Tim McCarthy and the Business of Good

“What Comes Next”, by Karl Zinmeister

Apr 28, 2017 3:00:46 PM / by Tim McCarthy

Editor's Note:  A cancelled flight meant I missed Zinmeister’s Cleveland appearance but my host, Ron DiMattia, was kind to pick me up a copy of this book.  It might just be transformational to our foundation’s work.  (I’ll know more when my partners meet and discuss what we might apply from its reading.)  But in any event you will doubtless enjoy this brief, easy to read commentary on how philanthropy is, has and could further change America.  Who knew that the primary driver to an issue that our government was deadlocked on called slavery received substantial momentum from philanthropists from 1833 through the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War?  I certainly did not.  Or that the oft-lampooned Temperance movement was driven substantially by philanthropists and still has its desired effect today?  Pre-abolition USA alcohol consumption was 7.5 gallons per capita, since Prohibition ended and still today it is around 2.2 gallons.

Favorite excerpt:  “And for all our [political bureaucracy], philanthropic action is the perfect antidote.  You can think of the millions and millions of private givers and volunteers in our country and the hundreds of thousands of nonprofit organizations as a kind of matrix of private legislatures.  They define social ills, set goals and priorities for attacking them , then methodically marshal money and labor toward solutions.  And philanthropic Americans do all this spontaneously – without asking the state’s permission.  When we do these things, we become producers of governance rather than just consumers of government.  We take direct action to improve the life around us instead of being dependent citizens who wait for officials to descend as saviors”.

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Tim McCarthy

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