What Foundations Really Need to Succeed

To the Editor:

A new foundation trying to navigate through the so-called infrastructure of philanthropy and find a safe membership harbor would be hard-pressed to decide where to dock.

Consider the choices: the Council on Foundations, 30 regional associations of grant makers, the Association of Small Foundations, 200-plus other statewide associations of grant makers, local donor forums, more than a couple scores of affinity groups, and Independent Sector.

However, let’s stop blaming the council or anyone else for the existence of a philanthropic map that resembles Germany before Otto von Bismarck’s arrival on the scene.

What we have is a very young field that is exuberantly bursting into the bloom of adolescence. And if projections about the transfer of wealth, and its impact on philanthropy, are correct, this is just the beginning.

All of the organizations I have noted came into being to address a wide array of grant makers’ needs that others had failed to meet. Simply eliminating some of them will not make the needs go away.

At the same time, it’s also clear that many of the services they provide to their members are duplicative. All of the current players in the game are performing some valuable services for their members; they also are doing a lousy job of giving their members what they need on other fronts.

Something’s got to give, if only for financial reasons. Foundations that pay dues to many of these associations or provide them with regular grant subsidies may be reaching the limit on the number of checks they’re willing to write to keep the entire enterprise afloat.

So what’s to be done? There’s no single answer, and we most certainly don’t need a new Bismarck to come in and impose order upon us. Instead, it’s going to take a lot of discussion to devise a solution — as well as the curbing of some large egos and a widespread willingness to cede some measure of turf and influence.

Rather than reflexively starting to tinker with the council, the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, or any of the other pieces that constitute our support system for grant makers, let’s instead begin by considering the major functions that an integrated system needs to perform:

• Some organization has to nurture good relationships with our most important common audience — the federal government that legislates us — and to advocate for laws that do not impede our independence and effectiveness. It should speak with a clear, authoritative, and apolitical voice on behalf of American philanthropy. That same organization should give leadership to the articulation and promotion of meaningful standards for all foundations.
• To make a strong case for organized philanthropy requires a single powerful and flexible research organization that can routinely generate a wealth of information, sliced and diced in many different ways, about the entire philanthropic sector.
• As oversight of our field devolves to the state level, we will need a concurrent program to inform and monitor the attorneys general and other officials with regulatory powers.
• We have many audiences, so we need a system to communicate to all of them on a regular basis the individual and collective value of American grant making.
• A field whose assets could increase tenfold within the next several decades demands ongoing programs of education and training for as many foundation board and staff members as possible — in grant making, asset building, investment, governance, management, communications, and ethical responsibility.
• Finally, we need a coordinated and simple dues structure that will enable those grant makers who want the simultaneous benefits of national, regional, and local affiliation with their peers to accomplish that goal by writing a single check.

Who is best positioned to meet these needs? All of us who care about this subject are tempted to provide a quick answer.

However, the correct response to that question will come from an honest, national dialogue among all of the infrastructure’s players whose methodology will not be simply to tweak what we already have. Instead, their common goal will be to make it as easy as possible for every grant maker — whether large, established, and powerful or small and new — to find a way to be linked to our radically growing field, even if it means ceding responsibility to another organization that could be better positioned to provide service.

We must remember that the average grant-making organization or donor doesn’t really give a damn about our internal wranglings or struggles for turf and influence. They are looking for leadership, representation, information, and examples of excellence at every level of daily operation, and they don’t really care who provides these essentials.

Let’s also concede that all of us collectively have failed to engage 90 percent of our country’s foundations in the work that we do. Granted, some folks just aren’t joiners. But it’s also possible that we have let a system evolve that discourages the interest of many potential members of the family of philanthropy.

If we’re going to be witnessing a quantum jump in the numbers of foundations and their assets, it’s disturbing to think that our current patterns of behavior might lead to us becoming even less relevant to the field. Conversely, the thoughtful re-imagining of new ways to do our work might hold the possibility of bringing more players into the game.

There’s work to be done, but we don’t need to wring our hands. We should rejoice that so-called organized philanthropy — despite the messiness of the way it’s currently structured — is alive and growing rapidly and that we have the opportunity to provide it with strong direction. Let’s have the courage to imagine something different.

Martin C. Lehfeldt
President
Southeastern Council of Foundations
Atlanta

Board Chairman
Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers
Washington