Philanthropic Institutions and Networks

From a report by NCRP

Many of the 12 conservative funders have played leadership roles in the broader effort to mobilize and redirect philanthropic resources for conservative purposes.

They have done so by supporting organizations whose mission is either to encourage conservative philanthropic practices or launch attacks on what conservatives regard as "liberal" grantmaking and grantseeking institutions. Over the study period (1992-94), $1.549 million was granted to support the work of the Capital Research Center (CRC) and the Philanthropy Roundtable.

CRC was founded to rally corporate donors to conservative causes and to expose what CRC regards as the unacceptably liberal orientation of nonprofit grantees. In its brochure, the Philanthropy Roundtable describes its work as "motivated by the belief that philanthropy is most likely to succeed when it focuses not on grand social designs, but on individual achievement, and where it rewards not dependence, but personal initiative [and] self-reliance."

At the same time, foundations like Bradley, Smith Richardson, [John M.] Olin, and others have increased their advocacy of conservative philanthropy, playing leadership roles within the Philanthropy Roundtable and assuming a strong public stance via media interviews, opinion editorials, articles (usually published in the journals of grantee institutions), and conference presentations.

In combination, these and other efforts have the clear potential of tilting mainstream philanthropy toward ever greater caution or conservatism in a climate where few institutions have remained unaffected by the nation's shifting political center.

The Philanthropy Roundtable is a growing membership organization whose 430 institutional and individual donors are committed to the Roundtable's founding principle that voluntary action offers the best means of addressing society's needs. It was founded in the early 1980s, when conservative donors left the Council on Foundations to protest the Council's adoption of The Principles and Practices of Effective Grantmaking, a statement intended to encourage its members toward greater public openness and accountability.

With the presidents and trustees of major conservative foundations as officers and members of the board, the Roundtable today expresses ironic concern over the "politicization of philanthropy." Michael Joyce, [former] president of the Bradley Foundation, currently [formerly] chairs the Roundtable's board of directors. James Piereson (Olin Foundation), Joanne B. Beyer (Scaife Family Foundation), David B. Kennedy (Earhart Foundation) and Chris Olander (JM Foundation) serve with him.

The Roundtable holds annual and regional conferences, provides technical assistance to individual donors and grantmaking foundations (placing special emphasis on donor intent), and publishes occasional monographs on topical issues, including The Market Foundations of Philanthropy and Local Organizations as Problem-Solvers.

Roundtable monographs reflect an effort to "theorize" the voluntary sector's role in American society in ways consistent with pro-market policy objectives. This has involved the development of a rationale for ending the partnership between government and the nonprofit sector in the delivery of services.

The Roundtable is adding its voice to the growing number of new right grantees aggressively articulating the virtues of a philanthropic paternalism that would in effect place the poor under the direct moral guidance of the rich, or those who have presumably demonstrated their moral superiority through hard work, self-reliance and personal responsibility.

Growing concern over declining "social capital" is used to buttress conservative claims that government expansion stifles the philanthropic impulse and that private philanthropy, not government is the proper and most effecfive vehicle for responding to social needs, encouraging civic responsibility and restoring social trust.

The Capital Research Center is active in the larger effort to encourage both corporate and private foundations to align their philanthropic interests more closely with the market system that made their wealth possible. In its annual Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy, CRC attacks corporate foundations and programs whose giving practices it feels are at odds with business positions.

It also seeks to steer donors to "goodnonprofits" and targets for critical exposure those [liberal] organizations that "with tax-exempt, tax-deductible -and sometimes tax dollars -mix advocacy and 'direct action' to promote their own vision of the public interest." Like many of the other foundation grantees, CRC publicly states its comniitment to "a vigorous and strong private sector, the cornerstones of which are the free-market economy, constitutionally-limited government, individual liberty, and a strong sense of personal responsibility."

