ABSTRACT
There are over 60,000 independent foundations in the United States, with an estimated $4.2 billion giving in 2006 for international causes, or about 22 percent of their total giving, including international grants to both US-based and international recipients (Renz and Atienza 2006; Foundation Center 2008). The order of magnitude is best appreciated when compared to the Official Development Assistance (ODA) by the US government, estimated to be $9.8 billion for the year 2000 according to ODA guidelines (Adelman 2003). Another useful benchmark is the total foundation support for US higher
education, estimated to be $7.3 billion in 2002 (Lawrence and Marino 2003). Total giving by the US private foundation sector has grown more than five times in constant dollars over the last 30 years, and giving for international causes has grown even faster (Foundation Center 2008). Eighty percent of international giving comes from about 1,000 foundations, with the 50 largest awarding almost 3,000 grants for about $1.4 billion. There are many new foundations among the largest 50, as much new wealth has followed the philanthropic tradition of professionally managed, independent foundations launched by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller a century ago, including work of an international or global nature. The new mega philanthropy-equivalent to those established by Carnegie and Rockefeller in the 1910s and Ford in the 1950s-is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which devotes an even larger proportion of its funds to global issues and the developing world than the others did in their early days. Whether or not new foundations will depart from the priorities, strategies, and organizational culture said to predominate among older foundations-needless to say, quite a varied group in itself-is an open question.2 New philanthropic organizations, with no previous commitments and with huge endowments, needing to spend their income at a fast pace, are likely to be bolder and more ambitious than the professionally managed older foundations. Health-related initiatives receive the most giving, growing from around 30 percent to 50 percent of the total in recent years, with education, including higher education and the social sciences, the next most-funded area. Important other priorities include international development, international affairs, and the environment (Renz and Atienza 2003, 2006). Domestic giving to higher education by the large foundations has also declined in relative terms and become a relatively minor percentage of funds available to institutions, yet strategically significant around some issues. The traditionally intimate connection between the worlds of education and modern philanthropy, built on the initial decades of the last century, has eroded, as foundation boards and management are less often recruited from academia and their cultures have drifted apart (Bacchetti and Ehrlich 2007). Foundations seem keenly aware that higher education systems worldwide, including those of the poorer and middle-income countries where they focus their programs, have become massive in scale. Universities in the public sector are complex organizations, requiring important capital investments in buildings, laboratories, equipment, and libraries in order to operate effectively. Institutions are largely funded directly or indirectly by governments, in particular for capital investments, although they pay an increasing proportion of operational costs through private sources, including fees. Development assistance from the World Bank and the regional banks developed credit lines far surpassing philanthropic funding, targeting support to capacity building within governments and individual higher education institutions. Only a few
of the 50 largest US foundations awarding grants for international development choose to work with universities and other higher education institutions in their overseas programs, and even fewer have specific programs or initiatives in the higher education field.3 Among the new large-scale foundations, the Open Society Institute network of George Soros philanthropies is the exception rather than the rule in supporting universities in developing and transitional countries, although several medium-size foundations have provided funds for selected countries and institutions (i.e., the Zemurray Foundation in Central America and the Kresge Foundation in South Africa). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on the other hand, has no higher education initiative in any of its three major programs, although “science” is prominent within the Global Health Program, and the Global Development Program supports agricultural and economic research and is about to launch a human capital development program in agriculture in Africa.4
