Opinion

Handbooks and lectures rarely result in on-ramps to the “success sequence.”

In this case, to the MacArthur Foundation’s failed, and democratically rejected, vision of criminal-justice reform.

Recent legislation meant to promote transparency in giving by foreign philanthropists will boost the charitable world’s credibility.

The fourth in a series of five republished articles to mark our fifth anniversary.

Nobody asked, but …

To mark our fifth anniversary, a selection of five of our favorite articles.

Seeming to despair of creating anything of lasting value from philanthropy understood as a free-standing activity—and shifting to what turns out to be little more than another Democratic Party get-out-the vote effort, of the sort already very much in evidence in today’s political philanthropy.

Good character and healthy habits are best transmitted through trusting human relationships. The strength of those relationships is difficult to quantify, but research that ignores them can only produce inconclusive evidence.

If successful, the suit would further politicize the charitable world, to its great detriment.

Observations on The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “The Commons” debate about whether philanthropy can bring America together.

Without checks and balances, scrutinizing and challenging foundation leaders’ million-dollar paychecks is nearly impossible.

If race-based grant contracts violate §1981, practical legal advice for grantors and grantees alike would include options ranging from linguistically just avoiding any reference to race in grant agreements to avoiding grant contracts altogether.

Progressivism “certainly came to dominate the first modern foundations, the universities, journalism, and most other institutions of American intellectual life. But … it nonetheless failed in its effort to change entirely the way everyday American political life plays itself out.”

The author of a recent Urban institute report comments on the “1 Q: 5 A’s” set of reactions to it.

Fundamental questions.

Is there a “Charity, Inc.” and if so, what could perhaps be done about it?

Trustees need to keep in mind that long success at following orders does not always equate to success at giving them.

Quick reactions to the new report from Ben Soskis on two schools of thought about philanthropy—whether a diversity of charitable causes supported by donors is itself a good thing or, alternatively, some causes are more worthy of support than others.

Time and money. The bottom and the top.

Building a better future for young Black men and women just can’t be done in a research institute, no matter how well-funded. It is going to happen in classrooms, in living rooms, in churches, and on sidewalks.

Remembering an active, faithful Milwaukee citizen.

Advice for the House Ways and Means Committee as it convenes a hearing this afternoon investigating the nexus between antisemitism, tax-exempt universities, and terror financing.

Leading nonprofit associations have rejected efforts to expand the rules governing donor privacy. Their concern is misplaced, and the field’s legitimacy is at stake.

Quick reactions to the recent, high-profile withdrawals of major philanthropic support of certain higher-education institutions for their tolerance, if not actual outright promotion, of pro-Hamas sentiment and activities.

Wealthy nonprofits, especially universities, increasingly demonstrate the same behaviors that led Congress to regulate foundations more than 50 years ago. The law should be updated to include these organizations.

From a Philanthropy Roundtable debate after original publication of the 2008 book by Dan Pallotta on which the new documentary film is based.

Quick reactions to some results of the Independent Sector survey with Edelman, in five short answers to one question.

Donors should know that any “answer” to poverty that takes the form of a paper or policy summit—even with the occasional overcoming-poverty anecdote thrown in for inspiration—is at best several degrees removed from making life better for the poor.

Solutions to fix the “problem.”

We see the tripartite—dependent—relationship between government, commercial interests, and nonprofits in the rise of institutional DAFs.

Remembering Cordelia Taylor and her community.

Remembering Cordelia Taylor and her love for others.

Contemplating a framework for Schedule F that would default to full disclosure of all foreign grant recipients, but also provide an exception allowing for redaction when there is a genuine safety threat.

Approaching Labor Day, remembering Penn Kemble … and Robert Nisbet.

In 1994, the Bradley Foundation’s then-president described the “Bradley Project on the 90s,” led by Bill Kristol, and its call for a “new citizenship” that helped form the foundation’s grantmaking program.

Further, expanded reflections on Giving USA’s annual report on philanthropy.

In various contexts.

Supporting knowledge and appreciation of American history, and democracy.

Suggesting a session for serious self-examination.

