Giving to government: the policy goals and giving strategies of new and old foundations

Abstract

Scholars have found differences between older and newer foundations and their giving priorities and strategies, especially in education. Foundations founded in recent decades with still-living benefactors have been more vocal, result-oriented, and focused on education initiatives like charter schools and alternative certification than their older counterparts. In this paper, I examine whether these differing patterns hold for new and old foundation grants to state departments of education, leading new foundations to target contexts politically amenable to education reform while old foundations focus less on politics and more on state need. Using data on the largest 1000 foundations, in addition to grants from the Gates and Wallace Foundations, I find that new, but not old, foundations, are more likely to support education reform policies when giving to state education agencies. I also find that new, but not old, foundations support state education agencies possessing political contexts conducive to education reform as well as higher levels of child poverty. I illustrate these findings with the case of Kentucky. These findings suggest that, by taking advantage of state need while seeking out political allies, new foundations behave like interest groups in their grants to government.