Tag: Philanthropy

In Defense of Traditional Philanthropy as “Effective Altruism” Looms

In Africa, as elsewhere, “traditional” giving has taken something of a bashing since the launch of the effective altruism, a.k.a. strategic giving, movement—what Kayode Samuel calls “strategic philanthropy that delivers large-scale impact in a sustainable context.” Like many effective altruism adherents, Samuel pushes hard for streamlining philanthropy in Nigeria through the creation and consolidation of foundations, mainly corporate, to invest in social transformation by addressing local realities and providing support to development initiatives.

While there is a place for this kind of giving and social investment, Samuel and other proponents of strategic philanthropy do not give enough credit to so-called “traditional” philanthropy, which is not always giving for its own sake but does fulfill serious economic and emotional needs. A case in point is the practice among the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria wherein wealthy individuals train selected apprentices in trade and other crafts and set them up in business once they attain the required level of proficiency. In addition to providing economic empowerment, this kind of philanthropy enhances awareness of people’s interconnectedness and upholds values of community, sharing, and reciprocity by encouraging beneficiaries to pay forward the kindness that they have received. Through this practice, hundreds of young men and women have become self-reliant members of society who might not ordinarily qualify for strategic assistance from philanthropic foundations.

Nigeria (about which Samuel writes), like the rest of Africa, has a long, embedded history of giving. The foundations that form the vanguard of its public philanthropy today are merely reflections of, and coexist with, more ancient, communal forms of philanthropy like age grades and other community organizations. Foundations arguably have more money at their disposal than their antecedents, but there are important reasons why they should not be favored over traditional giving.

  • As Samuel rightly points out, many of these foundations are based in and focused on Southwest Nigeria, which automatically limits access to their services by people from other parts of the country.
  • Almost all foundations are offshoots of corporate bodies with specific interests like basic service provision and entrepreneurship development. Again, this limits access to beneficiaries who share these interests and meet the criteria for support.
  • The very fact of approaching situations of need looking to make large-scale impact, occasioned by the business logic of maximizing efficiency while reducing loss, is a further barrier to foundations helping society’s most vulnerable.
  • Because foundations are organizations with policies and procedures that must be upheld, they are far less flexible than the average man or woman giving to persons in need. The sophisticated business machinery of large foundations can substitute humanity for efficiency. Systematization, while sometimes necessary, is not always helpful.
  • Traditional giving is not the preserve of “flamboyant moneybags,” as Samuel calls them; giving and sharing are a part of daily life for ordinary men and women throughout Nigeria.
  • There is just not enough publicly accessible knowledge on the scale and practice of traditional philanthropy to allude that it is not sufficiently strategic or transformational, both relative terms.

In my view, social transformation ought to be a joint effort. Just as there are different needs, there are different ways to meet them. If more individuals would do more (good) consistently, there would be less work for foundations. The more people give, the more people will be helped, resulting in farther and deeper overall transformation.—Titilope Ajayi-Mamattah

Why the LA Teacher’s Union Picketed the Opening of an Art Museum

Billionaire Eli Broad and his wife Edythe have a number of philanthropic interests, including education and the arts. Yesterday, one of his endeavors in the arts, The Broad, a $140 million vanity vessel for his collection of contemporary art, opened to a picket line protesting one of his other initiatives—his avid funding and moneyed advocacy for the advancement of charter schools, as was reported here by NPQ’s Larry Kaplan.

Broad is an indefatigable philanthropist, but he is also described as something of a control freak, demanding at one point as a condition for a charter-related grant in New Jersey that Governor Chris Christie stay in office. He gets ideas and then throws a lot of money at them to make them happen. This can give him a level of influence in a place like Los Angeles that some might consider out of alignment with democracy. An excellent article by Catherine Wagley in L.A. Weekly describes the dynamic in the L.A. arts arena, where he has invested deeply in his self-described plan to transform Grand Avenue, where both The Broad and MOCA are located famously right across the street from one another, into the Champs-Elysées of Los Angeles.

Those picketing were protesting Broad’s involvement in a plan to significantly increase the number of charter schools in the L.A. school district. The group comprised students, parents, educators, and others involved and invested in public schools, albeit without the ready cash to capture the riveted attention of public officials.

