Civic Life and Economic Opportunity: How Philanthropy Can Help

In the second of two briefings about the future of American democracy, three experts joined the Chronicle to share insights from essays they wrote for a collection commissioned by the Kettering and Knight foundations. The foundations asked leading thinkers what philanthropy should do in the long haul to strengthen democracy and civic life in this country.

Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle, hosted the most recent discussion and began the conversation by asking the authors to explain the premise of their essays.

Safiya Noble, co-founder and co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, said her essay shines a light on the ways that foundations decide which societal problems warrant investment, whose ideas get supported, and who gets left behind. Philanthropy operates a lot like the tech industry, she says, where a few big ideas and a small band of people get financed, so only a narrow set of ideas reach fruition.

In the same way that technology hasn’t lived up to its promise to advance democracy and equality, philanthropy has also fallen short, Noble argues. In these times of political instability and economic inequality, philanthropy must make room for those in society whose voices are not being heard and for those who have not benefited from our economy.

“We need to make a significant amount of space for the people who have the least power in our society, “Noble says, and philanthropic institutions should acknowledge that their wealth often stems from the inequitable use of resources. To right these wrongs, Noble says, “it’s time for philanthropy to confront some of these [issues] in its past and really open up new protocols and new possibilities for the future.”

Brian Hooks, head of Stand Together and president of the Charles Koch Foundation, argues that the problems with our nation’s democracy should be addressed from the bottom up, that they stem from deeper challenges that limit people’s ability to realize their potential.

Institutions can help or hinder people’s quality of life, he says. They influence education, business, safe communities, and government policy. While acknowledgingthe erosion of faith in institutions, including the government, headvocates for fixing shortcomings in these areas to strengthen democracy and enable everyone in society to thrive.

Frank Fukuyama, director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, put his focus on the ways government needs to work better — and says philanthropy could do much to ensure that talented people see public service as a great career choice. The Covid epidemic has shown that “civil society, philanthropy, the private sector, they can all do useful things. They can make a contribution,” he says. “But some of the biggest challenges are actually ones that can only be met by the government. And therefore you have to have both philanthropy and civil society and the private sector working [together].”

The notion of public service is “an ideal that has been denigrated in recent years,” he says, but philanthropy can help restore belief in public service as an admirable career path and foster respect for people “who give back in ways that may entail personal sacrifices over a long period.”

Listen to the whole conversation, including an audience Q&A, below:

Read the full collection of essays, Democracy and Civic Life: What Is the Long Game for Philanthropy, and watch the first briefing, which was held on November 16.