What are we reading April 2023

Wow, big month.

From UX Indonesia on Unsplash

This month, we are thinking about some bigger-picture ideas in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. From what dignity, to secrecy, to better equity and diversity work, there’s a lot to dig into here. More below:

1. Is your organization acting ‘dignified’? 

The Dignity Audit Project, developed by ID Insight, was designed with the goal of “making the dignity agenda more tangible for practitioners”. It focuses on the international development and humanitarian sectors. The three main goals of the audit are: 1)helping influential actors in global development ensure they are developing systems to ‘keep their promises’ to those they serve, 2) expanding the research agenda to demonstrate what works to uphold dignity and why that matters in the work, and 3) to ensure that IDinsight is facilitating the movement towards a ‘dignity agenda’ in the sector broadly by fostering connections and building processes. 

We’re interested in following this project closely because of how it prioritises the experience of the people who interact with the actual activities of the development sector, as opposed to the experiences of a target beneficiary who sometimes only exists in the mind of well-meaning, often Western and Northern, aid professionals. 

Read more about the Dignity Audit Project, or access the Dignity 2020 Report.

2. Reviewing: Why is there so much secrecy in philanthropy?

Mark Blumberg examines the VOX article Why is There so Much Secrecy in Philanthropy - which discusses the anonymity of charitable gifts to organizations. As highlighted by Blumberg, there are two types of anonymous gifts - the first type of donors actually want to be anonymous, the second is happy to be persuaded to disclose. Blumberg shares that major donors almost always want recognition - even if they are ‘forced’ to go public with their donations. Often these donations come with agreements, limitations or restrictions, which are also not public knowledge.

Blumberg argues in favour of legislation that would requires all major gifts with restrictions on the use of funds to be publicly disclosed. He also argues that the tax benefits that come with these gifts should be reviewed. For example - should a donor still receive a tax benefit if they will continue to reap the benefits from recognition for their contributions years later? The lack of overall transparency is bad - for the donor, who will be questioned for their motives, and for charities who may have their hands tied without the public being aware. 

3. The launch of “Demographics via Candid” campaign

Finally, we’ve been interested to follow this project developed by Candid. They have recently launched  a platform, Demographics via Candid, which allows nonprofits to share their demographic information and makes it accessible and reusable by others. It strives to standardize demographic requests, formats, and questions and encourage more equitable funding practices. They have seen momentum since beginning the initiative. Given Candid’s previous approach to their data projects (which often consists of collecting & crowdsourcing data and putting it under licenses which explicitly prevents commercial use) we’ll be follow it closely to see how the information is handled.