Philanthropy and the Problem with Public Good Rhetoric
Last evening, I took John Palfrey’s “courage is contagious” hashtag to heart and decided to challenge him on some of his statements about philanthropy. While I’m not new to speaking up, I’ll admit that I haven’t made a habit of publicly pushing back on the president of one of the largest private foundations on the planet. That said, our brief conversation was enlightening. It clarified something I’ve been circling for a while: the way elite philanthropy uses the language of the public good to insulate itself from public accountability.
When Palfrey defended foundations against a proposed excise tax increase, he didn’t lean on financial data or legal nuance. He leaned on moral language. Foundations like MacArthur, he said, fund after-school programs, cultural access, public-interest journalism, medical research. “These are all public goods.” In other words: We’re doing good things—so why should we be taxed?
But here’s the problem: if privately governed, tax-sheltered institutions get to decide what counts as a public good, then Project 2025 fits the bill too. Funded by The Heritage Foundation, designed to reshape the U.S. government in the image of authoritarian nationalism, and distributed freely for maximal public influence—by Palfrey’s logic, it checks the boxes. That’s the irony: once you let private discretion define the public good, you don’t just invite backlash—you invite imitation.
So what do we really mean when we say something serves the public? Because once you strip the term of governance, accountability, and consent, public good becomes little more than a flattering euphemism for whoever got there first with a checkbook and a theory of change. And, if philanthropy keeps playing fast and loose with the language of public benefit, it may find it has no standing to push back when the next regime uses the same logic to do far worse things.
Defending the Status Quo —and What It Reveals
Palfrey’s defense of the philanthropic status quo was framed as a calm rebuttal to a proposed excise tax increase. But, read closely, it wasn’t about numbers; it was about narrative control. He insisted that foundations like MacArthur are doing the real work of civil society. “It is important to recall what we do: we donate money to charitable causes in the public good,” he wrote, along with an impressive but curated set of outcomes. The message was simple: we’re the nice guys—why would you tax us?
But, when pressed on how these privately governed efforts actually qualify as public goods (who defines them, who oversees them, who gets a say) Palfrey had no response — not a dodgy answer, not a reframing… just nothing. Because the truth is he doesn’t want to have that conversation. Like many in his position, he wants the moral halo of public service without the mess of public accountability. The foundation decides what’s good. The foundation funds it. The public, conveniently, is expected to applaud.
That’s not public service. That’s private governance in drag. And it’s precisely that self-insulated posture that makes progressive philanthropy so vulnerable to critique from both the populist right and the social justice-minded left. The problem isn’t that Palfrey said the quiet part out loud. The problem is that, when asked a real question, he had nothing else to say.
The Problem with Public Good Rhetoric
Let’s get clear: a public good isn’t just something that sounds nice or helps people. Thinking back to our first econ class, a public good is non-rivalrous (my use doesn’t reduce yours) and non-excludable (no one can be denied access). Think streetlights, clean air, national defense… You don’t apply for a grant to breathe. You don’t need a relationship with a program officer to drive on a road. Most foundation-funded work doesn’t fit that definition. It’s valuable, sure. But it’s also selective, restricted, and deeply controlled.
So why call it public? Because over the last 40 years neoliberalism trained us to accept a bait-and-switch: the state shrank, philanthropy stepped in, and we all started pretending that privately governed services were a sufficient substitute for public infrastructure. Once foundations filled the vacuum, they claimed the moral high ground and the tax break; and no one wanted to say out loud that this whole setup was public in name, private in structure.
But now we’re seeing the cost of that blurred line. When anyone with a 501(c)(3) and a strategic plan can declare their work a “public good,” the term stops meaning anything. It’s just rhetorical window dressing for whoever controls the purse. That’s not semantics; it’s a legitimacy crisis. And it’s a crisis made worse by the fact that the very people invoking the language of public good are often the last to accept any form of public accountability.
Project 2025 – The Rhetoric Comes Home to Roost
Enter Project 2025, a 900-page blueprint funded by The Heritage Foundation to dismantle the administrative state, purge civil servants, and center executive power around far-right ideological goals. It is, in every structural sense, what liberal philanthropy claims to be doing: a long-term strategic investment in public influence, freely distributed, backed by charitable dollars, aimed at “fixing” the country. If we’re using Palfrey’s logic, this thing should be celebrated. It’s a public good, right?
Of course it’s not. It’s a privately funded attempt to bend public life toward authoritarian ends. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: it’s using the same tax privileges, the same philanthropic infrastructure, and the same rhetorical sleight-of-hand. “We are helping the public. We know what’s best. Trust us.” The difference is that Heritage isn’t pretending to be accountable. It’s playing the game more aggressively because it knows the rules are soft and the field is unguarded.
This is the real cost of letting “public good” become a vibe instead of a structure. When the left calls its work public but resists actual governance, it opens the door for the right to do the same—only harder, faster, and without the guilt. One commenter in our thread urged moderation, asking whether we couldn’t agree to pursue reform “with a scalpel in lieu of the chainsaw.” To which I replied that some of us knew back in 2022 that The Heritage Foundation and others were busy creating their own version of a “public good” and we knew the chainsaw was the strategy.
What Elite Philanthropy Should Have Seen Coming
Some of us saw all of this coming. The Heritage Foundation was openly preparing to seize the machinery of government while progressive philanthropy was hosting convenings about trust-based philanthropy, decolonizing wealth, and assuming Biden was a shoo-in for a second term. While Project 2025 was being drafted, evidently no one at MacArthur was doing any scenario planning—asking what it would mean for institutions like theirs when authoritarian actors decided to play by the same rules.
And, now, as those same actors prepare to implement the most anti-democratic policy agenda in modern memory, we’re hearing calls for moderation. ”Let’s be careful. Let’s be precise. Let’s not overcorrect.” That’s rich. The time for scalpels was before the chainsaws first started buzzing. If philanthropy wanted to protect civil society, it could’ve begun by scrutinizing itself—its privilege, its insulation, its reluctance to risk anything but reputation.
Instead, it clung to the illusion of moral clarity. But Trump doesn’t fear moral clarity; he exploits structural weakness. And, when the foundations that claim to stand for justice won’t confront their own contradictions, they don’t just lose credibility. They vacate the space entirely. And movements with far worse intentions are more than happy to fill it.
Public Goods Require Public Governance
The core issue isn’t whether foundations do good things. Most do. The issue is whether we allow tax-sheltered, privately governed institutions to define what counts as a public good without any accountability to the public itself. Once we accept that arrangement, we see that it’s not just MacArthur we’re protecting; it’s Heritage too. And, if both get to claim moral authority without public accountability, then public good becomes a matter of taste, not structure. That’s not sustainable. It’s barely even defensible.
Philanthropy doesn’t get to have it both ways. You can’t claim the privileges of public purpose while rejecting the burdens of public governance. You can’t warn about blunt policy instruments when you stood by through years of strategic silence. You can’t invoke the scalpel now if you never used it on yourself. And you certainly can’t cry foul when your opponents start playing by the very rules you insisted were yours alone to interpret.
If foundations want to keep their relevance—let alone their legitimacy—they’ll need to do more than rebrand their intentions. They’ll need to surrender some control. That means embracing real oversight, submitting to democratic scrutiny, and recognizing that public goods don’t become public just because the donor said so. They become public when the people—not the boardroom—get to decide what the public needs.
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, Founder, Responsive FundraisingWriting Projects
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Excellent take. Thanks for this.