PARTISAN REVIEW
143
THE ART OF GIVING
THE BIG FOUNDATIONS. By Waldemar A. Nielsen. A Twentieth
Century Fund Study. Columbia University Press. $10.95.
Perhaps the most intriguing bit of incidental intelligence
provided by Waldemar Nielsen's useful study,
The Big Foundations,
is to
be found in the Appendix in "A Note on Foundation Investment
Performance."
It
turns out that at best foundations do no better in the
stock market than most mutual funds, and he ci tes another study, The
Peterson Report, which suggests "that foundation performance is far
inferior to market performance."
All of which raises an interesting question. Since foundation grants
are really a form of social or cultural investment, why assume that
foundations -- which draw their trustees and boards primarily from the
fmancial community -- will do any better in their nonprofit invest–
ments than in their for-profit ones? As a matter of fact, based on the
evidence of the Nielsen study such an assumption is totally unwarranted.
"Judged on the basis of its present actual performance, private philan–
thropy in the United States is a sick, malfunctioning institution," con–
cludes Nielsen. "On the basis of the record, it is difficult to insist that
the public and the Congress should exert themselves excessively to
defend and encourage foundations."
Foundation favorites, in descending order of the money they get,
are education (frequently to alma maters), science (medical research),
health (three-quarters to hospitals and schools), welfare (usually to
"community funds"), and last and least, the humanities, by which is
meant not writers but libraries, not artists but museums, not art but art
centers. Foundations know how to endow physical facilities which com–
memorate things past but not mental facili ties which can create
The
Remembrance of Things Past.
Giving away other people's money, ap–
parently, sounds easier than it is. Project officers find it simpler to justify
a building than an idea, easier to measure quantity than quality, more
congenial to ratify a plan than a hope. One would think it had something
to do with the puritan heritage of the mostly Wasp officers who make
these recommendations and decisions were it not for the unconscionable
commuting distance between foundation rhetoric and foundation perfor–
mance, between
grantese
and
granting.
An example which borders on caricature may be found in the 1969
report of the Irvine Foundation which summarized the role of founda–
tions as follows :
