In this view, demanding benchmarks for success or performing due diligence have become passé, or even a sign of structural racism; the often-white donors should simply trust leaders of color to make decisions for themselves. Lori Bezahler, the president of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation and chair of the board of Race Forward, says that unrestricted multiyear grants “would be a form of philanthropic reparations that could become the real game changer, providing steady streams of investment income to fuel the racial-justice movement and representing a true transfer of power.”

But this transfer of power, as it is called, has hit some bumps in the road. Over the past few years, donors have lavished hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts on race-based groups like Black Lives Matter, only to see most or all of those funds wasted or stolen. In retrospect, those donors would have achieved more if they had demanded accountability in the expenditure of those funds. …

The recent experiences with Black Lives Matter and with alumni pulling funds from Harvard, Penn, MIT, and other schools due to concerns about anti-Semitism prove once again that donors should exercise diligence in awarding grants and evaluating them after the fact. The reasons for this are twofold: to make sure that their own purposes are carried out and to prevent those institutions from taking them for granted. Trust in philanthropy, as in other fields, is built organically and over time by performance. Calling forth a new movement, or coining new phrases, will not change that.