Philanthropy’s Data Dilemma

July 09, 2012

(Bradford K. Smith is president of the Foundation Center.)

When McKinsey & Co. released its seminal study Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity, the firm confidently predicted that the world was "on the cusp of a tremendous wave of innovation, productivity, and growth, as well as new modes of competition and value capture -- all driven by big data as consumers, companies, and economic sectors exploit its potential." While the study covered every segment of the economy, from "accommodation and food" to "wholesale trade" and even government, philanthropy -- an industry that, in America, controls over $600 billion in assets and makes close to $47 billion in grants every year -- wasn't even mentioned, most likely because no one thought toBurroughs taking Capote to task for a “betrayal” of literary talent before concluding by effectively casting a curse on Capote’s writing abilities. Read with the benefit of hindsight, the text is all the more disturbing given that history bore out the desired effects of Burroughs’ sinister wish. But first, some background…

According to Ted Morgan, Burroughs first became aware of Capote between 1942 and 1944, when Capote was working as a copyboy at the offices of the New Yorker. Morgan recounts that Burroughs was introduced to Capote by a mutual friend, Chandler Brossard, then a reporter for the New Yorker and later a novelist in his own right. Conversely, in his “Afterword” to And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, James Grauerholz states that Burroughs was introduced to