funders

Let me start by saying I wanted to write an energising piece about the increasing predominance of wine farmers linked with philanthropy – and it would probably have ended up sounding a tad romantic, with visions of committed philanthropists making funding decisions to change South Africa’s entrenched dynamics of poverty and injustice, while sipping on a glass of world-renowned pinotage as the sun sets over their vineyards and workers bring in the last of the day’s grape harvest.

This blog hasn’t turned out quite that way.

The nonprofit sector is claiming it is entering another funding crisis yet not defining the root cause or coming up with a plan B or C. A business term for defining a crisis is: “A critical event or point of decision that, if not handled in an appropriate manner (or if not handled at all) may turn into a disaster or catastrophe.”