Small Change: A Short, Unassuming Book about a Big, Important Idea

In our newsletter and on our blog I have in the past recommended that all our friends read Uncharitable, by Dan Pallotta. I’ve called the book revolutionary and even have taught from its pages in the advanced Rice/AFP course, “The Art of Fundraising.” 
Now I have to advocate that you read the counterargument, in a much smaller volume entitled, Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World, by Michael Edwards.

Edwards is a former director of the Ford Foundation's Governance and Civil Society Program in New York, where he oversaw grants totaling more than $900 million between 1999 and 2008. Pallotta is an articulate thinker and writer in a movement that promises to save the world by bringing the magic of the market to philanthropy. Nonprofits should be run like businesses, its adherents say, and businesses can find new sources of revenue by marketing goods and services that benefit society.

Dubbed “philanthrocapitalism,” the movement’s supporters believe that business principles can and should be the primary drivers of social transformation. What could be wrong with that?

Plenty, argues, Edwards, who marshals a wealth of evidence to show just how far short the promise of philanthrocapitalism has fallen, and why the whole concept is fundamentally flawed.

The debate advanced here by Edwards was begun, I think, by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. In his monograph entitled “Good to Great and the Social Sectors,” Collins begins his text with this clear directive: “We must reject the idea – well intentioned, but dead wrong – that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become ‘more like a business.’” I find myself siding with Collins and Edwards. See what you think.