Those of you who have visited us on-site at 312 Sutter Street probably have noticed we share this address with the World Affairs Council. The World Affairs Council's President and CEO, Jane Wales, co-counder of the Global Phillanthropy Forum recently spoke with our PND editors about focusing attention on the world's poor, the impact of the financial meltdown on international philanthropy, and the Obama administration's interest in social innovation. Below is an excerpt from that conversation:
Philanthropy News Digest: You've served in two Democratic administrations, advised businessmen and Nobel Prize winners, and worked in foundations and nonprofits. None of those sectors — public, private, or tax-exempt — is held in particularly high regard by the public at the moment. Indeed, by some measures, public confidence in institutions of any kind is at an all-time low. What can government, business, and the nonprofit sector do to regain the public's trust?
Jane Wales: One of the key characteristics of the Information Age is the diffusion of decision-making and authority. And with that comes a decline in public trust in all institutions. So I think the premise of your question is correct. At the same time, it is not clear that there's a direct correlation between performance on the one hand and levels of trust on the other. That is to say, lack of trust in institutions could be a function of something much larger; it could, for example, be a function of the enormous amount of information that washes over everyone today — a flood that is both exhausting and, increasingly, unmediated. The contexts within which we used to evaluate information are eroding, and there are fewer and fewer people with the authority to set standards, to tell us what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong.
In that kind of shifting, uncertain environment, the idea of success itself is up for grabs. And so the task for each sector, and for institutions of every kind, is to develop a shared view of what constitutes success, and to monitor, measure, and communicate our progress in achieving it. It's also essential to be willing to admit to mistakes and failures. I would argue that the nonprofit sector scores relatively high on the latter and has some work to do with respect to sharing its successes.
PND: It's funny you should mention mistakes and failures. It is the perceived mistakes and failures of Wall Street that are largely responsible for the current economic mess we find ourselves in, which in turn has created a tremendous amount of acrimony and finger-pointing. We are all taught to believe that robust debate and competing policy prescriptions are hallmarks of a vibrant democracy. Are we having healthy debates on big issues such as health care, energy, and the economy? And are you hearing anything in those debates that causes you concern?
JW: What is interesting about this moment is that we are not only in a crisis, but that it's a crisis that is widely recognized and acknowledged. In fact, it is broadly acknowledged that we are facing not a single crisis, but a series of crises — and that we must work together to address them. I would argue that democratic decision-making is based on an assumption of shared knowledge, the concept of the village green, and that implicit in the idea of democratic decision-making is the notion and art of compromise. Rather than seeing compromise as capitulation, healthy democracies see it as an essential element of decision-making. And nonprofits and NGOs provide the space for compromise, they provide the village green. That said, we have a lot of work to do as a society to regain our respect for the process of coming to solutions together.
PND: Over the last year, the condition of the global financial system has gone from bad to worse. Indeed, no less an authority than George Soros is on record as saying that the world financial system has disintegrated and that the economic turmoil we're experiencing is as serious as what the world went through during the Great Depression. Do you agree?
JW: Well, I would not presume to challenge George Soros on questions of global finance. [Laughs.] He's the expert and has the track record to prove it. What I would say is that one of the great ironies of the mess we find ourselves in is that while the financial systems of the developed world have failed us, systems set up for the developing world — that is to say the whole field of microfinance — did not fail. Here's a world in which collateral is not things or dollars, but a set of social relationships. And it turns out that that is a more resilient system than ours — and one from which we all could learn something.
PND: What are some of the lessons developed economies can learn from microfinance?
JW: That norms may be more important than things, that commitment to community may be the most important source of societal resilience, and that therefore the loss of social capital may be a fundamental one that can erode all else. If that is so, rebuilding social capital should be our priority. And that is where the nonprofit sector and the philanthropic sector have critical roles to play. And, of course, political leadership is key....
Click here for the rest of the interview.
