THE AMERICAN WAY OF GIVING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73-00475R000401820002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2014
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 14, 1966
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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? THE AMERICAN WAY OF GIVING
Afew years ago some officers of the
Ford Foundation were discussing
various ways Ford's millions could gener-
ate social reform. As the brainstormers
saw it, the existing power structure of
business, labor and government was too
firmly entrenched to make really signifi-
cant changes. Finally one officer offered
a simple suggestion: "Let's just buy
Rhode Island" and make a fresh start.
Though Rhode Island wasn't for sale,
the Ford Foundation, which this year
will spend at least $250 million around
the world, would have had little trouble
paying operating costs for the state. Gov..
? John H. Chafee plans to get by on
$188 million in 1966. And the notion of
such ambition by U.S. foundations is not
as farfetched as it may sound. Each year
Ford and the nation's 15,000 other foun-
? dations dispense some $1.1 billion
through a system of organized private
giving for public purposes so potent that
some social historians have called it the
Fifth Estate. Indeed, the dollars they
have poured out have exerted a strong
. influence in shaping the quality of twen-
tieth-century life.
Foundation money helped eradicate
hookworm, yellow fever and malaria in
. many areas of the world (the Rocke-
feller Foundation); built 2,509 libraries
in the U.S. and other English-speaking
countries (Carnegie Corp.); supported
Robert H. Goddard's rocket re-
search when the military could
not see a need for it (Smith-
sonian Institution and the Dan-
iel and Florence Guggenheim
? Foundation); modernized Mex-
-- lean agriculture (Rockefeller)
and sustained U.S. educational
.? television (Ford); developed
. the new math for U.S. schools
, (Carnegie), brought new con-
traceptive techniques to villages
.' in India (Ford and Rockefeller)
and supported almost 7,000 art-
ists and scholars (John Simon
Guggenheim). Even such every-
day items as Pyrex glass and the
. outer white lines on highways
are the result of efforts by the
Carnegie Institution of Washing-
ton and the Dorr Foundation.
Warpath: Despite these suc-
cesses, foundations have often
had to fight to protect their
sovereign status. Congressional
committees, which once sus-
pected that foundations were
nothing more than shrewd
schemes for holding on to great
fortunes, later. worried that they ,
? were serving international Com-
nism. Today certain founds.'
? ~week North 14, 1966 ?
tions are under attack from liberals who
decry the right-wing pamphleteering
that masks itself as educational activity.
Some critics claim that large foundations
are a benevolent-aid society for the
Eastern Establishment: Dean Rusk went
from the State Department to Rockefel-
ler to State, John W. Gardner from Car-
negie to HEW and last week McGeorge
Bundy went from the White House to
Ford. And the occasional abuses of the
tax-exempt status of foundations for pri-
vate gain has Wright Patman of Texas on
the warpath again.
"We still suffer from the old John D.
Rockefeller kerosene trust," the 72-year-
old congressman said last week. "Foun-
dations are perpetuating themselves in
office. It's like feudal Europe." He pro-
poses limiting the lives of foundations to
25 years, a 'remedy already rejected by
the Treasury Department. But in a 1965.
report on foundation tax exemption, the
department recommended tighter re-
strictions on foundation finances, includ-
ing a law barring them from owning
more than 20 per cent of a business.
Slow Beat: Significantly, philanthro-
poids themselves are re-examining the
foundations. "Philanthropy generally is
not attuned to the tempo of the times,"
John D. Rockefeller III said recently.
"We are prone to be too complacent."
One reason for the discontent is the fact
that foundations no longer enjoy a be-
nevolent monopoly.
The Ford Foundation was once de-
scribed as "a large body of money sur-
rounded by a lot of people who want
sane." Foundations in the Great Society
are large bodies of money surrounded by
even more money?that of the Federal
government. In nearly all the traditional
foundation fields?education, health, in-
ternational aid and research?the govern-
ment is now spending more than the
private foundations. And, significantly, ?
much of the money is going for research ?
and development of new ideas.
Turnabout: The government's Na-
tional Foundation on the Arts and the '?
