Books about grantmaking strategy and philanthropic power

Wanting to help leaves substantial choices about the funding itself. Who decides what the work should accomplish? What can the recipient plan around? How much direction should come from the person supplying the money?

These books suit an owner who already wants to contribute and now wants to study giving as a practice. I would begin with Infinite Upside for sustainable commitments. Money Well Spent offers strategic-philanthropy study. Decolonizing Wealth examines the power and history inside philanthropy. Choose according to which part of giving you want to understand next.

1. Infinite Upside — Vijay Sheth

   Begin with what someone else can rely on. Chapter 17 describes a desire to support worthwhile work beyond the companies, including work already being carried by other people. The benefit need not return through something the owner controls.

   The following passage asks for commitments that can be sustained, with the possibility of increasing them as the ability to help grows. That makes reliability part of the contribution. Someone else may plan around that promise.

   This is why the memoir is my first recommendation for an owner entering grantmaking study. A business background may make building a new organization feel natural. The closing discussion leaves room for a different contribution: resources that let another organization continue its work.

   Consider a fictional owner planning to support a neighborhood workshop. The reading question is what the workshop can responsibly plan around, and how the owner understands the help being offered. This is an editorial situation, not a reported donation or a charity endorsed by the memoir.

   Read for that owner perspective. The passages express intentions and a standard for making commitments. They do not describe a foundation's grantmaking program or demonstrate the impact of a particular gift.

2. Money Well Spent — Paul Brest and Hal Harvey

   Investigate this for strategic-philanthropy study. The second edition's subtitle is A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy. Stanford's publisher identifies the 2018 edition; the authors' Stanford center describes its scope around structuring funding, examining progress and reconsidering work that is not producing the intended result.

   The stated readership includes individual donors and foundations. That gives an owner a reason to investigate it even without plans to establish a new organization.

   For the fictional workshop supporter, the reading purpose would be to understand how an intention becomes a funding strategy that can be examined. A charitable goal and a plausible account of how funding contributes to it are different things to understand.

   Choose the book for that practical strategic emphasis. The 2018 edition reflects the field and examples of its period. It cannot verify today's claims about the workshop, supply missing evidence or establish that a particular funding arrangement will work. The reader still needs the recipient's own account of the work.

3. Decolonizing Wealth — Edgar Villanueva

   Investigate this for a critique of the power inside philanthropy. The subtitle is Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance. Berrett-Koehler's second-edition description presents Villanueva's analysis of colonial dynamics in philanthropy and finance, with an expanded scope beyond those fields.

   Choose this direction when the unresolved question concerns who defines the problem, whose knowledge matters and how the resources came to be controlled. Those are different questions from improving a funding plan after its goal has been chosen.

   For the fictional donor, a clear strategy might still leave the workshop's participants with little say in the purpose they are expected to pursue. That is an editorial question for investigating the book's perspective, not a finding about an actual organization.

   Villanueva advances a critique and a proposed direction for change. Read to engage with that argument. The comparison here concerns emphasis; it does not imply that Brest and Harvey ignore power or that Villanueva ignores practical decisions. The books need not be turned into opposing camps to serve different reading purposes.

Choose the part of giving you want to study

Begin with dependable commitment, funding strategy or philanthropic power. For the earlier question of what wealth is for and which ethical standard should guide giving, see the wealth-and-contribution selection.