Introduction

In this chapter we will explore some of the contemporary entanglements of ‘new’ philanthropy with social and education policy and, concomitantly, some of the ways in which:

The chapter is a pot pourri organised around the theme of enterprise and the discourse of enterprise: enterprise in philanthropy, philanthropy and the enterprise curriculum, and philanthropy and social enterprise. The latter pursues the relationships between philanthropy, the Third Way and the Big Society indicated in the previous chapter. We also hope to illustrate more of the connections between philanthropy, education policy and governance, and the social and interactive density of the philanthropic community itself. We argue that the discourse of enterprise in its various forms is a crucial component, both as a reforming narrative and as an effective infrastructure, of network governance.

As indicated in the previous chapter, the boundaries between philanthropy, business and the public sector are being moved and blurred, the public sector generally is being worked on and reworked by new policy actors, from the inside out (endogenous change) and the outside in (exogenous change). This is happening in particular through the dissemination of the values and practices of enterprise and entrepreneurship and the transposition of the ‘international discourse of managerialism’ (Thrift, 2005, p 33) and its metaphors, that is New Public Management, into the public sector and through attempts to embody those metaphors in the public sector workforce. New values and modes of action are thus being installed and legitimated and new forms of moral authority established, while others are diminished or derided.