January 15, 1998 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Somehow, young computer millionaires have got it in their heads that when it comes to philanthropy, foundations don’t insist on results.
In explaining the reasons behind the formation of a group of prospective cyberphilanthropists on the West Coast, one electronics executive recently told The New Yorker, “The idea is to look at the giving away of money in a paradigm that people in our industry are used to looking at it — from a point of view where you can recognize budgets and deliverables.” Another told The Washington Post that charities should recruit people who “know how to put together a business plan and demand results.”
The implication, of course, is that the established mechanisms for giving — by individuals and foundations alike — aren’t demanding enough.
In the foundation world, however, the opposite is closer to the truth. Nothing more obsesses foundation officers than results. How to measure results, what in fact are good results, can results be expected in the short term — those questions are the daily dance partners of the grants officer, and the music never stops.
In the field of international security, where I work as a grant maker, “results” are most visible in reports published, conferences held, speeches given, or articles written. It is assumed, perhaps rightly, that those things are valuable enough in themselves to be accepted as good results. That thinking animates non-profit organizations large and small, from the prestigious institute that offers handsome studies, intellect-packed seminars, and global commissions to the small environmental-advocacy group that promises that it will send every member of Congress a copy of its policy paper.
Such standard offerings look like results — “deliverables,” in the idiom of Silicon Valley — but did any of it affect the conduct of war and peace? Did the organizations educate the movers and shakers in international policy making?
A telling moment for me came early in my foundation career, when I asked a respected researcher to do an analysis of how Congress educated itself on defense issues. His conclusion, after extensively interviewing defense aides of members of key committees, was that the sources of information that were used most often — in fact, by an astounding margin — were The New York Times and The Washington Post. Studies, hearings, journal articles, newsletters, and seminars were very far down the list, virtually unacknowledged. I was left with the indelible image of a food chain from the think tanks to the seats of power that is long, entangled, and often broken, with very few nutrients making their way to the end.
Everyone in the business of making grants understands the problem. It may be that new generations of intellectuals and policy makers are trained in the bargain, but even that effect is far from certain. And the information age has compounded the difficulty, because the amount of data that is produced has grown significantly through faxed position papers and e-mailed newsletters, while the human eye can read no faster than it did a hundred years ago. Indeed, the glut of data and opinion makes the old type of “results” more suspect than ever.
Focusing on projects that produce such dubious results would all be harmless fun if it weren’t diverting resources from other, less-conventional projects. In my field, the more venturesome activities are those that deal with conflicts directly through unofficial diplomacy (dialogues, mostly, between adversaries), the building of institutions of civil society, post-conflict resolution, and the like. While ingenious, even courageous, activities are pursued in those ways, the results are extremely hard to measure. As one practitioner says, it’s difficult to take credit for a war that didn’t happen.
Indeed, the results of dialogues, new networks across old boundaries, growing toleration for differences, and the other practices of this new trade are elusive and sometimes ineffable. Some scholars are trying to create benchmarks for such activity, which would be useful, but in the long run, measurements of success tend toward quantification, which rarely captures the actual consequences of the work.
It is not surprising, then, that a number of grant makers spurn interest in this kind of activity precisely because they lack confidence in their ability to see “results.” Instead, they tend to return to the more comfortable precincts of tangible products.
That process, I suspect, is repeated in many of the fields that American philanthropy supports. But the search for “deliverables” is often misleading, and the desire for tangible outcomes often leads to grant making that is overly cautious. Ultimately, such attitudes starve innovation.
We need to think of ways to demand productivity without relying on inappropriate standards. Beneficial results take time to unfold, and the perceptive grant maker must be able to appreciate that unfolding for what it is.
The image of the grant maker as entrepreneur, so often invoked among the new cyberphilanthropists as a longed-for ideal, is not far from the current reality. We do make investments, mainly in people as well as ideas, and we hope to score a payoff. But the metaphor has been in fashion longer than desktop computers, and it’s no longer of much use.
And it may be even less useful for people from an industry who scored their fabulous fortunes almost overnight. Social change is harder, more complex, and less certain than writing even a million lines of code.
John Tirman is executive director of the Winston Foundation for World Peace, in Washington.
