Truth and Beauty for Everyone
posted on: Wednesday, January 28, 2009
By Kevin Laskowski
Heather MacDonald's “Never Enough Beauty, Never Enough Truth” in this winter’s City Journal would have you believe that "American generosity is under fire" from organizations like the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. On the contrary, NCRP is counting on American generosity and the "creative spirit" to assist those that need that generosity and creativity the most.
MacDonald, a City Journal contributing editor and John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contends, "The public good is best served by giving maximum freedom to the creative spirit." It’s a truly inspiring sentiment in theory. In practice, however, this view has amounted to little more than “foundation trustees are and should be free to do whatever they please.” It is a recipe for complacency that takes generosity for granted and does little to encourage the creativity to which she attributes the "beauty and knowledge" in the world.
Foundation trustees are not simply free to do whatever they please, nor should they be. While I would agree that donors are and should be given maximum freedom to dispense of their personal dollars as they see fit, as trustees, philanthropists take on very specific obligations under the law. As John A. Edie, Director of Exempt Organizations Tax Services at Pricewaterhousecoopers (hardly of one MacDonald’s “connoisseurs of identity politics”), maintains in his Self-Dealing: A Concise Guide For Foundation Board and Staff:
Whether the donor to a private foundation is an individual, a family, or a for-profit company, it is important to understand that once cash or other assets are gifted (or bequeathed) to a private foundation, those assets then belong to a separate legal entity that is subject to many restrictions. Said as plainly as possible: “It's not your money anymore.”
MacDonald would like to set this argument up as one of donor freedom vs. “identity politics.” No one disputes donors’ freedom. The debate is over what trustees of philanthropic foundations owe to the public, given the public’s enormous investment in the success of philanthropic foundations. MacDonald would have us believe that foundation trustees have few, if any, obligations to the public and its representatives. If she wants to reargue the payout requirement, prohibitions on excessive compensation, the self-dealing rules, and the Tax Reform Act itself, she is free to do so. The reality is that foundation trustees and directors do have obligations, and as long as private foundations enjoy significant tax benefits, the public has every right to hold foundations accountable in their performance of those duties. If the public interest is not being served, we may indeed elect to regulate foundations appropriately as we have done in the past.
If it is fallacious to assume that a grantee is effective simply because it is minority-led, then it is equally fallacious to assume, as MacDonald does, that every grant is "minority-serving" because "no one can predict how ideas will play out in practice or who will be their beneficiaries." She cites how developments in the arts and sciences benefit all humanity. True, “John Singer Sargent’s Venice watercolors” may be “minority-serving.” However, Sargent’s works can’t do too much for a single mom with two jobs if she can’t ever take her kids to see them. True, “an encounter with J.S. Bach” may change the life of “a kid in Harlem,” but MacDonald doesn’t ask philanthropists to change lives with Sargent or Bach. She reassures us instead that Sargent and Bach change lives in marginalized communities without any considered action on our part. As Bill Gates (again, hardly a connoisseur of identity politics) has said, “The world is getting better, but it's not getting better fast enough, and it's not getting better for everyone.” Far from stifling creativity, NCRP counts on it, seeking private and public action that brings the benefits of philanthropy to everyone, especially people often not served well by the government or the marketplace.
(In a bizarre example, MacDonald also points to the inspiring capacity of pictures from the Hubble telescope. I’d be happy to grant that kids in Harlem can benefit from seeing the Hubble pictures, but Hubble was not brought to you by private philanthropy, unless the X Prize goes back a lot farther than I thought. It’s funny that MacDonald, in extolling American generosity, would ridicule European organizations for looking to “their American alumni and patrons for support when their government funding dries up” only to then point to a successful government research project that had to be jointly funded by the European Space Agency.)
Even if everyone will eventually benefit from philanthropy’s grants, NCRP challenges grantmakers to strengthen communities today, to look for creative ways in which they can get help to those that need it. Our vision of philanthropy in no way asks philanthropists to stop doing what they love, be that important medical research, scholarships, or giving to the local opera, hospital or museum. It does ask whether or not marginalized communities who have historically not had access to such institutions are finally getting the benefits of the “beauty and knowledge” that philanthropists help create and MacDonald rightly treasures so much. Do what you love, we say, but do it so that more and more people can love what you do. The vitality of our sector, our communities, and our world depend on it.