Humanities promises to be one particu-
larly adventurous agency and may even, ;
reverse traditional roles. Arts council
chairman, Roger Stevens, has authority to
finance pilot projects and then ask pri-
vate foundations to put Up matching
funds or take over the projects. While
:foundations claim that they are the ven-
ture capital in a pluralistic economy,
examples like this have prompted critics
to say that government has captured the
lead in innovation as well. Foundations,
In short, are being forced to search for
,new purposes for their billions.
One critic on record that the Federal
government often makes better grants
than private foundations is. the Ford's
.? ? new president, 46-year-old Mc-
? t ? : Ceorge Bundy, who once sought
grants when he was a Harvard
,dean. "Bundy arrives," says a
top. Ford officer, "when a con-
gruence of forces both within
and outside the foundation
make it a critical time to have
a younger man in charge of the
foundation's fortune."
"When McGeorge Bundy was
announced," cracked one staffer,
"a lot of people ran to the win-
dows to jump." But so far
Bundy, who can be ruthlessly
efficient when he must, has f?
been rather genial. At a meeting
with the foundation's officers on
his first day in office last week
he managed, says one impressed -?'
staffer, "to give everybody the
idea we were going places. I've
seen people take over organiza-
tions before, but never with a
tour de force like this." Then
Bundy made a tour of the
cramped Ford offices on New
York s Madison Avenue (the
foundation will move to new
twelve-story headquarters near
?,,United Nations Building
neat:March), introducing hint.
11' '
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Dralthlt 69 Robt. Dam P1069 The N. Toltsir isfaus166.tile
'Just a minute, young man. That's .
not quite the way we do things
here at the Ford Foundation'
?
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EDUCATION
Newnweek?Phil htieMultan
Ford's Bundy: 'Applied intelligence'
' ' , '? .,.'
? .? . self to everyone including secretaries.
.., ,
..? ,'- Nevertheless, some of the jumpiness
among the 147-man professional staff is
?-? justified. Bundy probably will trim
Ford's administrative pyramid to achieve .f ,
greater flexibility. One prospective ap- the family?it would have had to sell' dispensed by philanthropoids (a term ? .'"'..
pointment: the State Department's Da- most of the stock to pay estate taxes . 'coined by former Carnegie Corporation . ,.
..:, vid Bell may come in July to be when they died. The foundation inher- : president Frederick P. Keppel). In '4 ,
, , 4.`... international vice president. .. lied 88 per cent of the Fords' stock major foundations, these men are pol- :',V
?-?.i....,??,-, Lollipops: Foundations can be called (non-voting); creating what may remain" ished specialists operating under defined. ?
.' ? I ' .? trusts, funds, societies or endowments, the world's largest foundation. ? programs. Typically, the philanthropoid
? and they can support anything the IRS ? The major foundations, and the best - is an ex-academic or government bu-
? will allow as charitable, social, religious of the smaller funds, still "advance hu- reaucrat who travels widely looking for
.or educational. The purpose can be as man welfare," but selectively. Founda- new ideas and talent.
..? lofty as Rockefeller's ("to promote the. tions account for only 8 per cent of ' Money Men:, "The philanthropoid is
well-being of mankind throughout the private giving, but their influence has not particularly imaginative," says one
". world") or as circumscribed as that of come from their ability to use money to., former foundation man who has returned
The Lollipop Foundation of America . get at the causes of problems and en- to teaching. "He might have become a
?,; which distributes 300,000 all-day suck- courage more money to follow. "Big dean or vice provost?he's happier in
ers eaCh year to hospitalized children. - foundations like Ford, Rockefeller and - administration." But many are extraordi-
?':- The Benefit Shoe Foundation offers per- Carnegie," says John W. Gardner, Sec- narily able men drawn by the founda-
. sons with one foot single shoes, the retary of the Department of Health, Ed-'-tions' power to effect change, and
.:? Mount Everest Foundation will assist ucation and Welfare on leave from the Harvard's David Riesman claims that
. U.S. mountain climbers, two foundations presidency of Carnegie Corporation, "some of the most reflective men I know
.-. stand ready to help preserve the prairie "have an extraordinary opportunity to are in foundations."
? chicken and the Headache Research ? look beyond crises of the day, dig deeper . A problem for philanthropoids is the
..
