| A Future Filer Part 1 of 3 I write these words in a cafe in Gdansk in Poland. It has just turned 12 noon and the bells of a hundred churches have begun to ring. For some of us, the persistence of religion under Communist oppression is a sign of the strength of the idea of voluntary association. It is perhaps symbolically significant also that this is written in the very city where Solidarity was born. The question now is whether the culture of Eastern Europe will change. Will the tradition we call philanthropy emerge as a third sector alongside government and the private economic marketplace? It might be argued that the concept of a three-sector society is essential to democracy; that democracy is essential to the well-being of the people in eastern Europe; and that the well-being of eastern Europe is important to the well-being of the rest of the world, including the United States. The concept of the three-sector society is the most important contribution of the Filer Commission. What a second Filer Commission might investigate and propose about "private philanthropy and public needs" is the subject of this informal and personal essay. The style is informal and personal so that no one will mistake it for claiming more authority than that of one interested observer. That observer also confesses that this essay is an exercise in "mythistory," a term coined by historian William McNeill to refer to the way we blend historical evidence with stories we tell about the past; we then use the resulting mythistory to shape the present and the future. In my version of recent American history, I credit the Filer Commission with contributing to mythistory by adding the concept of the three-sector society to the public discourse. Because of Filer, I argue, we see the United States through a different lens than we did before the Commission on Private Philanthropy and. Public Needs. In providing us with that concept, "Filer" (referring to the commission and not simply to its chair) gives us a way of thinking that makes the role of philanthropy visible as well as important to democracy and to the free society. Put in those terms, philanthropy can no longer be dismissed as peripheral or inconsequential. The reason there was a Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs was that John D. Rockefeller III and some other people sensed that American philanthropy was more important than most Americans realized. They proved their point. Whatever else may be said about the efforts of the past twenty years, we now have a conceptual grip on the scale and scope of the voluntary sector. The sector is clearly more important and more complex than anyone realized before the Commission did its work. But if the Filer Commission made philanthropy important, it also made it a target for critics. Many of us have spent the past twenty years arguing the case for philanthropy -- against Marxists, libertarians, Stanley Surrey liberals, Ernest Istook conservatives, and a host of other cultured despisers, cynics, or True Believers. We have had to face charges that philanthropy is a tool of American imperialism, American religion, American culture, and American business. Once a target for liberals (because it takes the heat of f government to deal with social problems), it is now a target for conservatives (because it puts the heat on government to deal with social problems). Philanthropy is praised for its high aspirations to make the society more compassionate and to strengthen community. But philanthropy is also often criticized for raising money, for earning money, and for receiving government assistance. And for charging overhead. A second Filer Commission should engage more directly than did Filer I with the ideological critiques, both Left and Right, both political and economic, both philosophical and religious. But the first task of the next Filer Commission -- perhaps of any future Filer Commission -- will be to examine the state of what Filer I called "the ageless rationale" for philanthropy in America. Giving in America listed the following nine "underlying functions of voluntary groups" and concluded that-these provided the "ageless rationale" for philanthropy:
The rationale for philanthropy is, in fact, neither ageless nor widely shared and it would be a serious mistake to take the rationale for granted. While these general functions are still relevant, the attack on the second one -- "developing public policy" -- indicates how vulnerable the rationale continues to be. It is always susceptible to changing social conditions. What has been called a "defining moment" in American political history may have begun in November 1994 with the election of a new Republican majority in Congress. The most important consequence of this historical moment for the third sector will be changed assumptions about the roles of each of the three sectors. The boundaries between philanthropy and government and between philanthropy and the marketplace will be redrawn. The roles of each sector will be redefined more precisely -- or rather, will continue to be redefined, because "privatization" and other trends have been underway for some time. Filer II will confront a three-sector society with increasingly permeable boundaries between sectors. How much have privatization and other boundary shifts already changed the profile? It appears that some functions can be reassigned from the first sector (government) to the second (marketplace) without affecting philanthropy much at all. The third sector has encroached on the second in its effort to generate new sources of income. For years for-profit health club competitors have complained about the tax advantages of the YMCA; others have complained about the sale of computers by campus bookstores, or about the sale of art objects by museums -- and other scandalous behavior. At the same time, and more immediately pertinent, recent years have seen state and local governments, even the federal government, launch philanthropic fund raising efforts. Many public school districts now follow the lead of public higher education, and such venerable institutions as the National Park Service and all of its state and local counterparts now raise funds from private gifts. Political parties and candidates form tax-exempt 501(c) (3) think tanks and similar spin-offs, which also compete for philanthropic dollars. This competition for funds, both between and within sectors, is intensified by the newly amassed fortunes of the present generation. We are on the verge of a historic transfer of wealth from this generation to the next, which will have-important implications for philanthropy. Other changes already made, or under consideration, in public policy areas such as welfare, health, and the environment, will alter the respective functions of the sectors and raise