The American Tax Reform Act of 1969 represented a major watershed in the law of philanthropy, introducing a new classification scheme — one that sharply distinguished between ‘private foundations’ and other charitable organisations — and, for the private foundation category, a new regulatory system, new regulatory sanctions, a new tax on investment income and new restricitons on the deductibility of property gifts. After briefly tracing the origins of this legislation, the paper sets forth five norms that should characterise the legislative process, and proceeds to explore, albeit in abbreviated fashion, the extent to which each of these norms was respected by the Congress in 1969. The paper then turns from an examination of regulatory principles to a consideration of regulatory impacts, dealing with several ways in which the 1969 Act appears to have caused diversion of resources, including: diversion of charitable giving from foundations to non-foundation charities (with consequences for the ‘birthrate’ of foundations); diversion of resources from charitable to non-charitable uses; diversion of funds from charitable channels to the US Treasury; and a diversion of resources from certain grantees to others. The mitigating effects of recent forms of deregulation are described, followed by the suggestion that more deregulation is desirable, in order to sustain the health and strength of America's private foundation sector.

This paper compares legal approaches to foundations in six economically well-developed democracies (USA, England and Wales, Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands). ‘Foundations’ refers to ‘nongovernmental, non-membership, organisations, recognised as a legal category with a purpose in the general interest’. This covers the common field of the common law's charity and the civil law's foundation as a legal person. The countries organise public supervision of foundations in very different ways. Mostly there is governmental involvement or involvement of an independent body in the establishment and governmental supervision of foundations in action. In a few cases, the supervisory power — concerning the foundations’ activities, not their establishment — is with judicial authorities. Access to information of foundations (registration) and possible requests for sanctions by interested parties are also rather different. Not all rules are in accordance with the freedom of organisation and some are less desirable. The conclusion is that a balance between the freedom of the foundation (board), the protection of the public order and the protection of the interests of others can be found in a system with systematic supervision at the establishment — and later practice — by governmental or independent authorities or in a system with good registration and incidental supervision by judicial authorities, also at the request of interested parties. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Large philanthropic foundations such as those which first developed in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had four characteristics: (a) the aim of contributing to the public good; (b) applying science and scientific method to human affairs, interpreting science broadly; (c) using great wealth to pursue these purposes; and (d) seeking public recognition of their charitable status in doing so. Between 1870 and 1930 the large foundation emerged as a major social institution, and under the influence of their officers began to be major patrons of applied social science for public policy purposes. Critics of foundations have charged that they were private bodies without external accountability; they were secretive, undemocratic, unrepresentative and indeed pillars of the ruling class. Nevertheless, foundations have exercised a disproportionate influence upon public policy research and have sought to apply fundamental knowledge to tackling social problems. They represent the institutionalisation of knowledge-based social engineering.

This article traces the history of Ford's involvement in population work in South Asia from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. The primary focus is on the transition from large-scale technical assistance programmes rooted in government and academe, to work with grass-roots women's groups and community-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In the process, the Foundation also moved from quantitative efforts designed primarily to distribute contraceptives, to a more holistic approach focusing on maternal and child health. The article concludes by relating these trends to a larger shift from a belief in the power of ‘disinterested expertise’ and university-based policymaking that marked the efforts of the major American foundations since the Progressive era, to a new emphasis on ‘self-interested expertise’ and grass-roots social activist and development NGOs that emerged in the 1970s. Changing development paradigms, political trends and a growing disillusionment with large-scale technical assistance all contributed to this transition.

This article describes three ideal-typical cultures of grant-making constructed in the light of data from an exploratory study of British foundations. These three cultures, representing the values and assumptions which inform the way in which foundations approach the task of making grants, have very different implications for the resources required by foundations and for organisational processes and procedures.

The article goes on to discuss some of the organisational and management dilemmas of British grant-making foundations. Five key sources of management difficulty in the grant-giving foundation are identified. First, grant-giving foundations face particular difficulties in identifying and assessing the relevance of their priorities; these difficulties stem from the nature of grant-giving and the foundation's relationship with its ‘customer-suppliers’. Second, grant-giving foundations must manage within the constraints imposed by limited choice of and time available from trustees. Third, grant-giving foundations must manage the potential tension between control by donors and trustees. Fourth, grant-giving foundations must work within financial and time constraints. Fifth, the management of grant-giving foundations may be further hampered by lack of adequate feedback. In this article, particular attention is paid to the first three difficulties.

Foundations — or proto-foundations — that had their roots in the western world in the Greek and Roman civilisations later found their way into ancient Spanish law. The early historical inheritance was transferred by Spain and Portugal to Latin America. Those first foundations were dedicated to a few activities in the areas of health, education and community services. In this article I briefly follow the transition from the traditional foundations to the contemporary one with their wider scope of activities. There is an attempt to follow the correspondence that may exist for the Argentine case between these foundations and extant theories that attempt to explain their role in a wider societal and economic context to conclude that the evidence is still limited for the various failure approaches discussed in the literature. Alternatively, we suggest that the retrenchment of the welfare state should be considered one of the factors that lead to the increase in the number of foundations and the diversification of their activities. The analysis incorporates the issue of discontinuities and crisis, and the strategies followed by different types of foundations under authoritarian rule and periods of high inflation. Surprisingly, during those periods the foundations continued to increase in numbers. I suggest that an adequate explanation for the dynamics of those foundations requires a socio-political approach complemented with the analysis of some economic factors.

This paper is an exploration of research funding by western, local and Islamic foundations in the Arab world. Arab and Islamic foundations supporting research present a very recent phenomenon, so their numbers are limited and basic institutional traditions are still being developed. At the same time, they do have their own ‘ideologies’ and their own experiences which are not the same as those of the West. The findings in this paper are largely drawn from three case studies of foundations in the Arab world. There are several differences among the cases, although all of them are acting as non-profit organisations funding research work and making grants to individuals and institutions. It is difficult to compare precisely the contribution of the three foundations in all aspects of grant-making, but we can build the comparison on the scope of activities and their final contributions in education and culture. This paper closes with a discussion of potential research agenda on the future role of foundations in this part of the world.