From Villains to Heroes

Last year I wrote a celebration of then European champions Barcelona, who eschewed perhaps more than 50 million euros in revenue to ink a shirt-logo deal with UNICEF, rather than with a commercial interest. It looks as if other football clubs are following suit.

In a press conference today in Birmingham, English Premiership side Aston Villa announced that next season, its strip will carry the emblem of Acorn Children’s Hospice, an institution providing year-round respite care, end-of-life care, and bereavement services across the West Midlands region in which Aston Villa is based.

The Philanthropy Exchange

Just before heading to India, I stopped in New York to attend the inaugural celebration of something that may well become an important new institution for charitable giving: The Philanthropy Exchange.

The event was held, fittingly, in the magnificent Board Room of the New York Stock Exchange. The worlds largest marketplace was playing host to an exciting new concept in open market structures: nonprofit organizations seeking donor funding, whether in tiny individual contributions or large program-wide sponsorships, could become “listed” on an exchange.

Celebrating Humbug: the ethics of misers and ritual gift-givers

It wouldn’t be particularly novel or interesting for me to assail the crass commercialism of the holiday season. Most of us do it this time each year.

And yet the pattern of insane consumption continues. Why? Because most folks who decry Christmas materialism nevertheless continue to feed the economic machine by participating in the purchase and exchange of generally useless gifts.

Looking at Service from an Entrepreneur’s Perspective

I spend the day at the TiE.YE (www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~tieye) forum for young entrepreneurs at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, a program bringing innovative business people together with a mix of undergraduates, MBA students, and recent graduates to discuss topics on the general subject of entrepreneurism. All the speakers were CEOs of successful, profitable start-ups – all but me. I spoke on behalf of CharityFocus.