What is the evidence that people are changing?

Philanthropy as a strategy

The phrase ‘strategic philanthropy’ is widely used, from the ‘Erasmus Centre for Strategic Philanthropy’ to various papers and books such as Peter Frumkin's (2006) ‘Strategic Giving: The art and science of philanthropy’. There are websites dedicated to the topic and companies that use the phrase in their names. The term is applied to corporate social responsibility programmes (an early – 2002 – article by Porter and Kramer uses the phrase ‘strategic philanthropy’ in this sense), to the activities of foundations, and to individual philanthropists. It is used – for example by Maas and Liket (2010) – to mean corporate giving that has two objectives: ‘benefitting social welfare and financial profitability’.

Writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, John Kania, Mark Kramer and Patty Russell (Kania, Kramer, & Russell, 2014) describe the core principles of strategic philanthropy as ‘clear goals, data-driven strategies, heightened accountability, and rigorous evaluations’. Some authors, such as Shaw (2015), add a public policy lobbying element to strategic philanthropy – in other words using philanthropy to change government policy (in education, health or women's rights, for example).

Mark Kramer had been one of the co-authors of the paper attributed as the origins of strategic philanthropy, but by 2014 he, Kania and Russell were ready to criticise the approach.

Ulrik Kampmann, the former Director of Development at Realdania, knows these complex dynamics in grant-making: “As a foundation we have to move a scale or two up in complexity. We cannot know all the steps from input to impact. We have a large degree of uncertainty.” “You have to set on the goal. But it is not a business strategy, it is more loose.”