What’s Wrong With Profit?
The New York Times today had a special section entitiles “Giving.” Major changes, it seems, are afoot in the philanthropic world. Call it “Neo-New Dealism.” Here are a couple excerpts from the article…
THIS year, as never before, the line between philanthropy and business is blurring. A new generation of philanthropists has stepped forward, for the most part young billionaires who have reaped the benefits of capitalism and believe that it can be applied in the service of charity. They are “philanthropreneurs,” driven to do good and have their profit, too.
If the buck doesn’t stop THERE, many Web 2.0 kingpins seem to be saying, it stops HERE.
“More and more people are asking who else is going to finance doing good if government isn’t,” said Alan Abramson, director of the nonprofit sector and philanthropy program at the Aspen Institute, a public policy think tank in Washington. “These guys have firsthand knowledge of the market’s power, and they’re asking themselves why they can’t make money and tackle some of the problems once addressed primarily by government at the same time.”
It sounds simple, but the idea of such hybrid philanthropy is upsetting long-held conventions. These new philanthropists view the current foundation model, built on the fortunes of earlier industrial titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller, as hidebound and often ineffective. They have an urge to change the world, and argue that in some cases only the speed of capitalism is fast enough.
Said Apple founder, Stephen M. Case to a group of foundation executives this past January: “We need to be open to bigger, bolder reform because the hard truth is Philanthropy 1.0 hasn’t worked well enough… If you’ll forgive the computer metaphors, our system needs an upgrade.”
The articles goes on to profile some of the more prominent “philanthropreneurs,” including Case, eBay’s Jeffrey S. Skoll, Pierre Omidyar, founder of the Omidyar Network, and Virgin Group’s Sir Richard Branson.
Like a Rolling Stone, Snipes, Logomancy and So So Psychosis can only hope that this trend, if the reader will forgive the mixed metaphors. will pick up steam and gather no moss along the way…
Read the full article on the NYT website
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ABOUT
Raphie Frank is a New York City- based interactive producer, writer, photographer and designer, with supplemental expertise in Usability & Online Marketing. Raphie helped found swandivedigital in 2000 after ten years of production, technical and design experience in the Visual and Performing Arts worlds. While at swandivedigital he oversaw multiple engagements for such organizations as the Markle Foundation, Referral Networks and the Shubert Foundation, before setting out on his own in 2005 as a freelance intermedia consultant.
Prior to his experience at swandivedigital, Raphie traversed the artistic globe as Culture House Director (“Asylum” theater/cafe/art gallery, Prague, 1992-1993), award-winning short-film Producer (Bacchus, Germany, 1998), Theatrical Lighting Designer and published photographer. Raphie graduated from Vassar in 1990 with degrees in Psychology and Dramatic Writing and has published 50 interviews with leading city blog Gothamist.com since August, 2004.
PORTFOLIOS ::::: producing ::::: writings ::::: photography ::::: design
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PERSONAL HISTORY
Planning Warhol in Prague: Part I: The Asylum Culture House & The Warholesquian Sensibility
excerpt
The Asylum of cultural myth, for those who were in Prague and in the sub-cultural know during that winter and spring of 1993, lingers in memory as a crazed Bacchanalian Warholesquian happening, even if, public nipple piercings and simulated urination aside, a generally less explicitly sexual version. One minute you might go into the café, a smallish cave-like hole-in-the-wall we always thought of as the Soul of Asylum, and there would be a bongo, guitar and violin foot-stomping Celtic jam. Ten minutes later there might be a cultural film about Rodin flickering across the wall, and another half hour after that you might find a wanna-Kerouac poet spouting Beat banalities or diamonds across the room and over the cheers or heckles of his temporarily captive audience. Read Essay
Planning Warhol in Prague: Part II: Kafka and The “Refounding” of the Asylum Culture House
excerpt
Look at an old 19th Century Italian landscape painting and you might think “Wow! What unique vision those Italians had! Look at the gem-like fragile clarity of the leaves and their sparkling translucence. Look at those elongated spidery trunks! ” Then you go to Italy and look at the actual landscapes and the actual trees and you realize those painters were simply painting what they saw. That’s what it looks like.
To read Kafka is a similar experience. “The Castle” and “The Trial” are not the twisted mad ravings of a genius, but simply faithful recordings of the daily Czech experience with authority. That day was the first, but certainly not last, day I think I truly understood that. Rik felt it too. And that understanding came upon us this time not in a twisted brow knowledge kind of way, but more in a brown coal smog, nowhere-to-get-away-from-it, kind of way. Except that instead of being everywhere all at once, it’s nowhere all at once which is so… Czech. So… passive aggressive. Read Essay
Yes, Virginia There is Still A Santa Claus
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Interestingly enough, I think that moment bothered me more than — sorry to blow the lid on this Virginia — finding out my parents were Santa Claus four years previous. On some level I already knew Santa was a fraud even before Brian Kux, my red-haired neighbor two doors down back in Washington D.C., cemented into eternity my collapsed North Pole house of card illusions one Christmas Day. Playing outside together with our new toys, he told me with an almost conspiratorial glee that he had seen his parents putting presents under the Christmas tree the night before. It didn’t come as much of a surprise and, although he was a full year older than me, I didn’t need his wizened input to immediately understand the exact implications of what that meant. The writing had already been on the wall for some time now.
After all, Santa looked different every time we met at the shopping mall and sometimes he was in two places at once; I would see him again on the way home from the mall collecting money for the Salvation Army on a street corner, the helicopter he’d come to the mall in nowhere in sight. And didn’t Santa use a sleigh anyway? I knew there was something fishy going on by the time I was four. Read Essay
Riven Hearts
excerpt
I said “no” a couple times, A little too loudly. Guess it made me mad, that unpaid electrician waking up at 3am to catch a train to an isolated Long Island train station the producers “forgot” to pick up. Guess it made me mad having shit bubble up the drain in the shower of the rooms they gave us. And we were told we’d made the choice. After all, we were offered a ride back to the City each night; eight hours between call times. Three hours home and three hours back. And the Assistant Camera Man with a child at home to support who said he was mad as hell cowered in fear when the time came to say “Yes” or “No” to the face of the Producer when I spoke for the crew at the request of the crew.I understood, but wished they had not said they would if they wouldn’t. Read Essay
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