On Funding
When my Tajitsu grandparents came to this country from Japan early in the 20th century, they never applied for foundation grants to fund their local kenjinkai (community association for people from their prefecture in Japan). Instead, they asked churches or local businesses to support a community activity or ball team. Funding was as local as the needs.
Come to think of it, even my Nash grandparents, going to school and starting a family in the early 1900s in New England, had to raise money the old-fashioned way. Grandpa Nash used a week of his vacation to help the church prepare for the annual bazaar, which was a major source of fundraising. Grandma, her family, and her neighbors helped out as well, providing the energy and the know-how to cook, decorate, and prepare for the many fun activities. In the process, a community was built that cared for the sick, took care of the grieving, and helped families to weather the coming Great War, Great Depression and World War II.
Since I became involved in community organizing in the 1970s, nonprofit groups have evolved, assuming that funds should be raised partly through traditional sources such as membership dues and event fees, and partly from private or governmental foundations.
There are basically two kinds of foundations. Some are funded by corporate parents and help build goodwill for the corporation while reducing its tax bills. Other foundations were set up by wealthy individuals seeking a way to reduce taxes. Individuals or subsequent boards of directors set the priorities for how the monies should be distributed.
The rise of all types of foundations and the resultant rise of foundation-dependent nonprofits is troubling, but on the whole, I’d say that the Asian American community has benefited. Many of these organizations have provided needed health, legal, educational, and social services.
Today, some Asian American groups are asking themselves whether they should accept monies from some corporate foundations whose products or practices they find objectionable. This thought process and this ability to protest or question is consistent with a healthy democracy and a system that fosters corporate responsibility. It is the first step toward a broader understanding of the economic roots of racism, sexism, immigration exclusion, and other unfair practices.
While corporate decision-makers have a right to offer monies to community groups in return for positive publicity for their telephone service or their beverage, groups have the responsibility to ask whether it is appropriate to accept monies from corporate foundations whose products are not appropriate for children, the elderly, or other at-risk groups.
Perhaps part of the problem is that we as a society are fixated on measures of wealth, such as the stock market, but do not have comparable indicators for net social welfare. Although I am CEO of a corporation, I hope my customers and my employees will feel free to talk back to me and help me to walk the fine line between making a socially-responsible profit and making a huge profit that does not take into account the social costs of workplace exploitation, environmental destruction, and other unfair practices.
Each of us must make decisions as we struggle to keep our organizations afloat. The process of discussing how we will do that is an important dimension of our democracy. |
