February 8, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
NEW BOOKS
The Foundation: A Great American Secret
by Joel L. Fleishman
With Warren Buffett’s gift of $31-billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, notes Joel Fleishman, the eyes of the public turned to the notoriously secretive world of privately endowed foundations. The author, a professor of law and public policy at Duke University, attempts to explain how private foundations “fit into the network of civic, political, and economic institutions that shape contemporary American life,” how effectively they work, how they need to improve, and what the future may look like for philanthropy.
Written in three parts, the book begins by describing the general reasoning and ideas that support philanthropy and guide foundations’ giving. He describes the strategies foundations use; for example, Mr. Fleishman writes that a fund that wishes to create and disseminate knowledge can found an organization to do basic research, support a new field of study, or support an existing field of study.
In the second part of the book, the author looks at specific examples of foundations that were able to create some kind of positive change. He examines 100 case studies, written by Scott Kohler and Steven Schindler under the author’s supervision, of “high-impact initiatives” by foundations. He includes 12 condensed versions of these in this volume, but all 100 of the case studies can be found at http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/dfrp/cases.
The third section of the book focuses on reasons a foundation’s efforts sometimes fail, characteristics shared by successful grant programs, questions about how long a foundation should exist, and suggestions for how philanthropy can make its grant making more effective.
Mr. Fleishman stresses that foundations have great potential and an important place in society: “What could possibly be more beneficial for the entire world than a powerful passion to do good for others, a relentless determination to do it well, and a keen sense of responsibility to make oneself continually accountable for achieving one’s goals?”
(A profile of Mr. Fleishman and an excerpt of the book appeared in The Chronicle’s December 7 issue.)
Publisher: PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1825, New York, N.Y. 10107; http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com; 357 pages; $27.95; ISBN 1-58648-411-7.
