It’s easy to criticize charities and foundations as being dinosaurs from another era, limited in funding, reach and risk. I was very surprised to learn that this was not the case at the turn of the century when philanthropies were emerging to solve the pressing social issues of that time.

Katherine talks about five categories of experiments, each of which challenges an old assumption of philanthropy and pave the path for philanthropies to adapt to today’s environment and social challenges:

• Mass collaboration: think Wikipedia
• Online philanthropy marketplaces: think DonorsChoose.org
• Aggregated giving: think Warren Buffet and how he didn’t start his own foundation.
• Innovation competitions: think X Prize
• Social investing: think xigi.net

… what’s really interesting here is that we’re not thinking our way into a new way of acting. We’re acting our way into a new way of thinking. Philanthropy is reorganizing itself before our very eyes. And even though all of the experiments and all of the big givers don’t yet fulfill this aspiration, I think this is the new zeitgeist: open, big, fast, connected. And, let us also hope, long.

She also has a report on the future of philanthropy called Looking out for the future.