It’s Time for Philanthropic Institutions to Speak Out on Public-Policy Matters

Following is an opinion article by Peter Goldberg that appeared in the November 8, 1988, issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Mr. Goldberg, who died on August 12, was vice president of the Primerica Foundation, when he wrote this piece. At the time of his death, Mr. Goldberg was chief executive of Families International, in Milwaukee.

The mission of philanthropy, broadly stated, is to contribute to the national well-being, to contribute to the quality of community life, and to help individual citizens. These, too, are perfectly legitimate functions of government—federal, state, and local.

Whether grant makers like it or not, the role of government in our lives has grown dramatically. We may not always agree with how a government carries out its mission. We don’t have to. We can be critics as well as cheerleaders. We can champion involvement of the public sector in the causes in which we believe or we can challenge the premises of public policies we think are expansionist or the purported benefits of public programs we think don’t work. We can have different definitions of national well-being, different priorities for the quality of human life, and different ways to help individual citizens. But when we pursue our missions in philanthropy wearing a set of blinders that prevents us from recognizing the role which government plays in our everyday lives, we imperil our effectiveness and consign ourselves to the periphery.

I do not believe that government is a dirty word or that participation in the public-policy debate is dishonorable. At times I have been mystified and frustrated by the seeming antipathy with which most of us in the grant-making community view government.

The reality is that government can afford to ignore us, but it is a mistake for us to ignore the government.

It is also a mistake to view government only as a threat. There is nothing wrong with a philanthropic organization’s using some of its resources to shape the policies and priorities of our governments—as long as it is done within the limits of existing law.

True, foundations are not generally allowed to lobby per se. There are considerable penalties applied to us when we try to influence specific legislation. But the definitions of what constitutes lobbying and what constitutes specific legislation are delineated. There is plenty of room to participate in the public-policy-making process without violating federal law.

We can support nonpartisan public information and education campaigns, provide general support to advocacy organizations, and give money to demonstration programs for the public sector to consider for wide-scale replication—activities that some of us do engage in. We can communicate to the public about the important issues of our times through numerous legitimate and effective vehicles, which some of us also do.

What concerns me, however, is that we seem to play down our involvement, to segregate each grant and each activity so that the whole of our efforts looks to be less than the sum of all of its parts, to mask our potential impact as if we would be scolded if we somehow appeared to be getting too big for our britches.

Is our caution about being very visibly involved in public-policy activities grounded in the factual basis of the law and subsequent regulations, or are we consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously using the law as a convenient mechanism to hide behind?

In other words, has the law simply become an easy avenue of escape, a way to avoid direct contact with what we perceive to be a complex, turbulent, murky world that we don’t understand and one we can’t easily quantify for reporting purposes in our annual reports?

With the exception of the occasional willful or flagrant abuser of the law—from which we should all vocally dissociate—how many philanthropic institutions have ever bumped up against the limits of what Congress allows us to do?

My guess is that very few of us have tested the ceilings and most of us are hugging the ground like some kind of fog. And while some of us might wish to see Congress ease some of the restrictions on the lobbying and public-policy activities of foundations, an equal number of us might find that it would present us with distasteful opportunities.

The problem here is not with Congress or the Internal Revenue Service but with ourselves. Either we don’t want to or we don’t know how to exercise our legitimate rights to be involved in the shaping of public-policy priorities. In so doing, we are missing opportunities to train policy makers and are watching, sometimes passively, while others take their best shots on behalf of those causes in which they believe.

Here are some of the things grant makers can do:

• As individuals we have to recognize and speak out about the legitimacy and importance of the public-policy-making process. We have to make this a topic of discussion within our professional community.

• We need to learn more about what we are allowed to do under existing legislation and regulation and not be preoccupied only with what we are not allowed to do.

• We need to give more credence to hiring staff members who have had experience in government affairs and public policy. I am surprised at how few public-policy analysts work for foundations.

• We have work to do with our trustees or boards of directors. For years they have been trained to view incursions into public policy with trepidation. We will need trustees’ support and encouragement if we are going to become more involved in the public-policy-making process.

• We need to be more open to supporting advocacy organizations and advocacy-oriented projects with the limits of existing law, and we ought not to disguise those organizations and projects as something else.

Finally, we should not be satisfied simply to give money to nonprofit groups for advocacy projects.

As important as that may be, it is still an act of ventriloquism. We have more to offer than just our money: We have institutional credibility, and many of us have some in-house expertise and experience. We simply don’t use it often enough in direct ways to further the causes we support through our grants.

It may be time for us to speak out as institutions on our own, to use the good will or institutional clout we have accumulated, as well as the financial resources we have, to pursue with a greater sense of organizational urgency the goals we hold most dear. For those issues that we care deeply about, foundation leaders should get involved personally as official representatives of their foundations. They should take stands on issues, speak about government policies and spending priorities, meet with legislators, plan with advocates, participate in the process—and most of all be proud of it.