Top 10 accomplishments from when Rick Cohen led NCRP

Rick Cohen was executive director of NCRP from 1999 to 2006. Like many of you, we’re shocked and saddened by his sudden death on Tuesday. Here are some of his many accomplishments from his years leading NCRP.

1. Improving Understanding of Social Justice Philanthropy

In 2003, under Rick’s leadership, NCRP published “Understanding Social Justice Philanthropy,” which explained to the sector the concept of social justice philanthropy, its elements and its theoretical framework. The definition of social justice philanthropy put forward in that publication has been widely adopted by the sector, and is the definition used by Foundation Center to measure social justice giving by U.S. foundations. During Rick’s tenure, NCRP also published reports on funding for advocacy and social change in metropolitan Washington, D.C., and in California, highlighting models of funding organizing and public policy change for the sector. NCRP also published research that quantified the state of social justice philanthropy in 2005.

2. Watchdogging Conservative Philanthropy

Rick continued NCRP’s already established reputation as a vigilant observer of conservative philanthropy, whose influence had increased dramatically during the 1990s. Reports examined the role conservative philanthropic dollars played in making policy on welfare and entitlement reform, corporate and environmental deregulation, tax policy and education. This research remains today some of NCRP’s most popular and widely recognized work. It is also often credited with motivating progressive philanthropists to step up their game, which contributed to the creation of influential groups like the Democracy Alliance and the Center for American Progress. In memory of Rick, we’re making these reports available for free download:

• $1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s
• Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Public Policy
• Funding the Culture Wars: Philanthropy, Church and State
• The Waltons and Wal-Mart: Self-Interested Philanthropy

3. Campaigning to Increase Foundation Payout

In 2003, Rick and NCRP advocated for moving more money to charities as Congress considered removing foundation overhead expenses from the payout calculation for private foundations. If Section 105 of HR 7, the Charitable Giving Act of 2003, had passed, it would have effectively created an all-grants 5 percent payout requirement. The campaign earned NCRP scorn from many foundations, and quiet praise from cash-starved charities. Read NCRP’s A Billion Here, A Billion There: The Empirical Data Add Up.

4. Exercising Power and Influence

Rick was named to The NonProfit Times’ “Power and Influence Top 50” list in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. He was regularly asked to testify on Capitol Hill, especially in the lead up to passage of the Pension Protection Act of 2006. He also frequently appeared on cable news and was often quoted in mainstream and nonprofit press.

5. Lifting Up Nonprofit Voices

Under Rick’s leadership in 2001, NCRP joined the Center for Effective Government and other allies in commissioning a first-of-its-kind survey of the nonprofit sectors’ needs and recommendations, and presented them in “The Nonprofit Agenda: Recommendations to President George W. Bush to Strengthen the Nonprofit Sector.” Rick also maintained a strong voice for a nonprofit sector actively engaged in civic and political activity, defending our right to engage in advocacy. In 2005, he spoke out strongly against a bill that would have restricted nonprofit advocacy rights, a bill that ultimately did not pass.

6. Demanding Greater Foundation Accountability

During his time at NCRP and as a prolific writer for Nonprofit Quarterly and other publications. Rick was always a voice for foundation accountability and openness. In 2004, NCRP released Standards for Foundation and Corporate Grantmaking, which urged foundations to be more forthcoming with information on grantmaking. The report laid out a vision for good grantmaking that encompassed many of the values that would later be included in Criteria for Philanthropy at its Best.

7. Sending Abramoff to Jail

Corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff went to jail in 2005, and Rick and the NCRP team helped send him there by exposing his abuse of the Capital Athletic Foundation. The foundation used only a pittance of its nearly $4 million in philanthropic grants and expenses for legitimate charities, essentially buying its philanthropic bona fides with tiny $500 grants to legitimate charities. These small grants camouflaged dubious grants to Abramoff-controlled charities and other clearly inappropriate expenditures such as international golfing trips for members of Congress, including Ohio’s Bob Ney. Ney’s committee jurisdiction happened to include oversight of Capitol Hill contracts of interest to Abramoff’s lobbying clients, who also happened to contribute to the Capital Athletic Foundation. See NCRP’s press release on Abramoff’s indictment.

