(Photo by iStock/porcorex)
The cover story in SSIR’s most recent issue, “Where Strategic Philanthropy Went Wrong,” reminded us of Mark Twain’s response to a rumor about his death published in the New York Journal in 1897. When a journalist asked him for his comments, Twain replied that “the report of my death was greatly exaggerated.” Our reply to authors Mark Kramer and Steve Phillips is similar: You have sounded the death knell of strategic philanthropy prematurely and without compelling evidence.
Kramer and Phillips define strategic philanthropy as charitable giving intended to create lasting solutions to the country’s societal problems. The root assumptions driving this type of giving, Kramer and Phillips argue, continue Andrew Carnegie’s beliefs “that the beneficiaries of philanthropic support are incapable of solving their problems, that wealthy donors have the wisdom and incentive to solve society’s many challenges, and that the social sector is an effective alternative to government in building an equitable and sustainable society.” They find evidence of strategic philanthropy’s failure in the country’s growing social challenges and argue it should be replaced by “empowerment philanthropy,” a combination of unconditional cash transfers, voter education and mobilization, and collective impact tactics that give people agency to help themselves. They warn that strategic philanthropy is dangerous because “it diverts attention from fundamental reforms less palatable to wealthy donors and from the fact that government and corporate behavior are responsible for the ills of society.”
This is not our experience with strategic philanthropy. We see Kramer and Phillips’ depiction as an almost cartoonish caricature that confuses the role of philanthropy with that of government. Perhaps more importantly, they dismiss philanthropy’s critical role in society, ignore evidence of philanthropy’s role in successful social change, and fail to recognize how philanthropists and practitioners have learned and improved over time. We take these points in turn.
We know of no foundation—even the largest—that thinks it replaces government. But we know many who seek to help unlock government resources and fill critical gaps left by government programs. While Kramer and Phillips identify the federal COVID-19 relief program as a sign of the government’s unique ability to address national issues, we saw philanthropy helping to bridge the gaps in funding, accelerate the distribution of much-needed protective medical supplies to vulnerable communities, and drive vaccine access worldwide. For example, COVAX closed at the end of 2023 having delivered nearly 2 billion doses of vaccines to 146 countries and averted an estimated 2.7 million deaths in lower-income countries. Philanthropy was a major contributor to this effort with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) funding vaccine candidates and supporting global distribution efforts.
Today, we see philanthropy taking on a similarly complementary role in helping low-income communities access the benefits of clean energy. Many foundations are supporting grassroots and national environmental organizations to ensure that a fair share of the $394 billion in federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax incentives and grant dollars flows to communities who may be unaware they are eligible or lack the staffing or expertise to access it.
Kramer and Phillips define a very narrow solution set for philanthropy that does not leave space to understand an issue deeply before deciding what to do and how to do it, a type of analysis that is fundamental to strategic philanthropy. Their suggestion that voter mobilization and education are sufficient means to improve our country’s democracy illustrates the limits of their analysis. Voter education and mobilization are important to the health of our democracy and are often effective ways to increase voter turnout. But there are deeper structural issues at play. For example, the country’s electoral system—including partisan primaries, single-member districts, and plurality voting across many states—creates competitive incentives that drive parties and voters to embrace extremist positions. Many elected officials, nonprofit organizations, researchers, and foundations are collaborating to reform this underlying incentive system in both blue and red states across the country. By cherry-picking specific tactics as the only solutions to our democracy’s challenges, Kramer and Phillips dismiss a holistic understanding of the problem and miss the many innovative solutions that need philanthropic support to succeed.
