For many around the world, Ireland in the last ten years or so has represented two things: first, a strong voice for human rights and justice, from Presidents like Mary Robinson to prominent private citizens like Bono. And second, a powerful economic success story: the “Celtic Tiger,” which Atlantic was proud to play a part in through our substantial investments in strengthening higher education.

The “Celtic Tiger” has quieted to a faint purr at the moment, with Ireland’s economy, like most in the world, thrown into deep recession. It will take time and considerable effort, but in time the Tiger will roar again. Of growing concern, though, is whether Ireland’s human rights reputation will survive the economic downturn. In a visit to Dublin last month, I was distressed to learn from the leading rights organisations supported by Atlantic that deep budget cuts in pivotal agencies threaten their very ability to do their jobs.

My colleagues and I shared a meal with directors of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) and Amnesty International. We were told that The Equality Authority, an independent body set up under the Employment Equality Act of 1998, has lost 43% of its funding. The budget for the Human Rights Commission, which is responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights as defined in the Irish Constitution and international agreements to which Ireland is a party, was cut back by 24%.

“Salvaging the economy is a vital task,” wrote Katherine Zappone and Michael Farrell, two veteran rights campaigners who are members of the Irish Human Rights Commission, “but we are concerned that an exclusive focus on economics will create a vacuum for the promotion of social justice and protecting the interests of diverse and vulnerable groups. Because the economy is in a recession, our national sense of justice and moral compass do not have to go into recession as well.”

Huge shortfalls in funding for the two key statutory institutions established to protect and promote human rights and equality in Ireland is short-sighted and risky for Irish society. It threatens Ireland’s international reputation for promoting human rights and as a place where diversity and equality are embraced and protected. What are the implications of severely weakened state human rights institutions?

The Equality Authority will have to cut its staff by a third. Much damage has already been done, as many experienced staff have already resigned or been transferred to other parts of the civil service. The amount of money saved by the Department of Justice with these cuts will be miniscule, relative to its overall budget – about €2.5 million out of €459.5 million. But the cost to the Authority’s work will be devastating. According to the Equality and Rights Alliance, the cuts will mean that no new case files can realistically be opened for the next two years and therefore the Equality Authority will be unable to protect any new victims of discrimination in Ireland.

When you consider all the people in Ireland who are either young or old, gay or straight, Irish or foreign, married, single, widowed or divorced, parent or carer, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, or Jewish, male or female, very few people are left who might not need the help of either The Equality Authority or the Irish Human Rights Commission at some point in their lives. Where will people like Phyllis Fahey, who was refused a bank account because she was told she was too old, or women like Heather Lane, who was discriminated against and victimised because she was pregnant and had young children, turn to when they face discrimination?

Ireland’s international reputation for protecting human rights has already come into question. A recent European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) report found Ireland to be among the worst of all countries in the EU when it comes to victims of racial discrimination and abuse. This situation is likely to worsen with unemployment levels projected to rise to nearly 17% by the end of 2011. Dr Maurice Manning, President of the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC), said the report, “clearly demonstrates that more needs to be done to protect people in Ireland against racist discrimination” and warned that “the recent budget cuts to the IHRC, Equality Authority and the closure of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI) are only likely to worsen this situation.”

The Irish Human Rights Commission is a small and traditionally under-funded organisation, nonetheless praised consistently as a strong and independent voice for human rights by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and others. As recently as last July, the United Nations explicitly called on the Irish Government to strengthen the independence and capacity of the IHRC by giving it adequate and sufficient resources to do its job properly. These budget cuts do just the opposite – further limiting its ability to conduct enquiries, take legal proceedings to vindicate human rights or provide legal assistance to Irish people. This is difficult to understand in light of the Irish Government’s sponsorship of a recent United Nations General Assembly resolution calling upon governments to strengthen national human rights institutions.

“It’s unfortunate that Ireland is choosing to make the protection of human rights a casualty of the economic crisis rather than deciding to protect them at a time when they are most vulnerable. It is at times of economic crisis when human rights need to be protected the most,” said Martin O’Brien, the Belfast-based Director of Atlantic’s Reconciliation & Human Rights Programme.

