How should philanthropists think?

Stanford has a new School of Design, the d.school. Despite the ultra-hip lower case school name, there are some interesting things going on there, led by an important cross-discipline group of people. Right now you can check out some of the stuff in one of these new online conferences (that I love - no airport security involved!) called AlwaysOn.

David Kelley of IDEO is one of these folks, and this interview with Business Week shows what he's trying to do. I've excerpted the bit I think is most relevant to philanthropy:

Q: The D-school is still in formation, right?
A: ...The big difference is the faculty and students come from different departments: business, humanities, engineering, so forth. We all work on projects together. In the past, group projects would be done by a group of designers or a group of engineers. With engineers, whatever the problem is, a mechanism is probably the outcome. If it's all businesspeople, the answer is always a spreadsheet or a chart with 2 by 2 matrix. Now we have all these different disciplines, and it's not predictable where the innovation is going to go and that's what's exciting.

Q: Are you seeing any trends?
A: The solutions are more integrated, taking into account technology, business strategy, the user interface. I would say the solutions are more human. There's also an amazing discontinuity as far as what students are interested in. Ten years ago, most of my students wanted to be Bill Gates, do a startup, and become wealthy. They're still entrepreneurial, but they're in my office saying, "I want to do something that has social value."

Those student interests have driven our research agenda -- sustainability, superlow cost for the developing world, K-12 education, health and wellness, and medical stuff."

This kind of cross-discipline, cross-sector thinking is key. Its hard to find places to practice it. Maybe the d.school could help. Its almost cool enough to make me want to go back to school. Almost.

Dealing with the real problems

Poor people pay more than those with resources for the most basic things. This is absurd. Their food is more expensive since poor neighborhoods often lack grocery stores. Home furnishings get paid for on credit - at exorbitant rates. They often rely on check cashing services and payday loan services instead of banks - so even their paychecks get slammed by interest rates.

Why don't community foundations or other locally-focused foundations address these issues? Grants to nonprofits aren't going to solve these problems. Program-related investments in local communities might make some impact. But why not use philanthropic capital to back a system of loans and credit that can actually help people get out of debt and have access to some of the credit and financial tools that are key to building wealth?

Another comment on Gates Foundation and Open Source

I'm a big fan of David Bollier's work on issues of the Commons. His blog posting on the Gates Foundation and open collaboration shows why. Bollier, who is one of the most articulate defenders of the commons (read more here) is graceful enough to recognize the value of (and irony) in the application of these principles to the critical philanthropic investments being made by the Gates Foundation.

Open Source Philanthropy is finally here

...and from all places its coming from the Gates Foundation. The Foundation's latest work on HIV is employing the practices of collaboration, shared data, and public ownership to accelerate research progress. All practices worth watching.