RESUMO
This article examines the extent that community foundations (CFs) are funding COVID-19 mitigation in their communities. We examine 877 of the 894 National Standards accredited community foundations in the United States for both general discretionary grantmaking to COVID-19 responsive discretionary grantmaking in a purposeful sample. Exploring the landscape of national standard certified community foundations COVID19 funding patterns in local communities presents as statistically significant. Exploratory research is presented regarding the connections between the CFs increase community well-being through early responsive discretionary grantmaking during the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 to mid-November 2020.
RESUMO
Philanthropic organizations contribute to important work that solves complex problems to strengthen communities. Many of these organizations are moving toward engaging in public policy work, in addition to funding programs. This paper raises questions of legitimacy for foundations, as well as issues of transparency and accountability in a pluralistic democracy. Measures of civic health also inform how philanthropic organizations can be accountable to stakeholders. We propose a holistic model for philanthropic accountability that combines elements of transparency and performance accountability, as well as practices associated with the American pluralistic model for democratic accountability. We argue that philanthropic institutions should seek stakeholder and public input when shaping any public policy agenda. This paper suggests a new paradigm, called philanthropic accountability that can be used for legitimacy and democratic governance of private foundations engaged in policy work. The Philanthropic Accountability Model can be empirically tested and used as a governance tool.
