Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2015

Published late last year, Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2015 is an annual industry forecast written by leading philanthropy scholar, Lucy Bernholz, about the social economy. Published via the Foundation Centre’s GrantCraft service, we encourage you to peruse both the Blueprint and the additional resources provided by GrantCraft.

The Blueprint gives an overview of the current landscape, points to major trends, and directs your attention to horizons where you can expect some important breakthroughs in 2015. To give you one such example, Lucy talks of ‘deliberate cross-fertilization, ’ where hybrid experimentation becomes the norm over the coming years. She believes that “incentives for using private resources for public benefit are freed from institutional form and aligned instead with activities — so any kind of enterprise can be rewarded for “doing good” as long as that good is demonstrable, measurable, and accounted for.” This could breed a new type of organisation, such as “social data cooperatives and pro-benefit businesses.”

While you can download the report, GrantCraft also provide extra facilities, allowing you to easily browse key takeaways, highlights, and even offers suggested means of using the report effectively. We found the takeaways section particularly useful, with short excerpts detailing future trends, research resources and even the jargon we’ll be hearing over the course of the year.

Be sure to peruse Blueprint and the accompanying resources and do let us know which trends and insights you find particularly exciting or valuable.

We encourage you read and share the report. To join the debate, you can tweet about this year’s Blueprint using the hashtag #blueprint15, or tweet @p2173 @FdnCenter directly.