William A. Schambra & the power of everyday philanthropy

This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy Beer sits down with William A. Schambra to explore the tension between establishment philanthropy and what he calls “everyday philanthropy”—the grassroots efforts that often go unnoticed but play a vital role in strengthening civil society.

They discuss the influence of progressivism on modern giving and why top-down approaches can miss the real work happening in communities. He makes the case for trust-based philanthropy, local leadership, and a renewed focus on empowering individuals and neighborhoods to drive change from the ground up.

Let’s go!

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Center for Civil Society's YouTube Channel

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This week on the podcast, join us as we speak with William Chambra, senior fellow emeritus at the Hudson Institute, about the vast differences between establishment philanthropy and everyday philanthropy and what they all mean for American giving. Let's go. And this season, if you've been following along, you know that we have been highlighting some of the most or more interesting, innovative, strategic things being done by American givers, especially in light of the ongoing celebration of the American semi-quincentennial. Today we're doing something a little bit different with our very last. I don't know if this will be released last, but our very last podcast episode, as just, as I was just telling our guest, who I'm honored to have with us today, William Chambra, senior fellow emeritus at Hudson Institute, uh, former director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal at Hudson, and co-editor of the Giving Review, which I urge you to check out. I've wanted to have Bill on this podcast for years, as he knows, because I have pounded him about it. I wanted him to be the first guest on this. Now here he is as the last guest, which is actually really fitting because Bill has more interesting things to say about American philanthropy than basically anyone. I was gonna go ahead and say that, Bill. He is a student of political philosophy by training. He has written, as I say, more interesting, more penetrating, more challenging essays and articles on philanthropy than I think anyone else, probably probably ever, certainly in the last generation. And no writer or thinker has influenced my own thinking about this sector more than has Bill. No one's helped to orient me intellectually more than Bill. So I couldn't be more honored to have him with us for the next 45 minutes or so. Bill Shambra, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Thank you, Jeremy, for having me. And after that introduction, I am certain to disappoint your listeners, and I'm so sorry about that.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

I did set the bar really high. You did. You didn't. I apologize for that. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

People will be saying, yeah, well, after he did that Shambra interview, it was so bad that he just quit.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Go not with a whimper. No, I think I don't think that'll be the case. It's really true, uh, as you and I have talked about before, and as possibly listeners or viewers of this podcast have may have discovered for themselves. There's not a surfeit of really deep, interesting thinking about philanthropy in this country, uh, for I'm sure a lot of reasons, but your writing's always been different. You've um I wish but this way the the the thinking and writing we do tend to get on philanthropy is is pretty puppies and rainbows, you know. Uh it's just almost entirely celebratory, which is and there's a lot to celebrate. I think we would both agree with that. I mean, that there's um an incredible tradition of voluntary giving in America, and you'll you'll tease that out for us. But um you're one of the few who's been willing to kind of, you know, uh uh say if the emperor strides out with no clothes, you've been one of the few to call out that he's naked. Tell me first, before we get into all that, how did you um how did you get into writing? You did political philosophy. How'd you get into writing about philanthropy?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, sure. Well, I, you know, I was in Washington for many years after leaving graduate school and worked at the American Enterprise Institute and uh went into government uh under uh Attorney General Meese. I was a speechwriter and then Lewis Sullivan speechwriter at HHS uh during the first Bush administration. And I was sort of at loose ends after that. And Irving Kristol uh uh called up Mike Joyce at the Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee and said, you know, Shambra is a good hire as a program officer. So that's what I did. I spent 10 years in Milwaukee at the Bradley Foundation, being a program officer and ended up directing the program there. But as you say, there an awful lot is going on in philanthropy, and yet very little is being said or written about it that's terribly thoughtful or interesting.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

It's not philosophized very much, if I may put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Exactly. Yeah, there really is, there really isn't any deeper thought about what's going on. And so I at the end of that time in Milwaukee, I uh came to Washington to found the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. Or civic renewal, as you know, is a kind of a code word for those of us who are big fans of civil society and philanthrocalism. Uh and for 10 years I did that, and and you know, I did my best to kind of poke the field into larger reflections on what they were doing. So if an interesting book came out, whether it was by a conservative or a liberal, and unfortunately, most of them are by liberals. Conservatives don't have a lot of people doing this kind of work. Uh, I would have a panel discussion in Washington and try to balance the panel left, right, and center, and so forth, and uh ask some of the tougher questions. And in the course of that, also I was writing uh op-eds for the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Quarterly and several other publications, including you guys as uh recall. Philanthropy Daily. Yeah, Philanthropy Daily. So that's that's really how I got into it. I came into it not from political philosophy directly, but really uh through practice and for the you know, the seeing that people were really were they were doing excellent things, but they really weren't able to kind of describe it in a way that attached it to larger themes of American life. So that's sort of what I intended to do.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

