Foundations, Reality, and Ties to the Press

To the Editor:

Pablo Eisenberg hits the nail on the head in claiming that non-profit groups must work to form new partnerships with the media (“Non-Profit World Must Improve Ties to the Press,” May 7). Journalists do vitiate their watchdog capacity by paying excessive attention to scandals and problems and ignoring positive accomplishments. Non-profit groups and foundations must learn to be less “thin-

skinned” and become better communicators. And yes, if there’s anything less than desirable in a non-profit or foundation’s operation that warrants less-than-favorable coverage, the organization must clean it up.

About one thing, however, Mr. Eisenberg is dead wrong. The Council on Foundations has done a great deal to raise “the standards of accountability, performance, innovation, access, leadership, and governance” in the foundation community. The council adopted its “Principles and Practices for Effective Grantmaking” in 1982, requiring all members to subscribe to them as a condition of membership. The “Principles and Practices” represented the first codification of standards for grant makers. With membership in the council at an all-time high, more foundations than ever have agreed to guide themselves by these principles.

In addition, the council has an advisory board on accountability and can take steps to expel foundations if they are members and to admonish them if they are not. Through a variety of programs, conferences, and seminars, the council constantly highlights best practices in the field of philanthropy and seeks to foster creativity and innovation in grant making. The council’s publications on governance, especially for community and family foundations, are benchmarks in the field and bestsellers from our catalogue. Council conferences offer grant makers unparalleled opportunities to learn from other grant makers and grantees about successful as well as failed funding approaches. The council’s Institute for New Staff provides the most comprehensive training of its kind for new program officers, providing special emphasis on issues of accountability, leadership, and governance.

Can more be done? Of course. Mr. Eisenberg has spent a distinguished career urging foundations and non-profits to fully realize their potential in bettering our society. It is heartening to see that he continues to do so. His prescriptions for improving non-profit relationships with the media are reflected in the council’s ongoing effort to help the press more fully understand the work of foundations.

We will continue, as we have always done, to encourage grant makers to communicate more effectively and frequently with the press, to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships between grant makers and journalists, to focus communications efforts in smaller towns and communities, and to advocate for grants, including funds to help grantees “tell their story.”

Dorothy S. Ridings
President
Council on Foundations
Washington

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To the Editor:

Pablo Eisenberg is one of the more trenchant observers and writers covering the non-profit world, so I am in general agreement with his admonitions on improving relations with the press. But my experience of serving on 20 non-profit boards over 21 years suggests that his counsel is more idealism than reality, given the nature of the boards he addresses.

First, aggressiveness and greater staff resources for media work are an illusion. Non-profits simply will not budget for this. Further, few make news in sufficient consistency to justify such expenditure — even if funds come via grants. The downtime will be costly.

Second, before such investing, non-profit boards must do their homework and try to understand what is news and what isn’t. Expectations must be tempered with pragmatism.

Relationship building with the press is, of course, necessary and proper, but do boards realize that with this goal comes the responsibility to be available and responsive to press requests — often on topics incompatible to their concept of privacy or proprietary information?

Furthermore, it is naive to expect this ever to be a buddy-buddy relationship. There will always be creative tension between the press and the source.

However persuasively put, the wish, in this case, is not father to the deed. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the creation of an amateur public-relations committee of the board — with no budget, no infrastructure, and little but spirit and good intentions. It is considered heresy to cancel a standing committee, but it is better than seducing ourselves that the “P.R. factor” is being taken care of and turning our attention to other priorities.

I have actually advocated the elimination of “P.R. committees” on several boards on which I sit, simply to keep this issue front and center and not buried in the administrative structure.

If I had an open salary slot, I’d hire a fine expository writer who could freshen up the standard word-fare of any non-profit — the grant proposals, the support-seeking letters, the brochures, the quarterly or annual reports to supporters — eliminating the turgid language, cliches, and self-serving rhetoric that are typical of nearly every “charity du jour.”

Why not back up such an individual with a retired journalist as “writer in residence?” To do so would not require large amounts of funds, nor special grants — only a commitment to resourcefulness and realism. And those ideas can be implemented virtually overnight.

John F. Budd, Jr.
Director
Board Executive Committee
International Center in New York
New York