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May 07, 2008

Council on Foundations
The Grant Maker's Guilt

The exhibit-hall booths have been dismantled and most of the 3,200 foundation leaders who attended this week’s Council on Foundations annual meeting are heading home.

Some grant makers say they are leaving the meeting energized and eager to tackle social issues with a renewed vigor.

But at least one conference attendee says the lavishness of the event at the new Gaylord National Harbor conference center has left him with mixed feelings.

Albert Ruesga, vice president at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, in Washington, writes on his blog, White Courtesy Telephone, of the uneasy emotions that he felt as he listened to speakers talk about addressing human-rights abuses in an opulent hotel he says is “large enough to have its own zip code.”

“Sitting in this place, isolated as I am from the hurly-burly of the world, I’m in a fog,” Mr. Ruesga writes. “I forget that the wars we wage most vigorously in the name of human rights are tied intimately to the protection of American consumption—my consumption, and that of my family and friends.”

— Peter Panepento

Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink

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