8. Calling for More General Operating Support

Rick’s leadership at NCRP included years-long focus on increasing foundation funding in the form of general operating support. Rick understood that core support was critical for nonprofit sector health and for long-term systemic change. He and his team at NCRP frequently pushed the sector to give more such grants. Check out The Core of the Matter, Not All Grants Are Created Equal and A Call To Action. Since 2000, general operating support by U.S. foundations has increased from 16 percent of grantmaking to 21 percent.

9. Promoting Philanthropy in Rural Communities

Rick’s interest in the issue of rural philanthropic investment, and his tireless pursuit of more foundation dollars for rural communities, informed much of NCRP’s work during his tenure. In 2004, Rick co-authored Beyond City Limits: The Philanthropic Needs of Rural America, which called attention to this pressing issue. He was a major source of knowledge and guidance behind NCRP’s 2007 report Rural Philanthropy: Building Dialogue From Within, which identifies the common reasons that deter foundations from engaging in rural grantmaking and ways to overcome these challenges.

10. Spearheading Effort to Diversify Workplace Giving

During Rick’s leadership, NCRP continued a push to break the monopoly the United Way had on workplace giving by researching and incubating new models. NCRP produced research on the state of workplace giving in 2003, and on innovative models under development in Miami-Dade County and Northwest Ohio. Since then, workplace giving choices have diversified beyond just the traditional United Way, as reported by Nonprofit Quarterly.

Help us celebrate Rick’s accomplishments and contributions to the charitable sector. Share a memorable quote, anecdote or work of Rick’s in comments below.

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has served as the voice of nonprofits and the communities they serve in philanthropy since 1976.  Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Foundations looking to create systemic change make an expensive mistake when they ignore religious institutions as potential grantees. They miss an opportunity to fulfill their multiple and multiplying missions, one that exists in plain sight.

Religious institutions serve as an intermediary, providing glue between space and ideas. By intermediary, I mean what sociologist Peter Berger meant – they link the public and private sectors. They are rare sources of genuine and uncontrived interaction with community members, the very kinds foundations often say they are funding. They provide much needed space to gather for an astonishingly interesting array of artists, activists, recovering addicts and more. They mediate populations. They glue people to their values. They embody a community, sometimes of 1400 people, other times of 14. They gather and link. They often have enormous assets in real estate and endowments, about which they rarely know what to do.

Some grantmakers focused on social change do give grants to religious institutions, as this Michigan State University resource list shows. However, because most funders are “spiritual but not religious” (much like the wider population), they don’t always see religious institutions as the valuable intermediaries they are. This is no doubt propelled by examples of how closed-minded some religious institutions can be. But many others are open and democratic and hopeful, and they deserve a hand up; they are vital to the task of diminishing the closed-minded fear and hatemongering of those who distort religion. They especially need education and recognition as they manage their assets in a 21st century that is either scared by them or doesn’t “understand them.”

Foundations should not fund the parish itself. Congregations can and should pay their own way. But many places of worship fill multiple functions that go beyond religious services, often providing office and operating space for valuable nonprofit activities. Foundations should support the non-parochial work they do, which can include inexpensively renting space to day care centers, theaters, dance schools, “Stop Stop and Frisk” sign assemblies, fossil fuels suturing events or faith-based community organizing movement headquarters.

Religious institutions also can partner with foundations to achieve greater impact that relates to our shared goals for social change, regardless of whether congregations and program staff share a religious affiliation. Many congregations have “dead” or “inert” money about which they know not what to do. The same is true of the space-hosting value of their properties. My congregation in Miami invested one million dollars of its endowment, matched by a million each from Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Knight Foundation, to bring ACCION International to Miami. ACCION is now giving $12 million in loans per year and has been doing so for over a decade. Together, our organizations made an investment in our missions.

What is expensive? Waste. What is inexpensive? Asset appreciation and investment. Religious institutions and philanthropic organizations have a lot in common. Maybe we should get to know each other better.

