The National Committee of Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has noted the passing of Pablo Eisenberg at the age of 90.

A social justice advocate who decried U.S. philanthropy as a cozy club of privilege, Eisenberg pushed major donors to address inequities and improve an economic system that can leave many behind, the Washington Post reports. His long career was spent working to shift priorities among private foundations, corporate charities, and other grantmaking organizations—calling for a greater voice by lower-income people, minorities, and other vulnerable groups in how the money is spent. A senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership and former executive director of what is now known as Community Change, Eisenberg also was a longtime board member of NCRP, which he helped found.

According to the Post, Eisenberg told nonprofits to stop being “gutless wonders” and work more as advocates for people without power. He also took swipes at journalists for being “cheerleaders” while covering big-money donors and lambasted universities for a “higher-education caste system” that pays “bare-bones” wages to maintenance workers and other support staff.

“There are almost no grants given to look at the free-enterprise system, its excesses, its corruption, in some cases,” Eisenberg told NPR’s Talk of the Nation in 2006. “There’s very little money that goes into watchdog groups that are meant to hold government and other institutions accountable, so that’s not by accident.”

(Photo credit: Angelo Falcón, a public domain image via Wikipedia)