Sustainable Social Change and Philanthropy

As a professional grantmaker and manager with some of the world's leading foundations, David Bonbright sought innovative approaches to strengthening citizen self-organization in place of prevailing bureaucratic, top-down models. While with the Ford Foundation, David was declared persona non grata by the apartheid government in South Africa for helping fund the liberation struggle. In 1990, in the final years of that struggle, he entrepreneured the development of some key building-block organizations for civil society in the new South Africa. He then founded and now runs an international nonprofit dedicated to bringing constituent feedback to social change practice. He had an unexpected invitation to speak with Nelson Mandela, who reinforced that development aid and philanthropy run aground because those on the receiving end have no say in it, and that "in social change, as in our personal and social lives, it is relationships that determine outcomes. What follows are selected wisdom nuggets from an Awakin Call with David Bonbright.

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