Is Philanthropy Anti-Democratic?

Should the government be allowed to interfere with a philanthropic organization's purpose? Should it be allowed to appropriate a foundations' assets? The questions may strike many of today's readers as absurd, but they weren't always. When John D. Rockefeller asked the federal government to charter the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation, for example, he offered a series of concessions that gave the public a governance role in the foundation, including members of the board being subject to a veto by a congressionally appointed board. The concessions were meant to allay anxiety about the democracy-corrupting influence of a large and unaccountable private foundation, but they still were not enough for the U.S. Congress, which turned him down. The New York legislature granted approval without any concessions to the public interest, and the people's representatives in Washington lost their chance to control the world's largest philanthropy.