Duke Sanford School of Public Policy

"Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." —Samuel Johnson, as reported by James Boswell in Life of Johnson.

With the publication of the second annual report on spend-down at the AVI CHAI Foundation, Tony Proscio and I have had the opportunity to reflect on some of the lessons that we, as well as the trustees and staff at AVI CHAI, have learned over the first two years of the project.

This continues my reaction to Joan Spero’s Foundation Center presentation in New York on 17 May. As I noted yesterday, I f

Yesterday I went to a very interesting panel at the Foundation Center on “The Global Role of U.S.

It wasn’t too long ago that very few philanthropic foundations were designed, or would come to decide, to spend down their endowments and go out of business.

Sitting on a ramshackle assortment of wooden benches under the shade of a mango tree, we listen to the story of the widow Mary Gargar.

“Women are part of the development agenda for the first time—and we are making use of our time. Traditional culture has made us reticent. But no more.

"I fear the judgment of future generations,” former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is quoted as saying.  “I fear their asking how can wealthy peop

“Liberia is not a poor country.

Two years ago, Mladen Jovanović, one of three founders of PROTECTA, a Serbian NGO, took my online executive program on