The Philanthropy and Networks Exploration, a partnership of the Packard Foundation and Monitor Institute, is an inquiry into how networks can facilitate greater philanthropic effectiveness. By networks, we are referring to social networks—collections of people and, by extension, organizations—connected to each other through relationships. Social media and Web 2.0 technologies are enabling people to connect in new ways and making those connections more visible than they had been before.

Our working hypothesis is that engaging networks can help philanthropies become more transparent, share information and ideas with greater immediacy, and create opportunities for leadership to emerge in new places. We hope to test and introduce network tools, concepts and technologies within the Packard Foundation; to openly share what we learn in the process; and by doing so, inform other institutional and individual philanthropists.

We began this learning journey in early 2007, motivated by the belief that networks offer a source of decentralized power, creativity, and wisdom that the Packard Foundation should better tap into. We started by reaching out to leading academics and practitioners to understand the current landscape; we got a flavor of the accelerating innovation and activity in the world of networks, and quickly became aware of how much there was to learn. When we started experimenting with using collaborative technologies, we really began to gain traction. We're now focusing our work on running pilot projects, and learning from these experiments and from the much broader set of developments and new knowledge about networks being created outside of our work.

The purpose of these web pages are to share what we're learning during our exploration. The ideas here do not represent expert opinions or formal final products. This is a work in progress, which we are sharing so others can benefit from and contribute to our learning and activities. Our ideas will inevitably change, evolve, and, we hope, improve over time. We invite your feedback and comments.