April 23, 1998 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Foundations are increasingly coming under attack for promoting government policies at the state and local levels that are “more liberal than either the legislature or majority opinion in the state would feel comfortable with,” according to a cover story in Governing magazine (April).
The article notes that the growth in both the number and the size of foundations has allowed them to exert greater influence on public policy. “Now, flush with an asset base that has skyrocketed along with the stock market, and faced with governments at all levels that have slashed their own spending, foundations are positioned to influence the public sector in a whole new way.”
As one example of a project that has drawn the ire of local officials, the article points to an effort by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other grant makers to improve mental-health services in Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania House of Representatives subcommittee report accused the foundations of being “purchasers of public policy.” The subcommittee’s chairman, Republican Sam Rohrer, told Governing that a program to offer mental-health services in schools “was being done on the specific request and according to grants as established and framed by the foundations.”
The article also points to the “Neighborhood Transformation” project by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as an example of how it says foundations are usurping government. This grant program will work with neighborhood residents to improve their living conditions, according to the article. “This is, of course, nothing less than an expensive social experiment of the sort that, two decades ago, one would have expected to hear from a podium at the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” the article notes. “And while much is uncertain about the project, one thing that is predictable is that, in at least some of the communities involved, people will come to ask why they should be paying attention to the agenda of some far-off, unelected and highly unaccountable philanthropy.”
The article is available via the magazine’s World-Wide Web site, http://www.governing.com.
