Understanding Human Action and the Role of Knowledge
       The Framework of Individual Decision-Making

More and more of us are sensing that our country is in a kind of trouble
that cannot be cured by conventional political action, but by its
unfamiliar opposite-by de-politicizing, or de-managing, a society that
has outgrown its present structures and is not working.

Richard Cornuelle, De-Managing America (1975)

The ongoing social transformation depends heavily on the "new people" who are cultivating their intellectual capital and embracing self-management in the commercial world. Thomas Jefferson, F. A. Hayek, and even Karl Marx agreed that subordination would produce a passive work force unfit for self-government and unable to understand that a society is kept alive by a continuous process of adaptation, led by independent, enterprising people.

Today, a new breed of men and women understand and support the present transformation. They are reclaiming the responsibilities their parents were thought unable to assume. Many of them are finding themselves heirs to leadership in philanthropic foundations; others are becoming social entrepreneurs. We seek to help them understand and meet the challenges they will face in reinventing philanthropy for the new age in which the independent decision-making processes of millions of dispersed people are recognized as the most efficient means of social and economic coordination.

Research may include:

• Comparing and contrasting the services available to the commercial investor and those available to the philanthropic investor.

• Describing the voluntary process that produces consensus standards for various commercial products and analyzing its possible application to non-profit undertakings.

• Conducting a study of juries and standards committees as effective uses of volunteers. Members of these bodies assume important, sometimes grave, responsibilities. They bring unique "local knowledge" to the process. While guided by judges or their equivalents with technical experience, they are the decision-makers.

• Investigating the comparative effectiveness of subsidizing users of services rather than service providers.

• Identifying tools that can facilitate the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in the voluntary sector.

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