28 Philanthropy Issues to Watch in 2015

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

As the New Year gets underway, we could conjure up a list of “top trends” in philanthropy for 2015 or make a bunch of predictions that we would probably regret twelve months from now, along with all the junk we ate over the holidays.

But we’re going to skip such exercises and instead offer up a quick tour of the obsessions, favorite causes, and pet peeves that we’ll be indulging this year. If you’re still wondering what the agenda is at Inside Philanthropy, you’ve clicked on the right post.

Here’s what we’ll be banging the drum about:

Control Freak Funders

Along with most grantseekers, we’re tired of hearing funders give lip service to the importance of general support and then micromanaging through program grants. As long as only a quarter of grant dollars take the form of general support, we’ll keep pounding away at controlling funderswho think they’re smarter than the nonprofits they give money to.

Foundation Bloat

If foundations mainly wrote large checks for general support and didn’t micromanage, they wouldn’t need armies of micromanagers. And while we admire many program officers, we’d love to see many fewer of them as reformer CEOs take an ax to legacy foundations.

Source: Inside Philanthropy (link opens in a new window)

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