Philanthropy’s Hidden Power: How Foundations Quietly Shape Society

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Lauren Dula¹ , Laurie E. Paarlberg² , and Imoleayo Adeyeri²

¹Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA, ²Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA

Imagine a world where unelected actors—wealthy, well-intentioned, and often invisible—have profound influence over public policy, social change, and even what counts as “the public good.” This isn’t dystopian fiction. It’s the real, often under-scrutinized, but often critiqued, world of philanthropic foundations.

For decades, foundations were seen as benevolent forces—generous patrons funding education, health care, climate action, and poverty alleviation. But as scholars and critics dig deeper, a more complex picture emerges: philanthropy is not only about giving. It’s also about power. The kind of power that shapes narratives, sets agendas, and determines whose voices get heard—and whose don’t. It is also about the norms, values, and government regulations that shape private actors’ capacity to enact their philanthropic values. 

 A recent integrative review by Lauren Dula of Binghamton University, SUNY, and Laurie Paarlberg and Imoleayo Adeyeri, both of the Lily School of Philanthropy, Indiana University (2025) entitled “Philanthropic Foundations and the Exercise of Power: An Integrative Literature Review of The Many Faces of Power” challenges us to take a closer look at the complexities of power and philanthropy, offering a fresh lens: the four faces of power—domination, coercion, subjugation, and manipulation—and how they operate in, through, over, and against philanthropic organizations.

Mapping the Terrain: The Methods Behind the Insights

To explore this question, the authors conducted an integrative review of 219 peer-reviewed articles published between 1970 and 2022. Their goal wasn’t just to summarize the literature, but to systematically analyze how scholars across disciplines understand and critique the power dynamics in philanthropy.

What sets their approach apart is a hybrid methodology combining both qualitative coding and theory-driven synthesis. They employed iterative open coding to let themes emerge naturally from the literature, followed by more focused coding using analytical categories rooted in power theory—such as Steven Lukes’ faces of power and Fleming and Spicer’s sites of power. This layered approach allowed the authors to move beyond surface-level observations and dig into the multi-faceted ways foundations influence and are influenced by the world around them.

The Many Faces of Foundation Power

So what are the faces of power and how do they appear in the academic literature?

1. Coercion is the most visible and direct form of power and involves the use of incentives or disincentives to compel behavior. 

• Power in foundations: Internally, coercion can be observed in hierarchical decision-making, where staff, donors, or trustees have access to the resources needed to fulfill the organization’s mission and use that control to influence funding or programmatic decisions, thereby exerting control over resources without input from staff or communities. Internally, wealthy donors or elite trustees may dominate board decisions or may steer grant-making toward personal values through a variety of donor-advised vehicles.
• Power through foundations: Funders use their philanthropic infrastructure to impose programmatic direction on grantees, often through rigid funding criteria or performance reporting methods.
• Power over foundations:  Government actors or watchdogs may control foundations through regulation or legal requirements, forcing compliance with government standards.
• Power against foundations: Populist social movements may use their platforms to force foundations to change their practices through public pressure or influence public policy through the court system. 

2. Manipulation is a less visible form of power—it works through shaping the issues that are considered important for discussion by fixing the decision making criteria.  

• Power in foundations: Trustees and executives identify the issues that are important for the foundation and control networks, impression management, and strategic narratives, and control information within the organization. 
• Power through foundations: Foundations unilaterally set agendas and strategic priorities b   by controlling information and knowledge dissemination. Foundations may manipulate agendas through funding research, data collection, or evaluation tools that frame issues in a way that aligns with their ideology.
• Power over foundations: Societal actors shape public foundation agendas, discourse, social networks, direct influence, and rhetorical appeals by controlling the narratives or institutions that support their worldview.
• Power against foundations: Foundations’ agendas are shaped by social movements that actively oppose foundations by shaping public opinion. As a result, public or media narratives, sometimes reinforced by the philanthropy itself, may silence alternative approaches or critiques of systemic issues.

