A Generous Difference by Vivian Hutchinson is the latest chapter in How Communities Heal a book developed by The New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, a peer learning community of outstanding New Zealand change-makers. It “tells the unique stories of a group of New Zealand social entrepreneurs, and their work to create systemic and sustainable solutions to New Zealand’s social challenges.”

The book’s chapter, A Generous Difference tells the story of one social entrepreneur’s challenge to secure funding for “real innovation” from mainstream organizations and shares insights from a number of well-respected philanthropists within New Zealand to help make the case that the role of philanthropy must transform beyond the funding social services, to also provide “the venture capital that can support projects which focus on the issues that the government and the private sector are either unwilling or unable to address.”

Hutchinson concludes that transforming the culture of grant-making and philanthropy to support real innovation and sustainable social change will require that social entrepreneurs and their funders need to get a whole lot wiser about creating more effective partnerships with one another –based upon a greater understanding of the process of social innovation, and its longer-term requirements.