These partnerships between investors, governments and nonprofits are a new way to pay for programs and services that help people in need and address intractable problems like mass incarceration.
There is a risk that the foundation’s alleged disregard for its duty to serve others rather than one family’s personal interests could become more commonplace.
People may not have a criminal record before they become homeless, but they likely will afterward due to laws intended to keep people with nowhere to go out of sight.
When conflicts over whether nonprofits have kept their word about how they said they’d use big gifts crop up, donors rarely get everything they demand as reimbursement.
When public universities and their foundations take large sums of money from political and strategic philanthropists, they can’t safeguard academic freedom unless there’s some transparency.
Big business influences politicians in many ways. One little-recognized channel is the money companies and their foundations give the nonprofits politicians like.
The tax agency, as it happens, singled out both conservative and liberal groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny. But the myth that it picked on the tea party movement hasn’t gone away.
Associate Professor of Philanthropic Studies and Donald A. Campbell Chair in Fundraising Leadership, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University
Professor of Economics and Philanthropic Studies; Associate Dean for Research and International Programs, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University