Public funders—and eventually private funders as well—will migrate away from organizations with stirring stories alone, toward well-managed organizations that can also demonstrate meaningful, lasting impact.

But Morino, who has preached a mantra of measurability and impact for nonprofits for the last 15 years, is right. And Leap of Reason is terrific resource for nonprofit managers and board members, as well social entrepreneurs, foundation leaders and informed individual donors. A nice story simply won’t get it done.

Nor should it; nonprofit organizations, churches, and foundations are granted an extraordinary privilege in the United States – they exist tax-free in exchange for the social benefits they promise. Increasingly, suppliers of capital to social causes are demanding measurable impact. And Morino (who I’ve known since the mid-90s) points out that this trend will only increase in an era of diminishing public sector spending on nonprofit organizations. Those funders will migrate away – and indeed, I’ve seen this in my work with nonprofits. What Morino calls “managing to outcomes” involves showing real, provable social benefits to those paying the bills – and this goes beyond the raw numbers of people served, to showing how they’re served, and in many cases, the scale at which the organization tackles major social challenges.

I have to say: this kind of thinking can sometimes be frustrating for hard-working nonprofit managers toiling in the trenches in underpaid jobs with over-long hours. Particularly in the social services sector, the managers can rightly say they’re changing people’s lives every day – with programs that may not scale in the investment sense, or provide clear-cut metrics for societal impact. Yet kids get early childhood intervention, young moms get support, addicts get treatment, etc. To these folks, the work is clearly needed – though the philanthropic dollars are increasingly difficult to find.

Morino is aware that some of the management-speak in his book might put off a few readers. “I use the term ‘performance culture’ with some trepidation. I know it’s radioactive for some, especially those in the education field,” he writes. But his chapter on organizational culture really isn’t threatening – it’s inspiring. Morino encourages strong, questioning, creative people in positions of nonprofit management. “In my experience, people who improve, innovate, and adapt are curious souls and self-learners. An organization’s culture should encourage people to ask questions, seek advice, do research, improve what they do and how they do it, help each other, push each other’s thinking, probe, nudge, adapt, look at things from different vantage points. All of these behaviors lead to improvement and innovation for the organization and the individuals who are part of it.”

Leap of Reason is packed with good advice in three sections: Morino’s opening monograph on impact, a framework for planning, and a section with essays and resources for more in-depth reading and follow-up work. As a consultant who often works on strategic plans and development roadmaps, I particularly value the savvy framework section and will undoubtedly use some of the key questions and models there in my work.

Even skeptical, harried nonprofits should spend some time with Leap of Reason for another, very practical reason – it provides clear and actionable insight into the thinking of a prominent major funder, a truly involved philanthropist. Mario Morino has been working on building a more engaged form of philanthropy for a decade and a half, and many foundations and major donors now walk in his footsteps. For that reason alone, Leap of Reason should be on the bookshelf of every nonprofit leader I know. But there’s another reason as well: better-managed, more sustainable nonprofit organizations won’t just be better bets for donors – they’ll be better for the people who need them as well.

And CGI served as a non-threatening, open-handed collaborative that stood squarely in the mainstream center of the political spectrum – but clearly to the left of the White House.

This year, when the current occupant of the White House praised Bill Clinton as the nation’s “Do-Gooder in Chief,” there was more than a little irony in the worlds of President Barack Obama. Because in its seventh annual confab this past week in midtown Manhattan, Obama’s Democratic predecessor once more had assembled the kind of open, ordered collaborative the President might well wish Washington more resembled.

And both CGI and its energetic founder still stood squarely in the mainstream center of the political spectrum – but clearly to the left of the White House.

This was my sixth CGI annual meeting (I also spoke at CGI University in Miami last spring) and it has been fascinating to watch the organization’s evolution. Then too, this is Bill Clinton’s 10th year working on his post-Presidential philanthropy and development projects. The numbers continue to be big: CGI has garnered more than 2,100 commitments worth nearly $70 billion. But it’s clear to me that Clinton’s own thinking has evolved, and that he still gestates new ideas on the “art of the possible” during these annual meetings and his year-round work with CGI and his foundation.

