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Imprimis, On Line -- May, 1993
Imprimis, meaning "in the first place," is a free
monthly publication of Hillsdale College (circulation
435,000 worldwide). Hillsdale College is a liberal arts
institution known for its defense of free market
principles and Western culture and its nearly 150-year
refusal to accept federal funds. Imprimis publishes
lectures by such well-known figures as Ronald Reagan,
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Tom Wolfe, Charlton Heston, and many
more. Permission to reprint is hereby granted, provided
credit is given to Hillsdale College. Copyright 1992.
For more information on free print subscriptions or
back issues, call 1-800-437-2268, or 1-517-439-1524,
ext. 2319.
---------------------------------------------
"Philanthropy and Citizenship"
by Michael S. Joyce
President and CEO, Bradley Foundation
---------------------------------------------
Volume 22, Number 5
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
May 1993
---------------------------------------------
What Is Good Citizenship?
Philanthropy is an essential part of a much larger and
more encompassing activity, namely, American
citizenship. Now, when I mention "citizenship," the
first thing that comes to mind is probably not
philanthropy or private voluntary activity of any kind,
but more than likely political activity of some sort--
particularly voting.
The essence of citizenship--or at least so it
seems from the hectoring swarms of voter education and
turn-out drives that descend upon us every election
year--is to vote faithfully and thoughtfully, after
acquainting ourselves with all the policy prescriptions
of the various candidates for office. To be a good
citizen, in other words, demands that we wade through
those mind-numbing charts of policy positions regularly
published each election year, which dutifully set
Candidate X's 17-point plan for reducing the deficit
side-by-side with Candidate Y's 21-point plan for doing
the same.
Citizenship thus understood is necessarily an
episodic, infrequent, to say nothing of onerous duty.
Its chief purpose seems to be to turn over to
supposedly qualified experts the "real" business of
public life--namely, designing and launching public
programs of all sorts, which will bestow upon the
victims of poverty or AIDS or discrimination or some
other insidious force the tender mercies of
bureaucrats, policy experts, social therapists and
others who claim to be uniquely able to cope with such
problems by virtue of professional training. Once a
citizen has voted, he is supposed to get out of the way
and let the experts take over. Small wonder, then, that
Americans today feel profoundly alienated from the
realm of public life and that citizenship understood as
voting holds so little appeal.
Genuine citizenship involves active participation
in that vast realm of human affairs known as civil
society. This is a far more expansive field for human
endeavor than the political sphere, for civil society
encompasses all the institutions through which we
express our interests and values, outside of and
distinct from government. Thus civil society includes
our activities in the marketplace, including acquiring
private property, holding a job, and earning a living.
It includes what we do as loving members of our
families; as students or concerned parents within our
schools; as worshipful attendees at our churches; and
as faithful members of neighborhood associations,
clubs, and voluntary associations of all sorts. This
broader understanding of citizenship also encompasses
the full range of philanthropic activity, including
committing energy and resources to helping others.
Teaching the Lessons, Singing the Songs
Clearly, citizenly activity within civil society occurs
not episodically or infrequently, as with voting, but
regularly and constantly, in countless small ways that
are so much a part of the texture of our everyday lives
that we are almost unaware of them. Every time we
attend church, go to a PTA meeting, help a charity
drive, or perform faithfully and well a task at work,
we are being decent citizens. In further contrast to
voting, which supposedly engages chiefly our abstract
reasoning and objective judgment about candidates and
policies, citizenship in this larger sense engages the
full human being. That is, the institutions of civil
society appeal to and sustain our spirit and heart, as
much as our mind.
Heart and spirit are nurtured by the songs and
fairy tales of home, the lessons of Sunday Bible class,
the instruction at school, the gentle advice and
perhaps criticism of a neighbor, a mentor, or a friend-
-all of which enrich us, all of which create bonds and
obligations, all of which demand that we, in turn,
teach the lessons and sing the songs to others.
Through these countless, subtle, daily
interactions, our civil institutions give form and
substance to the everyday qualities and values without
which life itself would be impossible--honesty,
perseverance, self-restraint, personal responsibility,
service to others--by rewarding them when they appear,
punishing when they don't, and by mercifully and
willingly sustaining those who may fall behind, in
spite of good-faith efforts to live by civil society's
rules. Sound civil institutions insure that those
cherished values are passed on to the next generation,
by surrounding the maturing child and young person with
constant, quiet messages of reaffirmation and
reinforcement.
