Craig Kennedy

thegivingreview.com/seeing-t… In @GivingReview co-editor @WilliamSchambra’s remembrance of a remarkable man at @AEI last week, he says @BobWoodson saw a world of grassroots leaders—“otherwise unnoticed, unfunded, and unappreciated”—quietly restoring their communities, one person and one block at a time. Woodson spent his life trying to get the rest of us to see that world, too, including through the @WoodsonCenter. “And now it’s up to us to try to bring Bob Woodson’s vision to those with eyes to see,” according to Schambra.

scottahodge.substack.com/p/m… “Yesterday, I was fortunate to speak at a terrific event sponsored by the Giving Review, the Urban Institute, and the Tax Policy Center on the future of the nonprofit sector. Below are my formal comments,” @Arnold_Ventures’ @scottahodge writes. “The nonprofit sector is facing an existential crisis, but not for the reasons that many of you may be thinking,” Hodge says in his remarks. “To me, the crisis is that there are too many commercial businesses masquerading as nonprofits, and this is to the detriment of truly benevolent charities,” he continues. “Congress has avoided addressing this issue for decades. “The bottom line is that in a free enterprise system such as ours,” Hodge concludes, “we can no longer have successful tax-exempt businesses competing directly with for-profit taxpaying businesses. Fairness demands reform.”

thegivingreview.com/what-dol… @GivingReview senior fellow @RCK52 thinks establishment philanthropy in America can and should learn from Dolly Parton’s practical, local, apolitical, and patriotic approach to giving …

stevehayward.substack.com/p/… “[T]hree things about the modern ‘non-profit sector’ have come into focus over the last couple of decades,” Steven F. Hayward writes in “Time to Abolish Non-Profits?” on Substack. “First, too many non-profit organizations have succumbed to John O’Sullivan’s First Law (sometimes attributed to Robert Conquest, too), which holds that ‘Any institution or organization that is not explicitly right wing will become explicitly left-wing over time,’” he continues. “The left is especially skilled at gutting once-neutral and innocent non-profits and turning them into bastions of leftist activism. … “Second, beyond the partisan and ideological tilt of many non-profits, it is hard to credit them with the kind of self-sacrifice and nobility associated with soup-kitchens or tutoring services for poor kids when you see the senior executives at so many of them receiving seven-figure salaries. You can do pretty well by doing good these days. It is especially outrageous when so many of the organizations depend largely on government grants more so than tax-deductible contributions from real people.” And “the third point: lots of legitimate traditional charities, especially small local ones, don’t depend on the tax-deductibility of donor support for their existence.” 1/2

capitalresearch.org/article/… The “Charities” Influencing Elections: 2024 and Beyond, @capitalresearch

thegivingreview.com/power-we… According to @IndSector survey data, Americans trust nonprofits considerably more than they trust private foundations—even though foundations are supposed to have more transparency. In @GivingReview, @PhilanthropyRnd’s Joanne Florino wonders whether the widening distrust is really about accountability, or something deeper. “Increasingly, distrust of power is linked with distrust of wealth,” she writes. And for those who value philanthropic freedom, she argues, trading that freedom for greater public trust “is not a wise bargain.”

thegivingreview.com/decidedl… @GivingReview senior fellow @RCK52 looks into decidedly lopsided political giving of large philanthropies’ employees …

city-journal.org/article/mel… “To survive, higher education and the humanities must enjoy broad public support. It’s foolish to expect such support while steering universities toward open—and at times, openly partisan—political activism,” @ManhattanInst’s @JohnDSailer concludes in @CityJournal article about @MellonFdn’s “narrow vision of the humanities.”

courant.com/2026/07/31/rober… Robert B. Reich, “‘Charitable giving’ isn’t what you think,” @hartfordcourant

thegivingreview.com/restrain… @GivingReview senior fellow @RCK52 questions assumptions underlying the restraint recommended by “prudential pluralism” in solving philanthropy’s problems, instead more realistically urging that it be subject to continued and even more scrutiny and questioning itself … “I would like to see an environment in which donors and nonprofits were regularly, if not constantly, subjected to scrutiny by politicians, the media, and watchdog groups,” Kennedy writes. “Vocal criticism of how the charitable status and charitable deduction are misused might encourage all of the actors involved in this drama to be more cautious and careful and, if not, face the possibility of hearings, legal action, and new legislation. “In the end, the real tension is between, in the words of one writer, ‘status quoists and brokenists,’” he concludes. “Prudential pluralism is a high-minded and even edifying idea that asserts that the current state of affairs is only mildly blemished by easily correctable problems. The status quo is fine, just tweak it a bit. “However, if you believe, as I do, that the system is broken, then strong medicine is warranted. A charitable community that is becoming increasingly used for activities that go far beyond our usual notions of the charitable deserves investigations, criticism, and hearings that address these weaknesses and, if we are lucky, these demands will produce serious reform of our current system.”

philanthropy.com/opinion/a-d… Philanthropy “has too often operated as though the country’s chief problem is bad actors threatening good institutions. In truth, many institutions have failed to live up to their public purpose and have lost credibility as a result,” @forachelP courageously writes in @Philanthropy. “When institutions focus more on deflecting blame and attacking their critics than on meeting widely felt public needs, they only reinforce the perception that they are unable or unwilling to reform themselves. Our funding has frequently underwritten that posture,” according to Pritzker. “Adversarial advocacy has also infected many other areas of philanthropy, often in ways that funders miss and that conflict with their democracy goals,” she notes, and “adversarial advocacy, pursued single-mindedly, degrades democracy by deepening polarization, cutting off productive negotiation and compromise, and foreclosing the broad coalitions that democracy requires. … “[M]ost funders are drawn from a relatively narrow professional class: highly educated, ideologically left-of-center, institutionally minded, and clustered in a small number of metropolitan hubs. Our values and priorities are out of step with a wide swath of the country. At best, we may occasionally recognize this disconnect. At worst, we judge our fellow Americans for not sharing our views. … “Philanthropy has spent a decade funding the defense of a democracy that most Americans still don’t trust—and we may well be further fueling that distrust,” Pritzker concludes. “Are we capable of changing course when the evidence suggests our approaches are not working? Asking that question honestly and publicly is an important first step.”

timworstall.substack.com/p/i… “[I]’s that left which has most of the money in British politics. For these are the sorts of places they get it from and this sort of money always does flow to those lefty-style organisations,” @worstall writes. “It is, after all, worth noting that two freshly minted MPs and junior ministers in this Labour Government were, immediately preceeding their elections, the heads of two of those funded organisations. This isn’t a level playing field.”

freebeacon.com/democrats/the… “The least surprising aspect of the Democratic Party's lurch toward left-wing radicalism is the pampered, privileged backgrounds of the politicians, donors, and operatives leading the charge,” @AndrewStilesUSA writes in @FreeBeacon.

philanthropy.com/opinion/opi… “I would welcome retaliatory hearings by both parties when they control a branch of Congress just as I would welcome more scathing investigations of nonprofit behavior by the mainstream and partisan media,” @GivingReview senior fellow @RCK52 wrote in his @Philanthropy column earlier this year. “An environment of scrutiny and recrimination may be the only path by which a sharper line between charity and political action can be drawn. “If funders and grantees on the left and right are fearful of being investigated by highly motivated journalists or hauled before an antagonistic congressional panel, they may be more cautious when undertaking projects that seek to shape public policy or influence the outcome of elections.”