Reining in Philanthro-Activism
Time to Control the Destructive Foundation Funding of NGO Lobbying Campaigns
Western societies are creating billionaires at an unprecedented rate. But these newly minted accidental philanthropists are not like the Rockefellers, Carnegies or Fords of a century ago. They are not turning to philanthropy to build schools, hospitals or shelters for the homeless. Nor are they giving money away to the needy, as people tend to assume the focus of philanthropy should be. Rather these billionaires, under Giving Pledge pressure, are investing in actions and campaigns that reflect their interests.
And these interests also reflect their investment strategies. Foundations funding impact-oriented NGOs running campaigns against climate change, plastics, conventional agriculture… are also investing and profiting from alternatives (while the vulnerable consumers have to pay more to get less food, shelter and energy). The investment funds or family offices are buying or financing renewable energy companies, large farms and green technologies that benefit from regulatory changes from the campaigns they fund.
Make no mistake - most of these billionaires are not getting up in the morning to manage their foundations to make the world a better place. They subcontract the work to professional consultants (politically hardened and highly experienced activist campaigners) who promise a “return on investment” of their funds. This has been called the professionalization of foundations – no longer content on spending enormous time and energy analyzing candidates and donating funds to the most worthy organizations, but rather to manage issues via fiscal sponsors or groups of interest groups via their donor-advised funds (rarely transparent and often mired in controversy). There is very little philanthropy, kindness or altruism in the political mud pits they are creating. Often these consultants work within their networks to create front organizations where multiple foundations fund ethically-challenged politically charged campaigns.
Some examples:
The Agroecology Fund
The Agroecology Fund was managed by a small group of foundations for many years on a budget of around a million dollars a year to support peasant farmers in developing countries. Then they changed their fiscal sponsorship to the Global Greengrants Fund. This new fiscal sponsor repositioned agroecology as a means to mitigate climate change and tapped into their network of climate-obsessed tech billionaires. Within a few years, they upped the Agroecology Fund’s funding to over $100 million a year (with most of these funds earmarked for advocacy campaigns to raise fear and doubt about conventional agriculture). But as the Agroecology Fund does not exist as an entity, hiding behind the façade of their fiscal sponsor who manages their operations, the activists do not have to report anything or be held accountable for their actions.
Beyond Plastics
Likewise, Beyond Plastics was created by Michael Bloomberg (mirroring his Beyond Coal and Beyond Petrochemicals “projects”). None of these organizations actually exist but are managed out of fiscal sponsors. Beyond Plastics is run out of a tiny liberal arts college in Vermont, Bennington College, which has to bow to this activist organization’s activities to continue to enjoy access to the lucrative Bloomberg management commissions. When scientists complained about false statements made in Beyond Plastics’ documents and campaigns, Bennington referred to it as academic freedom and looked away. Beyond Plastics founder, Judith Enck, testified in front of the US Congress representing an organization that does not exist. Nobody seems to mind or feel the need to impose basic transparency rules and guidelines.
Sher Edling
Sher Edling is a tort law firm that has never won a case or received a payout to cover their private jets. They were created by two activists to file climate nuisance lawsuits against fossil fuel companies for liability for the consequences of climate change. This is a very hard evidence bar to prove in court but their main objective is not to win cases but to try to damage the reputation of these industries, keeping an association between climate catastrophes and fossil fuel companies in the public narrative. Sher Edling is completely funded by a fiscal sponsor, New Venture Fund, managing the tens of millions of dollars donated by seven large climate-focused foundations. New Venture Fund, by the way, also manages the campaigns and funds for Bloomberg’s Beyond Petroleum “project”. Good business for these consultants.
Heartland Health Research Alliance
Heartland is perhaps the most egregious example of special interest groups, in this case the litigation industry, using foundations to hide their funding of a group of activist scientists. These renegade academics use the funding to produce evidence on herbicides the law firms would then use to generate a large number of lawsuits (using many of these same scientists as high-paid litigation consultants). Many foundations have donor-advised funds where these interest groups could anonymously donate to, and then earmark millions of dollars in funding to be directed toward the Heartland Health Research Alliance, who then fund the scientists (running personal “research institutes”) via their universities. The scientists, who publish litigation-compliant studies, don’t declare any funding from the law firms since the money is cleansed first via the foundations and then via Heartland. The foundations meanwhile, protect the anonymity of the donors (and in return take a hefty commission).
Billions of philanthropic resources are now going to activist campaigns and policy advocacy. This has had an enormous influence on environmental issue debates over the last decade. The transition was almost seamless as this new generation of philanthropists redefined the profession of giving. Changing the world for the better became all about making an impact and the best way to make this impact was no longer seen as lifting up the most vulnerable but rather to lobby governments to drive policy change. Groups like Effective Altruism have turned this pragmatic philanthropy into a cult-like business, sucking in robber-philanthropists like Sam Bankman-Fried.