All governments, even the most progressive ones, rankle from time to time at the findings of independent agencies charged with holding them accountable for human rights standards. Repressive regimes shut down such agencies or even worse. Democratic ones sometimes yield to the temptation to weaken or silence their critics by control of the purse strings. The Reagan Administration in the United States did this with sharp cuts in legal services programmes and civil rights agencies, damage to the rights infrastructure that the nation is still struggling to repair.

Compared to other functions of government, agencies dedicated to human rights are a bargain. The savings gained from cutting them are minimal, but the costs of doing so are huge – and at precisely the time when the vulnerable and the voiceless need more protection, not less. While the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has recently announced that that the budget cuts of the Equality Authority are to be reviewed, the cuts still stand for the time being. Atlantic joins it grantees and leading rights figures like Elizabeth Palm, Vice President of the European Court of Human Rights, in urging the Irish Government to reverse the damage by quickly restoring critical funds for human rights agencies now.

Gara LaMarche
gara@atlanticphilanthropies.org

Links to organisations mentioned in this column:

• Irish Council for Civil Liberties
• Free Legal Advice Centres
• Amnesty International
• The Equality Authority
• Equality and Rights Alliance
• Irish Human Rights Commission
• National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism

On a mellow California afternoon earlier this month, I drove a few hours up the coast from Los Angeles, where I’d been on a panel at the annual meeting of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, to spend some time with one of the most influential figures in philanthropy, Dick Boone, the last director of the Field Foundation. We talked over tea in his Santa Barbara garden.

I’d never met Dick Boone, but I’d long heard of the work of the Field Foundation, which twenty years ago spent down its assets, much as Atlantic is now doing on a larger scale. When it closed its doors, The New York Times ran a kind of obituary, under the headline, "Field Foundation, Civil Rights Pioneer, to Die at 49; Survivors Will Be Legion." Established in 1940 by the Chicago banker, publisher and department store heir Marshall Field, the foundation, though never spending more than $4 million annually, had an outsized impact that is felt to this day.

Field was an early funder of racial integration in the United States, paving the way for larger foundations to follow. A report on hunger, funded by Field, played a key role in expanding government programmes to feed poor children at school and enable poor families to buy food at stores with vouchers. Field helped launch the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the Food Research and Action Center and the Children’s Defense Fund, all current Atlantic grantees. Each of them worked to hold the line in support of meeting human needs during the tough years of the Reagan and Bush presidencies, and they are now working to make gains for low-income Americans in the more promising time of the Obama administration. All social justice organisations and movements in the U.S., and all the foundations, large and small, that support them, stand in the shadow of The Field Foundation.

But rather than view Field’s legacy as a shadow that dwarfs current efforts, it is best to think of it as a beacon for all of us. For that reason and others, I wanted to meet Dick, who remains actively engaged in advising a host of nonprofit and philanthropic efforts. I had felt for years that I knew him through his legions of protégés, whom he carefully mentored and promoted and who now occupy leadership positions. These include Bob Greenstein, longtime director of CBPP; and Margery Tabankin, philanthropic adviser to Steven Spielberg, Barbara Streisand and other entertainment industry figures. Also among them was Colin Greer, President of The New World Foundation, which, along with the Field, Norman, Taconic, and Ottinger foundations, Stern Family Fund, and others, fueled the engines of social movements with funding in the 1960s and '70s. Finally, his protégés include Lisa Goldberg, the late President of the Charles H. Revson Foundation.

