Looking Back at Zimbabwe

How a grant aimed at advancing democracy missed the mark

This is the anatomy of a grant that failed. In October 1999 Carnegie Corporation provided funding of $200,000 for the Constitutional Commission of Zimbabwe in support of public education and outreach activities, including: 1) educating Zimbabweans about the strengths and weaknesses of the present constitution; 2) informing them about the Commission’s work and 3) soliciting their input about the kind of government they wanted their country to have. According to the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, the Commission, a task force of 400 citizens, had been set up “to afford the people of Zimbabwe the opportunity to author and found their constitution enshrining freedom, democracy, transparency and good governance.” But as anyone who has witnessed the repressive Mugabe regime at work will attest, this opportunity would never materialize.

Why would Carnegie Corporation give a grant to a futile project in a doomed country? Why for that matter do foundations give grants at all? Philanthropic foundations exist primarily to give money away and, in the simplest possible terms, do so to solve problems. Carnegie Corporation founder Andrew Carnegie’s vision of philanthropy was “to do real and permanent good in this world.” And as Corporation president Vartan Gregorian stresses, the most essential element of successful philanthropy can best be summed up in the word strategy.

Foundations such as Carnegie Corporation employ strategic grantmaking to assure that support is used where it will accomplish demonstrable change; formal objectives, timetables and procedures are spelled out and agreed upon in advance. Adhering to these strict criteria is the surest way to keep philanthropy from naïvely over-promising on its potential. Even so, there’s a risk of foundations supporting projects that are long on hope and short on strategy. One relevant example is the Corporation’s failed grant toward a new constitution for Zimbabwe. ”