Condescending Philanthropy

[RICHARD ROMEO]

FWIW:

Organized Philanthropy is an inherently American endeavor.  Nowhere else 
in the world is the so-called "third sector" as vast and important to 
society as the universe of nonprofit organizations in the U.S.  Seeing as 
this has become so successful here, the U.S. has tried to implant this 
charitable mentality abroad, namely in the former eastern bloc nations.  
This has met with various levels of success, most favorably in Japan, 
most unfavorably in Russia.  So, this philanthropic putsch has been 
working on a international relations scale as well.  Notice George Soros, 
the man who made billions speculating on the English pound, who is fast 
becoming the Andrew Carnegie of his time (forget Gates--Microsoft gives 
millions but most of this is in-kind support, not gifts of cash;  forget 
Ted Turner--his growing foundation supports cutesy enviornmentalism, not 
to mention Hanoi Jane's involvement)
Luckily Soros is funding more and more in this country, funding for 
relaxed drug laws, immigrant rights, and so on.
Philanthropy will always be condescending in a way.  However, basically 
because of the anarchy within the philanthropic sector in that each of 
the 40,000 private foundations operate on their own, each funding what 
they want to fund (the media hardly covers anything besides scandals, and 
most people are ignorant as to what they do--they are not all 
liberal--Olin, Scaife, Weinberg, DeMoss--(don't forget these guys 
Steely--funding the Heritage cronies, David Horowitz, and total 
uncompromising free-market, no lobbying for nonprofits legislation), 
there is some good that comes out of the residue.  Foundations should be 
risky but most are not.  I think they are scared of the scrutiny, now 
that the feds, etc are relinquishing their involvement in traditional 
programs.  I find it somewhat poetic justice that scrubs like Ford, 
MacArthur, etc. are funding things these men would fumed over if they 
knew.  



Richard Romeo
Coordinator of Cooperating Collections
The Foundation Center-NYC
212-807-2417
rromeo at fdncenter.org