Experts Have Long Warned About a Pandemic. Why Wasn’t Philanthropy Paying Attention?

Over 20 years ago, I read a thriller called “The Cobra Event” by Richard Preston, about a terrorist who releases a deadly virus in the United States. Preston had previously written “The Hot Zone,” a book on an Ebola outbreak in Africa, and so he knew all sorts of scary things about how quickly lethal infectious diseases could spread. “The Cobra Event” scared the heck out of me, and supposedly also scared Bill Clinton so much that he ordered the U.S. government to pay more attention to biosecurity.

In 2011, I saw the movie “Contagion” starring Matt Damon, which vividly played out the impact of a pandemic that originates in China, killing over 2 million Americans and tens of millions more people worldwide.

What was so alarming about these two works of fiction is how totally plausible they were. For decades, when experts have mused about the really bad things that could happen in the world, a pandemic was always near the top of the list.

Yet, for the most part, philanthropy has paid little attention to this risk. As IP recently reported, very few funders work in this space, and the dollar amounts granted have been negligible. Now, as the coronavirus disrupts U.S. society in a big way, some foundations are scrambling to respond. But almost no one in the sector seems to have thought at all about biosecurity issues, so for the most part, they’re starting from scratch in dealing with an emergency that’s turning communities upside-down.

Why have funders been caught so off-guard here?

It’s an important question to ponder, especially since a value-add of philanthropy is that it can pay attention to issues that aren’t on the minds of voters and politicians, and also won’t be addressed by the market. Foundations are supposed to be good at playing the long game to make the world a better place, peering around corners and over the horizon. But that hasn’t happened here, despite decades of warnings that a pandemic would inevitably arrive on America’s doorsteps, with deadly effects.

I don’t have any grand theory about why biosecurity has never been on philanthropy’s agenda. Funders have actively engaged two other existential threats to humanity—nuclear weapons and climate change—and so it would be wrong to say that philanthropy can’t imagine the very worst that might happen.

One thing about those two issues, though, is they’ve fit neatly into pre-existing funding categories. Philanthropists starting with Andrew Carnegie were working to prevent war and promote peace well before nuclear weapons were invented. And the environment was a well-established focus of foundations before scientists started sounding the alarm about climate change. What’s more, both nuclear weapons and climate change generated tons of media coverage and political activity. And so philanthropy’s response in these two areas wasn’t really an example of far-sighted funders engaging a critical issue that nobody was thinking about. In fact, in both cases, philanthropy followed the lead of activists and policy advocates who were pressing for action. More recently, quite a few funders have heeded alarms about the risks posed by artificial intelligence.

In contrast, the threat of a deadly pandemic—however obvious and real—has lurked in the shadows. Few journalists, advocates or political leaders have paid much attention, despite terrifying works of fiction and equally terrifying policy reports. And because nobody else has cared about a pandemic risk, foundations and major donors have been tuned out, too.

This is another reminder that philanthropy is not all it’s sometimes cracked up to be. Most grantmaking is pedestrian and service-oriented, focused on near-term needs and glaring problems. Not many funders think outside the box.

This sector plays a critical role in bettering humanity. Just don’t expect too much of it.

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