Opinion

Recalling Michael Bailin and his humble approach to philanthropy

Jan 28, 2025
Michael Bailin (Edna McConnell Clark Foundation)

He thought the best thing the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation could do was find a few good nonprofits that were doing sensible things, and bring them whatever help they needed.

Lest I be accused of disliking all large liberal foundations (and I have been so accused), let me fondly recall the leader of one such foundation whom I in fact admired a great deal, namely, Michael Bailin, who died last month. Among his many other leadership roles in the nonprofit sector, Bailin was president of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) from 1996 to 2005.  

I remember one important speech in particular of Bailin’s, “Re-Engineering Philanthropy: Field Notes from the Trenches,” delivered in 2003 as part of the Waldemar Nielsen Issues in Philanthropy Seminar Series at Georgetown University. The series fully exposed the strengths and weaknesses of mainstream foundations.

During his remarks, Bailin describes his makeover of EMCF after coming to the helm in ’96. The Clark Foundation’s purpose when he came aboard, he notes, was “like many foundations, dedicated to systems change—to reforming the great delivery systems of public service” in education, justice, child welfare, and neighborhood improvement.” But even though the foundation had an at-the-time negligible (!) annual budget of some $25 million, it had been, he said,

proceeding as if we had some independent leverage over social systems that had been many decades in the making—systems that were fortified by all the ramparts of bureaucracy and regulation, and thickets of intergovernmental agreements and contracts, and moats of public dollars. We were fighting battles that had tested the power and wealth of serial U.S. Congresses and presidencies. It was a battle of Homeric proportions fought with Lilliputian resources. How could we ever imagine that we could accomplish anything so significant in our lifetimes? And how would we even know if we did?

Bailin’s response to this humbling realization was to phase out grantmaking in all but one area, namely, youth development. He then concentrated giving on a handful of nonprofits that were already doing indisputably good work on a modest scale, but held promise of doing good work on a larger scale, once supplied with the more-extensive commitments of resources and expertise that EMCF proceeded to offer them.

Let’s ponder for a moment the implications of Bailin’s observation about the old, failed approach of the Clark Foundation, namely, using funding to influence social systems. This is, of course, the cutting-edge, avant-garde, progressive approach taken by most large liberal foundations today. Private foundations don’t have sufficient resources to tackle problems directly, we are told, hence it’s best that they use their grants to “leverage” other funders, especially government, to spend their money in the right way. This sounds so sensible, so clever, so cost-effective, that it’s difficult to dispute the logic of the approach. So today even the smallest foundations repeat the mantra of leverage as if it were self-evidently valid. It might be pleasant to believe that foundations can lead large social institutions around by the fiscal nose like so many docile bulls, but in the real world, as Bailin points out, these institutions have eaten Congresses and Presidents for breakfast. Why on earth does a private foundation really think it can do better?

Oh, of course, those social systems will talk a good game of collaboration and coordination whenever a foundation trolls grants through the neighborhood. I’m certain that the files back at EMCF during the “leverage” days were bulging with plans and blueprints from consortiums of agencies indicating that their work was now dovetailing nicely, thanks to EMCF dollars. But as soon as the group photo was taken, you may be sure the various agencies grabbed their share of the take and went home—reassembling only long enough at the end of the grant period to assure the foundation that all had gone splendidly and collaboratively. My hunch is that few of the dust-gathering reams of reports outlining elaborate plans, milestones, benchmarks, and measurable outcomes gave the slightest hint that the foundation was waging a futile “battle of Homeric proportions with Lilliputian resources.” Here is displayed the latest strategic “leveraging” technique, no doubt measured to a fare-thee-well with the most sophisticated metrics, with staff and leadership reassuring everyone that things are going according to plan. It finally took new leadership, sensing discomfiture on the part of the Board, to come aboard and announce that the emperor has no clothes. How many years of how many millions of dollars from this one foundation alone followed this bankrupt course? How many millions today, from foundations much larger than EMCF, are still being squandered on this futile strategy?  

When large foundations tell small ones that they’re just “wasting their money” if they’re merely meeting immediate needs of a handful of the poor back home through charitable gifts, remember this largely unheralded tale of massive waste from the world of complex, sophisticated philanthropy. And heed this note of hope: EMCF in its newfound humility under Bailin’s leadership decided the best thing it could do was to find a few good nonprofits that were doing sensible things, and bring them whatever help they needed. That’s an approach that the smallest foundation can adopt, with the certainty that it’s doing some modest good in a broken world.