Merle, can you say more? These are exactly the kinds of questions I'm
tossing around. (Or should I treat you to a long, chatty lunch or
dinner when I get back to Santa Fe, and pick your brains face-to-face?
P.
On Apr 15, 2009, at 3:29 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
Merle here in San Francisco deeply imbedded in the philanthropic
community this week. Interesting thread you have going, Pamela and
Paul. I am advising donor networks and my new client, an
international environmental foundation (and also raising money for
the Madrona Institute) by talking about applied complexity. I
suggest to my folks that they might use the principles of CAS to
change how they make decisions on grantmaking, and my message
appears to be compelling. I hadn't thought about it before, but I
use a lot of metaphors to describe principles like "path dependency"
and "self-organization" etc.
Pamela McCorduck wrote:
Apparently I failed to make myself clear. My informant--as I said,
an historian of philanthropy--mentioned that the *metaphor* of the
germ theory of disease had deeply influenced the big givers at the
turn of the twentieth century (e.g., the Rockefellers, even
Carnegie). He didn't say that they literally thought social "ills"
were amenable to some strict application of the germ theory of
disease. They simply took that point of view as an interesting way
to guide their philanthropies.
I'm asking the second set of questions Paul mentions--how do you
apply complexity theory to institutional philanthropy? As metaphor?
As guiding principles?
Pamela
On Apr 14, 2009, at 5:53 PM, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]
> wrote:
Being on the board of a major environment NGO, I think that the
conclusion that donor institutions are motivated by a desire to
mitigate "illnesses" is too broad a generalization. Often donors
do have a vision of what they or the recipient organization are
striving for. This being said, the idea of applying complexity
theory to institutional philanthropy is certainly interesting and
perhaps very useful. How to do it is the question. "Tipping
points" and threshold analysis? Choosing where and how to give
most effectively based on ABMs and emergence? Worth a discussion,
particularly by those seeped in complexity!
Paul
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"To measure the abundance of positrons in cosmic rays, the team
used data from the instrument PAMELA <http://pamela.roma2.infn.it/index.php
>(Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei
Astrophysics), which launched aboard a Russian satellite in June
2006. Unlike previous antimatter-hunting instruments, PAMELA can
pinpoint not just the type of incoming particle but also its energy."
WIRED Science
------------------------------------------------------------------------
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
"To measure the abundance of positrons in cosmic rays, the team used
data from the instrument PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter
Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics), which launched aboard a
Russian satellite in June 2006. Unlike previous antimatter-hunting
instruments, PAMELA can pinpoint not just the type of incoming
particle but also its energy."
WIRED Science
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
