Foundations Can Fight Poverty Through Public-Policy Change
By M.J. Prest
Senior Editor, Solutions
March 23, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
Helping People to Help Themselves: A Guide for Donors
by Michael E. Hartmann
Foundations can best assist the poor by helping them take personal responsibility for their financial health and not depend on government aid, writes Michael E. Hartmann, a visiting fellow at the Philanthropy Roundtable, in Washington. “The greatest antipoverty program is a job,” he writes. “The poor need to be integrated into the economy as thoroughly as possible.”
The book outlines ways grant-making institutions can combat poverty by supporting programs that improve access to education and health care, prevent crime, help people kick drug and alcohol addictions, and expand job-skills training efforts. In particular, he continues, public policies governing entrepreneurship must be rewritten so the poor can more easily start their own businesses.
For example, the guide discusses how a woman in Arizona sued the Board of Cosmetology for the right to host an apprenticeship program without requiring participants to undergo 1,600 hours of cosmetology licensing. The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit group in Washington, helped her file her lawsuit, which resulted in a state law that exempts hair braiders from the licensing and promotes entrepreneurship.
An appendix lists the projects and charities discussed in the guide, as well as the foundations that support them.
Publisher: Philanthropy Roundtable, 1150 17th Street, N.W., Suite 503, Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 822-8333; fax (202) 822-8325; main@philanthropyroundtable.org; http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org; 119 pages; available free for download on the organization’s Web site.