Foundation has an obvious mission. And ; and arrive at independent judgments ' ' awe and obeisance of some of the peo-
' "until the end of the world," schoolchil- they can make available to the people.". ? pie they deal with. James W. Armsey, , ?:.
;
,.. dren in Scotch Plains and Fanwood, N.J., If the ends of philanthropy remain. . who administers Ford's lucrative ($277 ;'?, ',Iri :
.-: are promised a scoop of ice cream a year '? ? , ? million thus far) matching-grant pro-. ? ????.' .1,1 : ?0
? ,, ..:1,.
by the Dr. Coles Trust Fund. ? : gram for colleges, ruefully notes that -,,II? ,
.. The most influential contributions, .'every phrase I write is scrutinized and ':
however, have not been made by such dissected for meaning." So strong is 1
% scattered hands. By near unanimous Armsey 's word that one college presi-
.? . . .
? ? ?:.? . opinion three foundations stand out dent admits "there are a lot of us who
-'. above all. "It would be awfully hard to
J would run down Fifth Avenue naked if
.....,--- find any money in the U.S.," claims Uni- Jim Armsey said it would help get one
- .- versity of California president Clark of his grants." Peter Caws, a former offi-
' Kerr, "as well spent as that spent bycer at Carnegie, observed that "wher-,
Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller." ever you go you are welcome, every
'Andrew Carnegie preached a gospel suggestion you make is regarded as a
''',?? - ? of wealth to his fellow millionaires which special kind of illumination from above.
. held that their "surplus wealth" should When I went to Carnegie, a friend told
. r,.. be treated as a "public trust." Before , me, 'You'll never have another honest
.,,,:?.:::: income tax was a problem, ? the immi- conversation again in your life."
grant Scot argued that wealthy people Bishoprics: Hovering around the ma-
'? had an obligation to help those who had for foundations are a variety of special-
' . the talent and will to follow. 1 Ids, usually in the academic world,
Carnegie and other industrial captains
soon found their wealth outstripped
their capacity to disperse it. Concerned
that their philanthropy be capricious,
they seized on the foundation as a way
to spend money as efficiently as their
corporations made it. Carnegie, after
establishing numerous specialized funds,
founded the first general-research foun-
dation, the Carnegie Corporation, with
$25 million in 1911. The Rockefeller
Foundation was incorporated in 1913
with $35 million, later received 8148 mil-
lion more from its founder.
Exodus: Ford, the third member of
the Big Three in foundations, was a
product of post-World War II taxes.
"The man who dies rich," Carnegie had
argued, "dies disgraced." The IRS also- Neveaveeek?rhil MneMulInn
made 'sure the rich couldn't leave very , Rockefeller's Horror: Broad mission
much anyway, causing a mass exodus ?
of wealth into foundation havens. For basically the same, the means have
Henry and Edsel Ford, the foundation ' changed considerably from the days
device offered ? a convenient way "to ' when a John D. Rockefeller could hear
advance human welfare" and at the... about the evils of hookworm and de-
same time keep the Ford company in cide to eradicate it. Now, the money is
,
For fa part, John D. Rockefeller felt
?consult Or. inicrrmally advise the
a religious. obliption to give; but he, Carnegie's Pifer": Smalll anibmtliri "F.acir fotntdation has its
? : ? ? , ? ?.7:
^ t' ? `.? ' ? t. ?. Nearstraek
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bishopric," explains one of Ford's aca-
demic bishops. "If you look at the.
professors on the senior level of any
university you can distinguish to what
bishopric each belongs." Serving the '
foundations this way can be lucrative
in more ways than prestige and access
to grant money. Foundation executives,
says Carnegie acting president Alan
Pifer, frequently make recommendations
for college presidents and deans, and
they tend to nominate those they know.
Each foundation has a distinct style.
Although it is one of the youngest large
foundations, Ford is already one of the
most highly bureaucratized. Graced
with a larger endowment than ever '
before imagined in philanthropy, Ford
has struggled to find a sensible way to
manage its fortune. But while critics
fault Ford for being "bureaucratized,"
Ford has managed to move effectively.
Last year, for example, it allocated
$85 million for orchestras, and it has .
created "satellite" organizations such
as Educational Facilities Laboratories,
.- which tests ideas in school construction.
