Duke Sanford School of Public Policy

Center Faculty Chair Joel Feishman, with his coauthor Tom Tierney of the Bridgespan Group, has an article in today's Fortune magazine online, titled "The New American Philanthropists: Will Their Billions Get Results?"

The Center is pleased to announce the creation of a new resource for the field, the Philanthropy Course Syllabus Database.

The Course Syllabus Database contains a collection of syllabuses for courses on philanthropy contributed by scholars from institutions nationwide, including Indiana University, the Harvard Business School, Stanford University, and Princeton University. Course titles and descriptions are fully searchable. Users can also browse by focus, keyword, institution, instructor, and year offered. The syllabuses themselves are stored as read-only PDFs behind a free registration wall.

John Abele, a cofounder the director of the medical devices company Boston Scientific as well as founder of the Argosy Foundation, came to Duke recently and met with several groups.

Video of his presentation before the Foundation Impact Research Group, in which Mr. Abele discusses the evolution of Argosy's decision-making process, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) youth robotics competition programs, and a book he's writing about cooperation, among other topics, is available here.

About two years ago CSPCS, along with the Fuqua School's Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) and the Bridgespan Group, hosted a conference at Duke titled "Scaling Social Impact: What We Know and What We Need to Know." (Session summaries of the conference can be found here.) Out of that conference came a book edited by CASE's Paul Bloom and our own Edward Skloot, Scaling Social Impact: New Thinking (Palgrave Macmillan).

In today's Chronicle of Philanthropy, Thomas Tierney and the Center's Faculty Chair, Joel Fleishman, discuss the recent announcement that 40 very wealthy individuals and families, at the encouragement of Bill and Melinda Gates, have taken the Giving Pledge, promising to donate half their wealth to good causes.

And over at the Center for Effective Philanthropy's blog, Phil Buchanan has written a heartfelt and moving thank-you to Joel Orosz, who recently announced his retirement from Grand Valley State University.

Day one at SEI10, held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, was attended by close to 400 funders, nonprofits, philanthropy advisers, and others.

Ventureneer is partnering with Adin Miller Consulting to provide a one-stop resource for insights and news from the

Yesterday Lucy Bernholz, philanthropy maven and lead author of the just-published monograph Disruptin

Disrupting Philanthropy: Technology and the Future of the Social Sector, by Lucy Bernholz with Edward Skloot and Barry Varela, is now available on the Center's website, at

Elizabeth McCormack, Deputy Chairman of the Atlantic Philanthropies and Senior Advisor on Charitable Giving, Rockefeller Family & Associates, spoke before the