knowing that her mother had much enjoyed it on a girly trip to the cinema. This meant that I could watch it in the privacy of our home. (I am a devoted Abba fan. If the original recordings pall after a bit, try mezzo soprano Ann Sofie von Otter singing Like an Angel Passing Through My Room. Have a Kleenex to hand).
Films are much more fun than philanthropy; discuss.
Sunday 4 January 2009
Getting, Giving and Golf
On Christmas Eve, Nicholas Kristoff, in a New York Times article called The Sin in Doing Good Deeds, asked the question: If a businessman rakes in a hefty profit while doing good works, is that charity or greed? The season has also been enlivened – for those of us fortunate enough not to have been victims – by Mr Madoff whose name and swindle (as many have pointed out) are straight out of Dickens. It’s interesting, and sad, that so many charities lost money with Madoff. Ed Pilkington points out in a Guardian piece called Tales from the country club that the Palm Beach Country Club was at the heart of Madoff’s social and business circle. As Pilkington writes: anyone wishing to join has to prove they are not only persons of huge wealth but also of upstanding character - they must demonstrate that they give away hundreds of thousands of dollars each year as charity. In return, they gain entry to a social circle that can help them further enhance their fortune. Madoff, he says, was the epitome of the moneymaker/money-giver, as he not only coined wealth for himself and others, he was also a major philanthropist. It’s surely no coincidence that one of those who lost money with Madoff was Arpad Busson who, as both readers of this blog may recall is the same person whose charity, Absolute Return for Kids, benefited from a fundraising dinner (at which guests were entertained by Prince) which raised over £26 million. Pilkington has neatly summarised the process through which this kind of charity simply serves to reinforce the situations which give rise to the need for charity in the first place. It is regrettable that some very worthwhile charities have been caught in the Madoff backwash (and a good thing that Atlantic Philanthropies is coming to their rescue, in part at least) but those of us who have been deeply suspicious of this kind of conspicuous giving/acquiring can surely, as the New Year dawns, allow ourselves some comforting schadenfreude.
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