And it’s not so much driven by philosophy or ideology (indeed, Clinton’s ideas of government’s role in the world seem remarkably intact) as much as by necessity – and the challenge of these deeply threatening economic times.

“There are challenges that we all face and we have to face them together,” said President Clinton at one of the plenary sessions. “You should feel good about being part of the non-governmental movement, but I do not think you should be anti-government.”

There was a subtle shift in CGI this year that fit in under the focus headline of “jobs” that displayed a keen sense of the present. President Clinton was talking quite a bit about his upcoming book on creating jobs. The main stage “commitments” (those promises of projects, collaboration, and funding that define CGI’s operations) feature the former President and the usual range of celebrities, heads of state, big corporations, nonprofit leaders and assorted do-gooders. I’m not sure if this was commented on elsewhere, but I found the scarcity of big financial institutions both onstage and in general evidence at CGI this year to be somewhat telling. There was stronger emphasis on companies that make things, and on projects involving retrofitting vast portions of the economy (energy efficient real estate deals were the big-ticket headline of the meeting, in my view), and interesting, on labor.

One of the signature commitments came from the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers to fund energy-effecient infrastructure in cities. The initiative led Reuters’ coverage and signaled Clinton’s widening of CGI in the last two years to focus more on serious domestic issues:

With the United States possibly on the brink of another recession and the unemployment rate at more than 9 percent, Clinton trumpeted a pledge by the AFL-CIO labor federation and the American Federation of Teachers to reinvest $10 billion over the next five years in energy-efficient infrastructure.

“This is a huge deal. This could be done not just in the United States but in every European country, in every wealthy Asian country. This system will work and you get guaranteed savings,” Clinton told attendees during the opening session.

The unions have worked with state treasurers and pension funds associated with labor to make the green investments. For example, two of the largest U.S. public pension funds, California’s CalPERS and CalSTERS, have allocated over $1.1 billion to the effort.

In a small backstage gathering of bloggers on CGI’s final day, President Clinton popped open a Diet Coke and held forth of a wide range of current events that – in total – put him (gently) to the left of Obama Administration – or perhaps more accurately, a bit more plainspoken than a sitting President can be on pressing issues. The former President poured blame on the government Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for holding up the Palestinian peace process (earning the enmity of neo-conservatives like Elliot Abrams in the process), chastised the international community for not making good on its pledges to rebuild Haiti, urged a liberalization of U.S. policy on refugee settlement (“keeping people in long-term limbo is a waste of human potential”), talked about food security in the developing world, and blasted climate change denial.

He also spoke in strong, tough terms about U.S. immigration policy: “America needs to become more open to immigration again,” he told the group. “We simply need to be more pro-immigrant. I don’t think it’s particularly threatening to jobs.”

Peeking briefly into national U.S. politics, President Clinton criticized what he called “the non-fact-based political debate,” arguing that the he said, she said “horse-race” style of national political reporting means “nobody rings the bell if the facts are wrong. There’s no bell ringing, and that means there’s a huge disconnect not just in the message, but in the method.”

It’s a point that wasn’t lost when President Obama pushed his jobs bill in his CGI speech in the main hall – nor when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was interviewed by Chelsea Clinton, who clearly has a public life on the agenda. “I would make a plea for more people with knowledge,” said Secretary Clinton, “to not stand on the sidelines and shrug or throw a shoe at the TV when political discussions take place, but to try to participate, play a productive role.”

The sidelines will clearly not include her husband during the nascent political season. It was no accident in my mind that President Obama hit the golf course with President Clinton in Washington after CGI closed. Facing a re-election fight during difficult economic times of high unemployment coupled with general dissatisfaction over the direction of the country.

