Hartwick Colleger Presenter Offers Changing Paradigms in Philanthropy: March 11th

Open to the public
Located at the Dewar (Student Union) on Hartwick's campus

On Thursday, March 11, at 3PM in the Farrington room in Dewar Hall, my friend George McCully will be discussing changing paradigms in philanthropy.

Philanthropy is George’s second career. Trained in Renaissance history at Columbia University (M.A., 1961, Ph.D. 1967), he taught history and the philosophy of history for nearly twenty years at Swarthmore, Princeton, Yale, and Wellesley, with two years in academic administration at Brown, as Assistant Dean of the Faculty. In 1976 he entered philanthropy as a grantmaker to academic research organizations. By 1983 he was full-time independent consultant in philanthropy, since then as fundraiser, strategic planner, executive director, trustee, and advisor to charities, foundations, families and individual donors. He was founding Board President of the national Center for Plant Conservation, and conceived its Priority Regions Programs in Hawaii, California, Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico; he conceived the New England Plant Conservation Program for the New England Wild Flower Society; and helped over 20 years to build the Boston Early Music Festival as today the world’s leading Early Music organization. He is a 20-year trustee of the Ellis L. Phillips Foundation (Boston), and is an acknowledged authority on community foundations, helping to create four, and serving for ten years as trustee of the Community Foundation of MetroWest (Boston). He is a founding trustee (2008) of the Davlin Fund, a philanthropic mutual fund, and of its corporate Foundation. In 1997 he led a coalition of 40 foundations, corporations, and individual donors, to create the first Catalogue for Philanthropy (incorp. 2002) to promote charitable giving and strengthen the culture of philanthropy through donor-education. He wrote vols. I-XI of the Catalogues—articles about philanthropy supported by descriptions of (in twelve years) over 900 charities—the most thorough and detailed description, defense, and advocacy of philanthropy ever published. He also created the Generosity Index, which soon became the nation's leading stimulus for media discussions of charitable giving. In 2008 the Catalogue published his book, Philanthropy Reconsidered—a comprehensive introduction to, and strategic overview of, philanthropy, from ancient Greece, through the American Revolution, to the current national paradigm-shift, in which the Massachusetts Catalogue is playing a leading role. He serves on the Editorial Board of Conversations on Philanthropy, and is a main author of the Wikipedia article on “Philanthropy”.



His book, Philanthropy Reconsidered, is a re-interpretation and strategic overview of philanthropy--its meaning and values, greatest accomplishments, current transformations, and future directions. He asserts that from its first coinage in ancient Greece, in Prometheus Bound, philanthropia meant "the love of humanity", or of what it is to be human, an educational and cultural ideal. He suggests that we view the American Revolution as philanthropy in action--how Classical philanthropy through voluntary associations produced a "purportedly philanthropic nation", created by and for philanthropy. He describes how 20th-century growth and professionalization made philanthropy paradigmatic, but neglected Classical values, and how we are now in a paradigm--shift, in which philanthropy is being thoroughly transformed. He argues that the paradigm-shift analysis illuminates issues facing Old Paradigm institutions, and current trends suggesting a probable future. He reveals how a possible New Paradigm, uniting Classical ideals with Internet-based operations, might benefit donors, grantmakers, philanthropic advisors, trustees, executive directors, scholars, media journalists, teachers and students, as well as civic, religious and political leaders.


You’re invited. I hope you’ll come.


John Clemens