A compilation of interesting and insightful thinking from the last three of seven recorded discussions so far this year about grantmaking and giving.
Partisan Policy Networks
Partisan Policy Networks separates “what I would call institutional funders—which are corporations, government, private foundations, other nonprofits, and interest groups, and things like that—from individual donors. I separate them because I find that they actually behave in very different ways, and different types of think tanks rely on different sources of money.
“One of the things I look at are the funders of the seed money that helps found these groups. The money is given in expectation of some form of politics, some particular viewpoint, and so that has a little bit of a path-dependent effect.
“But then I also look at ongoing fundraising. How do these think tanks keep the lights on, sustain their operations? The big difference that I find between more of the academic model and the more-political model is that the academic groups rely much more on institutional money, even if that money has a viewpoint, has a perspective.” Institutional donors don’t want research they fund “to be seen as totally biased and disregarded by decision-makers, and so they care about the processes and quality of the research a bit more than a lot of individual donors.
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“[S]tronger parties would help solve some of the issues we have going on. I would actually turn attention, though, to stronger parties inside of political institutions, so mainly Congress and stronger nonpartisan institutions within there, as well.” This would include, for example, “more support for something like the Congressional Research Service and nonpartisan research organizations inside the institution, which would make members less reliant on outside sources of information, which come with all this baggage we’ve described.
“[S]tronger political-party organizations, as well, inside Congress”—like “stronger policy committees, stronger committees in general—might help again make members of Congress less reliant on these highly motivated outside sources of information.
“A big part of why there’s been this increase in partisan and political research organizations is that elected officials have a demand for this, and these organizations are meeting that. … It’s very much a marketplace dynamic where” what they supply “is just a rational reaction to broader partisan polarization.
“Another, more-punitive approach might be to have more enforcement of these separations” between legal categories, but “I think that’s kind of a dead letter. I don’t see that being a realistic solution and I really think that raises all sorts of thorny questions.”
— Zachary Albert, from “A conversation with Partisan Policy Networks author Zachary Albert (Part 1 of 2),” March 23, 2026, and “A conversation with Partisan Policy Networks author Zachary Albert (Part 2 of 2),” March 24, 2026
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Think tanks and democracy
In Canada, there is “a parliamentary democracy,” which “means that if you have a majority government, you basically have the run of the show.” There is “quite a bit of unilateral control. It’s sort of closer to the unitary executive. That, combined with the thickness of the parties, means you don’t really need an independent policy apparatus.” Policymakers can and do “rely on academics and commissions and consultants that can sort of pop up ephemerally, rather than have this sort of permanent third sector.
“Whereas we in the United States have sort of a truly independent sector,” as part of which groups, many of them nonprofits, “apply cross-pressure to their own party and try to have their own independent goals.
“Every one of these subgroups has their own institutional representation, in the form of think tanks, media, PR firms, talent development.” It “almost becomes like this parallel political process that is sort of outside the democratic context.” The people in this process “tend to be highly educated party elites, apparatchiks,” and they and the groups in it “are a big part of the story of political polarization in this country.
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“[C]hanging the tax treatment of trusts and foundations in particular, I’d be very supportive of that. Even just applying more scrutiny. I would still want people to give to bona fide charities, but a lot of these so-called educational nonprofits are more or less just lobbying firms.
“But then what do you ‘crowd-in’ with? I think part of that has to come from more like forward-looking public policy.” Referring to some social policies like child-care tax credits and poverty-reduction efforts that seek to empower families and individuals, as opposed to subsidizing professionalized institutions, “I would go to war with them,” because “what you’re really doing is creating seed funding for another institutional armada that can entrench these credentialed interests ….”
It’s worth “exploring those kind of strategies, where we don’t just try to tamp down on the (c)(3)s and the foundations, but also have a vision for what grows in its place and ideally something that flows directly from the bottom up.”
Critics of the professionalized nonprofit sector on the left “were seeing something very real, in part because that part of the left has a big focus on political economy. I think the populist right is now recapitulating their own version of this.” While “[y]ou don’t want to overstate the areas of agreement, right, … [w]e’re both critiquing the status quo ante and the ancien régime, but we have very different versions of what should replace it.”
— Samuel Hammond, from “A conversation with the Foundation for American Innovation’s Samuel Hammond (Part 1 of 2),”April 20, 2026, and “A conversation with the Foundation for American Innovation’s Samuel Hammond (Part 2 of 2),” April 21, 2026
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American philanthropy at the Smithsonian, and how the Revolution and Progressive Era changed it
Before the National Museum of American History’s philanthropy collection was formally established in 2015, philanthropic artifacts were scattered across other collections and treated secondarily. “Objects related to philanthropy, charity, and what not had been collected as part of other collections, often secondarily. Many objects, all objects, speak multiple voices” and “tell multiple stories. By establishing the philanthropy collection, the Smithsonian was recognizing that this is a topic that deserved attention in its own right, with objects collected first and foremost with the philanthropy story in mind.
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After the Revolution, “Americans are continuing to collaborate across the Atlantic, but they’re also collaborating after the Revolution with fellow citizens in other states and there they are emphasizing those national ties. So one does see a huge boom in charitable organizing philanthropic activity after the Revolution, as Americans are trying to create new bonds of citizenship and pursue their ideals of life, liberty, and happiness through their” philanthropy.
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Asked whether the Revolution or the Progressive Era effected more change in philanthropy: “Well, I would love to say the Revolution because my background is as an 18th Century historian, but I think In fairness that the scale of wealth, the new scale of wealth in the late 19th and early 20th Century probably, you know, we could say it changed it more. … The rise of huge fortunes, the rise of huge foundations, and also of mass fundraising that grows up with the advertising and marketing professions also in the early 20th Century, it grows over and changes throughout American history, but it really does reach a new scale in the early 20th Century.
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On current invocations by defenders of donor freedom of the philanthropists funding Revolutionary advocacy and activities to argue against those who might be receptive to some conditions on the nonprofit sector’s tax benefits: “They weren’t doing it for a deduction because there wasn’t an income tax,” and exemption itself “goes back centuries to England, where churches did not pay taxes and that was true for charitable institutions. … You really can’t analogize to today because the whole framework was different.”
— Amanda Moniz, from “A conversation with the Smithsonian’s Amanda Moniz (Part 1 of 2),” June 1, 2026, and “A conversation with the Smithsonian’s Amanda Moniz (Part 2 of 2),” June 2, 2026
