The World We Want

Launching The World We Want

WGBH Video or Audio  (1 Hour):

Paul S. Grogan, president, CEO, The Boston Foundation
Peter Karoff, founder, The Philanthropic Initiative
John Abele, founder, Boston Scientific Corp, Argosy Foundation

TBF and TPI host a reception and community discussion to formally launch a national book tour for The World We Want: New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change by Peter Karoff with Jane Maddox. The evening opens with welcoming remarks from Paul Grogan, President and CEO of The Boston Foundation, followed by commentary by the author, Peter Karoff, who is the founder and board chairman of The Philanthropic Initiative, a nonprofit consulting group that promotes philanthropy and advises donors on strategic giving. Peter also engages in a conversation with John Abele of Boston Scientific and The Argosy Foundation, one of the book's distinguished contributors, to discuss themes and issues raised by this significant addition to philanthropic discourse.

The Noble Nature

At Gifthub a meditation on "The Noble Nature" by Ben Jonson recalls Jonson's "Penshurst," and with it Peter's meditation on aristrocacy and democracy at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Mansion on the Hudson.  Peter wrote a blurb for Jay Hughes new book, Family: A Compact Among the Generations, praising Jay for his citizenship, among other things.  In that blurb, as in the poem about the Rockefellers, Peter's  words go both ways at once, graciously praising what passes in America for Nobility, and yet tacitly asking it to go further, towards what one might call the real thing.  The Colonel does chicken right. We have a long way to go, if we hope to do Aristocracy right. We will be lucky if we get somewhere close to Plutocracy with bogus patina. (You can quote me on that, a Fool at your service, Sire.)

The Public Launch of The World We Want

Received an email from Peter who had the following news:

The book came out in February, and has had good response and a second printing. The public launch will be September 19th in Boston under theauspices of The Boston Foundation.The Literary Ventures Fund has organized an impressive media and promotion campaign and in the process the book is being redesigned, and the price reduced.

The book tour will begin in earnest in the fall and I am open to ideas and suggestions as to possible venues. My TPI colleagues have put together an exciting workshop series based on some of the major themes in the book. We piloted this notion - a talk about The World We Want anda workshop - in Toronto last week at the annual meeting of Foundations Philanthropic Canada, and it went well. We like the plan very much of taking these ideas and helping people put them into practice in their own communities.

We have also done the first three of a series of podcasts, two of which are based on a conversation with Melinda Marble - http://karoff.libsyn.com/ -and want to do more. Doing podcasts is suspiciously like having fun, and you are herby invited to join in with your comments at the link above.

Do readers have any suggestions on venues for conversations about the book, or stops for Peter on his book tour?

Book Review

The World We Want has been reviewed at Foundation Center.

For Jane and Peter: Ollyollyexenfree!

The World We Want is an artifact, a residuum, of many conversations - between Peter Karoff with wealthy, well-known donors, and of  Peter with himself, reflecting on what he has heard and learned in a lifetime working in sales, then  as an entrepreneur, supporter of civil rights, poet,  "founding father" of philanthropic consulting, and as a father, husband, neighbor, and citizen.  The book is full of questions for discussion. But how can we awaken those questions so that the World We Want becomes a conversation among citizens from all walks of life, a cacophony, if necessary, but the voice of democracy, not just the voices of a sequestered and privileged elite, flattered by the attention of those who dare not raise the hard issues, lest they offend, lose access and be cast into the Dumpster of insignificant lives?

The leaders have passed on. They have vouchsafed their insights. They have been written up and respectfully preserved. But the world is no better off. Democracy seems as much in peril as ever. And tomorrow there will be other interviews for the famous, new celebrities, more vanities. How we come together to create the world we want is as much a question as it was when the project began.

I have thought hard about how to reawaken the conversation, now that the book has landed on my desk with a thump. If the editor, Jane Maddox, had permission from Peter and the publisher, perhaps she could delve back into the tons of material that have been cut, including essays and comments that did not make it into the book, and snippets from the conversations that did, and simply post provocative bits from day to day for conversation. Without the bits being online, it is hard to reference them, and hard to comment. With 25-200 word chunks online, perhaps we could attract the highly placed author of the bit, and those who might want to interact with her or him. Perhaps Jane could even email the famous person a "heads up" that his or her bit would be online, and that the public served by philanthropy was in danger of commenting, whether or not respectfully?

Of course two-way or many-to-many dialogue between the Prince and the Paupers would be world-changing. And that is the risk you run when you publish a book called, The World We Want and offer it to the general public.  We have voices too,  Peter and Jane.  Do you want to interact with us or not? (Silence, by the way, means, "No." When you live in a Dumpster, you get very sensitive to the silence of those who avert their eyes as they walk by. We know what it means to be invisible and unheard. In the World We Want you stop to acknowledge our existence.)

