April 23, 1998 | Read Time: 4 minutes
How Foundations Work: What Grantseekers Need to Know About the Many Faces of Foundations
By Dennis P. McIlnay
If private foundations are to engender trust among grant seekers and the general public, they must pull back the shroud of secrecy that often obscures their operations, writes this book’s author.
“Foundations are mysterious, and they are poorly understood even by the people in non-profit organizations that receive grants from them,” says Mr. McIlnay, a professor of management at Saint Francis College in Loretto, Pa.
He offers this exploration of the machinations of America’s private foundations to help grant seekers get a leg up — but he also intends to debunk the myth of foundations as risk takers and to spark discussion of the ways in which foundations can improve their operations.
He divides his book into six sections examining what he sees as the different guises that foundations assume: judge, editor, citizen, activist, entrepreneur, and partner. The section on foundations as judges, for example, explores how foundations winnow stacks of grant proposals and delineates what foundations expect to see in a request for funds. Mr. McIlnay also provides a tongue-in-cheek look at “proposalese,” the jargon that he says lards many unsuccessful proposals.
He also aims to clarify misconceptions. One of the most common, he writes, is that foundations are in the business of supporting projects that are innovative. Not true, he says. He recommends that foundations make grants for longer than one or two years so as to no longer allow themselves a “quick getaway” from a risky project, and he advises foundation officials not to forsake programs that have lost government funds.
Though he stresses that he holds many foundations in high regard for the work they do, he concludes that, on the whole, private grant makers have made few strides since the days of Carnegie and Rockefeller.
“For all their wealth and power, foundations are organizations whose reach has not exceeded their grasp, whose promise is yet unfulfilled,” Mr. McIlnay writes. “Their secrecy, condescension, arbitrariness, gamesmanship, aversion to risk, and lack of public accountability are arguably as prevalent today as they were a hundred years ago.”
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco 94104-1310; (415) 433-1767; fax (800) 605-2665; World-Wide Web http://www.josseybass.com; 204 pages; $27.95; I.S.B.N. 0-7879-4011-9.
1998-1999 V.I.P. Address Book
Edited by James M. Wiggins
Celebrity hounds may find much to peruse in this directory — but its compilers also tout it as a resource for fund raisers seeking endorsements, donations, or refer rals.
The addresses of more than 25,000 rich, famous, and otherwise noteworthy people are arranged alphabetically by last name. Each entry includes the person’s vocation or claim to fame in the right-hand margin, and categories include public service, “adventure” (military leaders, astronauts, etc.), business, religion, education, communications, fine arts, science, entertainment, and sports.
The editors say that each person is contacted directly and asked if he or she prefers a home or a business address for the listing; home and office addresses appear in roughly equal measure. Phone numbers are not included.
Indexes include a listing of people who have died since previous editions were released and addresses of talent agencies and news-media outlets.
Publisher: Associated Media Companies, P.O. Box 489, Gleneden Beach, Ore. 97388; (800) 258-0615; 766 pages; $94.95; I.S.B.N. 0-938731-13-0.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Seizing Opportunities: The Role of CDCs in Urban Economic Development is a report from the Ford Foundation that heralds the success of community-development corporations, which bring together government and private organizations to stem poverty in urban areas. The Ford Foundation has poured $30-million into 20 such partnerships, and here it spotlights the work accomplished by C.D.C.’s in Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington. The C.D.C.’s provided loans or lines of credit for residents to acquire and develop commercial, industrial, and retail property and to create jobs in blighted neighborhoods. While those cities have enjoyed some success — an abandoned cotton mill in Pittsburgh now houses 40 businesses, for example — C.D.C.’s still still struggle with a lack of technical expertise and the reluctance of retail organizations to follow their lead. The report recommends that more be done to promote the economic potential of low-income areas, such as in Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood, where residents spend $240-million on goods and services per year but where only 18 per cent of that amount supports local vendors. Publisher: Ford Foundation, 320 East 43rd Street, New York 10017; (212) 573-5169; World-Wide Web http://www.fordfound.org; 32 pages; free. When ordering, refer to Title No. 566.
