Just Another Emperor? The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism by Michael Edwards
Every now and then a fad/innovation (choose one) takes off in philanthropy and all of us must learn a new lexicon and listen to a lot of excited presentations where we are promised the moon in return for getting fully on board
Of late, we are beset by discussions of (mix and match) social ventures, venture philanthropy, social venture capital, social enterprise all of which attempt to embed the principles of capitalism in efforts to transform and better society.
There have been few outright challenges to this line of thinking so when we saw Just Another Emperor? The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism by Michael Edwards we were struck with it’s honest appraisal of the whole proposition. Edwards is the director of the governance and civil society unit at the Ford Foundation though this was written on his own time.
NPQ has linked a brief introduction, largely drawn from the book itself. The full book is available as a PDF download.
More on this at the Nonprofit Quarterly’s: home page
Value is the only commonality in an increasingly complex, challenging and interdependent world.