The Philanthropy That Sets the Agenda
Large foundations fund the research, the advocacy, and often the evaluation. The resulting consensus can look broader than it is.
A foundation with a program area and a long horizon can do something no legislature can. It can fund the underlying research, the organizations that turn research into proposals, and the coalition that advocates for those proposals, over the fifteen years it takes for a policy window to open.
When the window opens, the option that is ready is the one that gets adopted. That is not manipulation. It is preparation, and it is the entire theory of strategic philanthropy, stated openly in the annual reports.
The difficulty is that a field funded largely from one source will look like a consensus even when the underlying question is contested. Researchers who take a different view exist, and they are usually not the ones with a program officer, a convening budget, and a communications team.
The remedy is disclosure rather than restriction. When a report, the organization that produced it, and the group promoting it all trace to the same funder, that should be visible on the first page rather than in a footnote. Readers can weigh it themselves once they can see it.
Owen Blackwood writes for The 13th Bell on power. This piece was edited and fact checked before publication.
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