Obama was clearly in recruiting mode. With his popular Secretary of State out of action for active campaigning, there is no more valuable surrogate for next year’s election than her husband – who so clearly brought domestic issues to the fore at his annual CGI confab, and placed himself – with a grin, and a pat on the back on the stage at the Sheraton last week – just to the left of the White House.

Social media and the resulting mass philanthropy movement are bringing rapid and often destabilizing change to the nonprofit world. This panel discussed how some nonprofits are beginning to harness this new force for change, re-configure their missions and manage change in new ways as a result of the Web-powered social networks. The panel also discussed the adoption of new social media tools is a strategic imperative for traditional organizations of all stripes. (Thanks go to Marcia Stepanek for organizing panel and indeed, the discussion series, at NYU).
Panelists included:

For those who work in social services, the arts, education, healthcare, environmental action, and elsewhere in the social sector, the phrase “across the board cuts” has to cause an almost involuntary shudder. As executive directors and board members across the country know, Federal cutbacks have a long tale indeed: not only do they mean less funding for U.S.- sponsored programs, but they effect the budgets of states and municipalities (often in the following year or two) leading to more slicing of public funds to vital programs.

Consider nonprofit healthcare and the discussion around Medicare, Medicaid, “cost savings,” and reimbursement and fee rates. The right-wing push to cut the size of government has placed a crosshairs over a major revenue source for the nonprofit institutions that serve communities around the country. Cuts to Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals are among the so-called “automatic” cuts insisted upon by the GOP as a virtual threat to their Democratic counterparts to trim an actual $1.5 trillion from the Federal budget. They’re an axe hanging over the head of the vast nonprofit healthcare system.

Wrote Sarah Kliff in the Washington Post: “Medicare providers are among the clear losers in the debt ceiling deal. Come November, they face two really unpleasant options: absorbing whatever cuts the congressional super committee settles on, or, if the group doesn’t reach an agreement, absorbing an across-the-board budget reduction.”

And that’s direct Federal money. As was clear in the real crisis of 2008, the fall-out is often felt a year or more later when, despite initial Federal stimulus funds, public money declined and states and cities pulled in their budgets. For now, it looks like the charitable tax deduction will survive, but it also seems certain the “Super Congress” will consider it among a package of cuts.

“We assume that the new committee will certainly consider the cap on deductions,” said Jason Lee, a lawyer for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, a trade group that is opposed to reducing the value of the charitable deduction, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “So we’re working under the premise that we still have our work cut out for us.”

And as United Way Worldwide CEO Brian Gallagher writes in the Huffington Post: “At a time when unemployment remains high, our nation’s most vulnerable families need more help, not less. States can’t fill the gap and most are cutting their human services budgets. As a result, more and more people are turning to charities for assistance. Thus, any change to the federal tax code that undermines charitable giving is a bad idea.”

Howard and I debuted the white paper at JK Group’s Forum on Philanthropy in Princeton, NJ, where we led discussions on millennial generation workers, socially-wired CSR, and new trends in media and corporate philanthropy with attendees from Fortune 500 companies.

In preparing the paper, we studied several large American corporations who are using social media and who have found ways to involve employees, customers and stakeholders as they seek to achieve their CSR goals. We found that:

1. Companies are more comfortable using social media tools internally, but they’re waiting for external adoption by marketing before moving ahead to use them in CSR type efforts.
2. Employees seek choice and appreciate democratic participation.
3. Leadership is required to ensure continued participation in corporate giving campaigns, since employee participation is decreasing.
4. Both social media and traditional communications methods are used in employee giving campaigns and external outreach to communities.
5. Formal feedback loops for social media are the exception rather than the rule.

We also noted that there are different levels of commitment companies can make to using social media. As an example, some are taking advantage of intranet tools to allow employees to share and attract others to their causes on one end, while others actively encourage employees to alert their online connections of campaigns and request participation. Companies that are in what are traditionally regulated industries such as healthcare and finance are actively using social media as part of their CSR outreach, carefully finding the line between compliance and campaign. And some are stretching the boundaries – finding ways that their CSR efforts are part of their marketing, branding and core business efforts.

