Foundations and Scrutiny

I don't much care for its tone, and I'm not willing to accept that campaign finance reform was "an immense scam," but as for the conclusions of this essay (In a World of Bloggers, Foundations Can Expect More Scrutiny)by William Schambra of the Hudson Institute and formerly the conservative Bradley Foundation,  it's hard for me to fundamentally disagree.

Schambra argues that bloggers such as Ryan Sager (who led the recent charge against the Pew Charitable Trusts) represent a "new network" that will keep organized philanthropy on its toes:

Foundations may insist [their policy] recommendations spring from pure rationality and objectivity. But the new network has another name for them: liberalism.

If this seems harsh, conservative grant makers can only say, "Welcome to our world."

Harsh? What's harsh about that? Liberalism is my name for it too. It's an honorable name.

Schambra continues,

Some will quail before this new media world, complaining that now is hardly the moment for heightened criticism of foundations, with Congress poking around. But it is precisely this paranoia about negative reporting -- this priggish reluctance to air differences and difficulties before outsiders -- that prompts Congress and the public to suspect foundations have something to hide. Awareness that they are being scrutinized tends to keep large organizations nimble, alert, and alive. Why should philanthropy be any different?...

Foundations that want to become active in public policy should not be discouraged from doing so. But it is important for board and staff members alike to take a long, searching, honest look at the political assumptions the foundation inevitably carries into the public fray. Those assumptions will quickly be brought to light, by others who do not share them. It will no longer be credible to profess innocence of political intent in the name of objectivity. Foundations may find the new world of press and public policy to be messier, louder, and less genteel. But we will all find it to be more honest, more balanced, and ultimately, more informative.

The major mainstream foundations -- Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Mott, and half a dozen others -- are all products of the postwar "liberal consensus," when it was possible to believe, as President Kennedy said, "What is at stake ...today is not some grand warfare of rival ideologies which will sweep the country with passion, but the practical management of a modern economy. What we need is not labels and cliches but more basic discussion of the sophisticated and technical questions." When foundations adopt the tone that they are engaging in rational and objective research about problems and solutions, they are not covering up for some ideological bias, they are speaking from this most basic founding principle.

And yet, that principle is dead. The Kennedy-era consensus is gone. And foundations need to understand that the very idea that "rationality and objectivity" should shape public policy, that we should test programs, find best practices, and government should support those that work, is now itself a contested idea (along with evolution and climate change), territory to be won back in a "grand warfare of rival ideologies." Foundations that want to return to the world in which they were created will have to fight for it -- and that means admitting that they are taking sides, and operating, without shame, with politics (not partisanship, but politics in the broad sense) and ideology in mind.

They should be more involved in public policy, and that means not just advocating increases in government funding for services they are interested in, but fighting for a tax and budget structure adequate to provide that funding.

There are plenty of exceptions. The work on campaign finance reform that Schambra cites was not liberal, in that many liberals hate the law and its most prominent backer, Senator McCain, is a solid conservative, a worthy heir to Senator Goldwater's seat. Strategies to help low-income families save and accumulate assets, as developed by some of my colleagues, similarly have supporters from the far right to the far left, and diverse foundation support as well. And there is plenty of research and analysis that foundations fund that truly has no ideological context, or that cuts across ideological or party lines.

But in many, many instances, the kinds of policies that foundations want to further -- reducing global warming, increasing public supports for low-income families, fixing health care, making the tax code fairer, fixing public school funding, increasing voter participation, etc. -- are going to be treated as political in a way they never were -- "messier, louder, and less genteel," as Schambra puts it. And he's right that it can be healthier and more balanced in some ways, just as the world of the "liberal consensus" papered over a lot of real differences.