Through our vast, complex web of civil
institutions, in short, we grow and develop into
complete human beings--learning to suppress our often
chaotic and destructive impulses; to express our
connectedness and mutual obligation to each other; to
reach beyond ourselves to higher aspirations,
reflecting nobler impulses. Those institutions sustain
us, but we in turn must sustain them, for without
unremitting, steadfast citizenly involvement, they are
doomed to wither and die.
The Collapse of Civil Society
That America was blessed with a robust, vigorous civil
society was once understood to be vital to its health
and success. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in
America is the classic expression of wonder and
admiration at the incredible energy generated by the
vast array of civic institutions spread across the face
of our young nation. Everywhere he looked in 19th
century America, he noted that our citizens had formed
associations, committees, and clubs to tackle one or
another of the problems facing them in this undeveloped
wilderness. Through such citizenly activity,
Tocqueville believed, Americans expressed and sustained
their civil freedom, accomplished an enormous range of
tasks, and, most important, developed fully as rooted,
connected human beings.
Tocqueville's admiration for the liberty-
sustaining, life-affirming energy of civil society, is,
of course, by no means shared by our intellectual and
cultural elites today. Instead of citizenship as a
vigorous, multi-faceted participation in civil society,
we are urged to constrict our view of citizenship to
the lonely, sporadic act of the isolated voter. What to
Tocqueville appears as a vast, pluralistic upwelling of
groups expressing boundless civic energy appears to our
elites to be a wasteful, chaotic, misguided jumble of
amateurish groups meddling unwelcomed in social policy.
What to him appears as vigorous, coherent, value-
affirming civic associations appears to them as
oppressive, stultifying, retrograde, rights-violating
social tyrannies.
To our intellectual and cultural elites, the
virtue of the constricted, "citizen-as voter" notion is
clear. It quietly and neatly removes public business
from the messy world of active citizens and civic
institutions, placing it instead into the neat,
rational, smoothly humming world of the centralized,
professionalized bureaucracies, wherein the elites
themselves prevail. Indeed, it might be said without
exaggeration that their central project is nothing less
than the abolition of civil society. The story is told
most eloquently by sociologist Robert Nisbet in The
Quest for Community. Modernity, Nisbet argues, assails
civil society both from below and from above. From
below, the authority of family, church, neighborhood,
and school is quietly eroded by the proliferation of
individual rights of all sorts, especially the right of
self-expression--that is, expression of self with utter
disregard, or contempt, for civil society. From above,
civil institutions are pressured to surrender authority
and function to the professional elites of the
centralized, bureaucratic state. Caught in a pincers
movement between individual rights and the central
state, Nisbet noted, the intermediate associations of
civil society struggle and languish.
What has been the result of the modern assault on
civil society? Look at the vast array of social ills
bearing down upon us: the explosion of illegitimate
births and single parenthood, the spread of sexually
transmitted disease, the dramatic increase of violent
crime in the streets, the rise of drug abuse, the
decline of public education, the spread of
irresponsible behavior in every realm of personal and
professional conduct. What is the common thread? Very
simply, the collapse of civil society--the decay of its
institutions and values, and the loss of control they
once exerted over human behavior.
But instead of trying to rejuvenate civil society,
our elites instead call for more government programs--
more bureaucratic experts and professionals to minister
to the hurts allegedly inflicted on hapless victims by
industrialism, racism, sexism, and so on--in the course
taking away yet more authority from citizens and civil
institutions. This leads to the vicious cycle described
years ago by Nathan Glazer in his essay, "The Limits of
Social Policy." As Glazer noted, the expansion of
government social policy doesn't solve problems, it
only makes them worse. Government intervention
undermines and weakens the authority of the very civil
institutions that had kept undesirable behavior within
reasonable limits in the first place. As government
programs push into a problem area, civil institutions
weaken further, and the problem is compounded--as is
the demand from our elites for more government
programs. This sad, ironic cycle-the prime example of
the doctrine of "unintended consequences"--is perhaps
the central paradox of our time.
