Leadership change at activist group could signal an era of cooperation
One of the first things Rick Cohen did when he took over as president of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a prominent watchdog group, was to visit Dorothy S. Ridings, who heads the Council on Foundations.
While the council, one of the main targets of the watchdog group’s attacks on established philanthropy, is just a short walk from Mr. Cohen’s office near Dupont Circle in Washington, his visit was a big step toward what will probably be a significant shift in the way one of the non-profit world’s leading gadfly groups operates.
In March, Mr. Cohen, 48, succeeded Robert O. Bothwell, who led the organization during most of its 23-year crusade to transform philanthropy into an instrument for progressive social change. Mr. Bothwell, 61, will remain at the organization as president emeritus and senior fellow.
During his tenure as president, Mr. Bothwell tried to influence philanthropy mainly by applying pressure from the outside, and was known for his outspokenness and sometimes-abrasive style.
He used a combination of court battles and Congressional lobbying campaigns in an attempt to force government charity drives to allow non-United Way organizations to solicit workers, and he loudly criticized companies that did not allow non-United Way groups to make appeals to workers.
He also pushed the organization to conduct dozens of research studies and then publicized the results widely, often using the data to make his points about grant makers’ unwillingness, for example, to publicly disclose certain information or to award money to charities that serve racial minorities.
“Bothwell is coming out of a civil-rights era, a time when organizations had to stand up and shout it out loud,” says Kate Conover, who, as the committee’s vice-president for Washington operations, is second in command. “He has a loud voice, he talks loudly, he waves his arms around.”
Mr. Cohen, on the other hand, has a conciliatory style, speaking repeatedly about opportunities for N.C.R.P. and philanthropic organizations to work together to increase support for charities that serve poor people, minorities, women, and the environment.
“I’m really trying to reach out to as many different foundations as I can,” he says. “I’m asking them for their ideas on what N.C.R.P. ought to be focusing on.”
Mr. Cohen says he won’t be shy, however, about “condemning things that need to be condemned.” For example, he says he is particularly troubled by what he sees as a paucity of grants to social-change organizations. But, he quickly adds, “when there’s an opportunity to provide help in making things better, we should do it.”
If anyone is well suited to reshaping an aggressive N.C.R.P. into a collaborative one, it is Mr. Cohen. He has spent much of his career working for organizations that serve as liaisons between those who give money and the groups that put it to use. His last job was as vice-president for field strategies at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, in New York. The organization helps foundations and other donors work with community-development groups. He previously held senior posts at the Enterprise Foundation, which also specializes in community development, and the Trust for Public Land, which brings together grant makers, non-profit groups, and the government to preserve wilderness and other lands.
Mr. Cohen’s approach to philanthropy will help determine the success or failure of the very mission for which the N.C.R.P. was formed in 1976 by a group of progressive non-profit organizations. The founders wanted to draw foundations’ attention away from such causes as universities and art museums and toward the needs of disenfranchised groups.
So far, the goal has remained elusive. In 1997, after more than two decades of advocacy, only 2.4 per cent of the $13.8-billion in foundation grants went to organizations that specifically represent the interests of poor and elderly people, minorities, women, American Indians, and homosexuals, according to the National Network of Grantmakers, a San Diego coalition of foundations that support progressive causes.
Part of the reason that the percentage remains so small, says Mr. Cohen, is that foundations see progressive organizations as risky. He says N.C.R.P. can help allay their apprehensions by bringing both sides together and by helping non-profit groups better understand how to approach foundations.
One idea, he says, is to put more foundation representatives on the committee’s board of directors. Only 3 of the 40 current board members represent foundations. The goal of adding foundation representatives, he says, is to get “closer to their thinking.”
And he hopes that foundations will open their offices to N.C.R.P. staff members and consultants, who will examine grant makers’ operations and offer suggestions about how foundations can improve their grant making to help disenfranchised people.
Mr. Cohen’s collaborative approach is “a very good idea,” says Terry Odendahl, co-director of the National Network of Grantmakers and an N.C.R.P. board member. But she says she is not expecting big transformations any time soon.
“The foundation world is quite slow to change,” she says. “I think it will be a challenge.”
Ms. Odendahl and others acknowledge that a conciliatory approach was not as practical back in the days when Mr. Bothwell began running N.C.R.P. The organization was formed at a time when the foundation world, having long operated secretly and virtually without government regulation, was reeling from its first painful public scrutiny by Congress. The Tax Reform Act of 1969 had been passed after revelations that many foundations had done little for the public. Many philanthropists still were resentful of government intrusion into what they saw as their private affairs, and the notion that they should further open themselves to the criticisms of N.C.R.P. -- and some of the very non-profit organizations they had long financed -- was virtually unthinkable.
Robert Crane, president of the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, says that mindset no longer exists. In today’s environment, he says, N.C.R.P. may be more effective by providing constructive suggestions than by trying to shame the philanthropic world into changing.
