Send us Fan Mail In this episode we hear from Isaac Jones, Director of the UK charity First Give, about their work in schools helping children and young people to become 'philanthropic citizens'. Including: What does First Give do, and how did the organisation come about?What does the program look like for a participant?Is the primary aim to get schoolkids to be more philanthropic, to teach them skills of civic participation/engagement, or to teach personal skills (e.g. presentation, confiden...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we talk to Emily Teitsworth, Executive Director of the Honnold Foundation (the nonprofit set up by world-famous climber Alex Honnold), about trust, risk and the foundation's work supporting community-led climate work and low-cost solar projects. Including: How did the Honnold Foundation come about, and what is the organisation’s core focus ?How and why was low cost solar energy chosen as an intervention? What makes this so effective?What is the foundation’s op...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode we hear from Renata Minerbo, co-founder and Head of Philanthropy at Be The Earth Foundation, a family foundation focussed on the environment and social justice. Including: How did Be The Earth come about?How does Be The Earth implement a trust-based approach to grantmaking?How do you ensure that a trust-based approach doesn’t risk becoming exclusionary? (i.e. that you aren’t limiting your scope to organisations and individuals you already know and trust, but c...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode we are joined by Dr Xanthe Scharff, Managing Director for External Affairs and Editor-at-Large at the Freedom Fund, to discuss their work combatting modern slavery and what it is like to receive not one but two major gifts from Mackenzie Scott. Including: What is Freedom Fund’s mission, and how does it go about delivering on this?What is the scale of modern slavery as an issue? How much philanthropic funding does modern slavery currently attract? How...

Send us Fan Mail In the thirteenth edition of our podcast partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP), we talk to more academics whose work is featured in the latest batch of short, practitioner-focused ERNOP Research Notes. In this episode we hear from: Lauren Dula (Binghamton University, State University of New York) & Laurie Paarlberg (Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University), about their research into the literature on how power m...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode we are joined by Craig Newmark - founder of Craigslist, philanthropist and recent Giving Pledge signatory - to discuss his thoughts on the importance of philanthropy and how he approaches it. Including: What was it that particularly made him decide to sign the Giving Pledge last year, given that he has been doing philanthropy at a significant level for a long time now?Part of Craig's stated aim in signing the Giving Pledge is to “inspire really rich people to ...

Send us Fan Mail In the third and final episode of our "Myths of Philanthropy" series, Rhodri and Chiara are joined by Zaineb Mohammed (Kataly Fund) and Devi Leiper O'Malley (Closer Than You Think) to discuss individualism and scarcity. Including: What does it mean to have a scarcity mindset, and why is it so common in the nonprofit sector?What does a scarcity mindset lead to?How can funders and nonprofits overcome the scarcity mindset themselves, and how can they help the nonprofits they fun...

Send us Fan Mail For the second episode in our "Myths of Philanthropy" series, we are joined by élysse marcellin (Whose Knowledge?) and Tesmeralna Atsbeha (philanthropic strategist & advisor, formerly Wellspring Philanthropic Fund) to discuss presumed knowledge. Including: Why do we equate wealth with expertise across a broad range of domains, and why is this a mistake? Do we also make judgements about those who do not have money (i.e. that they have less knowledge or less capacity t...

Send us Fan Mail In the first episode of our mini-series on "Myths of Philanthropy", Rhodri and Chiara are joined by Lisa Cowan (Director of The Haven Fund, previously Vice President of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation) and Dimple Abichandani (author of A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth Into a More Just and Sustainable Future) to discuss the notion of legacy. Including: To what extent do foundations exist in perpetuity as a default, rather than an active c...

Send us Fan Mail Rhodri is joined by Mandy van Deven and Chiara Cattaneo from Elemental, to introduce a new 3-part collaborative series on "Myths of Philanthropy". Including: Why curate a series about the myths of philanthropy? How did the series take shape? Who are the contributors?What are the myths of philanthropy, and where did they come from?What do we hope readers and listeners will take away from this series?Further Resources: ElementalThe Myths of Philanthropy Fil...