Taking Control of Our Lives Again
I believe, however, that we are nearing the end of this
futile cycle. As Irving Kristol reminded us in a recent
Wall Street Journal op-ed, people are increasingly
disenchanted with the manifest impotence of government-
-its utter inability to perform even the most
rudimentary duties assigned to it, such as securing our
unmolested passage down our own streets. He points to
the strong revival of religious sentiment in America as
evidence that we at long last are beginning to
appreciate once again the vital role played by civil
society's religious institutions and values in
maintaining a decent, orderly society.
Other encouraging signs are to be found in recent
election returns and surveys of public opinion. Reflect
for a moment on the signals there: a massive, palpable
discontent with all major governing institutions; the
success of term limits and tax-and-spending limits in
referenda across the nation; above all, the immense
popularity of calls to return government directly to
the people. The message, I believe, is clear: Americans
are sick and tired of being treated as if they are
incompetent to run their own affairs. They are sick and
tired of being treated as helpless, pathetic victims of
social forces that are seemingly beyond their
understanding or control. They are sick and tired of
being treated as passive clients by arrogant,
paternalistic social scientists, therapists,
professionals, and bureaucrats who claim exclusive
right to minister to the hurts inflicted by hostile
social forces. They are sick and tired of supporting
the bloated, corrupt, centralized bureaucracies into
which our social therapists are organized to insure
that power and accountability flow to them, rather than
to the citizens of the United States.
Americans are clearly willing and eager to take
control of their daily lives again--to make critical
life choices for themselves, based on their own common
sense and folk wisdom--to assume once again the status
of proud, independent, self-governing citizens intended
for them by the Founders and denied them by today's
social service providers and bureaucracies. In short,
Americans are ready for what might be called "a new
citizenship," which will liberate and empower them.
This impulse toward a new citizenship is, of
course, nothing more--or less--than a return to the
older, far more encompassing notion of citizenship that
figured so prominently in Tocqueville's teaching. If
properly channeled and directed, this impulse may in
fact lead directly to the resuscitation of civil
society--a regeneration of that vast network of
vibrant, liberty-sustaining, life-affirming
institutions that once covered the face of this nation.
What sorts of measures will be required, if we are
to accomplish this revitalization of civil society?
First, we must be prepared once again to regard
ourselves as genuinely self-governing citizens, willing
and able to reassume control of our daily lives and to
make critical choices for ourselves. We must not allow
others to dismiss us as helpless victims or passive
clients.
Second, we must seek to restore the intellectual
and cultural legitimacy of citizenly common sense as a
way of understanding and solving problems. This
suggests an effort to re-establish the dignity of
traditional folk wisdom and everyday morality, with
renewed emphasis on teaching and nurturing personal
character--the customary guideposts of everyday life.
This will mean taking on intellectually the radical
skepticism about such "unscientific" approaches
propagated by professional pseudo-scientists eager to
preserve their intellectual hegemony.
Third, we must reinvigorate and reempower
traditional, local institutions--families, schools,
churches, neighborhoods--that provide training in and
room for the exercise of genuine citizenship, that pass
on folk wisdom and everyday morality to the next
generation, and that cultivate and reinforce personal
character. This will require efforts to reform such
local institutions, for often today's churches,
schools, and related "mediating structures" have
themselves succumbed to the view that Americans are
mere clients or consumers of therapeutic social
services.
Fourth, we must encourage the dramatic
decentralization of power and accountability away from
the bureaucratic "nanny state" in Washington, back to
the states, localities, and revitalized "mediating
structures." We should also strive to reinvest moral
authority in such structures, rather than in corrupt
intellectual and cultural elites in education, the
media, and popular culture, who regard traditional
mediating structures as benighted purveyors of
reactionary prejudices.
Finally, we must challenge on all fronts the
political hegemony of the "helping" and "caring"
professionals and bureaucrats who have penetrated so
many aspects of our daily lives, and who profit so
handsomely from the nanny state. We must dramatize
their status as entrenched, corrupt special interests,
more concerned about advancing narrow ideological
agendas and protecting political prerogatives than
about serving the public. This will require not only
traditional approaches like policy research, but more
innovative approaches as well--for instance, media and
writing projects that capture the vivid, compelling
human stories of those who suffer at the hands of
paternalistic, arrogant bureaucrats and professionals,
and the equally compelling human stories of those who
have launched successful grassroots citizen empowerment
projects.