One of the So we'll we'll start to kind of get into some of what those larger themes are. And one of the key distinctions that you have made about when it comes to philanthropy, and I don't think you had this nomenclature a few years ago. Maybe you did. I hadn't heard it from you, is between um establishment philanthropy and everyday philanthropy. Talk about that. What what is what is establishment philanthropy versus everyday philanthropy? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah, no, that's yeah, you're right. It's something, it's just a quick and dirty, rough hand rough uh way of characterizing these two very broad approaches to philanthropy. And it is something that I kind of settled on for this very podcast. You know, maybe uh I know it's making history here. Exactly. If I trademark it, it uh we can refer to this pod this last podcast. Uh but it's uh, you know, establishment philanthropy is uh is really uh the trust the experts philanthropy, and everyday philanthropy is trust the citizens philanthropy. Establishment philanthropy is where the big foundations are. And uh Carl Zinsmeister recently reminded us that they only give about 19% of all charity, uh, and 66%, almost two-thirds of giving is done in the realm of everyday philanthropy. And it's done by everyday citizens, hence the name, uh, at a rate of about $3,000 per year, uh, per household, excuse me. In spite of that imbalance, uh philanthropy industry today is almost entirely governed by the dictates of establishment philanthropy. It's been this way for well over a hundred years, right? So it's in the in the beginning. Exactly. Yeah, in the beginning there was Carnegie Rockefeller and Russell Sage, and they uh set out the basic goal, which was instead of, you know, charity, old-fashioned charity, just met the immediate needs of people, uh, which was just so pathetically inadequate, you know, when you compare it to the promise of the natural and social sciences, which were just coming onto the scene 100 years ago or a little over 100 years ago. Establishment philanthropy wants to harness those sciences and solve problems once and for all by getting to the root causes. That's why you hear again and again this notion of root causes.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

And it sounds great, Bill. I mean, who could be against that, right? I mean, I think it's a bit of a measure of how much this thinking has permeated life. And maybe you can get to why this is, but yeah, certainly I think most people hear that like, oh, well, that's the smart thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Right, right. No, very true. Uh the the problem with that, of course, uh, is that the notion of what the root causes are keeps changing. I mean, it's it's a and they change it incidentally without even telling us, oh, by the way, you know, we made a mistake pursuing this idea, and now we're yeah, this turns out not to have been the root cause of poverty or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

It's something else.

unknown 9:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

You know, early on, as as you well know, uh one of the one of the uh theories about root causes, a very important theory, was that it bad genetic makeup is what caused evil uh in the world. And that's why Carnegie and Rockefeller were heavily invested in eugenics, the science of eugenics, right? I mean, Charles Davenport, the sort of the godfather of eugenics, was associated with Carnegie not just as a grant recipient. He actually ran a division of Carnegie at Cold Harbor uh in New York. I mean, it was it was that central to the program of the early of the early foundation.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Car Carnegie cannot credibly claim not to have been deeply associated with with the eugenics movement. Is that what you're telling us? They could not credibly clay that no, it was just some grantee who was all the education.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Exactly. We we always hear the excuse, oh well, that was just a small grant. No, no, no. The guy was on the staff. I mean, he was in charge of making the grants for this, for this sort of thing. Uh uh and incidentally, I've written a bit, and and maybe they people can track it down. They've finally gotten around to apologizing for it. A hundred years later, right? They've finally gotten around to apologizing for it. But these apologies, of course, aren't highlighted. You know, there is there's no grand unveiling of an apology that just sort of pops up on their website and you say, oh, okay, good, you finally got around to that. But I've been I've been sort of hounding these guys to make formal apologies.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

And incidentally, I was gonna say that's only because of you and your work that that's happened. Well I mean no one else is hounding them to do it.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Well, that's not entirely true, but it is close.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

I mean, Edwin, a guy named Edwin Black, who wrote That's true, because he wrote uh uh War on the Weak, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