Mr. Crane, whose New York foundation already supports many progressive causes, including civil-rights and environmental conservation, said he was impressed by the idea of turning the watchdog group from a soapbox into a toolbox.
“Rick Cohen is better reflective of the political time we are living in and will have a better chance at being heard,” says Mr. Crane, whose foundation is a long-time supporter of N.C.R.P.
Pablo Eisenberg, one of the founders and a long-time board member of the committee, says it is a mistake to interpret Mr. Cohen’s collaborative approach as a sign that N.C.R.P. won’t continue to speak out forcefully about its concerns.
Mr. Eisenberg, who retired last year as head of the Center for Community Change, an antipoverty group, says he expects that Mr. Cohen will speak out more loudly than did Mr. Bothwell on some issues, such as increasing from the current 5 per cent the minimum portion of their assets that foundations are required to distribute each year.
“I think the role of any watchdog organization, particularly of those that are overseeing powerful, established, monied organizations such as foundations, has to be the willingness to go to mat if you need to,” Mr. Eisenberg says. “If it turns out that in five years Rick has been nothing but conciliatory, that will be a real problem for the organization.”
Mr. Bothwell says he supports Mr. Cohen’s attempts to reach out to the philanthropic establishment in a collaborative way, but he says he has no regrets about his own outspoken approach.
“If you’re an advocate, you can have the correct analysis and the solution; but if you only say it once, nothing will happen,” he says.
He also points out that Mr. Cohen’s ideas about collaboration are not unprecedented for N.C.R.P.
In the mid-1990s, the William Penn Foundation commissioned N.C.R.P. to do a confidential study of how well the foundation was responding to society’s neediest people. Among the committee’s recommendations was that the foundation increase the number of grants made to small groups, which traditionally have found it difficult to attract money from established philanthropy. Not only did N.C.R.P. have the opportunity to show a prominent grant maker what it thought needed to be done, but the organization also came out with a financial benefit of its own. In recognition of that work, Penn committed itself to contributing $25,000 a year to N.C.R.P.
Ms. Ridings of the Council on Foundations says she welcomes such collaboration -- and also welcomes the watchdog group’s criticism, especially if it is constructive. She said she found Mr. Cohen to be “delightful, really quite engaging.”
And there are issues on which the council and N.C.R.P. agree. For example, the council encourages foundations to produce annual reports, though many still don’t. N.C.R.P. believes that annual reports are important for public accountability.
But Ms. Ridings does not agree with Mr. Cohen’s criticism of the proportion of gifts that go to social-change groups. She said the concept of donor choice, which N.C.R.P. championed in its effort to open workplaces to non-United Way fund-raising coalitions, should extend to foundation boardrooms as well.
The effort to open up on-the-job fund-raising campaigns, one of N.C.R.P.'s greatest successes, remains one of Mr. Cohen’s priorities, he says.
Today, federal and most state and local government charity drives allow solicitations from non-United Way fund-raising coalitions. N.C.R.P. reports that in 1997, government and private workers pledged about $310-million to roughly 200 fund-raising federations and individual charities that were not members of the United Way system. That compares with only a few million dollars two decades earlier. N.C.R.P. itself has helped set up about 75 fund-raising federations.
Many give much of the credit to N.C.R.P. and Mr. Bothwell’s aggressive style. The committee made United Way’s hold on employee drives “such a public issue that people couldn’t ignore it,” says Eleanor L. Brilliant, a public-policy professor at Rutgers University.
Still, only 12 per cent of U.S. Fortune 500 companies welcome groups other than United Way to solicit workers. And even some of those do so only on a limited basis. The reason, Mr. Cohen says, is that companies already have relationships with United Way.
“The challenge for the alternative funds is showing corporations that working with them doesn’t make the corporation’s life more complex but makes the charitable giving of its employees more effective,” Mr. Cohen says.
Mr. Cohen also plans to continue Mr. Bothwell’s support of research on philanthropic trends. One new study he wants to commission will explore how the recent spate of company mergers will affect corporate philanthropy. He wants to determine whether the mergers will mean that fewer donations will go to local groups and whether the consolidation of corporate headquarters -- and the movement of company managers away from the cities where they long operated -- is putting them out of touch with local needs. Another priority is to examine complaints by non-profit groups, especially small ones, about the voluminous paperwork requirements of many foundations, again with the goal of finding a way to accommodate the needs of both sides.
And he plans to devote a lot of his attention to N.C.R.P.'s new strategic plan, which the board began under Mr. Bothwell but is waiting to complete until after it receives Mr. Cohen’s recommendations.
All of that, Mr. Cohen says, won’t stop him from knocking on the doors of the people his group is charged with monitoring.
“I’m sure there’ll be people who will say, ‘Get out of here,’” he says. “But I know many people in the foundation world who will say, ‘Gee, Rick, I think this is something we can work on together.’”