Ideology, Philanthropy, and the Council on Foundations
posted on: Friday, May 05, 2006
When a nonprofit magazine devotes the equivalent of two full pages of nearly fawning coverage to a leader of a national nonprofit trade association, there are going to be lots of kernals of insight that warrant a dissonant comment here and there. So it is with the cover article about the new CEO of the Council on Foundations, Steve Gunderson, in the May 1st issue of the NonProfit Times (http://www.nptimes.com/May06/news-050106_1.html).
Some of the quotes in the article are a bit difficult to interpret, and one shouldn’t be too nit-picky about statements that might have been better expressed had the interviewees not been asked to respond on the spot or given a chance to edit the quotes attributed to them after the fact. But both Gunderson as CEO of the Council on Foundations and Emmett Carson in his capacity as chair of the Council’s board of directors make some statements in the article that should hopefully stimulate dialogue among foundations and nonprofits.
For example, Carson is quoted as viewing Gunderson’s “lack of ideological perspective” as “very refreshing.” It’s hard to figure out quite what Carson means regarding a lack of ideological perspective. Some interpretations probably are unfair to Gunderson. The American Heritage Dictionary gives two definitions of ideology (http://www.answers.com/topic/ideology): “1. The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture. 2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.” The originator of the term “ideology”, the 18th century French philosopher, Count Destutt de Tracy, thought of ideology as the “science of ideas,” characterized by “a more or less comprehensive theory of society, a political program, anticipation of a struggle to implement that program (thus requiring committed followers), and intellectual leadership,” according to the Count’s write-up in the Encyclopedia Brittanica (http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9367775?query=Destutt%20de%20Tracy&ct=).
Or course Gunderson has some sort of ideological perspective. He was a Republican Congressman for some years. You can find his name associated with a number of domestic policies due to his tenure as a leading moderate Republican legislator until he retired from Congress in the late 1990s.
What Carson may actually mean, though we don’t intend to speak for him in this column, is that Gunderson, as a moderate Republican, isn’t strongly aligned with the left or right wings of American political ideology, or that within philanthropy, Gunderson’s moderate Republican political history enables him to listen to and work with foundation leaders of diverse and sometimes contradictory political visions.
However, the article quotes Gunderson himself on political issues affecting philanthropy that suggests that he is hardly bereft of a coherent set of doctrines on which to base his ideas. The NPT article quotes Gunderson, after suggesting that “Government’s in retreat, whether you like that or not, on domestic issues”, making this somewhat difficult comment:
“I think when you look at the needs of society and you look at the federal deficit, I don’t think we oughta (sic) be in the business of putting philanthropy out of business because I think we’re going to need a significantly greater participation from philanthropy in addressing society’s needs in the future.”
It’s not clear who Gunderson thinks is trying to put “philanthropy out of business” or by what means. The article makes it clear that both Carson and Gunderson see the former Congressman’s leadership of the Council as focusing attention on “what we’re doing” and “not on the ‘mechanics of how we do so much,’” meaning potentially that they want to show foundations as societal problem solvers as government attention (and program revenues) ebb. Gunderson asserts that he wants to limit government regulation of philanthropy to “a minimum”, consistent with a sotto voce push among the nation’s philanthropic and nonprofit trade associations against even the minimal charitable governance reforms contained in the legislation that passed the U.S. Senate (in S.2020) last fall (for foundations, concerning penalties for self-dealing, new transparency and accountability standards for donor-advised funds and supporting organizations, a change in the calculation of the private foundation excise tax, cf. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN02020:@@@D&summ2=m&;).
