Hi! It’s Chris Cardona, Chair of VPF’s Advisory Council. I’m delighted to be contributing to VPF’s blog. I attended part of the Council on Foundations philanthropy mega-conference earlier this week representing VPF. I blogged about the experience – and got the word out about VPF to a broader audience – on Tactical Philanthropy, here, here, [...]

Recently, VPF members elected the environment as the topic we will focus on in 2008 – meaning that our Grants Committee team is currently hard at work developing an RFP to actively seek out New York City’s most innovative, emerging social entrepreneurs that are tackling local environmental issues. Appropriately, I had a discussion this morning [...]

Keep a keen eye on this blog in the coming weeks: New Voices of Philanthropy. Essentially, it is providing a platform for a diversity of futuristic views for philanthropy. Called the Giving Carnival, they have a few “preview ideas” already posted. From the looks of it, the final result will be a melange of interesting [...]

An explosive discovery related to a local philanthropy organization, GiveWell, has caused ripples through the progressive giving realm. Apparently, one of the founders, Holden Karnofsky, disguised himself on several websites to help drive people to GiveWell.net by posting questions asking where to find charity evaluation services while also providing an answer directing all fellow readers [...]

So today I was talking to a colleague about VPF’s upcoming Launch Party (Feb. ’08). We were admitting to one another that it often takes at least two attempts to clearly articulate what VPF does. Two attempts being on the low end. And everybody knows that this doesn’t make the ideal elevator speech. What is [...]