The end of the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation – Part II: Manipulating social and economic outcomes in West Michigan and beyond

In Part I of this two part series, I looked at how the local commercial news media reported on the sunsetting of the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation. I concluded that the local news was rather subservient to the DeVos family and miserably failed the public by not providing a more honest and transparent view of the foundation.

I (and others) have been monitoring the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation since the late 1980s. When I was involved in the Indy Media project known as Media Mouse, we regularly monitored and wrote about their foundation. Prior to that, the independent journalist Russ Bellant was writing about the DeVos family for a variety of publications, but then published a book in 1996 entitled, The Religious Right In Michigan Politics. 

Beginning in 2013, GRIID began to more methodically report on the most powerful foundations in West Michigan, which included the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation. I have continued to do so on an annual basis to not only report on how much money they were providing in grants, but to what entities and how that impacted the public. However, before we get to an analysis of the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation, I want to talk briefly about the function of foundations in general.

The function of foundations and the non-profit industrial complex

Foundations are primarily created by the rich and the powerful to fulfill several functions:

• Foundations are a way for members of the Capitalist Class to hide their wealth and not have it taxed.
• Foundations provide a public relations role for members of the Capitalist Class as a way to demonstrate their “generosity” and to shift the public’s attention away from how they made and expanded their wealth.
• Foundations provide the Capitalist Class with an opportunity to fund far right organizations and think tanks, which not only defend Capitalism, they craft public policy positions that benefit those with tremendous wealth. 
• Foundations get to influence what Non-Profits do, since the grant money foundations provide always comes with strings attached that are at best reformist in nature and social service driven.
• By providing grants to Non-Profits, foundations also are able to condition Non-Profits into not criticizing what foundations do or the Capitalists that create them. 
• Lastly, foundations provide funding to social service entities that assist individuals who are hurting, as a way to manage inequality, thus preventing working class people from rising up against the Capitalist Class. The agencies that provide social services act as a buffer for those with power.

In their groundbreaking book, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex, the group INCITE! identified the Non-Profit Industrial Complex as a relationship between the State, the owning classes, foundations and the non-profit/NGO, social service and sometimes social justice organizations. These relationships often result in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements. For the women of INCITE! the state and private power uses non-profits to:

• Monitor and control social justice movements;
• Divert public monies into private hands through foundations;
• Manage and control dissent in order to make the world safe for capitalism;
• Redirect activist energies into career-based modes of organizing instead of mass-based organizing capable of actually transforming society;
• Allow corporations to mask their exploitative and colonial work practices through “philanthropic” work;
• Encourage social movements to model themselves after capitalist structures rather than to challenge them.

All of this is to say that foundations, like the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation, don’t operate in a vacuum. In fact, the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation has always been a very strategic part of how the DeVos family uses their wealth, which we will now explore.

Funding hate, harm and far right Think Tanks

If you look at the 990 record of the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation over the decades, you see certain entities that have received millions of dollars. These groups often are faith-based groups, groups that defend Capitalism or Think Tanks that influence public policy.

Some of the faith-based groups that have received funding from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation are:

• Focus on the Family
• Family Research Council 
• Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church 
• Haggai Institute
• Luis Palau Evangelistic Association
• Right to Life 
• Prison Fellowship Ministries

Some common themes from all of these faith-based groups, and many more that have received funding from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation, are that they embrace an anti-LGBTQ politics, oppose reproductive freedom, preach a very heteronormative family structure, believe that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and have close relationships with conservative and repressive governments. 

Groups that defend Capitalism and are often Think Tanks that have received tens of millions in funding from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation are groups like:

• The Heritage Foundation
• The American Enterprise Institute
• Americans for Prosperity
• Freedom Works
• The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
• The Mackinac Center for Public Policy

You can investigate what each of these groups promote by using the invaluable online site SourceWatch.org 

All of the groups that I have listed so far that have received funding from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation have been the recipient of much larger amounts of money than most of the groups in West Michigan. I say this, since I think it is important that we understand that these groups don’t do charity work, they influence public policy and promote a religious right perspective that does real harm in this world.

Business Education, Religious Schools and the undermining of Public Education

A third major group that has received funding from the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation are systems of education or groups that promote the privatization of education. 

Regarding Universities and Colleges the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation has consistently contributed to Calvin University, Calvin Theological Seminary, Western Theological Seminary, GVSU, GRCC, Davenport University in this area, and to King’s College and Northwood University. In some of these cases the funding was purely to support religious education, while places like GVSU has more to do with influencing campus policy and/or to promote Business Departments.

The Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation has also supported the promotion of charter schools or the privatization of education, which are also the function of many of the Think Tanks mentioned above. 

A fourth Major area of funding for the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation has been organizations that provide social services to individuals or families. Many of these groups are also faith based, but none of them advocate systemic change, only individual achievement. These groups also won’t question or speak out against how the DeVos family spends money in the political arena, which often goes to candidates that do not support an increase in the minimum wage, who don’t support labor unions or which don’t promote higher taxes for the super rich. When the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation provides grants to these groups, I call it hush money, which just guarantees that the entities receiving the funds won’t question how the DeVos family increases their wealth or how they influence political outcomes. Some of these group that are local are:

• Guiding Light Mission
• Hope Network 
• Mel Trotter Ministries 
• Safe Haven Ministries 
• ICCF
• Bethany Christian Services

One last arena that the Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation provide funding to are projects which were started by their children. This provides an opportunity to just shuffle funding around in house, since it ultimately goes to a project that was created by another DeVos. Some examples are:

• ArtPrize
• Start Garden 
• Grand Rapids Initiative for Leaders
• Christian Leaders NFP 
• West Michigan Aviation Academy 

Anyone can see that the analysis that I have provided is way different than what the local news reported. While this is what the local news media should be doing, they have demonstrated over the past few decades that I have done news monitoring, that they are nothing more than stenographers for those with power. More importantly, we need people of conscience to understand and social movements to expose the blatant hypocrisy of the DeVos Family Foundations and not be fooled by their so-called philanthropy.