Lunch reading today.

Although this is mixed up considerably with Bill Clinton, an article in the October Atlantic describes a new paradigm for philanthropy, using “business models”. Interesting. The full article is behind a subscription firewall…but there is an excerpt and interview with Clinton online. They describe how their organization changes the market for things like AIDS drugs and florescent bulbs.

From the article:

The modern era’s predominant model for philanthropy, the grant-making foundation, is a century old. When the Rockefeller Foundation created the template, Woodrow Wilson was a new president and World War I was still a year away. Since then, the world has changed more than foundations have. In recent years, new generations have come to see the traditional approach as hidebound. ‘Everyone’s searching for new models and new ways of doing things,’ Peter Frumkin, the author of the recent book Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy, told me. ‘There is an urge for something other than the standard model of the grant-making foundation that dutifully delivers funds to nonprofit organizations that dutifully deliver the services.’