Taking on Infrastructure, Arnold Ventures Seeks to Make a Trillion-Plus Dollars "More Impactful"

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Last month, Arnold Ventures, the philanthropic LLC established in 2019 by billionaire couple Laura and John Arnold to broaden their influence, including into the policy arena, announced the launch of what it called a “bold, new infrastructure initiative.” Arnold Ventures says the new effort will “support research, policy development and advocacy aimed at bolstering U.S. capacity to build infrastructure — including housing, transportation, energy transmission, carbon reduction and more — faster, better and at a lower cost.”

That’s an ambitious vision, one that reflects the massive scale of what appears to have prompted it: historic federal infrastructure spending coming online over the past several years via legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. After decades of neglect, America’s infrastructure has become sexy — or, perhaps, what’s sexy is the opportunity to have a say in how more than $1 trillion in federal money will be spent.

In Arnold’s case, details are currently scarce, including the amount of money the funder is committing to the initiative. But in seeking ways to expedite infrastructure construction across the board, Arnold is taking a stab at a problem that has become increasingly apparent in recent years: America just isn’t so great at building things anymore — at least in a swift and cost-effective way.

Whether Arnold Ventures’ deliberate, evidence-centric approach to policy work can meaningfully address that problem is an open question, as is the issue of whether Arnold — and other like-minded philanthropies — can do so in a way that consistently prioritizes equity. But with the recent hiring of a former high-level Biden administration policy advisor, along with the money and influence that the Arnolds have on tap, there is little doubt that Arnold Ventures is planning on making a big splash in this arena. 

Making a trillion-plus dollars “more impactful”

The first clue that Arnold Ventures is serious about its infrastructure initiative lies with its hire to lead the new program: Charlie Anderson, who most recently served on the Biden administration’s National Economic Council and whose public service includes stints during the Biden and Obama administrations as well as four years spent as a senior advisor to Democratic Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet. 

In his most recent role with the National Economic Council, Anderson worked on permitting and environmental review “in preparation for the opportunities presented by the… Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act,” according to Arnold’s press release. That gives him a good window into what Arnold appears to be targeting in this work — “obstacles such as onerous policies [and] regulatory barriers,” as Arnold President Kelli Rhee put it, that make the deployment of infrastructure dollars less efficient.

For his part, Anderson said that he was attracted to his new position because it offers the opportunity to “take the politics out of” infrastructure improvements and “just go toward what works.” Anderson also praised Arnold Ventures’ process and results, saying that the organization funds people to determine what works , takes the results of that research “and then turns it into actual solutions.” 

Arnold’s evidence-based perspective for solving problems, Anderson said, “gives you an opportunity, by being nimble, to take a relatively small amount of resources compared to the giant trillions of dollars and actually make those trillions of dollars much more impactful.”

What counts as a special interest?

It’s true that Arnold Ventures, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation before it, have had major impacts on their focus areas, including criminal justice. At the same time, it’s unclear whether or not the organization’s emphasis on “evidence-based” social change has led to entirely positive outcomes. 

The Arnolds have been major backers of state-based legislative initiatives to end gerrymandering; as a Michigan resident and voter, I can personally attest to the positive impact of ending gerrymandering on everything from legislative budget priorities to protecting abortion access and voting rights in my state. 

On the other hand, the Arnolds have earned criticism from some corners for backing charter schools, supporting public employee pension reforms that critics say would weaken those programs, and promoting pretrial risk assessment tools that critics say are both ineffective and have little actual impact on racial disparities in pretrial incarceration. More recently, Arnold Ventures drew ire in criminal justice reform circles with the controversial hiring of former Texas A&M Associate Professor of Economics Jennifer Doleac as its new executive vice president of criminal science.

In response to these criticisms, Arnold Ventures said that the organization is “proud of our work to support children and families who are stuck navigating perpetually failing schools; to fix the broken criminal justice system; and to repair damage to financially unstable pension plans. We center our work around research and advocacy efforts that are tied to evidence-based solutions. By doing so, we aim to give voice to individuals who are too often ignored because of entrenched special interests that benefit from the status quo.”

Arnold has a point — every issue where its work has garnered criticism does suffer under the weight of competing, frequently monied interests. Infrastructure writ large is definitely no exception. The red tape Arnold has its eye on cutting in that arena has certainly been lucrative for an army of contractors, lawyers, consultants and other middlemen whose substantive contribution to what Anderson has called “basic, kitchen-table outcomes” in infrastructure is questionable to say the least. 

On the other hand, while some of those parties may indeed deserve the “special interest” label, where do we draw the line? For example, putting unions for public employees and teachers under the umbrella of “special interests,” or grassroots organizations working to dismantle systemic racism and injustice in the carceral system, would be cause for at least a raised eyebrow. When any funder cites its reliance on evidence to make decisions or fund policy work, the first question that should probably be asked is “who gets to decide which evidence matters?”

A “huge” role for philanthropy

When it comes to this new initiative, at least, Anderson gave the impression that Arnold Ventures is interested in hearing from people who are already working on the ground on infrastructure-related issues. Anderson said that some of the work is going to involve “going out and doing a bunch of listening sessions with [grassroots groups] and others who are engaged in this to figure out where the right places are to go to invest in.” He also said he believes that philanthropy’s role is to be more of a facilitator for discussions and cooperation between stakeholders with an interest in solving problems.

That’s not to say that Anderson feels Arnold Ventures will take a back seat in its infrastructure work. Philanthropy, he said, has an opportunity to play a “huge” role in everything from supporting “research to show what works” to “the policy ideas to take that research and make it a reality and the advocacy to take those solutions and make them real.” 

Of course, Arnold Ventures isn’t alone among heavy-hitting private funders in taking an interest in the country’s infrastructure. Last year, for example, IP’s Phillip Rojc reported on the funding collaborative behind the Local Infrastructure Hub, a resource designed to help municipalities access federal infrastructure grants. Infrastructure Hub backers include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Ford Foundation, the Kresge Foundation and the Ballmer Group. Other funders will almost certainly ramp up efforts to inform or influence public spending on housing, clean energy, roads and other infrastructure issues as the ongoing onslaught of spending turns “infrastructure week” into an infrastructure decade. 

One hopes those funders will remember that while infrastructure is a public good, not all infrastructure is good for everybody. Given the decidedly negative impacts of projects like the construction of the country’s interstate highways and the location of current electrical power plants on marginalized communities, we’ll all need to keep a sharp eye to make sure that the evidence used in determining where the next wave of infrastructure money moves includes a heavy emphasis on racial and economic equity.