This morning the HBS Club of Chicago hosted Julia Stasch, VP of the MacArthur Foundation, for a speech on the topic of "Philanthropy 2009: Charity or Change?"  Stasch posed the question:  Are foundations better suited to fund direct service ("charity") or systemic policy ("change")?

Stasch argued that despite MacArthur's $260M annual giving, the Foundation will never be able to solve the world's problems by responding to individual needs.  Rather, she suggested that broader impact would occur through systemic change "spilling over" into policy.

"One of the luxuries of philanthropy," she says, "is to take a long view. Foundations can have a higher tolerance for risk."  Perhaps, but at what point does this luxury become a liability?  There must still be accountability for results, or that capacity for risk will be sadly wasted.