Lisa has recently been on my mind because a few days after I visited with Dick, of whom she often spoke fondly, I spent an afternoon on the selection committee for a fellowship in her name at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where I am also an adjunct faculty member. Lisa, who was a good friend and cherished mentor to me and many others left her mark on public life in many ways. She led efforts to fund progressive television programming, including those of Bill Moyers, a prominent progressive American journalist, and Eyes on the Prize, the documentary series on the U.S. civil rights movement. But most of Lisa’s considerable influence was subtle and barely noticed, hence all the more effective. She was a central figure in empowering women, strengthening progressive ideas and politics, and fostering leadership for the next generation. She was farsighted and strategic, always keeping an eye on the larger picture. Lisa’s cruel and sudden death two years ago from a massive brain aneurysm still leaves a gaping hole in progressive philanthropy. That a promising young person on a path to public service will be able to go to NYU on a fellowship bearing her name is the most fitting monument she could have.

Dick Boone, now in his eighties, told me how much he learned from key figures throughout his amazing career beginning in his student days at the University of Chicago. Among them were: Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago; Saul Alinsky, one of the pioneers of modern community organising in the U.S. with whom Dick worked; and Robert Kennedy, with whom Dick and others created the Office of Economic Opportunity during the New Frontier. Dick told me that Kennedy taught him that not all problems come in shades of gray, indicating that some are black and white, and require taking a stand. Racial injustice, economic deprivation, hunger: these are issues where you must side with those in historically marginalised communities as they lead the way for the change they urgently need. For philanthropy to be truly effective, for it to have lasting impact in the lives of those who most need it, it must strengthen their voices and build their capacity, and take its cue from their leadership.

If, when Atlantic is finished spending our vastly larger assets in seven countries, it can be said that our "survivors are legion," and that we chose well, we will owe much to the path forged by Dick Boone and The Field Foundation.

**

In this more personal column than most, I’ve tried to get across the tremendous importance of individual leadership in social change philanthropy. Contemporary examples abound, but two I want to call out are being recognised with awards at the upcoming Council on Foundations meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in a few weeks. For their work to advance immigrant rights, Geri Mannion of The Carnegie Corporation and Taryn Higashi of Unbound Philanthropy, two close colleagues and friends, will receive the Robert W. Scrivener Award for Creative Grantmaking. They have chosen to use their award funds to create their own prize, The Freedom from Fear Award, to honour “ordinary people who demonstrate extraordinary acts of courage in defence of immigrant and refugee rights” – another salutary example of paying it forward. And the Association of Black Foundation Executives has chosen to honour Atlantic’s own Programme Executive Rahsaan Harris with its Emerging Leader in Philanthropy Award. Congratulations, Rahsaan!

Gara LaMarche
gara@atlanticphilanthropies.org

Links to organisations mentioned in this column:

• Food Research and Action Center
• Children’s Defense Fund
• New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
• Charles H. Revson Foundation
• Center for Effective Philanthropy
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)
• CBPP Video Honoring Richard W. Boone

It’s been some months since I offered some thoughts, in the early days of the global economic crisis, on the likely impact of the crisis on foundations and the organisations and movements they support. A lot has happened since then – including a number of steps taken by Atlantic – and I think it is a good time for an update. In a time of uncertainty and anxiety in all quarters, foundations owe our grantees and the larger community a high degree of transparency on these urgent and sensitive subjects.

Since October, the situation has worsened everywhere – something you don’t need me to tell you, since the news each day brings fresh tales of economic distress in virtually every country, and among our families and friends. Here in Ireland, where I am spending most of this week, there is growing unrest about the government’s handling of the crisis, which has made deep cuts in the budgets for human services and for human rights enforcement agencies.

In Ireland, Atlantic is the largest philanthropy in a sector that was just beginning to develop when the economic crisis hit. In the U.S., where thousands of foundations operate, nearly all foundation endowments are down significantly. At least two significant foundations – the JEHT and Picower Foundations, both close funding allies of Atlantic’s, based in New York – have closed their doors, since their holdings were with the disgraced investor Bernard Madoff.

In the case of JEHT, a leading funder of human rights and criminal justice reform, a great many of its grantees were shared with Atlantic. We could not stand aside when the sudden cancellation of scheduled grant payments for critical work wrought such devastation. With the Open Society Institute (OSI), we offered in late December to match the contributions of MoveOn.org members to four organisations identified by MoveOn who were also Atlantic grantees. In just a few days, over a million dollars was raised in small contributions from individual donors. It was an unusual instance of foundations’ funds being used to attract commitments of small gifts to social justice organisations, an approach we are eager to build on in the future.

