Response to The Boston Foundation Report
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Introduction
and Summary
The purpose of community foundations
is to build and enhance, not divide and diminish, the communities they
exist to serve. Their proper role with respect to controversies
is to help communities address them as constructive conveners of the
contending groups. To fulfill that role they must be strictly
nonpartisan, lovers of truth, and models of philanthropy in its noblest
sense.
We know of no other instance,
anywhere, in which a large community foundation has attacked the good-faith
work of a small charity in its service area—certainly not when the
attack is based on and disseminates undocumented and false information
about, and a misunderstanding of, that charity’s work; and most especially
when that work is promoting philanthropy—surely our common interest,
for our common wealth.
Scholars, for their part, are
trained to think on the basis of evidence. All their assertions
should be supported by evidence, otherwise they are not valid scholarship
or science.
When this Report project was first
announced in the summer of 2004, even though the public announcement
was framed as a critique of the Generosity Index, we responded in print
by welcoming it “with great interest and grateful enthusiasm” (Catalogue
for Philanthropy, Massachusetts, 2004, p. 5. [link]) Though we had
been deeply engaged for nine years in studying, reporting, and promoting
charitable giving in Massachusetts and beyond, we were not consulted
by the project, and only received the Report the day it was released,
with a notice that we would be called by a Boston Globe reporter
to comment on it (which happened immediately). This was political,
not scholarly nor philanthropic, behavior.
The purpose of our formal response
to all this is still constructive: to defend our work, and to suggest
a better way. What the Report finds objectionable and attributes
to the Generosity Index (GI) is not the GI, but the media’s interpretation
of it—a distinction of which the Report is evidently unaware.
This fundamental error would have been prevented simply by the discipline
of documentation or the courtesy of consultation. As we have said
many hundreds of times (cf. the 2005 Catalogue, p. 6 and on this
website [link]) the GI does not claim to measure or compare the philanthropic
generosity of people in various states; we have no interest in that,
and in any case believe it cannot validly be done, because it is too
complex a subject and existing data is inadequate. The Report
attempts to do it, and shows by its own example that assertions on this
subject are only estimates, not facts.
The “better way” is for us
all to work together constructively as colleagues in civil discourse.
The GI and the Report each have serious but diverse, interests, purposes,
methods, and data. There is no need, nor any public value or benefit,
in attacking one another. In philanthropy we are all on the same
team, and in this case it is the home team. Accordingly, we call
upon The Boston Foundation as a matter of professional courtesy to correct
the factual errors about the Generosity Index in its next installment
of this Report. We welcome civil conversation and even criticism,
but we believe it should be done constructively.
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For more information:
- Generosity Index website
- How the Generosity Index Works
- Catalogue Welcomes Study
- The Boston Foundation's letter in response, 3/27/06
