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Foundations of Radical Philanthropy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Annie Herro  and
Franklin Obeng-Odoom
Annie Herro*
Affiliation:
School of Social Science, University of New South Wales, Room 126, Morven Brown Building, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Franklin Obeng-Odoom*
Affiliation:
Development Studies Research Group, Faculty of Social Sciences, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 18, Room 206, Unioninkatu 35, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
*
a.herro@unsw.edu.au
franklin.obeng-odoom@helsinki.fi
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Abstract

As an institution that often seeks to redress global inequality and poverty, philanthropy is commonly dismissed as either masking structural causes, an insufficient response, or a contribution to the problem itself. Either way, philanthropy is increasingly labelled as philanthro-capitalism because it serves the interest of capital. But what about philanthropy that engages, seeks to transcend, and tries to provide alternatives to the status quo? Such philanthropies have been highlighted in the literature, but their radical foundations could be further clarified. In seeking to do so, this article (a) engages a radical theory of poverty, (b) teases out key principles of radical philanthropy, and (c) critically highlights the need to consider radical philanthropy as an alternative to philanthro-capitalism. Radical philanthropy is quite distinct and, while it can be unrealistic for individual foundations to embody all its principles, as a collective, they can be considered as one important and concrete contribution towards realising the aphorism, popularised by the World Social Forum, that ‘another world is possible’.

Keywords

RadicalismPhilanthropyPovertyInequalityPhilanthro-capitalism

Information

Type
Research Papers
Information
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , August 2019 , pp. 881 - 890
Copyright
Copyright © International Society for Third-Sector Research 2019

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