Like any other sector of society, a healthy philanthropic sector needs the scrutiny of external watchdog organizations as well as appropriate governmental regulation and oversight. But ensuring that the watchdog does not turn into a lapdog is a challenge that bedevils even countries with well-developed philanthropic sectors and confounds those where the sector is only beginning to build an infrastructure.
History As A Teacher: The Interactions Of Foundations And Legislators
In foundation circles, it is an oft-repeated truism that McGeorge Bundy, when he led the Ford Foundation, and his foundation colleagues botched their relationships with Congress when they testified against federal regulation and specifically what led to the 1969 Tax Act’s controls on private foundations. Though their dire predictions of the collapse of foundations after the Tax Act hardly came to pass—in fact, foundations boomed in numbers and assets following it–Bundy and his big foundation colleagues have morphed into philanthropic archetypes of how not to handle elected state or federal legislators.
The performance of some California foundations on May 12th may be instructive for philanthropic leaders eager to avoid becoming New Millennium protégés of McGeorge Bundy. On that day, the California Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development met to discuss pending legislation that would have required large California-based foundations (with assets over $250,000,000) to report on the racial/ethnic composition of their grantees, their grantees’ target communities, and the foundations’ own staff and board leadership.
