Book Preview: “Yours, Mine and Ours”

The U.S. population has a robust tradition of giving massive amounts of money during major tragedies — from Hurricane Katrina to the terrorist attacks in the United States Sept. 11, 2001 — but it is donating less and less to nonprofits in general.

McLeish argues that’s because the new field of donors is no longer willing to put up with the hidebound and hierarchical nature of its relationship to nonprofits — where, for instance, the donor merely complies to a nonprofit’s request to write a check and send it off in the mail — and instead is seeking out ways to make giving as interactive, informative and personally empowering as possible.