The Importance of Interrogating the Philanthropic Field’s Learned Practices
In a recent blog post on Nonprofit AF, Vu Le calls for important interrogation of the philanthropic field’s learned practices and how "they constantly and unconsciously affect how we think about and do everything."
Le says: "If you think about it, so many of the things that we do are done a certain way because that’s just how someone else told us things should be done. There are few legal requirements. Which means most systems and practices are traditions that we pass down, and after a while, we just accept that that’s how we do them..."
He cites grantmaking as an example:
One of the biggest and most time-wasting headaches in our sector. Seriously, we need to get a handle on this, because the communities we serve can no longer afford for us to collectively waste millions of hours to fulfill the whims of various foundations each year. Why do we do it this way? There’s no law requiring foundations to have burdensome applications, or any applications at all. Yet we still cling on to this weird, archaic, Hunger-Games-based system for resource allocation.
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