October 6, 2013 | Read Time: 6 minutes
As we mark the fifth year after the financial crisis of 2008, it is important to consider whether grant makers fully recognize that we have entered “an era of scarcity,” as the venture philanthropist Mario Morino puts it.
On a national level, our economy appears to be recovering, but it may be years before Congress restores money that has been pulled away from nonprofits and the people they serve. At the state and local levels, things are just as tight, and the need has not been reduced. Indeed, the number of Americans below or at the federal poverty line is stubbornly stuck at 49 million.
That means it no longer works to get government to expand effective programs that philanthropy starts. Instead, foundations must work more closely with government to find new ways to use our dollars to promote positive change for every kind of cause.
To meet these new challenges, foundations need a new vision from the coalitions and other organizations that represent us, and they must operate in much different fashion. Yet that vision has been lacking at our major organization, the Council on Foundations, which has operated for more than 60 years and now represents more than 1,700 grant makers. It’s time for the council to dedicate itself to what matters: helping philanthropy influence public policies that can improve the lives of people in the U.S. and around the world.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, when James Joseph was president, the council was an active organization full of energy and intellect. In more recent years, it has not been nearly as robust.
For many foundation executives, it is getting harder and harder to justify paying the annual dues the council charges, which can be thousands of dollars, depending on the organization’s size. Foundation board members have been rightfully asking: What are we getting in return for such a large annual investment? The answer, especially in the past 10 years, is: not enough.
Such fundamental questions inspired the council to name a new leader, Vikki Spruill, to take over the organization last summer. Ms. Spruill is a nonprofit executive and a public-relations expert and has been a trustee of a grant-making public charity. The hope, of course, was that a new CEO would bring new ideas, energy, and enthusiasm—something that the council needed desperately.
After assessing the lay of the land, Ms. Spruill has decided basically to do what the Council on Foundation has long done: be The Ed Sullivan Show of philanthropy and provide a little bit of everything to everybody.
In a letter she distributed widely in July to people who are involved in council activities, she cited four guiding principles that she planned to work on: leading the council to become a stronger public-policy advocate, heightening its role as a thought leader, building a thriving philanthropic network, and ensuring the organization has a structure that makes it responsive and effective in meeting the needs of grant makers.
While those principles are certainly acceptable, they don’t solve the problem. What philanthropy needs is for the council to focus entirely on the first principle: public policy. We need the council to be a true industry association and to engage fully in public-policy issues and their intersection with philanthropy. The council should be staffed not to engage the various segments within philanthropy—community foundations, private foundations, corporate foundations, and so on—but to monitor and influence policy makers in education, the environment, the arts, and all the other causes that grant makers work on.
The council should also have some staff members dedicated to matters that directly affect the way grant makers carry out their work and to monitor and work with the tax-exempt division of the IRS.
In a COF 2.0, everything the council did would be to advance the missions of the foundations it represents. It would spark a new wave of public-policy partnerships based on the knowledge that our grantees have gained in decades of solving problems with billions of dollars from government, foundations, and donors large and small. It would:
- Engage federal policy makers about the role of philanthropy in an era of scarcity.
- Make clear what policy makers can rightfully expect from philanthropy’s efforts to solve social problems and what would be asking too much.
- Serve as a conduit of proven ideas and programs supported by foundations that government agencies can adopt.
- Aggressively share and distribute research about the results of grantees’ programs supported by grant makers.
If the council decided to focus on these vital tasks, it could ask other groups to take over some of its programs and avoid the duplication of effort that today wastes resources that could be devoted to giving more grants.
This is possible because of the tremendous growth of organizations that serve the philanthropic world. For example, Brad Smith, president of the Foundation Center, and his staff have brought the organization into the 21st century, and it is fully using technology to distribute research, data, and other materials to help ensure that grant makers do a good job.
The center soon plans to have a platform for grant makers and nonprofits to use in their daily work that will be like the Bloomberg terminals that financiers use every day. It is also continuing to do training and programs on a national scale. Given its capacity and access to research and data on philanthropy, the center could assume management of the council’s annual conference and do a far better job developing its content.
The 30-plus regional associations of grant makers also have done much to transform philanthropy and provide professional development and forums for foundations and their boards and staffs to share ideas and strengthen skills.
What’s more, the regional associations are increasingly building their capacity to pursue public-policy agendas at local and state levels. They make excellent (and obvious) partners for the work the council should be doing with policy makers in Washington, and there is little need for the council to copy or reproduce what they already do.
Given all the pressing issues in philanthropy, one might wonder whether it is even worth spending so much time thinking about the council’s role. But the council is an underperforming asset and also at an important crossroads. Many foundation officials were hoping that true winds of change were going to blow through to rethink and restructure the council and its role. A year later, it looks like not nearly enough has changed. It is clinging to an old structure and way of serving its membership. In its current state, it is hardly a pioneering organization.
Now and in the future, philanthropy requires a trade association that is assertive and can ably represent grant making to people involved in shaping public policy. We also need an organization that represents us to be able to speak with authority on behalf of philanthropy,
My goal is not to demean the council and its staff and board. To the contrary: I believe that the council can be exactly what we need. I have been active in council committees and projects for more than two decades. I can attribute most of my professional development to training and ideas learned at the council.
But this is the time to shift the council and its resources so it becomes a potent public-policy force. We need the council to be active, energetic, and completely relevant again—not just to foundations but to all nonprofits and to the communities we strive to serve and improve.
Doug Bauer is executive director of the Clark Foundation. A longer version of this article was first published in the summer 2013 edition of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy newsletter.
