[Chapter 13, page 218]

Foundation-Sponsored Commissions

A foundation-sponsored commission can raise the visibility of an issue, shape a policy agenda, or move a policy debate toward resolution and action. For example, in its groundbreaking 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, the National Commission on Excellence in Education, created by the U.S. Department of Education in collaboration with the Carnegie Corporation, alerted policymakers and the general public to a quiet crisis in public schools. As Janice Nittoli has written in Acts of Commission, the magnitude of the problem, the expertise and reputations of the commissioners, and a commission’s research and media strategies can determine its success.[1] She suggests that the National Commission on Excellence in Education did four key things just right:

• The commission had a clear point of view—that U.S. public schools were in crisis;
• It directly addressed its target audience of parents;
• The report had a limited number of specific recommendations, and addressed implementation issues; and
• The report included ample and solid data that reinforced its credibility.

Sometimes foundations will sponsor commissions or studies that a government should itself undertake, but doesn’t. Concerned about the proliferation of fissile nuclear material, in January 2006 the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funded a group of renowned physicists and arms control experts to serve on the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), with the mission of analyzing “the technical basis for practical and achievable policy initiatives to secure, consolidate, and reduce stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.” Because of its expertise, the IPFM is becoming a major point of reference in the field. After Congress ceased funding the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), a group of foundations continued to support its co-chairs and a reduced staff to continue educating Congress and the public on its key recommendations.

In 2002, a group of foundations[2] created the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) with the goal of advancing “a coherent strategy for meeting the energy challenges of the 21st century that has the economic, environmental, and political integrity to overcome the current stalemate in national energy policy.”[3] Its commissioners include representatives from energy-related industries, labor, government, the non-profit community, and academia. The Commission was conspicuously non-partisan, with prominent Democratic and equally prominent Republican members.[4] Since the release of its 2004 report, the Commission has advocated in support of its recommendations to businesses, policymakers, and other stakeholders. The Commission championed stricter fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, which were enacted in 2007, and a cap on U.S. CO₂ emissions. In that year, the COmmission received this “right-handed” compliment from the conservative publication, Human Events:[5]

• How do you win a policy debate? First, be sure you set the terms of the debate. Then develop your arguments cautiously and methodically to suggest that your only purpose is to discover objective facts. To be taken seriously, keep your prose steady and your sources respectable. You are above the fray -- and beyond partisan strife. If the assumptions in your reasoning are controversial, don’t acknowledge the controversy. Instead, suggest that your premises are bipartisan. That will mean your policy conclusions must be acceptable because they are the outgrowth of a political consensus.
  
  
• In discussing energy policy, drop names of important people in politics, academia and the corporate world. Your conclusions must surely be right, because a panel of distinguished scholars and statesmen endorses them. Even calling the panel members a “commission” suggests that the participants are commissioned -- pulled with reluctance from their busy lives to solve an urgent world-class problem. Their findings are sure to be top-notch and their policy prescriptions sensible and balanced, forged in the crucible of bipartisanship.
  
• This is the modus operandi of the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP).
  
• To win the trust of the public and policymakers, NCEP never deviates from its mien of objectivity. To the public, the organization seems like an independent commission, perhaps set up by Congress. In fact, it’s a pressure group funded by liberal ideological foundations and partisan policy groups. Make no mistake, NCEP is a skillful activist group that has a singular goal: It aims to overhaul the energy business using the heavy hand of government.

Whatever one’s views of its objectives and recommendations, NCEP has had a strong media strategy from the start, and the funders’ budget included several years’ outreach after its report was issued.

While most foundation-sponsored commissions come to an end after several years, the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics has continued for almost a decade to address the commercialization of college sports. The Commission’s 1991 report, Keeping Faith with the Student-Athlete, and 2001 report, A Call to Action, have been influential in increasing college presidents’ control over inter-collegiate athletics and improving athletes’ academic standards.[6]

Janice Nittoli offers the following recommendations for foundations considering creating a national commission:

• Begin with a clearly defined task, a target audience, and an emphasis on articulating tangible actions that are within the power of the audience to execute.
• Bring together a bipartisan cross-sector group of diverse individuals who are capable of making decisions and shaping policy. Commissioners must be willing to listen, study, prepare, and be able to transcend ideology.
• Create a tight structure, including actively engaged chairs, to manage the work of the commission; a small enough membership to enable the commissioners to get to know each other; a single, strong staff director leading a staff able to frame clear, data-based decisions for commissioners; and continuing involvement of a foundation executive.
• Invest in applied research: make sure the research is positioned to get attention and reinforce the commission’s goals, and regularly release topical information and research findings to stay in the public eye and build interest and support for the commission’s ultimate recommendations.
• Limit the product of the commission’s work to a small number of actionable recommendations that are within the constituency’s control.
• Develop a media strategy appropriate to the commission’s goal and maintain a constant media presence.
• Invest in follow-up after the commission’s recommendations are released. Activities that support implementation include education of key audiences, fostering broad-based discussion of recommendations, clarifying guidelines for implementation, building the capacity of organizations that can carry out the work of implementation, and creating awards programs for communities that follow commission recommendations.