January 15, 1998 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Liberal foundations have squandered their money and allowed conservative grant makers to swing the national debate to the right, says a cover story in The Nation (January 12) written by Michael H. Shuman, a fellow and former director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal Washington think tank.
“The stakes are huge,” Mr. Shuman writes. “We are in a monumental struggle over the very future of governance and public policy as we know it. If progressive philanthropists insist we play whiffle ball while our opponents play hardball, we’re destined to lose.”
Mr. Shuman says that despite having more money to spend, liberal foundations have consistently lost public-policy battles to conservatives. “If our friends are dispensing more money than our enemies, why are we faring so unimpressively in the nation’s public-policy debates?” he asks.
The article cites five characteristics of liberal foundations that Mr. Shuman says have led to their marginalization: a reliance on small, single-year grants; fear of getting involved in partisan politics; an insistence on providing grants for projects rather than for general operating support; reliance on local, grassroots organizing rather than on national campaigns; and support of single-issue charities, as opposed to multiple-issue, public-policy organizations.
To illustrate his point, Mr. Shuman compares the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee with the liberal Public Welfare Foundation in Washington. He notes that the Bradley foundation provides large grants to a few national organizations that have profoundly influenced public policy on a wide variety of issues, while the Public Welfare Foundation scatters a larger number of grants to charities that focus on a small number of issues.
“There is an urgent need for an honest dialogue between grantors and grantees,” Mr. Shuman concludes. He says, “Progressive funders have much to learn from the right, and need to start radically rethinking their practices and priorities.”
