Abstract
We address the long-standing debate between elite theorists and pluralists about the priorities and scale of foundation funding for social movements by examining systematic data on foundation grants to environmental movement organizations (EMOs) between 1961 and 2000. By combining these data with a comprehensive inventory of EMOs that operated in this period, we show that foundation giving favored conservative mainstream environmental discourses, EMOs that avoided protest, older EMOs, and those located in the northeastern seaboard. Despite major growth in the constant dollar value of foundation giving to EMOs, this remains a highly concentrated system of philanthropy with over half of all foundation grants going to the top 20 grant recipients, a third of which have been leading recipients for over five decades. Nonetheless, there is evidence of change in that alternative discourses, especially environmental justice, received over 5% of these grants in 2000.
Foundation funding for social movements has long been a source of controversy and debate. Several have focused on the supportive and beneficial effects of foundation funding, arguing that organized activities require resources, including financial resources, to pay for facilities, full-time staff, and other activities (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004; McCarthy & Zald, 1985). The availability of outside resources, including grants donated by foundations, is treated as critical to initiating and sustaining mobilization. Research has shown that foundation funding and support contributed to the creation of new advocacy and organizing efforts by the “public interest” movement (Berry, 1977; Walker, 1991) and the environmental movement (Carmichael, Jenkins, & Brulle, 2012; McLaughlin & Khawaja, 2000). Similarly, foundation donations and financial and political support from other groups, such as churches and other nonprofit organizations, have contributed to the viability of social movement organizations (SMOs) by sustaining and legitimizing their efforts (Cress & Snow, 1996; Edwards & McCarthy, 2004). Speaking of the rise of the new environmental groups in the 1960s and 1970s, Bosso (2005, p. 39) concludes that “the environmental movement survived its tumultuous birth because of organizational patronage (by older conservation organizations and foundations) rather than mass citizen support.” Furthermore, some argue that foundation patronage can contribute at least indirectly to favorable movement outcomes by providing legitimacy, sustained organization, and political leverage (Cress & Snow, 2000; Kohl-Arenas, 2014; Jenkins & Perrow, 1977).
This view is contradicted by other research that sees foundation funding as channeling and possibly coopting SMOs and their leaders. The “radical flank” thesis contends that foundation funding is largely reactive, responding to the political threat posed by indigenous mobilization, and that most of the foundation funding goes to the more conservative and professionalized groups, many of which lack grassroots or indigenous support (Brulle, 2000; Brulle & Jenkins, 2005; Haines, 1988; Jenkins & Eckert, 1986; McAdam, 1982). In this view, foundation support channels movements into professionalized structures and institutional forms of action and, for some critics (Domhoff, 2002; Dowie, 1995; Piven & Cloward, 1977; Roelofs, 2003), transforms the goals and blunts the impact of dissent. A broader version of this channeling thesis sees the foundation funders of these movements as key architects of the creation of new organizational fields that come to regulate contention and channel it into more professionalized forms. Tracing the transformation of the consumer boycotts against the international forest products industry and Home Depot, which was targeted as the largest wood products retailer, into a less contentious privately regulated tropical forest certification system, Bartley (2007) shows how a group of 25 foundations pioneered and invested over $33 million in creating the new organizational field of sustainable tropical forest certification. While continuing boycotts were important in pressuring the international tropical wood products industry to adopt this sustainability certification system, eventually this new privately regulated certification system replaced consumer boycotts and contentious politics.
A key and poorly understood part of this process is the scale and the priorities of foundation support for social movements. How much money is invested? How has this changed over time? Are specific types of SMOs and projects more likely to receive support? Existing research has largely been case studies of specific SMO fields undergoing transformation, such as the 1960s civil rights movement (Haines, 1988; Jenkins & Eckert, 1986), the global tropical forestry industry (Bartley, 2007), or community organizing by inner-city minority groups (Domhoff, 2009). Others have used convenience samples and regionally limited samples of data on foundation grants to social movements (Rabinowitz, 1990). Delfin and Tang (2007) examine grants by California foundations that go to a diverse array of environmental projects, only some of which are EMOs. A broader and more systematic approach is needed to capture the overall pattern of foundation grant giving to SMOs. The most systematic attempt to date has been by Jenkins and colleagues (Brulle & Jenkins, 2005; Jenkins, 1989, 1998; Jenkins & Halcli, 1999), who used the membership lists of the National Network of Grantmakers plus snowball interviews with social movement funders and movement leaders to identify the funders of “progressive social movements.” Using the grants data for some 250 foundations between 1953 and 1990, Jenkins and colleagues estimated that cumulatively, progressive social movement philanthropy was only about 1% of overall foundation giving, was reactive to indigenous movement mobilization, and largely went to professionalized SMOs. Expanding on the original study, Brulle and Jenkins (2005) used this foundation giving data plus additional grants data drawn from the Foundation Center database to estimate foundation grants to environmental movement organizations (EMOs) for 1970 through 2000. Their data are limited, however, because they missed almost half of the foundations that funded the environmental movement. Below we improve significantly on their sampling method and find that foundation funding for EMOs is likely about 10 times their estimate for 2000.
