February 25, 2009
Debating Google.org's Revamp
Larry Brilliant’s announcement on Monday that he will be stepping down as executive director of Google.org to become “chief philanthropy evangelist,” and that the philanthropic arm will be aligning its giving more closely with the company’s expertise on technology and information has generated a lot of discussion among bloggers.
Writing at Change.org, Nathaniel Whittemore calls the move a good one. Mr. Whittemore says that when other philanthropists have given in ways that reflected their business approach (think Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll, both of eBay), social entrepreneurship has made big leaps.
He calls Google.org’s “core competencies” in technology and information “real” and “valuable.”
“It’s not hard to understand how that core capacity could be the driving force behind their entire philanthropic strategy,” he said. “Google should be investing in and scaling tools like Ushahidi or the new FrontlineSMS:Medic project that has the potential to dramatically improve the care community health workers can provide.”
Mr. Whittemore also welcomes the philanthropy’s experimentation. “If Google.org’s projects become self-serving, we should call them out on it,” he says. “But why not let maybe the most innovative company of the last decade unleash its creative fury on poverty, health inequity, and injustice?”
Sharon Schneider, an adviser to donors who blogs at The Philanthropic Family, says she’s also a fan of the philanthropy’s move to take advantage of Google’s strengths. And she says the shift has lessons for other philanthropists.
“For those of us without a billion dollars to spend on our philanthropy, the same lesson holds true: It’s not the amount of our money that makes us ineffective philanthropists, it’s the strength of our other resources that help us decide where to donate that money,” she says.
But over at a Fast Company blog, Anya Kamenetz wonders if Google’s move isn’t simply a “cutback in disguise.”
She says that Mr. Brilliant insists in his letter that Google will still invest 1 percent of equity and profits to improve society, “but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily giving billions away.” She says that Google has benefited from its giving in the past.
She continues: “By putting the wildly popular Brilliant out on the road as a brand evangelist, adding to (Megan Smith, the new director of Google.org’s) job description, and tapping more Googlers’ 20 percent time for do-gooder projects, Google gets to shin its image and build its business at the same time for less cash. Good thinking!”
What do you think of Google.org’s new focus? Will it help the philanthropy be more effective? Or is it self-serving? Is it a cost-cutting measure?
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Call it “Strategic Corporate Philanthropy”. When a company takes an in-depth look at how it does corporate giving rather than just blindly throwing money out the door, both the company and the communities they serve will benefit. Leveraging a company’s core strategic capabilities means more good can be accomplished with the same budget.
Oracle Corporation realized this several years ago when it quit buying hardware to donate to schools and instead made use of it’s core competencies in software and online hosting to create innovative online learning programs for students. There was no cutback in Oracle’s giving budgets but there was an explosive increase in the number of schools served, the global reach of the programs, and the impact on students lives.
Jimi Ballard
Former VP Oracle Education Foundation Programs
— Jimi Ballard Feb 25, 01:16 PM #