Broad also threw his support behind efforts to defeat Proposition 30, which would have raised taxes to fund public schools, supporting in part…arts programs. You can see why the situation carries its own special sting for those protesting yesterday.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s more than 207 charters have enrolled 16 percent of the students in the district, giving L.A. more charter schools and charter students than any other school district in the country. Broad’s foundation has invested $144 million in charter schools, and local charter school representatives involved in the expansion plan say that it will be ambitious, aiming at enrolling up to half of all L.A. students over the next eight years. Those schools would be non-union and many worry both about accountability to parents and the community and about draining badly needed funds from the public schools.

United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl said, “We are of the mind that billionaires should not be running public education.”

“Broad and his billionaire pals wreaked havoc on public education in New Orleans,” Caputo-Pearl said in a statement. “His education ‘reform’ there resulted in massive inequities and civil rights violations for students. Segregation was reinforced and special education students were left behind. We do not intend to stand by and let him do the same thing in Los Angeles.”

“Charter schools are destroying public education,” said retired kindergarten teacher Cheryl Ortega. “Mr. Broad wants to own 50 percent of our schools. That’s untenable.”—Ruth McCambridge

Rejecting a Tainted Grant: Dan Snyder Just Can’t Save Face

Dan Snyder’s all-but-in-your-face foundation to bribe the sympathies of Native Americans (“bribery” the term of art used by Senator Harry Reid to describe Snyder’s efforts) may not be putting any information on its website or responding to NPQ’s requests for updated information on the foundation, but it seems to be trying to pave the way for Snyder’s persistence with a racial epithet as the name of his Washington, D.C. NFL franchise.

In the Washington Post this past weekend, John Woodrow Cox and Michael S. Rosenwald authored a fascinating investigative piece on the dynamics behind the acceptance and then rejection of a grant from Snyder’s Original American Foundation to the volunteer-led and financially troubled Indian National Finals Rodeo. Last year, the Rodeo accepted $200,000 from the Snyder grantmaking entity, but this year spurned the money. The Post story contrasts two versions of what happened, the contention of the Snyder people that the Oneida Indian Nation basically offered a quid pro quo for the Rodeo to spurn the tainted Snyder money versus the argument of the Oneida spokespersons that they neither offered nor consummated a monetary transaction with the financially strapped rodeo.

The official statement from the Rodeo’s vice president, Michael “Bo” Vocu, stresses its rejection of Original Americans Foundation money based on principles, not alternative funding sources: In a letter to the foundation, Vocu wrote:

After much soul searching, we have decided that we cannot in good conscience accept resources from you on the terms you have offered, no matter how desperately we need it. That is because, as you know, the resources you are offering are not truly philanthropic—they come with the expectation that we will support the racial slur that continues to promote your associated professional football team’s name…That expectation is explicit: the organization offering the resources, the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation, was deliberately named to invoke this slur and to ultimately make legitimizing that slur the consequence of accepting the foundation’s support.

Cox and Rosenwald suggest a more complicated picture of interactions between rodeo officials and Oneida Nation representatives. Oneida Nation spokesperson Joel Barkin acknowledged that he helped the Rodeo with its messaging, explaining its reversal on taking money from the Original Americans Foundation, but denied to the Post that there was any truth to the idea of a financial arrangement between the Oneidas and the rodeo.

Regardless of whatever the Rodeo officials might have thought the Oneida Nation representatives told them, the relationship of the rodeo to Snyder’s philanthropic interests was built at least in part on the Rodeo’s difficult fiscal straits. Apparently, the Rodeo filed for bankruptcy in 2010. From its financials posted on GuideStar Premium, the rodeo’s fund balance shrunk from $18,061 at the end of 2009 to a negative $130,092 at the end of 2012, though improving slightly to a negative $116,654 at the end of the following year. Its 990s showed growing operating losses in 2010, 2011, and 2012, including an operating loss of $133,621 on total revenues of $1,182,894 in 2012. INFR’s shaky finances are evident in a 2011 case in which one of the rodeo’s debtors, the Apache Gold Casino Resort, alleged that the rodeo filed for bankruptcy in bad faith. To survive, the rodeo regularly sought sponsorships or exchanged debt for sponsorship.