A second limitation of these prior studies is that they look only at positive cases of funding, that is, the SMOs that received grants, ignoring those that received no grants. If the question is whether foundations distinguish among EMOs based on goals, tactics, and the like, we need to look at both recipients and nonrecipients of grants. A more methodologically astute approach dictates the development of a comprehensive inventory of the entire population of SMOs in a particular field to determine what factors best explain why some receive money and others do not. To this end, we draw from the Civil Society and the Environment Inventory of EMOs (Brulle, Turner, Jenkins, & Carmichael, 2007). This data set provides a comprehensive inventory of EMOs that were active in the United States between 1900 and 2000 as well as data on critical organizational characteristics that might influence the receipt of foundation grants.
The environmental movement is an ideal field for studying foundation giving priorities since it has been a major area of social movement philanthropy for many decades. Beginning with the 19th-century conservation and preservation movements, wealthy families and upper class individuals have been leaders and major patrons of efforts to protect the wildlife areas and natural environments. In the 1960s, foundations were critical funders of most of the new national environmental groups, leading to Bosso’s (2005) afore-cited conclusion about the central importance of foundation patronage. While foundation grants often make up less than 20% of the revenues of the larger national EMOs (Brulle, 2000), this funding can be an important resource for launching a new organization and for creating new initiatives.
Our first step is to identify a set of hypotheses about the EMO characteristics that are more likely to attract foundation grants. In this, we draw on the long-standing debate between elite and pluralist views of the role of foundations supplemented by organizational ecology and institutionalist arguments about the survival and legitimacy of organizations. Second, we test these arguments using systematic national data on foundation grants to EMOs over a 50-year period. We identify 494 foundations that funded EMOs between 1961 and 2000 and integrate systematic grant data with the Civil Society and the Environment Inventory of EMOs and their characteristics. This generally supports elitist arguments that foundations are more likely to fund EMOs with conservative goals and tactics and, in line with organizational ecology and institutionalist theory, favors older EMOs and those located in the northeastern United States with proximity to the major grant-giving foundations. At the same time, environmental philanthropy is growing rapidly and becoming more diverse, creating opportunities for new EMOs and reducing the concentration of EMO grant giving.
Explanations of Foundation Giving
A common elitist critique of environmental philanthropy is that foundations serve as instruments of the corporate elite and upper class, using grants and other supports to control the agenda and leadership of nonprofit organizations and thereby ensure social change that is “gradual, moderate and unambiguously controlled by society’s dominant classes” (Berman, 1983, p. 10; see also Arnove, 1980; Domhoff, 2009, 2013; Roelofs, 2003). Elitism in the environmental movement takes on three dimensions: compositional, ideological, and impact. Compositional elitism means that environmental leaders are drawn from the upper classes; ideological elitism contends that they favor the interests of these upper classes and elite; and impact elitism charges that the movement has a socially regressive social impact (Morrison & Dunlap, 1986).
In terms of grant giving, the compositional critique argues that the largest environmental grants go to a relatively small set of national environmental lobby groups (the “mainstream”) whose leadership is socially similar and overlaps with those dominating the philanthropic world (Arnold, 1999). This creates a world in which a small number of large foundations anchored in large corporate and family wealth are making grants to a small circle of large EMOs. This critique is often combined with the ideological critique that foundations prefer to fund mainstream EMOs that engage in research and policy reforms congenial to corporate elites. As Dowie (2001) puts it, “These ‘well branded’ nationals spend about 70 percent of the total funds devoted to nonprofit environmental advocacy and protection. Most of them carefully avoid challenging the power structures and relationships that have the most profound environmental impacts” (p. 89). A third critique is the impact thesis that environmental philanthropy puts a priority on wildlife conservation and nature preservation. Protecting open space, wildlife and wilderness is salient “primarily to those who can afford leisure time and travel away from urban/industrial workplaces” (Morrison & Dunlap, 1986, p. 584).
