Elitist Grant-Making Practices Stand in the Way of Equitable and Effective Public Policy

Not so long ago, many grant makers avoided funding public-policy and advocacy work. But as the systemic nature of issues such as economic inequality and climate change became harder to ignore, philanthropy slowly started shedding some former practices, including its reluctance to fund organizations focused on policy change.

As the former head of one such public-policy organization, Next100, I applaud the entrance of new donors and greater investments in this arena. But I have also witnessed how the way foundations fund policy nonprofits, such as think tanks and advocacy groups, affects how these groups operate — often to the detriment of equitable and effective public policy.

Foundations typically fund what they know. In the policy world, this means grants flow to established groups staffed by the very people who are likely to work at, say, a major foundation — individuals with elite credentials, prestigious graduate degrees, and traditionally impressive résumés, often with stints in government. A recent review by Next100 of job openings at 19 leading think tanks, such as the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution, found that 12 required or preferred a graduate degree for the vast majority of upper-level policy roles — requirements that serve as a barrier to employment but often aren’t necessary to do the job well.

The result is that the policy organizations funded by philanthropy tend to mirror and exacerbate the exclusionary nature of the field over all. These groups are disproportionately white, elite, and well connected. They don’t reflect the diversity of the country, much less the communities that bear the brunt of policy decisions. And a lack of data and transparency means the full extent of the problem is not known. Just 37 percent of the 19 think tanks Next100 analyzed made their staff demographics public. Of those, two-thirds or more of the leadership team identified as white at five of the six organizations.

This has real consequences for how public policy gets made — for which voices are heard and whose interests are served. When public policy is developed by those who already hold power and privilege — even those with good intentions — and excludes input from people most affected by those policies, outcomes inevitably fall short. Philanthropy helps fuel this dynamic.

Donors not only influence who gets funded but what type of policy work gets supported. In many cases, foundations have their own pre-existing policy goals and focus their policy investments on meeting them. That can make it hard for groups developing novel or unconventional policy agendas to get funding.

When I helped launch Next100 in 2019 with an initial investment from the Century Foundation, we were given the resources and autonomy to create a different type of think tank — one that put people who are usually excluded from the policy-making process in the driver’s seat. We recruited and hired differently. We trained and developed talent differently. And we took a different approach to our research and policy development.

Rather than searching top grad schools for job candidates, we found and hired people such as Michael “Zaki” Smith, a D.J. and formerly incarcerated activist on a mission to end the perpetual punishment faced by individuals with a criminal record. Instead of producing another think tank white paper, Smith installed public art murals across Brooklyn to raise awareness of the collateral consequences of incarceration and help bolster support for New York’s Clean Slate Act, which passed in the state Senate in June. To advance immigration justice, we brought on Rosario Quiroz Villareal, a former DACA recipient and teacher, whose policy recommendations were rooted in the real-life experiences of undocumented families like her own.

A handful of other think tanks and advocacy groups are taking a range of approaches to diversify the policy field. They include groups such as Pay Our Interns, which advocates for paying policy interns to make the positions more widely accessible, and the Policy Academies, which is training a diverse new generation of public-policy researchers.

But organizations such as these could do so much more if grant makers backed up their professed support of inclusive and equitable policy with investments in the groups and individuals best equipped to develop that policy. The following steps can help foundations reorient their thinking about what investing in policy change can and should look like — and fund accordingly.

Reconsider how policy expertise is defined. By prioritizing traditional elite organizations, individuals, and credentials, donors create incentives for the policy community to hire as it always has, sending the message that expertise comes through academic and government experience — not lived experience. Instead, grant makers should look closely at the policy organizations they fund and determine which voices are represented and who is left out. They should consider what types of flexibility and incentives will encourage an organization to hire people with more diverse experiences, who offer new ways of thinking about public policy.

If lived experience is truly a valued credential, foundations should communicate that message to grantees by asking them, for instance, to report on their staff’s personal experiences with policy, not just provide demographic data. Grant makers must be willing to invest in people who may not have the necessary skills or connections on day one but who can develop them with sufficient support.

Allow people and organizations to create their own policy agendas. When grant makers limit funding to organizations that will advance their preordained policy goals, the targets of those policies often end up serving as the face of an agenda they did not develop. It’s not enough to ask a formerly incarcerated individual or Native youth to speak at a press conference unveiling a new policy they played no role in developing. Donors need to be willing to support policy leaders and organizations that don’t have set solutions — those that may want to first get input from affected communities about the types of solutions that should inform their policy agenda.

Invest in leadership development, training, and human resources. Foundations need to provide policy organizations with money to recruit in new communities, develop more sophisticated and unbiased hiring approaches, and offer training and professional development to help people learn how to do policy work while on the job.

Most policy organizations do little recruitment beyond posting a job on an official website where those who aren’t already in the field are unlikely to look. They need the funds to hire human resources staff who can take the time to reach out beyond the usual networks. Similarly, few provide the professional development necessary to support advocates and thinkers who may lack grad-school degrees or previous work in the policy world but have a wealth of other experiences vital to the field. These organizations need donor dollars to develop internal training programs or to partner with outside groups that can help staff learn the additional skills necessary to do their jobs well.

Policy and advocacy nonprofits aren’t off the hook, either. They must be willing to change how they recruit, hire, and develop talent and how they engage affected communities in policy work. They should be vocal in making the case — both through their internal budget priorities and to donors — that the additional resources needed to make policy development equitable and inclusive are worth the investment.

Philanthropy must stop perpetuating the exclusionary elitism in the policy field that prevents the development of effective public policy. Instead, donors should use their significant power and influence to shift the status quo about how public policy gets made.