ABSTRACT
American foundations can most rigorously be appraised. For these strange and wonderful social inventions have a unique freedom from the dependency of other institutions on markets or constituencies that cripple their capacity to take the long view and to bring a competent and disinterested approach to the search for solutions to complex problems. Role models in philanthropy as in any other field can be a powerful influence. The influence of a role model like Robert Wood Johnson increases as knowledge of what it is doing and how it is doing it circulates among others in philanthropy, both staff professionals and trustees, and as the inevitable comparisons is made with their own policies and programs. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation exemplifies the potentiality. It concentrates its efforts on one of the largest, most rapidly growing, most complex, and most dangerously troubled aspects of the American welfare state: health care.