We invite you to read and comment on this paper. We know we are just scratching the surface of the efforts of companies across the world, and we consider this paper the beginning of a conversation around this topic, and not the definitive final word on the subject. Already, some interesting comments from our friend Allison Fine:

The report has terrific case studies of efforts by Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Pfizer, Western Union and many others. The efforts involve story telling through social media, fundraising match efforts, employee voting for donations. What I found most interesting about this report is what the authors call the rise of “citizen employees.” Employees using their passion, voices, votes, dollars to not only support causes but push their companies to be engaged and philanthropic. One thought I have: I wonder if or how these “citizens” extend their engagement into advocacy and even politics. We’ve seen companies push their employees into political giving in the past, might these employees do the same to their companies?

You can view or download the report here – Wired Workforce, Networked CSR

Housed in Vital Voices Global Partnership, the Coalition now has 110 members after its founding by international NGO and private sector leaders at Villa La Pietra, the Italian campus of New York University. Last year, the Coalition partnered with the Economist Intelligence Unit to develop the first Women’s Economic Opportunity Index that rates 113 countries on their provision of economic opportunity to women. The issues highlighted by the Index as most crucial to achieving the goal of lifting women’s economic opportunities were labor policy and practice, access to finance, education and training, and legal and social status. The Coalition now has working groups focusing on strategies to pursue change in each – and the target is now the deliberations of the G20.

The Coalition’s new senior director is Sandra Taylor, a veteran corporate social responsibility leader who has worked with companies like Starbucks and Eastman Kodak. I asked Sandra to discuss the Coalition’s evolution and its sharpened mission and goals.

Sandra, as you step into the leadership role of the La Pietra Coalition (which I’m proud to be a member of) can you tell our readers what its role in the world is – how the Coalition aims to be a catalyst for change?

I think it is important to acknowledge that of course there is a moral case to be made for women’s human rights and equality with men. The Coalition does not for a moment discount these issues as matters of justice, but those arguments have been made well and often. They are not enough. The pragmatic case – an economic one- is just as strong and has not been made enough in the right circles. This has been missing from the debate and this is the role that a diverse set of people, who make up the Coalition, representing diverse stakeholders, can play. Enough people in the general society and also among the decision makers have got to see that it is in their best interests, or self-interest, that women have equality and can participate in, and contribute to, their society to the fullest extent of their capacity. This is human nature. And happily we are at a time when there is now enough data based evidence that indeed this is not just a wishful thought but a matter of fact that there is a link between investing in women, or advancing the status of women, and economic growth and stability for an entire society.

What is your sense of advancing the goals and ideas set forth in Hillary Clinton’s 1995 Beijing speech about women’s rights and human rights – have we made major progress in a decade and a half?

On the one hand yes on the other no. Beijing, although it had its predecessors, in a way solidified and activated a global international women’s movement that is carrying the goals forward on all fronts. Some of the most active proponents of women’s human rights came into existence AFTER Beijing and to a large extent because of Beijing–especially in the developing world but also in, for example, the United States. In fact Vital Voices, the original convening body of La Pietra Coalition, is one of them. And Women for Women International, whose founder serves as co-chair of the Coalition, while founded two years before Beijing, certainly can attribute its success in establishing such a profound impact and strong local partners in war-torn societies, because of the climate that Beijing created among women around the world. There are still problems around the world, and new, often deadly ones keep arising, but something has changed since Beijing. Around the world women have cast off the victim status and are actively playing a role in solving those problems.

How can the Coalition influence the discussions and decisions of a group like the G20?

In order to fully realize the G20 goal of financial inclusion and to implement the G20 commitment to greater use of statistics and data in policy making announced at the Seoul Summit in November 2010, La Pietra Coalition asks G20 leaders to call for all banks and financial institutions to develop systems and methods to gather and disaggregate data on loans to women owned SMEs, as well as checking and savings accounts owned by women. Collection, compilation and disaggregation of such data will lead to better policy outcomes by governments, central banks and private banking institutions and ultimately to economic growth for both the lenders and their female customers.

