Events Detail

Reclaiming the Moral Life


of Philanthropy?

Thursday, July 21 - 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.
Hudson Institute - Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center
1015 15th Street, NW - Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005

 

Click here for video highlights of the event

Event Description

Delivering an address entitled “Reclaiming the Moral Life of Philanthropy” at MIT in September 2010, Atlantic Philanthropies president Gara LaMarche noted that he felt:

 

a disquiet about the way we in the foundation world, along with the organisations we support and the infrastructure many of us have helped to build, have mirrored trends in the political world to talk about what we do and why we are doing it in ways that have strayed too far from first principles. We have become more about the fix, the intervention – to use a horribly dominant word in the field that calls to mind invading armies – than about the reasons for doing or caring about it. In marching under the flag of what works, and in particular what can be proven or demonstrated through the rigours of evidence, we risk straying too far from what is right. I think it is time to strike a better balance.

 

Has philanthropy begun to lose its moral bearings? Has it become more concerned with the means than the ends? We wrestled with these questions and others as we discussed Mr. Lamarche’s speech on July 21st. Joining Gara LaMarche on the panel were Indiana University's Leslie Lenkowsky, Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion, and Phil Buchanan from the Center for Effective Philanthropy. Bradley Center Director William Schambra moderated the discussion.

Required Reading

Please click here to read Gara LaMarche's September 2010 remarks at the Starr Forum at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Program and Panel

 

11:30 a.m.
Registration, lunch buffet

12:00 p.m.
Welcome by Hudson Institute Senior Fellow William Schambra

12:10
Panel discussion
Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy
Gara LaMarche, President and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies
Leslie Lenkowsky, Professor of Public Affairs and Philanthropic Studies at Indiana University
Maya Wiley, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Social Inclusion

1:10
Question-and-answer session

2:00
Adjournment