posted on: Thursday, September 06, 2012

By Kevin Laskowski

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I went charter-fishing this summer. After a bout of seasickness, which never happens, I had a great time catching tuna and wahoo off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We had fun and we ate well that night, but I didn’t really feel like I’d accomplished anything. I hadn’t. The crew provided the rods, baited the hooks and cast the lines. They did everything but pull the fish on to the boat. No, wait, once I reeled the fish in, they did that, too. It’s not much of a sport; there’s no risk if you’re guaranteed a fish.

It made me think of when former vice president Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting companion Harry Whittington in the face during a quail hunt. These Texas ranches are stocked with birds that are raised in captivity and released when groups arrive. All a “hunter” has to do is get out of his or her car and shoot at a bunch of these confused pet birds that don’t fly too far or fast - with a shotgun. The risk isn’t that you’ll go without bagging a bird; the ranches promise you birds. The only risk is, well, somebody might shoot you in the face.

And that’s why these quail-hunters, if hunters they are, have to get a hunting license. It’s not because they’re doing something grand - they might as well be charter-fishing for all the actual hunting they’ll do - but because there’s a set of generally accepted practices for people wielding shotguns.

In a previous post, I wrote that philanthropy doesn’t so much confront risks as it manages them and how that’s a shame.

It’s a shame because, at some point, someone’s going to start asking questions about what Ford Foundation program officer, family foundation trustee and Harvard dean Paul Ylvisaker once called philanthropy’s “hunting license." Ylvisaker wrote:

“[Philanthropy] dedicated itself to finding systemic solutions to underlying causes of poverty and other social ills, and over time, has become a recognized social process — in effect, a set of private legislatures defining public problems, setting goals and priorities, and allocating resources toward the general good. Foundations have, in effect, been given a ‘hunting license’ as private organizations to participate in what has conventionally been thought of as exclusively a public/governmental domain.”

Why, you might ask, does philanthropy have this hunting license?

Philanthropy’s reply is that it needs a hunting license because it’s going hunting. QED. It’s hunting for the big problems and fishing out solutions. It alone can take the risks that other sectors cannot. Philanthropy is “society’s passing gear,” another Ylvisaker phrase. If foundations are not given wide latitude, they will stop taking risks and operate largely in lock-step with one another. Without the privileges of philanthropy, we will lose a creative and independent force for good. That’s why philanthropists have a hunting license.

You might reply that philanthropy doesn’t actually take very many risks. It avoids them. Foundations may not march in lock-step, but they all seem to dance to the stock market’s tune. In cases where risk is actually a question, grantees and communities are the ones facing them, not philanthropy. Most of philanthropy is charter-fishing, you might say, and you don’t need a license for that.

Philanthropy will nonetheless insist that it’s really hunting – or it could be some day, in which case it will need its license.

In that case, you might say, philanthropy might do as much harm as good. We should ask: what is the minimum standard of care required of anyone with this hunting license?

Philanthropy will respond that such standards - even common goals and aspirations - are to be avoided at all costs as an unjust intrusion upon philanthropic freedom.

In sum, philanthropy has a hunting license it doesn’t need, doesn’t use and refuses to do anything to get. Shouldn’t such a license be revoked?

Philanthropy’s privileges are rightly tied to its willingness to accept and confront risk. Philanthropy must renew its courage or risk its independence.

Kevin Laskowski is research and policy associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). He frequently blogs about trends, accountability and effective practices in philanthropy. He thinks Friedrich Nietzsche would have liked Kelly Clarkson’s "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You).”