Reinventing Strategic Philanthropy: The Sustainable Organization of Voluntary Action for Impact

Abstract

Philanthropic organizations have recently started to focus on how to invest their resources in a way that will really make a difference to society. Strategic philanthropy is the new concept for voluntary action for the public good to create a valuable sustainable impact! This inaugural address presents the future research agenda of the Erasmus Centre for Strategic Philanthropy and focuses on three (strategic) challenges faced by philanthropic organizations: 1) sustaining philanthropic commitment, 2) selecting and executing programmes, and 3) examining the role of management and boards. These are the linking pin between the first two challenges. Governance, accountability and organizational effectiveness are essential for management and boards of individual organizations and for the philanthropic sector as a whole. In the first strategic challenge, philanthropic commitment is seen as a natural resource and Ostrom’s (1990) eight design principles for managing ‘common pool resources’ are applied to philanthropic commitment. The second strategic challenge focuses on the results chain for programme management while the role of management and boards is analyzed from the perspective of ‘resource exchange partnerships’ in the third challenge. Cooperation, especially with the business world, is presented as essential for creating sustainable impact in society.

Keywords: strategic philanthropy, partnerships, corporate social responsibility, nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, common pool management, volunteering, impact, governance, boards

JEL Classification: F23, M14, M, G23