In terms of grant giving, these arguments suggest that foundation grants should go to EMOs with more conservative goals and tactics. Over the 20th century, environmentalism has been guided by four major discourses: (1) conservation/wildlife management of natural resources for human use; (2) the preservation of wilderness and wildlife areas undisturbed by human action; (3) reform environmentalism, that is, maintaining human health through the creation of healthy ecosystems; and (4) a set of six more recent alternative discourses focused on environmental justice (i.e., addressing racial and class disparities in environmental risks), deep ecology (i.e., that deeper structures in the political economy are responsible for environmental problems), ecotheology (invoking religious rationales for environmental protection), ecofeminism (linking patriarchy to environmental injustice), animal rights, and the antiglobalization “green movement” (for elaboration see Brulle, 2000, chapter 4; see also Brulle et al., 2007). Foundation grants should go to the first three discourses and neglect the alternatives. EMOs use a wide range of tactics ranging from education and media outreach, political advocacy, providing support services, creating land trusts, organizing local groups to support environmental projects, to using protest and contentious measures. Of these, the most important is likely protest tactics, which should reduce the odds of receiving foundation support.
Institutionalist theory argues that organizations are deeply shaped by the symbolic systems, relationships systems, routines, and artifacts in which they are embedded, looking to their peers for guidance for their decisions, practices, and structures instead of attempting to maximize short-term returns (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991; Scott, 2008). This leads to the dominance of mimetic isomorphism, that is, imitation of the myths, practices, and structures of surrounding and thereby legitimate forms of organization. This is reinforced by organizational ecology arguments about the liability of newness and the legitimacy that is associated with older forms of organization (Hannan & Freeman, 1989). This means that, except during the initial formation period when external supports are strong, organizational innovations are less likely to survive and that the failure rate of organizations should decline with age. In terms of receiving foundation grants, older EMOs should have greater legitimacy and thereby better odds of receiving support.
Elitist arguments also dovetail with ideas about the organizational ecology of different regions of the United States. Since they are controlled by the same corporate elite and wealthy families who are concentrated in the northeastern region of the country (i.e., the megalopolis of “Bosh-Wash”), foundations tend to be geographically concentrated in this region. Because of their geographic proximity to these foundations, EMOs with headquarters in this region are more likely to receive grants. We now turn to measuring foundation grants to EMOs.
Capturing Foundation Grants to EMOs
To develop systematic and comprehensive data on foundation grant giving to EMOs, we reviewed the grant lists of potential foundation funders for five decades from 1961 through 2000 (i.e., 1961, 1971, 1980, 1990, and 2000). We used five distinct sources to identify foundations that might give grants to EMOs: (1) all members of the Environmental Grantmakers Association for 2002 to 2005; (2) all members of the National Network of Grantmakers (1989-2002), which listed an environmental program; (3) all members of the Funding Exchange (2000-2005), a small national network of social justice funders identified by Jenkins and Halcli (1999) as central to progressive philanthropy; (4) the snowball interview-based sample of progressive movement funders assembled by Jenkins and Halcli (1999); and (5) a 3% random sample of all foundations listed in all editions of the Foundation Directory (Foundation Center, 1962-2001) as having an environmental or conservation program. 1 This review identified a total of 494 foundations as EMO funders, almost 300 of which were members of the Environmental Grantmakers Association. In the giving estimates and analysis presented below, the grants for the 3% sample were weighted to represent general population estimates of grant giving.
A foundation is defined as a grant-giving 501-c3 nonprofit organization, which includes private foundations, public charities, operating foundations, community foundations, and corporate foundations. Using mainly tax return information (Internal Revenue Service [IRS] 990s) submitted by these foundations or published annual reports, we recorded all foundation grants given to an EMO in the Civil Society and the Environment Inventory of EMOs (Brulle et al., 2007) in 1961, 1971, 1980, 1990, and 2000. We used 1961 because it was the first year of mandatory reporting of grants lists to the IRS, and 1971 (rather than 1970) because existing IRS records for 1970 were too incomplete to be useful. All efforts were made to locate complete grants lists for our target years but in a little over 10% of all foundation-years, this proved impossible. In such cases, we substituted available IRS data for the immediately preceding or subsequent 2 years. Despite this effort, grants lists for approximately 5% of the targeted foundation-years were unavailable, which suggests that we may underestimate total foundation giving by around 5%. In all cases, we record the amount and the year of the grant and appended these data to the broad set of EMO characteristics in the Civil Society and the Environment Inventory.