3. Domination involves shaping desires, beliefs, and perceptions, often without the subject’s awareness, such that those values become hegemonic. 

• Power in foundations: Foundation leaders create a culture and understanding of accepted values in the foundation that become taken for granted, including what it means to be a foundation professional.
• Power through foundations: Foundations control broader fields and societal norms and practices through supporting academic research, professional education, and the creation of knowledge and information networks.  Long histories of dependency create hegemony of ideas amongst grantee nonprofits, making them risk-averse and compliant with philanthropic norms.
• Power over foundations: Professional societies and philanthropic support organizations shape the values and norms of philanthropy.
• Power against foundations: Opponents may distort public perception of foundations, using media or misinformation to weaken their legitimacy and public perceptions of their societal value.  The spread of neoliberal values and practices in philanthropy, such as venture philanthropy and impact investing, supported the financialization of foundation values and practices. 

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4. Subjugation reflects a deeper form of power in which an actor’s sense of self-identity is shaped through discourse and routine practices. As a result, the oppressed accept their position as natural or deserved. This form of power is the most difficult to identify.

• Power in foundations: Managerial staff train workers to espouse the hegemonic ideals of the foundation, while the workers believe they are autonomous and in control of their own ideas. Workers internalized hierarchies within the foundation, creating unspoken expectations of what it means to hold a position within the foundation and the significance of their work. 
• Power through foundations: Foundations shape institutional fields so much that others believe the foundation’s views are their own. An example is foundation influence over educational institutions, shaping the professional and social identities of individuals, and through the grant-making processes, they create identities of passive recipient organizations. 
• Power over foundations: External actors establish norms that redefine how foundation employees perceive their work, in essence impacting their self-perception.
• Power against foundations: Social movements alter how foundation employees view their work.

Tangible Takeaways: What Should We Do With This Knowledge?

The implications of this study are far-reaching—for scholars, policymakers, activists, and foundation leaders alike.

• For Scholars: The study offers a robust framework to analyze philanthropic power that goes beyond simplistic critiques of “elitism” or  a description of “good intentions.” It invites more empirically grounded, theory-rich research into the political consequences of philanthropy. It also identifies future areas for research. For example, power through foundations is the most researched site of power. In today’s polarized environment, it calls attention to the need to better understand the power that government and social movements have over the expression of philanthropic values and the roles of philanthropy in society. 
• For Policymakers: Understanding how foundations operate across these dimensions can inform better regulation, transparency requirements, and democratic safeguards. What impact will changing tax incentives and accountability mechanisms have on foundations, their roles in society, and public perceptions of legitimacy?
• For Practitioners in Philanthropy: The review offers a mirror. Foundations can reflect on how they may unintentionally reinforce inequalities or exclude grassroots voices, and take steps to democratize their processes.
• For Civil Society and the Public: Awareness is the first step toward accountability. Recognizing the power foundations wield helps citizens ask harder questions: Who gets funded and why? Whose vision of the future is being promoted? Just as important, our review highlights that foundations are embedded in broader societal systems of organizations, which also shape foundations and the public attitudes toward philanthropy. 

Ultimately, the article challenges the seductive myth that philanthropy is somehow “outside” politics. Instead, it argues that philanthropy is intertwined with political relationships. 

Closing Thoughts: Power Isn’t Always a Dirty Word

One of the most important contributions of Dula et al.’s work is that it doesn’t villainize foundations. Instead, it makes a nuanced argument: power is inevitable in philanthropy, but how it’s exercised, and who gets to shape its contours, is what truly matters.

By naming and dissecting the many faces of power, this review pushes us toward more thoughtful, equitable, and democratic forms of giving. In a time of rising inequality, shrinking civic spaces, and global crises, that’s a conversation we can’t afford to ignore.

Click here to read the free full-text article: Dula, L., Paarlberg, L. E., & Adeyeri, I. (2025). Philanthropic Foundations and the Exercise of Power: An Integrative Literature Review of the Many Faces of Power. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640251332893