Roundtable Betrays Its Own Values of Philanthropic Freedom
CONTACT(S): Russell Roybal rroybal@ncrp.org Jennifer Amuzie jamuzie@ncrp.org
By defining themselves as the champion of philanthropic freedom in an era of censorship and liberal overreach the Philanthropy Roundtable has attracted $67 million dollars of private foundation support and $13 million via DAFs since 2006. They have never been shy about declaring voluntary philanthropic reform efforts a compulsory menace to the pluralist American tradition. As late as 2014 the Roundtable was suggesting that NCRP, then as usual promoting voluntary standards for philanthropic excellence, were “dangerously close to calling for regulations and legislation that would mandate how and to whom donors may give.” Efforts like NCRP’s, the Roundtable said, would “stifle and suffocate” charitable excellence. The Roundtable’s campaign to make philanthropy per se above public critique or regulation reached its apex in April of 2023 when, after a wave of backlash to the largest mass mobilization for racial justice in generations, a most unlikely and much remarked upon combination of high profile, powerful names appeared alongside more fringe anti-reform ones under the signature line of an open letter to the sector which urged the field to “not question the underlying legitimacy of any foundation or philanthropist holding a particular view” and to “assume that those involved in philanthropy have the best intentions.” The wealthy donors trying to use their philanthropy to subvert democracy are also in many cases Philanthropy Roundtable donors.
Over more than a decade, the Philanthropy Roundtable has stoked the fires of fear that someday someone from the government might tell philanthropists what kinds of work they could and could not support – which bits of the rich tapestry that makes up our vibrant civil society were within and without the law – and they’ve used the combustion to power an anti-accountability engine for their regressive donors.
And yet now that an administration aligned with their donors’ interests is threatening an inquisition and pretending that by fiat they can make racial equity grantmaking illegal, the author of the Roundtable’s 2020 anti-diversity “toolkit” is the director of human resources for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that has moved agency to agency, ransacking the federal government and installing political commissars. And at February 2025’s Foundations on the Hill, the sector’s annual lobby day, and generally with PSO colleagues, the Roundtable presents itself as a staunch defender of philanthropy – a shield for “freedom,” “personal opportunity”