War against the Weak, which is just he's uh an amazing, amazingly dogged researcher on this issue. And he's written several volumes, but that was really the one that said, whoa, you know, our our big philanthropies really were driving this uh science that ended up, of course, by the way, uh surfacing in Germany in a big direction. Yeah. Not going in a great direction. But it, you know, philanthropy, other than being embarrassed by its association with Nazi Germany, I don't know how long American foundations would have kept pursuing eugenics. They were they were really into it for the long haul. They really believed in it. Now, more recently, a new theory is commanding the scene, and that is the notion that uh the source of the root cause of our problem is something like structural racism or settler colonialism, however you want to describe the set of ideological theories about, you know, how bad America is fundamentally. I mean, not just a few and a few things that we need to correct, but that it was, you know, founded on false premises, that it was founded on slavery and oppression, and it you know, fundamentally needs to change. This has become quite a quite a popular theory of root causes, if you will, to the point, incidentally, that I I know you probably are familiar with the controversy about the Mellon Foundation recently, right? The Mellon Foundation. Elaborate on that for us. The Mellon Foundation was, you know, a longtime supporter of humanities, and if you had everywhere. And if you had an idea for you know a new book on Shakespeare, you go to the Mellon Foundation. Uh it's completely changed now. The staff has changed, the leadership, the mission is now entirely focused on theories of structural racism and oppression and the diversity, equity, and inclusion and critical race theory, all those things are now front and center uh in that program. And incidentally, the exactly the same thing has happened at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, you know, which is a huge supporter of science, uh, medicine and science, uh, as you know, and it it went exactly the same way. This irony is you have this leader in the humanities, leader in science. And if if you read their mission statements, they're almost identical. It's like every everyone is gravitating toward this central notion of social justice, and it completely obliterates the specific, you know, the specific areas of concern that used to govern their grant making. So that's uh that's a huge problem.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Yeah, and uh and it's an interesting connection you make, which I hadn't seen maybe before, that sort of it's sort of just sort of a progression from one set of root causes to another. One could write a history of of uh a philanthropy in America that sort of, and not not all of them end up as uh badly as as eugenics did, right? Or at least at least we hope. But the um a lot of mischief can be done through these sort of ideological commitments. And it's all it seems like the unifying ideology is progressivism. And we don't necessarily mean that, we mean that in the deepest sense, right? I think people might be surprised. They might think, oh, Carnegie, Rockefeller, these are, you know, these are Robert, Robert Barron types. They were, they were, these are conservatives, these are these are capitalists. But in fact, their view of philanthropy is very distinctively progressive, and they very kind of self-consciously so, I believe one could say, right, up until this day. But talk about the connection between American philanthropy and progressivism.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Yeah, well, uh they they all originated in this same notion that American public life is chaotic because we rely too much on citizens to run their own lives, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:00

And that is essentially the progress, but that and just kind of pause on that. Like that's that's like the quintessentially progressive point of view, right? That's the point of view associated with the earliest progressive reformers of the what late early 20th century, would you say, or even late 19th century?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Late 19th century going into the 20th century. Yeah, yeah. The the point was, you know, our life is chaotic because people are caught up in these minor concerns, like their own neighborhoods, their own religions. You know, I mean, this was a period, as you know, of mass migration from southern and eastern Europe, and all of these people were bringing these very peculiar religious beliefs over here, right? That were that were not lost.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

We were not lost.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Yeah, totally at odds with our founding, you know, Puritan fathers and so forth and so on. You know, the progress uh progressivism believed that, well, we really need to get public life out of the hands of these benighted souls who really think that there is a God and so forth, and uh when really there is only science. And so, you know, we're going to rearrange public life in such a way that that progressive that that the elites now assume control. And it look, as you say, it sounds so reasonable in a way, right? Which is, well, why not let the people who really have studied this problem, why not let them take the lead and carry us into the future? But of course, it's profoundly anti-democratic, right? And it it it intended to disenfranchise people and it intended to treat them as deplorables, right? I mean, progressivism is always treated everyday citizens as well.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Certainly as uh subjects in a grand social experiment.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah, right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah, I I I guess maybe as as as subjects is uh you know, if you want to be uh uh kindler and gentler about it in the in the way of your employer, President George. Uh well HW brush. HW, yeah, that's right. Okay, I mean it's um yeah, I mean it's uh it whether the mask gets removed and it's deplorables, or whether it's instead it's just sort of this top, I think it strikes me that one just a phrase we haven't used yet, but I think it's helpful is this establishment philanthropy that you're talking about is very top-down. And the everyday philanthropy you're talking about is very bottom-up. And um the top never trusts the bottom to do what's right.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Exactly right, yes. No, it doesn't. Um, because the bottom, as I say, has got all these peculiar beliefs about God and the importance of tradition and you know, the way things have been, and so forth and so on. And uh, you know, science knows better. And so, yeah, it you do end up having to uh remove power to the extent possible from the masses and direct it toward the you know, Woodrow Wilson is famous for having enunciated this grand theory of of progressivism in which the the experts would take charge. And it was the foundations were very much part of that. I mean, they were absolutely central to the growth of progressivism. We don't, it's it's not just crazy progressive ideas like eugenics, but you know, the first foundations were very concerned about rationalizing American life. And by that they meant, you know, purging it of these peculiar uh religious and cultural influences that, you know, especially those migrants brought up brought here. Uh uh and so they, you know, they funded projects to rationalize the legal profession, the uh, you know, social welfare profession, medicine. You know, perhaps the most, you know, the the uh reports on American medicine were you know revolutionary and closing down medical schools that were subpar. And that, incidentally, is probably a good thing, right? That they that they did that. So it's not all is where natural science is clear, you know, it can be helpful. Social science, not subpar.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