At this writing, Atlantic, OSI and other donors are working to identify remaining critical needs in 2009 for JEHT grantees. In the coming weeks, Atlantic will make additional one-time grants from a fund of up to $5 million authorised by our board, which also approved substantial additional support for time-sensitive policy initiatives to take advantage of the season of opportunity ushered in by the new administration in Washington on issues including economic recovery, health care, immigration reform and the restoration of civil liberties.

While it authorised these extraordinary expenditures, Atlantic’s board also approved my recommendations to slightly reduce our overall grant spending for 2009 and cut some of our operating expenses. Are these mixed messages? I don’t think so, and let me take a minute to explain why.

Most foundations seek to exist and maintain a certain level of grant spending in perpetuity, so their economic forecasts are based on managing their endowments to produce a steady level of income. Given the state of the market, most of these foundations are facing at least a few difficult years, as their performance is off by 30%, in some cases ranging as high as 50%. This year, most of our colleague foundations have managed to maintain or even, admirably, increase their grantmaking, but the next few years will be even tougher.

Atlantic is an unusual kind of foundation in that we are deliberately trying to spend down our assets and go out of business by the end of the next decade. While our endowment performance has been much better than most, we were still down about 15% by the end of last year. Atlantic has a careful plan in place to manage our remaining assets to make good on the investments in issues, organisations, leadership and movements in health, human rights, ageing and youth during our remaining years of grantmaking. So to make sure we can stay largely on course, we reduced our authorised grant spending level by about 5%, to a still considerable $355 million. We also took steps to reduce our operating expenses, trimming travel and consultant budgets, moving to a web-only based release of our lauded Annual Report, and cancelled our global staff conference this year.

What does this mean for Atlantic’s programmes and grantees? It means that each of our programmes has a little less to spend this year, and we may have to defer some new initiatives that are not time-sensitive. We will be moving away from a few grantmaking areas, and by extension from support of some organisations we have worked with in recent years, but these steps – which we will take with appropriate care and notice – flow primarily from our recent review of strategic direction, not from any fiscal exigency. (We have almost completed a months-long strategic process to align our programmes more closely with social justice principles, and I’ll have more to say about that in a subsequent column.) In short, we are working on a somewhat tighter budget, having made a few tough choices, and are staying fundamentally on course.

President Obama is taking an approach to the economic crisis that in some areas, despite the current crisis and the mounting deficit, the U.S. needs to step up public investment to deal with long-term and neglected structural changes in health care, education and energy. We and our colleague donors also need to recognise that tough economic times sometimes require us to step up the pace on urgent, time-sensitive initiatives. That’s why Atlantic is pressing ahead on supporting advocacy for health care and other policy opportunities, because if we wait a year the moment may have passed. It is critical to remember what is at stake in the effort to affect large expenditures of public dollars on core human needs: the recent U.S. economic recovery, or “stimulus” bill, at $787 billion, dwarfed by many times the annual spending of all foundations in the U.S. combined. This is a time for some fiscal prudence, to be sure. But foundations exist to take risks, and Atlantic in particular exists to make lasting changes in the lives of those who have been left out of power and public benefits for too long. We must rise to the moment.

On Thursday night in New York, I’ll be moderating a panel on philanthropy and the economic crisis – details are here – and I encourage you, if you are in the area, to come by for a discussion with perspectives from large and small foundations and social justice organisations. We are trying to do the best we can, as everyone is, to manage through these anxious times. We may not always get it right, but we aim to be as open about our thinking as possible, including to better ways of responding and communicating. To that end, as always, I am eager to hear from you.

Gara LaMarche
gara@atlanticphilanthropies.org

Atlantic was recently featured in an article in The Nation magazine about the impact of the economic crisis on nonprofits and foundations, which you can read here.