Dollar Philanthropy

Is it a good idea for Big Philanthropy to partner with Big Pharma?

This is cross posted from my other blog (heathcare/social marketing).  As I have two very different audiences for these blogs, I want to know what the DP readers think.

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I just read a Reuters article by Ben Herschler on the potential influence of the Gates Foundation on the pharma industry. A quick quotation to get you started:

"The billions of dollars thrown at global health problems by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are changing the game in drug discovery, posing big challenges to the world's top drugmakers, according to a report on Tuesday.

Pharmaceutical information group IMS Health Inc. said the emergence of megabuck philanthropy was both a threat and a collaboration opportunity for manufacturers.

"Pharma companies need to develop an explicit strategy to deal with this phenomenon," IMS said in its annual Intelligence.360 report on factors shaping the industry."

Now my day job is in healthcare and I've done a lot of work with the pharma industry over my career. I have helped with clinical research, written patient education materials and consulted on launch strategies and professional education efforts on new treatments.

Yes-- major philanthropic associations can do a lot to bolster the research efforts of pharma. Additionally, pharma gets good karma points for partnering with good causes. Nonetheless, one must always remember that in economics and business, nothing is ever free. Afterall, today's new era of empowered philanthropy, generous giving rarely means "without strings."

Just looking forward: How will pharma handle the philanthropist's demands for affordable prices on these new treatments that they have helped to bring to market? Afterall, right now most new treatments are priced based mostly on what the market will bear and competitor prices, rather than any real analytical plan to recoup costs plus a reasonable profit.

Or will philanthropic organizations require a  "return on investment" when partnering.  If so, what would this look like?

Not to leave out the megabuck philanthropies, I also have questions for them. What happens when an ethical question comes up about the research on a treatment? How will you ensure that your altruistic and philanthropic missions are not compromised by a greedy and immoral few? All it takes is one poorly designed study, one failure to disclose financial relationships, or one questionable and tragic death to occur in one of those studies to ruin all the good work being done.

We need only look back as far as 1933 and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to see how unethical research can ruin the trust of individuals who need care. Growing up and working in the south, I have seen the unfortunate legacy of this experiment. I have personally heard many African Americans voice suspicions and be doubtful of treatment offered to them. Some people going so far as to avoid doctors and hospitals at all costs and dying because they refused to seek treatment. I can only imagine what would happen if something similar happened in AIDS/HIV ravaged areas. It could completely undo all the work being done and send us tumbling toward the loss of multiple generations of people who really deserve better.

Michele Martin from Bamboo Project on Scarcity vs. Abundance Thinking

I want to welcome Michele Martin from Bamboo Project Blog to Dollar Philanthropy.  She recently wrote a series on how different thinking styles (scarcity and abundance--- first post here) affect our behavior surrounding philanthropy and giving.  I have written about my struggles with cynicism, but it was her thoughts on these two thinking styles that helped me understand another player in what keeps me from acting on things I know I should.

Then...  Michele made the mistake <wink...wink> of Blogtipping me and telling me that she thought I should put up more guest blogger posts.  So I thought it only appropriate that I ask her to write about the same subject that created some insight on an obstacle that I often bump into and --even worse--- had failed to recognize.

So without any further adieu... welcome Michele!
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Scarcity and Abundance

Recently I’ve been exploring the concepts of scarcity and abundance thinking and how they influence the ways we view the world and the choices we make to act in it. Carol kindly asked me to share some of these reflections with her readers, so here goes.

I’ve come to believe that there are two types of people in the world—those who act from a scarcity mindset and those who act from a fundamental belief in abundance.

Those who believe in scarcity see the world as a pie with a fixed number of pieces in it. Their goal is to grab and hold onto as many pieces of that pie as they can. They live in a world where resources are limited. There’s never enough time or money or people. Everything is a fight for survival of some kind.

Those who believe in abundance also see the world as a pie. But to them, that pie’s size is not fixed. The pie can grow indefinitely, so the goal is not to figure out how to get your piece and to hold onto it. The goal is to figure out how we can grow the pie so that everyone can have a larger slice. These people live in a world where resources are abundant, where you can always find the time, the money and the people if you’re willing to think differently. They aren’t fighting for survival. They are fighting to grow the pie so that everyone benefits.

What does this have to do with Dollar Philanthropy?

Well what Carol is trying to do here is to encourage her readers to move into abundance thinking and to use this abundance approach to grow bigger pies.

Abundance thinkers believe in the power of collective action. They see that small actions can add up to big impact and they’re always looking for ways to harness the power of the small choice made big. While scarcity thinkers see nothing but barriers and problems, abundance thinkers see challenges and opportunities. Where the scarcity believer focuses on maintaining his/her slice of the pie to make his/her life better, the abundance believer gives freely of his/her time and resources in the assumption that this giving will make things better for everyone, themselves included.

Personally, I really struggle with the scarcity mentality. When I’m worried about paying my own bills, it’s hard for me to think about how other people are worse off than I am. When I’m swamped  with work, it seems impossible to me that I should consider time to be an abundant resource. But sometimes you have to act in order to change how you feel, so I try at those times to behave as though I believe in abundance, even when I really don’t.

Seth Godin, one of my favorite writers,  suggeststhat one of the ways we can live in abundance is by always focusing in any situation first on what we can give. Not on what we can get out life, but what can we give back to it? He tells a story about his very successful father who used the idea of giving first as a fundamental guiding principle of his life—and it was giving all the time, not just when it was convenient.

