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- San Jose Mercury News; complete article
- Huffington Post; entry from Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club
- Global Philanthropy Forum
- Google.org; philanthropic arm of Google
Global Philanthropy Forum Explores New Way of Giving
Silicon Valley Model Endorsed
April 12, 2007
San Jose Mercury News
By Mary Anne Ostrom
Summary/excerpts
Google.org -- the philanthropic arm of Google -- hosted the opening of an annual meeting of the International Giving Forum. Participants included former President Bill Clinton, AOL co-founder Steve Case, and executives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, among others.
With some of the world's leading philanthropists gathering at Google this week, the head of one of the nation's oldest private foundations declared Wednesday that the philanthropy sector must embrace Silicon Valley-style, market-based approaches to combat the ill effects of globalization.
In a keynote speech to the Global Philanthropy Forum, Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin said, "We have seen that innovation emerges in untraditional ways," adding, "our work has never been more challenging, and it's never been more needed."
She said just as a Silicon Valley software programmer "must retool the program to keep up with the challenges, so must we." Her foundation was started in 1913.
"Philanthropy has always had innovation in its DNA. I see that is being ratcheted up," said Jane Wales, founding president of the forum and CEO of its parent organization, the World Affairs Council of Northern California. "What already was an inventive sector now has an infusion of talent of young, energetic, socially conscious people who have gained new wealth, a new class of philanthropist."
Copyright 2007 San Jose Mercury News
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