4/4/11 - Lorie Slutsky on charitable giving in New York Times
The Trust's president is quoted in the following piece by Paul Sullivan for The New York Times.
This is a season of fiscal austerity for governments, and state and local officials across the country are threatening to cut programs that aim to help the less fortunate. With tax revenue down and budgets constrained, they say they have little choice.
Now, a new book “Give Smart” (Public Affairs), written by two philanthropy experts, Thomas Tierney and Joel Fleishman, argues that the wealthier philanthropists around the world can focus on solving problems that government cannot undertake while also paying for research into new ideas that may be adopted later.
“Philanthropists can innovate, but the government must sustain,” said Mr. Tierney, chairman of the Bridgespan Group, which advises nonprofits. “This innovation can be accompanied by scaling up. It’s very different from providing shelter to the homeless or food to the hungry.”
He categorized what he and Mr. Fleishman, a professor of law and public policy sciences at Duke University, were advocating as “a shift from not just serving to solving.” Mr. Fleishman, described their approach as a how-to guide to strategic or venture philanthropy.
But their strategy is not without its detractors. “Philanthropy needs to be looked at as a continuum,” said
Lorie Slutsky, president of the New York Community Trust, which manages about 2,000 charitable funds. “This is one important piece on the continuum. But you couldn’t do strategic philanthropy in a settlement house without individual donors who provide support or government contractors.”
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