A $130 million commitment by the Open Society Foundations to respond to the coronavirus has drawn criticism from hundreds of the philanthropy’s own employees, who say the organization is leaving grantees in the lurch and not being forthright about how it came up with the money for the emergency fund.
On April 23, 211 Open Society staff members sent Patrick Gaspard and Leonard Benardo, Open Society’s president and vice president, a letter that questioned whether Open Society would honor all of its 2020 grants.
“We grow concerned about our fidelity to this commitment,” the employees wrote.
Gaspard maintains that all grant commitments for the current year will be honored. All of the money for the emergency fund, he says, came from unallocated sections of the sprawling philanthropy’s grant budgets. Many activities the foundation had planned cannot be done in an era of social distancing, and money that had been set aside for those projects would be best put to use elsewhere, according to Gaspard.
The decision to shift resources to a crisis fund, much of which will support humanitarian aid rather than the long-term civil-society and social-justice projects Open Society has historically preferred, came as projections were released that 260 million people globally will face extreme hunger as a result of the pandemic, Gaspard wrote in a response to staff.
“Clearly the choices we make must be contextualized against that landscape of new horrors,” he wrote.
Dispute Over Funds
In their letter, the employees, which included staff members from Open Society’s public health, women’s rights, scholarship, and other programs, criticized the creation of a fund, saying it ignored the “expertise and deep relationships” Open Society program staff had developed with grantees. “The creation of a centralized fund, removed from this deep knowledge base, seems antithetical to the practices and principles needed to meet this moment.”
Among other things, the Open Society staff called upon leaders to include a diverse group of staff members in making decisions on the response.
The letter accuses Open Society of giving a false impression that it was committing new funds rather than cutting grant budgets. Gaspard’s definition of “unallocated funds” includes grants that were verbally committed to, the letter says. By taking grant money away that had been verbally committed to, the foundation ignored the “realities, values, and accepted practices of responsible grant making,” the letter states, adding that any such cuts in grants should be restored in 2021.
The staffers’ missive also said that too much of the response was directed to the United States, with more than half of domestic grants committed to New York rather than the Global South, where the second phase of the foundation’s response is being planned.
Reconsidering Priorities
In his response, Gaspard called the foundation’s reallocation of grants the “furthest thing from abandonment of our fragile partners.” The speed at which Open Society shifted resources during an emergency, he suggested, should be a model for all of philanthropy.
In response to the assertion that Open Society was not practicing responsible grant making by redirecting certain funds, Gaspard said the “history turning” moment of the crisis “has led us to unapologetically reconsider convention.”
He said Open Society leaders had not heard from grantees that are facing an existential crisis as a result of the foundation’s decision to pull unallocated support, but he is confident that if he does, the foundation will manage those cases.
“Nothing close to a majority of our wonderful 2020 grantees will experience meaningful disruptions as a result of the choices we make in this moment of profound global trauma,” he wrote. “They will be buffeted by much harsher winds beyond our control.”
