It doesn’t take much imagination to see that the blurring of the lines between nonprofit and for-profit activities is bound to create a blurring, also, of the traditional aims of philanthropy — namely, to provide disinterested help to the disadvantaged, as opposed to furthering the donor’s business or political goals. […] In other words, what‘s needed most of all is a recognition that philanthropy must do more than provide charity, as Oscar Wilde suggested in 1891. Foundations still need to supply the desperately needed overcoat, as Wilde did, and do whatever they can to address the immediate needs of people in distress. But the real task is to come to grips with the reasons why so many people are left out in the cold in the first place.

Development organizations and Western feminists think that empowering poor women means giving them chickens or sewing machines. It doesn’t. --- [T]he term was introduced into the development lexicon in the mid-1980s by feminists from the Global South. Those women understood “empowerment” as the task of “transforming gender subordination” and the breakdown of “other oppressive structures” and collective “political mobilization.” They got some of what they wanted when the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 adopted “an agenda for women’s empowerment.” In the 22 years since that conference, though, “empowerment” has become a buzzword among Western development professionals, but the crucial part about “political mobilization” has been excised. In its place is a narrow, constricted definition expressed through technical programming seeking to improve education or health with little heed to wider struggles for gender equality. This depoliticized “empowerment” serves everyone except the women it is supposed to help. [...] [T]here is a skirting of the truth that without political change, the structures that discriminate against women can’t be dismantled and any advances they do make will be unsustainable. Numbers never lie, but they do omit. [...] In this system there is little room for the complexities of the recipients. Non-Western women are reduced to mute, passive subjects awaiting rescue.

The conveniently toothless word “empowerment” is easily mocked, but the mockery itself serves a darkly useful purpose: What cannot be taken seriously need never be examined, let alone condemned. This comfortable habit of casual derision prevents Western media watchers from grasping the real import of certain ideas, like this one, “empowerment,” which is now become a fig leaf for questionable claims and even outright fakery, especially where women’s rights are concerned. Beyond this, the kind of rhetoric in which “empowerment” appears is often the kind that is meant to make you stop thinking about something, rather than keep thinking about it. [...] Empowerment is a word you can use to distract, to deflect criticism, and even to raise money. In the context of specific foreign policy influence, putting an empty, pretty concept in the place where a fact or an idea or an action might have been is… well, it’s one way of practicing dismediation.

Steve Albini and his wife and friends dedicate their Christmas to directly helping poor people.

so far, it has raised over 10 million dollars… and counting. my mom has spent every single day of her life for the past three decades trying to get this kind of attention and funds for this disease. i don’t care if it’s a stupid gimmick. i don’t care if people are just doing this because it’s trendy or because they want pats on the back. i don’t care if it’s the new harlem shake. i don’t care if for the rest of my life, when i talk about ALS, i have to say “you know, the ice bucket disease.”

It’s hard to shake the feeling that, for most of the people posting ice bucket videos of themselves on Facebook, Vine, and Instagram, the charity part remains a postscript. Remember, the way the challenge is set up, the ice-drenching is the alternative to contributing actual money. Some of the people issuing the challenges have tweaked the rules by asking people to contribute $10 even if they do soak themselves. Even so, a lot of the participants are probably spending more money on bagged ice than on ALS research. As for “raising awareness,” few of the videos I’ve seen contain any substantive information about the disease, why the money is needed, or how it will be used. More than anything else, the ice bucket videos feel like an exercise in raising awareness of one’s own zaniness, altruism, and/or attractiveness in a wet T-shirt.

Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market. Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine.

Toyota’s emphasis on efficiency proved transformative for the Food Bank.

Charitable spending in the United States has taken on the protective coloration of American business culture. At every level, charitable grants have come more and more to resemble investment projects, with a specific, measurable return on equity in mind.

If we need simple narratives so people can amplify and spread them, are we forced to engage only with the simplest of problems? Or to propose only the simplest of solutions?

I just helped Anil Dash fix his blog and, in return, he fully funded the writing supplies for this program at the Volcano School of Arts & Science that I selected on DonorsChoose. Go internet!

"It is they, fronted by President Obama, who are behind the charter school movement. Their goal is to make franchises of our schools, docile, low-cost industrial robots of our teachers, and McStudents of our children. This, despite the fact that the best academic studies of charter schools have shown that they perform no better than public schools and in many cases perform worse. Sometimes much worse."

Why I don't think I'm a curmudgeon for thinking the green Iran icons are a joke. "…if you believe for one minute that publicly agreeing with an echo chamber is changing anyone’s mind, behavior, or outlook, you need to stand up, locate your disused front door, walk the fuck through it, and then go spend a full (unwired) day doing something to actually help another person."

Interesting, though I do not totally agree. (Is Christianity not itself a tribe? An ideological one, at least, if not geographically contiguous.) There is the same food for thought here that I've been chewing on for years... it is a conundrum I cannot reconcile.

"Connects via WiFi to your online bank account, and donates YOUR real money to an organization you HATE when you decide to snooze!" Sleep in, donate $20 to, say, the GOP. This is an evil machine.

Mike Lee calls for developers to donate to the Madagascar Fauna Group in exchange for a free plushy lemur and membership in "Club Thievey." I've got mine! :-)

People like Bill Gates who can truly understand the horror of millions of people suffering will save us. "Perhaps we should avoid leaders who 'feel your pain,' because their feelings will crap out at, you know, eight people."