CRC has launched Foundation Watch to critique the "liberal" funding initiatives of major philanthropies. A recent issue of the publication carried a new attack on the Campaign for Human Development for its funding of poor people's organizations and other social action groups. Other issues of the newsletter have targeted a range of foundations, including the MacArthur Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and environmental grantmakers. CRC board members and advisors include Terence Scanlon, a former appointee of the Reagan Adniinistration and former vice president of the Heritage Foundation; Linda Chavez, also a former Reagan appointee and current president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity; William Simon, [former] president of the Olin Foundation; Adam Meyerson, vice president at the Heritage Foundation; Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University; Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow; and T. Kenneth Cribb, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

If the Roundtable and CRC comprise the core, formal infrastructure for the conservative funding movement, other grantee institutions provide occasional, practical assistance and steady philosophical or ideological support. The policy joumals, newsletters and conferences of conservative grantees have served as vehicles for the promotion and dissemination of right-wing viewpoints on the role of philanthropy in the "post-welfare" society.

The Heritage Foundation has promoted the thinking of Michael Joyce and Heather Richardson Higgins by publishing and distributing "What is Conservative Philanthropy?" as part of the Heritage Lecture Series. Higgins, a former trustee of the Smith Richardson Foundation and current president of the conservative Randolph Foundation, has also published her thoughts on grantmaking strategies in the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review. In an article entitled "The Politics of Virtue: A Strategy for Transforming the Culture," she stated that 'Being right is not enough. Coalition building-having a broad spectrum of voices pushing on an issue - is crucial. By defining the broad bands of debate, you can shift the perception of what constitutes the moderate,reasonable center."

The Manhattan Institute's City Journal also published a full-scale attack on the major philanthropies by Heather MacDonald, a shorter version of which was published in the Wall Street Journal.

MacDonald, a senior fellow at the Institute, wrote that the country's big foundations used to be agents of social good, but today "have become the battering ram targeted at American society."66 She goes on to mount an ideologically-driven attack on Ford, MacArthur, Rockefeller and other major funders for funding what she calls "the dissemination of diversity ideology, the 'collaboration' movement in community development and public interest litigation and advocacy."

She then ridicules Carnegie's Alan Pifer for having "absurdly accused the country of tolerating a return to "legalized segregation" in 1982 while lamenting a more recent (and rather measured) statement by Peter Goldmark of the Rockefeller Foundation that we "urgently need ... a national conversation about race ... to talk with candor about the implications of personal and institutional racism."67

Others funded by conservative foundations are also taking up this message and promoting it to broader audiences via opinion essays and editorials in major media outlets and trade publications. In a statement reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's 1982 declaration that "government is the problem," Adam Meyerson, vice president of educational affairs at the Heritage Foundation, declared in a recent issue of Foundation News & Commentary, "I bring you the sad message that mainstream American philanthropy is part of the problem in this country, it is not part of the solution." Not surprisingly, Meyerson went on to encourage foundations to stop with its "bean-counting obsession with diversity" and begin to fund "social entrepreneurs" like the Hudson Institute, Capital Research Center, Focus on the Family and the Reason Foundation, whose activities reflect a traditionally conservative, pro-market approach to social issues and public needs.

Conservative foundations' increasingly pro-active efforts to shape American philanthropy are also reflected in the creation of a new commission, chaired by Lamar Alexander. The brainchild of the Bradley Foundation, the new National Commission on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal states that its central purpose is "to show that 'less from government, more from ourselves' is the right principle by which to revive America's communities and to make the best decisions about charitable giving." The Alexander Commission plans to issue a report in the summer of 1997 that will critically examine the "ever-closer entanglement of philanthropy with government," and generate a set of recommendations, or what the Commission calls a "road map" for giving in a post-big-govemment era. The Commission identifies three groups as its principal audience: the decision makers of large national and community foundations, affluent Americans who will be giving or bequeathing trillions of dollars over the coming years, and lawmakers who shape policies affecting private giving in America.

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CONSERVATIVE PHILANTHROPY

Philanthropic Institutions and Networks

From a report by NCRP

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Philanthropy Roundtable

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