Pushing foundations to be better, to pay attention to the “mechanics” of their grantmaking, meaning increased standards of transparency and accountability and bolstered government oversight and enforcement, doesn’t mean “putting philanthropy out of business.” Better yet, nonprofits might want to remind the new COF CEO that rather than foundations putting more assets into responses to society’s needs, they might want to turn their attention to the government retreat that Gunderson describes, and mobilize their constituents, their donors, their supporters, and their dollars to advocate that government do its job in addressing society’s social problems, and not try to use philanthropic money to plug the gaps in government program cuts. If the Council were to take a leading role in that campaign, then the sector might join and endorse COF board chair Emmett Carson in focusing on what foundations are doing and achieving for the public good. (RC, 5/5/06)
Some of the quotes in the article are a bit difficult to interpret, and one shouldn’t be too nit-picky about statements that might have been better expressed had the interviewees not been asked to respond on the spot or given a chance to edit the quotes attributed to them after the fact. But both Gunderson as CEO of the Council on Foundations and Emmett Carson in his capacity as chair of the Council’s board of directors make some statements in the article that should hopefully stimulate dialogue among foundations and nonprofits.
For example, Carson is quoted as viewing Gunderson’s “lack of ideological perspective” as “very refreshing.” It’s hard to figure out quite what Carson means regarding a lack of ideological perspective. Some interpretations probably are unfair to Gunderson. The American Heritage Dictionary gives two definitions of ideology (http://www.answers.com/topic/ideology): “1. The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture. 2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.” The originator of the term “ideology”, the 18th century French philosopher, Count Destutt de Tracy, thought of ideology as the “science of ideas,” characterized by “a more or less comprehensive theory of society, a political program, anticipation of a struggle to implement that program (thus requiring committed followers), and intellectual leadership,” according to the Count’s write-up in the Encyclopedia Brittanica (http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9367775?query=Destutt%20de%20Tracy&ct=).
Or course Gunderson has some sort of ideological perspective. He was a Republican Congressman for some years. You can find his name associated with a number of domestic policies due to his tenure as a leading moderate Republican legislator until he retired from Congress in the late 1990s.
What Carson may actually mean, though we don’t intend to speak for him in this column, is that Gunderson, as a moderate Republican, isn’t strongly aligned with the left or right wings of American political ideology, or that within philanthropy, Gunderson’s moderate Republican political history enables him to listen to and work with foundation leaders of diverse and sometimes contradictory political visions.
However, the article quotes Gunderson himself on political issues affecting philanthropy that suggests that he is hardly bereft of a coherent set of doctrines on which to base his ideas. The NPT article quotes Gunderson, after suggesting that “Government’s in retreat, whether you like that or not, on domestic issues”, making this somewhat difficult comment:
“I think when you look at the needs of society and you look at the federal deficit, I don’t think we oughta (sic) be in the business of putting philanthropy out of business because I think we’re going to need a significantly greater participation from philanthropy in addressing society’s needs in the future.”
It’s not clear who Gunderson thinks is trying to put “philanthropy out of business” or by what means. The article makes it clear that both Carson and Gunderson see the former Congressman’s leadership of the Council as focusing attention on “what we’re doing” and “not on the ‘mechanics of how we do so much,’” meaning potentially that they want to show foundations as societal problem solvers as government attention (and program revenues) ebb. Gunderson asserts that he wants to limit government regulation of philanthropy to “a minimum”, consistent with a sotto voce push among the nation’s philanthropic and nonprofit trade associations against even the minimal charitable governance reforms contained in the legislation that passed the U.S. Senate (in S.2020) last fall (for foundations, concerning penalties for self-dealing, new transparency and accountability standards for donor-advised funds and supporting organizations, a change in the calculation of the private foundation excise tax, cf. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN02020:@@@D&summ2=m&;).
Pushing foundations to be better, to pay attention to the “mechanics” of their grantmaking, meaning increased standards of transparency and accountability and bolstered government oversight and enforcement, doesn’t mean “putting philanthropy out of business.” Better yet, nonprofits might want to remind the new COF CEO that rather than foundations putting more assets into responses to society’s needs, they might want to turn their attention to the government retreat that Gunderson describes, and mobilize their constituents, their donors, their supporters, and their dollars to advocate that government do its job in addressing society’s social problems, and not try to use philanthropic money to plug the gaps in government program cuts. If the Council were to take a leading role in that campaign, then the sector might join and endorse COF board chair Emmett Carson in focusing on what foundations are doing and achieving for the public good. (RC, 5/5/06)
posted by NCRP at
1:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Blog Home