Building the Bridge Between Philanthropy and Policy
Building the Bridge:
Philanthropy and Policy 
I have a burgeoning interest in the role of private philanthropy in public policy. In the March issue of the New York Times Magazine, I came across an interesting discussion that offers some insight on directing funds to build policy:
Vander Ark: There’s one other arena that I’d recommend that our philanthropist invest in, and that is public policy. By law, a charitable foundation can’t lobby for specific legislation. But you can hire people to inform legislators and build public awareness and build alliances, and all that is critical. Those investments will protect and support the investments that you’re making in urban areas, and they will also create the future where the small demonstration models you’re funding can be taken to scale through good public policy. This part of the work is difficult. It is long-term, and the returns are indirect. But if it’s done well, it can be super-high-leverage.
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Barr: Philanthropists need to take some time to really learn and understand how the policy world works. If they’re interested in disruption, they need to understand that their disruptions won’t ever really take root unless the whole political ecosystem embraces them. In Los Angeles, we’re trying to figure out how to create political will around the idea that every high school in the city should look like a Green Dot school — not that they should all be charter schools but that they all should be run according to the same kind of principles and they should all achieve the same good outcomes. We decided to create a parents’ union. Everybody’s got a union, right? Everybody but the parents. So we got a group of parents together, some affluent and some nonaffluent, all of whom want the schools to change. And the group has now grown to 4,000 people. There are 15 chapters. If we can get a parent revolt going in Los Angeles, that is the kind of political change that can really move the game.
Klein: But I wonder how much appetite there actually is among philanthropists for this kind of political advocacy. New entrants into the field don’t usually want disruptive strategies. Building new schools and closing old ones, like Gates did in New York, was to some degree controversial. To do a massive 10-year reform piece, which I assure you will be noisy, you don’t do that without a political cost.
Vander Ark: When Bill and Melinda Gates began investing in education in 2000, they were very reluctant to devote any money to policy-related efforts. We did almost none of that for the first two years. But each year thereafter, they became more deeply invested in and sophisticated about public-policy efforts. And by February 2005, Bill was on the stage at the National Governors Association conference, and 35 states signed up for a program to make sure that high schools were preparing students for college and work. That was a big political coalition, and that had a good deal to do with Bill being there. . It was an important political moment in the life of the Gates Foundation, but it took us five or six years to build up the confidence in our ability and our sense that it was the appropriate thing to do. And that was only half-controversial, right? Taking on some of these other issues — working conditions, teacher pay, school choice — these are enormously controversial. And people new to education philanthropy are typically going to be very reluctant to step onto the third rail with their very first step.
Hess: But the reality is that these things won’t change without philanthropy. The problems are too complicated and the politics are too dogmatic at this point. We can’t solve it without outside intervention. We’ll need smart people to invest in solutions that can help illuminate the path forward. At its best, that’s what philanthropy can do.
Vander Ark: There’s one other arena that I’d recommend that our philanthropist invest in, and that is public policy. By law, a charitable foundation can’t lobby for specific legislation. But you can hire people to inform legislators and build public awareness and build alliances, and all that is critical. Those investments will protect and support the investments that you’re making in urban areas, and they will also create the future where the small demonstration models you’re funding can be taken to scale through good public policy. This part of the work is difficult. It is long-term, and the returns are indirect. But if it’s done well, it can be super-high-leverage.
………………………..
Barr: Philanthropists need to take some time to really learn and understand how the policy world works. If they’re interested in disruption, they need to understand that their disruptions won’t ever really take root unless the whole political ecosystem embraces them. In Los Angeles, we’re trying to figure out how to create political will around the idea that every high school in the city should look like a Green Dot school — not that they should all be charter schools but that they all should be run according to the same kind of principles and they should all achieve the same good outcomes. We decided to create a parents’ union. Everybody’s got a union, right? Everybody but the parents. So we got a group of parents together, some affluent and some nonaffluent, all of whom want the schools to change. And the group has now grown to 4,000 people. There are 15 chapters. If we can get a parent revolt going in Los Angeles, that is the kind of political change that can really move the game.
Klein: But I wonder how much appetite there actually is among philanthropists for this kind of political advocacy. New entrants into the field don’t usually want disruptive strategies. Building new schools and closing old ones, like Gates did in New York, was to some degree controversial. To do a massive 10-year reform piece, which I assure you will be noisy, you don’t do that without a political cost.
Vander Ark: When Bill and Melinda Gates began investing in education in 2000, they were very reluctant to devote any money to policy-related efforts. We did almost none of that for the first two years. But each year thereafter, they became more deeply invested in and sophisticated about public-policy efforts. And by February 2005, Bill was on the stage at the National Governors Association conference, and 35 states signed up for a program to make sure that high schools were preparing students for college and work. That was a big political coalition, and that had a good deal to do with Bill being there. . It was an important political moment in the life of the Gates Foundation, but it took us five or six years to build up the confidence in our ability and our sense that it was the appropriate thing to do. And that was only half-controversial, right? Taking on some of these other issues — working conditions, teacher pay, school choice — these are enormously controversial. And people new to education philanthropy are typically going to be very reluctant to step onto the third rail with their very first step.
Hess: But the reality is that these things won’t change without philanthropy. The problems are too complicated and the politics are too dogmatic at this point. We can’t solve it without outside intervention. We’ll need smart people to invest in solutions that can help illuminate the path forward. At its best, that’s what philanthropy can do.