Conservative Grant Makers Must Change to Be Effective, Leaders Say

Conservative leaders say that, while right-leaning foundations have played a big role in reshaping American politics, grant makers must change their focus if they are to remain effective.

At a meeting sponsored by the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, in Washington, well-known conservative pundits, such as William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and executives and board members from the John M. Olin Foundation and other charitable funds, generally agreed that conservative ideas now dominate political thinking and that a growing number of Americans believe in a free-market philosophy.

During the discussion and in essays published as part of the event, many of the forum’s 20 participants said the support grant makers provided to the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks helped propel such thinking to the forefront of political discourse in the United States.

Heather Mac Donald, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank in New York, wrote in an essay that even though conservative funds don’t have as much money as liberal grant makers, she believes they have been more successful in promoting their ideology. She pointed to the 1996 welfare law overhaul as an example.

To continue to produce such victories, Ms. Mac Donald encouraged donors to ignore “experts” in philanthropy and “support what you love, not what you feel you ought to support.” She added: “If donors were guided by their passions — whether for unknown 18th century operas or Civil War history — there would be a flourishing of wonderful new institutions.”

Such giving would help amend the “big-time cultural damage” caused by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and other liberal grant makers, she said.

Not all of the participants were certain that conservative philanthropy had been, or will be, a powerful force.

Mr. Kristol said that donating money to nonprofit groups may not be as effective in promoting conservative ideology as supporting election campaigns of Republican politicians. “I’m an agnostic on which efforts are best,” he said.

Scott McConnell, executive editor of The American Conservative, in Arlington, Va., said he believed that conservative foundations have helped to impede conservative ideas. “Something unfortunate has happened to conservatism: as it has grown in influence, it has become less attractive, less skeptical, and less conservative — and the big foundations have something to do with this,” Mr. McConnell wrote in an essay.

He said the foundations’ support for conservative thinkers and their ideas has led to “those intellectuals becoming more constrained and less free-thinking.”

He encouraged donors to support conservative groups that challenge the Bush administration, especially its foreign policy, to increase the level of debate among conservatives that is vital to an intellectual movement.

Other participants offered their suggestions for conservative grant makers:

• Donate to small, religious charities to fight social ills, said Robert L. Woodson Sr., president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, an organization in Washington that trains such groups. “Funders need to invest in the grass roots,” he said.
• Stop giving to institutions of higher education because of their liberal leanings, said Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, a free-market advocacy group. He also urged donors to stop giving to think tanks and instead establish “do tanks,” small nonprofit organizations that would apply conservative ideas at the local level. “The next generation of fighting vehicles for the conservative movement need to be groups oriented toward providing strategic advice for policy makers, building grass roots to match the left’s troops, helping educate candidates,” and other goals, he wrote.

• Pierre S. du Pont, a trustee of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, in Milwaukee, and a lawyer in Wilmington, Del., said he agreed with Mr. Moore’s criticism of colleges, but he suggested a different strategy. “We shouldn’t stop, we should refocus,” he said. “Instead of saying don’t give to Harvard, tell the donor to give to something we value.”

• Support for-profit entities instead of nonprofit groups, said Roger Hertog, a philanthropist and vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management, an investment company in New York.

“Too many philanthropists are not-for-profit-driven,” he said, suggesting donors should support commercial ventures such as magazines and Web sites that promote conservative ideas. “We ought to be much more adventuresome.”

But despite the suggestions, James Pierson, executive director of the Olin Foundation, said that foundations can no longer expect to guide the conservative movement. Instead, he said, wealthy donors who write checks directly to their favorite causes will become a stronger influence.

“The proliferation of individual donors probably will mean that the larger conservative foundations will be less influential than in the past,” he said in an essay. “In the future, there will be less strategic direction given to conservatism from a few donors.”

White House Support

Perhaps the best measure of the importance of conservative foundations is how much attention they get from President Bush and others at the White House.

Peter Wehner, director of strategic initiatives at the White House, who spoke at the one-day symposium, was asked how the president regards the work of U.S. grant makers.

“He’s clearly aware of foundations,” responded Mr. Wehner.

He said Mr. Bush’s effort to allow more religious groups access to federal and state grant programs was inspired by the Bradley Foundation’s support for religious social services in Milwaukee.

Through “tax policy and the bully pulpit,” Mr. Wehner added, President Bush “wants to create a policy and environment where foundations can do good work.”

The collection of essays written for the symposium is available on the Bradley Center’s Web site at http://pcr.hudson.org.