Editor’s Notebook: Philanthropy’s Quickened Pace

In the pre-Covid era, Chronicle reporters were the busiest when August opened. Those who covered foundations had time to work on longer pieces or cover other parts of the philanthropy world. Calls to grant makers — especially on summer Fridays — usually went unanswered because offices were officially closed and long vacations were the norm.

Now, as our lead foundation reporter, Alex Daniels, can attest, the foundation world is moving fast. As we were working on this issue, Alex was racing to keep our website up-to-date with a deluge of racial-justice grant making.

In just a matter of days, nearly a half billion dollars was committed, led by $220 million from the Open Society Institute and $170 million from the Hewlett Foundation. (Hewlett is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.)

Just a few weeks earlier, Alex wrote about the Mellon Foundation’s decision to focus all of its grant making on advancing racial equity as it increases its grant making by $200 million and about the Rockefeller Brother Fund’s plan to devote $10 million over five years to racial justice as it increased its grant making by a total of $48 million.

This is the second time in the last few months that the pace of foundation activity has been so rapid that we strained to keep up with it.

To be sure, we’ve covered lots of catastrophes and are accustomed to seeing money flow to relief funds. But rarely do we see foundations join forces to change longstanding ways of doing business.

Yet in mid-March, as social-distancing rules forced foundation leaders to set up shop in their living rooms or at kitchen tables, they came together on Zoom and cellphones to craft a pledge to let nonprofits to use grant money as they saw fit. Every week more and more grant makers agreed to do the same. In less than five months, 775 grant makers have signed the pledge.

Still, many people — including those in philanthropy — see too little money flowing too slowly to urgent needs. That’s why last month another pledge began to circulate, this one from Alan Davis, a businessman who heads his family’s foundation.

His Crisis Charitable Commitment pledge, he explained to the Chronicle’s Dan Parks, is urging foundations, donor-advised-fund holders, and philanthropists to increase the donations substantially — especially to organizations working on racial justice, get-out-the-vote drives, and other such efforts. Davis hopes the pledge will add to peer pressure to give big, but he’s also part of a group known as the Patriotic Millionaires that is urging Congress to force the wealthiest to do more.

Too many foundations, Davis wrote in a Chronicle opinion article, , “focus on hoarding wealth over addressing need,” and that “is as good an argument as any for shutting down these big taxpayer-subsidized foundations, or at least slapping a 10 percent mandatory payout on them.”

A few days after we published Davis’s observations, Joanne Florino, a top official at the Philanthropy Roundtable, shot back in a rebuttal. “Is it ‘patriotic,’” she wrote, “to demand legislation that will hamper severely — and perhaps destroy entirely — the ability of philanthropy to respond effectively to the next major crisis?”

While it would be foolish to predict whether Congress will act, or what else will come next, it seems clear that this summer we’re witnessing one of the fastest-paced and transformative moments in the history of American philanthropy.

Alex, Dan, and other Chronicle reporters and editors racing to document these essential developments couldn’t do their work without the support of subscribers like you. In a world that is changing fast, your continued support is vital. We hope you’ll check out our website every day to keep up with what is happening — and subscribe to our Philanthropy Today newsletter so you can stay on top of what matters most.

Stay well — and I hope you can take at least a few breaks to enjoy the summer sunshine.

Stacy Palmer, Editor