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On Being A Grantmaker
Michael Lerner
PREFACE: Philanthropy is a key but rarely examined element of the health policy community. Investigators, advocates, and policy innovators all look to foundations to support their work. Funding from health-related philanthropies fuels both the careers and the impact of many health services researchers and health policy actors. What is life like for professional philanthropists—the individuals tasked with making the grants that so many seek? We present two takes. Michael Lerner, an innovative free-lance scholar and environmental activist, explores the joys and perils of migrating from grantee to grantor. He offers important observations on the education and evolution of the foundation executive. Roger Hughes, the director of a foundation devoted to community health issues, is instructed by a chronically ill man, "Be sure to tell them about my ideas." This is exactly what Hughes does in his essay, bringing the lives, wit, and complaints of the "customers" of his philanthropy to our attention. Writing more than a report from the front, he reflects on the gap between his world of "30,000 feet up" decision making and the ground-level people whom his work affects.
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On Halloween 1991 Jenifer Altman knew she was dying. She called me to her house overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the small town where we both lived. She asked me if I would be willing to take responsibility for helping her turn her $12 million estate into a foundation. In that moment Jenifer changed my life.
I was forty-eight when Jenifer died. Born in New York, I had taught political science at Yale and had come to California in 1972 on a sabbatical. In the town where I settled, I met a woman who was directing a school for neurologically . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Conceptual Models, Long Attention Spans
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