Turning Yellow Journalism into Gold
These foundations and their billionaire philanthropists are still widely perceived as national treasures, cherished beacons of good fighting some alleged dark forces of evil. Nobody ever questioned their funding sources, criticized their complete lack of transparency or considered their conflicts of interest. Outside of The Firebreak, there are very few media exposés about how these foundations are driving the narrative and using hundreds of millions of dollars to create or buy off NGOs to control the policy issues. Why is that?
Could it be that a large number of these mainstream media groups have also been bought off by these same “philanthro-activist” groups? Some examples:
The Guardian claims they are not captured by industry and speak on behalf of (and are funded by) the public. One has to squint very hard and scroll a long way down a discreet webpage to learn that The Guardian receives hundreds of millions of dollars from foundations and writes articles on behalf of the interests of these philanthropists. While these hypocrites claim to represent the little guys, billionaires are paying their rent and calling their tunes.
Climate change issues have remained front and center of our societal narratives and policy debates because foundations, via fiscal sponsors they created NGOs like Covering Climate Now that have been training and paying journalists to work climate issues into all of their reporting. When a fiscal sponsor calling itself the European Climate Foundation (funded by a large number of often undisclosed foundations) pumps out a large part of its budget (€275 million from their last two-page financial report in 2023) on media relations and press campaigns, should we be surprised that reporters pony up to these consultants? We only found out recently that the ECF’s shadowy communications group was the force pulling the strings behind Greta Thunberg’s climate campaigns.
Groups like Bloomberg Philanthropies have set up news investigation organizations like The Examination to report on food, drink and nicotine issues. Worse, when Michael Bloomberg drops $1.6 billion on a flotilla of groups he created to run anti-nicotine campaigns, he not only controls the issue at the global level, he takes over the agenda at the WHO.
And why have anti-farmed salmon campaigns been popping up quite frequently in the media? The Firebreak showed how a media organization was funded by several foundations to fund a story about the work of an anti-salmon NGO (created and funded by those same foundations).
These foundations, now managed by professional activist zealots, play to win and have access to bottomless funds and networks needed to succeed. In Machiavellian style, these groups are using whatever it takes to win (untethered from funding constraints or scrutiny). They do not respect democratic principles, are not transparent and do not follow regulatory requirements in the policy process. Should the rest of us, fighting for evidence-based policies, consumer choice and opportunities for increased economic prosperity, just pack things up, go home and prepare for the coming decades of want and decline?
On most days, recently, I have felt like that.
What can be done to stop this madness?
People believe what they want to believe, and with a well-funded army of activist NGOs and mainstream media groups being paid to amplify the billionaires’ special interests in a social media driven communications environment, the public seems capable of being made to believe a lot of ridiculous claims. As foundations are controlling this armada of ignorance, it seems very unlikely that the halo-effect these foundations still enjoy will wear off anytime soon. But there are still measures that can be taken to limit their freedom to lie and their ability to operate from the shadows that these groups have so easily enjoyed. Namely:
Foundations must comply with the same transparency and disclosure regulations that industry and governments are held to. Dark, donor-advised funds should be abolished, or at the least, not be tax deductible if the interest groups choose to remain anonymous.
If foundations choose to fund activist lobbying campaigns, media groups or the litigation industry, then their donations should be taxed as income. We have to separate charitable groups (NGOs) from lobbying campaign organizations (APEs).
Foundations need to transparently report their investment holdings and declare where any conflicts of interest may arise (especially in cases where campaigns they are funding have direct policy ramifications).
Fiscal sponsor consultancies must be forced to reveal a detailed accounting of the earmarked funds they receive, from which foundations and interest groups, and how it is spent in the operations of their in-house “faux NGOs”. These secretive groups should also declare what percentage of foundation funding they withhold as commissions and salaries.
Faux NGOs like Beyond Plastics or the Agroecology Fund, that have no legal status or accountability, should not be given the same privileges as legitimate organizations (eg, to lobby governments, run campaigns or pretend to have offices and websites).
When media groups like The Guardian or AP publish stories that are funded by foundations, there needs to be a transparency banner at the top of the article declaring that it is a “paid advertisement”.
Foundation funding of organizations operating abroad, especially in developing countries, needs to be held under a higher level of scrutiny. When billionaires with more money than governments try to impose their agenda on vulnerable populations, there needs to be some minimum set of checks and balances. Billionaires like Michael Bloomberg should not be allowed to fund the campaign to ban tobacco harm reduction strategies in countries like Vietnam, costing them hundreds of thousands of lives.
Will these measures be enough to stop the imbalanced forces manipulating our societal narratives, controlling policy and affecting consumer choices and economic development? Realistically, no, but It is better than the present situation where these large foundations are allowed to roam freely doing what they want from the shadows (at the taxpayers’ expense). And we should stop raising glasses when these firestarters enter a room (myself, I raise a pitchfork).
We may only succeed in reining in these philanthro-activists and correcting the influence imbalance when these billionaires finally run out of money to waste on broken activist ideologies. But that might take a long time ... unless global financial markets crash (and the foundation-funded post-capitalist, degrowth zealots are working on that).