There are so very many things about this election that call us to a new future but if the future is showing itself to be radically different, we must become different too -- or we quickly become irrelevant -- and endangered.

In foundation circles, it is an oft-repeated truism that McGeorge Bundy, when he led the Ford Foundation, and his foundation colleagues botched their relationships with Congress when they testified against federal regulation and specifically what led to the 1969 Tax Act’s controls on private foundations. Though their dire predictions of the collapse of foundations after the Tax Act hardly came to pass—in fact, foundations boomed in numbers and assets following it--Bundy and his big foundation colleagues have morphed into philanthropic archetypes of how not to handle elected state or federal legislators.

Like many, the editors of Nonprofit Quarterly were disappointed in the Council on Foundations’ open letter to its members about what they and other foundations should do during this time of national and global economic distress (see the end of this article for the original letter ). Here is the letter we wish the Council had sent.