Love Giving Well

Book excerpt: Mark Petersen has learned philanthropy in the process of leading a private grantmaking foundation. It has been a pilgrimage with mountaintops and valleys, high-impact grants and dead-end disasters. He parallels a personal account of a physical pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago alongside his philanthropic journey to create a sense of momentum and intentional movement toward a shared destination. Each of the thirty-five chapters leads with a short journal entry from the author's month-long pilgrimage along the Camino del Norte and Camino Primitivo in Spain. Mark uses compelling stories to vulnerably shares fifteen years' worth of failures as well as successes in his journey of philanthropy. Along this journey he developed practical steps for reviewing grant applications and achieving goals for philanthropy. He advances the values of transparency, mutuality, and collaborating with others to achieve common goals. The vision of philanthropy espoused not only includes charitable impact but suggests the giver can be transformed in the process. The book offers a window into how people of faith struggle with giving, humanizes the mystique of a philanthropist, and provides grantmakers with tangible tools in their efforts to be both shrewd and faithful.