Foundation grant lists were drawn largely from IRS 990 documents, which were obtained from a variety of sources including directly from the foundations, the Guidestar online archive (www.guidestar.com), and the Foundation Center archival databases (www.foundationcenter.org). For 1961, 1971, 1980, and 1990, we relied heavily on annual reports and the IRS microfiche cards archived at the Center on Philanthropy Library at Indiana University–Purdue University (www.philanthropy.iupui.edu). To account for the fact that some foundations report giving during a calendar year and others use fiscal year, we use the IRS tax return year or the year of the annual report as the basis for our coding. Where available, we use information on the year of the actual payout, and for multiyear awards (which are rather common), we assume equal payout across years unless other information was available.
As discussed, the Civil Society and the Environment database (Brulle et al., 2007) was used to identify EMOs and their characteristics. 2 This database provides the most comprehensive inventory of the national EMOs that were active between 1900 and 2000 ever developed. It identifies the birth or founding year of the EMO, whether they were disbanded and when, their discursive frame, and the location of their headquarters. Using the Lincoln-Peterson or sample/resample method for estimating the total population, this inventory captures at least 84% of the total population of EMOs that existed for this time period. The database contains information on 3,523 EMOs with U.S. headquarters that were legally eligible to receive foundation grants between 1961 and 2000. This inventory was assembled from a comprehensive review of multiple sources (all issues of the Encyclopedia of Associations, The Conservation Directory, the IRS Master File of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 18 additional serial or multiyear directories, 67 single-year directories, 19 other printed sources, and 48 Internet websites). The database also includes information on several characteristics that might influence the odds of receiving foundation grants. For more details, see the codebook at http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~brullerj/Civil_Society.htm. We include only EMOs with a U.S. headquarters regardless of whether the money was actually spent abroad. We exclude all grants to government agencies, universities, think tanks, research institutes, and individuals. We also exclude grants to movement organizations whose primary agenda is not the environment but which might operate an environmental project. For example, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) operates an environmental justice program but is primarily a civil rights organization. In the analysis below, we distinguish between EMOs that received major funding (i.e., the “top 20 list”), those that received some or modest funding, and those that received no grants in any of the years in our data.
We added to the Civil Society and the Environment database information on movement tactics. We selected a 30% random sample of all EMOs stratified by their major discourse, plus all the top 20 grant recipients EMOs in each year. After reviewing the EMO websites and all other documents available from online searching, we recorded the presence of evidence that any of six major movement tactics were used by each EMO: (1) public education and media campaigns, (2) political advocacy (including litigation and public testimony in hearings and governmental forums), (3) the provision of support services, (4) land trusts, (5) community organizing efforts to build local support for environmental projects, and (6) the use of protest and other contentious politics methods.
Patterns of Environmental Funding
We begin with an illustration of the trend in foundation giving to the environmental movement across the series. Figure 1 presents the growth in foundation giving to EMOs using 2000 constant dollars (i.e., adjusted for inflation) between 1961 and 2000. In 2000, some 20,795 grants were given to EMOs totaling a little over $676 million. This represented an increase of almost 470% over 1990, when there were 4,994 grants or $119 million in constant 2000 dollars. The largest rate of increase, however, was between 1961, when there were only 507 grants totaling $5.07 million (in 2000 dollars), and 1971, when there were 822 grants totally $59.87 million (2000 dollars), an increase of over 1,000%. Between 1971 and 1980, growth was limited, total grants increasing by only 11.5%for a total of $66.7 million, and between 1980 and 1990, EMO grants grew by 78.5% to $119 million (2000 dollars).
Total dollars given to EMOs in constant 2000 dollars, 1961 to 2000.