Further we want to see policy recommendations that will help move women from micro-enterprise to small and to medium sized enterprises; provide incentives and specific goals for increased procurement by governments of goods and services from women-owned enterprises; and lead to a reduction in drop-out rates of girls from secondary schools and greater skills development by girls.

In many of the protest, conflicts, and now civil wars around the Arab world this year, the role of women has been crucial – they’ve been key organizers, leading voices, and leaders, particularly among young people and through the use of social media. And yet we see in Egypt how women leaders can be left on the sidelines when a new constitution is discussed. How can we address this?

Left on the sidelines, or even worse. It is a very real danger and has happened before. (Algeria in the late 1960s being a nearby case in point). This is where people have to keep up the pressure on their leaders and representatives in their countries to exert their influence on their counterparts in these newly emerging governments or politicians. The spotlight is good in these situations. However, it is important to remember there are always two conversations going on–one in public and one behind the scenes. We need to keep the pressure on our leaders to carry these issues into the meetings, and deal making, that go on behind closed doors.

How important is the role of the private sector in advancing women’s rights on a global basis – some of the LPC’s leading members are prominent corporate leaders, for example, how can we align business interests with human rights?

Our corporate members would be the first to point out that economically empowered women will not only suit the employees’ moral interests, but also the company’s bottom line. Women in developing countries have great purchasing power and multinationals recognize this.

“That was the day I decided to enter politics,” says [Mu] Sochua, now a prominent Cambodian opposition leader. “Watching her I had the sense that I could do it, that other women could do it, if we really spoke from the bottom of our hearts and reflected the voices of women.”

On a rainy day last October, I found myself rattling through the narrow streets of Florence in a crowded mini-bus and chatting with Mu, who has worked for many years for women’s rights in Cambodia’s post-conflict society. The Newsweek quote referred to Clinton’s famed Beijing speech of 1995 when she equated women’s rights with human rights, a crucial moment in the international movement to empower women; the conference Mu and I were attending, organized by Vital Voices, was directly inspired by the Clinton speech 15 years earlier.

During our conversation, I couldn’t help but be impressed by Mu’s focus on practical political objectives – by an intense determination to affect political change as an elected politician, to channel symbolism and soaring rhetoric into a movement at the polls and – eventually – in policy. Later, she spoke from the dais during a panel discussion hosted by Mayor Matteo Renzi in Florence’s soaring “town hall,” the Palazzo Vecchio.

“The absence of war,” she said. “Does not the mean the presence of rights and safety for women and girls if society continues to condone gender based-violence and if equal opportunities are not present for all.”

Even as many of us celebrate the freedom movements rolling through repressed societies in the Middle East, it’s clear those revolutions will not really be successes without the political involvement of women. Today, for example, a women’s day March in Tahrir Square in Cairo to call attention to the need for more political power for Egyptian women was marred by a gross sexist counter-demonstration; and it is hardly surprising that no women are represented on the commission charged with drawing up a new Egyptian constitution.

In Cambodia, Mu Sochua’s work shows that real change requires long-term commitment – and sometimes, public opposition to those in power. After 18 years in exile (she was sent away by here parents as a teenager in the violent 1970s), Mu returned to Cambodia in 1989 and served as adviser on women’s affairs to the prime minister, was elected to the national assembly and was minister of women’s and a veterans’ affairs from 1998 to 2004, a position she relinquished to join the Sam Rainsy Party, the leading opposition party in Cambodia. It hasn’t been an easy path:

My approach to peace has always been through building voices and forces with various groups, either at local, national, regional or international level. I strongly believe in a life free from fear and violence. My efforts have always been for long-term development which includes development of human resources for Cambodia, where most of our teachers, doctors, judges were killed during the Khmer Rouge years.

