It's been a year since Lehman Brothers, the New York City investment bank, declared bankruptcy, turning what had been a somewhat mysterious credit crunch into a full-fledged global financial panic.
Much has happened in the intervening twelve months. The country elected a new president, the first African American chief executive in its 233-year history. Housing prices and the stock market tanked, erasing trillions of dollars of homeowner and investor equity. Private endowments, and the smart people who manage them, suffered right along with Main Street. Employers followed the markets' lead and cut jobs with a vengeance. By summer, the "official" unemploment rate was approaching 10 percent and poised to go higher. Meanwhile, on Nonprofit Street, demand for services was up and donations and grant revenue were down, sometimes dramatically so. And on Wall Street, the deck chairs were rearranged, gaping holes on bank balance sheets were plugged (with taxpayer dollars), and the good ship Business As Usual was sent on its jolly way.
If you detect a note of disbelief in that last sentence, well, forgive me; it's been that kind of year. And what about foundations? Have they risen to the occasion over the last year, as Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Council on Foundation, argues in a recent Washington Post op-ed (Philanthropy's Leadership Moment")?
In his piece, Gunderson points out that, in October, as some really serious stuff was hitting the fan, he and CoF board chair Ralph Smith sent an open letter to the field encouraging foundations "to rise and face the new economic realities."
In the letter, Gunderson and Smith asked CoF members and philanthropic leaders to do three things:
- Reach out to their nonprofit partners and find ways to maintain service amidst the economic crisis;
- Use philanthropy's convening power to help communities and regions develop appropriate strategies to meet their respective needs; and
- Pay special attention to those circumstances where philanthropic mergers, consolidations, and outright evaporation of resources resulted in the immediate loss of support for local nonprofit services.
In PND, we've tracked and published dozens of stories about foundations, large and small, that have stepped up to the plate in this difficult time. And our Foundation Center colleagues have gathered additional information on the response to the crisis by the hundred largest foundations.
Now we want to hear from you. How would you rate the foundation response to the crisis? How have foundations done in terms of the three criteria laid out by Gunderson and Smith above? And, keeping in mind the old adage "If you've seen one foundation, you've seen one foundation," what more could or should foundations be doing to mitigate the pernicious effects of this downturn? Use the comments section below...
--Mitch Nauffts