What are the chances of successfully revitalizing
civil society through this kind of active citizenship?
It is easy to be pessimistic. After all, the entire
weight of modernity seems to be behind the destruction
of independent civil society. Nevertheless, I am
hopeful. Tocqueville himself, after all, was not
unacquainted with the destructive effects that
modernity would have on civil institutions. Indeed, his
purpose in writing Democracy in America was precisely
to warn mankind about the impending storm of modernity
and to tell us that the old, established institutions
of civil society were in danger.
In America, however, he witnessed the remarkable
spectacle of hitherto unrelated individuals--complete
strangers--coming together to form wholly new forms of
civil institutions, in the very teeth of the modern
storm. He understood and appreciated the fact that the
impulse toward voluntary association and the yearning
for genuine citizenship within civil society are not so
easy to destroy.
World events of the past decade only confirm
Tocqueville's optimism. No movement ever undertook the
eradication of civil society with more zeal or
determination than Marxism, that totalitarian
perversion of modernity. And yet beneath the seemingly
smoothly humming state bureaucracies of the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there sprouted once
again the seeds of civil society--churches, civic
associations, unions, dissident groups, free presses.
Even as the resolve of the free world halted Marxism's
outward thrust, so from within, Marxism began to decay
and crumble, as the nascent institutions of civil
society flourished and spread. The liberation of
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union soon made it
apparent that modernity's "final offensive" against
civil society had failed utterly.
Let us take heart both from these events and from
Tocqueville's hopeful teachings, as we undertake here
in the United States the revitalization of civil
society through the new citizenship. There can be no
more urgent task, and there can be no higher
philanthropic project, either for you as concerned
citizens and volunteers or for me as a foundation
professional, than the resuscitation of the civic
sphere, which alone makes genuine philanthropy and
genuine citizenship possible.
---------------------------------------------
Michael S. Joyce is president and chief executive
officer of the Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Prior
to his association with the Bradley Foundation, he was
executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin
Foundation in New York, executive director of the
Goldseker Foundation in Baltimore, and a research
associate at the Educational Research Council of
America.
He has also taught history and political science
at the secondary and college level, and has been an
advisor to President Reagan and President Bush. He was
a member of the presidential transition team in 1980,
has served on two presidential commissions and numerous
federal panels, commissions, and advisory committees.
He remains active on the boards of a variety of
professional, civil, and cultural institutions.
---------------------------------------------
"Philanthropy and the Free Society"
by Kimberly O. Dennis
Executive Director, The Philanthropy Roundtable
---------------------------------------------
The non-profit, or "independent sector," is growing at
a tremendous pace in America. It is becoming an
increasingly significant part of our public and private
life. Total giving by individuals, corporations, and
foundations has risen over 250 percent--from less than
$10 billion in the mid-1950s to well over $100 billion
today. Another index of growth is the fact that there
are now nearly one million non-profit organizations
operating across the country. And as members of the
baby boom generation age and inherit from their
parents, roughly $8 trillion in wealth will pass from
one generation to the next. This is bound to bring
another enormous infusion of funds into the independent
sector.
As the independent sector grows, its relationship
with the for-profit and the public sector will become
even more important. But unless we have a philosophical
perspective about what the proper role of this sector
generally ought to be, we won't be able to judge
whether it is performing as it should. It is my
contention that philanthropy and the independent sector
are most effective when they promote independence
rather than dependence, economic growth over
redistribution, and private initiative as opposed to
public undertakings. These may not sound like terribly
profound or controversial ideas, but they are
considered quite radical by much of the philanthropic
community. This is because the independent sector is
still deeply entrenched in the redistributionist,
interventionist rhetoric that characterized the 1960s
and 1970s.
The Connection Between Capitalism and Charity
The leaders of the independent sector would do well to
remember that philanthropy does not exist in unfree
societies. You don't see evidence of private
philanthropy in Cuba; you never saw it in the Soviet
Union; in fact, you don't even see much of it in
Europe, where social services are largely provided by
the state and where contributions to non-profit
organizations are typically controlled by political
parties. It is no coincidence, then, that America, one
of the freest countries in the world, has by far the
most active and generous independent sector.
I have met with many reformers who are interested
in developing independent sectors in their countries.
Those from formerly communist regimes in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union describe decades of economic and
social deterioration and the terrible hardships they
are enduring in the difficult struggle to become free.