More than once I have come face to face with armed police and military. My strategy for self-protection is to remain vocal, visible and high profile.

In 2002 Mu mobilized 12,000 women candidates to run for commune elections, with over 900 women winning and still actively promoting the women’s agenda at the grass-roots level. In that same year she helped create and pass the Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill, which imposes severe penalties on marital rape and abuse of minors. Her work in Cambodia also includes campaigns with men to end domestic violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS; working for the rights of female entrepreneurs; working for labor laws that provide fair wages and safe working conditions for female workers; and working for the development of communities for squatters with schools, health centers, sanitation, and employment.

This work put her in opposition to the government, which has taken action against her. She was threatened with arrest, and promptly sued the government for defamation and wrote a public letter (“As I Walk to Prison“) that is model for civil protest using the power of words:

I witness violence not as a victim but I listen to hundreds and thousands of women and children speak of the shame, the violation, the soul that is taken away when violence is afflicted on their bodies and on their minds. As a politician I always try to take action, to walk to the villages where life seems to have stopped for centuries, I challenge the top leadership of the government — I question international aid.

Today, I am faced with the real possibility of going to jail because as self-defense I dare to sue the prime minister of Cambodia, a man who has ruled this nation for 30 years. Having been assaulted to the point where I stood half exposed in front of men, by a general I caught using a state car to campaign for the party of the prime minister, I found myself assaulted again, this time verbally by the prime minister who compares me to a woman hustler who grabbed men for attention.

Mu Sochoa’s struggle continues, yet it’s clearly part of an international movement that’s growing. Today, Women for Women International organized hundreds of events linking women in post-conflict societies in the Join Me on the Bridge campaign. The event is symbolic – it calls on participants “to stand up for peace and an end to violence against women” – but it also brings young activists together and binds them in a common purpose. After all, Mu Sochoa’s words have resonance in Afghanistan, in Egypt, in Belarus, and in cities through the United States as well:

We must walk tall despite being people bent from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge, which is still a part of us. Let us not let our leaders and the world-community use this trauma to give us justice by the teaspoon.

Let there be real justice.

Notes: More International Women’s Day coverage:  The Guardian asked women leaders to share their life experiences and The Daily Beast and Newsweek marked the day with a list of 150 remarkable women around the world.

I’ve been with Prof. Yunus on several other occasions since then, and I always come away impressed with what I’d call his “calm impatience” – his measured outward presentation always at odds with the sense that he’d change things more quickly for the world’s poor if given half the chance. Yunus has never presented himself as a living saint, or as philanthropic idea, but he has – unapologetically – presented himself as a leader, as an essential force in what has evolved into his theory of “social business,” a form of capitalism designed to serve the greater good. It’s a revolutionary idea, filled with power, and quite frankly, it makes people nervous.

Like Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Poor People’s Campaign,” it builds on a foundation of success – Grameen’s millions of small-scale shareholders and the Nobel Prize for mainstreaming microfinance – but it doesn’t fit the accepted view of where microfinance should sit in the world economy. When King attacked poverty and the Vietnam War in the mid-60s, he broke out of his own well-accepted role as “safe” leader for civil rights for African-Americans. Yunus, in my opinion, is taking the same late-career radical path. Quite frankly, Prof. Yunus refuses to sit in the box, and be patted upon the head like revered elder. He’s still seeking change.

That radical streak sometimes causes more traditional political structures (particularly those invested in traditional capital markets) to react as if they’re threatened by his ideas. And sometimes that political fear is local. Such is the case in Bangladesh. The philanthropy and microfinance sector is nearly united in opposing an attempt by the government of Bangladesh to oust Prof. Yunus as managing director of Grameen Bank, the social enterprise for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

“This is the latest move in a campaign to persecute Prof. Yunus and undermine the independence of Grameen Bank,” said Sam Daley-Harris, Director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, in an email to supporters. “This is a scandalous way to treat a visionary who is the world’s greatest innovator in the field of poverty eradication.”