Here are six things foundations can do to encourage such partnerships:

(1) Learn about religion from the ground up. Attend worship services in four faiths before you reject the next proposal from a religious institution. Realize that cultural competency includes religious competency. Lessen elitism by moving around in the places where people move around.

(2) If your foundation has an anti-religious policy exclusion in your guidelines, change it.

(3) Think frugally, the way congregations do. A little goes a long way. For example, a $3500 new screen projector could enhance activities for activists, artists, recovering addicts, schools, teachers, students and more, all at once. Activate long-term thinking and imagine how long a small capital gift for, say, a new boiler could assist other organizations you might want to help. With just a little bit of money to build material culture and real infrastructure, religious institutions especially those serving the marginalized, would be able to maintain physical spaces that could provide real value to multiple communities.

(4) Fund the study of development rights, such as for air rights banks and land rights banks, which keep sacred sites from knowing their rights (and selling their spaces, because they don’t have the capital to buy a new boiler).

(5) Become active over the long-term. John D. Rockefeller founded both Judson Memorial Church and The Riverside Church in New York City with a combination of lead gifts and thousands of small gifts. This created a century of leverage and activity that has created positive change for our congregations – the type of change most foundations would be proud to support.

Donna Schaper is senior minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York City.

Of all the rich details in NCRP’s newest report, Families Funding Change: How Social Justice Giving Honors Our Roots and Strengthens Communities, the one that resonated with me most was the description that family foundations see social justice philanthropy as a “political third rail.” So many family foundations seek measurable change – and yet view a key element for it as a subject too dangerous to broach.  However, this misconception is easily changeable.

When family foundations disregard social justice strategies out of caution, they prevent themselves from serving society to the fullest. Let’s face it; most family philanthropists are not interested in reducing homelessness a tiny bit, polluting our environment just a little less, or giving one kid a scholarship. They are in the business of positive social change. They posit audacious mission statements: “end poverty,” “reverse climate change” and “restructure our public education system so all children have access to equal opportunities.”

Families Funding Change shares that, between 2004 and 2012, family foundations classified only 9 percent of their collective grant dollars toward social justice purposes. According to the definition cited in NCRP’s Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best, “Social justice philanthropy is the practice of making contributions to nonprofit organizations that work for structural change and increase the opportunity of those who are less well-off politically, economically and socially.”

The dearth of dollars for social justice philanthropy is a missed opportunity. Yet, there is good news. In the new publication, NCRP identifies seven “perceived barriers to funding social justice” by family foundations – and lays out recommendations for addressing each.

Many family foundations refrain from supporting social justice because they are leery of the legal rules of advocacy, not realizing the rules are actually quite generous. Alliance for Justice’s newest publication, Philanthropy Advocacy Playbook: Leveraging Your Dollars, sheds light on this very topic. The Playbook provides benefits, tips, diagrams and examples for how foundations can effectively and legally support advocacy within their foundations and through their grantmaking. Eleven chapters give foundation leaders the confidence to better reach their missions by incorporating organizing, civic engagement, public policy, voter registration, grassroots work and other advocacy strategies that could fall under the tent of social justice philanthropy. These strategies address the heart of the matter: how to practice philanthropy that matters.

I have witnessed how foundation leaders, who courageously and inclusively pursue social justice philanthropy, end up addressing root causes of problems. In doing so, their philanthropy yields deeper, stronger and longer-lasting outcomes. The NCRP publication cites helpful case studies of leading foundations – Surdna Foundation, Hill-Snowdon Foundation and Needmor Fund — that have championed advocacy and social justice.

As we know, there is no perfect formula for philanthropy, and it is often more of an art than a science. Yet, imagine if 90 percent, or even 50 percent, of family foundation grants supported social justice. Then we might all agree that the political third rail of philanthropy would be the absence (not the presence) of social justice philanthropy.

Christine Reeves Strigaro is the associate director of foundation programs at Alliance for Justice. She previously was senior field associate at NCRP. Follow @CReevesStrigaro on Twitter and join the #FamiliesFundingChange and #AFJPlaybook conversations.