Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World

A former Ford Foundation director takes a critical look at the role of for-profit companies in philanthropy—and exposes the troubling risks and downsides.
 
A new movement is afoot that promises to save the world by bringing the magic of the market to philanthropy. Nonprofits should be run like businesses, its adherents say, and businesses can find new sources of revenue by marketing goods and services that benefit society. What could be wrong with that? 

Plenty, argues Michael Edwards. In this hard-hitting, controversial expose he marshals a wealth of evidence to show just how far short the promise of so-called philanthrocapitalism has fallen, and why the whole concept is fundamentally flawed. Some business practices can be beneficial to nonprofits, and it’s definitely a good thing that the for-profit sector is developing a social conscience. Edwards carefully specifies when businesses and business thinking can help. But to really get at the root causes of the systemic problems most nonprofits wrestle with—hunger, poverty, disease, violence—a completely different way of operating is required.
 
Social transformation demands cooperation rather than competition, collective action more than individual effort, and patient, long-term support for solutions over short-term results. Philanthrocapitalism concentrates power in the hands of a few major players, mirroring the very inequities civil organizations should be trying to ameliorate. With a vested interest in the status quo, it shies away from fundamental change. At most all it can promise is valuable but limited advances: small change. Ultimately, Edwards declares that the use of business thinking can and does corrupt civil society. It’s time to differentiate the two—and re-assert the independence of global citizen action.
 
“Anyone who wants the truth of philanthropy in America should read this book.” —Robert B. Reich

Michael Edwards is a writer and activist affiliated with the think tank Demos in New York, the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, and the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University in the UK. Previously, he was director of the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Program and worked for the World Bank, Oxfam, and Save the Children.