Philanthropy lost a fighter and a trailblazer when Robert O. Bothwell died this month.
At a time when many are openly questioning philanthropy’s role in catalyzing change, Bob’s work as the first executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy is a fitting reminder of what it takes to push organizations created to advance the collective good to become more equitable and just.
NCRP was founded in 1976 in the aftermath of a high-profile report designed to examine what should be done to ensure philanthropy deserved its tax privileges.
As the Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs, created by John D. Rockefeller, carried out its research to prepare the influential report, an ad hoc coalition rose up to represent the needs of grantees and communities that were supposed to be served by foundations.
Bob helped turn the informal coalition into a permanent voice that could improve and balance the overwhelming power and perspective of the wealthy. His goal was to create an organization that would fight for and with people who had been historically marginalized and excluded not just from society but also from grant-making decisions and strategies.
If that’s a tall order in any era, it was an even greater challenge in the 1970s and ’80s. You didn’t dare criticize donors, and you certainly didn’t question where or how people gave their money away. Not if you wanted to keep the doors open and continue fighting the good fight. The unspoken rule was that if people were altruistic enough to part with their money, you just made do with whatever amount they chose to dole out. Their act of charity, their choice, their control.
Working hand in hand with the founders of NCRP — who included one of us (James Abernathy) as well as Thomas R. Asher, a lawyer and nonprofit advocate, and longtime Chronicle columnist Pablo Eisenberg. Bob believed that the lack of open critiques of philanthropy could no longer be tolerated. They were comfortable in challenging the traditional authority of philanthropy because they were determined to ensure that poor and middle-class Americans got the resources they needed to thrive.
Under Bob’s leadership, NCRP set out not only to break the silence of nonprofits but provide the kind of data and advocacy that would ensure foundations had to listen to the people they were supposed to serve.
Reports like Foundations and Public Information: Sunshine or Shadow, presented in 1980 at the annual conference of the Council on Foundations, an organization that represents grant makers nationwide, offered the first real assessment of the quality of information that foundations voluntarily provided about their assets, grant making, and more. It stressed, too, that while transparency was important, foundations should also be judged by their responsiveness to advocacy groups, environmental organizations, people of color, and others who rarely got attention from government, business, or philanthropy.
Under Bob’s guidance, the campaigns NCRP waged to give nonprofits a voice in foundation decision making were about more than just fairness.
Community leaders offered the kind of on-the-ground expertise and insight that could offer strong solutions to the problems that grant makers were supposedly trying to address. NCRP’s founders wanted to make it clear that it was in everyone’s best interest to have local nonprofits sit permanently at the decision-making table in an open space for all to witness.
But information meant little without coordinated action, and actions meant nothing if they didn’t lead to longlasting shifts in power.
That is why the coalition of nonprofits and grant makers that saw themselves as allies of grant seekers worked with elected officials like Democratic Reps. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, Pat Schroeder of Colorado, and Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Republican Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa on a 12-year campaign that ended the United Way’s monopoly on workplace giving. They succeeded by opening the nation’s federal employee fundraising campaign to small grassroots organizations and catalyzing a shift that increased resources to social justice groups and organizations that serve people of color.
And it’s why NCRP worked with Republican Sen. David Durenberger Minnesota to add greater requirements for transparency to the federal information returns nonprofits file.
NCRP’s strategy and tactics often stemmed from Bob’s understanding of bureaucratic systems and structures that he learned about working in 1960s government agencies like NASA and the Office of Economic Opportunity.
The knowledge he gained in government work taught him how to force institutions to bend. Bob challenged progressive grant makers to provide grassroots organizations with more multiyear and general operating grants, just as conservative foundations had long been doing successfully. While he pushed traditional grant makers to do more to serve communities, he also supported the creation of new entities like Community Shares, EarthShare, and Community Coalition Funds, which raised and distributed money from everyday Americans. It also led NCRP to help organize four of the first women’s funds that served San Francisco, Seattle, Washinton, D.C., and the state of New Jersey. Those organizations paved the way for the Women’s Funding Network.
On many days, Bob’s bulldog commitment, rooted in his working-class Ohio upbringing, seemed to make as many enemies as it did friends within the nonprofit world. With a legendary temper and the competitive flair of a onetime all-city high school tennis champion, he could be a demanding boss and friend. But Bob never acted out of spite. He was simply fearless in fighting for what he believed was just.
Bob knew that his vision for change could not have been accomplished without a vast network of those in and out of philanthropy. He did his best to make NCRP a partner (and a workplace) that could bring out people’s best skills and attributes, all in the service of a more equitable world. It’s a testament to his leadership — and the efforts of the teams and coalitions that he helped form — that NCRP has been able to continue its work for nearly 50 years.
Bob was fiercely loyal to his staff, but he was equally so to his values and moral compass. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have joined a small band of Naval officers that resigned their commissions in protest of the Vietnam War.
He knew what Frederick Douglass famously said was true — that power never has and never will concede anything without a demand. Someone benefits from society’s design flaws, and those who reap the rewards are not likely to give them up easily, no matter how well-intentioned they may be in other parts of their lives.
That is a lesson — and legacy — that can offer guidance to everyone working to alleviate the suffering that results from the growing gap between the wealthy and everyone else.
Bob’s last years were slowed by Lewy body dementia, but his lifetime of achievement is a reminder of what can happen when we all join forces to press for a world that distributes opportunity to all, not just a select few.