They have seen and read about the way the American
independent sector responds to people in need, and they
want to create the same kind of initiatives. Because I
am the executive director of an organization that seeks
to enhance the effectiveness of private philanthropy,
they come to me and ask, "How do we build a charitable,
non-profit sector that can respond to the desperate
economic and social needs of our citizens?"
My response is not the one they expect to hear. I
tell them that the only way to create a prosperous non-
profit sector is to create a prosperous for-profit
sector. The money that goes to support hospitals,
schools, civic organizations, the poor, and the
disabled does not, as the saying goes, grow on trees.
It can't be willed into existence by good intentions.
It is generated by people who are working to produce
goods and provide services. Until you create wealth,
you can't give it away. Until you have capitalism, you
can't have charity.
Of course, the reason formerly communist countries
haven't had much in the way of a for-profit sector is
because the means of production have been owned by the
state. They have been operated, ostensibly, for public
good rather than private gain, but, as we have seen
repeatedly throughout history, private gain is what
makes the public good possible in the first place. In
societies in which the government assumes
responsibility for citizens' economic and social
welfare and regulates the production and distribution
of goods, there is simply no basis for private
philanthropy, at least on any organized scale.
(Charity, like many other "subversive" acts of
individualism, remains underground.)
The More Government Does, the Less We Do
Even in the United States, the more government does for
people, the less they do for themselves. And the less
they do for themselves, the more they need government--
it is a vicious circle in which one government program
begets another. Interestingly, during the 1980s,
private giving in the U.S. increased tremendously.
There were two primary explanations for this. One was
the perceived cutback in public welfare during the
Reagan administration (and I emphasize perceived here,
because while the rate of growth in spending on welfare
programs slowed, spending still increased in real
terms). The theory is that people perceived a slowdown
in government spending on public welfare, so they
increased their charitable giving to compensate. If
this theory is correct--that people gave more because
they thought government was spending less--then the
counterpart should be true. People will give less if
they think government is spending more.
The other explanation for the explosion of
private giving in the 1980s was that the economy was
booming, due largely to tax cuts and deregulation. With
increased prosperity, there was more to give away. If
this theory is also correct, then it means that the
more government regulates the economy--the more it
interferes with the production of wealth--the less
money there is for private charity.
It is evident in any case that a monolithic
government is harmful in several related aspects: it
restricts the private sector from operating freely to
produce the maximum amount of prosperity for all
through for-profit activity; it dampens the generation
of wealth that makes charity possible; and it saps
individuals of the initiative to take responsibility
for their own and others' welfare.
We ought to pay particular heed to this last
consequence, since so much of our heritage is based on
the importance of voluntary action. The 19th-century
French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville was
among the first to note Americans' propensity for
acting independently to accomplish public business and
to form free associations for the purpose of enhancing
civic life. He saw this as one of America's unique and
defining characteristics.
But, as Richard Corneulle observed in Reclaiming
the American Dream (1965), after the Great Depression
and the introduction of the welfare state in the early
20th century, we began to ignore the independent
institutions that played such a vital role in meeting
public needs. And as government assumed more and more
responsibilities, we began abandoning the private, non-
profit associations which "once made it possible for us
to build a humane society and a free society together."
Though the independent sector has grown since
Corneulle's book was published in 1965, so, too, has
government. Why have they grown simultaneously? The
answer, ironically, lies in the fact that rather than
operating as an alternative to government action, the
independent sector has become more closely linked with
it. John D. Rockefeller III, announced in the late
1970s: "In so many fields of social need, the
pioneering work of the [independent] sector has
resulted in government's taking over responsibility for
extending the services broadly, applying the sanction
of law where needed, and assuming the major share of
the financial burden." In other words, the non-profit,
independent sector has become the breeding ground of
government programs.
Rockefeller's view of the role of philanthropy has
become mainstream. Thousands of non-profit
organizations see their primary objective as the
expansion of the influence and power of government. The
NAACP, the Grey Panthers, the Children's Defense Fund,
the Gay Men's Health Crisis, the Mexican American Legal
Defense and Education Fund, the Ms. Foundation for
Women, the National Council of La Raza, the National
Puerto Rican Coalition, the Native American Rights
Fund, Operation PUSH, and the Older Women's League are
just a few examples of special interest groups that are
supported by philanthropic institutions, and which seek
to increase public spending. Why spend $100,000 on a
soup kitchen to feed the hungry when you can spend the
same amount to produce a study that will influence
legislators to increase federal spending on food stamps
for all? Your money is much more highly leveraged when
it influences the way government allocates public
resources than when it is spent directly on services
for the poor.
