Advocacy Isn’t a Crime, Even for Charities

Several years ago Henry Ford II, the last family member on the board of the Ford Foundation, resigned, denouncing the country’s largest foundation for funding organizations that, in his mind, were undermining the very free enterprise system that gave it birth.

Earlier this decade, Donald Devine, the outspoken conservative who headed the governments’s Office of Personnel Management, tried to forbid federal employees from making on-the-job gifts to charities that were advocating on behalf of women, minorities, the poor, the disabled, etc. At the same time, Michael Horowitz, an Office of Management and Budget official, tried to cut off federal grants for organizations that engaged in advocacy even if the federal funds did not pay for the advocacy.

And just a few months ago, Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas professor, produced a study that excoriates a few big corporations that support organizations that do not “favor free enterprise” or “a strong national defense and traditional social values.” These organizations include the NAACP, the Urban Institute and the Council on Foundations, the trade association of foundations.

All of these actions are part of a decade-long campaign by the right wing to de-fund the left. “There is no more important priority for conservatives,” according to one leader writing in the Conservative Digest.

Their effort has had some victories, most notably the elimination of almost all federal funding from groups trying to improve their low-income communities. It has also met with some defeats--federal employees can still make gifts to charities that advocate for the people the groups are trying to help, for example.

But underlying this ongoing battle between organizations are some vital issues, particularly the role of the advocate-critic in a democracy and the responsibilities of private funding sources.

To theorists such as Olasky, it is unconscionable for corporations to support “government-oriented pressure groups, including litigious environmentalists, radical feminists, liberal racial establishmentarians . . . and others who see the federal government as ally rather than usurper.” It is unconscionable because “corporations should make grants that will support truly free enterprise. . . . “

But does an organization that pushes for equal treatment of women or minorities, or criticizes a society that allows one child in five to grow up poor, or examines a company’s effects on the environment, really undermine a free-enterprise system?

I would argue that they help keep it vital. A system or a society without critics quickly becomes stagnant and risks becoming a dictatorship.

The second fallacy of theorists like Olasky is that every organization is part of a dichotomy. You are either left or right, you believe that government is either ally or usurper, you favor either a strong national defense or “appeasement” of the Soviets.

The reality is not nearly so simplistic. There are tremendous differences among the groups that Olasky and others lump together as left-leaning. They differ in style, tactics and philosophy. Organizations such as the Council on Foundations and Independent Sector are essentially consensus-builders and educators. Groups such as the Urban Institute use research and commentary to influence policy. Groups like the NAACP often use the courts or the political process. Groups like the Assn.of Community Organizations for Reform Now often use demonstrations by community people to achieve change. The same differences exist among groups concerned about the environment or U.S. foreign and military policy.

To label any organization that wants change as left-leaning and a threat to our system is not only simplistic; it’s dangerous.

It’s dangerous in part because it could jeopardize the small amount of support that our society’s critics do get. Contrary to the claims of conservative activists, there has never been much support--from corporations, foundations or the government--for those who ask hard questions. As a study commissioned by the council and foundations put it several years ago, “In spite of the . . . myth about foundations as the . . . cutting edge of social changes, their record on the whole is one of caution rather than innovation.”

People involved in fund-raising will tell you that the vast majority of corporations are even more cautious. Nearly all of them give the majority of their money to universities, hospitals, art institutions or United Way.

Another danger in criticizing support for any organization that asks hard questions is that it threatens one of the great strengths of this country--its pluralism, its willingness to tolerate a wide variety of views, life styles and organizations.

By assuming that critics are enemies, by denouncing the few corporations and foundations that practice pluralism in their grant-making, theorists like Olasky may truly be the ones who are undermining our system and our “traditional social values.”