In the early years when Paul Hoffman
and Robert M. Hutchins ran the foun-
dation, Ford was a whirling picture of
Innovation, liberalism and occasionally
zany grants. "Every now and then the
newspapers would pick up some wild
grant," recalls a staffer at the time, "and
Henry [Ford H] would come in and roar
'Jesus Christ, why can't we be a nice
foundation like Rockefeller?'"
Eventually the trustees found a man
more to their tastes, Henry T. Heald,
who, with a background in engineering,
had proven himself an able adminis-
trator at Illinois Institute of Technology
and New York University. Under Heald,
Ford gained coherency, pioneered in the
U.S. and abroad in poverty, education
and birth control, but, say some, failed
to use all its resources imaginatively.
The Way Up: Ford grants usually
carry a long internal history (page 90).
Every grant must work its way through
a "discussion paper" prepared for the
staff officers in a particular program,
such as education. The next step takes it
to all the officers and, finally, through
the president to the trustees. Trustee
approval of programs or, projects is far
from automatic. The trustees are bank-
ers like Eugene R. Black, publishers
like John Cowles and academic admin-
istrators like new chairman Julius A.
Stratton. "Given this world," says one
Ford staffer, "they are liberal men
among conservatives." "In presenting
proposals," he adds, "we don't make a
grant seem like a breaking-down-the-
barricades proposition."
To skeptics, the system hasn't worked
very well. "It's It contradiction in terms,"
scoffs Hutchins, to say a mammoth,or-
ganization Is going to be adventurous.
Picture the Ford board at a meeting
THE BIG SPENDERS
Foundations with more than
$100 million In assets In
1964 (latest year available):
In millions
of dollars
1. FORD Big money for all fields ex-
cept religion and health 3,871
2. ROCKEFELLER Health, welferework,
much of it abroad 862
3. DUKE Aid to North and South Caro-
lina hospitals, churches, colleges 596
4. KELLOGG Medical training, adult
education, agriculture.
5. MOTT Benefactor of an entire city?
Flint, Michigan
492
, 418
6. HARTFORD (JOHN A.) Medical rs.397
search, kidney transplants, lasers
7. CAFINEGIE CORP. Studies and ex-
periments in education 344
8. SLOAN Stanford, MIT, cancer ra?
search, Negro scholarships 298
9. BISHOP (BERNICE P.) Hawaiian ed. ? 287
ucation
10. PEW Religious, patriotic cause.s;
Pennsylvania charities
264
?
11. LONGWOOD Du Pont's gardens, .
hospital and college construction 401
12. MOODY All to Texas ? churches,
hospitals, colleges
s,
13. LILLY Indiana colleges, Christian
and patriotic groups
242
234
14. ROCKEFELLER BROS. Family charl- ' 210
ties, studies of U.S. policy
15. COMMONWEALTH Medical educa-
tion and fellowships
156
16. DANFORTH Fellowships for gradu-
ates, chaplains, professors . 146
17. AVALON Performing arts, colleges,
medical schools 138
18. WATERMAN Philadelphia youth . 134
groups, hospitals, schools
19. KETTERING (CHARLES F.) Cancer,
photosynthesis research; education 121
. 20. CARNEGIE INSTITUTION Basic sci-
entific research by staff
21. OLD DOMINION Fine arts, mental
health, conservation
22. FLEISCHMANN (MAX C.) Mostly
Nevada charities
23. CLEVELAND First and largest oF
"community" foundations ? 102
113
103
103
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EDUCATION
?it's almost a drain on the intelligence
just to imagine all those weighty re-
sponsibilities they have taken on in so ,,.
many places." And to insiders, the foun-
dation has not always been a happy
place in recent years. Even some ad-
mirers of Heald felt his stewardship
had grown heavy-handed. Heald, who
maintained that a foundation should be
a "cutting edge," indirectly answered
charges that the foundation hadn't been
crtting enough by noting in his last an-
nual report that "a vast amount of social
change consists of skillful, painstaking
Introduction and perfection of 'ideas al-
ready articulated?processes that do not
attract brilliant spotlights." And despite
the fact that the foundation has sold a
large part of its Ford stock, Heald
says that "people at the Ford Motor Co.
were at times just as unhappy as they
could be over some of our actions."