Kramer and Phillips also propose conditional cash transfers as part of their new approach to empowerment philanthropy. Here, they miss the role that strategic philanthropy has already played. Social impact leaders, nonprofit organizations, researchers, philanthropists, and state governments have used unconditional cash transfers as part of broader strategies to alleviate poverty by giving people agency over resources. GiveDirectly, the nonprofit organization that helped popularize the idea of giving cash to poor people, was launched in 2012 with a grant from Google and then the philanthropy Good Ventures. Its success and thought leadership in poverty alleviation shine a light on another benefit of strategic philanthropy. The organization’s ongoing 12-year study on the long-term effects of basic income has been funded by foundations that practice strategic philanthropy. This study to understand the long-term outcomes of addressing poverty in this way in different contexts is a unique partnership for which philanthropy is especially well suited. Contrary to Kramer and Phillips’ argument, cash transfers do not represent an alternative to strategic philanthropy but instead have been enabled by it.
There are many stories of social impact where philanthropy has helped achieve change at scale, and these are ignored by Kramer and Phillips. Philanthropy has filled important gaps, provided patient risk capital, and supported scientists, advocates, and nonprofit and community leaders to adapt to shifting political and financial contexts. (Bridgespan’s “Audacious Philanthropy” initiative does a wonderful job describing these and other successful collaborative stories.) We highlight here three of the critical roles that strategic philanthropy has played in collective efforts to improve people’s lives.
- Scaling national movements to improve people’s health. Philanthropy partnered with advocates, nonprofit organizations, researchers, and others to build the field of hospice care and help drive the widespread adoption of 911 emergency services and CPR. These are efforts catalyzed by philanthropy and scaled by government and markets.
- Supporting social movements to shift national norms and government policy. Foundations supported civil society organizations, movement builders, and public advocacy campaigns to help end apartheid in South Africa and achieve the goal of freedom for same-sex couples to marry in the US. These efforts were born from careful strategizing, partnership with activists, and acting with the right balance of patience and urgency.
- Addressing market failures that leave low-income countries without essential vaccines. Although developed countries brought polio under control by the 1960s, the disease spread in poor countries throughout the early to mid-2000s. Philanthropy reenergized global immunization, attracting government donors to double global spending and dramatically reducing the number of people affected by polio per year.
We see a much different version of strategic philanthropy than Kramer and Phillips do. At our own organization, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, we use strategy as a discipline to understand social issues from different perspectives, to focus our giving and measurement, and to act as good stewards of the family’s resources. We see strategy as a powerful tool not because it guarantees that every effort and investment leads to successful change at scale but because it helps organizations to focus, learn, and adapt over time. As part of our understanding of an issue, we first go on a learning journey—reading the literature, consulting different sources of information and with nonprofit and community leaders, experts, practitioners, civic leaders, and more. Our strategies provide focus and guardrails for decision-making since we cannot fund everything. And, once we launch our strategies, we continue to gather and use feedback from grantees and support them to use tools like Listen4Good to ensure the voices of community members are amplified and respected. We think Kramer and Phillips have created a false binary between strategic philanthropy and supporting community agency. We fervently believe in both.
Among the many lessons we have learned over the years from peer foundations, nonprofit organizations, social change leaders and communities in which we have traveled, lived, and worked are ones we know many philanthropies share.
- Treat everyone with respect and kindness; build relationships not transactions.
- Do not fall in love with your ideas or seek to control the organizations or communities you support.
- Gather and use feedback humbly from staff, grantees, and community members to improve your understanding and the work you do.
- Learn about what works and what doesn’t so you can build on others’ success and learn from their failures.
- Measure and evaluate to learn and improve, not to prove or cast aspersions.
- Align early and often with grantees on what you are partnering to do together and never micro-manage their work.
We hope this response provides readers with a reason to doubt the early death knell of one of several different approaches to philanthropy. Rather than harkening back to a paternalistic view of philanthropy as the wealthy keeping progressive change at bay, we conclude by going back even further to the word’s Greek etymology. In the original Greek meaning, the word philanthropy means the love of humanity. At its worst, Kramer and Phillips’ article reads like an effort to polarize. There is enough polarization in the rest of the world—there is no need to create unnecessary division in a field that is meant to support the love of humanity. Instead, let’s focus on what philanthropy can do best when it is at its best—serve, support, solve, catalyze, innovate, and partner with others to achieve meaningful changes in community, nation, and planet.
Read more stories by Jodi Nelson & Fay Twersky.