Prof. Yunus has launched a legal battle on against his removal from the top post of Grameen, a dismissal seen by many as part of a political vendetta by the Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. The Bangladesh central bank’s board of directors voted to remove Yunus, claiming that at 70 years old he was is well over the mandatory retirement age of 60, a situation it had ignored for years. But most observers say the ouster stems from out-dated charges of misappropriated funds and political tension between Hasina and her ruling party and Yunus, one of the world’s best-known figures. (The Bangladeshi government owns 25 percent of bank by statute).

The social sector’s reaction to the dismissal was neatly summed up in a tweet by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof: “I’ve seen lots of dumb, self-absorbed politicians. But rarely one as venal as Bangladesh PM Hasina as she persecutes Yunus.”

And the U.S. government signaled hits displeasure with the action as well. The State Department said it was “deeply troubled” by the Bangladeshi’s central bank’s efforts to fire Yunus and that Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, would discuss it with him in Washington next week.

“The U.S. has been a great friend to Muhammad Yunus, and he and Grameen Bank need our support now more than ever,” said Joanne Carter, executive director of RESULTS Education Fund, a charitable fund supporting micro-credit. “We urge President Obama and Secretary Clinton to use every diplomatic tool available to preserve the independence of Grameen Bank and, by extension, the independence of the entire civil-society sector in Bangladesh. If this decision is allowed to stand, it sets a dangerous precedent for other governments to take similar actions against independent microfinance institutions.”

Even occasional detractors of Prof. Yunus spoke out on his behalf. Philanthrocapitalism co-authors Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, somewhat critical of Yunus’s own strong criticism of for-private microfinance, stepped behind the Grameen founder in a post entitled “Leave Yunus Alone.”

As Grameen points out, it is owned by its 8 million or so borrowers, most of them relatively poor women. It remains to be seen if the voice of these owners will be heard. There is a real danger that what is in effect an attempted takeover by the Bangladesh government will do serious damage to Grameen and the people it helps. While there are certainly examples of for-profit microlenders harming the poor, we think the greater harm to the poor is often done by the politicians who purport to be on their side. We fear this will be anther example of that shameful truth – and can only hope that, even at this late hour, common sense will prevail, and that the government of Bangladesh will leave Grameen and its founder alone to get on with the work they have hitherto been doing so well.

Prof. Yunus himself (and by way of disclosure, I’ve enjoyed speaking with him several times) acknowledged that there would be a transition in the future for Grameen leadership – and indeed, his own involvement in the social business movement has often take him well beyond the Grameen structure. “If there is any lack of confidence over Grameen Bank and if people have lack of trust over the institution, then the Grameen Bank will be a shaky institution,” Prof Yunus said after a court hearing. “It is no matter whether I remain in the institution or not. I am trying to secure the future of the institution.”

A group of charities led by former Irish President Mary Robinson – Friends of Grameen – had already been set up to defend Prof. Yunus earlier this year after Prime Minsiter Hasina accused Grameen of “sucking blood from the poor.” Much of the dispute stems from a Norwegian television documentary re-floated charges of irregularities related to donations dating to the 1990s; the bank denied the charges and the Norwegian government approved its response. Still, the Bangladesh government’s move surprised some. Said the Economist:

Perhaps, the most surprising thing in this whole saga is how much of its international reputation the government is willing to risk in order to remove Muhammad Yunus from Grameen Bank. It is difficult to see what there is to gain from Mr Yunus’s removal, apart from the satisfaction in satisfying a grudge—unless, is it possible?—the government intends to take control of the bank, and use it for its political purposes.

Whatever the motive, Sheikh Hasina’s government has chosen to join the ignominious little club of governments who turn against their own Nobel peace-prize-winning citizens.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times quoted a “prominent” businessman in Bangladesh: “He will go to court. In this tug of war, the country will also pay a high price. The world will see Bangladesh as a place that doesn’t respect its own heroes.”