The Evolving Philanthropy Industry

Since the crises of 2008, the global financial system has shaken many societies, causing job losses, homelessness, sluggish economies, overhangs of unrepayable debt with central banks trying stimulative exercises to substitute for failing fiscal policies and political will.  Financial markets retreated into risk-averse, short-termism while needed long-term investments in infrastructure maintenance and redevelopment stalled.  Meanwhile, risks in the real world proliferated: water shortages, severe weather events and variability due to global average temperature rises, terrorism, conflicts, refugees, all reported in real-time by global and social media. 

All these epochal changes are driving paradigm shifts in science, academia, policy circles, corporations, finance and philanthropy.  The charity sector of the past is evolving beyond the great foundations endowed by the wealth of 19th and 20th century industrialism, the ivy league college endowments and millions of individual donors enabled by tax codes in the USA an other countries. 

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Hazel Henderson, D.Sc.Hon., FRSA, founder of Ethical Markets Media, is a futurist, evolutionary economist and author of award-winning Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy. She leads the Transforming Finance initiative, created the Green Transition Scoreboard®, tracking global private sector investment in green tech, and developed with Calvert Group the widely used alternative to GNP, the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators. In 2010 she was honored as one of the “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior 2010” by Trust Across America.