Last year, staff members who worked in “corporate security” at eBay set out to harass a husband-and-wife team who publish a newsletter that criticized the company. Things got ugly in a hurry. The security staff sent them boxes of live cockroaches, a bloody Halloween mask, a funeral wreath and a book on how to survive …
Well, that didn’t take long. Less than six months after stepping down as CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, Wayne Pacelle is returning to the animal welfare movement, this time as a part of a political action committee called Animal Wellness Action. Pacelle left the Humane Society (HSUS) in February under a …
Some people who start out poor and then make a lot of money forget their roots. Not Mario Morino. In a speech to the august City Club of Cleveland in 2012, Morino talked about growing up in one of the city’s working class neighborhoods. He said: My dad sold vacuum sweepers door to door and …
Too many nonprofit boards are weak. The board of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation was reputed to be one of them. That changed, dramatically, today when the board put Emmett Carson, the foundation’s CEO, on paid leave while it conducts what certainly appears to be a serious investigation into the workplace culture of the foundation, …
Days after a workplace scandal with #metoo overtones led to the departure of Mari Ellen Loijens, the chief fundraiser at the fast-growing Silicon Valley Community Foundation, questions are swirling about Emmett Carson, the founding CEO of the SVCF. Carson has been trying hard to distance himself from the noxious behavior of Loijens, which was exposed …
Last night, the Chronicle of Philanthropy published a long story about the Silicon Valley Community Foundation that I wrote with help from Megan O’Neil, the news editor at the Chronicle. The headline: A Star Performer Created a ‘Toxic Culture’ at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Say Insiders An investigation is looking into reports of bullying, sexual …
Social entrepreneur Leila Janah is a regular on the do-good circuit: She’s been to the Clinton Global Initiative, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Fortune Global Forum, SOCAP, BSR, SXSW and Tedx. She’s a media darling. She’s got a new book out. But what has she accomplished? Let’s have a look. There’s lots to admire about …
You could call Jonathan C. Lewis a late bloomer. Not until he retired from business in his mid-50s did he rediscover his 1960s activist soul and become a full-time “social entrepreneur.” Lewis founded a nonprofit impact investing firm now called MCE Social Capital that makes loans to poor people in the developing work. He created Opportunity Collaboration, …
Mauricio Lim Miller spent about two decades leading a anti-poverty organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he did it well, so well that President Clinton invited him to the 1999 State of the Union address. But Miller was disillusioned. “I became very cynical about my work,” he told me. He had come to …
To raise awareness of the global water crisis, Mina Guli ran the equivalent of 40 marathons on seven deserts on seven continents in seven weeks earlier this year. As a marathon runner, I salute her. As a reporter who writes about philanthropy, I’m less impressed. A “global leader, athlete, entrepreneur and adventurer” — her words, not mine -Guli …
