LBJ School News Brief

A Strategy for Giving
Frumkin book describes model
for successful philanthropy

In the coming decades, donors will need a strategy for giving as a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth that is estimated at $40 trillion takes place, says Peter J. Frumkin, director of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service.

“Whether their wealth is inherited or earned, all donors need to take seriously the responsibilities that wealth brings with it,” Frumkin writes in a Kennedy School of Government paper called “Note on Strategic Giving.”

To help donors move toward a more strategic approach to giving, Frumkin has developed what he refers to as “the philanthropic prism,” a diagnostic tool that is the centerpiece of a new book he has written. Called Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy, the book will be published this coming summer by the University of Chicago Press.

Using case studies and his philanthropic prism, Frumkin takes an in-depth look at the question of what is effective philanthropy and why certain forms of private giving are more able to produce significant public benefits than others. The book is also aimed at fund-raisers and those who work in development, focusing on the need for fund-raisers to understand how donors think about achieving their intended purposes.

“The essential argument is that the best and most powerful forms of philanthropy are those that involve an intersection of the donors’ private values, commitments, and beliefs and important public problems,” Frumkin explained, adding that philanthropy often does the most interesting and important work when public problems and private values intersect and overlap.

“When philanthropy is out of balance, when it becomes all about public purposes, it gets to be too neutral, agnostic, and it starts looking like government,” he said. “When it becomes all about the donor and not about the community’s needs or public’s needs, it becomes too particular and too narrow.”

Using the five points of Frumkin’s philanthropic prism, donors and fund-raisers can define a path that will lead to a more strategic approach to giving. These five points are the value produced through giving, the theory of change to be pursued, the structure or vehicle through which giving takes place, the identity and style of giver, and the time frame within which the giving will take place.

“The core argument of the book is that strategy involves finding alignment, fit, and coherence at the intersection of these five choices,” said Frumkin.

By María de la Luz Martinez

14 November 2005

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