To the Editor:
Re "The Charitable-Industrial Complex" (Op-Ed, July 27):
Peter Buffett concludes that many funders of the rapidly growing nonprofit sector condition their support on the application of business principles — like investing where the return on investment is highest. There's some truth to this, but it's also worth remembering that a good many funders still pay little or no attention to what their donations actually accomplish as they pass through the hands of nonprofit managers. It's a crime to waste money, however well intentioned.
Somewhere between the benign neglect of traditional charity and the blind acceptance of benefit-cost analysis is a sweet spot for philanthropists of all stripes to move toward.
RAY HORTON
New York, July 27, 2013
The writer is a professor of ethics and corporate governance and founder of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School.
To the Editor:
I have worked for more than 30 years in the nonprofit and for-profit sector, primarily in Africa. Peter Buffett's simple sentence — "My wife and I know we don't have the answers, but we do know how to listen" — is profound and refreshing, and very, very unusual.
Most Westerners I've met who are trying to help the "less fortunate" don't listen. They diagnose, prescribe and, often, as Mr. Buffett points out, create disastrous unintended consequences. These are well-meaning people and organizations, but the simple act of listening is not part of their skill set.
Sadly, almost every negative consequence from earnest efforts — like the indiscriminate distribution of free mosquito nets or drilling water wells in the middle of villages, to name two — could be avoided by simply listening.
The people who are the targets of our help know their problems and they know the solutions. They're not waiting for us to diagnose the problem, much less force-feed them the solutions. They'd like us to listen and then work with them to provide the resources, whatever those may be, to solve the problems.
So yes, there is, as Mr. Buffett says, "a crisis of imagination." But before one even gets to imagination, one needs to listen to the people one is trying to help.
PETER V. EMERSON
London, July 29, 2013
The writer is a director of the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund and a visiting research fellow at King's College London.
To the Editor:
Peter Buffett laments that the nonprofit field isn't producing breakthrough answers and has a "crisis of imagination." I disagree.
Nonprofits involved in public change may not have the answers for worldwide teenage pregnancy, health care, education and the other global issues he mentions. But society grows primarily through small changes that can prove themselves — not sudden big answers.
A few examples from the program for nonprofit leaders that I run: faster ways to get elderly to the hospitals; better ways to stop lead poisoning in urban housing; ways for professionals who have continuing education requirements to use that time to help the needy.
The problem is that solutions like these often involve the need to press government to act. But foundations tend to stay away from public advocacy, afraid that they will be accused of lobbying (but public advocacy is allowed) and not wanting to pay for time-consuming efforts that may take several years to yield results, if ever.
If foundations began to finance public advocacy — and just small grants are needed — there could be thousands more changes for the good happening, and some might eventually become the large breakthroughs we all want.
ALLAN LUKS
New York, July 27, 2013
The writer is the director of the Fordham Center for Nonprofit Leaders.
To the Editor:
Philanthropy's elephant in the room is that charity targeting the rich-poor gap comes from sources that have produced this gap. Peter Buffett insightfully shows how giving does more to soothe the donor's conscience than to mitigate inequality. Often but not always.
Many nonprofits from coast to coast are redressing inequality. They efficiently use their contributions to provide second chances to Americans who have dim prospects for moving their lives forward without help — like offering kids an enriched early childhood education, mentoring at-risk youth or enabling the chronically homeless to move into permanent housing. They are proof that philanthropy can indeed be a vehicle for significant change. They do not, in Mr. Buffett's words, "only kick the can down the road." They're offering gateways to the American dream.
IRA SILVER
Framingham, Mass., July 29, 2013
The writer, a professor of sociology at Framingham State University, is the author of "Giving Hope: How You Can Restore the American Dream" and blogs at www.oppforall.com.
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