Talent Scouts: Before the rise of
the Ford superfoundation, the biggest
spender was the Rockefeller Founda-
tion. An early supporter of basic re-
search, the foundation has had enviable
success in picking talent: about one-
third of the winners of Nobel Prizes for
science or medicine received, some time
before the award,' Rockefeller money for
their research. Fittingly, the foundation
commands a 42-story-high view of New ? ;,
? tA
York, but in organization it resembles a
graduate school. For a long time the
staff was divided into various academic '
disciplines, and recently the foundation ? .4
reorganized into inter-disciplinary areas, ."
just as the most up-to-date campuses .
have. Even the board of trustees has a
'strong academic orientation?nine of its ?
nineteen members hold positions in col- ?
leges or universities.
,
,?
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. 14.
With at least half of its $33 million :;1'?:",% ?
annual budget going to overseas proj-
ects, Rockefeller has often led the way .
for U.S. Government foreign aid. A ? ,
significant example of the foundation's '4
ability to move years before the govern- '',;`,V.:;
ment was Rockefeller's project in Mex-
ico, which increased corn, wheat and
bean production threefold in twenty n1,.
years. But when Washington is willing,
Rockefeller president J. George Harrar
says he is eager "to collaborate with the
[U.S.] government."
Rockefeller is also willing to join with
other foundations. The International
Rice Research Institute in the Philip-
pines, which may revolutionize agri-
culture in the Far East, is staffed by
Rockefeller, but the $7.5 million starting
cost was paid by Ford.
The Carnegie Corporation, which has
an annual budget of $12 million, takes
pride in its unbureaueratic ways. It
. ? ?
makes , . ' a point of congeniality and ? ? r.
Invention. The :doors at Its Fifth Avenue :
offices are open to grant-seekers. "Car-
? ' !legit)." says corporation secretary Flor- ?
pace ,Andetioq, like' to be cutting
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edge for other foundations. We're
smaller, so we have to be brighter."
Under the leadership of John Card-
ner, whose influence far exceeded the
grants he approved, Carnegie was among
the most imaginative of foundations.
Shortly after World War H, Carnegie
. funded the Russian Research Center at
Harvard, setting an? example for area-
study centers at universities. Other
foundations, notably Ford and Rocke-
feller, have since put their greater re-
sources behind the idea. Carnegie began
supporting new mathematics curricu-
lums a year before Sputnik I 'and paid
for James Bryant Conant's influential
studies of American schools.
The foundation's flexibility has al-
lowed it to react more quickly to small,
Individual requests for funds than some
of the larger foundations. John Kenneth
Galbraith reports he had little trouble
Newsweek?Jeff Lowenthal
Chicago's O'Brien: How to succeed
persuading Carnegie in 1950 to give
him a modest grant to allow him time for
developing one of the first courses on
the economics of developing countries. ?
Full Harvest: Traditionally, universi-
ties and colleges have been a favorite
planting ground for foundation money.
Rockefeller's General Education Board
?,- spent $95 million to help make American
medical schools among the best in the'
world.
. world. Carnegie pioneered in establish-
ing music and art as part of the college
.? curriculum. Ford granted $260 million to
raise teachers' salaries across the nation
and sponsors the National Merit Scholar-
ship Corporation, which gives scholar-
ships to top high-school graduates. It
, also pioneered in teacher education.
Danforth and Wilson fellowships have
encouraged' some of the best students to
continue on in graduate school to be-4
. come college teachers. And individual'
foundation programs in, various
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plines have prodded universities into
new areas of study and, in many ways,
prepared the ground for the multiversity
built with Federal funds.