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SPEAKER_02 20:42

Yeah, well, that's actually a really important distinction. I mean, um, I could say this as a social scientist, having gotten my doctorate in psychology, which is I always remember every or remind everyone of what Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory says one time, ah, psychology, the doofus of the sciences. Yeah, that that is what I have my doctorate in. Yeah, social sciences are are fundamentally different than the natural science, because humans are there of what they study, and humans are not. Humans are different than wood or trees or whatever it might be. But your other the point about that is when it comes to the natural science, I think your point is like, yeah, you know, there's a there's a clear role for experts. Um, uh, but you're trying to do something that involves the natural science, you know, that it's um there really is a level of of knowledge and um of expertise that is uh undeniable. That's not though, like how should my community be organized is is though a matter of probably a matter of of politics, you know, what goods to prioritize over others. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yes, exactly. Quite right. Yeah. And that that sort of, I don't know if you want to move into the discussion of so called everyday philanthropy, but that seems to be that seems to be a nice segue here.

unknown 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I mean, that our political system was built on the notion of democratic participation, of civic engagement. You know, no one, no one talks more about that than Alexis de Tocqueville. And, you know, if you read Tocqueville, you realize, and Tocqueville is quite clear about it. He said, look, if you want to get stuff done in America efficiently, um, that's not gonna happen. You're not gonna do things quickly and efficiently. You know, it it by implication, the French system, you know, the emperor declares it and sends out the state uh repair people, the road repair people, and it's you know done very efficiently. But Tofield said, you know, Americans don't do it that way. They form a committee, they talk it over, they get together with their citizens, they make decisions about what should be done, and they do it. You know, then they proceed to actually provide the solution to the problem. And so that's uh it's essential to American democracy because given our sort of commercial impulses, which the founders valued immensely and were intended for for uh us to to engage in commerce, feel worried that that it would sort of drive us into individual isolation, that we would end up being uh sequestered from each other by our immediate material concerns. And so he he saw American decentralized government and local associations, voluntary associations, as a way of compelling Americans to get to get together with each other and solve problems, you know, together and to learn about your fellow citizens. You know, it's annoying, it's slow, it's it's inefficient, right? If you've ever been on an HOA board, as I have been, uh you realize that it's it can be very annoying. But it's the way you learn to be a citizen because you know, you've got to, you know, when you're debating this issue, you know, at the HOA board, you have to be careful because you're going to see this person later a Safeway. So, you know, you better be you have to learn to curb your tongue, which of course does not happen on today's, you know, uh, you know, social media where you can't.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Yeah, but where you're not actually involved in any sort of um common enterprise. Uh you're just you you have you can carpet one another and uh from an from places of anonymity uh and total disconnection.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah, exactly. Right. So that that sort of face-to-face problem solving is still extremely important for everyone, but it's you know it's particularly useful in the uh lower-income parts of America. I've learned a lot from a fellow by the name of Robert Woodson. I've been friends with him for 40 years. He's a great champion of American grassroots initiatives. And uh what he has found, and what he's persuaded me of, is that in neighborhoods, no matter how depressed the neighborhood seems to be, there are embedded in those neighborhoods uh centers of community life. They're people who are doing really good things, and they uh they're by and large completely invisible, right, to these to establishment philanthropy. They support their projects out of their own back pocket or their neighbors help out a little bit, you know. They it's voluntary by and large. They're probably in uh an abandoned storefront, you know, in the central city, very unprepossessing, and yet they are doing amazing things. And you know that by the fact that people show up in in those places where they are. There's something about them that communicates respect and love and healthy relationship, and people respond to that, right? So they, you know, this is these are places where people come. I the the example I always use is uh Cordelia Taylor. She's one of my heroes. She died about two years ago, but she's just such a wonderful person. She, in her, she was a trained senior care management manager, and she was appalled by the sort of institutional places she worked. So she started a senior care facility, community-based facility in her own home, her own former home on 11th Street in Milwaukee, which is a very tough neighborhood. But she became, it was immediately people started flocking to her, right? Kids showed up on her porch. And she could have legitimately said, look, you know, this is a senior care facility. You guys go someplace else. There's a YWCA, YMCA down the black. And there probably was, but they wanted to be there. They wanted to be with her because she had something. She communicated love and respect for them. So she had her son start a homework club for them. Uh pretty soon, a uh one of her volunteers wanted to do martial arts, teach these kids martial arts. So down in the basement, you know, he started a martial arts program. Then she noticed that that the kids oftentimes uh showed up toward the end of the month and asked for canned food from the from her supply. And it turned out that their mothers were running out of food toward the end of the month. And so Cordelia Taylor started teaching little classes for these mothers about how to make meals that are economical and they could stretch for multiple days and so forth. You know, here she is, a senior care facility, martial arts place, uh, you know, homework club, welfare mother trainer. She's got she's all these things, right? And if you're a if you're an establishment philanthropy person, you would look at that and say, you have really, you have really blurred your mission. This is chaos. But it's it is it's an expression of the community uh and their their needs, their desires, and she responds to them in such a way that they end up being her huge, you know, being huge fans for her. And so the whole neighborhood began to improve quite a bit. I mean, it required her, she was about five feet tall, and a little tiny person, but she would stand up to drug dealers in the middle of the street and, you know, tell them this is not the place to peddle your wares. She was an amazing person. The Bradley Foundation was was uh How do you support someone like that, Bill, without top-downing?

SPEAKER_02 28:59

So to get into the weeds a little bit. The foundation, the Bradley Foundation was a large foundation, still is a large foundation. How do you um what's the right touch? You know, how do you support someone like that without ruining what they're doing or dictating or requiring getting letting the tail wag the dog, basically, is something like that. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Yes, exactly. It's important to understand that the Bradley Foundation, and this incidentally was something that the progressive critics of conservative philanthropy were always were they loved our methods, but they hated, of course, our ends, which but the method was general operating support over multiple years, minimal reporting requirements, you know, uh write us a grant proposal, tell us what you're gonna do. Don't worry there, we don't have a framework that you have to fit in. We're not gonna say that you can you have to express your mission in 30, you know, words or less. What I mean, you know all the all the crap that you know donors come up with by way of requirements. We had none of that, right? I mean, it really was it was an early version, I suppose, of trust-based philanthropy.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

We really exactly the words I was going to use, which uh I think Mackenzie Scott is uh, if I'm getting her name right, has made very uh well known now because as a former ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, she has a little bit of money to throw around and has been doing that. And in the um the phrase uh much to the chagrin, actually, of many members of I think of the philanthropy establishment has popularized this idea of trust-based philanthropy, but that's I don't think it's essentially different than what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

No, that's exactly right. She's she's one of the very few progressive funders who actually is doing what we what we did and what all the progressive writers were saying. We got to do more of that. Well, she finally did, right? I mean, the rest of them are running, and of course, the contrast here is you define a clear project. You know, you we'll give you probably three years of funding. Uh, we won't fund the whole project. You have to find other matching funds for it. You have to report to us regularly, and it all has to be built on measurable outcomes, right? I mean, you have to tell us the beginning of the process, you know, what the deliverables are and when they're going to come in the door and all this stuff. I mean, it's just and it if you're a if you're a little nonprofit, like for Delia Taylor, you know, her her daughter was her business manager and and didn't have the, you know, this is not a a place that had a uh, you know, uh development staff like you guys. She couldn't have afforded you guys.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

No, I'm just joking. Yeah. She would have loved it. Exactly right. She couldn't have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

It would have, you guys, it would have, she would have been a star of your program, absolutely. But it it's uh we didn't do any of those burdensome things that foundations do. And you start small, right? I mean, I can't remember our our first grant with her, but it was it was you know a smaller grant. And we worked with her, and I I visited her regularly, not for oversight purposes, but because I really, it just totally inspired me about the work we were doing. I mean, if you if as a program officer at a foundation, if you ever had any doubt about the worth, the worth of what you were doing, someone. Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, you know, I'm sitting here all day uh reading grant proposals and trying to figure out budgets that people and it's like, okay, I'm gonna visit Cordelia Taylor right now because I've got to be reminded why all of this work is worthwhile, you know, and it really is. And this approach, you know, what we would call philanthrolo localism. Jeremy Beer might have had a hand in introducing that uh neologism to the horrible neologism, by the way. Well, you haven't pursued it. You need to hammer away at it. Such a bad word.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Well, anyway, the concept is all right, I think.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

The concept is excellent. But it's, you know, this is philanthrocalism is is this process of finding the Cordelia Taylors of the world and being partners with them, right? I mean, right I know that's again, that's a cliche and people say that, but uh, you know, she was just doing amazing things, nothing that we could have invented on our own. And uh it was, in fact, a privilege and an inspiration. That's the thing that if if your donors are interested in this approach, the payoff is huge. Not the payoff and measurable outcomes, but the payoff and the people that you meet. They're amazing people, right? They are do, they're they're doing amazing work in the face not only of incredible problems, right, in society, but also in the face of the contempt of the philanthropic professionals, not Amphil, but the other guys. Everything these people do is denigrated by the professionals because it's again, it's meeting immediate needs, it's dealing with the symptoms, not the root causes.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Certainly not uh up to the effective altruist standards of uh what uh efficient and um ethical philanthropy looks like, right? Exactly, exactly the case. But what I think you're saying is um to kind of just dive into this a little bit more deeply is um though when you do that kind of giving, the work kind of comes at the front in terms of finding the Cordelia. So to really kind of know your community and or at least people in the community who can lead you to those people. And then you you also have to, it seems to me, Bill, there's a certain kind of um letting go with this philanthropy that like that you're not really you're not controlling it. The effort is that we're gonna we're gonna 10x Cordelia, we're gonna create 30, unless Cordelia wants to, right? Cordelia has a plan to do that, right? And she can, but you're kind of like she's driving the train. You're um it it requires kind of a light touch, uh letting go, and also I think even like a certain comfort with wasting money potentially that is also antithetical to progressive, the progressive mindset from the beginning, uh sort of very concerned about waste. That's why we get the first community chests and so forth. Not that there isn't ever waste, but sort of you're like you know, you're willing to live with that because you're getting something that's real and arising from within the community and that is driven by people within that community, not by outsiders. Am I saying all this in a way you would you would agree with?

SPEAKER_01 35:53

That's perfect. Absolutely correct. Yes. It's hard for people. It's you know, it's hard. And I tell you, I've worked with some, you know, moderately successful business people who are thinking about setting up philanthropies. And it's it's not the way, well, it's not the way they say they made their money, right? I mean, they will say they made their money by having a very clear mission, very clear plan, you know, drive to the measurable outcomes, the deliverables, all of those metric marvels that that's how they say they did it. And it's it's uh it may be true, but if it is, it doesn't apply to philanthropy. It's a totally different way of doing things. I could tell a story about a grantmaker who was interested in a substantial grantmaker, or potential grantmaker, who is thinking about how things were going to go. And I'll I'll blur the details of the story so you but the the upshot is this guy went from a very small business uh to an enormous business overnight because a major department store had canceled a contract, right, with their previous supplier for the for these goods. And uh they drove out to this little dinky outfit and said, Can you do this? And the guy said, Yeah, we can do it. Sure, we'll take up the he couldn't do it. He had no, you know, he didn't have any visible means for making that kind of commitment, but he made it and he delivered on it. And now, you know, many years later, he was an immensely himself was an immensely wealthy person who's thinking about philanthropy, and he had no room for the for that kind of of serendipitous development that propelled him to fame and fortune.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

He's not alone. That's a great story. Yeah. I mean, you see that over and over again, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

You really have described exactly the letting go part, it's very hard. Humility is a huge virtue in giving appropriately. Uh and you really do have to stand back. You have there are times when you you will say to yourself, look, I don't think that's a very good idea. I think that's probably a step too far. And, you know, if the person has earned your trust, you uh should be willing to say, okay, I, you know, uh, this is my advice, but I'm not going to strong arm you into not doing that, which, you know, most foundations feel no compunction about strong arming their grantees to do whatever they want them to do. I mean, that really is a standard. You know, grant you, I mean, it's a huge temptation if you're a program officer at a foundation, you know, you're sitting there, uh, you have you've got a degree in psychology, let's say, and you have you, you know. Lord help us. You know, these nonprofit comes to you with something that bears on psychology. And of course you want to say, yeah, well, in my training, I can tell you that. But you've got to give, you've got to give all that up and really understand that the experts on the problem are those that are living with the problem, that have been in the community suffering the problem, and have thought long and hard. No one has thought harder about the solution to the problem than that person who's suffering the problem. Many times, uh, let's, you know, in the inner city, uh uh the problems of drug addiction and alcohol addiction and so forth are huge. Uh, and the most effective agents for addressing that are people who have been through that experience, right? And it's again, it's not something that, sorry, Jeremy, psychology degree won't help you necessarily, as much as the experience of having been a person in addiction and struggling through it, getting through it somehow or another. And having been there, right, it is it's possible for you to give credible advice to people who are still in addiction. So that's, you know, that in general, that's the kind of the notion of trusting the people who live with the problem. That's that's Bob Woodson's zip code test, right? The people who who you should make grants to usually are people who live in the same zip code uh as the problem that you're seeking to address. And all of this, incidentally, I'm just everything I've learned and written about is just really second-hand Bob Woodson. He's just a he was an extraordinary mentor and is uh, you know, still active at the age of, my God, at this point, he's 85 or six.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

He he really is. Well, let's shift gears here toward the end of this podcast. I want to make sure we have just a few minutes to talk about where philanthropy is going. And there's a uh for years, um, for many years, the rallying cry of sort of more right-of-center philanthropic institutions uh and their advocates has been philanthropic freedom. And we've really seen uh something like a, you know, a populist challenge to some of those notions of what that means. Can you talk about what that debate or discussion is like right now, kind of bring people up to speed on it and kind of give your your take on things there?