To me, this is probably the greatest lesson of moving to an abundance mentality. That it’s through giving that we actually get all the happiness we want out of life. Even if we don’t feel like it, by giving, we can change our world.

Thanks to cobalt123 for the photo

The first logo sketches are in

Josh at Acid Tongue has sent me the first sketches of the logo.  Here they are-- I put them up as thumbnails...click on them to see a larger version.  They definitely have me thinking.  Please feel free to leave your thoughts too.

Pitch In For Baseball: Equipping Kids For Baseball and Life

The March Madness will soon be over and April is upon us.  To me, that means one thing.... Baseball. As a kid, the beginning of April meant long hours at the community baseball fields or some pasture or open field somewhere where we would practice. 

Baseball in my house was a family affair. The star of the family was my brother, an athletic lefty who pitched and played first base.  My Dad, well, he coached teams and tended the playing fields.  My Mom, she was the cupcake and cookie maker, the gatorade dealer, the boo-boo cleaner and bandager, and she did her shifts at the concession stand. As for me...now I wasn't the player... being an early achiever in the arthritis game, cut short my playing time (but I wasn't too good anyway). However, my rather OCD attention to detail and doing things right made me the best official scorekeeper in Powder Springs.

But this story isn't about my family... it is about the kid that stood at the edge of the practice pasture and watched with enrapt attention the other boys playing ball. 

In mid 70s in the South, neighborhoods were segregated. While my family never heeded the boundaries, nor were they ever explained fully to me, I remember local kid/peer wisdom illuminating the fact that there was a dividing line in our town --literally a "right side" and "wrong side" of the tracks. I knew the houses were not as nice and that my mom would get funny looks from the other parents when we would take a friend home who lived in that neighborhood.  But, to my parents credit, I never understood what the big deal was.

I remember vividly the unrest caused when my father, the coach at the time, and another man selected a practice pasture across the tracks.  They ignored the critics cause really, it was the best practice field, outside of the school fields in town.  Everyday after dinner, we would pack up the stuff and my brother would grab his well-oiled glove that he slept with and we would trundle over to practice.  For 2 hours, I would watch them catch pop-ups, take batting practice, make double plays on invisible runners, and practice squeeze play base running.  And everyday, I would see a kid who lived a couple of blocks away standing at the edge of the property watching too.  Everyday, I would see my dad or the other coach go over and ask him if he wanted to play too.  He would decline but each day he would move closer and closer to the playing field. 

Then one day, someone pulled the extra glove out of the equipment bag-- it was beat up, dirty and stiff as a board and handed it to the boy.  He was sent to center field and from that day on, he practiced with the team.  He was good too.  He was fast and had natural athletic ability that made him a baseball sponge out there in center field.  A couple of games went by without him and then he began playing officially with the team and definitely was a member of the team.  He had a uniform, cleats, and a hat.   Parents took turns picking him up and dropping him off.  In my view-- he just belonged.

While each baseball season saw players come and others go to another team.  This kid was always on my brother's team and my dad and whoever was helping him coach always selected the same practice field. The second season with him playing, he showed up with his own glove.  It was new and my brother set about teaching him how to use olive oil to soften the leather and how to properly 'break-in' the glove.

As time passed and seasons came and went, this kid eventually excelled at baseball and football-- went on to be a local star, in fact.  My Dad kept up with him and his acheivements.  I know my dad would read us articles on saturday morning out of the sports section of the area newspaper about him and my dad would talk about his performance after the high school football games.

Looking back, I now see that my dad and some very caring adults in our town removed the obstacles to this child playing ball and being part of a team.  Registrations were paid for or waived, equipment and uniforms were either made affordable or just given to him and people made sure he had transportation to and from games and events.  All was done quitely and no one wanted to make a big deal out of it. I'm sure that since kids can be cruel and it really didn't matter anyway, this was the best plan.

So today, in honor of my bighearted Dad (who just celebrated his 70th birthday this week), the beginning of baseball season and all those people who work hard to include instead of separate, I am highlighting an organization that provides baseball equipment for those who need it.

Pitch In for Baseball

Pitch In For Baseball's Mission is to help kids and make friends all over the world by sharing the great game of baseball. We collect and give baseball equipment and other assistance to young people in underserved communities around the globe. Baseball gives them the structure and freedom to be kids while making good decisions for their future. Kids not only have fun, but also learn important lessons for their future like teamwork, sportsmanship and dealing with adversity.

They ship new and gently used equipment to children all over the world, as well as here in the U.S. Anyone is eligible, so long as the community has a genuine need for youth baseball and softball equipment and the kids want to have fun. They normally work with leagues and programs in the community that have the ability to distribute the equipment and have a demonstrated track record of working with kids. Pitch In For Baseball has four goals:

• To support the growth of baseball in the U.S. and internationally.
• To give kids equipment so they can get out, have fun and stay healthy.
• To teach kids important lessons through baseball, like teamwork and sportsmanship.
• To make friends across the world through America's pastime.

Recently, Pitch In For Baseball collected money and equipment donations to get little league baseball re-started in the Gulf-coast regions devistated by Hurricane Katrina.

Send your Dollar:

For their mailing address or to donate through their website: Click Here

Through Network for Good:  Click Here

Through Just Give:  Click Here