A fundraiser asks why nonprofits and foundations aren’t speaking out about philanthropic reform

Hildie Lipson recently left a long career in fundraising in Maine (she’s still working for good causes!), and we think you’ll find her letter compelling:

I have worked in nonprofit fundraising in Maine for 35 years, and I’m so glad to find the Philanthropy Project. I see many familiar names on your Working Group – people whose work I have read for years.

My concern is that we are not seeing any kind of response, in New England anyway, from the philanthropic sector to our immediate crisis of threats to our democracy, civil rights, planned climate decimation, and all the rest. We need a strong, urgent campaign to demand not a 1% or 2% increase in giving, but giving to make real change in the short amount of time we have.

We need a massive and immediate increase in the giving rate of foundations to support the organizations and people fighting for our rights. Vu Le has made this argument for years. Where is everyone else? I am not a funder. I don’t serve on funding boards. I am one of the thousands of former development directors who worked for many years, groveling for grants. How can we promote this message?

And why aren’t more nonprofit leaders and nonprofit associations speaking up?

I don’t have a good answer to this question.

In fact, one of the reasons I got out of fundraising was that I no longer had the stomach to explain to a wealthy foundation trustee why they should fund advocacy (“Our trustees don’t like advocacy…” he said, from his midtown Manhattan well-appointed law office). How else do good laws get made to help people?

I know nonprofits fear offending the funder. Maybe we need the board members of nonprofits to be the ones speaking out. They don’t have as much to lose, generally. And funders shouldn’t have such thin skin. They are the ones in positions of power and I’d like to believe they are open to hearing from the orgs they fund and other potential orgs.

But I know better. For instance, a local community foundation is sitting on $732 million in assets. And once a year, they have an open application that any nonprofit can apply for, for the maximum of $10,000. It’s insulting.. That program gives away maybe $2 million a year. And usually the grants are only for project funds.

So what are they saving for? A rainy day? It’s storming and hailing, and the winds are over 60 MPH!

We need to work with our state nonprofit associations and with associations in our fields to promote what the funders are doing to respond to this moment. It’s a frightful time, and all of us are thinking about what risks we can and/or should take as individuals and as organizations. I hope that in three years we aren’t all looking back and thinking we should have said something.

Q: Amen, Hildie

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