Donor Trade-Offs Include Support for Amenities vs. System Change

To the Editor:

Reading “10 Trade-Offs Donors Face” (Opinion, December 11), I was concerned that the author, Melissa Berman, chief executive of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers and a person with such influence over philanthropy, did not even mention a critical trade-off for any donor: whether to fund amenities charity or system change.

The gap between rich and poor has reached the greatest extreme since at least 1929. Large corporations wield more influence over elections, public policy, and our planet than they’ve had in at least a century—perhaps ever.

Reversing these and other destructive trends will require shifts in both strategies and funding.

Foundations and donors have a fundamental choice to make. Will they accept and work within the current paradigm, or invest the money and energy required to reverse the centralization of power and accompanying decay of democracy that so deeply harms people, communities, and our natural environment?

It’s easy to receive backslaps and claim success when you can quantify the number of performances staged, the number of people served or acres protected.

It’s far more difficult to focus energy on genuine movement-building that necessarily takes many years or decades to create structural change. And no entity will be able to claim more than a small share of credit for ultimate successes in correcting our most critical challenges.

I agree with Ms. Berman that, like her 10 other choices, this is not a matter of right vs. wrong. But it is a question—perhaps the most important question—any donor should ask.

Jeff Milchen

Bozeman, Mont.

The writer co-directs the American Independent Business Alliance