From Gardening to Globalization: 3 Grant Makers Give Their Views

In their most recent annual reports, several executives of large foundations had noteworthy things to say about the state of philanthropy.

Peter C. Goldmark, Jr., who stepped down as president of the Rockefeller Foundation at the end of 1997, used his annual message to reflect on how the fund came up short during his tenure — and to suggest ways to meet the challenges of the next century. William S. White, president and chairman of the board of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, offered the metaphor of gardening to explain the role of foundations and their grantees. And Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation, focused on the implications of the worldwide mingling of cultural and economic forces known as “globalization.”

Following are excerpts from each of those reports.

Foundations are uniquely dependent for their effectiveness on internally generated discipline and passion. Foundations lack the three chastising disciplines of American life: the market test, which punishes or rewards financial performance; the ballot box, through which the numbskulls can be voted out of office; and the ministrations of an irreverent press biting at your heels every day. And so in the philanthropic world, recognition and celebration are best left to others. What is needed is bracing self-examination, and the balance, rigor, and nerve to face one’s own shortcomings and requirements.

Where do we at the Rockefeller Foundation fall short, and what are the lessons going forward? . . .

First, we have not moved decisively enough to integrate our program activities. Few of the major problems facing the world in the 21st century will yield to a “uni-lever” approach. They are a broad tangle of unfamiliar elements, requiring multidisciplinary, multi-angled approaches. Many of the challenges become “problems” precisely because they defy the traditional categories of the existing institutional landscape. Over the past decade we built upon the divisional structure of the foundation and concentrated primarily on strengthening program content. It may be time now to rearrange the strengthened program components in an approach that is much more problem-oriented. . . .

Second, the foundation should engage directly in the job of building the new transnational institutions that the world will need in the next century. Most of the present architecture in the international arena was erected in the years following World War II and was designed to address a distinct set of challenges: providing collective security arrangements; rebuilding war-torn Europe; ordering a world trade and currency system dominated by the industrial democracies; and assisting agricultural and industrial development in former colonies. These institutions were not designed, and are poorly equipped, for dealing with global narcotics traffic and criminal activity; confronting terrorism and the international arms trade; dealing with intracountry militarization and genocide; modifying the direction of industrialization worldwide so that the environment is protected; or coping with worldwide flows of people, private capital, and diseases. Governments usually react to crises; philanthropy has the ability to anticipate them. To deal with today’s ultimata we are required to plan for the development of new institutions and the adaptation of old ones. . . .

Third, by the accounts of both the American public and many of its most thoughtful observers, American democracy is in deep trouble. Regenerating a process of robust, open, non-destructive deliberation in this country is an indispensable step toward substantive progress on both domestic and international issues. The foundation has supported projects that address parts of this problem. But the deterioration in our public life is now too advanced and the penalty for continued failure too steep for anything less than a full-scale, serious engagement with the challenge of renewing American democracy. . . .

In terms of the foundation’s internal operations and culture, the need for dramatic innovation is preeminent. To work for a major foundation is to operate with an astonishing measure of professional latitude and privilege. It is not realistic to expect that over time all program officers will remain impervious to the temptations for self-indulgence and mental or moral complacency that present themselves.

At one point I favored a “term limits” arrangement whereby most program staff would be expected to leave after seven to 10 years. We also discussed the possibility of requiring or encouraging some staff members to take a leave during which they would work in the field with a grantee, or with an organization raising rather than dispensing funds. I have come to the conclusion that the problems of “foundationitis” and isolation are very real and require a more disciplined remedy along the following lines: that program staff members who hire on understand that if they stay over five years, they will be required to take a six-to-12-month posting with a non-profit organization that is not a grantee of the foundation. This would be clear upon initial employment, and be buttressed by suitable financial incentives and penalties.

Such a measure would be an antidote to loss of perspective and to the enormous and often arbitrary power to fund or not to fund that foundation officers (and presidents) wield; would offset comfortable insulation from the pressure and anxiety of financial uncertainty that is a basic condition of existence for many non-profits; would stiffen the spine against creeping psychological accommodation to the torrent of syrupy flatter, seduction, and intellectual ennoblement to which officers are subjected; and would shore up as well the occasional wobbling in standards of professional behavior and personal interaction that in some cases accompany the foregoing phenomena.

— Peter C. Goldmark, Jr.

