One is the number divided by two
Wrapping up the Year 3 look back at my blog topics. Here are the questions I raised and concepts I developed in Year 1 (April 2010-April 2011).
- Five zombie philanthropic ideas that won’t die
- What are the hard problems in philanthropy?
- Philanthropy in the CIVETS countries (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa)
- “Varieties of capitalism” and varieties of philanthropy
- How different institutional arrangements incentivize different information flows
- Agriculture vs. engineering as a metaphor for social change
- Analogies between nonprofit fundraising and political campaigning
- The privileging of local knowledge as a bipartisan concern
- Democracy, markets, and freedom (or, Homer Simpson and the rule of law)
- The range of ways you could invest $1,000 of discretionary funds for social impact
- The false dichotomy of service vs. advocacy
- The Arab Spring in Egypt and the role of philanthropy (a series of posts)
- A positive vision of culture-as-causal-factor
- What’s the quintessential New York foundation?
- Decision-making and transparency
- The intentional socialization of externalities
- Mercedes-Benz and nonprofit evaluation
- Intentionality and coordination in markets and philanthropy
- The “imp of the perverse” in history
- Social distance and the season of giving
- Needlessly fragile equilibria in social relations
- Philanthropy and the depersonalization of charity
- Why does the New Yorker want me to stop trying to improve the world?
- Diversity and the perils of monoculture
- What should training for a philanthropic generalist look like?
- The data-driven, multi-method, context-sensitive life
- Voting systems and philanthropy
- Impact, influence, and incentives
- Askers and Guessers in philanthropy
- What does it really mean to be methodologically rigorous?
I got a lot done the first year! Lot of material to mine here for future posts.
Here are my favorite posts from that year:
- “Let the River Run“
- “I’ve Got a Theory“
- “One of These Things is Not Like the Other“
- “Baby did a bad, bad thing“
Next week, back to the future!