But foundation dollars can be a mixed
blessing. Foundations, reports Wisconsin
historian Merle Curti, have made uni-
versities become "places where talented
scholars hang their hats while pursuing
the answers to problems of advanced
research." These "executive professors"
with foundation connections can fly
around the world on consulting or re-
search missions almost at will. "The
amount of money you can get for re-
search," says Columbia's Paul F. Lazars-
feld, "is practically infinite." Projectitis,
the disease of obsessive group research,
is growing. Economist Galbraith, who is
a trustee of the Twentieth Century
Fund, is "struck with how scarce good
projects are," particularly since the fund
gets so many requests from "people who
want to be great entrepreneurs of re-
search, sitting on top of a project pyra-
mid. The failure rate," he reports, "is
pretty high." An important side effect
of projectitis, of course, is that teaching
Is downgraded and Berkeley fever be-
gins to spread among students,
Name Game: Nonetheless, grants-
manship remains among the most popu-
lar of academic activities. Like speaking
a foreign language, grant-seeking is easy
and enjoyable for those who know how,
but rather difficult for the uninitiated. A
lot depends on whom you know.
A grant, says master fund-raiser Rich-
ard F. O'Brien, who lured $113 million
to Stanford before taking over the Uni-
versity of Chicago's $160 million drive,
often begins informally. "A faculty mem-
ber has an idea, and when he's in New
York he drops in at a foundation where
there are people he knows. If they
think the idea sounds good, the faculty
member comes back and draws up a for-
mal proposal." For a neophyte who thinks
in modest terms, O'Brien stands ready
to "help him shape the proposals, mak-
ing sure, for example, he has anticipated
all costs, reminding him that he can get
aid for assistants and equipment."
"What it boils down to in the end,"
says David C. McClelland, professor of
psychology at Harvard, "is that if some?
-
one on the inside has confidence in you,
you get the grant. Once you get above a
certain level of visibility, the opportuni-
ties are fantastic."
Though most major universities and
colleges keep a constant check on foun-
dation interests and such friendly con-
tacts as alumni on boards of trustees,
when a school embarks on a major
hunt for capital, foundation-watching
and wooing becomes a major adminis-
tration preoccupation. At the University.
of Southern California, where a twenty-
year master-plan drive for $106.7 million
?
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ANATOMY OF A GRANT.l
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Mrs.Aubrey Potts, 31, of New
Haven, Conn., was having her
troubles. Her rent was unpaid and
her landlord ordered eviction when
? he suspected that 'One of her five
children had set a fire in the apart-
ment building. She lost her driver's
license after an accident, and she
wanted to divorce her husband,
claiming desertion. On a nurse's aide's
salary of $62 a week, Mrs. Potts could
hardly afford the cost of a lawyer to
straighten out the mess. But follow-
ing a friend's advice, Mrs. Potts found
one lawyer, who helped her recover
her apartment and is trying to recover
her license. Another is handling the
divorce. This battery of legal talent
has cost her nothing. In effect, the
Ford Foundation paid the bills by
way of a sizable grant to the Legal
? . Assistance Association, Inc., (LAA) of
;
-15
,
? New Haven, a group of lawyers who
have established storefront law offices
in poor neighborhoods.
The dollars that helped Mrs. Potts
were part of a much larger effort to
remedy a serious defect in the ad-
ministration of U.S. justice. Though
the poor are more apt to get arrested,
they often have no adequate coun-
sel; though they often suffer from the
depredations of loLn sharks, slumlords
and finance companies, they have the
least access to legal advice.
Step One: Few of the legal ap-
plications submitted to the Ford
Foundation were concerned with this 6 .
widespread and depressing situation
when William Pincus joined the foun-
dation's public-affairs program in
1957. Most grant proposals came
from law schools, and the academic
mind tended to look down on the
problems of criminal law as being in-
tellectually uninteresting. And the
foundation itself, Pincus recalls, "had
a tendency to take for granted that
research and education were good.
Rarely was the test from a social
point of view?how to give more ben-
efits to more people." So Pincus, a
former government lawyer with the
born reformer's drive to help the ?
underdog, began a campaign to con-
vince both the legal profession and
the foundation of the need for'
change.
change. In 1959, the first step toward ?
a broader effort was taken with an
$800,000 Ford grant to the National
Legal Md and Defender Association .
?an organization that encourages le.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/01/06: CIA-RDP73-00475R000401820002-1
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LEGAL Alti BUREAU.
IllffER REFERRAL
SIRYICIcouRco St 3Ofl
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Newnweek?netrierd Oottrycl
Legal Aid office in New Haven: Rebalancing justice
gal assistance to persons unable to af-
? ford a lawyer. Ford asked NLADA to
,. set up clinics to interest law students
, in the problems of the poor.
