I just read the article, Renaissance Man on a Mission, from the December issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The article discusses the purpose of Joel L. Fleishman's book, The Foundation: A Great American Secret--How Private Wealth Is Changing the World.
If you looked at Fleishman's bio and CV, he has had extensive experience in philanthropic foundations, board membership, and academia. Fleishman wrote the book to talk about the strengths and weakness of foundations. One of the major strengths lies in the ability of foundations to do enormous good for the world. He lists a series of case studies (both successful and unsucessful) in his book. One example of a positive philanthropic inititiative that is listed is the Rockefeller Foundation's work to drive "The Green Revolution".
Fleishman argues that while foundations have an enormous potential to do incredible good in the world, they also face a number of weaknesses, which could seriously hamper their ability to deliver on that potential.
The major weakness pointed out is a lack of transparency. The article quotes Fleishman's book: foundations "operate within an insulated culture that tolerates an inappropriate level of secrecy and even arrogance in their treatment of grant seekers, grant receivers, the wider civic sector, and the public officials charged with oversight." By not talking about their processes, their needs, their desires, and even their mistakes, foundations inhibit the growth of change-making while inviting greater governmental scrutiny and regulations. On the flip side, foundations also seem to have a problem with taking credit for all the wonderful things that they have done. Fleishman's book is again quoted, "Foundation leaders must find the courage and vision to rise above their self-imposed , self-imagined phantoms of insecurity and lead their institutions into a new era of transparency, accountability, and effectiveness."
Now, I have not read the book, but the point of this post is not to critique the Fleishman's text, but rather to expound upon his thesis of transparency. And I do want to note that foundations are not the only ones who suffer from lack of transparency. It's a problem that affects all sectors, organizations, and is, in fact, a human foible. But I digress.
The point is, we need to talk, we need to communicate. We need to discuss who we are, what our values are, what we need, what we expect, and how the other party feels about all of this. It's fundamental to any sort of relationship, but it seems so hard. But the possibility for such communication is there, particularly with the way technology is going. And here I'd like to offer the concept of the wiki as one of many solutions to managing transparency.
The beauty of the wiki is that authorship lies in the hands of the users. It frees the communication from the ties of one author, opening the discussion up to more democratic levels. To me, this seems like a good way to address the problem of lack of transparency. If communication is dictated by one source, it's going to be biased, or at least perceived as such. But when the direction of communication is opened to all levels, to anyone, the process has a greater sense of authenticity. There is greater potential for better, more effective feedback.
I'm in the process of developing a wiki. I'll clue you in to my frustrations, challenges, and successes once I get into it a little bit more.
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