Inventing Digital Civil Society

Lucy Bernholz is a philanthropy wonk. She is trying to understand how we create, fund, and distribute shared social goods in the digital age — what she calls The Future of Good. She writes extensively on philanthropy, technology, information, and policy on her award-winning blog, philanthropy2173.com. This work led The Huffington Post to hail her as a “game changer.” In 2011 Bernholz sold her company, Blueprint Research + Design, to Arabella Advisors.

Bernholz is a visiting scholar at the Stanford University Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, a Fellow with the Hybrid Reality Institute and former Fellow of the New America Foundation. Among other advisory roles, Bernholz serves on the Board of The Craigslist Foundation, on the NeXii Industry Standards and Advisory Board, and is an advisor to the Center for Digital Information. She is a frequent conference speaker and an oft-quoted media source for NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economic Times of India. She is the author of numerous articles and books about the business of giving, including the Blueprint Series of Annual Industry Forecasts on Philanthropy and Social Investing, the 2010 publication Disrupting Philanthropy, and her 2004 book Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets: The Deliberate Evolution. She has a B.A. from Yale University, where she played field hockey and captained the lacrosse team, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)