Was this increase in EMO grants the result of greater priority being placed on funding the environmental movement? Based on estimates of total foundation giving from the Foundation Directory, this does not appear to be the case. The two decades with the largest increase in EMO funding (i.e., 1961-1971 and 1990-2000) experienced an actual decline in the share of total foundation grants going to EMOs. In 1961, EMOs received about 3.1% of total foundation giving, but despite an increase of over 1000% in EMO grants, by 1971 this had dropped to only 0.4% of total foundation giving. The share of total foundation giving going to EMOs remained roughly constant from 1980 to 1990 (0.4% and 0.35%, respectively) and then declined further to 0.16% of total foundation giving in 2000 despite a 470% increase in the constant dollar value of this giving.
What are the priorities that guided these foundation grants? We begin by considering the role that the primary discourse of the EMOs played in determining who gets foundation funding. As discussed above, we identified the major discourse of all EMOs. Table 1 and Figure 2 chart the share of EMO grants in constant dollars over time going to these five major discourses. In the 1960s and 1970s, reform environmentalism received over two thirds of all foundation dollars with about a quarter of funding going to preservation efforts, primarily land trusts. Conservation and wildlife management EMOs received about 10% of foundation funding. This changed, however, by 1980 with over 45% of all funding going to preservation and, beginning in 1990, a small share (about 3%) going to environmental justice and the other alternative discourses. By 2000, preservation continued to make up about 45% of all funding, followed by reform environmentalism and conservation. Overall, the three mainstream discourses received almost all of the funding with only 3% to 5% going to alternative discourses only after 1990.
Percentage of Foundation Grant Dollar by EMO Discourse, 1961 to 2000.
Note. EMO = environmental movement organization.
Discourse growth in constant 2000 dollars, 1961 to 2000.
To what degree are foundation grants dispersed across all EMOs? To answer this question, we identified the top 20 grant recipients in terms of dollars received in 2000, their rank order standing for each of the prior decades, their primary discourse, their founding date, and the state location of their headquarters (Table 2). The table identifies a number of important trends in foundation giving patterns but perhaps most important that overall giving to the environmental movement is highly concentrated into the hands of a relatively small group of organizations. In 2000, just 20 of 3,523 EMOs received over half (52.1%) of all grant dollars and a comparable or larger share in preceding years. The most concentrated distribution was in 1961 when the leading recipient—the Population Council—received 76% of all grant dollars and the “top 20” received 100% of total grants (actually just 14 EMOs received all the foundation grants in 1961). Over time, the share of total funding going to the top 20 has declined, dropping from 100% in 1961, to 69.7% (1971), 65.9% (1980), 45.1% (1990), and 52.1% (2000). Nonetheless, this remains a highly concentrated distribution of funding. It is also highly conservative in terms of the discourses receiving this “big money” support. With one exception—an ecotheology organization that received a major grant in 1980—all top 20 recipients in five decades were guided by the three dominant discourses of preservation, reform environmentalism, and conservation/wildlife management. These is mobility into and out of these top 20 lists across time. Only 7 EMOs manage to persist in these two 20 lists across the full 50-year period and about a 20% of all EMOs in this top 20 list had just been founded in the previous decade. The average age of these top 20 EMOs in 2000 is 44.4 years, as compared to a mean age of 16.8 years for all EMOs. Fourteen are headquartered in the Boston-New York-Washington DC area, that is, “Bosh-Wash”—the traditional eastern seaboard location for the national upper class and corporate elite. Four are located in California and two in other states (Alaska and Tennessee). A similar pattern holds for the other decade top 20 lists. Below we look at whether EMO age and geographic location are associated with the likelihood of foundation funding. Overall this suggests a relatively concentrated system in which the foundations are funding “environmentalists they know, creating an inner circle of ‘haves’ along with a bunch of outsiders looking in” (Allen, 1997). This inner circle is dominated by larger older EMOs located in the northeast that are guided by the more conservative environmental discourses.
2000 Top 20 ESMO Recipients Discourse and Tactics.
Note. ESMO = environmental social movement organization; NA = not applicable.
Does a movement’s choice of tactics influence foundation funding? We first look at the tactics of the top 20 grant recipients. Table 2 shows the tactics used by top 20 list in 2000. The use of mass media to educate the public and influence public opinion is a near universal, along with political advocacy of various types. The latter includes attempts to influence public policy through testimony and contacts or meetings with governmental officials as well as litigation and targeted public education campaigns. A majority of the top 20 provide technical services to either the general public or to specific target groups. Seven of the top 20 are engaged in creating land trusts for conservation efforts and half engage in community organizing by promoting citizen groups to become involved in local projects and activities. A surprising finding is that three of these groups have some engagement in protest, typically consumer boycotts and lawful demonstrations. Two of these—the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club—are the largest membership organizations in the environmental movement. Both have local and state chapters and facilitate a wide variety of projects and activities by local groups. WildAid works with celebrities globally to discourage the consumption of wildlife products and has been involved in consumer boycotts. The top 20 lists for the other decades showed a similar pattern except that protest was less evident. Below we look at whether particular tactics and other characteristics of these EMOs influence the likelihood of foundation funding.
