Matthew Gerken

Matthew Gerken joined American Philanthropic after serving as a program officer at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where he organized the Institute’s first-ever collegiate debating symposium. He studied intellectual history as an undergraduate at Yale, and has experience in education, event planning, and foundation research. An Illinois native, Matt lives in the Chicago area with his wife and sons.


The good, the bad, and the ugly of direct mail tactics

Shady direct mail tactics, like crying wolf, have diminishing returns over time.

3 fundraising fads you should ignore

Like cats on the internet, fundraising fads can be fun to play with. But they ultimately harm your organization by fixating on lower return strategies, implicitly endorsing false premises, and misallocating precious resources.


3 shockingly common hiring mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Until the moment of need strikes, the high costs of employee turnover are rarely dwelled upon by nonprofit leaders.

John Bogle, Boring Philanthropist

Philanthropists should learn from the late John Bogle’s humility and localism. Because of his selfless business decisions, we had one less billionaire philanthropist and millions more middle-class givers spread throughout the world.


The madness of metrics

How philanthropy’s obsession with metrics makes complete gibberish out of grant proposals.

Contradicting the cult of conciseness: why less isn’t always more

Perhaps we’ve gone too far in our obsession with three-word slogans and bullet-point presentations.


Why suburban malls survive

As long as there are suburbs, the essential communal and civic needs that drove Austrian architect Victor Gruen to design shopping malls will remain.


Democrats and the ethics of direct mail

A social media kerfuffle erupted on the left when an activist took issue with a misleading piece of direct mail he received from the Democratic National Committee…