Four Revolutions in Global Philanthropy

The paper identifies and analyzes the four main fault lines which will influence the next decades of global philanthropy. All are related to what we can refer to as "the market revolution in global philanthropy". As global philanthropy moves beyond grantmaking, into investment approaches that produce a social as well as a financial return, this accelerates the mainstreaming of a variety of what used to be niche activities. They marry effectiveness, social impact, and market mechanisms.The paper discusses four key theatres: amplifying social entrepreneurship through synthetic social business; the shift from microfinance to inclusive financial services; the abandonment of the paradigm of development assistance in favor of base-of-the-pyramid investments; and the transition from classical grantmaking to an entrepreneurial internalization of externalities that uses public-private-civil society value chains.The paper was reviewed in the Huffington Post on January 18, 2011. According to the reviewer, “If you are a serious social entrepreneur, Dr. Martin's insights provide a hard-hitting perspective about how a new generation of the super-wealthy is "changing the logic" of philanthropy by moving dollars from inefficient, relationship-driven grantmaking to investments in values-driven social impact business