Heron Calls for A New Model Of Philanthropy

 

The Heron Foundation today is calling on its philanthropic peers to jettison outdated operating models that leave resources untapped in the face of systemic social ills. In a treatise entitled “Building a Foundation for the 21st Century,” Heron President Clara Miller makes the case that the modern economy demands a different practice of philanthropy, one that makes use of all of its resources to actively engage with the capital markets for the public good.

 

Heron, whose mission is to help people and communities help themselves out of poverty, is among a growing number of institutions and investors working to advance the practice of philanthropy to match the needs of modern society. Many U.S. philanthropic institutions today are structured to meet—and rarely to exceed—the IRS requirement of five percent minimum annual charitable payout.

 

Miller’s essay comes as number of bold moves have brought new attention to the philanthropic sector and its relationship to the economy at large. The Ford Foundation’s President Darren Walker announced a new strategic direction focused on inequality, while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg pledged the majority of his wealth toward fixing social ills, making the deliberate choice not to do it via the rubric of a traditional private foundation.

 

Miller writes, “Baked into [the traditional philanthropic] structure is the sacrosanct belief that mainstream profit-making cannot be philanthropic and philanthropy cannot be market-connected, that grants could not be available without the profits that only unfettered capitalism can provide, and that furthermore, the best use of philanthropic grants is to finance nonprofits to be a cleanup crew for the inevitable mess real capitalism leaves in its wake.”

 

She explains that a shift is necessary if philanthropies are to avoid undermining with their investments the progress they are making via grants, and lays out the changes Heron is making in its own operations. In 2012 Heron first declared its quest to deploy 100 percent of its investment capital toward its poverty fighting mission, without becoming a “spend-down” foundation—which was considered a groundbreaking approach at the time. With experience of working toward that goal, Miller appeals to foundations to abandon the common practice of separating grant making from endowment investments, and to instead merge mission and finance functions into a single office of philanthropic capital deployment, looking at both the financial and social impacts of every outlay of capital.

 

Heron presses peers to recognize that every enterprise impacts the environment and society in the course of its business, through its products and services, treatment of workers, supply chain and more. Therefore all investing also has impact, whether positive or negative, and thus investing for impact is not limited to a particular asset class or enterprise type, but implies understanding and improving social and environmental outcomes across an entire portfolio. For Heron this means maximizing the opportunity to improve economic outcomes for workers and businesses, and the communities in which they operate.

 

Specific calls to action in the essay include: