Paradigm Found

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAY 1, 2006

Part do-it-yourself guide and part memoir, this inspirational primer is aimed at budding social activists and those seeking to build a thriving nonprofit organization. Back in the mid-1980s, when Murray founded the Global Fund for Women and became its executive director, he linked women's rights with population issues, economic development and environmental preservation, well before the international philanthropic community recognized these connections. Discouraged by the experts' pessimism about the state of the world and the old-style hierarchical, donor-oriented philanthropic model, she saw the need for a new paradigm of social relations and organizational structure to overcome world violence and poverty. Drawing on second-wave feminist principles, Murray created a grantee-centered funding organization that put money "directly into the hands of women at the grass roots level so that they could do what they wanted to do rather than what the donors... wanted." Contrary to conventional wisdom, she found that small grass-roots organizations value the feeling of support more than the money they are awarded. In 21st-century, bottom-line driven America, her orientation toward connection over money is almost shockingly quaint, until her implementation reveals its effectiveness. Her personal story and spiritual yet practical approach to public service will inspire idealists to take action; the nuts-and-bolts how-to information provides the tools to begin.