Letters

...Incidentally, all of these timely concerns were repeatedly described to-and byCongressmen and Senators in the public debates on the Tax Reform Act of 1969...

...His implied answer in the negative is that “the old causes...

...2. This foundation and others with whom it is in touch are not “smarting under the new four per cent excise tax on their earnings and the new provisions against taxshelter wheeling and dealing...

...it was made on the merits, as were pre-Act grants to such organizations as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, etc...

...Letters The Case Against Foundations I thought Taylor Branch’s “The Case Against Foundations” was first-rate...

...Its staff has doubled in four years, it spent $43 million last year in overhead costs, its larger grants are made on a handshake basis on the 11th floor, and it operates much like the Department of Agriculture...

...Maclnnes is executive director of the Wallace-Eljabar Fund...

...RICHARD MAGAT New York, N.Y...

...Since this space does not permit an adequate treatment of other fallacies or errors in the article, let me note just two others: 1. The Ford Foundation’s reason for making a grant to the Center for Law and Social Policy was not to “demonstrate that it was still in the business of social change” after the Tax Reform Act of 1969...

...Third, the article leaves the impression that we could probably do pretty well with publicly supported programs...

...Furthermore the article’s repeated sugestion that foundations are living off dusty old justifications is belied by their early and catalytic role in an astonishing array of current social changes somehow ignored or minimized in the article-including legal defense for the poor, preschool education, experiments in school and university alternatives, voter registration of minority groups, new patterns of health care, the growth of a black Southern cooperative movement, and initiatives in population and environmental work, long before either became governmentally popular...

...This giant has special responsibilities because it commands such a large proportion of total foundation resources...

...The fallacy here lies in the notion that because fields like poverty, health, education, population, et al...

...The really unfortunate consequence of that act was to give excuses to people who want to be cautious in their grants anyway...

...have become a public responsibility rather than the beneficiaries of taxexempt compassion...

...Not only is it cautious since the Tax Reform Act (an act brought on largely by the indiscretion of Ford), but it still operates like a small family foundation...

...Its bureaucrats nit pick the $200,000 Chicano grants to death while its multi-million-dollar contributions to the Urban League, Columbia, Harvard, the Urban Coalition, and Brookings go unpoliced...

...It is true that we could do without most foundations, but I would hate to turn to Washington, Trenton, or Sacramento for the replacement money...

...McGEORGE BUNDY New York, N.Y...

...Second, while most foundations are supporting the Boy Scouts and the local hospital, the few that dare to create and innovate are slipping into a new form of incest...

...Moreover in an increasingly critical array of cases we find that it is precisely the fragmentary and bureaucratic character of Federal programs that can give critical importance to relatively small private grants...

...and post-Act grants to other public interest law centers-the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club Foundation Public Advocates, Inc., the League of Women Voters Education Fund, and the Environmental Defense Fund...

...This strikes me as a bit queer after reading with interest your previous articles on public slothfulness and clubbishness...

...The hard evidence against this proposition lies in the huge numbers of appeals for important projects that this foundation and others have received even in the heyday of Federal social expenditures in the sixtiesand receive today with even greater urgency...

...Certainly when I was on the outside looking in, I judged the quality of the Ford Foundation entirely by its willingness or unwillingness to support the bright ideas of the Harvard faculty...

...Bundy is president of the Ford Foundation...

...have become increasingly public responsibilities, government alone can and will adequately do the whole job...

...italics supplied...

...Taylor Branch’s piece on foundations assumes a rather narrow circle of virtue for philanthropic action, but I will admit that I think most people tend to do that...

...Fourth, there are some people who believe the Tax Reform Act was more beneficial than harmful...

...GORDON A. MACINNES, JR...

...And by the way, the contention that legal representation for the poor and consumers had been pioneered by OEO Legal Services and others but was too touchy for the Ford Foundation is nonsense: OEO’s program, in fact, was largely modeled on Ford-Foundation-supported projects of the early 1960s...

...There is also a noticeable “I’m-more-radical-than-you-are” syndrome...

...Magat is director of the Office of Reports of the Ford Foundation...

...Aside from the easy fun-Taylor Branch has with foundations (“chic recessed telephones,’, “Don Quixote in a limousine,” the Ivy League tinge of trustees, etc...

...We do strongly oppose the tax, as a breach in the basic principles of taxexempt philanthropy, but we believe the law’s provisions against the financial abuses of some foundations were long overdue, and constitute a strong assurance that foundations will engage fully and solely in the business the American people expect of themphilanthropic support of worthwhile efforts to improve conditions in a wide range of social, cultural, and educational affairs...

...East Orange, N.J...

...There is a growing tendency for these funds to deal with the same groups and ,individuals and to exclude from consideration those projects that don’t hold out the possibility of a “national impact...

...First, it was too soft on the Ford Foundation...

...he raises a critical issue in “The Case Against Foundations’, (July)-“Is not philanthropy a throwback to less prosperous times...