Tonight I helped Intersections International to celebrate its 10th anniversary and honor a forerunner in the Christian LGBTQIA and social justice movements. Dr. Randall Miller, now at the Arcus Foundation and formerly of both the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and the Pacific School of Religion, grasped decades ago that religion can be a […]
Save the date: Give Out Day 2017
All day on Thursday, April 20, 2017, LGBTQIA organizations across the US will participate in an annual 24-hour philanthropy campaign called Give OUT Day. This giving event is hosted by the Horizons Foundation, and is now in its fourth year. It allows the nonprofits that are part of the LGBTQIA movement to showcase their work, […]
A little money, a little power
I’ve been reflecting on the story of the money behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. More than 17 major national banks are funding construction and credit lines for the companies building it across the Dakotas and the Midwest: $2.5 billion to Sunoco Partners $3.75 billion to Energy Trading Partners $1.5 billion to Energy Trading Equity; and […]
Copeland: Deeper change is needed
The nineteenth-century notion of linear progress not only has collapsed but decayed. The cynical retreat of the nation-state, regressive programs of structural adjustment, repressive taxation, rising oil prices, gross inflation, market manipulation, food shortages, pandemics, drought, and wars have trapped not only the peoples of the two-thirds world but most of the rest of us […]
Why the greatest good can lose out to potato salad
I shared a MarketWatch article on charitable giving yesterday. The writers explain how much donors give based on emotional connection rather than whether our gifts are a “great deal” financially. They also make another point that goes to the psychology we bring to our efforts to help others. As internet-based crowdfunding started booming last decade, I wondered why some kinds of […]
Investments and charitable giving
Investing and charitable giving are two different ways for someone with resources to contribute to an organization or cause. I’ve conflated them in the past, but recently read an article advising people not to. In Market Watch, Berman, Barasch, Levine, and Small explain that people give when they feel emotionally connected to a cause, not necessarily because […]