1. THE CHANGING CONTEXT FOR PHILANTHROPY
The World
THE WORLD OF THE WORLD AROUND
PHILANTHROPY PHILANTHROPY
MULTIPLICATION GLOBALIZATION
Everything associated with the domain of The growing scale and complexity of today’s
social benefit has grown significantly in the You and/or issues—from epidemics to human trafficking—
last 25 years, making it both a more active Your seldom adhere to traditional geographic and
and more crowded environment. There are Institution programmatic boundaries. At the same time,
more wealthy individuals able to give, more resources and ideas to address these problems
foundations, more donor-advised funds, more are coming from all over the world, not just the
giving circles, more philanthropy-related West. Increasingly, the solutions of the future
businesses, and more nonprofit organizations Philanthropy will need to match this global scope and scale,
competing for funds. This increases the pool and to cross old borders and boundaries.
of ideas, resources, and allies for anyone
seeking to address an issue, but also could PRIVATIZATION
add to the fragmentation and duplication of The power and wealth of private actors—
effort in the sector. businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and
individuals—has grown dramatically, and now
DIVERSIFICATION has greater potential than ever before to both
Not only is philanthropy growing in size, it is
diversifying by almost every measure.
Philanthropists now operate create and solve social problems. Private
individuals such as President Clinton can lead
Today’s wealthy include growing numbers of
women, Latinos, blacks, Asians, and others
in a context that is deeply international efforts that once were the province
of government. Although the importance and
who bring their respective cultural traditions
as well as their assets. Younger donors who
different from the one in power of governments has not necessarily
diminished, the stage on which they work—and
made their money in industries like IT,
finance, and biotechnology bring new which many of their the actors with whom they must interact—has
been transformed.
assumptions about how to get things done and
how active they want to be as living donors.
institutions, assumptions, CONNECTION
And philanthropy is no longer only the
province of the rich, as new technologies
and habits were formed. New tools and technologies—from free
conference calls and emails to blogs, wikis, tags,
make it easier than ever before for people of
all backgrounds and perspectives to give.
Funders sit in the middle of texts, and twitters—are changing the way we
communicate and connect. These “social media”
OBSERVATION
changes taking place in the tools now allow more people to easily engage
and connect, irrespective of geographic distance;
The enormous growth in both the number of
people engaged in the social sector and the
broader world outside of they let us access a greater diversity of
perspectives and expertise; and they can
amount of money coursing through it is
sufficient to attract attention. Add in the
philanthropy, and in the facilitate accelerated learning and on-demand
access to information—all while reducing the
increasing availability of information and the
means to communicate it instantaneously and
midst of irreversible changes costs of participation and coordination. The tools
are allowing us to re-imagine many of the social
mounting scrutiny is inevitable. As the New
York Times has written, the public is now
within philanthropy itself. acts we already do—activities such as learning,
organizing people, generating ideas, sharing
“asking do-gooders to prove they do good.” knowledge, and allocating resources—but with
Both givers and grantees are being held to
rising standards of accountability and
The pressures of this new the potential to do them bigger, better, faster, and
cheaper than ever before.
transparency by legislators, the media, and
the broader public.
environment, and the need ACCELERATION
REFLECTION
to respond to it, will shape As the density, speed, and scope of connection
has increased, our society has accelerated the
In the last 30 years, people in the social sector
have benefited from enormous advances in
both how philanthropy is rate at which information is communicated, the
rate at which it can be incorporated into other
their ability to reflect on and share their own
work and the work of others in the field.
practiced and the role and processes, and the number of people who can
use that information to create new ideas,
There is now a history to study and many
more institutions and vehicles through which
influence of large donors and synthesize new inventions, and make decisions.
One effect is that there is a new pressure on
one can learn it. What began as a relatively
small field with little information available is
foundations within the field individuals and institutions at all levels—local,
regional, national, and global—to respond more
rapidly becoming a mature industry. for the next generation. rapidly to shifting external circumstances.
© Copyright 2009 Monitor Institute

2. A few facts and figures about philanthropy’s changing context
Philanthropy by the Numbers Growth in the Number of U.S. Billionaires and U.S. Foundations
Number of foundations in the U.S. in 1984: 24,859
Number of foundations in the U.S. in 2007: 75,187
Average number of new foundations created in the U.S. per day in 2007: 8
Number of foundations with assets over $1 billion (in 2007 dollars) in 1984: 11
Number of foundations with assets over $1 billion in 2007: 156
Portion of the field comprised by those billion-dollar foundations: 0.2%
Fraction of all foundation assets they hold: 67% U.S. Foundations
Portion of the field comprised by foundations under $1 million: 63%
U.S. Billionaires
Total charitable giving (from all sources) in 1984 (in 2007 dollars): $142 billion
Total charitable giving (from all sources) in 2007: $314 billion
Total foundation giving in 1984 (in 2007 dollars): $5 billion
Total foundation giving in 2007: $44 billion
Privatization of Wealth
Of the world’s 100 largest revenue producers in 2007, only 33 were countries/ Number of High Net Worth and Ultra High Net Worth Individuals
governments (measured by budget revenue). The other 67 were corporations
(measured by annual revenue).
Wal-Mart was the eleventh largest revenue-producing entity in the world,
behind only the governments of the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Italy,
China, Spain, Canada, and the Netherlands.
Bill Gates net worth in 2007, $59 billion, was larger than the GDP of many
countries, including Croatia, Ecuador, and Bulgaria.
Cell Phone Growth
Number of cell phones globally today: ~4 billion
Number of years to sign up the first billion cell phone subscribers: 20 years
Number of years to sign up the second billion subscribers: 40 months
Number of years to sign up the third billion subscribers: 24 months
Number of new cell phone customers around the world every minute: 1,000
Web pages indexed by Google
Number of Articles in All U.S. Newspapers and Wires
with Philanthropy in the Headline or the Lead Paragraph
LexisNexis.com
© Copyright 2009 Monitor Institute