Just how influential is billionaire philanthropist George Soros?
Vilified by some, praised by others, the Hungarian-born investor and his Open Society Foundations (OSF)鈥攈e鈥檚 donated $32 billion since 1979鈥攚orks to support liberal democratic intuitions in 37 countries around the world.
But exactly how much influence has OSF had on those countries?
A new study by researchers evaluated the global investments by the nonprofit to understand the role of private philanthropy in a range of public policy areas, including education, criminal justice reform, health care, development, civil liberties and civil rights, and democratization. Published in Global Studies Quarterly, the conclusion might surprise some. (
The report was written by Associate Professor , Assistant Professor , who led the qualitative study, and Schar School graduate Hayden R. Ludwig, who studies nonprofit policies at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Research assistance was provided by Schar School Master鈥檚 in Public Policy student Hadiyyah Aida Abdul-Jalaal聽and student Lea Mann.
The self-funded study began 鈥渁fter a friendly and informal conversation waiting for the elevator鈥 with N煤帽ez, said Correa-Cabrera, an immigration and border policy expert who had been curious about OSF while researching migrant caravans and mass migrations in the Americas.
And the findings? Well鈥eh.
鈥淲e find that OSF funding does not have much of an impact at the country level in a select number of outcomes that we can measure,鈥 said N煤帽ez. 鈥淭his does not mean that this funding does not do anything, but that it is at least not detectable at the country level.鈥
鈥淲e have found that whatever Soros鈥檚 foundations are doing, they are not having a clear significant impact; actually, they do not seem to have any impact at the macro-level at all, at least amongst the data available for this study,鈥 Correa-Cabrera concluded. 鈥淚n other words, there is no proof that OSF funding has a substantial contribution at the macro-level in the development of open societies, nor that it is having the negative impacts that some of its critics ascribe to it.鈥澛
The report has received attention in the media, including a two-part dissection by the public radio program, The World. . .