Kevin Laskowski is field associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
Heather MacDonald's “Never Enough Beauty, Never Enough Truth” in this winter’s City Journal would have you believe that "American generosity is under fire" from organizations like the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. On the contrary, NCRP is counting on American generosity and the "creative spirit" to assist those that need that generosity and creativity the most.
MacDonald, a City Journal contributing editor and John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contends, "The public good is best served by giving maximum freedom to the creative spirit." It’s a truly inspiring sentiment in theory. In practice, however, this view has amounted to little more than “foundation trustees are and should be free to do whatever they please.” It is a recipe for complacency that takes generosity for granted and does little to encourage the creativity to which she attributes the "beauty and knowledge" in the world.
Foundation trustees are not simply free to do whatever they please, nor should they be. While I would agree that donors are and should be given maximum freedom to dispense of their personal dollars as they see fit, as trustees, philanthropists take on very specific obligations under the law. As John A. Edie, Director of Exempt Organizations Tax Services at Pricewaterhousecoopers (hardly of one MacDonald’s “connoisseurs of identity politics”), maintains in his Self-Dealing: A Concise Guide For Foundation Board and Staff:
Whether the donor to a private foundation is an individual, a family, or a for-profit company, it is important to understand that once cash or other assets are gifted (or bequeathed) to a private foundation, those assets then belong to a separate legal entity that is subject to many restrictions. Said as plainly as possible: “It's not your money anymore.”
MacDonald would like to set this argument up as one of donor freedom vs. “identity politics.” No one disputes donors’ freedom. The debate is over what trustees of philanthropic foundations owe to the public, given the public’s enormous investment in the success of philanthropic foundations. MacDonald would have us believe that foundation trustees have few, if any, obligations to the public and its representatives. If she wants to reargue the payout requirement, prohibitions on excessive compensation, the self-dealing rules, and the Tax Reform Act itself, she is free to do so. The reality is that foundation trustees and directors do have obligations, and as long as private foundations enjoy significant tax benefits, the public has every right to hold foundations accountable in their performance of those duties. If the public interest is not being served, we may indeed elect to regulate foundations appropriately as we have done in the past.
If it is fallacious to assume that a grantee is effective simply because it is minority-led, then it is equally fallacious to assume, as MacDonald does, that every grant is "minority-serving" because "no one can predict how ideas will play out in practice or who will be their beneficiaries." She cites how developments in the arts and sciences benefit all humanity. True, “John Singer Sargent’s Venice watercolors” may be “minority-serving.” However, Sargent’s works can’t do too much for a single mom with two jobs if she can’t ever take her kids to see them. True, “an encounter with J.S. Bach” may change the life of “a kid in Harlem,” but MacDonald doesn’t ask philanthropists to change lives with Sargent or Bach. She reassures us instead that Sargent and Bach change lives in marginalized communities without any considered action on our part. As Bill Gates (again, hardly a connoisseur of identity politics) has said, “The world is getting better, but it's not getting better fast enough, and it's not getting better for everyone.” Far from stifling creativity, NCRP counts on it, seeking private and public action that brings the benefits of philanthropy to everyone, especially people often not served well by the government or the marketplace.
(In a bizarre example, MacDonald also points to the inspiring capacity of pictures from the Hubble telescope. I’d be happy to grant that kids in Harlem can benefit from seeing the Hubble pictures, but Hubble was not brought to you by private philanthropy, unless the X Prize goes back a lot farther than I thought. It’s funny that MacDonald, in extolling American generosity, would ridicule European organizations for looking to “their American alumni and patrons for support when their government funding dries up” only to then point to a successful government research project that had to be jointly funded by the European Space Agency.)
Even if everyone will eventually benefit from philanthropy’s grants, NCRP challenges grantmakers to strengthen communities today, to look for creative ways in which they can get help to those that need it. Our vision of philanthropy in no way asks philanthropists to stop doing what they love, be that important medical research, scholarships, or giving to the local opera, hospital or museum. It does ask whether or not marginalized communities who have historically not had access to such institutions are finally getting the benefits of the “beauty and knowledge” that philanthropists help create and MacDonald rightly treasures so much. Do what you love, we say, but do it so that more and more people can love what you do. The vitality of our sector, our communities, and our world depend on it.
Kevin Laskowski is field associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
posted by NCRP at
10:28 AM
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