Philanthrogeek isn’t a word you see very often. Neither philanthrohack. In fact, as of 6 May 2006, when I published this page, Google had zero references to either, so I guess I can claim a couple of neologisms if and when they ever take off.

Now, I’m no great expert on philanthropy, but what I’ve noticed is that like everything else, the field is changing – people are giving away more earlier in life, and “corporate philanthropy” is no longer considered a dirty phrase in a year end report. More sophisticated companies are even making “giving back” a part of their corporate mission – sometimes they call it “triple bottom line” thinking.

And I think more people are now doing it out of a genuine desire to help, rather than work off guilt or garner good PR. Sure, some philanthropy is done for the wrong reasons. That doesn’t mean it will come to nothing, but it does mean that you have to look further than the headlines to figure out what’s really going on. This is particularly true when it comes to the matter of “Foreign Aid” which often seems to be very much driven by backscratching and cronyism, as opposed to a real desire to make a difference for the people supposedly being “aided”. [1]

I’m genuinely interested in this sort of thing – just how and why people are doing good, what really makes a difference, and what just makes headlines. That’s why I consider myself a bit of a philanthrogeek.

I’d love to achieve a few philanthrohacks of my own one day. Do a lot with a little. I’ve got a few ideas, we’ll see what happens after the startup(s) finally turn into real businesses and I can justify a few pro-bono side projects. We actually did a few of those in Interclue’s early days, and yeah, might have been a bad call. Maybe we helped get Obama elected, and going back further maybe we helped swing the 2005 election away from the right wing party that nearly got into power here in New Zealand, and probably would have sold off our assets, driven up our public debt, and sent our troops to Iraq, but yeah, no idea if we really made a difference, and in the meantime, we definitely got a bit distracted. Sorry about that folks.

[1] One random example of Foreign “Aid”: Japan gave $400m to various developing nations with the implicit understanding that they would subsequently  e joining the International Whaling Commission and voting for the world to return to commercial whaling. The Japanese govt deserves scorn rather than credit for this “generosity”. Since they aren’t really interested in what happens to the money once they’ve got what they’re after, it may well have just been embezzled – when you give “aid” as a bribe, you’re just a bit less inclined to make sure it’s being used for anything remotely useful. But at least that’s better than the “aid” that comes in the form of weapons made by the favoured factory owners of the “donor” nation, another extremely dubious practice if you ask me, one that has been all too common in the previous century.

Read my blog posts in the Philanthrogeeking category