Riding into the rodeo’s fiscal breach, so to speak, was the Original Americans Foundation, offering money in 2014 and, apparently, in 2015. The financial vulnerability of the rodeo and, as evidenced in the rodeo’s bankruptcy filings, its less-than-sophisticated financial operations made it an attractive candidate for the Snyder money. As we have reported before, the Original Americans Foundation webpage has no new information—other than celebrations of the victories, few as they may be, of the football team—since March of 2014. The website contains no financial information, no list of board members, nothing pertaining to the foundation other than a letter from Snyder and a mission statement pledging that the foundation “will work as partners [with Tribal communities] to tackle the troubling realities facing so many tribes across our country…[and with] the national platform of professional sports organizations and their partners to address the challenges in the daily lives of Native Americans based on what Tribal leaders tell us they need most.”

Harry Reid is the senior senator from Nevada. The Rodeo moved its annual show to Las Vegas, according to the bankruptcy case, partly because of higher attendance and the ability of the tribes to reserve blocks of hotel rooms for members who might want to attend the event. “Bribery” is a tough word, but the Nevada connection hints at knowledge that Reid has about the Snyder operation looking for easy marks in the state. A five-figure grant from the Snyder foundation must be very attractive to an entity that even in good years barely breaks even. Given the quid pro quo described in Vocu’s letter, that’s not good philanthropy practice. Neither is not posting any information for the public about the governance and operations of the Original American Foundation. Whatever value someone might be able to find in the Snyder inducements, this operation doesn’t count as philanthropy and should be roundly examined by philanthropic trade associations concerned about the credibility and probity of the sector.—Rick Cohen

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ $30M Investment in Capacity Building for Smaller Arts Organizations

Last week, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced that 262 small to mid-sized arts groups in six U.S. cities would receive a total of $30 million in general operating support over the next two years. The invitation-only grants program, Arts Innovation and Management (AIM), is intended to strengthen these organizations in several important ways, including fundraising, audience development and board-member engagement. The cities with grantees are Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The foundation’s website has a full list of the organizations receiving 2015–2017 grants, which collectively touch more than 10 million people and account for approximately 1,700 jobs.

At a time when general operating support is increasingly hard to come by—and yet more critical than ever for many smaller arts groups without endowments or with only slim cash reserves—the AIM grants will allow organizations to invest in new or existing programs or to cover other expenses. And while the funding may only last for two years, the impact is likely to last long beyond that, because the grantees will also benefit from management development training for staff leaders and other capacity-building support like access to consultants to help implement new ideas.

The DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland, led by Michael Kaiser, will serve as a partner to Bloomberg Philanthropies on the AIM program. Kaiser is former president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a highly regarded arts consultant whose books include The Art of the Turnaround and Curtains?: The Future of the Arts in America. DeVos is developing curricula that will be delivered to arts managers from the grantee organizations in each of the six cities.

Although the AIM funds are unrestricted, grantee organizations are required to meet some challenging criteria:

  • Secure matching funds equal to 20 percent of the annual grant amount
  • Reach 100 percent participation in “give or get” fundraising by board members
  • Participate in the manager training offered through DeVos
  • Maintain up-to-date information in the Cultural Data Project, a national reporting and benchmarking program that tracks important information about the arts sector.

Bloomberg is rolling out the six-city initiative following a successful pilot project that provided similar investments in 245 cultural organizations in New York City from 2011-13. The DeVos Institute was also a partner for the pilot, and earlier this year summarized key trends among the New York grantees:

  • 79 percent reached new audiences through targeted marketing and social media.
  • 95 percent improved board engagement by adding new members and/or increasing board giving.
  • 88 percent leveraged their grants to secure new contributions from donors.

Kaiser, in a statement, addressed the potential impact of the support being offered to Bloomberg grantees through the powerful combination of unrestricted funding and management development: “This unique approach empowers participants to navigate the rapid changes in technology, demographics, and the economy that continue to affect arts organizations across the country.”

The potential to engage a cohort of arts leaders from each city in a focused learning experience is perhaps the most exciting aspect of the AIM initiative. Having a group of arts leaders in any community with that common point of reference and a shared vocabulary is the kind of rising tide that can lift all boats; over time this investment in professional development is likely to benefit other arts organizations in each of the participating cities.—Eileen Cunniffe