What we are, and aren’t, saying to each other.

Conservative donors need to take a hard look at where their dollars go.

Remarks from a panel discussion on populism at the “Foundations on the Hill” event for foundation leaders and officials in Washington, D.C.

Remarks from a panel discussion on populism at the “Foundations on the Hill” event for foundation leaders and officials in Washington, D.C.

On February 9, The Giving Review ran a piece authored by Julius Krein, “What Do Conservative Donors Want?,” that alleges that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) “recently had to hold an all-hands meeting to discuss whether it was still a conservative institution.”  The statement is laughably false. No such meeting has happened, or could happen,… Continue reading AEI: alleged meeting never took place

Follow the money.

Conservative philanthropy is in crisis. It needs to be self-critically clear and honest about its position, as well as disciplined in pursuing its issues and aims.

And what it may do to us, as well as the elites who created it.

Recognizing a tenuous credibility, and reviving a true charity.

Improve lives, grow and strengthen civil society, and demonstrate the power of private giving based on our core values.

It has reconstituted the very system that Alexis de Tocqueville once famously lauded Americans for not having. Meaningful reform will be of the hatchet, not the scalpel variety.

Hard questions.

Policymakers must divorce themselves from the old connotations of what they always believed “charity” represented, and instead see them as what they have morphed into today.

Sober historian, disciplined thought, jovial presence.

This article, republished with permission, originally appeared in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on December 13, 2022.   With Democratic Senator Rafael Warnock’s victory last week, another contentious Georgia Senate race is over, and with it, the attention focused on nonprofits for their role in registering, educating, and mobilizing voters and monitoring the fairness of the electoral process.… Continue reading Georgia Senate race shows why the fraying line between charity and politics must be repaired

We should be as willing to continue to learn from him as he has always so humbly been to learn from, and with, others.

Thank you.

Egger: “I question openly whether those laws were designed by people to keep us right where we are. … [O]ur ultimate goal is to change the laws.”

Eisenberg: “[H]e strongly believes that the regulations governing nonprofits are too restrictive and should be changed to allow nonprofits to participate directly in political campaigns and partisan politics … and I heartily disagree.”

Recalling, and appreciating, his insistence on support for the grassroots and willingness to criticize the powerful.

Many means.

Floating a four-element ACE Act alternative.

Levels of ambition, including philanthropic, the impossibility of a “New Man,” and the consequences of trying to create him.

In southwest Florida after Hurricane Ian, thousands of people are pitching in to help their next-door neighbor and also the unknown victim of a flat tire in the middle of a busy road.

Using one guiding principle, here are two proposed reforms to improve the permissions, restrictions, and tax advantages around 501(c)4s.

Here are four serious proposals to separate “charitable” and “political” giving.

Apparently, the value of philanthropy is determined by the worldview of the gift-giver.

And knowledgeable observer of, and commentator on, philanthropy.

Given recent attention to the Federalist Society, policy-oriented donors can learn some underappreciated lessons from the Society’s early philanthropic support.

More to be made of that which it has wrought.

Forty years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan delivered his historic speech to the British Parliament at Westminster, during which he famously predicted that Marxism-Leninism would end up “on the ash heap of history.” Daniel P. Schmidt writes about the Westminster speech in the article that we republish below, which originally appeared here on November 18,… Continue reading Revisiting Westminster before the fall of the Wall, and Sheptytsky before Schabowske

An ActBlue clue.

Looking at some of the edifices, atriums, and façades.

Healthy cooperation and equally healthy collisions between fully functioning capitalism, government, and civil society.

An earlier version of this article originally appeared at American Affairs on April 5, 2020. Establishment philanthropy in America is on the defensive—as it should be. Measured in terms of its size, the philanthropic sector is big and getting bigger; this is not necessarily a bad development in itself, but the sector’s growth in recent decades… Continue reading Philanthropy on the defensive

“The turn of so much of mainstream conservative philanthropy away from engaged foreign and defense policy work has been to America’s detriment, and to the detriment of the world as well,” according to the former Hudson Institute president. “It is time for conservative philanthropy to … return to supporting serious, sober, creative, security-oriented foreign-policy work ….”