Working closely with NLADA,
: Ford then developed the National
Defender Project to provide more
. direct legal assistance. By. - constitu-
tional right, defendants are entitled
,? to representation in a criminal case;
but in many states, the poor and the
j? powerless were being denied their
rights. Just three months after the
- Ford trustees approved the 82.3 mil-
'lion Defender Project appropriation,
the Supreme Court extended this
.constitutional right to the states in
the Gideon v. Wainwright decision.
The money allowed NLADA to de-
? vise several experiments to demon-
strate what an adequate defense
ought to be like; it also channeled
money into existing legal programs.
In New Haven, paid lawyers set up
shop first in two community schools,
later in storefront law offices. In Phil-
adelphia, a "circuit-riding" lawyer vis-
ited jails and investigated prisoner
complaints of unfair trials (15 per
cent had a case valid enough for the
lawyer to help them file writs of ha-
beas corpus). In Boston, a team of
lawyers and students represented the
? poor in misdemeanor cases, and in
. , Houston a NLADA project may lead
,,? to a state law requiring every lawyer
' ' to take on some impoverished clients.
Full Defense: Many of these cities
were given priority for the Defender
Project money because they were
part of Ford's "gray areas" program,
another imaginative foundation ven-
ture with profound social implica-
tions (it later became the prototype
? for the Federal poverty war).
In New Haven, for example, Ford
workers and city officials developed a
comprehensive anti-poverty program
? which included neighborhood centers
. in the schools, job retraining, and one
of the first big pre-school programs.
This direct involvement in community
action in turn` led to the inclusion of ".?
LAA. Its lawyers provide help for de-
fendants in criminal cases and also
advise people coming to the offices
on all kinds of legal problems and ini-
tiate civil suits when necessary. Pin- ;.
cus was able to get this started by
combining the Defender and gray-
areas funds. Showing the poor how,
to initiate their own suits stirs up op-
? ponents most. "This is sivaying the
? balance between two litigants," com-
plains a New Haven lawyer, also a
landlord. "The cards are stacked
? against the man of average means.
Insurance: But those on the other
? side pass a considerably better judg-
. ment. "I don't know what I would
? have done without it," says Mrs.
Potts. Most,of the 625 persons helped
during the last eight .months of 1965.
had never had legal advice before..
, Says Frederick Danforth, director of
. the project: "We want to teach peo-.,. ?
pie the usefulness of a lawyer."
Another mark of success is
? tion. The Office of Economic Oppor-
tunity has already started similar
projects in 23 cities and hopes to
spend $20 million this year. Predict-
ably, mossback elements in the legal
profession have charged the 0E0 pro-
gram is "fomenting social unrest" and
leading to "socialization" of lawyers.
The Ford men are delighted to see
the government financing what they
started, and they are now thinking
ahead to other innovations, such as a
legal-insurance plan patterned after
Blue Cross. Because of the recent Su-
preme Court decision and programs
like Ford's', Pincus notes, "communi-
ties now have a new category to think
about?justice."
I. Mar .14, '1966
EDUCATION
??? ?
years after its commencement, a black-
board in the office of vice president ?
Thomas P. Nickell jr. gives a daily
bulletin on the school's progress in
matching a $7.5 million Ford grant on a ,;?
basis oi $3 for every $1 of Ford's. "A ?
,
Ford grant," says Nickell, "is viewed as
an international stamp of approval."
The Shadow: But foundations are
finding it is harder than ever to make a ..
real difference. Money doesn't buy as
much as it used to, and foundations are
a relatively smaller source of money in ?
the society than they used to be. .
"Foundations," predicts Cornell presi-
dent James A. Perkins, "are not going to
have the visibility they used to have.
Ford is the only one left with enough
money to go into an area and create a
real change in institutions. But ten years
from now even Ford won't be big
enough to change institutions."