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Yeah, you bet. Well, as you say, there has been a populist wave challenging almost all the establishment institutions, including science and medicine, incidentally. We were talking earlier about how there are reasons to trust that, but people lost a lot of that trust in the COVID era, as you know. Yeah. But uh, you know, the uh the universities, even the corporations, Hollywood, the media, all of these institutions, we used to kind of think of them as trustworthy and somehow neutral in the ideological struggles. Uh, but in in the past 10 years or so, we've really begun to think of them as as biased toward progressivism. They're you know, the message is prog always progressive, and the censorship of conservative points of view is uh is uh pretty pretty vigorous. The same thing, some conservatives have seen the same phenomenon in philanthropy, right? I mean, we've got a that there's no question but that the overwhelming uh um you know amount of money in establishment philanthropy is on the left.

SPEAKER_02 42:47

I'd I wouldn't venture to guess a proportion, but it's yeah, I've I've tried to kind of figure out those numbers before, but it's it's a multiple that's more left of center than than right of center, for sure. It's not particularly close.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

Exactly. You know, and that they've engaged in, you know, massive activity very close to the political line. Of course, foundations aren't supposed to be engaged in politics, but of course they are, you know, indirectly and and purely legally, but nonetheless, an awful lot of the activity uh is is political in nature. I mean, if you're if if you're if the root cause is social injustice, structural racism, and so forth, of course you have to get political. From their standpoint, it wouldn't make sense to you know to just treat the symptoms, right? I mean, that this is where the root cause language reoccurs. Um so uh, you know, what do we do about that as conservatives? As you say, we have a firm commitment to philanthropic freedom. And yet we know that the left is abusing uh freedom. I mean, they're not abusing it, but they're pursuing. Things that are, at least in my opinion, subversive of the of the American political order. I mean, that's it's not a secret. They've said it's a terrible political order and they want to do things about it. So what you know, what should conservatives do about that? Well, we you know, we've had some hearings in the House and Senate and so forth about abuses of the various uh aspects of the you know charitable realm. People have gotten very upset about that on the right as well as on the left, right? Because it it violates philanthropic freedom. We're gonna have uh the same trouble in spades once the Democrats retake power. It could be as early as November with the House and Senate. Who knows? But you know, they will come to power again, and they've already shown themselves to be no great observers of American freedoms, right? I mean, we've the censorship uh during the Biden administration. We, you know, is we've now we're now aware of all kinds of quiet, informal pressures exerted by the government on social media to censor conservative points of view and so forth. It's gonna happen again in spades. And they're not gonna, they're not gonna pause for a second and say, oh, but you know, philanthropic freedom, which is what we did. You know, we basically pulled back and said, well, we we can't lean into this. So I don't have an answer. You know, I have my own point of view, which is that we need to lean harder on foundations, but I I I certainly understand the the conservative doctrine of philanthropic freedom and how important that is. We're it's I don't know. I wish we could have a grand confab and kind of come up with some sort of solution to this problem. But we haven't done that and we're running out of time.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

Sort of the partisan stuff aside, do you think we sort of is it like uh is this a moment for do you think here's the most radical thing I'll ask you. Like, is it time for like an antitrust movement in the philanthropy world? Like, are foundations too big and too powerful? Uh, should should there be, in other words, you could tax endowments higher, you could make it harder to accumulate these massive amounts of money in foundations. There's nothing in nature that says that has to happen this way. You could you could increase the payout percentage that's requiring foundations, you could require DAFs to have a minimum payout and so forth. A lot of these ideas have been mooted about. What are you what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Well, I'm on record as as uh being a skeptic of DAFs because it does, they do tend to accumulate dollars and they're not as good at getting them out as they might be. There are no uh restrictions on there are no legal minimum payouts for DAFs, as you know. Foundations have to give out five percent. DAFs don't have a an equivalent uh uh requirement. I was struck by Carl Zinsmeister's last book, Sweet Charity, which just came out. He's a he's a conservative foundation person and has been for years. You know, he ran here, he uh uh edited their their magazine and was in charge of their well, yes, at AEI and at the round table. And he was uh even he has come to the point where you know he's very disturbed by this politicization. And he's willing to say, look, maybe we do need to have limited, you know, term limits for foundations.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Yeah, it all has to be sunseted, not no perpetual foundations, right.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

And maybe we do need to increase the payout from 5% to 10%, which is I think you know, or 12%.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

