We need a science of philanthropy

by reestheskin on 15/06/2017

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Or so says an article in Nature. No we don’t , is my response

Philanthropists are flying blind because little is known about how to donate money well. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s US$100-million gift to schools in Newark, New Jersey, reportedly achieved nothing. Some grants to academic scientists create so much administration that researchers are better off without them. And some funders’ decisions seem to be no better than if awardees were chosen at random, with the funded work achieving no more than the rejecte

There is no science to philanthropy. You can study it, you can come up with ideas about it, and try to meld systems of rationality about it. But this is just an abuse of the word science, an abuse meant to demarcate this area of activity from things that are non-science and are, by implication, less robust or rigorous. This is one of the ways the science (and STEM) lobby misunderstand the world. But, the quoted paragraph, does of course say something meaningful.