Roundtable Betrays Its Own Values of Philanthropic Freedom
CONTACT(S): Russell Roybal rroybal@ncrp.org
Jennifer Amuzie jamuzie@ncrp.org
By defining themselves as the champion of philanthropic freedom in an era of censorship and liberal overreach the Philanthropy Roundtable has attracted $67 million dollars of private foundation support and $13 million via DAFs since 2006. They have never been shy about declaring voluntary philanthropic reform efforts a compulsory menace to the pluralist American tradition. As late as 2014 the Roundtable was suggesting that NCRP, then as usual promoting voluntary standards for philanthropic excellence, were “dangerously close to calling for regulations and legislation that would mandate how and to whom donors may give.” Efforts like NCRP’s, the Roundtable said, would “stifle and suffocate” charitable excellence. The Roundtable’s campaign to make philanthropy per se above public critique or regulation reached its apex in April of 2023 when, after a wave of backlash to the largest mass mobilization for racial justice in generations, a most unlikely and much remarked upon combination of high profile, powerful names appeared alongside more fringe anti-reform ones under the signature line of an open letter to the sector which urged the field to “not question the underlying legitimacy of any foundation or philanthropist holding a particular view” and to “assume that those involved in philanthropy have the best intentions.” The wealthy donors trying to use their philanthropy to subvert democracy are also in many cases Philanthropy Roundtable donors.
Over more than a decade, the Philanthropy Roundtable has stoked the fires of fear that someday someone from the government might tell philanthropists what kinds of work they could and could not support – which bits of the rich tapestry that makes up our vibrant civil society were within and without the law – and they’ve used the combustion to power an anti-accountability engine for their regressive donors.
And yet now that an administration aligned with their donors’ interests is threatening an inquisition and pretending that by fiat they can make racial equity grantmaking illegal, the author of the Roundtable’s 2020 anti-diversity “toolkit” is the director of human resources for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that has moved agency to agency, ransacking the federal government and installing political commissars. And at February 2025’s Foundations on the Hill, the sector’s annual lobby day, and generally with PSO colleagues, the Roundtable presents itself as a staunch defender of philanthropy – a shield for “freedom,” “personal opportunity” and “donor privacy” in an era of existential threat. Yet the existential threat they envision is not HR 9495, or the revoking of c3 status of nonprofits and foundations that defend civil rights. It’s not the government grant freezes that dwarf philanthropic resources, hurting the most vulnerable communities philanthropy serves. It’s not executive orders weaponizing white fragility to destroy fragile progress around diversity, equity and inclusion among foundations and in public institutions. Their concern is much narrower: the specter of new taxes and DAF oversight as Republicans look to pay for yet another short-sighted round of tax cuts for the rich. When challenged about this hypocrisy, the Roundtable claims they have to lay low and preserve their seat at the regime’s table. Yet they have already picked their battles and made their priorities clear in public; there’s little evidence they are a champion for the sector’s truly deepest needs behind closed doors. Even worse, the Roundtable themselves have welcomed the President’s inquisition.
Probably no one is more shocked about the Roundtable’s betrayal of philanthropic freedom than their mainstream foundation supporters. The Philanthropy Roundtable has an annual budget of $11 million, which is 3 times larger than NCRP’s. Most of The Roundtable’s foundation funding over the past decade has come from predictable places. Foundations like Bradley, Searle, Templeton, and Anschutz have always dedicated their giving to advancing a right-wing policy agenda. But thanks to their savvily cultivated image the Roundtable’s anti-DEI crusade was underwritten to the tune of millions of dollars by some much more mainstream, well-respected names.
Foundations with otherwise pro-social funding commitments in areas like health, shared prosperity, climate resilience, and even democracy justified giving to the Roundtable because they believed them when they claimed to be defenders of a philanthropic freedom threatened by the forces of reform – forces the Roundtable worked hard to associate in every philanthropist’s mind with rousing the rabble. The tax-preferred status of multi-billion-dollar endowments is a valuable interest to protect, and perhaps some feared a little criticism and scrutiny would lead to more than the sector’s political capital could sustain. Some foundations simply thought of it as funding both sides of a heady debate about tax policy. Whatever might have been the rationalization, it should be clear now in the light of a newly authoritarian dawn in US civil society that those millions of dollars in mainstream foundation support for the Philanthropy Roundtable were misguided, and they have done real damage to the prospect of free philanthropy in the USA. Whatever the Roundtable may have said about the threat to civil society posed by an imaginary imperious Left, it is they who have welcomed an American Emperor’s assault on the freedom to associate and give without fear of retaliation from the state.
