What Is Thing Called Transparency, Anyway?

In a call for ideas from the folks at Tactical Philanthropy regarding how to help foundations more transparent and accountable, I sent the posting below ("Can Philanthropy be Citizen-Centered?" -- scroll down) as something that might be considered. Two lines were pulled from my post:

Essentially, foundations need to start exploring new ways to develop stronger partnerships between the professionals that staff foundations and “real people” on the ground living in real communities. And that means going beyond simply hiring consultants to interview those people for “input” that usually gets fed back to the foundation experts who ultimately decide what they’re going to do. It means working with people to figure out how foundations can best to address the issues they say are important to them and their communities.

Sean Stannard-Stockton, the host, responded:

I think that for foundations that want to try this approach, it might lead to exciting results. But I also want to be clear about my continual urging for a broader philanthropic conversation and more foundation transparency. I do not think that foundations should be required to be transparent. The concept of private foundations having a right to “privacy” is not something I disagree with at all. I think that foundations should be free to pursue whatever course of action they desire and that they should not be obligated to take any direction from the public. This distinction is why I talk about transparency as an issue of philanthropic effectiveness, not public accountability.... I think that we will find that transparency is good for foundations, good for nonprofits and good for the public. But at the end of the day, I think that the transparency decision is completely up to each individual foundation. This is why I make the distinction between "public accountability" transparency and "philanthropic effectiveness" transparency. I'm interested in the second type.

This is an interesting delineation, and one I've heard before. And it's certainly a legitimate one, given that most foundations are private institutions. But I’m not convinced the larger public would view it as entirely acceptable, given that they're not getting much feedback about what's actually done with the millions foundations dole out and how "effective" they are. Yes, there seem to be lots of evaluation reports floating around, but how many of these are actually conducted by third parties that sample beneficiaries randomly and over time? The latter are the three most important questions to ask of any evaluation, according to William Cotter, former president of Colby College, Oak Foundation, and the Africa-America Institute, in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article.

In lieu of more formal regulatory or accountability structures (is there really such a thing as "self-regulation"?), perhaps foundations might consider alternative steps toward public accountability, beginning with involving the latter more in their decision-making processes. Will doing so enhance institutions' effectiveness? Other institutions are slowly realizing that it may--not only in their ability to address specific issues but also in increasing people's interest and involvement in their larger community and the institutions that support it. While the jury may still be out as to whether public involvement in foundations' work is cost-beneficial in terms of concrete outcomes, perhaps the most valuable "outcome" of such efforts may simply be increasing the levels of civic engagement in communities that are starved for it.

The Flattening of Politics Through Technology

Today, there is little substance in campaigns, with spin passing for political discourse, much of which is driven by poll-obsessed consultants who balk at the hint of candidates having an original thought and expressing it. Even when there are political “debates,” the questions lobbed at candidates are usually those that have been vetted by party leaders and then posed by celebrity journalists, rather than by citizens. Campaigns are also dominated by big money and there’s a real dearth of interesting and inspiring candidates, due to ballot access requirements that keep third-party and independent candidates—those are, arguably, more interesting—off the ballots. The United States, in fact, has some of the most stringent ballot access requirements of any democracy in the world. Add to that antiquated redistricting rules and a Byzantine maze of electoral rules and regulations across every state, and you’ve created a real disincentive for people to “get involved” in politics.

But the answer isn’t to walk away. It’s to change it.

Auspiciously, that’s what some are trying to do, and they’re using technology to do it, which may be leading to the flattening of politics. Take the Vote Different video—the “most famous video of the election cycle thus far,” according to the Globalist. Although Hillary was bashed (literally) in the spot, which was produced by a self-proclaimed Obama fan, the overarching message was powerful: It’s time for real people to take back campaigns from the media pundits, pollsters, consultants, party fundraisers who’ve bollixed up the process. And it’s helped spread the word about a relatively new concept—citizen-generated content—to nearly 3 million people who’ve viewed the spot on YouTube.

So is this the wave of the future or just a fluke? The 600-plus participants who converged on New York City to attend the Personal Democracy Forum’s recent conference argue that technology is changing politics, like it or not, so we all better get used to it and see it as an opportunity to transform our democracy in ways that encourage, rather than limit, participation. This was PDF’s fourth conference, which brought together the country’s leading technologists, campaign organizers, politicos, bloggers, activists and journalists high-level conversations about the new tools, sites and practices that are transforming elections and government. In an array of tight and compelling presentations, speakers warned that politicians and others who aren’t getting it about technology will soon find themselves left in the dust—maybe not during this election cycle but certainly, the next one. They also underscored how technology is pushing out the traditional media as the arbiters of what gets discussed regarding political campaigns through social networks and user-created media through which information flows from the bottom-up, rather than top-down.

This is particularly true among young people, said danah boyd. In one of the most interesting presentations, boyd called on politicians to start understanding that, to young people, digital spaces are just as important as physical spaces and is where they tend to live their lives. To that end, she said, politicians need to start “giving digital handshakes on virtual receiving lines” by logging on once in awhile and participating interactively with young people, rather than just putting up a website and pushing out “messages” to them.

Politicians, boyd noted, aren’t doing this yet. Yes, they’re rushing to Facebook to put up a profile, but they’re still using these sites as platforms and “broadcast media like TV,” rather than interactive, civic spaces whose hallmark is interactivity and reciprocity. “Simply having a profile on MySpace,” she warns, “does not convince the under-30s to vote for you.” What will is making time to “shake hands” with young people digitally the same way politicians make time to shake hands with voters in public forums.