August 22, 2002 | Read Time: 7 minutes
The reluctance of most American foundations to support advocacy and activism flies in the face of American history. It is precisely that type of activity that distinguishes our civil society from all others and makes it the envy of all nations that are struggling to establish and strengthen their own nonprofit groups.
In other countries, nonprofit institutions in large measure have provided social and educational services, softened the edge of government and politics, and made life a little more bearable for the people. Social and institutional change has been the province of government, political parties, and labor unions. Not so in the United States.
From the very beginning, public-policy work and advocacy activities, such as organizing citizens to voice their views, have been the bedrock of our democratic evolution. Nonprofit organizations, fueled by money from individual and institutional donors, have held governments accountable, helped formulate and pass public policies at the national and local levels, given voice and influence to marginal constituencies, protected our civil rights and environment, and assisted in shaping our relations with other countries.
While such groups were always a small portion of our society, they nevertheless have been responsible for most of the social and institutional changes that have occurred throughout our history. Too few foundation officials seem aware of the great legacy of policy and advocacy activities that have transformed our society, and that lack of historical background puts the nation at risk.
It is not surprising that our early colonists, fleeing religious and political persecution, developed a strong sense of individualism and suspicion of government, as well as a fondness for nonprofit organizations. Probably the first advocacy group was established by Ben Franklin in Philadelphia in 1729.
After the Revolution, Democratic-Republican societies emerged to become monitors of government activities. At the same time abolitionary societies began to agitate for an end to slavery. They were some of our earliest watchdog groups.
During the first half of the 19th century the growth of evangelical Protestant churches and black churches led to demands for more public services and greater activism by antislavery advocates. The seeds of women’s liberation were sown by affluent white women who fought to win state charters and public money for asylums, hospitals, and orphanages that would care for the poor. A citizens’ petition in 1845 in Massachusetts resulted in the first legislative inquiry about labor conditions. Nonprofit groups at that time began their campaigns for a 10-hour workday.
The end of the Civil War spawned the growth of nonprofit organizations, including some prominent antislavery organizations and the Freedmen’s Bureau, which established hundred of schools in the South for children of former slaves.
During the 1880s small farmers, debtors, and other disaffected inhabitants of rural areas sought to improve their economic condition by creating granges, fraternal organizations of farmers. The public pressure exerted by more than 20,000 granges led to important rural-policy changes and the creation of the rural extension service.
At the turn of the century, urban immigrants helped form the International Institute to fight for their rights and increased economic opportunities. The settlement-house movement, led by prominent personalities like Jane Addams, of Hull House, surfaced to combat poverty and deteriorating health conditions in America’s cities. The activities of tenant unions in the 1930s led to the Wagner Act, which legalized union organizing. And, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Townsend clubs, with a combined membership of more than five million people, pushed for workers’ pensions, resulting in the Social Security Act of 1935.
Those victories for improved working and living conditions were won by advocacy groups that organized large constituencies and lobbied lawmakers. Their successors over the past 40 years have been similarly successful. They are the thousands of activist nonprofit groups that have been the heart of the antipoverty, women’s, environmental, consumer, gay-rights, youth, student, and public-service movements. To those one might add the many organizations that are trying to improve the quality of our health, education, low-cost housing, and criminal-justice systems. They have been successful because they challenged unfair conditions and poorly functioning institutions, won new legislation and regulatory measures, fought discrimination, and preserved our First Amendment rights and civil liberties.
So why, it is fair to ask, have so many of our foundations failed to recognize the outstanding record and important role of activist groups in our history? Why do so few foundations continue to bear the burden of financing this invaluable portion of our nonprofit world? Why is it that people who live outside the United States seem to place a greater value on our advocacy, policy, and organizing activities than our own foundations? Is it foundations’ ignorance, fear, values, or lack of leadership that is responsible for this situation?
The answer, I suspect, is a combination of all four factors.
Fear of risk taking by financing activist causes is certainly a brake on most foundations’ willingness to support advocacy, especially grass-roots efforts. They are afraid of the publicity their grantees’ activities might generate. They know that they can’t control the direction and impact of such advocacy. And they fear inciting the ire of politicians or government officials.
Many raise the Tax Reform Act of 1969 as a reason they don’t want to risk trying to influence policy makers and government. In too many cases, that merely is an excuse for not supporting activism. Conservative foundations have never permitted the act to be a constraint on their strong commitment to advocacy, policy, and organizing. In their longing for neutrality, the liberal-leaning foundations have succeeded only in being neutered.
The lack of leadership from top foundation executives also accounts for the timidity of foundation grant making. University presidents, academics, a few politicians, and sundry business and nonprofit executives — they have rarely been risk takers or courageous decision makers. Caution has characterized their experience and careers.
The values of foundation trustees may be the most important reason for foundations’ reluctance to support advocacy activities. The boards of the major foundations are composed of wealthy and highly paid professionals who are not representative of this country’s diverse population.
While they include many more women and members of minority groups than they did 25 years ago, most of the women as well as the blacks, Hispanics, and other minority-group members are similar to their affluent white, male counterparts in class and background. In short, foundation boards lack the concerns, perspectives, and passion that could drive their support for greater activism. Comfortable and cautious, they are reluctant to underwrite social movements or social and institutional change.
In view of those roadblocks to philanthropic advocacy, can we expect our foundations to embrace a more activist posture? Much will depend on their willingness to reassess their grant making in the light of recent social, economic, and security developments in this country — the fight against terrorism, the danger to civil liberties, the failures of corporate America, the weakening of environmental standards, the poor performance of our schools, the widening gap between rich and poor, the growing destitution of our rural areas, and the loss of our prestige as an international leader, to name a few.
If poor and working-class people are to fight successfully for social and economic justice, they must receive the support they need to level the playing field. If corporations are to be held accountable and the free-enterprise system better regulated in the public interest, then nonprofit organizations — both old and new — will have to receive the necessary resources to help the federal and state governments do the job. If our political and electoral systems are to function fairly and effectively, citizen-monitoring and -action organizations will need money to assure public accountability and needed reforms. And if our rural areas are to be preserved and strengthened, it will be incumbent upon our foundations to no longer ignore advocacy efforts to revitalize rural America. And the list could go on.
Those and other major national and local problems cannot be solved by more services or by maintaining the status quo. Fundamental changes are in order. Such changes can be brought about only by activist strategies: constituency mobilization or organizing, public-policy work, and advocacy activities.
They are the strategies that have made our civil society and our democracy unique and great. It would be a pity at this critical juncture in our national development if the mainstream foundations were to forget the lessons of our history.
Pablo Eisenberg is senior fellow at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute and a member of the executive committee of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. He is a regular contributor to these pages. His e-mail address is pseisenberg@erols.com.
