July 6, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Who benefits from grant making?
A seemingly simple question, but a recent study on the subject has triggered a variety of responses, with vastly different conclusions.
This month the Philanthropic Collaborative, a Washington nonprofit coalition, released a report that estimated that two out of every three grant dollars to health causes helps the poor and disadvantaged populations.
The report sought in part to repudiate the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a foundation watchdog that is pushing grant makers to give more to marginalized people. The committee, in Washington, has said that one out of three grant dollars to all causes helps under-served populations.
To some, the report reveals a left-wing conspiracy to convince Congress to regulate foundations, a move that would help “destroy de Tocquevillian America,” as Peter Roff, a conservative columnist, writes on the Web site of U.S. News & World Report
To be sure, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy has stated it is not seeking new legislation. In its online response to the report, the committee did say it continues to support “targeted universalism,” an idea that philanthropic efforts to help impoverished people and other disadvantaged groups would help society as a whole.
There is one thing that the Philanthropic Collaborative and National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy do agree upon: the data about foundation spending can be improved.
The two organizations based their analysis on information from the Foundation Center, a nonprofit research group in New York. On its blog, Larry McGill, the center’s senior vice president for research, writes that both sides in the debate make important points.
He also suggests that grant makers are in part to blame for the confusion. “Foundations,” he writes, “may not be telling us as much as they could about the population groups that benefit from their grant making.”
What do you think? Where is this debate headed? Share your views by clicking on the comment button below.