“Vladimir Bukovsky, Václav Havel, Adam Michnik, and Czeslaw Milosz come to mind, among others,” according to the longtime Bradley Foundation vice president, “as do the Polish Solidarność trade union, the Czech Charter 77 group, and the Russian truth-telling group Memorial.”

“Peace is a conservative value, and a benefit to America and the world,” according to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft chief executive officer. “Increased conservative support for realism and restraint in U.S. foreign policy is imperative.”

“Left of center American donors now largely set the agenda and dominate international giving. There is a strong emphasis on exporting American morality on gender, orientation, and race, as well as a major focus on various development schemes in Africa and elsewhere,” the former Joyce Foundation and German Marshall Fund president writes. “There are no conservative donors that are supporting alternatives to this agenda.”

“After helping people in their moments of crisis and humanitarian need,” according to the Wilson Center president, “conservative giving should focus on capacity building and supporting people, communities, and countries in their journey to self-reliance.”

Overall, giving by conservatives in America to support organizations and projects concerned with foreign policy and national security, as well as to groups and efforts at work “on the ground” in other countries that promote democracy or provide humanitarian aid, seems to have changed in many ways during the past decade, if not longer—concerningly to… Continue reading Symposium on conservative international giving: Introduction

Parsing a few Sections, Parts, columns, and Schedules.

Among other things, according to the outgoing Hewlett Foundation program staffer, “Knowing that I would hold my position for only eight years has, throughout my service at the Foundation, reminded me that this is not my money.”

Conceptually, to what sort of standard or standards, if any, should giving advisors of various sorts be held, by whom, and how?

Levels of ambition, including philanthropic, the impossibility of a “New Man,” and the consequences of trying to create him.

An appreciation of honesty, and a call for serious debate.

Pondering pills, considering colors.

Trying to help build more trust among farmers and those who serve and finance them would yield much benefit.

Let’s be uncharitable: how charity foundations damage Western societies.

Thank you.

Christopher DeMuth’s is a deeply insightful critique to be taken seriously, including by conservative philanthropy.

As establishment philanthropy defends its position in American society, it would do well to tend to more than just one flank.

Where New Labour boldly reformed schools, Keir Starmer retreats to the class-war comfort zone.

Education is a public good, but so is medicine and Pfizer doesn’t claim to be a charity.

We cannot allow our fantastic philanthropic institutions to become subsumed by wokery.

Pondering pills, considering colors.

Brief insights from an area of utmost geopolitical, religious, and cultural significance.

Activist billionaires use community foundations to funnel even more money to their national and global causes.

“At a time when philanthropy faces mounting critiques,” the Council on Foundation’s new strategic plan proves it’s not up to the challenge of facing those critiques.

Optimism is cowardice.

The “playing field” and potential proposals.

As University of Kentucky law professor asks, “Why are we focused only on universities?”

Worth exploring.

Remember who won the race.

Frank Shakespeare.

As shown in and by Sanford, Mich., starting one year ago, it’s often when massive devastation is visited on a population that it discovers its true character.

What gives, and to what to give?

A letter to the editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

In any real-life revision of the parable so often cited by philanthropists, there’s a strong likelihood that the philanthropists forging their way upstream to the source of the problem will never get there. As with the challenge of homelessness in L.A., they will instead become hopelessly entangled in the real-world obstacles that invariably complicate the drive for simplistic, root-cause solutions.

Washington, D.C., is not where the important battles of the day are fought. Change the culture first.

Place-based strategies seem attractive to overcome these constraints, but while they help ameliorate financial and political challenges, they actually exacerbate information challenges.

Revisiting the risky confidence and nihilistic moral certainty of an intelligentsia—this time, of Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, and Delta.

Conservatives would be wise to push for a bolder plan that addresses the conflation of political and charitable causes—and clearly defines what constitutes legitimate charitable goals. That’s the only way to ensure philanthropy doesn’t lose all credibility and become completely politicized. Let’s focus on what really matters.

