[WS:] We are talking past each other. I agree with your description of major foundations as establishment institutions run by professional managers. It would be very unrealistic to expect them to be anything else. The same can be said about the unions, btw.
What I argue against is the notion that the above mentioned character of foundations is the major factors that stifles radicalism in the US or even in the recipients of their funding. As most nonprofit executive directors would confirm, nonprofits typically do not rely on a single funding source. They use multiple sources. What is more, private grants which includes both individual and foundation giving accounts for a small fraction of their revenues - about 12 % or on average (the rest comes from government grants reimbursements and contracts - about 35%; and fees, sales, charges, dues, investments etc. - about 53%). Foundations grants account for only about 2% of nonprofit revenues, on average.
So arguing that a 2-bit funding source can control the agenda of the nonprofits makes little sense. Moreover, foundations typically support large, established mainstream institutions (such as mine) - which are hardly harbors of radicalism by any stretch of imagination.
What I argued for was giving more money to advocacy groups instead of service provides. In terms of human resources (employment and wages), advocacy groups (NAICS 8133) account for less than 2 (two) percent of the total nonprofit resources (this is based on the BLS data.) So even a modest diversion of funds from services (about 84% of the nonprofit sector's human resources) to advocacy will have a large impact. By implication, even moderate shift of foundation giving from service provision to advocacy will boost advocacy quite considerably.
I understand that no foundation will fund any project way out in the left field, but they do fund serious left advocacy efforts , such as Economic Policy Institute (EPI) which receives 53% of their funding from foundations. So it stands to reason that similar institutions devoted to promotion of left/pro-labor perspectives on a range of issues from environment, to education, to health care, to housing, to transportation, to land use, to foreign policy and what not. Even though foundations will fund only the more moderate projects pursued by these institutions, this will free other resources to pursue more radical projects. And even those wussy moderate advocacy projects will mobilize and attract people whop otherwise would be toiling in some dead end corporate or academic jobs.
This mobilizing potential of advocacy expansion will not bring the revolution, of course, but anyone who seriously thinks that revolution is even remotely possible in the US (or EU) needs to have his head examined.
Wojtek
On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:22 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 29, 2011, at 2:08 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> But you did not answer my argument - that right wingers were able to
>> overcome the stifling effect of nonprofit culture and legal constraint
>> son advocacy to a much greater degree than left wingers. It is
>> difficult to blame the nonprofit culture for that difference - it must
>> have something to do with left wingers themselves. Ravi had an
>> excellent point that some of it is linked to the culture of
>> individualism and celebrity cults that prevail in liberal and left
>> circles. I would only add one more thing to it - most American
>> liberals and lefties are not that radical after all - they are more
>> happy with little pragmatic projects here and there than fundamentally
>> changing the society. Those who seek radical changes are a tiny
>> minority. That may provide a better explanation of the fragmented and
>> minimalistic nature of left/liberal projects than the supposed effect
>> of funding, which I think is quite small.
>
> Your classification scheme is rather broad. The right-wing foundations are often funded by individuals with strong ideological agendas. Liberal foundations, like Ford and Carnegie, were endowed generations ago and are now run by professionals. They're anything but individualists. Few serious left wingers have any money to throw around. Soros is an interesting oddball in this gang - he's pretty "left" for a hedge fund guy, and controls the agenda of his philanthropies tightly. Consequently he'll do stuff like drug law reform and anti-incarceration research. He likes funding stuff that's unfashionable (which kind of fits with his investment philosophy). But most funders won't touch that stuff.
>
> Look at the big green organizations. Grantmakers like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund pull a lot of their strings. Some years ago, my pal Ron Arnold, an interesting guy despite his rabid dislike of greens, got hold of the transcript of an Environmental Grantmakers Association meeting in which the Rock guy said explicitly that he wanted to control the movement's agenda. That agenda means cutting deals with corporations and pushing for market-friendly approaches like cap and trade. I can't imagine what that has to do with "individualism."
>
> Doug
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