Conclusion

Foundation philanthropy at the dawn of the new century and new millennium can look back on a proud heritage, but it should instead concentrate on a future that is quickening with power and potential. The big bull market has made foundation philanthropy strong. The intergenerational transfer of wealth will make it large. Venture philanthropy will make it more significant. And intersectoral alliances will make it resourceful beyond the wildest dreams of only a few years ago.

For all of this glory and promise, foundations sometimes fall short of the ideal. Some are too slow to make decisions, some too quick to move on to other things. A few have staffs that are too amateurish, others have no staff at all. Some are too passive, others too meddlesome. Some boards are rubber stamps, others too prescriptive. Some foundations lack imagination, whereas others have grandiose and impractical ideas. An argument could be made that, for all of their wealth and power, and for all of the freedom given them by society, foundations have returned too little value to the nation and the world.

The same critique, of course, could be leveled at pharmaceutical researchers, who often experiment with dozens of ineffective compounds before finding one that can cure a disease. And, just as critics can point to a number of underperforming foundations, so can admirers point to overachieving foundations that have found innovative ways to invest relatively small amounts of money strategically to make significant changes for the better. Echoing Archimedes, foundation professionals might truly say, “Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth.”

It is no accident that the modern form of both the private and the community foundations is an American invention. Befitting a paradoxical nation that fiercely holds to simultaneous beliefs in egalitarianism and unlimited accumulation of wealth, foundations have provided an ingenious way to begin to reconcile these contradictory tenets. Foundations allow private individuals to convert private fortunes into entities that, whether public (community foundations) or private (private foundations and corporate giving programs), explicitly serve the public and strive to promote the common good.

Foundations also serve as the vehicle for “giving back” to society. All living people owe debts to previous generations, debts that they cannot repay in any conventional sense. We all live in houses we did not build, travel on roads we did not construct, visit museums we did not establish, and take cures in hospitals we did not create. All of these are fruits of investments made by others for our benefit, often long before we were born. How can today's citizens discharge these obligations? Abigail Scott Duniway's answer is simple: “The debt that each generation owes to the past, it must pay to the future.” This concept has been formalized by scholar Kenneth Boulding (1973) as “serial reciprocity”: repaying our obligations to past generations by placing future generations in our debt. A foundation is perhaps the highest form of serial reciprocity, for, properly managed, it will repay those debts owed to earlier generations, not just to the next generation, but to endless generations into the infinite future.

What, then, could be a higher calling than to serve that process of repayment? And what could be more important than ensuring that this work is done thoughtfully, spiritually, creatively, and ethically? So much depends on it that it behooves anyone wishing to work in foundations to remember the words of Aristotle, and strive always to serve posterity by today doing work that is rare, praiseworthy, and noble.