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” … many American efforts to influence foreign countries have misfired — not least here in Vietnam a generation ago. We launch missiles, dispatch troops, rent foreign puppets and spend billions without accomplishing much. In contrast, schooling is cheap and revolutionary. The more money we spend on schools today, the less we’ll have to spend on missiles tomorrow.” -Nicholas D. Kristof “Rachel Beckwith, R.I.P., and may our generation learn from yours.” “Sometimes you can give more, and sometimes you can give less,” said Thornton, a teacher’s assistant. “Today was one of my ‘more’ days.” ” … My inclination is to reserve judgment until we know more, for disorganization may explain more faults than dishonesty. I am deeply troubled that only 41 percent of the money raised in 2009 went to build schools, and Greg, by nature, is more of a founding visionary than the disciplined C.E.O. necessary to run a $20 million-a-year charity. On the other hand, I’m willing to give some benefit of the doubt to a man who has risked his life on behalf of some of the world’s most voiceless people.” “… there’s a tendency to put this type of work into one box or the other. One of the big challenges has been what we mean by our space, and going back to the discussion of creating metrics, what do we think success really looks like for this sector? There’s a big difference in success for those who are creating a large-scale business that will affect as many poor people as possible, and the financial returns on those businesses at places like Goldman Sachs. It’s a question of what your yardstick is. But, as the sector grows, either we’re going to define how we measure success, or others will define it for us.” “…The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research. For instance, the billionaire Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, recently helped kill a proposition that would have created an income tax for the richest 1 percent in Washington (one of seven states that has no personal income tax). All of these funds would have gone to improve his state’s failing schools. What kind of society does Ballmer want to live in—one that is teeming with poor, uneducated people? Who does he expect to buy his products? Where will he find his next batch of software engineers? Perhaps Ballmer is simply worried that the government will spend his money badly—after all, we currently spend more than almost every other country on education, with abysmal results. Well, then he should say so—and rather than devote hundreds of thousands of dollars to stoking anti-tax paranoia in his state, he should direct some of his vast wealth toward improving education, like his colleague Bill Gates has begun to do … It seems to me, however, that Gates and Buffett could easily expand and target this effort: asking those who have pledged, along with the rest of the wealthiest Americans, to immediately donate a percentage of their net worth to a larger fund. This group of benefactors would include not only the super-rich, but people of far more modest means. I do not have 1/1000 the wealth of Steve Ballmer, but I certainly count myself among the people who should be asked to sacrifice for the future of this country…I am aware that a proposal of this kind is bound to seem quixotic. But what’s to stop the wealthiest Americans from sponsoring a 21st Century Renaissance? What politician would object to our immediately spending a trillion dollars on improvements in education and energy security? Perhaps there are even better targets for this money. Let Gates and Buffett convene a team of brilliant people to lay out the priorities. But again, we should remember that they could scarcely fail to improve our situation. Simply repaving our roads, the dilapidation of which causes $54 billion in damage to our cars every year, would be better than doing nothing.” “Imagine if we could actually ask people in the developing world what they thought of projects before we started them. And most importantly, perhaps, imagine if we could fail quickly enough at the beginning of a project to not pour in the resources, ego, and time that sometimes gives otherwise bad ideas an unstoppable, zombie-like momentum. But wait. We can. And it just happened, right in front of you. This was an easy one, because it was such an obviously bad idea, and it was so clearly stated in its badness (because that’s how you go viral). There were no long whitepapers to hide behind, no complicated acronyms that denote “divide” more clearly than any physical wall. It was also easy because it was one guy, and he posted a provocative video as a response, so he got people emotional. Mobile phones are (soon to be) everywhere. Connectivity is growing. Barriers of communication are dropping. If we can learn from this how to publicly lay our ideas on the ground and invite a square-dance on them, we can more correctly link development activity, delivery and effect - and that link can be the person at the very end of the last mile. Let me call this the first crack in the very large iceberg of ‘charity.’” - Christopher Fabian
"Heart-warming high jinks have ensued ever since. Saturday night marked the fourth annual dance-crazed celebration of what Ms. Martin calls the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy. Since that first year, Ms. Martin has been joined by several other small-time philanthropists, who bestow multiples of $100 on admired acquaintances. This year 16 inductees committed creative acts of kindness, some of them kooky, most of them thoughtful."
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