Overt Ideology Versus Ideological Neutrality

There are essentially only two ways to do policy work. One way is to take an ideological position and pursue it with gusto. The other is to strive to be perceived as a nonideological, neutral source of information and advice. If you are working for a peremptory foundation, chances are that it will stake out an ideological position and defend it pugnaciously. Very few passive foundations bother themselves with policy work. It is the prescriptive and the proactive foundations, then, that are faced with the tough question of whether to be overtly ideological or to strive for neutrality. Both stances offer advantages and disadvantages to the foundation choosing them.

The ideological stance offers an unambiguous mission. For example, if a foundation is convinced that access to primary health care is a basic human right and that all Americans are entitled to it at no cost to themselves, then its task is clear. Focused on this target, the foundation can ignore any evidence or people not supportive of its views, and zero in on only those data and people likely to move its cause forward. Its focus and discipline allow the foundation to gain and wield a power that is often disproportionately high in relation to the number of dollars that it spends. For example, conservative foundations such as Scaife and Bradley, although outnumbered and outspent by liberal foundations, were consistently more effective in the public policy arena in the 1980s and 1990s because of their focused strategy and zealous adherence to their ideological beliefs.

Although it can undeniably be effective, the ideological stance also presents very real costs. If a foundation makes no pretense of being ideologically balanced, it immediately loses credibility with those of the opposite ideological persuasion and risks losing its credibility with a relatively small but strategically important “nonaligned bloc” between the two camps. If it is too strident, the foundation may find itself only preaching to the choir and could well stir up a counterreaction on the other side of the ideological divide. If so, any gains achieved might be ephemeral, and the counterreaction could even cause the position favored by the foundation to lose ground in the long run.

The ideologically neutral stance is based on the belief that foundations should engage in nonpartisan, nonideological research and testing to promote the common good in society. If a foundation consistently produces work that is fair, even-handed, and unbiased, then its work will be respected and used by people of goodwill from both sides of the ideological divide in order to find ways to improve society. There is also a very practical reason to keep to the middle: in a democracy, political parties come and go from power. Becoming too closely identified with one side or the other will mean that when “your” side is out of power, the foundation will be ostracized. By staying in the middle, the foundation will have influence no matter which party is in power at the moment.

The nonideological stance seems to be a strategy for all seasons, but it is also problematic. At the national level, there is no question that during the 1990s, the post–World War II political consensus largely collapsed. In the late 1990s, partisanship became the order of the day, and critics of the nonideological approach maintain that in such an atmosphere there are limits to the effectiveness of high-minded neutrality. “If you ain't with us, you're agin' us” is the new motto of both parties, so fair, even-handed research can fall into a narrow demilitarized zone between the warring ideologies, lacking champions on either side to put it to good social use. In an ideological war zone, a reputation for neutrality may be hard to hold. Ultimately, the stance of the foundation will be judged by its body of grantmaking, which is likely, over time, to veer one way or another away from dead center. And there is always the chance that critics will judge the foundation's work by taking one or two grants out of context. A single award to Promise Keepers or to Sojourners may brand the foundation as right or left on the spectrum. This is particularly the case in the popular press, when critics are wont to cite only one or two grants to “prove” that the foundation is a haven for either babbling Birchers or malignant Marxists. In short, a foundation striving for neutrality may find itself to be everyone's enemy and largely ineffective in the policy sphere.

No clear winner emerges from this debate. Although ideologically motivated foundations have gained better results lately, it is still an open question as to whether this winning streak will last. Should Americans tire of the bare-knuckles partisanship in the nation's capital, the backlash could swamp the ideological foundations along with the political ideologues. In the end, a foundation must choose a policy stance that is most congenial to its values and sense of ethics. It is likely that both ideological and nonideological Foundations will coexist, however uneasily, for some time to come.