“Write some good ones.”

Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo tell the story of Indivisible and its donor-driven succumbing to the siren call of “the DC-based nonprofit industrial complex.”

Examining the origin of some of the official lines, at least as originally drawn, between charity and politics.

We must steadfastly strive to see, and necessarily recall, others’ witness—so we can take the chances they give us to do so, too.

The appropriate context within which its eugenic past should be considered.

More money, but meaning less?

Or what used to be a pyramid—and may be again, albeit pixelated.

As chairman of the National Commission on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, he urged “more of ourselves instead of more government.”

Thank you.

Post-election 1992: “The largest problem of all is that conservatism has utterly lost its focus, its sense of purpose, its mission. It has become too comfortable and too complacent.”

The arcane, demanding jargon of strategic philanthropy is being replaced by an equally arcane, demanding jargon of social justice.

The reaction to Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination shows how the notion of God presents a challenge for the liberal intelligentsia, the cutting-edge moral and philosophical doctrines of which raise serious questions about any form of transcendent truth. For conservatism, a religious understanding of brokenness can only better it.

Exemplifying a tradition worth celebrating for its positive reflections on the American civic character.

Conservatives need to face that truth.

The risky confidence and nihilistic moral certainty of an intelligentsia.

In the decades before “darkness” was deemed descriptive.

Sector-bending has always been a symptom of a larger intellectual problem: utopianism.

If not, don’t. As an aspect of the French Revolution suggests, the old will be new again.

We have been here before: a debate about capitalism between clerics and capitalists occurred during preparation of a bishops’ pastoral letter on the economy in America almost four decades ago. The lay letter on the economy warrants serious re-examination, given the new debates into which its concepts should be re-introduced.

Science and experts, muckrakers and establishments.

All foundations, but especially conservative ones, should consider annually spending substantially more than the five percent of their corpus now required by federal tax law.

Hope for Prisoners in Las Vegas offers one good example.

Surveying crisis-caused civic involvement—and appreciating, and supporting, it.

Generate the moral energy for a reinvigorated central government, or rely on a bewilderingly diverse and dispersed network of local, decentralized civic institutions?

Just as with “pulling the goalie,” properly assess the future, but in this case to “skate to the puck.” Don’t wait to skate—or, again analogizing to grantmaking, to spend.

Analogically, assessing the right risks of waiting to spend.

From more than a decade ago, thoughts an what can best and most reliably be done by foundations.

To help mark National School Choice Week, a story of patience and perseverance.

A good way to think about it.

With overriding principles of freedom and human dignity, underlying practices of patience and persistence.

If we’re moving from an “information age” to a “reputation age,” what are the implications for funding public discourse?

We’re in the midst one of the most-drastic changes in the flow of information in history. Policy-oriented funders need to change their strategies accordingly.

And where to look for rebuilding self-governance.

On Labor Day, remembering Penn Kemble … and Robert Nisbet.

Where did the phrase originate, and what does it mean?

In Milwaukee, it didn’t start with any grantmaker. The indispensable groundwork was laid by parents concerned about the education of their children.

Searching for isolated, but incredibly powerful voices of authentic experience with utopian progressivism, who can speak about its excesses with an authority that scholars and activists don’t possess.

It may sometimes be a good idea for policy-oriented givers to consider supporting those on the other side of an otherwise-overarching ideological divide or with another worldview.

Restoring a more patient philanthropy means backing away from the obsession with immediate policy and political outcomes.

The story of conservative policy philanthropy from Barry Goldwater to Donald Trump.

Conservative philanthropy appears to be on the threshold of a new phase in its history.

Should you give to charity based on emotional ties or on calculated rational analysis?

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES) released new findings on the District of Columbia school-choice program. The “evaluation showed that students who received a voucher did 7.3 percentage points worse on math than students who didn’t, while reading scores were not significantly different for the two groups,” according to Frederick M.… Continue reading In looking for truth, breezes over bushes

American philanthropy is thoroughly, fundamentally elitist. In the Trump era, it will be tempted to pursue political activity that will only make that fact painfully apparent to the American people…