Philanthropy is often seen as society's risk capital. That means the onus is on philanthropists, nonprofit leaders and social entrepreneurs to innovate. But philanthropic innovation is not just about creating something new. It also means applying new thinking to old problems, processes and systems.
Interpretation
Philanthropy is a crucial driver of social innovation and requires new thinking to address existing challenges.
In this quote, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen emphasizes the transformative power of philanthropy, suggesting that it serves as a source of financial risk akin to capital in a business environment. Philanthropists, nonprofit leaders, and social entrepreneurs are urged not only to create novel solutions but also to rethink traditional approaches to age-old problems, highlighting that innovation can stem from reimagining existing processes and systems rather than solely from new inventions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a conference about social entrepreneurship to highlight the importance of rethinking traditional approaches.
There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.
Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it runs.
It's not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between.
True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others.
She thought about her life and how lost she’d felt for most of it. She thought about the way that all truths she’d been taught to consider valuable invariably conflicted with the world as it was actually lived. How could a person be so utterly lost, yet remain living?
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