White Courtesy Telephone

Celebrating Conservative Philanthropy

I.

I was surprised and pleased by the question posed by Bill Schambra in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy op ed: Is Conservative Philanthropy Ignoring the Poor? His thoughtful article provided a refreshing counterpoint to some of the anti-poor messaging of the Republican primaries.  It should be noted that in Democratic primaries, by contrast, candidates don’t so much attack the poor as simply ignore them.

I share Schambra’s admiration for the generous men and women of all political and social ideologies who understand the obligations of living in community. One of the most “progressive” programs in the country, in my view, was launched by a couple with impeccable conservative bona fides. The Taylor Plan, which started in Louisiana but has now been adopted in 21 states, leverages public money with private money to guarantee a college education to all qualifying high school graduates. It’s difficult to find a more compelling contemporary example of work that might over time significantly reduce racial disparities in higher education.

II.

Some readers might have stumbled, as I did, on Schambra’s invocation of George W. Bush as an icon of the “compassionate conservatism” his article celebrates. Many liberals and conservatives still fail to see the compassion in state-sanctioned torture, and in a war declared on false premises that has cost thousands of military and civilian lives and bankrupted the country. Under President Bush, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was notorious for political cronyism, frequently accused of linking grant monies to campaign support.

Putting this issue aside, we can more clearly focus on the heart of Schambra’s argument, which is this:

… [B]eyond the problem of political image lies the more substantial issue of conservatism’s enduring charitable obligation to the poor. Ardent advocacy for reduced government spending is fine, but it must be matched with serious regard for the needs of those affected. This is a moral demand upon a movement that takes moral demands seriously.

A refreshing call to action.  As an example of a serious regard for the needs of the poor, Schambra cites a group of wealthy conservative business executives in Denver whose largesse helped Step 13, “a small, scruffy rehabilitation center for addicts,” buy the building it could no longer rent.

First, hats off to this forward-thinking group of businessmen who, without being solicited, saw a significant community need and responded to it. Addiction is not an issue typically embraced by individual donors, conservative or otherwise.  I’m reminded of the Business Council of New Orleans & the River Region in my own beloved city, an organization that has championed the very difficult issue of prisoner re-entry and re-integration.

Having given credit where credit is due, I invite the reader to reflect on the philanthropic archetype proposed by Schambra, in which a generous patron bestows favor on a grateful supplicant.  What concerns me is that this assistance for the supplicant depends very much on the vagaries and inconstancies of donor volition.  What if this group of businessmen had not heard about the plight of Step 13?  What if they happened to be strapped for cash this particular quarter? Should services for the addicted, a clear and consistent public need, depend so much on chance?

Sticking with this inspiring example, I would rather that our collective noblesse (mine included) be more than morally obliged since experience shows that individual volition can make for a flimsy safety net, especially in those cases where the supplicant has participated in his own ruin. I know that some donors put homeless addicts in the category of the “undeserving poor,” making fundraising for organizations like Step 13 a real challenge.

In complex societies, individuals are typically obliged to support important public goods through taxation.  Being a small government liberal, I’m no friend of taxes, and if Mr. Schambra has an alternative, I’d like to hear it.  Perhaps instead of levying taxes, we can agree to impose schmaxes, the latter coming into force when and only when the spirit of charity fails us.

Profiles in Courage: Towards a More Balanced Portrait of the Grantmaking Profession

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Is grantmaking getting smarter? As I reported elsewhere, the answer appears to be ‘not by much’ or at least not fast enough, according to a survey recently released by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.  This study of mostly US foundations found that over the past three years, there were only minor shifts in grantmaking practices that help grantees succeed, such as providing general operating support and awarding multi-year grants.

Perhaps a different set of questions would have been a little more flattering to me and my colleagues.

For example, self-identified social justice grantmakers like me could have been asked to detail our coordinated plans for overcoming our country’s racial and other disparities. (To conserve space, I believe the survey designers could have safely limited this response to 140 characters or less.)  We foundation CEOs could have been invited to stumble through some account of the root causes of poverty, although, quite frankly, without the benefit of a head-clearing trip to Davos, I’m not sure how I would have answered. And let’s be fair, these things take time.  The disenfranchised of the world need to exercise patience while we schedule more meetings to study the situation.

Or, perhaps, in the interest of stakeholder engagement we could have asked the public how we’re doing on reducing global warming, educating our children, and ending homelessness. 

You get the idea: a softball question or two on the survey that probes some of the less technocratic aspects of our work would help restore the bell curve to a less alarming shape and do much to paint a vivid portrait of those of us who sport the mantle of the grantmaking profession.

Avoid Frankenthinking, Expert Suggests

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In Mary Shelley’s beloved novel, Dr. Frankenstein was a visionary member of the scientific community of his day, who, sensing the terrible nature of his work, isolated himself from the world to conduct his experiments.  He was a god-like figure, a “modern Prometheus” breathing new life into inanimate flesh.

Imagine how a well-meaning member of the nonprofit or foundation world might have rewritten Shelley’s tale.  Perhaps, from this perspective, Dr. Frankenstein’s approach to creating human life was too top-down.  This is what ultimately led his townsmen to take up their torches and pitchforks to hunt down and kill his monster.

Suppose instead that Dr. Frankenstein had invited each villager to dig up his or her favorite body part in the churchyard and bring that to a community visioning process.  The creature, when finally stitched together, might have sported five arms and two heads and been unable to breathe for lack of a trachea, but it would have been their monster.

Unfortunately, research indicates that group brainstorming processes that involve simply eliciting and accepting the contributions of multiple participants, without examining these contributions critically, rarely outperform processes that incorporate a robust measure of respectful disagreement and debate. 

“Never, ever brainstorm,” cautioned Jonah Lehrer, the keynote speaker at a recent Grantmakers for Effective Organizations conference in Seattle.

And yet brainstorming, “consensus-building” processes are endemic to our field.  Every potentially bone-headed thing we’ve ever said is reverently recorded on a piece of flipchart paper now hanging in some facilitator’s office.  Being overly cautious not to offend our colleagues, we self-edit our “yes, buts” into “yes, ands,” as if by doing so we can bleach out the stain of our disagreement.

That is how we in the foundation world take what might be an extraordinary tale, a great advance in human knowledge, and turn it through groupthink into lifeless quiltwork.  These processes account for the myriad incoherent mission statements we encounter in our work, which are not so much mission statements as overwrought landscape paintings attempting to capture every inconsequential detail of some alien terrain.  What might have been simple statements of purpose are often yes-anded into meaningless word salad.

Inclusiveness is an important value in nonprofit work, I get that. Yet I often find that a regard for including all points of view in these processes does more to make us feel good than to improve our work.  We celebrate our consensus not fully understanding what the cost is to the communities we serve.

Philanthropy lacks the respectful, yet bracing, debate that is so much a part of the culture of the business world and of academia.  It would take a deliberate and sustained effort to shift our culture, but doing so might at least help us avoid compounding the sin of ineffectiveness with the sin of incoherence.