The only Irish organisation to appear on the illustrious list of partners and funders of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue is the Community Foundation Ireland. There they are, nestled among such luminaries as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society, not to mention the tech giants of Silicon Valley and the spooks of Whitehall and Washington.
That’s odd, I said to myself, and mindful of the right of reply prior to outing them as a front for the Illuminati of Bavaria I decided first to contact them and to ask them what is “the exact nature of this relationship” with the ISD. Was it the case that the ISD provides for or funds the Community Foundation of Ireland, or, perhaps in fear that the Gates family and the British state might go bankrupt, were CFI were bunging the Institute a few bob to keep up all their good work watching the For Roysh, and whoever else they might be watching.
Perhaps they were all busy caring for the marginalised and disenfranchised on Monday and Tuesday because they have not gotten around to responding to me. So, we must park that for the moment. There are, however, a number of other things which are interesting about the Community Foundation.
According to itself the Community Foundation is – akin to a Woke Blues Brothers – on a mission. Yes siree. “A shared mission of equality for all in thriving communities.” In this noble endeavour they have “5,000 voluntary, community and charitable partners.” I am not sure if that includes the British Home Office or the German Ministry of Justice but they are all mutually acquainted through ISD.
CEO Denise Charlton was formerly CEO of the Immigrant Council, a director of Women’s Aid and used to have her own consultancy business. She is also a director and substantial shareholder in a number of property and real estate companies including Gervalden and Metropolitan Properties.
Charlton was chair of the campaign for same sex marriage and the main fundraiser for the Together for Yes campaign to legalise abortion on demand. She is a good example of the fit between the south Dublin bourgeoise, the business community and their progressive views. Thus, well positioned to attract philanthropists who want social change, but not actual social change. If you get my drift.
Community Foundation Ireland was founded in 2000. As with so many of the leading NGOs it received a considerable early boost from Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies who gave them €4,000,000 in 2003. That was ostensibly for the “creation of older people’s fund” but I have no idea of what became of that. Older people are certainly not the focus of CFI grants as that category only received 1.3% of their disbursements in 2022.
CFI is a subsidiary of the Foundation for Investing in Communities which was incorporated in 1998. The list of subscribers for that company included Deirdre Carroll who was then Assistant Secretary of the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs; Tony Hynes who was managing director of the Green Isle group; Philip Mulally of the Enterprise Trust; Steve Costello, the general manager of Marks and Spencer Ireland; Anna Lee, John Hynes, and then Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Professor Tom Mitchell.
The financial statement for the FIC includes the accounts for Community Federation Ireland. In its most recently submitted figures for 2022 this shows that CFI increased its income from donations from €6.2 million in 2018 to €25.8 million in 2022. The major jump was in 2020 when the Foundation’s income increased by more than four times. The financial statement for that year includes a reference to more than €12 million raised through Comic Relief, the Late Late Toy Show and the opening of six new donor advised funds and five gifts of more than €1 million each.
The main source of cash are such fund holders and legacies and the Foundation regularly facilitates “philanthropy masterclasses” at which the Center for Effective Philanthropy and various capital funds – Aviation Capital has done presentations – at which donors and potential donors are advised about the potential tax and other advantages that accrue to socially minded donors.
The Center for Effective Philanthropy – another beneficiary of Atlantic Philanthropies to the tune of $1.4 million soon after its foundation – describes its task as advising foundations established by the wealthy on how “to utilize tax-privileged funds that are intended to benefit society.” It is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has worked with the Gates Foundation and others in pursuit of this.
Modern philanthropy is closely linked – as we know from the experience of CFI’s seed-funding Atlantic Philanthropies patron – to specific social goals and the targets and objectives of CFI funding complement the left liberal project in Ireland. In 2022 grants of €3,930,264 were made to beneficiaries under the category of Refugees/Asylum Seekers.
A good insight into how the Community Foundation channels funds is that in 2022, according to the accounts of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, they received “multiple grants” totalling €42,906 from CFI. Charlton is as we have seen the former CEO of the Immigrant Council.
Atlantic Philanthropies boasts about how its vast funding helped to bring about gay marriage, abortion and the promotion of mass immigration. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is all there in black and white. What is most insidious is how they show that their “strategic partnering with government and with other foundations was a vital part of the process.”
What they did in effect was to massively boost the advocacy and activist NGOs in the sectors they were interested in making a radical impact. They then, with the cooperation of the state and politicians across the spectrum, ensured that the state itself – you the taxpayer – took up the burden of funding those NGOs and thus ensuring that their influence continues to carry undue weight in Irish public discourse.
Even where – as with the two defeated referendums and the shift in attitudes regarding mass immigration – those NGOs and the political establishment which it has colonised have been shown to be way out of line with the opinions of most of the citizens of the state.
Community Foundation Ireland and its controlling body the Foundation for Investing in Communities represent an interesting situation in which an organisation mostly supported by anonymous wealthy liberals is nowhere near as dependent on the state but which clearly has substantial influence on public life both through its grants and its policies and demands.
CFI has 38 separate lobbies registered on the official register. Most of these concern the place of philanthropy and presumably their mission to influence and shape a “national policy on philanthropy.” Last year, for example, they met with Jerry O’Connor, an advisor to Minister Roderick O’Gorman on their desire to “Secure a meaningful National Policy on Philanthropy to include measures to promote legacy giving, placed based giving as well as a new cross-Government openness to match-funding.” They also emailed every TD.
And sure enough, last December the Government published such a strategy document. The “vision” section gels very closely with that of the Community Foundation with the goal of increasing the level and enhancing the role of “philanthropic giving” in pursuit of “a more equitable, sustainable and just society.” Which has motivated wealthy people for as long as there have been wealthy people. Not.
While none of the philanthropists who were asked even mentioned possible tax benefits that might accrue from their giving, a substantial section of the document is focused on what Minister for Finance Michael McGrath had stated in October 2023 were ways in which “our tax system can better encourage and support philanthropy.”
There is nothing inherently wrong, of course, with wealthy people “giving something back.” There are many examples where people like the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie donated 90% of his fortune to public libraries, baths, black education, music, science, health and so on. He certainly had strong political and social views but his objective was charitable rather than ideological – nor did he benefit from tax breaks and measures to protect a huge inheritance.
There is certainly an issue with the modern form of philanthropy which in the cases of Atlantic and Open Society to name but two, their funding has had a huge and ideologically motivated and targeted influence on the areas to which the funds have been directed. In the case of the Irish state, that includes effecting a radical sea change not only through legislation but in the virtual creation of an entire advocacy NGO sector that continues to wield enormous influence through its funding and intimate connections to the state.
Community Foundation Ireland remains a key part of that nexus, in both channelling anonymous funding and in creating a dependency on the part of the grantees who become doubly reliant on the favour and patronage of the fund holders, and on state “match funding” which in most cases then replaces the initial seed capital and foundation dependency.
The question is whether such dependency is healthy. Those of us critical of how the influence of the advocacy NGOs has operated and the fact that they have driven agendas that have most recently been exposed as out of sync with public opinion in the two defeated referendums in March would argue that it is not.