FOR CENTURIES, PHILANTHROPY has helped build institutions that define our communities: libraries, museums, parks, hospitals, orchestras, and schools. It has funded scientific discovery, preserved history, expanded educational opportunity, protected important places, and provided relief in moments of crisis.
However, as we know, the problems confronting communities today are increasingly complex, interconnected, and larger than any single foundation—or even the philanthropic sector itself—can solve.
No foundation, regardless of its size, can eliminate poverty, reverse climate change, repair a failing education system, protect every endangered species, or ensure that every animal is treated humanely. Perhaps the role of philanthropy is shifting. Rather than ask, “What can philanthropy solve?” the question is, “What is philanthropy uniquely positioned to do?”
Kirkpatrick Foundation chairman, Christian Keesee, puts it simply: “We are funding organizations who are trying to do good things for other people.” While that guiding philosophy remains at the heart of our work, our approach goes beyond grantmaking. We believe philanthropy can take risks and be willing to stand for something.
That is the approach Kirkpatrick Foundation has taken on ending the extreme confinement of pregnant pigs. Our position did not come first; the work did. For the last sixty years, animal wellbeing has been a significant part of our focus. We have invested in shelters, veterinary care, wildlife conservation, research, public education, and efforts to address pet overpopulation. We researched the issue, listened to different perspectives, examined the science and evidence, and considered the economic realities facing producers.
In 2024, Kirkpatrick Foundation published A Way Forward: Ending the Extreme Confinement of Pregnant Pigs in Industrial Farm Animal Production in Oklahoma. The report examined the use of gestation crates—metal enclosures so restrictive that pregnant pigs cannot turn around or move normally—and placed the issue within the larger story of industrial pork production in Oklahoma. It considered animal welfare, agriculture, economics, rural communities, consumer expectations, and the changing marketplace. What we learned led us to a position: extreme confinement is cruel and should end.
And sometimes taking a position means questioning practices close to home. Pigs restrained and forced to give birth on public display under the guise of education at the State Fair of Oklahoma is a practice that should also end. Education should help the next generation understand our responsibility to animals—not teach them to accept extreme confinement as an acceptable form of agriculture.
It is well documented that how a community treats animals says something about the health of that community, what we value, what we tolerate, and whether we are willing to act when evidence tells us we can do better. We also recognize that change has costs. That’s where philanthropy can play a role – not simply identifying what is wrong but investing in what might make it right. That is what philanthropy can do now. It can still write the grant check that keeps the doors open, funds the exhibition, protects a habitat, educates a child, or helps an organization serve its community. That work remains essential. Philanthropy can also ask questions. It can investigate. It can convene. It can challenge accepted practices. It can invest in solutions before they are obvious. And when research and evidence point toward the need for change, it can be willing to say so.
Philanthropy will never have enough money to solve every problem. That was never its greatest promise.
Its greater value may be in what it can set in motion: funding organizations doing good work, illuminating possibilities, taking the first risk, bringing people together, challenging complacency, taking a stand, and
creating momentum where none existed before.
And sometimes, making the world a little kinder—for people and for animals.
Kelley Barnes is the executive director of Kirkpatrick Foundation in Oklahoma City.
Kirpatrick Foundation is the publisher of ArtDesk. For more information about the
foundation or to read The Way Forward. kirkpatrickfoundation.com