The Moral Architecture of the Gift
Last week I had the opportunity to present one of the frameworks that I’ve been teaching for more than a decade.| The Butterfly Effect
Last week I had the opportunity to present one of the frameworks that I’ve been teaching for more than a decade.| The Butterfly Effect
Last week I argued that the First Amendment won’t save Big Philanthropy. Foundations can’t hide behind claims of free expression when their very existence depends on a bargain with the public. This week I pick up where I left off, asking whether those on the left, in both politics and philanthropy, are ready to confront the deeper cycle of defensiveness and decline that bargain has produced.| The Butterfly Effect
Don’t miss my latest piece in The Giving Review on the ideology hiding in direct mail.| responsive.substack.com
Don’t miss the next piece in my series in The Giving Review on the ideology hiding in direct mail.| The Butterfly Effect
I’m not an expert at this stuff.| The Butterfly Effect
In May I argued that direct mail didn’t just raise money. It became one of neoliberalism’s handiest tools, reframing collective struggle as a private transaction. It didn’t kill the civic imagination; it domesticated it, shrinking our sense of what participation should mean. What once felt like building movements was replaced with a transactional spirit where growth looked like success but connection became an afterthought. And while many of my colleagues want to keep debating the merit...| responsive.substack.com
Every semester my students conduct a field research project built around what we call sensemaking interviews. Their task isn’t to collect data for an exhaustive report or confirm a predetermined thesis. It’s to make sense of how the people inside these organizations understand their work—how staff interpret their roles, how leaders describe their challenges, how funders explain their expectations, and where those stories converge or collide. By noticing where responses align and where t...| The Butterfly Effect
Fundraising has long been preoccupied with the ask.| responsive.substack.com
The latest from David Callahan, There Are Too Many Nonprofits.| The Butterfly Effect
By the end of next week, the students in my social entrepreneurship course will have identified a complex social problem they want to wrestle with and design a solution for throughout the semester.| The Butterfly Effect
In two weeks I’ll be back in the classroom introducing a new group of students to the nonprofit sector.| responsive.substack.com
A couple of weeks ago our family was in the midst of a crisis.| The Butterfly Effect
The more I understand the logic of the gift—learning how to distinguish it from the commodity and the tax—the more I’ve asked myself whether I’m shooting myself in the foot.| The Butterfly Effect
Last week, while facilitating a workshop, someone asked a question that immediately brought to mind Scuttle from The Little Mermaid—the seagull who confidently describes a fork as a “dinglehopper.” It reminded me how few supposed experts in our space can accurately describe what a gift actually is.| The Butterfly Effect
Last month, I suggested we’re in the midst of a reckoning our sector’s narrators don't want to see coming. They’re not helping us face the system’s unraveling; they’re trying to manage the disruption without surrendering control. They’re still clinging to the tools, institutions, and authority of a system that’s plainly falling apart. What they offer is just enough change to preserve their standing, but not enough to reckon with what truly needs to be rebuilt. Yet many of us can...| responsive.substack.com
This is part two of a three-part series on fundraising’s original sin.| The Butterfly Effect
This is part one of a three-part series on fundraising’s original sin.| responsive.substack.com
This is the last in a three-part series on reclaiming the ethic of the gift in contemporary fundraising.| responsive.substack.com
In the past few weeks, I’ve read a number of pieces from those trying to make sense of this moment for the rest of us.| responsive.substack.com
This is Part Two of a three-part series exploring what it really means to reclaim the ethic of the gift in today’s fundraising landscape.| The Butterfly Effect
This is the first in a three-part series on reclaiming the ethic of the gift in contemporary fundraising.| responsive.substack.com
I just spent twenty-four hours watching a gaggle of direct response professionals have an existential crisis over a critique that, admittedly, wasn’t even all that original.| responsive.substack.com
Last evening, I took John Palfrey’s “courage is contagious” hashtag to heart and decided to challenge him on some of his statements about philanthropy.| responsive.substack.com
Last week, I poked fun at an increasingly familiar group—let’s call them the Nice Guys of Philanthropy. Understandably, they have a lot to say about where institutional philanthropy finds itself right now—and they’ve got plenty of boosters ready to cheer them on for their bold takes. They’re easy to spot: white and about ten years older than me, they grew up in blue counties, went to elite schools, and built the kinds of résumés guys like me weren’t exactly meant to have. Despit...| responsive.substack.com