And why worry about raising private funds to
support your lobbying efforts when you can tap into the
public treasury? Non-profit organizations seeking to
convince Congress to spend more taxpayer money can
actually get taxpayer money to pay for their efforts.
One recent estimate is that some 60 percent of all non-
profit revenues now come from government. This figure
includes support for hospitals and schools, but it also
includes support for cause-oriented groups like the
Environmental Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood,
which take government money and use it to "educate"
people about the need for more government support for
the causes they represent.
It should be pointed out, however, that government
money doesn't come without strings. Government, too,
uses its influence to get what it wants. To qualify for
federal funding, religious day care centers have
eliminated religious teaching, schools have adopted
affirmative action programs, and hospitals have agreed
to provide certain kinds of mandatory treatment. In
what has been called the "government philanthropy
nexus," leverage works both ways.
The True Nature of Philanthropy
In the days of Aristotle and the early Greek
philosophers, philanthropy didn't exist as we know it
today. In fact, the closest concept was "beneficence."
The difference is instructive: In ancient times doing
good, or helping others, was a personal matter, a
reflection of one's character. It had nothing to do
with large foundations that hand out multi-million
dollar grants or organized charities that seek to help
thousands of people. Rather, it referred to how you
behaved toward your fellow neighbors.
In the centuries that followed, the concept of
beneficence was dropped in favor of "charity," and the
emphasis shifted from the character of the giver to
that of the recipient. The objective of being
charitable was not so much to become a better person
but to be helpful to others in time of need. Though
broader in scope and ambition than the classical Greek
notion of beneficence, charity still implied individual
acts of kindness and generosity by some individuals on
behalf of others, and the goal was to make sure that
each individual had the opportunity to succeed within
society.
Today, charity, in turn, has been replaced in
large part by "professional philanthropy." Professional
philanthropy has less to do with individual redemption
than with social reconstruction. The goal is not so
much to help people succeed within society as to remake
society so that no one is a failure. Instead of a
humble effort to help people who are less fortunate,
professional philanthropy has a much more grandiose
aim, which is to act as a powerful catalyst for
political, economic, and social change.
Somehow the idea of helping others has evolved
from a personal exercise of individual virtue to an
impersonal expression of public concern. Professional
philanthropy has become less a matter of doing good
than doing justice, with justice defined as the
discovery and elimination of the social (as opposed to
moral) causes of privation. Instead of helping people
better themselves, professional philanthropy blames
society for their condition. Instead of helping people
succeed within the existing system, its aim is to root
out inequities and promote systemic social change.
In Marvin Olasky's recent book, The Tragedy of
American Compassion, he gives an especially good
account of how the emphasis on spiritual and material
improvement has shifted to support for individuals to
live any way they choose, without having to bear the
consequences. Whereas once recipients of charity were
expected to attend church or perform chores in return
for the assistance they received, it is now more often
than not that they are told it is not their fault they
need help; they are victims of circumstance, and there
is nothing they can do about it.
Instead of charitable efforts to enhance
individual opportunity by helping people make the most
of their talents and resources, we see more and more
philanthropic initiatives that attempt to reform
society through policies that redistribute wealth,
level success, and even equalize self-esteem. Instead
of expanding liberty by giving people the means to be
self-sufficient, professional philanthropy tends to
reward behavior that is inconsistent with such habits
of virtue as liberty demands, including individual
initiative, private enterprise, and personal
responsibility.
---------------------------------------------
Kimberly O. Dennis is the executive director of the
Philanthropy Roundtable in Indianapolis, a national
association of grantmakers dedicated to the enhancement
of private initiative in phlanthropy. The
Roundtablesponsors meetings for grantmakers around the
country, issues a quarterly newsletter, and provides
consulting services for donors on starting,
restructuring, and maintaining giving programs.
Previously the director of public affairs at the
Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason
University, and a director of program development at
the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, Mrs.
Dennis has also served as a program officer at the John
M. Olin Foundation.
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