Rockefeller Foundation

As a grant-making foundation as opposed to an operating foundation, we really can’t be a gardener; rather, we are a supplier. If we try to do it all ourselves, we begin to lose accountability — which comes, after all, from grantees who are independent and tough-minded enough to tell us how we’re doing, “weeds” and all. We need that kind of critical feedback in order to stay focused on what we do well. We can supply money, and a lot of very important things that, frankly, money can buy: research, expertise, equipment, et cetera. And we can also supply much that does not have a price tag: person-to-person contact, ideas, and experience, to name a few. We can supply encouragement, empathy, and partnership. We can help our grantees get their messages out to the world.

Still, despite all the resources that a foundation can supply, the successful garden ultimately depends on the diligence, organization, and passion of the gardener. One of the occupational hazards foundations face is that of becoming too directive — of trying to tell a grantee what to do and how to do it, rather than serving as a resource for the grantee’s own best ideas.

The gardener, not the supplier, is the one with the ground-level expertise, the dirt under the fingernails. The gardener knows which plants, flowers, and trees will grow. The gardener knows if an exotic species will be beneficial or harmful to the yard. A garden can’t be forced, but must be nourished. A flower shouldn’t be forced to bloom out of season, and a gardener shouldn’t be pushed beyond his or her limit of time, energy, and resources. Some gardeners will experiment or specialize and develop a new type of rose or orchid, and they may share these new varieties with others. But others may just choose to be very good at providing beauty and thus service to their neighbors. . . .

During their lifetimes, gardeners often live in various places. As they change locales, they have to learn to adjust to new terrain, new soils, and a different climate. The adjustment takes new research, and sometimes requires new thinking, but the skills learned in a lifetime of dedicated gardening will yield a good harvest. . . .

No matter what the subject and no matter where in the world, my experience, often learned by trial and error, is that good results require long-term focus, balance, and partnerships. Yes, as in any garden, you can change the plants, and there is a place for both annuals and perennials, but in the long run, partnership and collegiality are what matter. . . .

Try as we may to contribute to gardens that can thrive, occasionally we foundations make a mess of it. We talk about our failures internally, and we think about how open and accountable it would be to publish our failures. That’s difficult for many reasons, but let me give you one. We have been associated with some spectacular failures, but in the long run these pale by comparison to the everyday, small mistakes and oversights, the slip-between-the-cracks syndrome — often due to the fast pace of change. There’s the rudeness, the unanswered phone calls, the bureaucratic delays, the failure to communicate, the uneven playing field, and the many good intentions that lead to bad results. These little mistakes, which plague almost all forms of human endeavor, have to be guarded against. These daily goof-ups are the weeds in the garden, which must be rooted out. . . .

While from time to time herbicides may be needed, such as a major change in systems, ecology teaches us that natural systems of style, culture, and customer orientation are far more effective. . . . In the final analysis, let’s make sure we don’t destroy the garden, but improve it and pass it on to future generations in a better shape than when we inherited it.

— William S. White

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

Rapid economic and cultural mingling brings both positive and negative results. Outside influences can help revitalize communities, but they can also corrode traditional values. And the movement of jobs across borders can leave some people in jeopardy as it creates new opportunities for people elsewhere. Whatever the positive-negative balance may be, globalization prompts us to rethink aspects of our lives and the institutions we believe in, and to recognize that resources for coping with change can come from great distances.

On a trip to Russia last year, for example, I learned about tenants living in a large Soviet-style apartment who had assumed ownership and management of their housing, some of them with help from people knowledgeable about tenant-management and community-development programs in the United States. When the Ford Foundation recently began a major initiative to encourage low-income people in the United States to save, we drew ideas from programs we had seen in poor communities in Asia. That same pattern of seeking advice from distant places was evident as South Africans consulted with people in Latin America and Eastern Europe about ways to move toward truth and reconciliation in the post-apartheid era.

This increasing openness to ideas from afar enables the Ford Foundation to connect men and women working to improve conditions in their own communities with people elsewhere who have similar goals. Our aim is not to seek “one size fits all” solutions; rather it is to help people explore and adapt strategies that show promise. We are doing this in fields as diverse as development finance, natural-resource management, campus-diversity work at colleges and universities, and the creation of new foundations. Over time, these networks of colleagues could be a strong national and international force.

As we address economic, intellectual, and societal changes worldwide, we have focused on topics we think have great importance: reducing poverty and repairing the social fabric, building knowledge about our changing world, and supporting secular and spiritual forces for freedom, responsibility, and human development. . . .

As globalization proceeds, we will all experience one of humankind’s most challenging transformations. We will need new concepts and new ways of working. Institutions will change in profound ways. The course is anything but clear, and no one can claim to have fully worked out the guiding vision and day-to-day-practices we will need.

— Susan V. Berresford

Ford Foundation