These days a lot of foundations are putting grant dollars and energy into work that protects democracy.
But that wasn’t the case a quarter of a century ago, when Patricia Bauman shifted her family fund’s assets into focusing on this vital cause. And long before big philanthropies started giving more of their funds through multiyear general operating support, Patricia made sure the Bauman fund did just that.
In giving away close to $200 million of her foundation’s money over her lifetime, she treated grantees with respect and prided herself on timely responses to them. In short, she embodied the gold standard for grant makers.
Patricia, who died in March, had a remarkable ability to look around the corner, take risks in her philanthropy, and exert an outsize influence compared with the nation’s biggest foundations. Because of her vision and tenacity, she was able to influence foundations far wealthier than hers to tackle causes they might otherwise have avoided. As a matter of fact, that’s how she liked to describe her foundation — she considered it a tugboat pulling the nation’s wealthiest foundations into action to tackle significant problems.
Patricia was committed to protecting public health and the environment. Over the years, she increasingly saw that addressing these social issues, particularly for people of color and other marginalized people, was inextricably tied to other pressing issues, such as economic and educational inequities.
And the biggest barrier to improving lives for all Americans, she recognized, was the failure of our democracy.
Patricia realized many years ago that gerrymandering was limiting the power of many Americans to vote for lawmakers who had their best interests at heart. And money in politics was contorting the ability of people to have a voice in government. What’s more, she knew the legacy of racism and hatred of people who were not part of the white male power structure was ever-present, if not growing.
Patricia put money into organizations working to fight those problems, but she also did a lot more. She got involved in the leadership of the governing bodies of many organizations, including the Brennan Center for Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Catalist, Montefiore Medical Center, Working America, and Democracy Alliance. She didn’t see board membership as simply an opportunity to put her name on organization letterheads. She was involved actively, always pushing the envelope with a vision to strengthen the organization and advance the mission — and always from a position of loyalty, devotion, and encouragement.
Some people who knew her have described Patricia as tireless, if not unyielding. And thank goodness she was. Yet her fierceness was blended with grace and humor.
She was always dressed to perfection — she had a hat for every activity and outing. Some people interpreted that as a sign of aloofness, but nothing could be further from the truth. She had a rare ability to talk to anyone and to show a genuine interest in what they said. Those who knew her well also saw how Patricia nurtured and relished relationships.
And while Patricia loved the arts, culture, traveling, and birding, those interests never got in the way of her willingness to engage in partisan fights to protect social, economic, and environmental justice.
Perhaps what made Patricia such a good grant maker was her desire to seek out new ideas. She was always reading and listening so her thoughts about the best ways to protect democracy evolved over the years. Nonetheless, she never lost sight of her progressive values.
Patricia took over the fund created by her father, Lionel, a lawyer and real-estate investor, in 1987, right after he died. Before she became a foundation leader, she held positions in the administrations of two New York mayors, Robert Wagner and John Lindsay, was a staff member on a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Jacob Javits, and worked as a research consultant to organizations such as the Milbank Memorial Fund.
These experiences, mostly focused on public health issues, including the occupational health of migrant workers, taught her that social change can take decades. Indeed, her experience as a young lawyer framed her grant making in the years to come. She believed that smart lawyering and advocacy could reshape the world.
But she quickly saw that the traditional ways philanthropy operates were hobbling social-change efforts. She recognized that foundation grant cycles, which typically last from one to three years, thwarted the long-term work that brings about progress. Long before philanthropic discussions about general support grants, she made unrestricted grants and provided consistent funding to many nonprofits year after year.
Right from the start of her grant-making career, she took up a cause that wasn’t receiving much attention from philanthropy — but had the potential to put new power into the environmental movement.
A year before she took over the foundation, the federal government had passed a law requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to collect and disclose information about toxic chemicals polluting the air, land and sea. Under Patricia’s stewardship, the Bauman Foundation supported groups to work with the EPA to get the data out to the public and then made grants to community groups so they could understand the value of the data for their advocacy work. She also made grants to help the groups put the information to use — which required a great deal of complicated technology support in those early days of the internet and providing online data.
That work led her to think about other ways to help nonprofits hold government accountable for protecting the public’s welfare. For instance, Bauman was one of the first foundations to support nonprofits that work to shed light on how government operated, especially the regulatory processes that often favored companies over the public.
Patricia was not afraid to make grants that many other donors considered risky. She joined the Carnegie Corporation of New York — among other grant makers — in 2010 to create the State Infrastructure Fund, which today plays a crucial role in channeling philanthropic aid to organizations protecting democratic processes. She supported organizing efforts such as the Labor Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, which successfully fought for more bus service for poor people. She supported David Brock when he abandoned his conservative alliances and right-wing tactics and conspiracies to create Media Matters for America.
Those aren’t the only organizations where Patricia’s early funding made a difference. Organizations like the Voter Participation Center and Working America Education Fund got off to a good start because of Patricia’s willingness to get behind them. She also provided the initial funding for two unprecedented funder collaboratives that pushed the federal government to conduct a fair and accurate census and to ensure redistricting practices were equitable.
Patricia believed grant makers should not be afraid to support advocacy and organizing, efforts that continue to get a paltry amount of support from the nation’s grant makers. And she often reminded other philanthropists that no matter what their mission, they certainly should not fear making grants to strengthen democracy — and they needed to understand that their causes would not progress without a strong democracy.
Possibly the highest compliment about Patricia came from a younger grant maker who recently told one of us that she hopes to be like Patricia. That is a reason to celebrate her life and legacy — that a bit of Patricia Bauman will continue in the work we each do. But we also deeply miss talking to our friend — for her frankness, her compassion, and her devotion to her grantees and friends alike — and we will continue to mourn her passing for a long time to come.