Who Gets Foundation Grants?
To address the factors that influence which EMOs get foundation grants, we distinguish between EMOs that receive no grants, those that receive some or modest grants, and the top 20 grant recipients. The idea is that factors that influence getting some grants might differ from those that lead to the “big money.” We begin first with the question of discourse and then examine the age of EMOs, their regional location, and their tactics.
Given what we saw above, the major difference in terms of discourse is likely to be between EMOs guided by the three dominant discourses versus EMOs following an environmental justice or other alternative discourse. Figures 3 and 4 show the result from this distinction for each decade. Overall, the overwhelming majority of EMOs receive no grants, which is a constant across time. In 1961, 96.5% of EMOs received no foundation funding and just 14 EMOs received all the foundation dollars. By 2000, this has changed in that 28% of all EMOs received at least one or more grants despite the fact that 52% of all funding went to the top 20. In terms of the distinction between receiving one or more grants versus no grants, about the same share of mainstream and alternative discourses received at least one grant. The more important distinction in terms of discourse is between being in the two 20 rather than receiving one or more grants.
Percentage of mainstream discourses receiving grants.
Percentage of alternative discourses receiving grants.
How does age of the EMO affect the likelihood of being funded? Figure 5 shows the mean age of the EMO in each of our three categories across time. In 1961, all grants went to 14 EMOs, whose mean age was 38.1 years. This contrasts with the EMOs receiving no grants, which had a mean age of 23.9 years, suggesting a grant-getting advantage for older EMOs. In 1971, the pattern changes somewhat such that those receiving “some grants” were older (27.1 years) than those in the top 20 (22.2 years), which was similar to those receiving no grants (21.2 years). In this respect, the 1970 panel is unusual. This may be due to the large number of new EMOs that were founded in the 1960s, which received some grants and made it into the top 20, thereby lowered the mean age of these two groupings. From 1980 through 2000, the advantages of older EMOs showed consistently with the mean age of the top 20 increasing steadily. At the same time, the difference between those receiving no grants and some grants shrank to insignificance, producing roughly the same average in 1990 and 2000. Overall, older EMOs had better experience in getting grants and this grew across time, suggesting that age is associated with greater legitimacy in the eyes of the foundations. While we lack data on the budgets and professional staff of these EMOs, this may have reflected the legitimacy advantages of larger budgets and staff professionalism.
Average age of EMOs by number of grants received, 1961 to 2000.
In terms of regional location, we have seen the concentration of the top 20 in the northeastern seaboard. Does this hold advantages in terms of overall grant getting? Figure 6 shows the change in the share of EMOs that were headquartered in this “Bosh-Wash” area versus all other states that received no grants, some grants, and were in the top 20. The largest regional gap is consistently between those in the top 20 and all other EMOs. Over time, the concentration of the top 20 in the northeast has grown from a quarter to 55% in 2000. A slightly larger share of EMOs with some grants were headquartered in “Bosh-Wash” versus those with no grants. Overall, the biggest regional gap lies between the “big money” EMOs that are located in the eastern seaboard, which gives them greater geographic proximity to the foundations that provide the majority of this funding. By the 1990 panel, over half of all foundation funding went to EMOs in the “Bosh-Wash” region.
Percentage of EMOs in NY, MA, and DC by recipient category.
How do tactics influence foundation grant getting? As we saw earlier, no specific tactic except for engaging in protest seems to distinguish the top 20 grant recipients. Based on past discussions of the civil rights movement experience and Bartley’s (2007) analysis of creation of the tropical forest certification system, we might assume that engaging in protest would reduce significantly the odds of receiving grants. Table 3 generally supports such a conclusion. A consistent pattern across all decades is that EMOs that engage in protest are roughly half as likely to receive foundation grants as their share in the total EMO population would suggest. Overall, only about 2% to 2.7% of EMOs engage in protest tactics. Over time, the share that do seems to be declining from 2.7% in 1961 to 2.1% in 2000. The data also show that, looking at the other tactics, the largest difference was between EMOs that received no grants versus those that received some. The “no grants” group was significantly less likely to engage in political advocacy, land trusts, and community organizing relative to those receiving some or “big money” grants.
