Power and Accountability in Civil Society

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The world's biggest philanthropist, MacKenzie Scott, has given away $14 billion in the past three yearsmore than any other person in history, the New York Times reports.

But while Scott's giving is "remarkable not only because of the amount of money that she's given away, but also because of the way she's done it," Harvard Business School professor Julie Battilana tells the Harvard Gazette.

"As an outsider looking at Scott's giving, it seems like she tried to find the consensus best nonprofit organizations in the United States and around the world and give her money to all of those in the fastest, most unrestricted way possible."

Battilana, who has researched Scott's giving, says the pace of her donations is "just about the fastest that anyone has given away such a large amount of money in history."

Scott's giving "isn't subject to the same constraints that public money is," she says.

"Power resides in control over access to valued resources, and funders control access to financial resources.

The reality is that when there is a significant power imbalance between two groups, those grantees can use their power to decide which social problems are worthy of attention, and also how we should go about addressing them."

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