During Center for Civil Society podcast, the scholar, author, onetime philanthropy executive, editor, and commentator discusses establishment philanthropy’s elitist progressivism and alternative thinking and examples, as well as the need to balance philanthropic freedom against concerns about philanthropic power.
During his appearance on the last edition of the Center for Civil Society‘s great Givers, Doers, & Thinkers podcast hosted by AmPhil co-founder and executive chairman Jeremy Beer, Giving Review co-editor William A. Schambra argues that the dominant model of large-scale grantmaking by establishment philanthropy in America arises from a Progressive Era faith in elite-credentialed professional experts, data-drivenness, and top-down attempts to solve social problems. By contrast, he champions everyday philanthropy, which trusts citizens, community leaders, and local institutions to deal with problems from the ground up—however messily in our democratic civil society.
Big philanthropy in the U.S. has become overly committed to identifying and solving “root causes” through expert-imposed interventions, according to Schambra, while undervaluing the local individuals and groups that actually help people and strengthen neighborhoods. Philanthropy’s future depends less on better theories of change and more on having humility, trust in others, and respect for their knowledge and wisdom—however uncredentialed as a formal matter by the professional-managerial class.
Establishment philanthropy and progressivism “originated in this same notion that American public life is chaotic because we rely too much on citizens to run their own lives,” Schambra tells Beer in the just less than one-hour conversation.
The point was our life is chaotic because people are caught up in these minor concerns like their own neighborhoods, their own religions. I mean, this was a period, as you know, of mass migration from southern and eastern Europe, and all of these people were bringing these very peculiar religious beliefs over here.
Progressivism, Schambra says, basically “believed that, well, we really need to get public life out of the hands of these benighted souls who really think that there is a God and so forth” and “there is only science and so, we’re going to rearrange public life in such a way that … the elites now assume control.
“The bottom, as I say, has got all these peculiar beliefs about God,” he continues, “and the importance of tradition and the way things have been and so forth and so on, and science knows better. So, yeah, you do end up having to remove power to the extent possible from the masses and direct it toward” those elites.
Critic of elitist philanthropy
Last month, Schambra was included on the 2026 TIME100 Philanthropy list. TIME’s profile of Schambra called him “one of the most prominent right-leaning critics of the sector” and noted that “his critiques of ideological elitism in large foundations have attracted interest from across the political spectrum.”
Schambra is also a senior fellow emeritus at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He directed Hudson’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal from 2003 to 2014. Prior to joining Hudson in ’03, he was director of programs at Milwaukee’s Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. At Bradley, among other things, he spearheaded creation in 1997 of the National Commission on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal.
Before joining Bradley in 1992, Schambra was a senior advisor to and speechwriter for U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Constance Horner, and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan. He was director of social-policy programs at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and co-director of AEI’s “A Decade of Study of the Constitution.”
In addition to the theories and practices of civic revitalization and philanthropy, Schambra has written extensively on the Constitution, as well. He has edited several books, including As Far as Republican Principles Will Admit: Collected Essays of Martin Diamond.
Champion of civil society and an active citizenry
During the discussion, Schambra also talks about:
- the writing of Alexis de Tocqueville and the purpose of local associations being to produce citizens, not outcomes;
- the thinking and teaching of Robert L. Woodson, Sr., that people closest to a problem understand it best;
- the real-life practical example of Milwaukee’s Cordelia Taylor, who illustrates everything establishment philanthropy struggles to understand about everyday philanthropy;
- his experience at Bradley;
- humility as a philanthropic virtue; and, …
- the need for conservatives to balance a belief in philanthropic freedom against concerns about philanthropic power that is so concentrated, arrogantly exercised, and anti-democratic.
