Thursday, January 5, 2012

Inside Fortress Bill

A BBC documentary devoted to the Gates Foundation with some parts about secrecy and lack of transparency. Presented on Humanosphere. There is no mention of Melinda :(

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The hidden cost of million-dollar donations

An interesting article by Robin Rogers in the Washington Post looks at the "concern about how and where the money is spent", the responsibility to the public to be clear about its use. She worries about the reluctance to critically review such generosity and concludes by stressing the need for checks and balances. Where are they?

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Why this blog?

I created this blog to share my thoughts about the need to implement transparency practices for non-profits, from the big Foundations (like the Gates Foundation) to their grantees and sub-grantees.
My experience during the last four years in the field of tobacco control in Africa has been one of extreme secrecy and refusal to divulge key information about how the programs are managed.
Creating a transparency scorecard could be a way to document in a more precise way what the actors are hiding and shame them for doing so by positioning them on a scorecard where their performance would be for everybody to appreciate.

How transparent is the Gates Foundation?

An interesting article published by Caroline Preston in this blog of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Philanthrocapitalism blog about King Bill

Bishop and Green keep complaining about the lack of transparency and how people are afraid to say anything that could perceived as criticism of the Gates Foundation.

Gates Foundation: still looking for honest feedback

From Tom Paulson's Blog, Humanopshere.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Alliance Magazine and the Gates Foundation

Tom Paulson reports about the articles about the Gates Foundation published in Alliance Magazine.
He refers to Tim Ogden's introduction that points out to the difficulty of honest feedback:


Speaking truth to power
The first is that it is increasingly difficult for anyone to speak truth to power at the Gates Foundation. We were surprised at the number of people who responded to our requests for submissions with some version of ‘I’d love to talk about that, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to comment publicly’.