In the United States, everyone may enjoy freedom of speech so long as it doesn’t matter. For those who would like what they say to matter, freedom of speech is very expensive. It is for this reason that organizations with a strong sense of public mission but not much money are dependent on the blonde child of capitalism, private philanthropy. Working with this child has its challenges, not the least of which is the risk that the philanthropist will end up dominating the mission of the organizations it funds. According to one source with decades of experience in philanthropy, foundation grants are too often a drama between “gods” and the “little people” who fulfill the destiny of the gods.
Like the system of patronage that served the arts and charity from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century, private foundations have the rarest privilege of all: They do not have to explain themselves. They do not have to justify the origins of their wealth, or how they use that wealth, or what the real benefit of their largesse is. To quote an unlikely source, Steve Forbes has written that “there is one, largely unaccountable aristocracy in American life today: foundations . . . They do not answer to the marketplace or an electorate.”
Generally speaking, private philanthropy gets a pass in the press. I assume that journalists think they have better things to do than criticize rich people for giving their money away, especially when they are funding good causes. But even if it has been mostly voiced off the public stage, criticism of the culture of philanthropy in America, from both the left and the right, cuts deep. Foundations have been described by both wings of American politics as arrogant, elitist, plutocratic, insular, opaque, capricious, inbred, intellectually deficient, bureaucratic, and bewildered. These are surprising but not necessarily hurtful words for private philanthropy, because the people most connected to private foundations already know they are aristocratic and unaccountable and are rather pleased with the fact. These people serve on each other’s boards, share in prestige’s warm mutuality, and make certain that foundations are compliant with the values of the donor class. Moreover, this arrangement is careful to perpetuate itself. According to Stephen Viederman, former director of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation (a foundation that focuses on environmental and economic justice), replacements for departing foundation board members are almost always from the “world of top people” and are of the “same race, class, or occupational group as those who had served before.”
In the end, the philanthropist’s philosophy is this: We are virtuous because we have money. We are virtuous for giving away some of it each year. We give money only to the best causes that fall within our mission. We will tell you what the best causes are. We are under no obligation to tell you why the best causes are the best.
This may sound extreme, but it is not a new criticism. Parts of this critique have been in circulation since the first corporate philanthropic foundations were formed in the early twentieth century. Upon the formation of the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, there was fierce debate about their provenance, legality, and lack of accountability. Observers worried that non-tax-paying entities with massive resources and little accountability would be just another way for the wealthy to turn money into power.
Copyright © 2026 by Curtis White. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