Share of Foundation Grants to Protest EMOs, 1960 to 2000 (Based on 30% Tactic Sample).
Note. EMO = environmental movement organization.
Conclusions
Elite theorists argue that, contrary to their declared mission of innovation, philanthropic foundations may actually contribute to stagnation in the development of new ideas and creative solutions to social ills. Foundations typically have strong ties to the corporate elite and wealthy families that donated the funds to the foundations. In the majority of cases, these wealthy families or their representatives sit on the boards of these foundations and oversee the grant-giving process. For this reason, elite theorists have argued that foundations do not prioritize social movements as a primary vehicle for carrying out their initiatives. Nonetheless, at least in the environmental area, EMOs are a significant vehicle for foundation grants. Although foundation grants typically make up no more than about 20% of EMO budgets (Brulle, 2000), this funding can be strategically important to the creation of new organization and innovations.
Our analysis of nationally representative data on grant giving to EMOs supports major contentions of this elitist critique of environmental philanthropy. Foundations do strongly favor mainstream, conservative discourses and EMOs that avoid contentious forms of action. At the same time, it is important to note that grant giving to EMOs has increased significantly in the last decades of the 20th century. This funding is overwhelmingly directed toward mainstream environmental discourses, such as preservation, conservation, and reform environmentalism. At the same time, it is also important to note that funding for alternative discourses, especially environmental justice, did see significant growth in the 1990s. While funding for alternative discourses remains less than 5% of all EMO funding and, measured in terms of total foundation giving, represents only a minute share of total foundation giving, it is still important to note that this funding is bolstering this section of the environmental movement.
Our results also support institutionalist and organizational ecology arguments about organizational survival and development. Funding for EMOs tends to go to older organizations, which presumably have greater legitimacy and are less vulnerable to the liability of newness. While we lack the ability to dig into the budgets and professional staff of these EMOs across time, this is compatible with the idea that larger budgets and staff enhance the legitimacy of these EMOs in the eyes of the foundations and their ability to secure support. The largest “big money” EMOs also tend to be located in the northeastern seaboard, which makes them geographically proximate to the location of the foundations and to other institutions of the national corporate elite. It also means that they are located nearby to where national policy is being formulated.
Our data suggest that while grant giving to EMOs is certainly more decentralized and dispersed than it was in the 1960s and early 1970s, over half of all foundation funding for EMOs continues to be concentrated among a small select group of 20 or so recipient organizations. This is only 0.6% of the 3,133 EMOs that were active in 2000. Over half of the EMOs in this top 20 list in 2000 were also in this list in the previous decade and about a third persisted in this list for over five decades. In short, this is a highly concentrated pattern of grant giving.
Although foundation funding likely constitutes less than 20% of the budgets of EMOs, the potential impact on these organizations is considerable. There are a number of reasons for this influence. First is that foundation money is largely (60% to 70%) given for project specific functions and the actions of the organization in fulfilling the grant requirements are monitored by the foundation. Second, membership and general public support, while larger, is diffuse and not targeted toward specific projects. As foundations fund a larger proportion of the organization’s activities, there is a greater focus on meeting their conditions over the more diffuse membership’s interests. Third, to ensure a continuing flow of funds from foundations, the EMO is inclined to follow the expressed desires of a foundation representative. Finally, foundation funding tends to foster foundation participation on the boards of directors of the organizations they fund, which leads to long-term structural relationships between social movement groups and the foundations that fund them.
External foundation funding creates a dynamic that can be seen as financial steering of the SMO. This may partially result from the process of institutional isomorphism. This process describes the tendency of organizations to mimic other successful organizations in their environment as a means to improve and/or secure their own likelihood of success. Mimicry enables interface between organizations, including financial transactions. In the process of funding movement organizations, foundations often strengthen the political advocacy of a limited number of centrally controlled organizations that are removed from the grass roots based they supposedly represent. In securing the resource base of a social movement organization, accountability and control of externally funded organizations tend to shift away from active members and toward financial patrons, which reduces the independence of the movement organizations.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: the funding was received from National Science Foundation: Project# SES-0422415.