Foundations Urged to Do More to Meet Global Need

Foundations can help the billions of poor people in the world rise out of squalor, but they must be bolder in their efforts if they want to make headway, said experts in philanthropy and international aid at a conference here.

At a meeting organized by Princeton University, the Asia-Pacific Center for Philanthropy and Social Enterprise (in Melbourne, Australia), and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs (in New York), several speakers encouraged grant makers to take more risks with their international programs and make multiple-year commitments to assist the world’s poor.

“Philanthropy can indeed make a contribution to global-poverty alleviation,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, in Boston. “But only if it becomes more strategic, more structured in its analysis, more willing to assume risk.”

As an example, Mr. Offenheiser said grant makers should challenge the “free-market triumphantalism” that believes poverty can be solved through economic policies such as decreased restrictions on businesses and the reduction of trade barriers. The foundation world “must come of age and recognize that it is markets that are determining the opportunities for the poor,” he told the conference, which drew more than 100 people.

He said foundations work best when operating as the “R&D arm of society.” He pointed to U.S. grant makers’ support for the Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh, which developed the idea of providing small loans to poor women for business ventures. Today, charities worldwide offer such loans.

Joel L. Fleishman, professor of public policy at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., and former president of the Atlantic Philanthropies, in New York, said that U.S. foundations need to make long-term commitments — a minimum of 10 to 15 years — to a charitable cause, such as fighting AIDS in Africa, improving education in a poor nation, or meeting other global needs. “If you really want to accomplish something, you have to stick with it,” he said.

But in India, a country with one of the largest numbers of poor people, few U.S. grant makers have made such multiyear efforts, said Pushpa Sundar, director of the Sampradaan Indian Center for Philanthropy, in New Delhi. “Too often donors are in a hurry and leave much too quickly,” she said.

Ms. Sundar also criticized charitable funds for imposing their agendas on the groups they support in India. She said that despite efforts to be sensitive to local nonprofit leaders and government officials, foundations hold the purse strings, so “it is their worldview that naturally prevails.”

‘Chump Change’

While most speakers agreed that foundations and charities can play an important, if limited, role in fighting global poverty, David Rieff, a journalist and consultant to several international aid organizations, challenged that notion.

“The claims made for what philanthropies do are exaggerated,” he said. Nonprofit groups do admirable deeds, Mr. Rieff said, but he questioned whether they can provide long-term solutions for poverty in the world.

He said a donor would do more to help impoverished people by giving money to a politician who supported international policies favorable to development, rather than contributing to an aid group. What’s more, the total amount given away in 2003 by individuals, corporations, and foundations in the United States is simply not enough to make a dent in global needs. “Two hundred forty billion dollars is, as they used to say in my high school, chump change.”

Mr. Offenheiser, of Oxfam, agreed that charitable groups have limited resources, but he defended the work of such organizations. “I will concede that what we do, why we do it, and how we do it may not always be pretty, successful, or as noble as we had hoped,” he said. “Nonetheless, I continue to believe that there is a place for philanthropy in the field of international development and poverty alleviation.”