The Jane Mayer article on the Koch Brothers brings up an issue I’ve been internally debating over the role of corporate philanthropy and how an organization goes about setting its guidelines and boundaries as far as which sources of funding are legitimate. In particular, the passages regarding David Koch’s huge donations to the Smithsonian natural history museum (despite denying climate change) and to Sloan Kettering (despite lobbying against formaldehyde regulations) raise serious questions about ethics and judgment (and maybe the research abilities of the organizations).

This came up for me personally last year when I helped put together a revised Corporate Fundraising Policy for our organization. Doing so meant thinking through some really difficult questions. For one, which industries should be blacklisted? Since my organization fights climate change through sustainable transport, the oil industry was an obvious one. But what about banks? They are not directly antithetical to our mission, but many have done serious harm to people’s lives through predatory lending, high-risk investing, etc.—though perhaps less conspicuously than say the tobacco industry. I also had to consider which industries may potentially call into question the integrity of our organization; for instance, funding from Uber while we’re doing studies on ride sharing. I wonder how thoroughly the organizations the Kochs give to actually debate these questions.

In some ways, this is part of the “who gets to decide?” question we discussed in class. In this case, organizations have a say in where private/corporate money is spent simply by saying no. No your oil money will not be spent to promote sustainable transport, for instance. However, this may only be possible from a privileged position. While it is an instance of the populace getting to decide, we’re fortunate to have a diverse funding network that allows us to say no to some funds, where others may not be able to—a real limit on the public’s actual power to decide.