Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2017 is an annual forecast from the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society about the ways we use private resources for public benefit. Each year, Lucy Bernholz offers an overview of the current landscape, big ideas, offers predictions, and captures the buzzwords that are trending in the sector. Her thoughtful analysis is a deep read but also essential.

The Insight section in this Blueprint looks at two fundamental questions:

  1. what is philanthropic and what is political, and
  2. what is the infrastructure of civil society in the digital age?

Having led workshops on the nature of governance and digital data in dozens of cities in several countries on a few different continents, I’m also happy to share some of the materials we (at Stanford PACS’ Digital Civil Society Lab) have developed. These have been informed by numerous nonprofit, philanthropic, and digital leaders. They will link you from this Blueprint to the digitalIMPACT.io site, to the MarketsForGood community, and to the Digital Civil Society Lab. There are many points of entry, and I hope you will find them useful.

In the Foresight section, I try to bring these big ideas down to ground level by making some predictions about what we’ll see in 2017.

I hold myself accountable to what I got wrong (and right) last year in the Hindsight section.

The Glimpses of the Future section focuses on the changing nature of form and governance in civil society as exemplified by the Black Lives Matter movement. It also considers the distressing fact that space for civil society is closing globally.

The annual list of Buzzwords and a set of three Worksheets on the use and governance of digital data round out the Blueprint.

 

Download a 37 pages comprehensive Blueprint - PDF from Stanford PACS