Browsing by Subject "Foundations"

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    Foundations as interest groups
    (Interest Groups and Advocacy, 2018-10-01) Goss, KA; Berry, JM
    Foundations are traditionally viewed as civic-minded but politically neutral organizations. Yet foundations, if they choose, can become involved in a wide variety of activities aimed at influencing public policy. Here we lay out the rationale for thinking about foundations as interest groups in the American political system. There are differences between conventional interest groups and foundations to be sure, but there are similarities as well. The choices foundations make as to whether to consciously try to influence government appears to be guided by organizational norms, regulatory requirements, and the beliefs of boards, donors, and internal leadership.
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    Opening the black box of conservation philanthropy: A co-produced research agenda on private foundations in marine conservation
    (Marine Policy, 2021-10-01) Gruby, RL; Enrici, A; Betsill, M; Le Cornu, E; Basurto, X
    In the ‘new Gilded Age’ of mega-wealth and big philanthropy, academics are not paying enough attention to private foundations. Mirroring upward trends in philanthropy broadly, marine conservation philanthropy has more than doubled in recent years, reaching virtually every globally salient marine conservation issue in all corners of the planet. This paper argues that marine conservation philanthropy warrants a dedicated research agenda because private foundations are prominent, unique, and under-studied actors seeking to shape the future of a “frontier” space. We present a co-produced social science research agenda on marine conservation philanthropy that reflects the priorities of 106 marine conservation donors, practitioners, and stakeholders who participated in a research co-design process in 2018. These “research co-designers” raised 137 unique research questions, which we grouped into five thematic research priorities: outcomes, governance roles, exits, internal foundation governance, and funding landscape. We identify issues of legitimacy, justice, and applied best practice as cross-cutting research priorities that came up throughout the five themes. Participants from the NGO, foundation, and government sectors identified questions within all five themes and three cross-cutting issues, underscoring shared interest in this work from diverse groups. The research we call for herein can inform the practice of conservation philanthropy at a time when foundations are increasingly reckoning with their role as institutions of power in society. This paper is broadly relevant for social and natural scientists, practitioners, donors, and policy-makers interested in better understanding private philanthropy in any environmental context globally.
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    Philanthropy as Redistribution: A Geographic Analysis of Domestic Foundation Giving
    (2018-01-17) Englar, Brian
    Private foundations, and philanthropy more broadly, have long been critical players in the American civic sector. By seeking out and funding projects otherwise left behind by the public and private sectors, these grantmakers hold significant power to influence societal outcomes and sometimes even policy. As a result of the most recent election – with both the Clinton Foundation and Donald J. Trump Foundation receiving heated criticism – American foundations have begun to receive a much more critical spotlight. This newfound criticism of private philanthropy represents a prime opportunity to reexamine the private foundation’s effects on American communities. In this study, I employ an original dataset for a sample of fifty US counties as I examine two crucial aspects of foundation operations: the private foundation’s often-assumed redistributive function and the private foundation’s role in providing funds to rural nonprofits. First, I find little in the way of redistributive trends in grants made to my sample counties. My sample dataset lacks evidence for a significant relationship between community need and private foundation grant receipts in the direction redistributive theory would predict. Second, I find no significant difference between the population-adjusted size of the nonprofit sectors in my rural and urban counties and a difference in per-capita grant receipts between the two county types that approaches significance at the five percent level. Combined, these findings suggest private foundations are failing to target their grants to the communities most in need and to proportionately fund projects in rural communities.