A New Era of Philanthropy: Why Funders Must Invest in Nonprofit People - with Dimple Abichandani
In this episode of the Fund the People Podcast, listeners will gain practical insight into how philanthropy can evolve to meet today’s interconnected crises—and what funders can do differently right now to support justice, sustainability, and nonprofit workers. Host Rusty Stahl is joined by nationally recognized philanthropic leader, lawyer, and author Dimple Abichandani, whose new book, A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth into a More Just and Sustainable Future, offers a bold reimagining of philanthropy’s purpose and practice.
Together, Rusty and Dimple explore why so many funders are skeptical that philanthropy can rise to this moment, tracing those doubts back to the field’s historical roots in Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” and the enduring legacy of Gilded Age thinking. They focus especially on the importance of investing in nonprofit people, with Dimple sharing concrete examples from her time as a foundation CEO—including "healing justice" grants that helped address burnout, trauma, and precarity in grantee organizations of General Service Foundation before and during the pandemic. The conversation closes with a compelling invitation to move beyond 'gilded philanthropy' toward 'true alchemy': transforming wealth through care, listening, and solidarity, so that communities can genuinely thrive.
Gust bio: Dimple Abichandani is a nationally recognized philanthropic leader, writer, and lawyer, and author of a forthcoming book, A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth Into a More Just Future, that offers fresh answers to the question of how philanthropy can meet this moment.
Related episodes:
Links to Resources:
A New Era of Philanthropy book by Dimple Abichandani
Dimple Abichandani website
For Philanthropy, This Actually Isn’t 2016 All Over Again, Dimple Abichandani letter in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, November 2024
To Ensure Nonprofit Wellbeing, Invest in Wages, Workloads and Working Conditions Rusty Stahl’s guest post on Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, June 2024
