Posted on Sunday, 20th July 2008 by chris wignall

I’m very proud of my son’s friend Mackenzie. See why. One of the challenges for many philanthropic families is in seeing the values of generosity extended to succeeding generations. It’s not easy to do. We are inviting the children of our principals to explore the things we are doing now at Catalyst, present us with [...]

Tags: Great Stories, Philanthropy
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Posted on Sunday, 20th July 2008 by chris wignall

Why can’t the organizations I meet with each week tell me the real cost of their programming? Time and time again I have conversations in which people who are hoping to receive support from Catalyst explain their desire to offset some of the fees required by their participants, but need to be prompted to explain [...]

Tags: Leadership, Philanthropy
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Posted on Wednesday, 11th June 2008 by chris wignall

On The Hour tonight one of the guests is Paul Polak, founder of IDE. He is leading advocate of what some people call Market Driven Development. The basic idea is that traditional charity efforts are doomed in part simply because they are based around giving things to needy people for free. Polak and others argue [...]

Tags: Partners, Philanthropy, Vision
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Posted on Wednesday, 4th June 2008 by chris wignall

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has posted a transcript of an interesting live discussion with marketing guru Seth Godin. It may not be entirely in depth; but I suspect some of the people at organizations we are interacting with would benefit from the quick read through. A couple interesting insights for me: -the difficulty of really [...]

Tags: Philanthropy, Resources
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Posted on Tuesday, 3rd June 2008 by chris wignall

When did you last feel deeply and enthusiastically happy? Last week’s Globe and Mail contained an article by Margaret Wente that expressed some of the latest research findings on happiness. (Yeah, they can get money to study anything these days). Among the findings she describes if that the easiest life change we can make to [...]

Tags: Philanthropy, Resources
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Posted on Wednesday, 28th May 2008 by chris wignall

Among the many areas in which we are trying to learn as much as we can as fast as we can is the nature of the relationship between Catalyst and the various organizations we support. The common term foundations seem to use is “Partner”, which we have also adopted. The intent is that we develop [...]

Tags: Catalyst, Partners, Philanthropy
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Posted on Friday, 16th May 2008 by chris wignall

A recurring theme in the last few months is the challenge and need for nonprofit and ministry organizations to find a decisive way to self-evaluate. By extension, Catalyst and other grantmakers need criteria to evaluate not only applications but also the outcomes of projects after they receive funding. There are a few particular difficulties in [...]

Tags: Philanthropy
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Posted on Tuesday, 22nd April 2008 by chris wignall

One of the challenges for our work is trying to figure out how to evaluate not only the proposals and opportunities we come across, but(even more difficult) evaluating organizations and projects that we are supporting. This is an ongoing challenge in this field, as I’ve commented on before. In a couple weeks I’ll be attending [...]

Tags: Leadership, Philanthropy
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Posted on Sunday, 23rd March 2008 by chris wignall

Today’s Hamilton Spectator had an article on something called “poorism”. It’s basically the development of tourism in the world’s poorest slums. I’ve been on a couple trips to areas like this to do work with local churches, which I see as quite different from what this article describes. Still, there is an element of voyeurism [...]

Tags: Philanthropy
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Posted on Sunday, 2nd March 2008 by chris wignall

For the first time in my professional life I have a larger budget than I’m sure how to spend. Being in the role of making grants to deserving people and organisations is an amazing opportunity, but almost immediately it becomes abundantly clear that there are far more worthwhile causes than we have resources. By foundation [...]

Tags: Catalyst, Philanthropy
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