Opinion: Foundation Diversity Bill Is Intrusive and Ineffective

California’s legislature is overstepping its bounds by requiring grant makers to disclose information about diversity, write two nonprofit leaders in an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times.

David A. Lehrer and Joe R. Hicks, top officials at Community Advocates, in Los Angeles, complain about the State Assembly’s passage this week of AB 624, which would require large foundations in California to reveal information about the gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of its members, its board of directors, its staff, and the owners of all businesses with which the foundation contracts.

The result, they say, is that foundations would “have to drill down into the composition of the organizations to which it makes grants.”

“Those concerned about privacy rights, fairness, and freedom from unwarranted government intrusion should find AB 624 objectionable on countless scores,” Mr. Lehrer and Mr. Hicks write. “It’s now up to the State Senate to stop this offensive legislation, recognizing that it would be pilloried were its authors in Washington rather than in Sacramento.”

While the authors admit that the legislation “stems from benign motives — to increase funding that affects the least advantaged of Californians,” they say that it is wrong to use diversity as a measure of either need or foundation effectiveness.

What’s more, they write, “the state should not be subtly directing where foundations spend their charitable dollars.”

“Just as private individuals don’t want the government looking over their shoulders when they write charitable checks (so long as the recipients are tax exempt and legal), foundations should not have their discretion impinged upon by someone else’s notions of what is appropriate.”

Read more about the bill in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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