Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Mangoes and other strange Israeli philanthropic fruit.


Our Strategic Partnerships Mission in Israel continues with the wonderful trustees of the Farash Foundation. We had a superb briefing by my colleague, Galit Sagie, Director of Planning and Development for JDC-Israel. 

One of the most interesting developments in Israeli philanthropy in the past few years has been the "MaNGoes" - an acronym (sorta) for "my own NGO" - an attempt by Israeli philanthropists to set up their own pet projects, supported by their own philanthropic foundation. Occasionally this results in the Israeli philanthropist turning to US philanthropic funds asking for their help and support.

On the other hand, we're a long way off, still, from Israeli Board members on NGOs being expected to make a donation to the cause for which they were asked to sit.

We've come a very long way in a short time with Israeli philanthropy. We were a social-welfare and pseudo-socialist state, in which expectations came from the people to the State. We have a massive culture of volunteerism, but that doesn't translate to an organized culture of philanthropy. (Disorganization we seem to have lots of ....)

But we've come a very long way.

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