Foundation People who Blog: Do Not Embarass the Interlocked Board of Your Foundation!

Project Censored via Arcadia Financial:

August 3, 2007 | The Project Censored team researched the board members of 10 major media organizations from newspaper to television to radio. Of these ten organizations, we found there are 118 people who sit on 288 different American and international corporate boards proving a close on-going interlock between big media and corporate America. We found media directors who also were former Senators or Representatives in the House such as Sam Nunn (Disney) and William Cohen (Viacom). Board members served at the

FCC such as William Kennard (New York Times) and Dennis FitzSimmons (Tribune Company) showing revolving door relationships with big media and U.S. government officials.

These ten big media organizations are the main source of news for most Americans. Their corporate ties require us to continually scrutinize the quality of their news for bias. Disney owns ABC so we wonder how the board of Disney reacts to negative news about their board of directors friends such as Halliburton or Boeing. We see board members with connections to Ford, Kraft, and Kimberly-Clark who employ tens of thousands of Americans. Is it possible that the U.S. workforce receives only the corporate news private companies want them to hear? Do we collectively realize that working people in the U.S. have longer hours, lower pay and fewer benefits than their foreign counterparts? If these companies control the media, they control the dissemination of news turning the First Amendment on its head by protecting corporate interests over people.

What is missing in the report is the board interlock between corporate media, corporate America and foundations, including think tanks. Dr. Joel Orosz, founder of The Grantmaking School, writes:

Since foundations are undisciplined by the market, electorate, or funders, their only impetus for improvement comes from their (generally) self-perpetuating board of trustees. If you are a foundation leader, your imperative thus is a simple one: keep the board happy, and you will keep your job. So, what makes a board happy? The answer is easy: pride-inducing success. What makes a board unhappy? The answer is equally easy: embarrassing failure.

Perhaps we can now understand the bland tone and tenor of so much philanthro-blogging. The more connected the blogger, the more they know, the more polite and innocuous the posts.  I used to think that the simpering, upbeat prose of the best positioned philanthropy bloggers was a peripheral issue. I assumed they were good kids growing up, well raised, teacher pleasers, who had gravitated to safe, prestigious,  inside work. But now I realize that "not embarrassing the Board" - not embarrassing the interlocked Board - is the name of the game and is actually taught to them as the prime directive in their Grantmaking School!  Root Causes in Pinstripes sit on the Board.  We have the solution reporting to the problem.  Offline, some philantro-bloggers email me in anguish, caught in the bind between expressing what they feel and remaining chipper, upbeat, and inoffensive.  So far good career sense is winning out over truth. The Emperor on the Board is always well-dressed.  I name no bloggers and do not link because the smiling  cubicle slaves are my friends. Their emotional labor is much to be pitied. On their tombstone may it be written, "At least they Never Embarrassed Candida Cruikshanks." 

UPDATE: Please not the kind comment from Dr. Orosz in the comments below. I am afraid he has embarrassed me a bit in front of my boss, Candidia, but she is going to let me off with a beating. She made me apologize to him for getting the facts, including his name, wrong. But she also asked me to convey to him that she will not be pleased if he teaches foundation people to take her lightly.  "Embarrass me at your own risk, Joel. Unless  - what? You have tenure? Another reason I as a trustee at Grand Valley State support American Council of Trustees and Alumni. We are going to get you tenured radicals thrown out on your behinds. Remember Ward Churchill."

Comments

[Joel J. Orosz]

Being a professor, I feel compelled to correct a couple of errors in Candida Cruikshanks' August 4 post, "Foundation people who blog." First, my last name is spelled Orosz (not Oroz), but I can hardly hold that against her, since I have relatives who've never mastered the intricacies of Hungarian spelling. Second, and far more important, Ms. Cruikshanks completely misunderstood the quotation from my new book, "Effective Foundation Management," about CEOs avoiding embarrassing their board members at all costs. I was criticizing that practice, and Ms. Cruikshanks thought I was endorsing it. In fairness to her, the context will be much clearer when she can read the entire chapter in which the quote appears. As the founder of The Grantmaking School, however, I can't let stand her comment that not embarrassing the board "is actually taught to them as a prime directive in their Grantmaking School." Actually, The Grantmaking School teaches just the opposite approach, as its hundreds of graduates will attest. I'm happy to say that Ms. Cruikshanks, The Grantmaking School and I are all on the side of the angels on this issue--none of us will never mindlessly be, in her own words, "chipper, upbeat, and inoffensive."

[Phil]

Thank you. Joel. My apologies for misspelling your name. I have sent away to Amazon for a copy of your book. Thank you very much for your good natured reply. I am truly pleased to learn of your true views and what you teach. How does one, I wonder, work effectively in such an environment, where certain things might embarrass the board, given their class position, political views, personal business affiliations, etc? That must be a conundrum. We all live in such a world, and some of us call it Wealth Bondage, seeing Candidia as the personification of an upper class without class that we embarrass at our own risk. I am very glad to have you as a kindred spirit in the struggle and appreciate your dropping by to comment. I will correct the spelling of your name. Sorry.

[Joel J. Orosz]

Dear Phil:

Not to worry about the misspelling. The "sz" on the end of Orosz has a specific meaning and function in Hungarian, but it just hopelessly confuses both spelling and pronunciation in English. And I'm always happy to have a thought leader in philanthropy order a copy of my book! The dilemma you identify--wealth bondage--is at the center of both my book and what we teach in The Grantmaking School. The ideological differences between program officers and the board members to whom they report are often profound. The extreme reactions--surrendering your own principles, on the one hand, or getting fired for insubordination on the other--are both unproductive reactions. Neither the book nor the School can offer a magical solution to this dilemma, but we do advance some practical tips for keeping both your self-respect and your job. We advise program officers to choose their battles wisely; to compromise on the margins; to be politley, but relentlessly persistent in championing core values; to select their words carefully (semantics do matter); and to keep the battles on the terrain of data and the common good, not on the terrain of emotion and ideological contention. Given the realities of the power dynamic, program officers will unboubtedly end up compromising more than will board members, but when I was a program officer, I was able, by using these methods, to get support for enough people and organizations I believed in to keep at it for 15 years (and to leave for academia under my own steam)! I surely don't want to trivialize the problems this dilemma causes, but do believe there are ways to manage it so that you don't become the victim of it. Many thanks, Phil, for providing a forum to debate this vexing, problem. I'm sure that our collective wisdom will help us to find a way through the snares.

[Phil]

Joel, thank you so much for the candid and revealing comment. I look forward to reading your book. I can identify with your remarks, about doing what one can at the margins while remaining employable. Very few in my experience can illuminate a moral dilemma or power dynamic from within. Somehow our own consciousness is affected and we begin to half-believe our own alibis. Your clarity and wisdom are a relief.

Your insight that foundations are indeed accountable; that is, accountable to their board, is stunning in its obviousness, now that you point it out. To whom, then, is the board accountable? To the public interest as they and their staff interpret it. And therein lies the torsion, I guess, that allows good staff to justify good programs, even if they are a little against the grain of the board.