New Incentives for Middle Class Philanthropy: Radical Funding for the Public Good

The recent expansions in membership and budget of the American Civil Liberties Union and, even more dramatically, the explosive funding by mail of newly-founded Common Cause and Public Citizen, all suggest the presence of evolutionary forces at work in the American political economy that are encouraging a renewal of middle class associations to monitor powerful institutions and to advocate in behalf of the relatively powerless. The rash of whistle-blowing disclosures of citizen professionals which have alerted us to the multi-billion dollar wastage on C-5As and attack carriers, the existence of My-Lais, the military assemblage of dossiers on 30 million civilians, the mass marketing of unsafe pharmaceuticals and automobiles, and the apparent substantial underpayment of presidential income taxes, have provided another manifestation of the private provision of public product at real sacrifices to the provisioners. What developments have encouraged this new outpouring of pioneering private philanthropy? What further evolutionary stirrings in organizational development and tax theory and law promise to both magnify and institutionalize such private largesse