Reimagining Global Philanthropy - by Kirk Bowman & Jon Wilcox (Hardcover)

About the Book

Applying lessons from the success of community banks, Kirk S. Bowman and Jon R. Wilcox develop and implement a new model that significantly raises philanthropic efficacy. Their straightforward and rigorously tested approach calls for community members to take the lead while outside partners play a supporting role.

Book Synopsis

Well-meaning Westerners want to find ways to help the less fortunate. Today, many are not just volunteering abroad and donating to international nonprofits but also advancing innovations and launching projects that aim to be socially transformative. However, often these activities are not efficient ways of helping others, and too many projects cause more harm than good.

Reimagining Global Philanthropy shares the journey of a conservative banker and a progressive professor to find a better way forward. Kirk S. Bowman and Jon R. Wilcox explain the boom in the global compassion industry, revealing the incentives that produce inefficient practices and poor outcomes. Instead of supporting start-up projects with long-shot hopes for success, they argue, we can dramatically improve results by empowering local leaders.

Applying lessons from the success of community banks, Bowman and Wilcox develop and implement a new model that significantly raises philanthropic efficacy. Their straightforward and rigorously tested approach calls for community members to take the lead while outside partners play a supporting role. Bowman and Wilcox recount how they tested the model in Brazil, demonstrating the value of giving people in marginalized communities the opportunity to innovate. In a time of widespread social reckoning, this book shows how global philanthropy can confront its blind spots and failures in order to achieve truly transformative outcomes.

Readers can access five of the documentary films discussed in the book on a companion website. In addition to the films, chapter discussion questions and other supplemental materials are also available at the site.

Review Quotes

Reimagining Global Philanthropy provides the critical analysis we have needed for decades, but not had until now, explaining why global philanthropy so often fails, and why dropping the ego and instead identifying and supporting grassroots actors will always be the most impactful, empowering and cost-effective way to make change. If our goal is really a world where everyone is able to lead a healthy and fulfilling life, ensuring our collective well-being in ways that preserve diversity and that promote belonging and care for our communities and ecosystems, not only reimagining, but actually realizing, a decolonial approach to philanthropy is imperative. Everyone interested in making change should read this book.--Theresa Williamson, executive director, Catalytic Communities

I often think about how different my own life might have been if I had not grown up with heroes. Young people need outstanding role models - so does "global philanthropy" assert Kirk Bowman and Jon Wilcox in Reimagining Global Philanthropy. They prove their point with powerful examples of local role models and "super heroes" who lead in the most challenging neighborhoods. How do we identify them, replicate and scale their work, and combine powerful economic lessons from community banking to increase the efficiency and impact of global philanthropy? Read on if you want to be both informed and inspired by the heroes and the windows and doors they open for effective philanthropy.--Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, co-chair, Nuclear Threat Initiative

Bowman and Wilcox turn their expertise in international affairs and banking to reforming international philanthropy, giving important advice to those who want to help in the most efficient way. Anyone who wants to participate in making a difference for the better in the world would be wise to read this book.--Jon-Claude Zucconi, managing director, investment bank

Bowman and Wilcox's core thesis is that philanthropists should avoid casting themselves as the heroes and instead serve as supportive sidekicks to effective neighborhood leaders. At once, they pinpoint the problem with so much global philanthropy and offer a meaningful solution.--Kentaro Toyama, W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information, University of Michigan, and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology

Reimagining Global Philanthropy takes a tried-and-true model--one based on the industry I work in every day--and brings the lessons of community banking to the global stage of international philanthropy. Now, more than ever, philanthropy must maximize returns on investment. A trailblazing book that provides a formula that really works.--John DeCero, president and CEO, Mechanics Bank

This book offers a highly original take on global philanthropy and the high failure rate of many of its projects, accompanied by compelling advocacy for a new model that relies on local leadership and insists on cost-effectiveness. The authors build on evidence from failures big and small and on their own decades-long experience with both failures and successes. They present their lucid analyses in highly accessible language. I cannot remember having seen a serious book with an important policy message that is such a pleasure to read.--Evelyne Huber, Morehead Alumni Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

This is an eye-opening and pathbreaking book offering concrete advice for those of us who want to do good in the developing world. Instead of yet another "new" twist on the usual humanitarian colonialism in which we of the West put ourselves in the driving seat of the civilized, educated know-it-alls that should plan for the poor primitives in the South how to become rich and developed like us, Reimagining Global Philanthropy offers a new model, where we are just the sidekick, playing the important but secondary role of allowing local activists and social entrepreneurs to scale-up successful programs they and their community built, tested, and preerected. Bowman and Wilcox put forward a bold new model and present it in a crisp engaging way. A must read.--Dan Breznitz, codirector of the Innovation Policy Lab and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, University of Toronto

About the Author

Kirk S. Bowman is a professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is cofounder and director of the international NGO Rise Up & Care. His books include Lessons from Latin America: Innovations in Politics, Culture, and Development (2014).

Jon R. Wilcox is the cofounder and the former president, CEO, and director of California Republic Bancorp. His current and previous board affiliations include Mechanics Bank, Waterfall Bridge Capital, Rise Up & Care, South Coast Repertory, Junior Achievement, and Fiji Reef Resources.