The Federal government' casts the
major shadow over the foundation's path,
and staying ahead of Washington's pub-
lic philanthropy, admits Ford vice pres-
ident W. McNeil Lowry, "is a far more
acute and difficult job in 1966 than ever
before." Foundation ideas are being
pirated before foundations have had a
:chance to work them out, Some of the
cutting-edge thinking behind Ford's
gray-areas program was quickly adopted
by the War on Poverty. The government
has moved in so quickly, in fact, that
foundation officers often fly to Washing-
ton for briefings on what's new.
As politically daring as the Great
Society appears to be, there still remain ?:-;
many areas where government fears to ,
tread or lacks the necessary dexterity.
And even though government may spend
more, foundations can make a consider-
able case for not deserting their former
pastures. "Counter-cyclical giving" is the
foundation phrase for it, meaning that
private money can be used to correct
distortions or fill in the gaps of govern-
ment programs. "I'm becoming a great
believer in competition in the public in- ? '
terest," says Paul N. Ylvisaker, director ;..
, of Ford's public-affairs program.
Appraiser Another option for foun-
dations is the job of public investigator
and appraiser?both of what is happen-
ing with Washington's money and in
other areas of society. The Rockefeller
Brothers Fund demonstrated the possi-
bilities of foundation appraisals in a
series of six reports on public policy in
1958-60, and top Carnegie officials feel
one of Carnegie 's most important roles
In the future may be in evaluations of
government and other institutions.
Of the various outlets for foundation
- money and imagination, however, the
problems of civil rights, and the poverty
and disintegration in the cities may offer
:
?
?
the greatest opportunities, even if most
foundations have ? been slmv in 'seizing
;ihetn...11m inability of .tbe cgovornment
r!!:t
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/01/06: CIA-RDP73-00475R000401820002-1
LLEGIB, euti401 TION
?
to assure civil rights by law and the still
inconclusive battles being fought in the
?? poverty war have left plenty of room for
.; "risk capital" to maneuver, but founda-
tions as a group have hesitated to act.
It is ironic that most foundations
should have been so myopic about civil
rights. The first substantial foundation in
the United States, the Peabody Educa-
tion Fund, spent much of its money on'
Negro education in the Reconstruction.
South, and Carnegie initiated and sup-
ported Gunnar Myrdal's study of the
Negro in America which produced his
? epochal book, "An American Dilemma."
, - But it took the Civil Rights Act to pry,'
loose much money for Negro aid outside
..-?
?
schools. In 1964 all foundations spent
?? -? ? $2.3 million on race relations. The figure;
.,. ? .
.; jumped to a still modest $27 million last.
year. An official of the Urban League,!
which has received some support, feels
foundations "have just been piddling.!
? They still retain the stereotypes. They!
? ? ask, what does the Negro want?"
? ?
Small Voices: Getting out of the uni-1
? versities and into the streets involves1
real risk. "We don't need to do all that'
much more thinking," declares Harvard's;
McClelland, "we need some people act-!
?
Ing. And we need some new types of
Institutions to allow us to bring the
' know-how we already have to bear on
the actual problem." On the whole only
small foundations have been willing to
try. The Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial
Foundation has used some of its small
resources to aid SNCC workers, and the
. - $43 million Field Foundation, in civil
?'?:, rights since 1944, last year aided a pro-
, gram of voter-registration education for
? Southern Negroes and supported a pro-
gram to help communities adjust when
Negroes move into white Chicago sub-
urbs. Taconic and New World are two
.4'. ? other small foundations with imaginative
? . social-action programs. Unfortunately,
these have been only small voices, usu-
, ? . ally speaking without .major foundation
. assistance.
There are hopes that Ford, which has
? supported education and now the arts so
lavishly, will soon accelerate its work on
social problems. It has recently been
? ? ? active in planning projects for the Watts
.?: section of Los Angeles. And McGeorge
Bundy is not a man with patience for
? overextended studies. He has said he
ap-
- ? preciates "applied intelligence"?knowl-
- edge that reflects "a sense of political
- responsibility, with an awareness that
action has consequences." He is likely
to seek the same sort of consequential
thought at Ford.
The foundation has already started to
?
.. ? ??? 'think about what schools will be like in
' the 21st century," a project which in-
volves thinking about what the cities of
that time will be like. Says Bundy,
don't think there's any shortage of pinb-.
?ems, and opportunities for foundations.";
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