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Due to the increasing complexity of global environmental, health, energy and poverty problems, higher requirements are placed on people’s ability to innovatively find solutions. As an internationally renowned expert who has been deeply involved in the field of philanthropy for many years, Professor Salamon has keenly observed that a brand new transform is taking place in philanthropy around the world, private investment in the field of philanthropy has become a trend, diversified subjects and tools are emerging, and the boundaries of new frontiers of philanthropy continue to expand.
In the book “New Frontiers of Philanthropy” edited by Professor Salamon in 2014, he reviewed the historical meaning of the ancient term “philanthropy”, abandoning its limitation of focusing on the donations or grants, and emphasizing its true meaning, namely transforming private resources into public good through a variety of tools and approaches. From the perspective of innovative models in the field of global philanthropy, this book is of great value to the thriving social value investment and the construction of new commercial civilization in the world and in China.
In 2018, CGPI introduced and translated this book. Professor Salamon was very excited that this book of nearly 750,000 words (in Chinese) could be translated into Chinese. “I am especially grateful to the China Global Philanthropy Institute. You have always been very open to absorbing the world’s freshest concepts. When I first heard that the China Global Philanthropy Institute would translate the 750-page book “New Frontiers of Philanthropy” into Chinese, I considered it the craziest idea I’ve ever heard.”
In March 2019, the Chinese version of this book was officially released. Professor Salamon came all the way to China, and paid a visit to CGPI reviewing the original intention of writing the “New Frontiers of Philanthropy” with our faculty and industry partners. He proposed new philanthropy concepts and positioned the book as an introduction to the global philanthropy and social investment community new tools and subjects of social investment currently being implemented in developed and developing countries.
As a book that responds to new trends in social development, it has three main contributions:
First, it explains the technical terms in the fields of philanthropy and social investment, and distinguishes between the growing number of traditional or emerging actors in the social finance industry and the various financial tools and instruments used in this field.
Second, it calls attention to the emerging operation mechanism of the new frontier of philanthropy—leverage, and opens up channels to other larger capital pools, including charitable foundations, well-known private investment companies, and government departments.
Third, it reminds people to be vigilant about the risks facing the field. For example, overrating the green finance can lead to “greenwashing”. Therefore, the division standard between social finance and conventional finance should be cautiously defined to ensure the rationality of its special benefits.
About the author: Lester M. Salamon, professor at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies, an international expert and representative of the study of government behavior and the nonprofit sector, and also a distinguished professor of CGPI. The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Research, chaired by him, mainly studies the scope, structure, composition, funding status and impact of the global civil society sector, and has published several books and research reports.