We can put these radical ideas on Carl is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Exactly. I'm not gonna think I'm going to endorse them, you're out of your mind. I'm in enough trouble as it is. So it's Carl's fault. But he's it it is striking that someone who is as as much a champion of conservative philanthropy as he has been is willing to begin to talk about that. And as you say, you know, I think it probably is worthwhile uh increasing the excise tax on foundations uh as a way of indicating that Congress is in fact keeping an eye on this. There's only one thing that big foundations fear, and that's Congress, right? Because nothing, there's no other, there's no other way of influencing philanthropy. You know, it's not like politics where you have voters or the market, you know, where you have customers.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

Yeah, once the money is there, the money is there. Exactly. Money is there and it's there for the thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

Except having investigations and hearings and hauling the president up in front of a congressional committee. It's it doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, frankly, but it does have an effect, right? People don't want to do that. They saw what happened to those university presidents that went up in front of a congressional committee to talk about anti-Semitism on campus, and it it didn't turn out well for them. And that's a kind of a nightmare scenario if you're a foundation president.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

Well, it does seem like a uh uh it it never struck me as rational to take all this off the table a priori. Seems worth discussing what best serves the common good when it comes to sort of uh these frankly not earth-shattering uh sort of uh potential tweaks to regulations, rules, laws concerning philanthropy. Uh bigger would be sort of like um uh I think calls for me anyway, Bill. You can speak to this if you want to, but you know, calls to like make all donations um visible, like political uh donations. So there's no anonymous giving anymore. That would be way more problematic for me. I I think that would have a serious chilling effect on American democracy, but you may think otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

No, I think I think you're right. I let me you're going back to DAFs for a second, though. As you know, a lot of foundations use DAFs to make yeah, will run their money through DAFs if it's very controversial. They don't want to be associated with. So they're using DAFs as a way of circumventing what we've decided as a society should be a public process, right? I mean, they these foundations do have to say who their grantees are if if they're reporting directly. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

That's the trade I would make, though. I would trade sort of like sunsetting on yeah, you know, um required mandated sunsetting for anonymous giving, even by foundations. You know, you're right, that's what we've decided. But that's what I'd be making, I'd be willing to make that trade or some other similar trade. I just feel like that's not, yeah. I I I just uh this is by this is a real-time conversation, everybody. Bill and I have never discussed this before. I yeah, I just don't know, I've never really understood why that's required of foundations, to be honest with you. Uh, I always have wondered even whether this Supreme Court would, if that were challenged, whether they would uphold that, given their uh the court's view that corporations are to be treated like individuals when it comes to political speech. Uh I'm I wonder if that would stand up, that if some foundation challenged uh um uh if it's a law or if it's an IRS ruling or whatever, that they have to reveal to whom they make gifts. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

Yeah, I would I I think I think that's pretty I think that's a useful minimal requirement of publicity. Yeah, I do. And it it it does sort of force force people to be careful about the kinds of of uh causes they they support. I mean it's it's um it's especially in a theoretical.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

The thing is, it really hasn't forced like big progressive foundations from being careful of it. They they still get anyway, and not always through DAFs.

SPEAKER_01 52:09

So I it's uh no, that's true, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:11

Yeah, but your points, your point's well taken. And this is why I've always enjoyed having these discussions with William Chambra.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Well, and I've always enjoyed talking to you, Jeremy Beer, father of philanthropism.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

I like that we end we'll end givers, doers, and thinkers on a completely inconclusive note about what should come next. But hope people have enjoyed the conversation. And Bill, I really appreciate you giving us your time and coming on here and speaking so uh candidly and thoughtfully about the state of American philanthropy.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Well, thank you, Jeremy. I've really enjoyed this. And uh just just as a if I may, and you can cut it off in the final edits, that we we do have uh we do have a blog uh a uh a podcast at the Giving Review. Yeah my my uh my co-editor Michael Hartman, a colleague from my days at the Bradley Foundation, uh does uh does regular podcasts with people as well. So if you're interested in this kind of treatment of philanthropy and from a from a you know a kind of a feisty independent point of view, we're always available at the Giving Review.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

ThegivingReview.com, correct, Bill? Oh Lord, I have to know my own I know I'm I'm correct. It's the givingreview.com. Check it out. Uh that's where you can find everything. That's where you can find more of Bill's work and Mike Hartman's work and work of others who provide exactly what Bill says, a feisty independent point of view on philanthropy, which I really appreciate and it helps keep everybody honest. And um, that's a good thing, frankly. So thanks so much, Bill. Appreciate you and all your work.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Okay, thank you very much. It was an honor to be here. And as you say, we've talked about it for a long time. We finally done it just under the wire. Just in time. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode and what is going to be the last season of the Givers, Doers, and Thinkers Podcast. Nevertheless, I invite you to like and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. And as always, if you want to learn more, check out mvil.com. Thanks.