The Book Club

Imagine an intimate gathering in your living room with a small group of book club friends discussing their latest good read. Now tweak that cozy image by a factor of five and re-imagine a conference room filled with 30 people assembled for a chat about the Jeff Jarvis book, “What Would Google Do?”

In the book, Jarvis describes a world that is being transformed by technology and the resulting social networking, democratization of information and unexpected connectivity.

Those of us around the room during the Sunday afternoon session (Book Discussion: What Would Google Do?) reflected on this changing social landscape and the lessons we might apply to the art of philanthropy.

Some of the questions, comments and dilemmas that arose in our discussion included:

• Promoting grantmaking transparency vs. protecting donor anonymity.
• Transparency is like water. It is a critical resource. In the right amounts and places, it brings benefits. When it is too much or not enough in the wrong places at the wrong time, then it can be problematic. The Google Model thrives by providing structure and aggregation to huge amounts of disparate information.
• Directional relationships. Traditionally, many foundations tended to have one-way relations in which communications flowed (be it limited) from donor to grantseekers. A more progressive model might embrace two-way communications in which information is exchanged two ways between donors and grantseekers. In the “post-Google” world, there is the potential for multi-directional exchanges between and across stakeholders (donor to donor, donor to grantseeker, grantseeker to donor and grantseeker to grantseeker).
• When will consumer-driven feedback come to the world of philanthropy, à la YELP or Trip Advisor user reviews on foundations?

And the final, perplexing dilemma of a psycho-social nature:

“If I’m on Twitter, am I a twit?”

Richard Woo is the CEO of The Russell Family Foundation.