Book Cover

The fact that many of America’s largest, most successful, most-admired foundations are not characterized by such departures from donor intent has not seemed to deter such opponents of perpetual foundations from continuing to believe as they do nor deterred them from opposing the creation of perpetual foundations. Nor does the continuing record of important achievements by such American foundations over more than 100 years dissuade them from waging their war against philanthropic perpetuity.

# Review

Given that philanthropy from the civic sector touches almost all aspects of society, I found it important to understand philanthropy more thoroughly. Fleishman’s book gives an excellent dive into the history of philanthropy, from the essays of John Stuart Mill to the activities of Andrew Carnegie. Fleishman also explores the modern trends in philanthropy, such as donors giving away their wealth while they’re still alive, greater cooperation between foundations, and more active political participation from community foundations. The main thesis of this book is that foundations should be designed to operate perpetually and not be constrained with a fixed time horizon.

Fleishman gives various reasons why the arguments against perpetual foundations and for time-limited foundations are overblown, such as potential donor regret, where a donor’s heirs may want to stay involved in the organization but the organization may not align with the donor goals. Fleishman debunks the well known case study of Henry Ford II leaving the Ford Foundation in 1976 and also provides a solution to prevent potential donor and foundation misalignment, such having non-family board members to mediate between family disputes and bring outside expertise and renown. Fleishman also explores some interesting topics such as what happens if a perpetual foundation’s goals are achieved or no longer relevant (should the government be allowed to reallocate the funds?).

Finally, Fleishman gives advice to all potential foundation donors, such as focusing on effecting policy changes for charities with shorter horizons and not only giving to high impact “most bang for buck” foundations as one should not be cause agnostic and some of the most revolutionary ideas may have the lowest calculated impact.

I found this book to be incredibly insightful, written by someone who is clearly knowledgeable in the field, as there were numerous supporting case studies of real foundations, both time-limited and perpetual. This book is very academic and can be very dry and somewhat repetitive, especially with the constant name dropping of different foundations. Another area of the book I found lacking was an explicit comparison of which areas perpetual foundations excel in versus which areas time-limited foundations excel in. I also disagreed with many of the arguments, in particular about over-reliance on quantitative metrics to track success; while qualitative and intangible metrics can be useful, quantitative metrics should still be the primary ways to gauge success as it's more objective and acceptable. It keeps stakeholders responsible and it allows a foundation to iterate on the best use of their resources.

# Conclusion

A very thorough book on philanthropy.

# Overall rating: 7.4

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