expectations of the role of philanthropy. Present efforts to reduce regulation and federal intervention in those areas promise a new role for philanthropy. Tax policy affecting philanthropy, a preoccupation of Filer I, will clearly remain on any philanthropic agenda, perhaps even more centrally if there is a move to use tax policy to change giving patterns. One difference is that now the third sector beginning with Independent Sector and other new or revitalized organizations -- is much better prepared to express whatever agreement or consensus among its member organizations it might be able to achieve. Whether it's the charitable deduction, postal rates, or advocacy, the third sector claims a right to be heard and to have its needs balanced against other claims. The new historical moment may also affect the third sector's reliance on government. By this I do not mean the familiar complaint that voluntary associations become dependent on government financial assistance. There is a greater concern: that third sector organizations have relied too much on government to convert third-sector goals into public realities. I accept the recent observation that environmental organizations effectively abandoned the responsibility for the environment to the government. The very broad popular base that supported pollution control and conservation eroded as third sector activism on behalf of environmental protection and preservation gave way to administrative and judicial control. The ancient and historic strategy of using voluntary action to shape public policy needs to be re-examined, both by its critics and by its advocates. The problems appear not only in unstable and vulnerable policy; they may undermine voluntary organization and commitment. Turning from the relationships among the sectors to concerns internal to the third sector, let me begin with a concern expressed recently by a colleague: he believes that the sector is a victim of over-proliferation of organizations. Along with others, he foresees a difficult period of downsizing, retrenchment, mergers and closures. Third sector organizations are competing for attention and resources; their increased number intensifies the competition, and the successful organizations are those that are financially and organizationally stronger. If there has been any important change in the third sector over the past twenty years, it has been the adoption of marketplace techniques to improve management. The familiar consequence of this process is that organizations take on marketplace values along with marketplace techniques. The urgency and importance of mission is subordinated to economic survival skills. Measurable outcomes become more important than those that are more difficult or impossible to measure. There has been considerable progress on evaluation and accountability as well as on most other aspects of nonprofit management. Concerns about evaluation follow directly from the Filer Commission and other efforts to achieve accountability. The problematic concept of evaluation is more important to the third sector now than it has ever been. It is on grounds of poor management, inefficiency, loose discipline, and other blights of organizational life that most donors have insisted on change. Donors from the local United Way to the World Bank have increasingly tied continued support to management improvement. The emphasis on better management, combined with increasing competition among nonprofits, has pushed management to the center of third-sector consciousness. Another increasing pressure is the increased availability and use of technology, and the increased specialization that goes with it. Fund raising offers generous evidence of both trends and of the problems as well as the accomplishments that result from them. Computer software has been developed for almost every nonprofit need, real or imagined. In fact, one measure of the threshold of economic survival may be whether an organization can afford to acquire and use -computers and software. My intuition tells me that reliance on technology is excessive and that some widely used fund raising techniques are counter-productive. An underlying and important issue for me is whether philanthropy, especially in areas like fund raising and marketing, is beginning to behave too much like the marketplace. Has the third sector absorbed too many of the values of the marketplace in trying to make use of marketplace techniques? There is also the matter of monitoring and regulating the third sector. Harvey Dale's serious challenge to philanthropy, that philanthropy is too large and too important to continue without regulation, calls attention to the Filer Commission's recommendation "that a permanent national commission on the nonprofit sector be established by Congress." A Filer II will have to confront the issue of regulation. THE BEST OPPORTUNITIES FOR PHILANTHROPY Having unburdened myself of issues concerning the internal workings of the sector and of its relationship to the other two sectors, let me now turn to a recitation of what I consider to be "the best opportunities for philanthropy" in the future. In so doing, I am emulating Andrew Carnegie who, in The Gospel of Wealth, named what he considered to be "the best opportunities for philanthropy" at that time. The opportunities unevenly sketched out here are intended to be in some ways mutually dependent and interactive rather than mutually exclusive. They also require keeping the other two sectors in the mix; philanthropy doesn't work alone. 1. MAINTAINING THE SYSTEM Like Carnegie, I support the democratic capitalist system and its struggle to achieve the following goals:
I am concerned about the quality of democracy and of capitalism and about the vision and commitment of those who are the stewards of those traditions -- in the United States as well as abroad. Organized philanthropy should, in my opinion, confront the threats to the open and the civil societies of the United States and the West, as well as accept its role in advancing democratic capitalism and philanthropy elsewhere in the world. The philanthropist George Soros models that kind of stewardship of the tradition in his work to establish "open societies" in Eastern Europe. In exercising our stewardship of the tradition, we need to encourage impartial, balanced, rational, disinterested, objective, well-informed assessments and critiques of democracy, capitalism, and philanthropy -- and of their interactions and boundary changes. The third sector is the best place for such work; neither government nor the market command as much trust and respect. However, the third sector may lose its relatively higher level of credibility and trustworthiness if ideology and partisanship continue to use philanthropy as a cover for partisan and self-interested agendas. |
