posted on: Tuesday, June 09, 2009

By Kevin Laskowski

This post is part of a series that takes a deeper look at the myths surrounding Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best. View other posts in the series.

In his preface to Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best, NCRP Executive Director Aaron Dorfman argued:

There’s a popular but overused saying in philanthropic circles: “If you’ve seen one foundation, you’ve seen one foundation.” People use that phrase to emphasize how different each foundation is from the next. Anyone familiar with the sector knows that there is, indeed, great variability among grantmaking institutions. But many people also use the phrase to deflect criticism, arguing that the unique nature of each foundation makes it impossible to compare one foundation to another or to hold grantmakers to any standards more rigorous than those that are within bounds of the law.

Sure enough, when Criteria was released, critics trotted out a similar charge: the criteria are “one-size-fits-all.”

Steve Gunderson, President of the Council on Foundations, contended, “[W]e cannot endorse mandates, or imposed measures that seek to promote a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Adam Meyerson, President of the Philanthropy Roundtable, used the words as he attempted to provide examples of grants that wouldn’t fit NCRP’s supposedly “narrow” definition. Unfortunately, the examples actually work against him. Andrew Carnegie’s libraries and the schools that Meyerson mentions benefitted and benefit low-income people, one of the many marginalized groups mentioned in Criteria.

Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy characterized the criteria as both “deeply flawed” and “a fine set of recommendations” in the same paragraph before warning of “the sort of effectiveness where everyone marches in lockstep.”

There are several problems with this “one-size-fits-all” criticism.

First, Criteria includes exceptions for some foundations because NCRP respects the diversity of foundation missions and intent. For instance, if your mission makes it difficult to prioritize marginalized communities at the 50-percent level we established, a lower benchmark is proposed. The criteria can’t be one-size-fits-all if the benchmarks are offered in different sizes.

Second, Dorfman also wrote, “Ultimately, it's up to the leadership of each institution to decide how it's going to operate and whether or not it makes sense to meet or exceed the benchmarks for each criterion.” It isn’t “one-size-fits-all” to leave things up to the judgment and leadership of the nation’s foundation trustees.

Finally, there are already a number of “one-size-fits-all” approaches at work in philanthropy. Regulation, which NCRP isn’t calling for, is a one-size-fits-all approach. Codes of ethics are another. Critics, however, aren’t similarly opposed to the rules against self-dealing or principles in favor of having conflict-of-interest policies, which apply to all foundation leaders equally. If “one-size-fits-all”approaches were discounted outright, our sector would have no rules at all.

Critics charge that no single set of goals could possibly do justice to the diversity of aims, methods, and people involved in philanthropy.

But is this the right issue to raise? If we have to ask whether NCRP does justice to the diversity of aims, methods and people, we should also ask whether or not the diversity of aims, methods, and people in philanthropy does justice.

Does philanthropy contribute to leveling the playing field to maximize impact? In essence, does our being different make a positive difference?

In his essay “Let’s Stop the Craziness” published in the new book Wit and Wisdom: Unleashing the Philanthropic Imagination (Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, 2009), Emmett Carson, President and CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, notes that industry trade groups consistently paint the same picture:

The Foundation Center, one of our most respected institutions, continues to report that the amount of philanthropic capital distributed by foundations to communities of color and women is miniscule. The Council on Foundations, our major trade association, has consistently documented that foundations have not recruited trustees of color and that there are only a handful of CEOs and vice presidents of color serving our institutions.

Noticing a different kind of conformity, Lucy Bernholz, founder and President of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc. resurrected the term “institutional isomorphism” in a post last month. In short, as different as foundations may seem, they’re astonishingly similar. She writes:

Yes, I know the old trope, "You've seen one foundation and you've seen one foundation." That may be true at some level, but it is also true that if you've seen one foundation you've probably seen 1/3 - 1/4 of the prevalent models. The differences will all be in the trimmings, not in the underlying structures, norms, practices, or expectations.

Stannard-Stockton rightly worries about a sector in which foundations march in lock-step. Unfortunately, that’s the foundation world consistently encountered by grant-starved advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement groups serving marginalized communities.

And where the foundation world does succeed in diversity — grant application processes come to mind — that success often comes at the expense of nonprofits who must pay grant writers and fundraisers to navigate those resource-intensive, idiosyncratic processes.

If the foundation world is so diverse that no set of benchmarks could possibly have anything to say about them, then why do statistics regarding the communities and causes that benefit from foundation grantmaking, and data on board composition and general operating support remain largely unchanged despite years of debating these issues? And why do the disparities which foundations work to address continue to widen?

Could it have something to do with the fact that seemingly diverse foundation practices are not, in fact, making a substantive difference for growing numbers of people and the nonprofits that serve them? And couldn’t a well-crafted, well-researched set of recommendations for more responsive grantmaking, regardless of one’s preferred program goals and missions, be the very thing that in Stannard-Stockton’s words, “empower[s] each person to make their own choices in the most effective manner possible”?

Insisting on the foundation world’s diversity does not change the fact that the field appears to fail at being as responsive as it can and must be to meet the growing challenges of today. NCRP and all members of the philanthropic sector rightly want to pay appropriate attention to the diversity of donor goals, means, and practices, but we can also legitimately ask whether our great American philanthropic institutions are paying appropriate attention to the diverse and most pressing needs and communities foundation grants aim to benefit. To that end, Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best offers an aspirational vision of a sector that can and must do more to remain relevant.

Kevin Laskowski is field associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.