How To Order The World We Want

The World We Want: New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change, edited by H. Peter Karoff with Jane Maddox is now available for prepurchase.

Comment Policy

Some will post in propria persona, others in masks. The World We Want is going to require a coalition of all kinds of people, including those who do have wealth or privilege and those who have nothing at all, except their efforts and their talent.  I would just like to ask that however you manage your online persona, please consider this a shared space and shared effort. We learn through disagreements, sometimes heated, but see if we can show respect to one another as human beings and fellow seekers.  If your comments are truly divisive and threaten our fragile conversational space, I will intervene as best I can. But let's see if we "can be the change we seek," by letting others see that whatever our momentary bluster or emotion, whatever our mask or public standing that we are respectful of one another as fellow citizens and mutual learners.

Action in the Name of The World We Want

In response to 9/11 came war, surveillance, Guantanamo. Some or all of these responses may be necessary, but none are positive in themselves. Beneath these responses many of us are still in mourning. We want to come together as citizens to ask, to transliterate J.F.K, not what our community can do for us, but what we can do for our communities. The World We Want by H. Peter Karoff could be a rallying point. Some will find the viewpoints presented by leading philanthropists in the book to be of immediate interest; others will find the questions themselves to be the main thing - "What is the world we want, and how can we contribute?" We know that a better world is not sold in stores. No one, no matter how wealthy, can create it by fiat or through money alone. Our best hope is to come together, many with many, in diverse communities of interest, and pitch in, each doing a part, whether rich or poor.

If you have a project or hope that you and your friends would like to pursue in the name of The World We Want, the world you want in your particular community, please let me know, so I can link and point to it, as one volunteer among others. Peter can keep track of what is going on through this site, and can offer whatever guidance he wishes.

Here is what is so sad. I think many of us are almost waiting until someone "among the leaders," gives us permission to be citizens. We are so used to being driven by marketing or political speeches, or corporate imperatives that we seem to think someone has to authorize us to work for a better world. ("That which is not permitted is forbidden.") I am not sure Peter is in a position to stand on some balconey and bless this or that project. But I am sure he would be happy to see a revitalization of civil society, led by engaged citizens who are willing to do their part all over the country. So, until you hear otherwise, why don't you consider yourself an active citizen of a free country and act accordingly, not just as one person, but as one person connected in common purpose to many?

I will let you know if Peter revokes your right to assemble or to do good works in the name of The World We Want. Am I authorized? No, I am just doing it, as a guy with blog. Shall we? What would you like to do, for a better world, with whom, when? What's stopping you?

Trust and Transgression: Fulfilling and Betraying Genre Expectations in The World We Want

Did you know that in Greece and Rome tragedies were always followed by a Satyr play in which the elevated themes of the tragedy were transposed to a comic, obscene and often scatological register? To make The World We Want work on line I think we need two spaces, one elevated and safe, and one transgressive and debased. We need a place where the Kings and Queens, the billionaire "friends of Peter," come to discuss The World We Want in all seriousness; and we need a place where the Satyrs cavort, in their comic masks or hairy cloaks, inverting the established order, and flinging obscenities, shit, and unwelcome truths in all directions, as even the powers that be laugh with shock and relief. We need both. What history seems to tell us is that we need both, but cannot expect to have both inside the same frame at the same time. First Carnival, then Lent, or the other way around. To realize the great opportunity presented by "The World We Want," I think we need two spaces, with two "decorums." My strength is convening the clowns. But that will be pointless unless we can get the Lords and Ladies to convene in an adjacent but Safe Space, one where we clowns can eavesdrop. The Festival of Democracy is not complete without both moments. Even Lords and Ladies must excrete or they would indeed be full of shit. But still the Boardroom and the Bathroom should have doors. In one the Queen sits upon a gilded throne, writing directives for The World We Want; in the other room, her comic doppleganger sits upon a porcelin throne, using the official directive as toilet paper. Both the constructive and deconstructive moments are essential to the health of the Body Politic. My point is that these are two quite different "Scenes," and must be kept separate but parallel if the genres are to work.

The Constitution of The World We Want

Via Synergos:

H. Peter Karoff, a member of Synergos' Board of Directors and the founder and Chair of The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), has produced a paper Open Source Philanthropy -- Social Change in a Flat World which looks at new models of collaboration in philanthropy. These models, which are characterized by transparcy, openess and interdependence. Looking at the broader "open source" movement in the world of technology, Karoff asks if the lessons and potential of that movement are applicable to philanthropy and concludes with "a hopeful 'yes,' qualified only by how open we ourselves can be."

Download Open Source Philanthropy -- Social Change in a Flat World.

Written June 2005

As we develop a "Constitution" for The World We Want perhaps we can converge on the principles of the Open Source movement.