rachel pritzker

philanthropy.com/opinion/a-d… Philanthropy “has too often operated as though the country’s chief problem is bad actors threatening good institutions. In truth, many institutions have failed to live up to their public purpose and have lost credibility as a result,” @forachelP courageously writes in @Philanthropy. “When institutions focus more on deflecting blame and attacking their critics than on meeting widely felt public needs, they only reinforce the perception that they are unable or unwilling to reform themselves. Our funding has frequently underwritten that posture,” according to Pritzker. “Adversarial advocacy has also infected many other areas of philanthropy, often in ways that funders miss and that conflict with their democracy goals,” she notes, and “adversarial advocacy, pursued single-mindedly, degrades democracy by deepening polarization, cutting off productive negotiation and compromise, and foreclosing the broad coalitions that democracy requires. … “[M]ost funders are drawn from a relatively narrow professional class: highly educated, ideologically left-of-center, institutionally minded, and clustered in a small number of metropolitan hubs. Our values and priorities are out of step with a wide swath of the country. At best, we may occasionally recognize this disconnect. At worst, we judge our fellow Americans for not sharing our views. … “Philanthropy has spent a decade funding the defense of a democracy that most Americans still don’t trust—and we may well be further fueling that distrust,” Pritzker concludes. “Are we capable of changing course when the evidence suggests our approaches are not working? Asking that question honestly and publicly is an important first step.”